Journal of Military History
Vol. 82, No. 4
October 2018
Articles
“The Function of History in Clausewitz’s Understanding of War,” by Peter Paret: 1049-66
Drawing on statements by Clausewitz long known but ignored, the article traces his early and soon dominant interest in the past as it develops out of his experiences as a child and young man to become a major element in his thinking about the present. The article points to his easy shifting back and forth between an exclusively military approach to the history of war and a more encompassing political, social, and cultural interpretation that emphasizes the psychological forces of leaders and followers, and comments as well on the relationship between his historical and his theoretical work. In noting some general issues that turn people into historians, while following the unique conditions that led to Clausewitz’s massive historical writings, the article opens new perspectives on his thought and his times that may be worth pursuing further.
“Perception and Naval Dominance: The British Experience during the War of 1812,” by Kevin D. McCranie: 1067-91
During the first six months of the War of 1812, American frigates defeated three British frigates. These losses did little to affect Britain’s actual naval dominance, but the moral impact proved a bitter shock for the world’s pre-eminent naval power. Negative reactions rippled through the print media, the political public, and the naval officer corps, leading to questions about the very nature of British naval superiority. In response, British naval leaders made difficult choices about procurement and rules of engagement, minimizing the risks faced by British warships and protracting the naval conflict long enough to take advantage of American missteps.
“The War of the Pacific, Technology and U.S. Naval Development: An International History of Regional War,” by Thomas M. Jamison: 1093-1122
Historians have generally recognized The War of the Pacific (1879-1884) as a significant event in the political, military, and economic history of South America. Applying an international lens to the conflict reveals its influence on extra-regional states and actors. Violence along the Pacific Slope in the 1860s stimulated demand for surplus (especially U.S. Civil War-era) and experimental weapons, while also offering an operational laboratory for their evaluation. During the war, additional and decidedly “modern” technologies were produced by foreign firms and local actors alike. Information about the efficacy of these systems was carefully documented by international observers as far away as the United States and China. Beginning in the 1880s, Chilean naval preponderance in the American Pacific—a key military result of the war—threatened both U.S. expansion in the region and the ideology of racial superiority which underwrote it. That challenge, in turn, stimulated and for many justified the emergence of the U.S. “New Navy” in the 1890s. An international perspective, as such, suggests the profound and unpredictable ways in which regional or peripheral violence articulated with Great Power politics and navalism in the late nineteenth century.
“The Treatment of Prisoners of War Captured by the Greek Army during the Balkan Wars of 1912–13,” by Panagiotis Delis: 1123-47
In 1899 and 1907, international conventions providing for more humane treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) were signed at The Hague. But these new international norms seem to have done little to alleviate the mistreatment of POWs in the Balkan Wars in southeastern Europe in 1912–13. This article seeks to explain why this occurred by using the treatment of Ottoman and Bulgarian POWs held by the Greeks in the 1912–13 wars as a test case. Two intermingled factors seem to have led to the violation of the Hague Conventions: the inability of economically strapped Greece to cope successfully with such an urgent humanitarian situation and the negative stereotypes of the enemy, which were enhanced by combat brutalization. The participants in the two Balkan wars appropriated long extant European stereotypes of Balkan peoples as backward and uncivilized and applied them to their opponents.
“‘Not only useless, but dangerous?’ The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps in France in the aftermath of the battle of La Lys, 9 April 1918,” by Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses: 1149-74
In the wake of the battle of La Lys (9 April 1918), the British High Command on the Western Front fought a sustained campaign to keep the remnants of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps (CEP) from returning to the front lines. This article examines this campaign, which rested on the British view that the CEP had been largely responsible for its own destruction and for placing the Allied position in Flanders at risk. Portuguese officers were especially singled out as incompetent and too proud to adapt to the new realities of the battlefield. The question was made complicated by the sometimes ambivalent attitude to the conflict of Portuguese President Sidónio Pais, who had staged a coup against the country’s interventionist government in December 1917. Pais, more concerned with establishing what he called a “New Republic” than the war, did not view the CEP as his deposed predecessors had done—as the key to a glorious future for Portugal. Still, in the wake of La Lys, he maintained that the CEP should be reorganized, reinforced and returned to the front lines. Caught in the crossfire between the Portuguese government and the British High Command, the CEP’s officers and soldiers, employed in secondary duties many saw as humiliating, waited for a final decision regarding their future. In the very last days of the war some units did return to the front, but only after a number of mutinies were repressed.
“Canadian Military Culture and Tactical Training, 1940–1944: The Making of Infantry Junior NCOs,” by
Caroline D’Amours: 1175-98
Caroline D’Amours: 1175-98
Between 1939 and 1944, the Canadian Army underwent significant reforms to redress prewar deficiencies in the training of its infantry junior noncommissioned officers. The startling German successes of 1940 would eventually challenge the Canadian traditional tactical culture. As a result, the Canadian Army would expand its training organization as well as revising and updating its tactical doctrine and training. However, owing to a narrow-minded military culture, the new ideas came across some resistance. This article examines this process at work and thereby disputes the concept of a straight Canadian ascending learning curve during the Second World War.
“Sexual Violence During the Occupation of Japan,” by Brian Walsh: 1199-1230
Much recent writing on the post–World War II Occupation of Japan (1945–1952) has challenged the traditional picture of a well-disciplined American army laying the groundwork for Japan’s transition to democracy by the example of its behavior. Instead it depicts the Occupation, especially its opening phase, as marred by the widespread rape of Japanese women by American servicemen. Copious documentation of American behavior from both Japanese and American sources does not support such claims. Rather, it makes very clear that though there was some sexual violence perpetrated by American and other Allied servicemen, stories of mass rape during the Occupation are simply not credible.
“Theodore Ropp’s Makers of Modern Strategy Revisited and the Course of Military History, 1945–1981,” by Michael P. M. Finch: 1231-57
This article examines an attempt by the historian Theodore Ropp (1911–2000) to remake Edward Mead Earle’s Makers of Modern Strategy (1943). It considers Ropp’s motivation for embarking on this project against the backdrop of his career and the development of academic military history in the United States. It then focuses on the Makers project, examining the scope and parameters within which Ropp conceived of his future volume and the ways in which he attempted to realize it. Although Ropp’s project ultimately failed, his Makers underlines some of the ways in which military history developed since the Second World War.
Book Reviews:
Soldiers and Civilization: How the Profession of Arms Thought and Fought the Modern World into Existence, by Reed Robert Bonadonna, reviewed by Paul D. Lockhart, 1259-60
More on War, by Martin van Creveld, reviewed by Cole Cheek, 1260-62
Hadrian’s Wall, by Adrian Goldsworthy, reviewed by Dirk Yarker, 1262-63
The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost, by Cathal J. Nolan, reviewed by Kevin Braam, 1264-65
A Short History of the Hundred Years War, by Michael Prestwich, reviewed by Stuart Gorman, 1265-66
The English Armada: The Greatest Naval Disaster in English History, by Louis Gorrochategui Santos, translated by Peter J. Gold, reviewed by Pradeep Barua, 1267
India, Modernity and the Great Divergence: Mysore and Gujarat (17th to 19th C.), by Kaveh Yazdani, reviewed by Kaushik Roy, 1268-69
The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire, by A. Wess Mitchell, reviewed by Jonathan Abel, 1269-71
Russian-Turkmen Encounters: The Caspian Frontier before the Great Game, by S. Peter Poullada, reviewed by Sean M. Pollock, 1271-73
The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon, by Christy Pichichero, reviewed by Christine Haynes, 1274-75
From Byron to bin Laden: A History of Foreign War Volunteers, by Nir Arielli, reviewed by James Sandy, 1275-77
Unlikely General: “Mad” Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America, by Mary Stockwell, reviewed by Derrick E. Lapp, 1277-78
By More than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific since 1783, by Michael J. Green, reviewed by Jeremy Black, 1278-79
American Amphibious Warfare: The Roots of Tradition to 1865, by Gary J. Ohls, reviewed by James Kirk Perrin, Jr., 1280-81
A History of the Royal Navy: Women and the Royal Navy, by Jo Stanley, reviewed by Elaine Murphy, 1281-82
Women of Empire: Nineteenth-Century Army Officers’ Wives in India and the U.S. West, by Verity McInnis, reviewed by Alexander Nordlund, 1282-84
To Master the Boundless Sea: The U.S. Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire, by Jason W. Smith, reviewed by Jeremy Black, 1284-85
History of the Third Seminole War, 1849–1858, by Joe Knetsch, John Missall, and Mary Lou Missall, reviewed by Thomas A. Britten, 1285-87
Georgia’s Civil War: Conflict on the Home Front, by David Williams, reviewed by Eric Paul Totten, 1287-88
In the Wake of War: Military Occupation, Emancipation, and Civil War America, by Andrew F. Lang, reviewed by Christopher S. DeRosa, 1288-90
Battle Studies: Ardant du Picq, translated and edited by Roger J. Spiller, reviewed by Jordan R. Hayworth, 1290-91
Imperial Germany and War, 1871–1918, by Daniel J. Hughes and Richard L. DiNardo, reviewed by Ethan S. Rafuse, 1292-93
Resistance to the Spanish-American and Philippine Wars: Anti-Imperialism and the Role of the Press, 1895–1902, by Charles Quince, reviewed by Reilly Ben Hatch, 1293-94
Women, Warfare, and Representation: American Servicewomen in the Twentieth Century, by Emerald M. Archer, reviewed by Sarah E. Patterson, 1294-96
The Conscription Conflict and the Great War, edited by Robin Archer, et al., reviewed by R. Daniel Pellerin, 1296-97
The War in the North Sea: The Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy, 1914–1918, by Quintin Barry, reviewed by Eric W. Osborne, 1298-99
Killer Butterflies: Combat, Psychology and Morale in the British 19th (Western) Division 1915–1918, by James Roberts, reviewed by Richard S. Faulkner, 1299-1300
German Submarine Warfare in World War I: The Onset of Total War at Sea, by Lawrence Sondhaus, reviewed by Douglas Peifer,1300-2
Passchendaele: The Lost Victory of World War I, by Nick Lloyd, reviewed by J. P. Harris, 1302-3
Publishers, Readers and the Great War: Literature and Memory since 1918, by Vincent Trott, reviewed by Alexander Nordlund, 1303-5
Women Activists between War & Peace: Europe, 1918–1923, edited by Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe, reviewed by Erika Kuhlman, 1305-6
Mixing Memory and Desire: Why Literature Can’t Forget the Great War, by Brian Kennedy, reviewed by Steven Trout, 1307-8
People Power: Fighting for Peace from the First World War to the Present, by Lyn Smith, reviewed by Alison Fletcher, 1308-10
The 1929 Sino-Soviet War: The War that Nobody Knew, by Michael M. Walker, reviewed by Peter Whitewood, 1310-11
El Conflicto de Leticia (1932–1933) y los Ejércitos de Perú y Colombia, by Carlos Camacho Arango, reviewed by Douglas O. Sofer, 1312-13
Eisenhower: Becoming Leader of the Free World, by Louis Galambos, reviewed by Richard Filipink, 1313-15
War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat, by Christopher A. Lawrence, reviewed by Nicholas Michael Sambaluk, 1315-16
Hegemony and the Holocaust: State Power and Jewish Survival in Occupied Europe, by Ethan J. Hollander, reviewed by Sylvia Taschka, 1317-18
The Turn of the Tide in the Pacific War: Strategic Initiative, Intelligence, and Command, 1941–1943, by Sean M. Judge, edited by Jonathan M. House, reviewed by John C. Hanley, 1318-19
Midnight in the Pacific. Guadalcanal: The World War II Battle that Turned the Tide of War, by Joseph Wheelan, reviewed by Bruce Zellers, 1320-22
Internment during the Second World War: A Comparative Study of Great Britain and the U.S.A., by Rachel Pistol, reviewed by Anna Marie Anderson, 1322-24
Captives of War: British Prisoners of War in Europe in the Second World War, by Clare Makepeace; and The Endless Battle: The Fall of Hong Kong and Canadian POWs in Imperial Japan, by Andy Flanagan, reviewed by Timothy Heck, 1324-26
The Rise and Fall of Comradeship: Hitler’s Soldiers, Male Bonding, and Mass Violence in the Twentieth Century, by Thomas Kühne, reviewed by Jared R. Donnelly, 1326-28
Lady Death: The Memoirs of Stalin’s Sniper, by Lyudmila Pavlichenko, reviewed by Raymond D. Limbach, 1328-29
The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand: The German Campaigns of 1944–1945, by Robert M. Citino, reviewed by Gregory Liedtke, 1329-31
Military Trials of War Criminals in the Netherlands East Indies 1946-1949, by Fred L. Borch, reviewed by Bruce C. Vandervort, 1331-33
Integrating the U.S. Military: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation since World War II, edited by Douglas Walter Bristol, Jr. and Heather Marie Stur, reviewed by David Williams, 1333-35
Armageddon and Paranoia: The Nuclear Confrontation since 1945, by Rodric Braithwaite, reviewed by Zachary M. Matusheski, 1335-36
Truman, Franco’s Spain, and the Cold War, by Wayne H. Bowen, reviewed by Mark S. Byrnes, 1336-38
Brotherhood in Combat: How African Americans Found Equality in Korea and Vietnam, by Jeremy P. Maxwell, reviewed by Jonathan L. Stinson, 1338-39
South Vietnamese Soldiers: Memories of the Vietnam War and After, by Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen, reviewed by Heather Venable, 1339-41
The Salvadoran Crucible: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency in El Salvador, 1979–1992, by Brian D’Haeseleer, reviewed by Philip W. Travis, 1341-43
In the Warlords’ Shadow: Special Operations Forces, The Afghans, and Their Fight Against the Taliban, by Daniel R. Green, reviewed by James Villanueva, 1343-44
The End of Grand Strategy: U.S. Maritime Operations in the 21st Century, by Simon Reich and Peter Dombrowski, reviewed by David Gray, 1344-46
BOOKS RECEIVED: 1347-49
RECENT JOURNAL ARTICLES: 1350-59
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: 1360-61
INDEX TO VOLUME 82: 1362-88
