Rethinking Military History: A Critical Book Review
This paper critically reviews Jeremy Black's Rethinking Military History (2004), assessing both its contributions and its limitations as a theoretical intervention in the field. The review examines Black's six identified problems with military historiography—including Eurocentricity, technological determinism, the land-sea distinction, and insufficient attention to political tasking—and evaluates the strength of his proposed correctives. While praising Black's careful argument structure and his challenges to technological bias, the reviewer argues that Black fails to adequately account for the reciprocal influence that actual military institutions exert on the historiography that studies them, a blind spot that undermines one of his central goals.
- Overview and Structure of Black's Argument: Black's goals, scope, and argumentative structure
- Problems Black Identifies in Military Historiography: Six core problems Black diagnoses in the field
- The Land-Sea Distinction and Institutional Influence: How militaries shape the distinctions historians adopt
- Military Historiography's Failure of Self-Reflection: Historiography's uncritical relationship with its object
- Technology, Political Tasking, and Black's Core Contribution: Black's strongest argument against technological determinism
- Conclusion: Strengths, Shortcomings, and Scholarly Value: Final assessment of Black's book and its legacy
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What makes this paper effective
- The review balances genuine praise with pointed criticism, demonstrating sophisticated engagement rather than simple acceptance or rejection of Black's thesis.
- The author uses the land-sea distinction as a concrete, well-developed example to anchor the abstract critique about military institutions influencing historiography, making the argument accessible and persuasive.
- The paper situates military history within a broader disciplinary conversation — drawing comparisons to literary criticism and postcolonial studies — to measure Black's work against established scholarly standards.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper exemplifies evaluative synthesis: it does not merely summarize Black's argument but tests it against its own stated goals. The reviewer identifies the gap between what Black sets out to do (bring military history in line with other critical fields) and what he actually achieves, then uses that gap as the basis for an original scholarly observation about military historiography's self-conception.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a characterization of Black's project and overall thesis, then moves through Black's six identified problems in sequence before focusing in depth on the land-sea distinction as a case study for a broader critique. The middle sections develop the reviewer's original argument about institutional influence, while the closing section acknowledges Black's most valuable contributions — the challenges to technological determinism and the call for political tasking — before offering a measured final verdict.
Overview and Structure of Black's Argument
The goal of Jeremy Black's book Rethinking Military History is simultaneously modest and groundbreaking. Black describes it as "a short 'ideas book'" that nevertheless attempts "to re-position military history at the beginning of the twenty-first century" by identifying and challenging what he views as the central problems facing the discipline. He recognizes the potentially hubristic quality of this approach by noting that it is "the sort of remark guaranteed to raise every reviewer's ire," but, for the most part, Black does manage to succeed in succinctly outlining the practical issues facing military history without becoming overwhelmed by the task.
One must laud Black for the careful structuring of his argument. Like the most successful theoretical texts, he begins by outlining the problem, describes and justifies his particular theoretical approach, and then concludes with an application of that approach to the subject at hand in order to demonstrate its efficacy clearly. However, while Black's analysis goes a long way towards identifying the major problems of military history and offering solutions, he errs by not considering the symbiotic relationship between the discipline and its object. He regards military historiography as a field apart from the military itself, and in doing so fails to recognize that some of the major issues facing military historiography stem not solely from the practice of historians, but from their reliance on distinctions and definitions provided by the very military apparatus they discuss. This issue becomes clear when examining Black's treatment of the historical distinction between land and sea operations, though it surfaces elsewhere as well.
Bibliography
Black, Jeremy. "Determinisms and Other Issues." The Journal of Military History 68, no. 4 (2004): 1217–32.
Black, Jeremy. Rethinking Military History. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Black, Jeremy. "Victory in War: Foundations of Modern Military Policy." The Journal of Military History 71, no. 3 (2007): 983–4.
Grau, Lester W. "War since 1990." The Journal of Military History 73, no. 3 (2009): 1026–7.
Lynn, John A. "Breaching the Walls of Academe: The Purposes, Problems, and Prospects of Military History." Academic Questions 21, no. 1 (2008): 18–36.
Reid, Brian Holden. "Michael Howard and the Evolution of Modern War Studies." The Journal of Military History 73, no. 3 (2009): 869–904.
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