ABSTRACT
What is the history of warfare? This is not as straightforward a question as it might appear. On the one hand war can be approached narrowly, through studying the central activities of the practice of warfare: battles, campaigns, command, formations, weaponry. This is the range of topics, centred on combat itself, that military history has traditionally comprised, and might be typified by regimental or campaign histories. Yet this is an approach that is often criticized now. At the risk of caricaturing, it is often regarded as tending towards the antiquarian and inward-looking; it is seen as self-referential, since it was often the preserve of soldiers or former soldiers; it is seen as excessively reverential, tending (perhaps unsurprisingly) to be nationalistic and nation-centred; and it often partook of a naive conception of history as shaped by the deeds of ‘Great Men’.
