FORUM: The Military in World History

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.

Douglas E. Streusand is Professor of International Relations at the Marine Corps Command & Staff College in Quantico, Virginia & Adjunct Professor at the Institute of World Politics, Washington, D.C. He has written The Formation of Mughal Empire & The Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals, & multiple chapters, article & reviews. He received his Ph.D. in Islamic history from the University of Chicago.

http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/12.1/forum_streusand_introduction.html

	Introduction to the Forum on the Military in World History
	Guest Editor: Douglas Streusand
	Command of the Coast: The Mughal Navy and Regional Strategy
	by Andrew De La Garza
	The Falsest of Truisms: Who Writes History
	by Richard L. DiNardo
	The Transformational War: A New Understanding of the Ottoman Empire's Long World War I
	by James N. Tallon
	The Chinggis Exchange: the Mongol Empire and Global Impact on Warfare
	by Timothy May
	Currents of Transatlantic Warfare: The European Revolutions and Martial Culture in Mexico, 1848-1867
	by E. Mark Moreno
	Articles
	Beyond the Scramble: African Veterans, the Second World War and Decolonization in the World History Classroom
	by Sharika Crawford
	Ethnography meets History: The Personal Interview as a "Doing World History" Pedagogy, with Four Model Student Papers
	by Howard Spodek
	The Military and War in World History: A Digital Resource, Part I to 1450
	by John Maunu