ABSTRACT
Writing over a hundred years after Roosevelt, I am not suggesting in any way that we only allow civilians the opportunity to write about our nation’s shortcomings, whether politically, socially, or militarily. After all, we have seen in recent years, American active duty military personnel contribute excellent studies that have opened our minds about aspects of the United States’ past. 2 I cite Roosevelt because I agree that we should continue to unshackle ourselves from the practice of segregating American military history from the larger historical themes within the overarching narrative of American history. In part this might be necessary for reasons that Robert Citino made blatantly obvious to all in “Military Histories Old and New: A Reintroduction” (2007). In his essay, Citino noted that military history as a profession had been muscled out in many ways by other competing historical fields because it was believed to be lacking in intellectual sophistication; a concern amongst military historians of Roosevelt’s era as well. Like good warriors, though, the historians of our profession adjusted to the conditions confronting them from all sides. Around the time of the rise of the New Social History in the 1960s, members of our profession facilitated and contributed to the growth of the New Military History, a point of view where conflict takes a backseat to social, cultural, racial, gender, and other questions. The study of War and Society, as it is now more commonly known, represents one pole holding up the “big tent” of American military history. 3
Just as Roosevelt saw military history as an important part of the larger field of American history, the authors of this volume and those that came before us see it as an integral inroad into further works on race, gender, socioeconomic concerns, and societal change. When the contributors of The Routledge Handbook of the History of Race and the American Military say “American
military history,” we see it not only as a study of the social aspects of military service, but as an examination of the entire military apparatus within American society. Moreover, and as displayed in this volume, military service is not necessary to define a subject closely associated with the study of War and Society. With that in mind, this volume includes works discussing the role of veterans and resisters alongside those of combat and conflict, and the pursuit of social equality.
