Military Society Research Articles

Christopher E Forth and Bertrand Taithe (eds), French masculinities: history, culture and politics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. xi, 249, illus., £50.00 (hardback 978-0-230-00661-4).

Christopher E Forth and Bertrand Taithe's edited volume is a welcome addition to a growing corpus of collected articles on the history of masculinity. What this selection does especially well is provide an overview of the history. Though there are a few essays in the collection that have a very limited research focus, most authors attempt to give an overview of their period and topic. This is especially useful as a starting point for discussing both the scope of the history as well as seeing what still needs to be done. The volume covers only modern history, starting with the late eighteenth century elite and ending with a contemporary piece on the suburbs, the veil and recent rioting by disaffected youths. The majority of the essays focus on the post-1870 period, when both imperialism and the Third Republic redefined and solidified the French male, only to have him questioned and perverted after 1940. The first three chapters cover the Old Regime, the Revolution and the Napoleonic period. What we see here is the shift away from the Old Regime masculine emphasis on civility and refinement (traits which were made fun of by the Germans and the British as effeminate) towards a militarization of society. By the height of the Revolution all able-bodied men were to be treated as property of the state through military service. As Christopher Forth shows, by the late nineteenth century, physicians and anthropologists worried about the softening of the physical body in modern society. The imperial project and the Franco-Prussian war were key moments in defining an unstable and highly criticized version of French masculinity. The French male was weak and overly intellectual and some even suggested that African colonials be recruited into the French army to reinvigorate it. Robert Aldrich's chapter on colonial masculinities reinforces this idea by arguing that colonial domination made up for masculine weakness in France. The First World War did not help quell the sense of threat to the men of the metropole. Judith Surkis uses the example of venereal disease between the wars to illustrate both the precariousness of the French male's ability to protect the family as well as the menace of foreign men who were blamed for spreading the infections. Michael Sibalis, in his masterful overview of French homosexuality and effeminacy, is the only other author to use medical history prominently. For the Second World War, Miranda Pollard investigates the various competing forms of masculinity after the French defeat in 1940 represented by Petain, De Gaulle and the Resistance. Three much more specific topics represent the post-war period: the roman noir, masculine stardom and a discussion of the writer Serge Doubrovsky. Andre Rauch's final chapter on recent violence in the suburbs focuses on the women who are abused and controlled by the disaffected immigrant youths, as much as on the men themselves. Rauch's piece is the most powerful, but also the most problematic. He jumps from topic to topic, not distinguishing between the Muslim youths whose sisters wear veils, and immigrant and French youth from other religious backgrounds. In the Afterword, Robert Nye, one of the leading historians on the topic, points to the continued vision of France as hyper-civilized and thus feminized, especially by Americans post-9/11. France has gone from a great nation to a declining one, both militarily and demographically. French (elite) men have had 200 years of failing to live up to the iconic masculinities created by the Revolution and Napoleon, while hanging on to the Old Regime vision of the civilized, intellectual gentleman.

The Consensus on Defense and Weimar Prussia's Civil Service

The impact of the Reichswehr's program of clandestine armament on Weimar Germany's civil society is a phenomenon largely overlooked by post-war historiography. Not only did it fail to identify the wide support enjoyed by the illegal preparations for a general mobilization on the national and local levels, but it also failed to address the question why the officials collaborated with the Reichswehr under the aegis of “national defense” at all. The reasons for both omissions are easy to find. While the role played by civilians within the militarization of society has been largely ignored (due to the historiographical dominance of the interpretation model of the army as an autonomous “state within the state”), the few authors who recognized its importance considered a more detailed analysis of civilian dispositions to be dispensable in view of the well-known nationwide anti-Versailles sentiment.

The Vivid Alphabet. Media and Mass Literacy in the Early Modern Military State

This article explores the connections between literacy, media technology and power in early modern Northern Europe. Designed as a genealogy of mass literacy, it suggests that the extremely successful literacy campaign in the kingdom of Sweden (dating back to 1686) was based upon a new kind of writing, a reshaped alphabetic technology, coterminous with a new technology of power, namely discipline, which originated in the army. At the same time, it argues that militarization of society, rather than consolidation of Lutheran faith, provides the pertinent context in which the take off of universal literacy in Northern Europe, and, consequently, in the West, must be interpreted. Thus it becomes possible to explain why mass literacy was first achieved in Sweden, a state of imperial ambition were military needs and military organization permeated every aspect of society.

Alternative Politics and the Transformation of Society–Military Relations

This article attempts to explain transformations in military—society relations using models developed in the context of political participation and social learning. The authors suggest that patterns of alternative politics might evolve from the undermining of the “republican contract,” that is, the exchange between citizens' military sacrifice and the rights and rewards granted to them by the state. This situation creates growing dissatisfaction among citizens that may trigger collective action, even among soldiers. Barriers to internal bargaining within the military generate modes of alternative politics in the military—society realm. Drawing from the case of Israel, the authors illustrate these strategies by focusing on conscientious objection, “gray refusal,” reservists' rebellions, and a direct form of civilian monitoring of the army.

The Militarisation of society in Georgian Britain and Napoleonic France

Resume Au cours de la Revolution francaise et de la periode napoleonienne, la Grande-Bretagne dut faire face a une menace d’invasion massive. Dans son ouvrage Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, paru en 1993, Linda Colley a montre le retentissement important que l’engagement volontaire massif parmi la population mâle, et l’armement de ces hommes, pour repondre a la menace d’invasion, eut sur la societe britannique. J. E. Cookson, dans son livre de 1997, The British Armed Nation 1793-1815, etudia en profondeur les relations entre la milice, les volontaires et l’armee. « Comme dans d’autres Etats europeens importants, » note Linda Colley, « en Grande-Bretagne, c’est la formation aux armes, sous l’egide de l’Etat, qui constitua l’experience la plus commune d’une classe ouvriere, a la fin du XVIIIe et au debut du XIX, et non en travaillant dans l’industrie, ni en ne faisant partie d’une association politique radicale ». L’armee britannique vit ses effectifs multiplier par six au cours de la periode napoleonienne, et ceux de la Marine par huit. L’experience francaise revele des similitudes frappantes. Au debut de la Revolution francaise, la jeune republique declara la guerre contre ses agresseurs percus comme tels, et lanca la premiere de ces levees en masse pour proteger « la patrie en danger ». Cette militarisation de l’Etat francais revolutionnaire puis napoleonien est devenue le sujet de nombreux travaux, comme celui de Jacques-Olivier Boudon, publie sous le titre Armee, guerre et Societe a l’epoque napoleonienne, et celui de l’historien reconnu de la revolution francaise, Jean-Paul Bertaud, Quand les enfants parlaient de gloire : l’armee au cœur de la France de Napoleon. La France et l’Angleterre devinrent des « nations en arme ».Cette etude offre une comparaison entre ces mouvements nationaux britannique et francais face a la perception d’une menace exterieure.

William Worcester, The Boke of Noblesse and Military Society in East Anglia

William Worcester, <i>The Boke of Noblesse</i> and Military Society in East Anglia

Black Slaves in Mamlūk Narratives: Representations of Transgression

While a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to the white military slaves and freedmen in the Mamluk Empire (1250- 1517), the black slaves ( ‘abīd ) have often been overlooked. In Egypt, Mamluk society, especially military society, was marked by a profound racial discourse that privileged white over black. This was by no means the only ethnic/racial categorization of people and groups, nor was it the only mechanism of privilege. But the definition of black slaves as the subaltern had social, economic and political ramifications that can not be ignored. Such definitions are especially evident in accounts of black slaves who are perceived to violate existing boundaries. My purpose in this paper is to explore the ways in which six Mamluk historians construct often mutually contradictory narratives of transgressive black slaves.

Aportes sobre no violencia: la propuesta del socialismo autogestionario noviolento

Ahora más que nunca existe militarismo y militarización de la sociedad. Pero además, este sistema injusto desarrolla para imponerse y controlar a la población otros muchos mecanismos basados sobre todo en el control de la información, la manipulación de las conciencias, el fomento de la cultura de la evasión y la gestión del miedo y la inseguridad. Creemos que aún no se ha profundizado suficientemente en la noviolencia como propuesta global de sociedad, más allá de su dimensión de estrategia de lucha, y esa es nuestra propuesta: construir la sociedad Noviolenta, o Socialismo Autogestionario Noviolento. Se exponen las características de la sociedad noviolenta como autogestión, interculturalidad, superación del patriarcado...

Marital Status and the Rhetoric of the Women's Movement in World War I Germany

The rhetoric of the German women's movement regarding female marital status changed during World War I. Female marital status had been a central concern of the leadership of the women's movement prior to the war. Yet as female marital prospects diminished in the wake of the Great War, leading voices in the imperial German women's movement shifted their focus away from the problematic "surplus woman" and adopted a platform that emphasized female unity and patriotism. This rhetorical shift advanced a vision of a "maternal citizen" that would figure prominently in the divisive gender politics of the Weimar era. (CD)

The “Military Society”

After clarifying what should be meant by “military society”, one is reminded that human and social sciences have for a long time shown interest in warfare and armies by giving priority to three viewpoints: historical, functionalist and socio-legal. But these are debatable even outmoded points that should be set aside to make room for another model which is termed here as a cultural one. Then, the conditions in which this entity appeared are recalled and they refer to a precise socio-cultural context: the one deriving from the birth of the nation-state in nineteenth century Europe. However, in order to be able to speak about a society, it is therefore necessary to fulfil several conditions, these are detailed in a second part where the specific features of a military group are given in more details. Once this done, the point at issue is to know whether the main characteristics which used to make of the armies a society are still valid. An attentive examination of changes that inter-state and indeed within a state confrontations have experienced in the post-Cold War era and these coinciding with army professionalization that many western countries have started, compel us to doubt somewhat the preservation of the present military society. In other words, we can bet on a relative withdrawing of the socio-cultural specificity of the military world within the global society.

Повседневность Воинственности в России : Наследие милитаризованноrо социализма ?1

Militarization of society and culture have been a key characteristic of the Soviet era. Deeply rooted in the Civil war period, militarism got reinforced and consolidated with the Great Patriotic War, which largely succeeded in legitimising military values and creating consensus on their importance both in society and in State institutions. Perestroika and the fall of the Soviet Union are a testimony to the consensus’ crisis, with the Afghan war as a main element of the de-legitimacy of militarism. Thus, the 1990s are analysed as an attempt for society and statehood to bypass militarism ; but institutional change does not mean the end of it. Post-Soviet period is characterized by a double and contradictory evolution : on one hand, an increasing rejection of the military ; on the other hand, a widespread use of (military) violence, on a daily basis as well as on a large scale, with the war in Chechnya.

Civil–Military Relations in Postcommunist Europe: Assessing the Transition1

This article argues that the relative homogeneity of communist civil–military relations postcommunist Europe has been replaced by significant diversity. Those states that have joined NATO and the EU have consolidated democratic civilian control of their militaries, re-oriented their defence policies towards peacekeeping and intervention operations beyond their borders and are fashioning new military–society relationships. In contrast, in Russia, Ukraine and most of the other former Soviet republics the military has become part of the nexus of semi- or outright authoritarian presidential rule, while severe economic and social problems are resulting in a dramatic downgrading of the military's professional and operational competence and severely inhibiting the prospects for meaningful military reform. In the countries of the former Yugoslavia, civil–military reform is gathering pace, but continues to struggle with twin legacies of war and authoritarianism.

Des citoyens et des soldats. Histoire politique de l'obligation militaire en France de la Révolution au début de la Troisième République (1789-1872)

The liberal French Revolution of 1789 rejects all ideas of military service but, forced by the 1789 armed revolution and radicalisation that led to war, the French revolution is compelled to resort to enforcing enrolment before it established a military conscription and defining five classes of conscripts for the Republic. Making use of this conscription, Napoleon's government develops it further by enforcing recruitment which makes military enrolment rational recruitment. This is the kind of enforced recruitment that the French Restauration will put in place in 1818 under the name of appeal , having abolished the conscription for building up a professional army. But the same tensions are experienced as during the rising up of the French Revolution during the XIXth century. In opposition to those who want to identify citizens with soldiers, those who want to reduce the standing army which demonstrates too openly the military power of the State or those who want to turn the national guard into a national militia, those who want to bring together citizens and soldiers by turning the standing army into a national military high school, there are always those who want a distinct differenciation between the civil and military society of the State - it is them who defend the possibility of replacement and a long lasting military service. From the Monarchy of Juillet to the second French Empire, they were responsible for the failure of numerous projects of reform. In fact, we must wait for the emergence of Prussian power, and especially the disaster of 1870, to establish again the principle of personal service. Nevertheless the syncretism of 1872, for which the main point is the deletion of the replacement, does not identify symbolically the citizen with the soldier as was the case during the French Revolution, and furthermore, it does not see in each citizen an effective soldier. The professional army born under the French Restauration does not disappear, even if it has a new function : that of providing military training to new citizens. Finally the law of 1872 establishes two principles : obligation for every citizen to enrol during wartime - legitimated by patriotic duty - and a first military organisation of the nation (not in the form of this armed militia claimed since the French Revolution - an army merged in the nation - but in the form of an armed nation, with a military system geared to enrol its citizens during wartime.

Waiting • The Crazed

Waiting • The Crazed

The Hall Handbook of the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902

Darrell Hall. The Hall Handbook of the Anglo-Boer 1899-1902. Edited by Fransjohan Pretorius and Gilbert Toralge. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1999. x + 272 pp. Photographs. Tables. Maps. Illustrations. Bibliography. $50.00. Cloth. Martin F. Marix Evans. Encyclopedia of the Boer 1899-1902. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio Inc., 2000. xxviii + 414 pp. Photographs. Tables. Maps. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. $75.00. Cloth. The centenary of the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer War has brought forth a raft of books, from American, British, and South African publishers, as well a number of seminars, especially in South Africa. This has enabled scholars from South Africa, the rest of the Commonwealth, and the United States to delve into topics that were previously slighted, to discuss new (archival) sources, challenges, and interpretations, and to place that conflict within the wider context of historiography and social science. Particularly noteworthy has been a willingness of some Afrikaner historians to take a somewhat iconoclastic view of what had previously been the Afrikaner orthodoxy on the war, an orthodoxy that bolstered the rise and subsequent entrenchment of Afrikaner nationalism within the South African ethnic state. (See, for instance, Andre Wessels's extraordinarily perceptive chapter, at War, in John Gooch, ed., The Boer War: Direction, Experience and Image [London: Frank Cass Ltd., 2000], as well as Ian J. van der Waag's Re-Fighting the Second Anglo-Boer War: Historians in the Trenches, Journal for Contemporary History 27 [2], 2002.) As a result, there is something of a new view, rather than a deja vu. The cast of characters has grown, with those who were Orwellian unpersons at the time (due to the myopia of white supremacy shared, albeit in somewhat different forms, by both the Afrikaners and their imperial opponents in the war) now advanced to full historical actor status. There is some degree of overlap between these two reference works, and Martin Marix Evans often cites the late Darrell Hall's volume as a source for some of his data. Yet the Hall work tilts heavily toward the military (and naval) direction, whereas the Marix Evans volume covers a wider array of subjects, including the military. This can be explained in some measure by the background of each author. Hall, who died in 1996, was a South African, attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, and spent twenty years in the British army. Marix Evans graduated from Cambridge University and has published several works on military history (including an earlier one on the Anglo-Boer War). Hall's bibliography, although considerably shorter than the one in Marix Evans's book (three pages versus six pages, respectively), includes Dutch- and Afrikaans-language sources, as well as materials in English, while Marix Evans's bibliography is limited to English-language materials. Marix Evans draws heavily on articles in Soldiers of the Queen, the journal of the Victorian Military Society, a source that Hall does not cite. However, Marix Evans overlooks the equally useful Militaria and Military History Journal, two South African journals devoted to military history that frequently publish valuable articles on the second Anglo-Boer War. Neither bibliography includes a listing of other bibliographies on that conflict, and neither cites any unpublished theses and dissertations, although Marix Evans does refer to the U. …

Role of religion in politics: Impact on the civil and military society of Pakistan

The beginnings of Islamic revivalism in South Asia were in reality attempts of the Muslim elite to regain their lost socio‐economic and political power which had been eroded as a consequence of British imperialism. Islam as a religion became an effective tool for social control and mobilisation. In the 20th century Syed Abul Ala Maududi, founder of the Jamaat‐i‐Islami, urged Muslims to struggle towards a worldwide revolution, transcending artificial boundaries and national territories to establish a worldwide ‘true Islamic state’. In keeping with these views, Maududi opposed the creation of Pakistan, but, after 1947, focussed on Islamisation of the country as an initial step towards a greater Islamic State. Fifty years of sustained efforts by the Jamaat have resulted in radicalisation of a large section of the Pakistani power structures by its cadre and sympathisers. Today, Pakistan is a hostage to the will of radical Muslim elements who pose a potent threat to the peace and stability of the region as well as to the existence of Pakistan as a sovereign state.

Globalization and Democratic Development in Thailand: The New Path of the Military, Private Sector, and Civil Society

Globalization and Democratic Development in Thailand: The New Path of the Military, Private Sector, and Civil Society

Südkorea und Rußland: Wie man Wohlstand erarbeitet oder verspielt

Zusammenfassung Am Anfang oder in der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts wäre es absurd gewesen, das aufstrebende zaristische Rußland oder die mächtige Sowjet-Union mit dem armen Korea oder Südkorea zu vergleichen. Am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts haben Südkorea und Rußland kaufkraftbereinigt ein annähernd gleich großes Bruttoinlandsprodukt erwirtschaftet. Das Pro-Kopf-Produkt in Südkorea ist drei- bis viermal so hoch wie in Rußland. Natürlich ist der unterschiedliche Entwicklungserfolg beider Länder auf russischer Seite weitgehend sowjetisches Erbe. Die so massiv unterschiedliche Wachstumsgeschichte beider Länder ist um so erstaunlicher, weil beide Länder in bezug auf klassische Determinanten des Wachstums - wie die sog. Vorteile der Rückständigkeit, Investitionen und Humankapitalausstattung - ähnlich günstige Ausgangsbedingungen hatten. Auch in bezug auf den autokratischen Charakter des Regimes und den Militarisierungsgrad der Gesellschaft ähnelten beide einander. Aber Unterschiede in bezug auf die Eigentumsrechte, den Zentralisierungsgrad der Entscheidungsbefugnisse, daraus resultierende Wissensnutzungschancen oder -defizite, wirtschaftliche Freiheit und Innovationschancen, „urban bias“ und Exportorientierung der Volkswirtschaft können die unterschiedliche Entwicklung beider Länder erklären. Vor allem in bezug auf die Unsicherheit der Eigentumsrechte wird sich das sowjetische Erbe in Rußland nicht leicht überwinden lassen. Die Tatsache, daß Rußland ganz im Gegensatz zu Südkorea ein ausgesprochen rohstoffreiches Land ist, verleitet zu Verteilungskämpfen, anstatt zur institutionellen oder wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung beizutragen.

Untimely Reflections

Untimely Reflections Arno Mayer (bio) This is a time to reject the temptation or superstition of fixing on a single cause for the loss of America’s splendid invulnerability and exceptionalism on September 11, 2001. The infamous terrorist attack, presumably masterminded by Osama bin Laden, a Muslim zealot, is no more the causa causans of the crisis in this early dawn of the twenty-first century than the assassination by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian zealot, of Francis Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria-Hungary was the causa causans of the crepuscular crisis of the long nineteenth century in July-August 1914. As Washington chooses to treat this horrific crime as an act of war, it is well to remember that it takes at least two (states) to fight a war. And any war raises the question of the relative responsibility of each side and its allies for the underlying and precipitant causes of conflict. Of course, in 1914 the leaders of the opposing but equiponderant Triple Entente and Triple Alliance knew who the prospective enemy was even if they could not foresee the consequences of their diplomatic decisions and military actions, which spiraled into catastrophe. Today, quite apart from the nebulosity of the “enemy other” there is not even the semblance of a balance of military power and even without allies America, the self-appointed world sheriff, has the military capability to “make the law,” which is not to say that the consequences, both immediate and long-term, will be any less fraught with imponderables. But the temptation of war in 2001, not unlike in 1914, calls in question Montaigne’s axiom, grounded in Aeschylus and Aristotle, that foreign war is “a milder evil than civil war” and that to resort to external war to avoid internal war is “a bad means for a good purpose.” Presently this prescriptive formula is being revised to say that the violence of international war is also less wicked than the violence of terror. Indeed, we are witnessing the incipient collaboration between, in Arnold Toynbee’s words, an “external and internal proletariat” against an overweening imperial ascendancy. This battle will take the place of yesteryear’s international civil war. Chateaubriand challenged the millennial wisdom that foreign war is “morally superior” to civil war. In fact, he posited that a civil war might actually be “less unjust and revolting,” as well as more “natural” than an external conflict. In any case, Chateaubriand invited reflection on the degree to which foreign and (un)civil war may, in fact, be two sides of the same coin of violence. Except in America, the Second World War radically narrowed the dividing line between heroic fighting men and blameless civilians. This ideologically and technologically conditioned transformation of the realm of war removes one of the main reasons for preferring military over civil conflict in the moral economy of Kant — perpetual violence and war. The growing place, since 1945, of women in the armed services, in the strategic elites, and in key economic sectors further reduces the boundaries between civil and military society in times of foreign and civil war as well as in moments of terrorist violence. This blurring of the line between the battlefield and the homefront is rendered all the more lethal by the absence of strategies and laws governing irregular and indirect warfare. Tellingly, there is no treatise on civil war to equal Clausewitz’s On War. To date, civil war has been essentially blind and wild, in part for being impregnated with vengeance and re-vengeance. The same is true, in spades, for terrorist violence. Nor is there anything comparable to the “laws of war” for civil and terrorist warfare, except the embryonic laws and courts to punish genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. And they are likely to be no more effective than the Geneva conventions during the Thirty Years’ War of the Twentieth Century. Incidentally, taking the long view, the waning of cross-border wars between and among states in favor of ethnically, religiously, and culturally fueled civil conflicts is a return to the historical norm — to before the emergence of the sovereign state and the attendant international state system. Until now, in modern...

The military and Turkish society

The military and Turkish society