by David Greenberg

Are military historians victims of political correctness? Via History News Network, I came across this piece by John J. Miller of National Review arguing that, as one of his sources in the professoriate says, "Military historians have been hunted into extinction by politically active faculty members who think military history is a subject for right-wing, imperialistic warmongers." Miller's right about this much: Apart from devouring James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and getting some Revolutionary War history through the back door in Ken Jackson's History of New York City class--remember the Battles of Brooklyn, Harlem Heights, and White Plains?--I made it through my requirements as both an undergraduate history major and a history PhD without touching the topic. I admit to sometimes feeling sheepish in the presence of elderly amateur history buffs who know far more about, say, Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign than I do. And Miller is certainly correct that the study of warfare has been anything but a growth industry in academia since the 1960s. But I think Miller gives away the game when he approvingly quotes Theodore Roosevelt, former president of the American Historical Association, saying: "I don't believe it is possible to treat military history as something entirely apart from the general national history." Miller complains that today's younger military historians focus on issues like female soldiers in the Russian army or the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II instead of examining "battles, leaders, and weapons." But if Miller's right that one reason military history has waned is the intelligentsia's lack of excitement about matters martial, another reason is surely the military buffs' often narrow, esoteric, and antiquarian focus on matters that don't seem terribly relevant to other aspects of the human experience. Contra TR, they frequently don't connect it to "the general national history." Indeed, one reason that Battle Cry of Freedom and its companion in the Oxford History of the United States series David Kennedy's Freedom from Fear succeed so magisterially is that they do integrate old-fashioned battlefield history with deep discussions of war's impact on society. (Apparently Mark Grimsley of Ohio State agrees.) Then there's the other matter Miller raises but doesn't explore of why the University of Wisconsin plans to name an endowed chair after a serial plagiarist.... Thoughts, my fellow Open U historians?