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This issue of World History Connected is part of a
continuing, informal, effort to bring more military history into world history
and more world history into military history. That project began
with the World History Association sponsored panel, "Topics in World Military
History" at the April 2014 Society of Military History in Kansas City, Missouri
and will continue with future panels at WHA and SMH meetings.
The essays in this issue lack thematic unity beyond the
general topic of military history but each of them offers a useful point of entry
for classroom use. Andrew De La Garza's essay on the Mughal navy
reveals that even non-Western historians writing about their own cultures propagate
inaccurate stereotypes and demonstrates the need to include naval and maritime
dimensions even of such quintessential land powers as the Mughal
Empire. Mark Moreno's contribution encourages treatment of the
liberal wars in the Americas and Europe in a single curriculum
unit. Timothy May, the leading Mongol military historian, presents
the concept of the Mongol era of globalization, which could readily form the
basis of a curriculum unit, and discusses the diffusion of military techniques
within it. James Tallon's essay on the wars of the last decade of
Ottoman history offers an interesting take on the problem of extending
periodization and nomenclature across regional and cultural lines.
European history presents the struggle between the Ottomans and the Italians in
Libya, the Balkan Wars, the First World War, and the wars associated with the
formation of the Republic of Turkey as a series of discrete
conflicts. From an Ottoman or Turkish perspective, they formed a
single continuous conflict. Richard DiNardo's essay explains the
circumstances that have led losers, not winners, to dominate the historiography
of the Peloponnesian War, the American Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, and
World War II in Europe, and the consequences for the mainstream historiography
of those conflicts. His discussion could form the basis of a
classroom lesson on the circumstances that lead to the development of
historiographical traditions.
I hope that this issue will stimulate discussion of the ways
that the military history can enrich world history instruction.
Douglas E. Streusand is Professor of International Relations
at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia and Adjunct
Professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. He has
written two books, The Formation of Mughal Empire and The Islamic
Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals, and multiple
chapters, article and reviews. He received his Ph.D. in Islamic history
from the University of Chicago. |
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Notes
1 For
an important new statement, see Globalising
Migration History: The Eurasian Experience (16th-21st Centuries), Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2014). |
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