A Bid for Insurgency, Military History-Style
If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.
--Sun Tzu, The Art of War
There’s been a lot of discussion on War Historian over the past couple of weeks concerning an article on National Review On-Line written by John J. Miller entitled “Sounding Taps.” The article basically “investigates” the “status” of military history as an academic discipline and predicts its demise due to the perceived bias of “tenured radicals” who are suspicious of all things military.
Dr. Mark Grimsley of The Ohio State History Department, AKA the “War Historian,” took serious issue with the article on a number of methodological points, but his main argument castigated Miller for doing more harm to the field of military history by predicting its failure than the material that pointed out the disciplines hardships did good.
I ran across the debate the other day and read “Sounding Taps” and it seemed, to me, to be a sort of deja vu version of the opening half of John Lynn’s classic article “The Embattled Future of Academic Military History.” Yet now, instead of being hidden within a nearly 10-year-old journal somewhere in some library or cloaked within the shady confines of J-STOR, the subject material was out in the open, on-line at the National Review, where presumably the material would be viewed by hundreds of the thousands. I was glad that the news was getting out.
Enter Grimsley.
In the interest to full disclosure I should acknowledge that even though I’ve never met him personally, I think the world of Dr. Grimsley. Absent a military history specialists here at Ole Miss his postings and online essays at War Historian and Blog Them Out Of the Stone Age have taught me more about military history as an academic discipline than any professor I’ve ever come in contact with. Yet his response to the Miller article infuriated me. Who was this professor, locked within the ivory tower of one of the finest military history programs in the country, to complain about an article that argued there was a bias against military history. He’s located at GHQ comfortably crafting strategy in a sympathetic environment while there are graduate students out there who are cutting their teeth on the front lines of the battle for military history, who aren’t serving on the OSU general staff and run into the academic bias daily.
The bias, it seems to me, is not necessarily one of openness making it difficult for the casual observer to perceive. For example, in my days as a graduate student I never ran into a professor who refused to let me work on a military history topic. However, I couldn’t even begin to count how many conversations I’ve overheard sitting quietly in my cubicle (which just so happened to be located directly across from the faculty lounge) where faculty members, believing I wasn’t around, voiced their true feelings about military history. Most simply stated that they refused to teach on military subjects, even if the class dealt exclusively with a major war, while others went so far as to indict the discipline for everything from the election of George W. Bush to the war in Iraq. Exposed to such academic obtuseness, I was glad to read something that brought these biases to light and here was Grimsley telling me to quit complaining.
However, I’ve had time to cool down over the past few weeks and it now seems that Grimsley does have a point, it does military history no good to simply complain unless action is being taken to carry the fight to the enemy. Much, I believe, is being done on the operational front thanks to the brilliant leadership of Lynn, Grimsley, and others but it’s the forces behind the front lines, where there are no military history specialists, who desperately need a handout. If biased faculty members refuse to give us courses in military history, then it's time to create them on our own. So, taking a page from the al- Qaeda handbook, a little of Mao, and a healthy dose of my own operational history, I propose a recipe for insurgency– a strategy for reaching out to graduate students, like myself, who possess the desire and the will to learn but are currently without sound direction from an academic specialists.
Connectivity should be utilized extensively to connect isolated students. This will require specialist to lend a helping hand. Such sacrifice may prove a bit burdensome but I think such a strategy could become fruitfull by exposing graduate students in countless departments to military history through association and classroom contact with grad students interested in the subject. Such students could, after gaining experience, take over teaching duties for NROTC-ROTC history classes which are, in my experience, simply pathetic.
Here's a short list of suggestions.
First and foremost, a new list of relevant academic military history texts needs to be completed and posted prominently on the Society of Military History’s Web Page. Such a list is the silver bullet for educating graduate students who have no direction. The current list, from the Duke-UNC program, is embarrassingly out of date. The new list should reflect new approaches to the discipline including military history from a world perspective, gender, culture, and memory methodologies, as well as more traditional titles examining strategy and operational history. No list is too small; this should be a reading list of comprehensive exam length NOT a preliminary list intended to introduce the discipline.
A collection of old syllabi, complete with reading lists and assignments, should also be posted in a centralized location. Suggested paper topics of an academic nature would prove invaluable for students looking for relevant research topics. Nonspecialists are willing to work with students in these areas but they either hide their ignorance of the subject matter or, more likely, are unfamiliar with current research and are afraid to ask for help.
The SMH conference keynote address and as many of the subsequent panel discussions as possible should be recorded and placed on-line. Students who are unable to travel or are simply uncomfortable traveling to an academic conference where they don’t know a living soul, would reap just rewards if they were exposed to this material.
Bloggers are invaluable! Personally, as I’ve previously stated, I learned more about academic military history reading “Blog Them Out of the Stone Age” than I did from any other source. Topics should include methodological and historiographical debates as well as more traditional topics. This allows for valuable discussion and contact with historians who would otherwise be unavailable to individuals both inside and outside the Academy.
Isolated graduate students should not feel like they’re alone in the fight. The facts is that military history has become isolated into far-flung programs throughout the country. Due to their isolation and small number, it can be extremely difficult for interested or even qualified students to enter the ranks of prestigious programs. However if such an insurgency is executed locally, isolated students can receive a strong education in military history through independent coursework and informal global interaction on the Internet. If this education can be coupled to more “in vogue” course materials taught by local faculty, a student can receive the best of both worlds. He doesn’t fall victim to the “just knowing military history” critique nor does he possess a perverted, irrelevant, or inaccurate view of academic military history. Such a strategy should be adopted; times demand it, students long for it, and the front-line fight requires it. Vive la resistance!
--Sun Tzu, The Art of War
There’s been a lot of discussion on War Historian over the past couple of weeks concerning an article on National Review On-Line written by John J. Miller entitled “Sounding Taps.” The article basically “investigates” the “status” of military history as an academic discipline and predicts its demise due to the perceived bias of “tenured radicals” who are suspicious of all things military.
Dr. Mark Grimsley of The Ohio State History Department, AKA the “War Historian,” took serious issue with the article on a number of methodological points, but his main argument castigated Miller for doing more harm to the field of military history by predicting its failure than the material that pointed out the disciplines hardships did good.
I ran across the debate the other day and read “Sounding Taps” and it seemed, to me, to be a sort of deja vu version of the opening half of John Lynn’s classic article “The Embattled Future of Academic Military History.” Yet now, instead of being hidden within a nearly 10-year-old journal somewhere in some library or cloaked within the shady confines of J-STOR, the subject material was out in the open, on-line at the National Review, where presumably the material would be viewed by hundreds of the thousands. I was glad that the news was getting out.
Enter Grimsley.
In the interest to full disclosure I should acknowledge that even though I’ve never met him personally, I think the world of Dr. Grimsley. Absent a military history specialists here at Ole Miss his postings and online essays at War Historian and Blog Them Out Of the Stone Age have taught me more about military history as an academic discipline than any professor I’ve ever come in contact with. Yet his response to the Miller article infuriated me. Who was this professor, locked within the ivory tower of one of the finest military history programs in the country, to complain about an article that argued there was a bias against military history. He’s located at GHQ comfortably crafting strategy in a sympathetic environment while there are graduate students out there who are cutting their teeth on the front lines of the battle for military history, who aren’t serving on the OSU general staff and run into the academic bias daily.
The bias, it seems to me, is not necessarily one of openness making it difficult for the casual observer to perceive. For example, in my days as a graduate student I never ran into a professor who refused to let me work on a military history topic. However, I couldn’t even begin to count how many conversations I’ve overheard sitting quietly in my cubicle (which just so happened to be located directly across from the faculty lounge) where faculty members, believing I wasn’t around, voiced their true feelings about military history. Most simply stated that they refused to teach on military subjects, even if the class dealt exclusively with a major war, while others went so far as to indict the discipline for everything from the election of George W. Bush to the war in Iraq. Exposed to such academic obtuseness, I was glad to read something that brought these biases to light and here was Grimsley telling me to quit complaining.
However, I’ve had time to cool down over the past few weeks and it now seems that Grimsley does have a point, it does military history no good to simply complain unless action is being taken to carry the fight to the enemy. Much, I believe, is being done on the operational front thanks to the brilliant leadership of Lynn, Grimsley, and others but it’s the forces behind the front lines, where there are no military history specialists, who desperately need a handout. If biased faculty members refuse to give us courses in military history, then it's time to create them on our own. So, taking a page from the al- Qaeda handbook, a little of Mao, and a healthy dose of my own operational history, I propose a recipe for insurgency– a strategy for reaching out to graduate students, like myself, who possess the desire and the will to learn but are currently without sound direction from an academic specialists.
Connectivity should be utilized extensively to connect isolated students. This will require specialist to lend a helping hand. Such sacrifice may prove a bit burdensome but I think such a strategy could become fruitfull by exposing graduate students in countless departments to military history through association and classroom contact with grad students interested in the subject. Such students could, after gaining experience, take over teaching duties for NROTC-ROTC history classes which are, in my experience, simply pathetic.
Here's a short list of suggestions.
First and foremost, a new list of relevant academic military history texts needs to be completed and posted prominently on the Society of Military History’s Web Page. Such a list is the silver bullet for educating graduate students who have no direction. The current list, from the Duke-UNC program, is embarrassingly out of date. The new list should reflect new approaches to the discipline including military history from a world perspective, gender, culture, and memory methodologies, as well as more traditional titles examining strategy and operational history. No list is too small; this should be a reading list of comprehensive exam length NOT a preliminary list intended to introduce the discipline.
A collection of old syllabi, complete with reading lists and assignments, should also be posted in a centralized location. Suggested paper topics of an academic nature would prove invaluable for students looking for relevant research topics. Nonspecialists are willing to work with students in these areas but they either hide their ignorance of the subject matter or, more likely, are unfamiliar with current research and are afraid to ask for help.
The SMH conference keynote address and as many of the subsequent panel discussions as possible should be recorded and placed on-line. Students who are unable to travel or are simply uncomfortable traveling to an academic conference where they don’t know a living soul, would reap just rewards if they were exposed to this material.
Bloggers are invaluable! Personally, as I’ve previously stated, I learned more about academic military history reading “Blog Them Out of the Stone Age” than I did from any other source. Topics should include methodological and historiographical debates as well as more traditional topics. This allows for valuable discussion and contact with historians who would otherwise be unavailable to individuals both inside and outside the Academy.
Isolated graduate students should not feel like they’re alone in the fight. The facts is that military history has become isolated into far-flung programs throughout the country. Due to their isolation and small number, it can be extremely difficult for interested or even qualified students to enter the ranks of prestigious programs. However if such an insurgency is executed locally, isolated students can receive a strong education in military history through independent coursework and informal global interaction on the Internet. If this education can be coupled to more “in vogue” course materials taught by local faculty, a student can receive the best of both worlds. He doesn’t fall victim to the “just knowing military history” critique nor does he possess a perverted, irrelevant, or inaccurate view of academic military history. Such a strategy should be adopted; times demand it, students long for it, and the front-line fight requires it. Vive la resistance!
posted by Will at 6:44 PM
7 Comments:
Excellent post, excellent suggestions!
One of the things that frustrated me in working on my M.A. (with an emphasis in Military History) at Sam Houston State University was the lack of theory that was presented in the program. I would love to see more materials promoting theory in Military History, as well as additional efforts to illustrate how understanding the details of how and why wars are fought enhance our understanding of the past.
Hi Chris,
I take it by "materials" you mean texts? If so I'd say that military theory (Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Mahan, Mao, Huntington, etc.) should definitely be included in the Military History reading list. Essay volumes such as the "Makers of Modern Strategy" series should also be included.
Will,
I probably should have been more specific - military theory along the lines of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Douhet, and Mahan was a large part of the program, and easy enough to find on your own if you wanted more. I was think more of the historiography and methodolgy aspect of theory - "the world perspective, gender, culture, and memory methodologies" mentioned above. One of the things I noticed as different in graduate work in Mass Communication and Information Science was that those disciplines rely heavily on theory (Marxist, Feminist, etc...) for a base for research, as do other disciplines in History. However, this seems lacking at SHSU,at least for the Military and Diplomatic History tracks. From reading Dr. Grimsley's blog this appears a problem for Military History as a discipline, not just a phenomenon restricted to my experience at Sam Houston.
Okay I'm with you now and I agree 100%. As I struggled through my MA we were required to take several broad historiography classes and a single class on historical methodologies. Because the faculty at UM were not specialist or, in some instances, even interested in military history we got a lot of gender and Marxist theory. I hated the courses at the time but found them valuable when I turned back to military history.
My only formal historiography/historical theory course was back during my undergrad days, so I'm personally at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to applying varies theories and methodologies to things I read or as a theoretical contsruct. The obvious hole in my graduate education is one of the things I mentioned as an improvement area during my "exit interview" at SHSU. It left me and other graduates at a bit of a disadvantage if we had aspirations beyond teaching high school or community college surveys.
That said, one of the non-military history courses I took as part of the program (The American West) did introduce me to some different methodologies for approaching history, as one of the focal areas of the course was to examine the differences and similarities between traditional narrative approaches to the history of the American West and the "new" Western History. Unfortunatly, since the course wasn't focused on the "how" part of using different methodologies as a tool of inquiry.
The next item on my personal readining list is a book suggested by Dr. Grimsley on his blog awhile back: The Gender of History : Men, Women, and Historical Practice, by Bonnie G. Smith. I'm hoping that the self-study route will help me figure out how different methodologies can be applied to Military History, and I'm always on the lookout for syllabi and texts to helppush things along.
I'd personally be a little careful about applying too much old theory to military history problems. While some work in gender and history would be good, we need to be careful of avoiding most of the debris left by Postmodernism, since, quite frankly, it's dying. While there are some good, cool things for us to loot from it's corpse, we shouldn't go overboard. Rather than say, old women's history, read the latest in true Gender history.
Remember, that military history, with good reason, rejected a great deal of the theory of the past as simply not that relevant. What we need to do is not look to what historians have toyed with in the past few years, but look how we can move the field forward. In other words, let's not look back for approval, but forge a movement in history that incorporates us. It's coming, especially in transmodernism and transnationalism, and we need to be at the forefront of those studies, I think best.
Let's not fall into the trap we condemn so many generals for- fighting the last war rather than the next one. And the real problem with developing a list like that is that there isn't anything big yet.
Guess that means we have to write it, no?
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