New Military History

There are three subfields of military history: the war and society, new military history, and traditional history. Neiberg follows the war and society, Bourke the new military history, and John Lynn, the only military historian of the three, is part of the traditional history group. Of the three, Lynn is the most persuasive, I will explain why later in this discussion.

In Neiberg chapter he outlines each field of study and main interest: war and society and the new military history are closely linked and to sharing its influences, methodologies, and ideas. He further adds that traditional and the new military history study: strategy and operations (mostly traditional does this), how solders fight, recruitment, how they are maintained,

and how the service affects both society and individual recruit. In addition, traditional take a top-down approach to the study, whereas the new take a bottom-up approach. War and society take the same bottom-up approach, but apply literature analyses in discussing the relationship between social and cultural systems and “how those systems experience war.” Neiberg goes on to lists five major areas of study. I will only mention one, Home fronts and fighting fronts, this study see how war affects civilian life, their governments, the economic changes, losing a war could destroy governments or cause revolutions, and how gender is affected by war (before, during, and after). The issue I see here is that “Generally they are not interested in explaining victory or defeat.” So my question to this field of study is: why is your field even in military history? If you don’t study how wars are fought or the causes and affect, or how war are won or lost, what is you purpose in military history? Contextually, war and society arguments do affect and assist in clarifying the effects of war on the civilian population, governments, the economy, women and race, this is great for the broader study of history in general, but not to military history.
Bourke is very proud of the new military history, she even states: “Indeed, new military history is arguably the most popular brand of military history in the academy today.” For clarification though she does not want to be considered part of the “old” (traditional) military were they study campaigns, leaders, strategy, tactics, weapons, and logistics.

Instead they study “the rest of military history – that is fascination with the recruitment, training, and socialization of personnel, combat motivation, and the effects of service and war on the individual soldier, etc.” They take ideas and methodologies from the other sciences: “sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology and literature.” The issue I have with military history is their politics (bias) that is coming into play, which should not be part of military history. Bourke references Benjamin Cooling on his analysis of traditional military history: “admitted that the older type of military history ‘connotes traditional drum and trumpet operational history with heroic, often panegyric coverage of the past’. In contrast, new military history ‘may represent the liberal wing, while the drum and trumpet school upholds the conservative right of the line.” Keeping with the liberal way of thinking she adds: “The inner world of combatants remains at the heart of new military history, spawning a vast amount of research. There was a shift in emphasis from passive suffering to active killing. Humanity’s extraordinary gift for slaying each other was veiled in much traditional military history. Bourke goes on to add in her book “An Intimate History of Killing”: “The characteristic act distinctive of men at war is not dying, it is killing. For politicians, military strategists, and many historians, war may be about the conquest of territory or the struggle to recover a sense of national honour (sic) but, for the man on active service, warfare is concerned with the lawful killing of other people.

Its peculiar importance derives from the fact that it is not murder, but sanctioned blood-letting, legislated for and policed by the highest civil authorities and obtaining the consent of the vast majority of the population.” Others might interpret this a different way, but this does have a left wing slant (hidden agenda) to the truth. The word “killing” is very telling in her statement. The potential bias is why I believe that contextually, the new military war is great for the broader study of history in general, but not to military history. The same questions I purposed with war and society field apply to the new military history: why is your field even in military history? If you don’t study how wars are fought or the causes and affect, or how war are won or lost, what is you purpose in military history?
As I stated in the beginning John Lynn is the one whose view of the broadened subfield of military history is the most persuasive, because he is the only military historian discussing his argument as to why his field needs to move towards the new methodologies of study. As he states his field has become an “increasingly hostile environment,” as well as becoming a dying breed. In his opinion, the study of history in universities today are flawed, caught up in a new trends that are “more self-righteous and intolerant that they have been before generations.” This confirms my point of the bias and the left wing lean of the new military history. Lynn adds to the folly of the other two use of literature analyses as part of their methodologies of study. When he states: “Whereas historians in the past were prone to borrowing theoretical underpinnings from political science and sociology, today they are more likely to import much from anthropology and literary studies. Concepts generated by literary and linguistic scholars seem particularly embarrassing in the study of history because they undermine the value of evidence and conclude that documents cannot actually tell us about reality but only about the author of the document.” He adds: “To my prejudiced mind, this exaltation of theoretical complexity, novelty, and the all-too-frequently trivial are signs of disillusionment and decadence within the historical profession: disillusionment with the possibility that historical knowledge might actually influence the real world and decadence in a desire to be at least intellectually entertained by a study which is now deemed essentially useless by many of its own practitioners. In lieu of the possibility of importance, the promise of amusement will have to do. Those forms of historical studies which are still held by the outside world to be of concrete value-political, diplomatic, and military history, for example-are precisely those rejected by the "cutting edge" (new military history and war and society fields). I include these two quotes to prove the point of his contempt for the other two subfields. There is more Lynn adds, about the American Historical Review that out of one hundred issues in twenty years there has been zero research articles on military history, which demonstrates contempt for the military field. Lynn does agree that they do have to adapt to the new studies, mainly cultural studies (intellectual history of people), but the primary focus or emphasis of military history has to be on “combat”, as he says “it is what makes our subject unique.” Lynn adds that the shift has already begun, studies of gender, masculinity (his discussion on French Military) , women you can see “in the February 1997 issue of the International History Review devoted to “Twentieth-Century Women in Wartime.””
In summary, Lynn is the only military historian and since this discussion is on military history the he would be the logical choice to be the most persuasive. As to the contextual argument to the broader study of history in general, I think he proves this point in his discussion on adapting to changes within the field.