Clio Muses

Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941

2011-12-07T09:26:00.000-05:00

Pearl Harbor Day. 7 December 1941. Americans were outraged and angered seventy years ago today when the Japanese Imperial Navy (JIN) unexpectedly attacked the United States Navy Base, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. At the time the success of the attack was perceived as a major military set back for the United States.

No one at the time, however, knew that Pearl Harbor was going to be the JIN’s last (and only) naval victory in World War II. Pearl Harbor for the Japanese was a catastrophe. Even though the attack at Pearl was well planned, practiced, and well executed, it was far from being tactically brilliant. The most important targets at Pearl were not the six battleships, which were obsolete, but the fuel tanking station, the maintenance shops, dry docks, and ship yards. Six months after Pearl Harbor, 4 June 1942, the United States Navy won a decisive victory at the Battle of Midway sinking all four of the JIN’s largest carriers, a heavy cruiser, and 322 airplanes.
While the JIN was trying to recover from Midway, the United States built a "new" wartime navy that carried the war to the Japanese home islands and victory.

A 1909 History Test

2010-08-29T17:22:00.000-04:00

“What explorations or discoveries did each of the following named persons make? Give the date in each case.

a. De Narvaez.
b. Coronado.
c. Marquette.
d. LaSalle.”

A candidate for the 1909 plebe class of West Point would have answered such a question on his (there were no hers) written entrance exam. The candidate would also have been asked questions on algebra, plane geometry, English grammar, English Composition and Literature, geography, and history.

In order to prepare, a candidate would have found sample questions from the encountered year’s exam in the Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, June 1909. For the history questions, it advised, “Candidates must be thoroughly familiar with so much of the History of the United States, and of Ancient Greece and Rome as is contained in good high-school text-books on these subjects, and must have a good knowledge of the important facts in General Ancient History and the History of Medieval Europe to the end of the fifteenth century.”

The candidate might, for example, be asked, “Mention the principal events in the reign of Darius I, and the most noteworthy features of his government. Of what nation was he ruler?”

Or: “Give the main points in the Greek colonial system. How did the Roman colonial system differ conspicuously from the Greek?”

Or: “Toward the close of the fifteenth century in England was the power of Parliament becoming greater or less than it had been previously? By what right was Henry IV King of England? What was the earliest form of parliamentary assembly in English History?”

Or: “Define: Electoral College; Spoils System; Primary; Supreme Court”.

Candidates who failed these examinations were replaced by alternates. In 1909 there is no evidence West Point had any difficulty in filling its annual quota of plebs. The 147 candidates who entered West Point in 1909, at least one from each state and territory in the Union as well as one from the District of Columbia and one from Puerto Rico in addition to at-large appointments, passed these examinations.

Some questions tested factual knowledge. Other questions tested the ability to compare and contrast similar and dissimilar historical events and institutions. Some asked the candidate to explain the causes; others ask the candidate to explain the consequences; some both.

All of the sample questions for history were short answer questions. Today multiple-choice questions are more common. There are obvious thematic differences from 1909 to 2010. The historical questions that appeared to historians in 1909 to be significant are not necessarily the ones that appear to be significant today. On the other hand, there is considerable continuity: the importance of the Ancient Near East; the development of self-rule in Greece; the long term impact of the Roman Empire; the importance of the rediscovery of self-governance in Medieval and Early Modern Europe; and so forth.

High school and college history text books were a large market in nineteenth-century America. They were sold to schools and students. In addition, many found their way into bookstores catering to adults interested in history. Most texts included chapter headings, sectional headings, and numbered paragraphs. Most of the leading textbooks included various aids to help the student organize and learn history. They often included chronologies, maps, and reproductions of primary documents, pictures, a glossary, pronunciation aids, and review questions at the end of the chapter. Texts published in the early nineteenth century focused mostly on facts while those published toward the end of the nineteenth century introduced more complex ideas of causation and themes.

One popular text of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century was Phillip Van Ness Myers’, Modern History. It was first published in 1886 and its popularity kept it in print through 1921. Like contemporary text books, this extremely popular text book listed in its preface twenty contemporary historians who had helped with the book and read the manuscript. Myers intended his text book to represent the best and latest thinking of academic historians. The sample West Point 1909 examination questions for history reflect Myers desire to stay abreast of what “historians” are saying. The 1909 West Point examination questions are a reasonable effort to determine what the students have learned from text books such as Myers’.

For the past several decades the teaching and learning of history has been hotly debated. Some argue our students don’t know enough history; some argue they don’t know “the right kind of history”; some say the fault is the teachers; others say it is the fault a society that seemingly cares little for history. Critics from both sides of the discussion do not, however, argue that American high school and college students know “too much” history.

A comparison, however, between the 1909 sample history questions from West Point and a randomly selected sample questions from contemporary sources such as state high school proficiency exams or the New York State Regents exams suggests that while themes and question design may have changed, teachers then and now demand a high level of content knowledge. Let me illustrate. Below is a sample question from a recent New York Regents test practice exam:

“In the Colonial Era, developments such as the New England town meetings and the establishment of the Virginia House of Burgesses represented

1. colonial attempts to build a strong national government

2. efforts by the British to strengthen their control over the colonies

3. steps in the growth of representative democracy

4. early social reform movements”

That question is from the Oswego City School District Regents Exam Prep Center, Oswego, New York. It is representative of many similar online sources intended to improve a student’s performance on SAT, ACT, or state mandated graduation tests. The URL for this particular site is:

http://www.regentsprep.org/Regents/core/questions/questions.cfm?Course=USHG&TopicCode=2a/

The complete text, with the sample exam questions, from the Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the United States Military Academy for 1909 may be found at:

http://digital-library.usma.edu/libmedia/archives/oroc/v1909.pdf/
An interesting exercise might be: Using the complete texts from the online sources, compare and contrast the two documents. Answer the following:

1. How well (given changes in thematic emphasis) might have West Point candidates in 1909 succeed on the New York Regents (or similar) history exams?

2. How well (given changes in thematic emphasis) would contemporary students succeed in the 1909 West Point candidate history exam?

Do you answers suggest more continuity than change, or the other way-around?

In addition to the above sources, analysis and samples of nineteenth-century American text books may be found at the University of Pittsburg Digital Research Library, 19th Century School Books: http://digital.library.pitt.edu/n/nietz/

Ten Best Books I Read This Year

2009-12-07T09:38:00.007-05:00

December is the month in which popular journals publish their “Ten Best Books of 2009”, as the New York Times did last week. I too use December to consolidate my reading for the year (which is usually between seventy to eighty books, some that are new and some that I am re-reading), collect my notes, and update my bibliographic and research software (I use Citation – but there are several good programs available).

Never wanting to be upstaged by the New York Times, here is my list of the “Ten Best Books I Read This Year”.

Appleman, Roy E. East of Chosin: Entrapment and Breakout in Korea, 1950. (College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press), 1987.

Baggini, Julian. What’s It All About?: Philosophy & The Meaning of Life. (New York: Oxford University Press), 2004.

Bak, Per. How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality. (New York: Oxford University Press), 1997.

Coyne, Jerry A. Why Evolution is True. (New York: Viking), 2009.

Faust, Drew Gilpin. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf), 2008.

Hämäläinen, Pekka. Comanche Empire. (New Haven: Yale University Press), 2008.

Hamburger, Kenneth E. Leadership in the Crucible: The Korean War Battles of Twin Tunnels & Chipyong-ni. (College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press), 2003.

Israel, Jonathan I. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750. (New York: Oxford University Press), 2001.

Parkman, Francis. Montcalm and Wolfe: The French and Indian War. (New York: Barnes & Noble Books), 2005. First published 1884.

Stendhal. The Charter House of Parma. (New York: The Modern Library), 1999. First published 1839.

The Scholarly Apparatus in a Popular History Book

2009-11-28T23:36:00.001-05:00

In a recent post I called attention to three history books that were based on primary sources and, through the scholarly apparatus, let the reader check the interpretation against the sources. Moreover, all three books contributed a new and deeper understanding of their subjects and a provided fresh interpretations. The direct relationship between the usefulness of the interpretation and the reliance on primary sources is unavoidable.

Let us consider a recent history book that was well reviewed and successful in the market place that did not contribute a new and deeper understanding or suggested a fresh interpretation: David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (New York: Hyperion), 2007. Halberstam was a long-time, successful journalist, a capable narrative writer, and winner of many awards. He was intelligent, a good interviewer, and an above average writer.

The book is based mostly on secondary sources with a few author interviews. Halberstam’s book has 200 entries in the bibliography and 849 endnotes. Reviewing the endnotes, twenty-one percent reference the author’s personal interviews; five percent reference oral history interviews; two percent reference primary documents; and seventy-one percent reference secondary sources.

The five percent that reference oral history interviews are from tapes or transcripts in presidential libraries or the United States Army Institute for Military History. The two percent that reference primary documents are limited to personal letters, personal journals/diaries, popular magazine articles, and newspaper stories.

The author’s own scholarly apparatus shows that he based his knowledge and conclusions mostly on other authors, only a few of his own interviews, and even fewer primary sources. Even though the Korean War is a topic rich in primary sources, many of which have yet to be fully used, with the exception of an occasional personal letter, Halberstam makes no reference to them at all. Further, all the references he cites are in English even though the Korean War is an international event. In other words, Halberstam takes no personal responsibility for his knowledge; he lets others do the actual research and assumed they all knew what they were doing.

Meanwhile, Halberstam’s portrayal and interpretation of the Korean War is, in its essential characteristics, the same interpretation he has used in all of his books and articles: History is caused by elites. The elites, driven by hubris, and make decisions that inevitably victimize the non-elites. The non-elites, in this case American soldiers and Korean civilians, nobly sacrifice themselves in the service of this arrogant, imperial power.

Those who write history but avoid primary sources risk missing the chance to contribute to our knowledge and understanding of history. “Good history”, that is, articles and books that add to our knowledge or understanding, are more likely to come from those who read the primary sources in whatever language is required, and draw their own conclusions rather than re-cycling the research of other authors. Halberstam missed the opportunity to write a good history book.

What Should I Read Next?

2009-11-19T10:33:00.000-05:00

Educated readers and students often ask, “How do I select a good history book?”

Michèle Lamont, in her new book How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts), 2009, explores how various disciplines evaluate scholarship within their fields. Drawing upon her research on grant proposals, she suggests that within the “humanities”, historians as a professional group are more likely to agree on the quality of a particular research proposal or its product, a book, than are other fields. That is to say, historians know a good history book when they read it. Understanding how historians agree on what are good books helps the non-historian in selecting books.

Why do historians have a wider agreement on superior scholarship than do scholars in political science, sociology, or literature? Dr. Lamont’s answer is no surprise to historians: history is evidence based where other fields are theory based. For the historian, evidence is always the starting point for any line inquiry. While explanations or interpretations may be subject to discussion, the discussion always returns to the evidence.

To illustrate, I have selected three recent history books: Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf: New York), 2008; Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (Yale University Press: New Haven), 2008; and Robert D. Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston), 2006.

Those books share several characteristics. They are written by distinguished historians; they received favorable reviews in scholarly journals; and they all won the prestigious Bancroft Award. By themselves, those characteristics do not make them “good books”. Rather, it is something the books did that caught the attention of historians.

While those books are on different topics, they share important characteristics. All have extensive footnotes, bibliographies, and notes on sources; the authors explain their methodology; and all three ground their narrative and interpretations on the evidence, not on theory.

The heart of a good book is found in the footnotes, bibliographies, and notes on sources (also called the “scholarly apparatus”). The scholarly apparatus itemizes the evidence that Dr. Lamont recognized was fundamental to historical analysis. Moreover, the scholarly apparatus is the road map that takes the reader through the author’s research journey, showing what the author found and where the reader can find it.

Now that the reader knows where to find the evidence, let’s examine how the author uses the evidence. Historical research begins with a question. How well, if at all, the question can be answered depends, for historians, on the evidence. The evidence is specific to the question (time, place, subject) and can be extremely varied (ranging from private correspondence, to works of art, to artifacts, to government documents, and so on). Different types of evidence require different methods with which to understand the evidence. In the preface, the introduction, and often throughout the work, the author will explain how he or she used (method) the evidence.

In William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism Richardson lists the published and unpublished sources he used. A cross check of his chapter notes shows that every source is noted, frequently more than once, and often cross referenced to other notes. A second cross check of his sources and notes shows that while Richardson used both primary and secondary (documents and scholarship not written by William James) most of his notes refer to the primary (William James) sources.

Why do Richardson’s notes suggest a preference for the writings of William James rather than what others have written about William James? Richardson answers that question in the preface in which he explains that his book is an “intellectual biography” that “seeks to understand his [James’] life through his work, not the other way around”.

Without yet reading the 520 pages of narrative we have learned much. The author has asked a specific question about an important historical figure. He has given us the evidence he used and explained how he used it. By laying the evidence out on the table, Richardson invites us to join him in the inquiry.

Let us look at This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust. Like Richardson her notes itemize in detail the primary and secondary sources used. Her Preface explicates her methodology, that is, how she used her primary sources and evaluated her secondary sources. Before the reader gets to her narrative, there is no doubt about either method or sources.

The reader should now know what is found in our third work, The Comanche Empire, by Pekka Hämäläinen: primary and secondary sources are itemized in detail, the preface and introduction explains the methodology. Hämäläinen’s draws on a wide range of types of evidence, ranging from diplomatic records to ethnographic sources. In each case Hämäläinen presents his evidence, discusses how it has been used by other authors, and discusses how he uses and understands the evidence. Like Richardson and Faust, Hämäläinen does not discuss theories, he discusses evidence.

History books worth reading follow a standard pattern. They site their sources and explain their methodology. “Good” history books give the reader everything needed to evaluate the work. A “good” history book is not necessarily one the reader might like or even agree. Rather, it is a work that provides the reader with all the sources and methods with which to come to his or her own conclusion.

Veteran's Day 2009

2009-11-11T11:16:00.000-05:00

A good friend with whom I served in Southeast Asia (SEA) in 1968 and 1969, made, during a recent email conversation, an observation about many in the draftee Army of that era.

He wrote that many of the men with whom we served were draftees (as he was; I was RA and we were both enlisted) were upset about being drafted, being in the Army, and being in SEA. They resented that their lives and careers had not only been interrupted, but put on hold; that they had been placed in conditions that were at worst very dangerous and at best very miserable. Many, such as my friend, were college graduates who wanted to get on with the careers. Many had some college or technical school and wanted to complete their degree. Many were married or engaged and wanted to move on with their personal lives. They all had lives that markedly differed from the Army’s agenda.

However, my friend went on to write that the vast majority of those with whom he served no matter how much they hated the Army, hated being in it, hated being wherever they were, did a good job. The majority carried out their duties: applied the knowledge and training they received in AIT and combined that with their civilian education; followed orders; and performed their unit missions and MOS skills up to and frequently exceeding expectations. They did not like it, but they did their job.

Let me add a few comments to my friend's excellent observations; but, first two assumptions. First we are considering anecdotes of remembrance rather than a rigorous and broad scholarly study and thus conclusions must be tentative. Second, his observations accurately reflect my own recollections.

The characteristic of the American draftee who is upset that he was drafted and yet, once in the Army, performs well, often exceptionally well, and often returns home still feeling upset about being drafted in the first place and regretting what to him was a loss of two years of his life, has been long noted in studies of World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam. Most draftees did the job they were called to do. Many draftees later in life joined various veteran’s organizations (American Legion, VFW, and so on), and while still upset that they were drafted, still keep their family and friends laughing with all the stories of the “Mickey Mouse” of the Army and the bumbling incompetence of the “lifers”. Nevertheless, later in life, they stand tall on Veteran’s Day. When, for example, we buried Sergeant Titus Reynolds here last month, those were the men who turned out by the thousands to honor him, made up the honor guard that carried the National Colors, held small American flags along the two mile drive to the cemetery, rode their motor bikes in the procession, or saluted the hearse as it passed.

Generalizations must be made with care. Not all draftees during the Vietnam Era performed as those mentioned in the anecdote above. Not all Regular Army (RA) men and women were self-sacrificing. Just because a person technically qualifies as a “veteran” does not mean he or she is an exemplar of soldiery attributes. At the same time, one can neither ignore or forget the men and women who from Concord and Lexington to Kabul who have turned out, grumbling or not, and did what was expected of them.

Veteran’s Day is an international day of remembering in which we recall specific events,such as 11 November 1918, as well as all who served in our armed forces since then. It is the day, as Shakespeare wrote in Henry V, that old men roll up their sleeves and show their scars.

Remembering 11 September 2001

2009-09-11T11:06:00.000-04:00

Americans remember 11 September 2001 in many different ways. One, but by no means the only way, is to ask, “Where were you on….?”

That question appeared on my Facebook account this morning and I intended to make a “comment”. However, Facebook, like similar social networking platforms , is not able to handle too many words and thus not too many thoughts. So, below is what I would have posted had the technology been able to support it:

One wonders how many times in one’s life is it necessary to recall where they were on a given date? To be sure, on 7 and 8 December 1941, staff members of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C., conducted a series of oral history interviews with people randomly selected as they walked up or down The Mall. The interviews were recorded on “wire” recorders and remain a fascinating source of popular history for the period. For the second half of the twentieth century, those interviews reinforced the habit of asking, “Where were you when. . . .?” The presumption is “where we were” somehow signifies or legitimizes the event itself. That is preposterous, of course; but knowing “where we were when” is a significant psychological touchstone with which to construct or recall what it is we perceive as (or was) real. I think we all do it. That is to say, I know I do it too. For the Civil Rights March, 28 August 1963, I was actually there. Three months later, however, when President Kennedy was assassinated I was taking an afternoon nap in my dorm room in New York. For the moon landing 16 July 1969, I was in SEA and did not see the actual video until a remote signal site I was near picked up on a delayed re-transmission. It goes without saying that for similar chronological reasons I not only missed Woodstock (also 1969), it was some time later until I had any idea that it might (or might not) be important. For 11 September 2001 I was at work but was, later in the morning, able to view the events on a TV. Ginny, my wife, was also at work and also had access to a TV. Bridget, our second daughter. was also at working at Cross Country Inn in Reynoldsburg and her husband-to-be, Justin, was asleep (as I was in 1963). All four of us were in Columbus, Ohio. Our oldest daughter, Susan, however, was enroute to a meeting at the Pentagon but heard about the attack in time to abort her schedule for that day. Her husband, Jason, was in class at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD. All of that may be of personal interest, but it can by no means compare to, let alone substitute, for those who were, on 11 September 2001, in the World Trade Center buildings, in the Pentagon, or on Flight 93; the first responders in New York City, Arlington, Virginia, and Washington, D. C.; the pilots who scrambled to fly CAP over DC; or the staff and children at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School, Sarasota, Florida, where President Bush was reading to them that morning. They, not us, are the ones with real stories to tell and for us to listen.

The Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History, 2009

2009-04-08T13:51:00.000-04:00

The annual meeting for the Society for Military History at Middle Tennessee State University this past weekend was enjoyable and successful. My paper, “The National Guard as Community, 1903-2008”, was well received.

The other two presenters on the panel, Shawn Fisher (University of Memphis) and Eric Jarvis (King’s University College) were extremely interesting and it was an honor to be on a panel with two such excellent scholars.

I was especially impressed by the panel chairperson, Professor Jeff Roberts (Tennessee Technology University) whose comments were insightful and helpful. Thank you, Jeff!

The conference was also a splendid opportunity to meet old friends (Peter Kindsvatter, Allen Millett, Steve Bourque, and especially Jim Williams) as well as to make new contacts.

I especially enjoyed visiting the Indiana University Press (IUP) booth and Bob Sloan, the Press’s Editorial Director. I have many fond memories from when I was an Acquisitions Editor at IUP. It was a delight to see their military history list remains strong and that several of the books I brought to the Press are still in print. The continuing tradition of successful scholarly publishing is a product of my friend , former colleague, and now director, Janet Rabinowitch’s leadership.

The Society for Military History Program Committee and the many volunteers from the Society and Middle Tennessee State University deserve a well-earned round of applause for their tireless efforts to make this conference a success.

While presenting a paper as I did is an enjoyable opportunity to share my research, more importantly it was a chance to “test” the direction of my research and its tentative conclusions amongst other scholars. I thank all who made excellent comments and observations about my paper and research and appreciate their encouragement.

Now to press on with the book!

The Second Moroccan Crisis, 1911

2009-03-25T13:50:00.000-04:00

For the past several days there has been an interesting discussion on the LSTSRV H-WAR concerning the importance of the Agadir Affair, also called the Second Moroccan Crisis, in terms of the causes of World War I.

In the decade and a half prior to World War I there were a series of international disputes that involved or affected the major European powers that in 1914 went to war as members of either the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy) and the Triple Entente (France, Russia, and Great Britain).

An important question concerning World War I has been to gauge the relative importance of these various diplomatic crisis’s and evaluate them in terms of the so-called Alliance System that developed as each participant attempted to guarantee its own security and protect its own national and dynastic interests.

The Second Moroccan Crisis and Agadir Affair are interesting because they led to results that the Germans, French, and British had not intended or anticipated. Below is a slightly edited version of my post on H-WAR on 24 March that discusses two of these unintended consequences.

H-WAR, 24 March 2009

There is a certain seduction about World War I theories of causation. The various pre-war diplomatic crises can be arranged and re-arranged to appear to march in step from one to another until shots are fired in August 1914. Such an approach not only obscures the fundamental causes of World War I, it also ignores the contingent nature of history.

So, before I too am seduced by the Second Moroccan Crisis, let us remember that the demographic revolution that began in the 18th century, the economic and technological expansion of Europe and world markets at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, and the powerful attraction of aggressive nationalisms are as and possibly more important in understanding the conditions that resulted in World War I rather than a diplomatic dispute over colonial interests in North Africa. The Second Moroccan Crisis, moreover, is arguably of greater importance to Moroccan history than European because it demonstrated again that European interests were of greater importance than Moroccan interests.

None the less, the Second Moroccan Crisis or the Agadir Affair, in my opinion, is important because its unintended consequences are, in retrospect, more significant than the German protest over the French occupation of Fez in 1911 that ostensibly triggered the crisis.

The first unintended consequence was Lloyd George’s Mansion House speech delivered three weeks after the Panther sailed into Agadir. The second unintended consequence is the Italian opportunism of using the Second Moroccan Crisis as a pretext for the Tripolitan War, which led to the Second (and final) Balkan War.

The significance of Lloyd George’s speech was that it marked a significant shift in British foreign policy in which it would no longer tolerate Germany’s colonial interference; that when such interference threatened British interests Britain may consider them to be points of “national honor” (escalatory vocabulary); and it signaled an increasing alignment of British and French interests that led to further military cooperation between their navies as well as discussions, “informal” to be sure, about further military cooperation on the Continent.

The Tripolitan War exposed Turkish weakness and Germany’s inability to aid directly her Turkish friend. Equally important, Turkish defeat led Bulgaria and Serbia to find further opportunities to expand their own national interests at the expense of both Austria-Hungary and Turkey, which resulted in the Second Balkan War, 1913, which in turn was ended on August 10, 1913, with the Treaty of Bucharest. However, the Treaty of Bucharest, the terms of which had been agreed on by the major powers in an earlier London conference, pleased few and aggravated many.

On the surface it appeared that the outcome of the Second Moroccan Crisis had given Germany the colonial concessions she sought; but Germany’s victory was Pyrrhic. Germany was now more isolated, Britain and France were growing closer, the Turks were defeated, and the Balkans remained unsettled.

However, even if we accept the importance of these unintended consequences, we ought not be seduced in thinking that they led inevitably to war in August 1914. After the Second Moroccan Crisis, Britain attempted to engage Germany in discussions that Britain hoped would lead to an agreement on future ship building. Although the Haldane mission was unsuccessful in obtaining such an agreement, it served to restore confidence between the two governments, a confidence that bore some fruit when Britain and Germany cooperated to limit the Balkan War in 1912 and 1913.

While the British and the French held important discussions after the Second Moroccan Crisis, they declined to commit the discussions to formal agreement. As long as that was the case, Germany had the potential to wean the British back from the French and to become in spirit if not in fact the “natural” ally Germany thought Britain should be. Germany, for example, took that opportunity by negotiating and signing an agreement with England in the Spring of 1914 that settled their long dispute over Portuguese colonies. By the fall of 1913, however, it was becoming clear that even though the major powers could agree to treaties, those treaties were unable either to ameliorate the inflamed passions of the south Slavs or to harness their own competing interests in the Balkans.

Whether or not British and French relations would have grown closer or whether or not Italy would have invaded Tripoli are topics that would form the counterfactual question, “What if the Germans had not reacted to, even ignored, the French occupation of Fez in 1913? Would Europe still have gone to war in 1914?”

A Soldier's Pay

2009-01-10T11:39:00.000-05:00

According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics’ constant dollar calculator, twenty-five cents in 1913 has the same buying power of $5.36 in 2008.

In 1913 an enlisted member of the Ohio National Guard received twenty-five cents in pay for attendance at each scheduled drill. According to Article XV, Section 5272, of Regulations for the Ohio National Guard, 1912, members of the Guard were required to meet for the purpose of “drill and instruction” at least once a week but not to exceed 48 days per year.

Article XVII, Section 5288 of the same regulation stipulates that enlisted members will receive twenty-five cents for each drill day, paid quarterly. In addition to weekly drills, Ohio Guardsman also attended the annual “encampment”, which would last from eight to fourteen days.

According to Paul H. Douglas, Real Wages in the United States, 1890-1926 (Houghton Mifflin: Boston), 1930, p. 108, real wages in all manufacturing in the United States in 1913 averaged $2.09 per day.

Some skilled workers, however, made considerably more. An article entitled “Wages Higher in 1913: Sixty Industries Paid More Last May Than in 1912” that appeared in the May 10, 1913, edition of The New York Times, called attention to the “high” wages of some skilled trades in certain cities. According to the Bureau of Labor, the article reported, bricklayers in Dallas made eight-eight cents an hour; carpenters in Chicago sixty-five cents an hour; and plumbers and gasfitters in Seattle made eighty-one cents an hour.

Whether we compare the Ohio Guardsman’s drill pay to contemporary buying power or to his contemporary’s wages, some who worked for firms such as National Cash Register which was headquartered in Dayton, he did not do it for the money.

If it wasn’t to get rich, why did these citizens give up 56 to 62 days out of the year to be a soldier?

Tennessee in April

2009-01-08T23:24:00.000-05:00

Today the Society for Military History published the program for their annual conference, 2 – 5 April 2009, at Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN. My paper, “The National Guard as Community, 1903 – 2008”, will be presented in the panel “Changing Role of the Militia and National Guard”, Session 7-6, 3:30 PM 4 April.

There are two other papers in this panel: “Helmets in the Halls: The Arkansas National Guard at Little Rock Central High” by Shawn Fisher (University of Memphis), and “In Defense of Our City and Our Nation: Military Preparations by the Citizens of Philadelphia following the Burning of Washington, 1814 – 1815” by Eric Jarvis (King’s University College). Both are highly respected scholars and I look forward to hearing their papers.

The Chair and Commentator is Jeffrey J.Roberts, chairman of the Department of History at Tennessee Technology University. Dr. Roberts did his Ph.D. at Ohio State University, long known for producing excellent historians.

I am very pleased to be included in such a strong panel.

Cut Backs

2008-04-14T22:16:00.000-04:00

According to an article in The Columbus Dispatch (Mark Niquette, “Society Board: 26 Jobs History”, April 12, 2008, pp. B1-B2), the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) is discharging 26 employees; curtailing its operations at its main facility, the Ohio Historical Center (OHC) in Columbus, from six days a week to four; and cutting hours at many of its 52 state-wide sites. Moreover, 21 open positions will not be filled and 49 current employees will be working fewer hours per week.

These cut backs are the result of a $2 million deficiency in OHS’s annual budget. This short fall, which accounts for approximately nine percent of the Society’s annual budget, has been primarily caused by the state legislature’s failure to support the OHS. State funding for the OHS accounts for nearly 60 percent of their total budget, according to the OHS Annual Report (2007). The State began reducing their support for the OHS in 2000 and there is no indication at present that either political party or the governor will reverse this trend.

The reduction in operating hours at the OHC adversely impacts my research on the Warren G. Harding papers and research for a proposed book on the history of the Ohio National Guard. The OHS Archives, which is essential for my research, is open only three days a week (Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday) eight hours each day.

These limited hours for research affect not just the scholarly researcher but every Ohio citizen who has a need or an interest in any of the OHS Archives holdings. Moreover, reduced hours at the other OHS locations severely diminishes the Society’s state-wide educational mission.

Regrettably, news stories about reduced funding for research, scholarship, education, historic preservation, or libraries and archives are no longer novel.

Lincoln's Walk

2007-12-06T00:40:00.000-05:00

In September 2007 my wife, Ginny, and I took a “busman’s holiday” to Richmond, Virginia. Our plan was to trace Lincoln’s 1865 visit to Richmond and to travel the route of V Corps, Army of the Potomac, from Petersburg to Appomattox Court House. Let me discuss the Richmond visit first.

James W. Loewen in his splendid book, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong (Simon & Schuster: New York), 1999, describes President Lincoln’s walking tour of Richmond, Virginia, 4 April 1865 (pp. 310-317).

Five days later, General Lee would surrender at Appomattox Court House. Ten days after his walk, President Lincoln would be dead from assassination.

Loewen provides a detailed account of the walk including a map, which we used to re-trace Lincoln’s steps (p. 311).

In his book Loewen also noted that there were no historical markers indicating the landing site on the James River or the walk itself. Moreover, he was unable to find a brochure or a map that gave a self-guided tour of the walk. When he asked a local expert why that was so, she replied that Lincoln’s walk was not a part of “Confederate history” (p. 310).

Was this still the case?

According to Loewen, Lincoln came ashore at Rocket’s Landing, which he had clearly marked on his map. Today, that part of the James River shore line is under construction for a major urban renewal project of upscale condominiums and offices. Because of the construction, it was impossible to reach the shoreline, but if there were a marker, it had been removed.

Nevertheless, we traced Lincoln’s walk and arrived at two of Richmond’s major tourist attractions: the Museum of the Confederacy and the White House of the Confederacy. On 4 April Lincoln visited Jefferson Davis’ White House, sat at his desk, and toured the building. He then visited the State Capitol where he gave an impromptu speech to the African American crowd who had been following him re-affirming their freedom. “You are now as free as I am,” Lincoln said (p. 315).

At the Museum of the Confederacy I spoke to two docents asking if they could direct me to Rocket’s Landing. The poured over their museum map looking for Rocket’s Landing. One of the docents drew a large oval along the James River and said he thought it was in that area.

I said that I thought so too, but had just driven through that area and it seemed to be under construction. I then asked did they know what happened at Rocket’s Landing? After a second or two, one of them asked, “What year?”

“4 April 1865,” I replied.

“Oh,” he said, “Is that where Lincoln landed?”

I told him that it was and that I was looking for a map or markers that would identify the walking route Lincoln took from Rocket’s Landing to Davis’ White House. At the point, one of the docents looked at me for a moment and walked away. The other one said he recalls hearing something about the Lincoln visit but the museum did not have a map nor did he know of any historical markers commemorating the event.

As Loewen argued eight years ago, the failure to mark or commemorate Lincoln’s walk is unfortunate. “His trip is one of the great walks in American history, full of little incidents rich with larger meaning. Richmond needs to recognize it on its landscape” (p. 310).

The next day we headed west in pursuit of V Corps’ march to Appomattox Court House.

Does the Munich Analogy Fit?

2007-11-28T21:20:00.000-05:00

My essay below, “Does the Munich Analogy Fit?”, was published in the online journal History News Network on 3 March 2003 (http://hnn.us/articles/1286.html/).

Analogies appear frequently in historical writing. Julian Baggini and Peter S. Fosl in their helpful book The Philosopher’s Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods (Blackwell: Oxford), 2003, point out that analogies are also used by philosophers, lawyers, and journalists to enhance reasoning, to make arguments, and as illustrations.

Analogies are, according to Baggini and Fosl, “strong” if they “share a large or decisive number of relevant similarities” while at the same time they “do not exhibit a large or decisive number of relevant differences” (p. 47).

To the extent that an analogy does not satisfactorily fit those two conditions, then the analogy is “weak”.

The essay below discusses some of the difficulties of using analogies in historical arguments.

“Does the Munich Analogy Fit?”
By Robert Cook

Recent world events have stimulated an increase of interest into the events of the September 1938 Munich Conference that, among other things, gave us the so-called Munich Analogy for appeasement. Students, journalists, pundits and even neighbors are discussing the current debate about Iraq in terms of British and French foreign policy of 1938.

Historical analogies rely on continuities; that is, the analogy draws on those things that were the same then as they are now. Like literary metaphors, of which historical analogies are a subset, meaning is measured by the strength of the similarity: the stronger the similarity the stronger the historical argument. A brief re-capitulation of some of the salient features of European foreign policy in the 1930s might be helpful.

The remilitarization of the Rhineland by Germany on 7 March 1936 was the key event in the interwar period because it upset the military balance of power between Germany and France and because it destroyed the assumptions of collective security upon which European states had conducted foreign policy since the conclusion of the Versailles Treaty and the inauguration of the League of Nations. Germany's unopposed march into the Rhineland in direct violation of the Locarno Treaty set the stage for Munich two years later.

France and Great Britain's failure to enforce the Locarno Treaty was Europe's last best chance to halt German expansion and Hitler's planned destruction of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations.

Munich in 1938 was no more than a continuation of that failure. The Sudeten and Czechoslovakian crisis was, as Chamberlain said, "a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing."

If France and Britain were not going to go to war in 1936 to enforce the Locarno Treaty, the idea of collective security and the defense of France, then it was no surprise that no major power was going to war over the territorial integrity of Czechoslovakia, a faraway country that neither wanted to believe they knew much about.

After 1936, Hitler was increasingly seen within and without Germany as the man of the hour; he was "Europe's new Man of Destiny." In February 1937, well before the Munich conference, in the Munich Hoffbrauhaus in a speech at the annual celebration of the NSDAP's founding, Hitler proclaimed to a cheering audience, "Today we have once again become a world power!" To many in the NSDAP and in Germany, Hitler's long-time promise, a promise that went all the way back to his book Mein Kampf, was now fulfilled.

At the same time, France lost faith in its own policy of containing Germany through alliances. Few in France and fewer in Europe cared much whether Austria became a part of Germany and so in early 1938 the Austrian Anschlus was a fait accompli: Munich was only six months away.

Munich is important because it was the recognition of the changing balance of power in Europe that had been occurring over the previous two years. Munich is remembered because Winston Churchill's ringing objections from the floor of the House of Commons articulated the foreign policy weakness of Britain and France not by a complicated explanation of national power and diplomacy, but rather by focusing on the moral question of appeasement. The Munich Conference, Churchill said, was a major disaster.

In September 1938 few agreed with Churchill. Chamberlain's assurances of peace with honor and peace in our time were far more comforting to the general public, a public whose memory of World War I, then known as The Great War for no one knew an even greater one was coming, left them with little will to sacrifice themselves again for Europe.

Since 1938 the abandonment of Czechoslovakia at the Munich Conference has become a well-known metaphor, an historical analogy, for policies of real or presumed appeasement.

The actual events in Europe between 1936 and 1938 are far too complex to admit to a simple summary through analogy. But that by no means suggests the 1936-1938 period is devoid of fruitful insight and understanding. If a use of history is to help us understand rather than providing selective ammunition for various political justifications, then this important period of European history has much to say to us today.

A basic assumption of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations was the supremacy of military and political power of France within Europe. However, during the 1920s and 1930s France's relative position of power declined without significant adjustments in the system of collective security. During that time period, neither Britain, the United States nor the Soviet Union stepped in to support the nation-state system of Versailles or to guarantee French borders. France, for the most part, remained oblivious to these changes.

The events of 1936-1938 are also useful for examining the strengths and weaknesses of collective security. What did the League of Nations achieve? How did it react to the Ethiopian Crisis, Japanese expansion, the Spanish Civil War let alone events in central Europe? What use was the Locarno Treaty when its major signatories elected not to enforce it? In the abstract, those questions are relevant today.

The events of 1936-1938 also suggest a discussion of domestic affairs. Britain and France were much more traumatized by World War I than either country suspected in the early 1920s. With each passing year after 1918, the peoples of Western democracies began to re-examine the usefulness of war and the necessity of sacrifice. World diplomacy focused on disarmament as a solution to world security. An unarmed world would be a safe world it was believed. But what if some do not want to disarm? Few in the 1920s and 1930s confronted that question.

What about the idea of appeasement? To appease means to calm, to pacify or to buy off an aggressor through granting concessions while sacrificing principle.

In the early fall of 1938 England and France could not have militarily stopped Germany from occupying Sudeten Czechoslovakia even had they wanted to. Britain had no more influence in the affairs of central Europe than it would a year later. By going to Munich and acquiescing to Germany's limited expansion through what today we would call a summit meeting, kept Britain in the game as a major power. If Britain had ignored the Sudeten Crisis, then Britain would no longer have a seat at the table of the major players. As a consequence, Britain would have lost its position of power and prestige among its colonies and Commonwealth nations and, most importantly, it would have entered World War II as either an ally of Germany (not as unrealistic as it might seem at first blush) or America's very junior partner. Going to Munich, keeping a veneer of diplomatic propriety on events that Britain could not otherwise control, maintained Britain's position as a world power -- weak to be sure, but still on the playing field.

Today France faces a similar dilemma. France does not want the US to defeat and occupy Iraq but is too weak to prevent it. If France is to remain a major player, then France needs to find a way to create a diplomatic environment that makes it appear that France, reluctantly to be sure, allows the US to go forward. France remains weak, but at least still in the game.

Returning to the 1930s, without informing France, Chamberlain cut a deal with Hitler. It was not a good deal, but it was far better than any alternative Britain had or thought she had at that moment. Benes, of course, was stubborn and would not go along, but without British and French intervention, which was out of the question, Czechoslovakia could not defend its borders; besides, Czechoslovakia had its own ethnic limitations, so to speak: Czechs and Slovaks were not all that enthusiastic about dying for Sudeten Germans.

None of that, of course, worked. The following year Britain's bluff was called. There would be no side-deals for Poland. Chamberlain hesitated but the angry outcry in the House of Commons made it clear, as it had not been clear the previous year, that Chamberlain's government would fell unless war was declared on the principle of the pledges made to Poland. France falls the next year and the lights went out in Europe — which was just as well for the King of England was now naked.

Yet, even at the time the new-founded indignity of the Commons was hollow. After all, Poland could not be saved, there were no Germans at Hastings, the Royal Navy still owned the English Channel. Some of that could come later, but for the moment the Commons could rise to the occasion.

To describe Britain's foreign policy of the late 1930s as a policy of appeasement is inadequate. Rather, it was a foreign policy of tragic ineptitude equaled only by France. Neither nation had the military power with which to enforce their foreign policy goals and gravely lacked the diplomatic skills with which to play a weak hand. The costs of their mistakes are not to this day paid.

There are also numerous and important dissimilarities between the events of 1936-1938 in Europe and those of today concerning a likely war on Iraq.

To name just a few: in the late 1930s the League of Nations had become ineffectual on all fronts, the system of collective security through multi-national treaties was bankrupt, the world was in a deep economic depression, the United States was not an active let alone dominant military or political player in the world, the Soviet Union was following an unsteady as well as unpredictable course and most minor nation states had very little to say or do in the world of great power, imperial diplomacy. Comparisons between Adolph Hitler and Saddam Hussein are only superficial at their very best.

Today there is only one dominant political and military power in the world. Unlike the late 1930s, small and economically weak nation states can play significant although hardly positive roles on the world stage. Through the tactics of terror non-national entities can play highly dangerous and disruptive roles. Colonialism and imperialism are gone. Political ideologies have been replaced by religious fanaticism. Yet large numbers of people live in conditions of extreme poverty and political impotence with little hope that the benefits of economic globalization will ever grace their hovels. Unlike the late 1930s, demographically it is the least developed nations that are growing in population while the most developed nations are not.

With only a very cursory glance one can see that the world of today is quite unlike the world of the late 1930s. Historical parallels and analogies between the two periods are few. Those that do exist are often overlooked because they appear to be truisms. Let me suggest three. Military power does count; it counts a great deal. Secondly, as Adam Smith reminded us in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), man's moral limitations are defined by his egocentricity — and the behavior of nation-states follows accordingly. Last but not least, history is the result of many individual decisions, not all of which are consistent or predictable.

What we can learn from the late 1930s is that individuals will make decisions based on their own perceptions of power and self-interest. Whether or not those decisions will be inept or wrong will not always be immediately clear. By extension, however, we can understand what happened and what went wrong in Europe in the late 1930s; and to that extent we can discern what, if any, lessons of that period may be appropriate for consideration today. To do so, however, one must take into consideration both change and continuity.

Historical analogies are indeed powerful, both as heuristic constructs for learning and models for political polemic. Unfortunately, historical analogies do not always account for change. However, examining what is different from one historical event to another is as much if not more of an historical enterprise than formulating and applying historical analogies and metaphors. The above discussion of European foreign policy in the late 1930s is by no means intended as a definitive discussion; rather it is offered as a stimulus for further discussion on both historical continuity and historical change; that is, to what extent do the discontinuities negate the application of the Munich Analogy to contemporary events?

The Unknowable

2007-02-23T23:19:00.000-05:00

On 23 February 1991 VII Corps crowded against the Iraq border. At that time, it was the largest United States Army Corps ever deployed in the field. VII Corps included 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized), 1st Armor Division, 3rd Armor Division, 1st Cavalry Division, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, the 11th Combat Aviation Brigade, and hundreds of combat and combat support units. In round numbers, VII Corps had over 1,500 M1A/2 Abrams tanks, over 1,500 M2/M3 IFV (Bradleys), over 300 attack helicopters, over 600 artillery cannons and MLRS’, and over 147,000 soldiers.

It had taken only 108 days to move this august force from Europe and the United States to the border of Iraq and ready it for battle.

VII Corps was not alone. Left and right the entire might of the coalition forces were coiled for the attack. The United States Army XVIII Corps. The British 1st Armored Division. The French 6th Light Armored Division. The 1st United States Marine Corps Division. The 2nd United States Marine Corps Division. All poised with their allies: the Saudis, Egyptians, and Syrians

Below are extracts from my oral histories from the 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor. These are some of their remembrances of the day before the day the war began.

THE ORAL HISTORY

Major Cook: Captain Torro [Captain Vaughn E. Torro, Commander Company B, 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor], what was your unit strength on 23 February 1991?

Captain Torro: Team Bravo on 23 February consisted of two platoons of M1A1 Tanks, four tanks each, total tanks ten; one platoon of infantry, having four M2 Bradleys, 25mm chain guns on them, had a total of, well, I also had one platoon of Engineers who had one AVLB [an M60 Armored Vehicle Launch Bridge] with a MICLIC [an M58 Mine Clearing Line Charge vehicle] attached, one ACE [an M9 Armored Combat Earthmover], and one FISTV [an M981 Fire Support Team-Vehicle]. Total head count that day was 146 men.

Major Cook: Thank you. Captain Torro, what were you doing on 23 February 1991?

Captain Torro: On the afternoon of the 23rd we had moved the company up towards the berm on Phase Line Vermont. We had two tanks and four Bradleys over watching; everyone else was in a hide position. I was on the right flank of the company nearest the cut in the berm where we would deploy in the morning. The instructions to the company were to maintain 50% security and to try to relax and rest before going across the berm. We rested and watched. That night it got very dark.

Major Cook: What was the weather like that night?

Captain Torro: It was overcast. The following morning it was still dark. Drizzle and rain most of the night.

Major Cook: Lieutenant Shinaman [2LT Richard A. Shinaman, Platoon Leader, 2nd Platoon, B/2-34, cross attached from Company A, 5th Battalion, 16h Infantry], what was your platoon doing during the same period?

Lieutenant Shinaman: Sir, my platoon was over with Alpha 5-16 and we were getting the tanks ready to roll across the berm, trying to get all the load secured in places where it belonged so it wasn’t on the blow-out panels. And getting my section ready, we had security on the berm that night. We had two tanks and two Bradleys up there at night and four Bradleys in the daytime. That night we didn't really see too much. The Iraqis weren't really throwing as many illumination rounds as they had in the past. We had several batteries of MLRS [Multiple Launch Rocket System] come up behind us and fire off and they were supposed to be followed by some 8-inch howitzers firing. I forgot about the howitzers and there was about a half an hour break and they just went off and I found myself trying to get underneath the sub-turret floor really quick inside the tanks because it scared the hell out of me!

Major Cook: Lieutenant Parker [1LT Charles Neal Parker, Jr. 3rd Platoon Leader, Company B, 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor], what were you doing on the 23rd?

Lieutenant Parker: The night of the 23rd I was on the berm. My tank commanders and I talked about sixteen people going through the berm and sixteen people making it the whole way. Basically concerned ourselves about being a part of the team, as far as responsibilities of the platoon as well as the company. And in that mental preparation, the tank commanders got together on the ground because there is no one except the lieutenant and platoon sergeants to talk to about frustrations, what they feel before the unknowable.

2007-02-21T21:17:00.000-05:00

Operation Desert Storm, 1991

On 21 February 1991 I was the Commander of the 326th Military History Detachment (USAR) attached to VII Corps and assigned for operational purposes to 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized), 1st Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor configured for the operation as TASK FORCE 2-34.

The ground war would begin in three days.

My mission was to support the Department of Army’s combat oral history program (in accordance with AR 870-5; FM 101-10-2, Ch 15; DA PAM 870-5; and FONCON, 7 Dec 90, William Stacy, FORSCOM historian).

In other words I was to design and execute rigorous oral history collection projects, supplemented by photographs, documents and personal notes as possible, that would capture the individual recollections, and unit histories of supporting and engaged Army units.

Over the next several days I will share with you some of my personal and professional experiences as an Army field historian commanding a Military History Detachment during Operation DESERT STORM (ODS).

The work-a-day world of most practicing historians consists of finding and studying documents and various historical artifacts that others have collected and deposited in libraries, museums, or private collections.

Military History Detachment historians, however, collect documents, artifacts, and oral histories in real time that will be deposited in archives for others to study.

As a classically trained historian, whose graduate major was the European Middle Ages (the ninth century polyptyques to be precise), I asked myself how does one go out on the battlefield and collect “stuff”?

What historical methodology applies? What differentiates an historian collecting “stuff” on the battlefield from a journalist collecting “stuff” on the battlefield? What distinguishes things that should be saved from things that are just stories?

Projects

2006-10-22T08:35:00.000-04:00

Historians always have projects. History is such a vast and complex field that it is nearly impossible to wade in the waters for very long without finding research and writing projects to do.

Some projects develop from the desire or need to produce a particular product (a course essay, a paper, a presentation, a book report, and so on.).

Other projects may result from asking a specific question or a set of related questions in which one is interested. What was the cause of the Cold War? When did it start? When did it end? Did America really win it?

My three front-burner history projects are:

· Designing a college level American History, 1877 to the Present course in various sub-packets for semester and quarter in-class use, a distance learning package, text package, reading lists, selected documents, photos, music, art, charts and graphs and so forth. The preliminary design calls for exportability, flexibility and thematic structure.
· Second project is to continue work on the documents, primarily oral history interview tapes, that I collected in Operation Desert Storm, 1990-1991.
· And my life-long reading project that includes the development of working bibliographies, mini-reviews and publishable reviews.

I have more, of course; probably too many more. But those are the ones I am working on at the moment.

A secondary purpose of the American history course project is to give me a wonderful excuse to re-study this period and explore what are for me new source material. For example, I have relatively easy access to the papers of President Warren G. Harding and while he was not one of the great American presidents, his papers provide interesting and important archival material for student study (and the research in primary documents is enjoyable).

Unfortunately, the archives that holds the documents, The Ohio Historical Society, has, because of budgetary constraints, so severely limited access times that I am fortunate if I can get four hours a week with the documents. Budget constraints on archives and research libraries, both federal and state, are a national disgrace.

Another goal for this project is to learn how to format the product for various digital media formats. What, for example, do I need to do to make this course quickly and easily transferable to an iPod?

The second project has been on-going since 1991. I was the Commander of the 326th Military History Detachment, United States Army Reserve, assigned to VII Corps and attached to 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized) for Operation Desert Storm (ODS). I conducted several field research projects the largest of which focused on 2nd Battalion, 34th Armor, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized) for the four days of ground combat. The result was one of the largest oral history projects documented for a United States Army combat battalion in action done since World War II. I continue to transcribe the tapes and edit the transcriptions.

Lastly, the third project, I am and always have been uncontrolled reader. While the bulk of my reading is in history, I troll the fields of philosophy, science, political science, literature and more.

My many years as an Acquisitions Editor for Indiana University Press was a delight for I could read the manuscripts that we might publish as books – and then read them again when they were published!

For some books, papers and articles I take notes that I expand into mini-reviews that can if needed be further expanded into a popular or scholarly review suitable for publishing. A future post for this blog must be on note-taking.

I also use the bibliographic database software, Citation. There are several other similar bibliographic database programs available and they all have their various advantages and disadvantages. However, once you use one, you will ask how did you ever live without this aid? Besides, I love constructing bibliographies and plan to publish some of them from time to time on this blog.

“Just when you think it is all over,
It has only begun.”

-- Willie Nelson.

At the Creation

2006-10-20T00:59:00.000-04:00

The purpose of this blog is to share my historical research; to provide data, documents and research that might not be available from other sources; and to explore how the Internet can spread and exchange knowledge.

Clio is in Greek mythology the Muse of History and thus this blog's title is a play on words. There were nine sister-goddesses who sponsored the arts and sciences. Not unlike contemporary celebrities, the Greek Muses made exciting appearances, but left the work of meaningful intellectual exploration to us humans.

By extension, the English word "muse" means to ponder, to reflect, to mull, to think about old ideas in new ways.

Musing about history, however, is not a dull activity one does while dozing on a sunny beach. History is not musty arguments over the past; as the important American author William Faulkner once wrote, that past is not over yet.

By that he meant that the past or our remembrances of the past only make sense in the present.

The French historian Jean Chesneauz took that thought a step further. He wrote, "The past is a reference point that makes possible a radical critique of the present and the definition of a qualitatively different future."

That is a very complex idea. But is it true? Is it a useful guide? Is the past, the present and the future as naturally and as excitingly linked as Chesneauz suggests?

How does Clio "muse" on that question?

Clio approaches the question by using something called "historical methodology". Historical methodology is a process in which documents and facts may be evaluated. Historical methodology is not a model in which the known variables can be supplied in such a way that solves for the unknowns. If it were that simple, it would not be fun at all!

But given that limitation, historical methodology is pretty powerful and subsequent posts will explore the uses and limits of historical methodology.

A blog, however, is also a personal journal and I do not intend to exclude postings of a personal or opinionated type. We are, however minor, all historical figures. Our lives are our history; we have feelings, ideas and opinions none of which ought to be suppressed from our writing. Self-conscious is not, however, self-indulgent.

The success of this blog will depend on the extent that I can fulfill its ambitions and the extent to which commentators help.