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The George C. Marshall Lecture in Military History is presented as delivered at the 2024 meeting for the American Historical Association (AHA) by Beth Bailey, Foundation Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas. She focuses on how military history is a history of social change, as exemplified by her research on the race crisis within the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War era.

This article examines how Chilean museums that exhibit war handles the bodily consequences of war and weapons upon the human body through an investigation of how death and injury in the War of the Pacific (1879–1884) is represented in a museal context. Are Chilean museums able to defetishise historical weapons and other forms of voyeurism? By analysing two permanent galleries and one temporary exhibit, this article argues that Chilean museums are unable to fully abandon traditional representations that treat the war as a romantic and heroic conflict. Death and injury are present in the museums but lack a reflexive and critical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Turkish nation had many martyrs and veterans during World War I, which caused the end of the existence of the Ottoman State, and during The National Struggle, which paved the way for the existence of the Republic of Türkiye. In Western Anatolia, where Bilecik is located, the National Struggle was fought against Greece. Due to the conditions of the time, families were able to identify their martyrs and veterans only in the following years. The martyrs and veterans who are the subject of the study were seen throughout the Ottoman geography of the period. Bilecik, like other Anatolian provinces, was included in the National Struggle to save Anatolia from occupation after the large geography lost in the First World War. In the examination carried out in this direction, in order to determine martyrdom and veteran status in the Bilecik Civil Court of First Instance; It was determined that a total of thirty two cases were concluded in four years, ten in 1931, nine in 1932, three in 1933, and ten before the end of 1935. As it takes up too much space to be included in one study, a total of thirty-three cases relating to the subject in 1934, 1936, 1937, 1939 and 1940 are examined in another study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2021 marked the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Cemetery's (currently the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Korea, UNMCK) establishment in 1951. The UNMCK is the only UN-designated cemetery for the fallen UN soldiers who underwent an arduous process of interment, exhumation, and re-interment during and after the Korean War (1950–1953). Despite abundant studies on the Korean War, little attention has been paid to the diverging historiography of the deceased military personnel and non-combatants concerning the UN graveyard and Operation Glory, a repatriation mission that changed the cemetery's geopolitical landscape. Through multi-archival research, this study re-examines the UNMCK's topology by shedding light on the incompatible sites of visible and invisible deaths in the context of Operation Glory. Thus, it contributes to the limited literature on military history and historiography by showing how bodily engagements were inextricably interwoven with the Korean War's heterotopic heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the role of military treatises and manuals as objects and factors in cultural and technology transfer from Western Europe to Russia in the 17th century in a comparative perspective. Listing the treatises on military tactics, organization and technology, translated for the needs of the Russian monarchs before the radical Westernizing reforms under Tsar Peter I started in 1700, the article analyses how these texts were perceived by their Russian readers and how they might have contributed to the military change in Eastern Europe. It defines the Russian military culture of the age as an elite culture, centred around the ruler's person. The article also contextualizes the history of translated military books within knowledge transfer, in particular the transfer of Early Modern scientific ideas in Russia, as these books provided an attractive insight into European science and technology, not available for the Russian elite from other sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This afterword brings the four articles in the cluster on "Gender in Russian and Soviet Military History" into conversation and suggests new ways to frame the theme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cluster of articles explores the gendered history of the military in the Russian imperial and Soviet contexts during periods of imperial conquest, war, and their complex aftermaths. The cluster began at the 2021 ASEEES virtual convention, when the contributors joined the Zoom panel while their respective countries were in various stages of lockdown. Chronologically, the cluster stretches from the middle of the nineteenth century to the 1960s, with two articles on the Russian Empire and two covering the Soviet period. From the imperial borderlands of the Caucasus in the nineteenth century to the Nazi‐occupied western frontiers of the Soviet Union during the Second World War, ideas about appropriate feminine and masculine behavior shaped the enactment of and reactions to violence. Veterans of the Russo‐Japanese and Second World Wars drew on vocabularies of military masculinity to claim authority within their respective postwar societies. In this short introduction, we reflect on the relationship between gender history and military history and underline the importance of integrating the Russian/Soviet case into international historiographies of gender and war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My contribution will explore how the Russian war on Ukraine could impact the evolution of peace history as a field. Drawing on various proposals to end the conflict, it will explain why peace historians should continue to do the work that they normally do such as describing grassroots activism against the war and how Ukrainians have used nonviolent tactics to resist the Russian occupation. But it will also explain why the war reinforces the need to spend more time exploring how the diverse peoples of the world have understood legitimate civic ordering and the acceptable use of violence at specific moments in time—a task necessary to undermine the historical falsehoods that Russians have used to justify their aggression against Ukraine. Finally, my contribution will grapple with the relationship between peace and military history, explaining why peace historians need to become more comfortable addressing what a country like Ukraine needs to do on the battlefield to survive as a nation and build a more just and peaceful world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article discusses the application of gis in the study of military history, particularly for campaigns in modern Asian history (1800s-1950s), citing the Battle of Hong Kong 1941 Spatial History Project as an example. gis allows researchers to move beyond text-based narratives by visualizing, contextualizing, and explaining the diversity of human experiences that are often overshadowed by frontline actions. This article assesses the use of gis-based interactive maps in visualizing the flow of the battle, reconstructing the battlefield, examining the diverse human experience, and integrating disparate historical data. Reflecting on the research team’s interdisciplinary experience in creating a gis-based interactive map, this article argues that such a method is suitable for military campaigns that took place in a rapidly changing urban environment. It also discusses the limitations of this method and the need to remain critical towards the visualization of data, the use of sources, and interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the middle of the South Atlantic lies Ascension Island, a modest island constructed in the background of Cold War politics and military history. This essay examines Ascension Island in three parts: first, from geologic prehistory to British naval occupation; second, the operation of the island by the United States military and installation of NASA tracking stations; and third, the lost histories in the wake of empire building. Ascension, initially deemed uninhabitable, became a technical island. This essay explores a distant island which may mirror our future world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay demonstrates how wartime objects can have a special resonance in families as keepers of memory, and it especially explores the role of daughters of military participants in preserving the artifacts of their veteran fathers. Using several case studies from a recent public history project collecting objects and object stories in the American southwest, it argues that a focus on daughters as caretakers of family military history offers a new way to engage with descendants' histories by showing how the work of such women can contribute to our understanding of modern war and its legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Robert Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture is presented annually on November 29, the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. In 2023, for the first time, the Fortenbaugh did not feature an individual scholar. Instead, a roundtable format was introduced, and a lively conversation ensued at the Majestic Theater in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, among Lorien Foote, Jennifer Murray, and Craig Symonds, moderated by Peter Carmichael. They broadly discussed the state of Civil War military history, reflecting on the field's evolution from a focus on generals and battles to a more holistic war-and-society approach that integrates social, cultural, political, and military history. Although Civil War military history has changed with the times and undeniably broadened its scope, the field remains on the margins of the academy, an issue that the panelists explored at length. They concluded their conversation before an audience of some three hundred people by reflecting on the ways that the study of Civil War military history has the potential to inform inquiries about a world engulfed in conflict today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American military forces have been working on a major doctrinal change since the middle of the last decade to move away from counterinsurgency and toward large-scale conventional warfare. The introduction of the concept of Multi-Dimensional Operations (MDO) to fight peer competitors has been accompanied by extensive historical studies of previous conventional campaigns. This article looks at the lessons learned from one of the main recent collections of historical cases, the Army's Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) Series. The book series contains a large number of cases of major conventional war from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and demonstrates a clear break with doctrine and historical interpretation developed in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Two sets of historical cases from the LSCO series were chosen for this study, the analyses of the October 1973 War and of the Soviet experience in World War II. These were also two of the main cases that were used in the 1970s and 1980s to help develop AirLand Battle doctrine after Vietnam. The article examines the lessons learned from both of the cases in the LSCO Series and compares those to earlier lessons learned about the same cases in the 1970s and 1980s. In this way, it also finds that the U.S. Army believes that AirLand Battle doctrine continues to be relevant today from a historical standpoint of lessons learned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the British Civil Wars, London suffered a severe energy shortage. By the mid-seventeenth century, the English capital was highly dependent on supplies of coal from the North-East of England. However, during the civil wars, the predominantly Parliamentarian city’s access to coal was restricted when the Royalists secured control of Newcastle and its coal reserves. The constriction of the coal supply of London caused an energy crisis in the capital, forcing the Parliamentarians to introduce price controls and seek alternative supplies of fuel. This article argues that ‘weaponisation of energy’ and ‘energy policy’ are appropriate terms to describe London’s coal supply in this period, given the clear parallels with modern energy policies and conflict. This article will further argue that the use of this term makes historians engage with the importance of energy even in premodern conflicts, and acknowledge that contemporaries were aware of its paramount strategic importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 2 July 1940, the ocean liner SS Arandora Star was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-47 , with the loss of around 805 lives; over half of these were British-Italian civilian internees. This article approaches the event from the arena of Second World War military history, contextualising the sinking within the early Battle of the Atlantic. In so doing, it shifts the customary focus away from government internment policy and discussions of cultural legacy towards examining British and German naval strategies and realities. Tactical and logistical considerations of the conflict are investigated, the explication of which allows more detailed discussion of the sinking controversies and enables delivery of 'answers' to the persistent 'questions' of why Arandora Star was sailing unescorted and without Red Cross insignia. The broad perspective offered engages with transgression and culpability, and overall the article seeks to advance Arandora Star scholarship with its distinctive maritime focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2021 military coup in Myanmar incited widespread civil resistance, including mass street protests, a civil disobedience movement, labour strikes and armed rebellions. Despite more than three years of conflict, the junta maintains power in certain areas Of the country. This article employs an outcome-explaining. process-tracing approach to elucidate the junta's persistence. The analysis reveals that civil resistance activities are highly fragmented, with minimal convergence in their operations or long-term visions. This fragmentation stems from divergent views within the movement regarding non-violent versus armed resistance and the varied objectives Of different armed ethnic organizations opposing the military. Concurrently, the junta has bolstered its repressive capabilities by developing institutionalized methods for countering adversarial forces. These methods are deeply intertwined with Myanmar's ethnicpolitical history and the military's entrenched dominance over political institutions. Consequently, this article contends that the evolution of both resistance efforts and the junta's repressive strategies has been markedly asymmetrical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A year and a half after two Sudanese military factions staged a joint coup against Sudan's transitional government, war broke out between the factions. Attempts by regional and international actors to arrange a cessation of hostilities between the warring parties have failed. The United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) was dissolved in early 2024, unable to fulfil its mandate of advancing Sudan's transition to democracy. UNITAMS could have been better equipped and endowed with a stronger and more realistic mandate for dealing with a contested transition. Arguably, however, it could not have prevented two armies that had conflicting interests and the resources to go to war from doing so. UNITAMS's record is in line with an apparent historical truth of international relations: only major powers motivated to use their political and economic leverage decisively can change the calculations of imminent combatants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently Western military history has concentrated on battles, technology, and the biographies of great generals. The roots of this tradition of history writing lie in the Ancient Greeks and this orientation has carried through to the present. Military historians studying other cultures, like China's, have usually tried to make very different traditions of commemorating war match or fit into the Western tradition. Although there is no established Chinese tradition of military history writing, an implicit tradition embedded in its extensive historiography suggests an emphasis on conflicts between military systems rather than specific weapons, battles, or individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently Western military history has concentrated on battles, technology, and the biographies of great generals. The roots of this tradition of history writing lie in the Ancient Greeks and this orientation has carried through to the present. Military historians studying other cultures, like China's, have usually tried to make very different traditions of commemorating war match or fit into the Western tradition. Although there is no established Chinese tradition of military history writing, an implicit tradition embedded in its extensive historiography suggests an emphasis on conflicts between military systems rather than specific weapons, battles, or individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a famous coastal defense heritage in the world's military history, the maritime defense heritage of China's Ming Dynasty represents the highest achievement of China's ancient coastal military defense. There is a relative lack of holistic research on this defense system from its establishment to stabilization. Additionally, there is a lack of comparative research on the combination of Wokou invasions and defense patterns from a spatio-temporal perspective. The study aims to offer insights into the temporal and spatial evolution of ancient military defense heritage and investigate the significance of Ming Dynasty coastal defense. This study focuses on Zhejiang, a key coastal defense during the Ming Dynasty. Using GIS tools, it analyzes the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of Wokou invasions and defense mode in the process of Zhejiang coastal defense from its establishment to its perfection by using GIS analytical tools, and explores the driving factors of the dynamic adjustment of this coastal defense system. The results show that: (1) Hongwu 1 to 31 (1368–1398) witnessed the construction of a 12-area defense system, encompassing Wei and Suo citadels. This followed a multi-point defense strategy, with Wei citadels controlling the coastline and Suo citadels supporting them; (2) Hongwu to Wanli (1368–1588) saw the evolution of five defense modes, evolving from decentralized to centralized and then to a coexistence of both. This culminated in the establishment of 4–6 Defense Mode (4 Canjiang and 6 Bazong); (3) the evolution of the defense paradigm is largely driven by Wokou incursions and is an adaptation from small-scale, short-duration infestations to large-scale, long-duration infestations. The findings show that the Ming Dynasty's coastal defense system in China was flexible and adaptive, evolving to meet changing defense needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply Anatol Rapoport’s typology of war to reconstruct how Russian research communities explain war against Ukraine. We argue that the initial three-dimensional framework can be divided into two explanatory models: military-political and eschatological-cataclysmic. The first model explains the war with reference to classical calculus about military threats and national interests. The second model interprets war as an act of creating a new world order and as a struggle existential for Russia. These two models are not mutually exclusive, yet they illuminate evolution of meanings given for the war during the first two years of Russia’s large-scale invasion against Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction As a result of the nature of military service, veterans are a unique patient population with many special health considerations. For various reasons, measures are often not taken by clinicians to address such special considerations. This results in a healthcare disparity for veterans first described by Dr. Jeffrey Brown in 2012. To address this disparity, we introduced "the military health history" to third-year medical students at a large medical school in the southeastern United States. Our objective was to assess the effectiveness of this educational intervention and determine its potential role in creating a future in which veteran healthcare is of the highest quality. Materials and Methods This study was approved as a quality assurance/quality improvement project by both Louisiana State University Health Science Center and Southeast Louisiana Veteran Healthcare System IRB offices. A short lecture outlining the components of the military health history was presented to 186 third-year medical students. The students were given the opportunity to answer five survey questions before and after the lecture. These questions assessed the students' current confidence performing a military health history, perceived importance of doing so, and likelihood of future implementation. To determine useful retention of the lecture material, the post-lecture survey was readministered to the same population sample 6 months after the lecture. A series of repeated measures analyses of variance were conducted to examine changes in mean levels of confidence, importance, and likelihood of ascertaining military history during a patient encounter at pre- and post-presentation as well as at the 6 month follow-up. Results Results revealed a significant effect of time on importance, Wilks' Lambda = 0.74, F (2, 87) = 15.41, P  < 0.001; confidence, Wilks' Lambda = 0.61, F (2, 87) = 27.58, P  < 0.001; and likelihood of ascertaining a military history during a future patient encounter, Wilks' Lambda = 0.46, F (2, 88) = 50.58, P  < 0.001. Results are demonstrated in detail in Table I of the manuscript. Conclusion The lecture resulted in a statistically significant increase over 6 months in both the likelihood and confidence parameters. The team believes that this result indicates that the students demonstrated useful retention of the lecture material. Our hope is that these students continue to employ the military health history throughout their years of clinical work. In the future, we plan to survey veterans immediately following Veterans Health Administration clinic visits with members of our study population to assess the patient's perceived benefit of the military health history. The team will continue to investigate ways in which military health curricula can be implemented in undergraduate medical education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the role and understanding of war's most inflexible factor—time—and its associated pressures and advantages in the Russo-Ukrainian War. While there seems to be no consensus on who might prevail (and of course the elements of what constitutes victory itself can vary), the passage of time—frequently understood in military terms as endurance and exhaustion—is a useful framework to assess the direction of the war, relative advantage at various stages, who may ultimately prevail, and under what conditions that may be possible. Although timetables and schedules have played an enormous role in military history, there appears to be no systematic assessment of the role of time in relation to strategy and victory in the Russo-Ukrainian war. This article sets out to fill that gap through a systematic comparison of time's passing and time pressures facing the combatants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violence was a feature of life aboard Royal Navy ships in the 18th century. However, the seemingly identical acts of violence on board had different logics and functions depending on the addressee. Based on the autobiographies of Black sailors and court records, this article traces these logics of violence and arguesthatthere was specific violence against Black sailors inthe Royal Navy. It is true that service at sea represented an opportunity for emancipation for Black sailors, as there was little institutional discrimination. At the same time, however, disciplinary and everyday violence among crew members proved to be highly racialised. For example, physical violence against Black crew members served as a means of humiliation, exclusion and emasculation, while for white crew members, fistfights were a responsetothe emasculating experience of shipboard conditions and became an essential element of maritime masculinity that strengthened social bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)