War and Society/Culture

Question 1

Where does John Keegan think the focus should be in military history?

Answer 1

On the experience of battle and combat - namely, what is it like to participate the rigors and often horrors of combat.

Question 2

Why does Keegan argue for the primacy of battle/campaign history?

Answer 2

He argues it’s the oldest historical form, subject matter is of primary importance, and it demands rigourous historical treatment and attention.

Question 3

Does ‘small scale’ action qualify as battle?

Answer 3

For Keegan, no. Battles obey laws of time, place, and action - especially action. (So, his colleagues in decolonial skirmishes? Soldiers who haven’t been through battle).

Question 4

Keegan Q

Answer 4

A

Question 5

Keegan Q

Answer 5

A

Question 6

Keegan Q

Answer 6

A

Question 7

In War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, does anthropologist Brian Ferguson think there is much difference between pre-state and state warfare?

Answer 7

No.

Question 8

What is Victor Davis Hanson’s emphasis on in his answer to Ferguson?

Answer 8

Stresses the connections between war and agriculture; stresses the free citizenry angle of Greek and Roman warfare and the value of heavy infantry.

Question 9

How did warfare and society tend to interact in the pre-modern world, per the authors of War and Society in Ancient and Medieval Worlds?

Answer 9

Continuous warfare or threat of it influenced internal social structure and culture, which then, in turn, drove military policies towards aggression and expansion.

Question 10

What are the hallmarks of pre-modern military oriented societies per the authors of War and Society in Ancient and Medieval Worlds?

Answer 10

Societies are hierarchical and stratified (with exceptions such as Athens), states willing and able to exploit peasants for purposes of wealth extraction and social order, society on the whole concentrated on mobilizing resources for war at the cost of other societal priorities, state control over land and its food which would support a growing population which would, in turn, fuel armies which would expand the state.

Question 11

What is Roseinstein’s argument, in Rome at War, about the decline of the peasantry following the Punic Wars?

Answer 11

Rosenstein argues that steep population growth in the second population BC was the cause of hardship among Rome’s peasant classes.

Question 12

What previous explanations for the decline of the peasantry does Rosenstein challenge?

Answer 12

1) devastation of Punic wars 2) heavy burden of conscription 3) expansion of latifundia (large estates)

Question 13

What was the main engine for population growth?

Answer 13

High wartime mortality led to the institution of a fertility regime in which girls married younger and had more children to ensure an heir survived.

Question 14

What does Grimsley identity as the three stages of Union attitudes towards Southern Civilians?

Answer 14

Conciliatory (first fifteen months), pragmatic (summer 1862-1863), and “hard war” of 1864-1865 focused on demoralization through seizing or destroying property.

Question 15

How does Grimsley’s interpretation of the conciliatory phase differ from other historians?

Answer 15

They have seen it as a sentimental gesture; Grimsley sees it as historical military precedent from the Revolution and the Mexican-American war.

Question 16

Who does Grimley believe were the agents who pushed back against the conciliatory approach?

Answer 16

Confederate guerillas and - this is key - the Union Commanders who had to deal with these irregular fighters.

Question 17

What factors led to the development of the more pragmatic policy?

Answer 17

Union commanders became unable to tell who among white southerners were loyal or actively or passively disloyal.

Question 18

What does Grimsley have to say about military necessity and the Emancipation Proclamation?

Answer 18

Argues it had very little to do with emancipation; most military men happy to wait for Lincoln to act; army was extremely ambivalent about slavery and the war.

Question 19

What battle was the transition point between the pragmatic and the “hard” approach?

Answer 19

Vicksburg.

Question 20

How does Grimsley argue that destruction of civilian property was still mediated during this latter stage?

Answer 20

Soldiers often targeted plantations, not small farms, even if they had stereotypes about poor southern whites.

Question 21

What is John Lynn’s position regarding a so called ‘universal soldier?’

Answer 21

No such thing. The experience of being a soldier is historically contingent on a number of factors.

Question 22

Who is Lynn most explicitely challenging in Battle? And how?

Answer 22

Victor Davis Hanson. Where Hanson sees a continuity, Lynn sees a multiplicity of ways of war. Lynn argues there has been no one way of fighting in the Western World (for example, citizen soldier shows up in Greece - then in Revolutionary France). Also agrees what Hanson sees as irregular war in the East happens in the West too.

Question 23

Why does Lynn think we need cultural approaches to the study of war?

Answer 23

To study the sometimes significant gap between how a society thinks about war (its discourses) and how it wages it (reality).

Question 24

How does Habeck think that the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, despite their differences, developed incredible similiar doctrines on tank warfare?

Answer 24

They both had shared assumptions about war, including admiration for British tank warfare, abandonment of conservative prejudice against mechanized war thank to improvements in the 20s, and key individuals: Guderian in Germany and Tukhachevskii and Triandafillov in USSR.

Question 25

What shared assumptions guided the Soviets and Nazis up to 1936?

Answer 25

Support of their leaders, who considered themselves experts in technological developments, committment to a mobile offensive.

Question 26

Why did the Soviets change their doctrine in 36?

Answer 26

Partially because of the great Purge, tests of mechanized warfare (‘the deep battle’) that largely failed.

Question 27

What does Neill Ferguson think is the “pity” of the First World War?

Answer 27

That it dragged Britain into a morass of continental commitments, and that they turned what was a continental struggle into a world war.

Question 28

What were the repercussions, for Britain, of this continental entanglement?

Answer 28

One botched victory led to another, left Britain too weak to defend its empire, weakened special relationship with America, and America turned attention elsewhere, and condemned Britain to the status of a middle power.

Question 29

What does Ferguson are was the greatest error committed in modern history?

Answer 29

Britain fighting the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place in the wrong way, when it didn’t have to get involved at all.

Question 30

For Eksteins, in The Rites of Spring, what was the major psychological turning point in the rise of modernism in the Atlantic?

Answer 30

World War I, and the utterly destructive power of its technology to make killing fields in battle, to revolutionize politics, and to make possible human actions previously beyond thinking.

Question 31

How did warfare in WWI bring about this shift?

Answer 31

Trench warfare, Ekstein argues, made survivors wonder if the war was worth the sacrifices. This brought about a spiritual crisis en masse, and previous Atlantic culture became unmoored.

Question 32

What is the signifigance of Stravinksy’s ballet?

Answer 32

Argues it is a musical symbol of the age with its energy and showing how life - spring - needed a sacrificial death.

Question 33

What is the connection, for Eksteins, between modernism, war, art, and the rise of the Third Reich?

Answer 33

Prior to war, modernism a force for hope, afterwards, one for destruction. Hitler, a failed artist, sees the role of aesthetics and technique in convincing Germans they are the leading race - this was an embodiment of an art form.