Results by title

148 books match the query 'History, Military' and 5 start with r

cover of Race and Radicalism in the Union Army

Race and Radicalism in the Union Army

Mark A. Lause

University of Illinois Press, 2013

In this compelling portrait of interracial activism, Mark A. Lause documents the efforts of radical followers of John Brown to construct a triracial portion of the Federal Army of the Frontier. Mobilized and inspired by the idea of a Union that would benefit all, black, Indian, and white soldiers fought side by side, achieving remarkable successes in the field. Against a backdrop of idealism, racism, greed, and the agonies and deprivations of combat, Lause examines links between radicalism and reform, on the one hand, and racialized interactions among blacks, Indians, and whites, on the other.

Lause examines how this multiracial vision of American society developed on the Western frontier. Focusing on the men and women who supported Brown in territorial Kansas, Lause examines the impact of abolitionist sentiment on relations with Indians and the crucial role of nonwhites in the conflict. Through this experience, Indians, blacks, and whites began to see their destinies as interdependent, and Lause discusses the radicalizing impact of this triracial Unionism upon the military course of the war in the upper Trans-Mississippi.

The aftermath of the Civil War destroyed much of the memory of the war in the West, particularly in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). The opportunity for an interracial society was quashed by the government's willingness to redefine the lucrative field of Indian exploitation for military and civilian officials and contractors.

Assessing the social interrelations, ramifications, and military impact of nonwhites in the Union forces, Race and Radicalism in the Union Army explores the extent of interracial thought and activity among Americans in this period and greatly expands the historical narrative on the Civil War in the West.

[more]
cover of Reminiscences of Conrad S. Babcock: The Old U.S. Army and the New, 1898-1918

Reminiscences of Conrad S. Babcock

The Old U.S. Army and the New, 1898-1918

Edited by Robert H. Ferrell

University of Missouri Press, 2012

The son of an army officer, Conrad S. Babcock graduated from West Point in 1898, just in time for the opening of the Spanish-American War. Because of his father’s position, he managed to secure a place in the force that Major General Wesley Merritt led to Manila to secure the city. The Philippine Insurrection, as Americans described it, began shortly after he arrived. What Babcock observed in subsequent months and years, and details in his memoir, was the remarkable transition the U.S. Army was undergoing. From after the Civil War until just before the Spanish War, the army amounted to 28,000 men. It increased to 125,000, tiny compared with those of the great European nations of France and Germany, but the great change in the army came after its arrival in France in the summer of 1918, when the German army compelled the U.S. to change its nineteenth-century tactics.

Babcock’s original manuscript has been shortened by Robert H. Ferrell into eight chapters which illustrate the tremendous shift in warfare in the years surrounding the turn of the century. The first part of the book describes small actions against Filipinos and such assignments as taking a cavalry troop into the fire-destroyed city of San Francisco in 1906 or duty in the vicinity of Yuma in Arizona when border troubles were heating up with brigands and regular troops. The remaining chapters, beginning in 1918, set out the battles of Soissons (July 18–22) and Saint-Mihiel (September 12–16) and especially the immense battle of the Meuse-Argonne (September 26–November 11), the largest (1.2 million troops involved) and deadliest (26,000 men killed) battle in all of American history.

By the end of his career, Babcock was an adroit battle commander and an astute observer of military operations. Unlike most other officers around him, he showed an ability and willingness to adapt infantry tactics in the face of recently developed technology and weaponry such as the machine gun. When he retired in 1937 and began to write his memoirs, another world war had begun, giving additional context to his observations about the army and combat over the preceding forty years.

Until now, Babcock’s account has only been available in the archives of the Hoover Institution, but with the help of Ferrell's crisp, expert editing, this record of army culture in the first decades of the twentieth century can now reach a new generation of scholars.
[more]
cover of Respectability and Violence: Military Values, Masculine Honor, and Italy’s Road to Mass Death

Respectability and Violence

Military Values, Masculine Honor, and Italy’s Road to Mass Death

Lorenzo Benadusi

University of Wisconsin Press, 2021

In the aftermath of national unification in the 1860s, the Italian army was tasked with molding generations of men from warring regions and different social strata into obedient citizens of a centralized state. Integrating large numbers of the educated middle classes into the young kingdom’s armed forces proved decisive in establishing the army as the “main school” and backbone for mass nationalization. Lorenzo Benadusi examines the intersection of Italian military and civil society over the last century as they coalesced in the figure of the gentleman-officer—an idealized image of an altruistic, charming, and competent ruling class that could influence the choices, values, and behavior of the “new Italians.”

Respectability and Violence traces the relationship between civic virtues and military values from the post-Risorgimento period through the end of World War I, when the trauma of trench warfare made it necessary to again redefine ideas of chivalry and manliness and to accept violence as a necessary tool in defense of society and state. The language of conflict and attitudes about war forged in these decades—characterized by patriotism, heroism, and sacrifice—shaped the cultured bourgeoise into loyalists who ushered in Italy’s transition to a powerful Fascist political system. This unique study of the officer is crucial for understanding the military, social, and political history of Italy.

[more]
cover of Riding for the Lone Star: Frontier Cavalry and the Texas Way of War, 1822-1865

Riding for the Lone Star

Frontier Cavalry and the Texas Way of War, 1822-1865

Nathan A. Jennings

University of North Texas Press, 2016

[more]
cover of Roman Siege Warfare

Roman Siege Warfare

Josh Levithan

University of Michigan Press, 2013

Roman siege warfare had its own structure and customs, and expectations both by the besieged and by the attacking army. Sieges are typically sorted by the techniques and technologies that attackers used, but the more fruitful approach offered in Roman Siege Warfare examines the way a siege follows or diverges from typical narrative and operational plotlines. Author Josh Levithan emphasizes the human elements—morale and motivation—rather than the engineering, and he recaptures the sense of a siege as an event in progress that offers numerous attitudes, methods, and outcomes. Sieges involved a concentration of violent effort in space and the practical challenge posed by a high wall: unlike field battles they were sharply defined in time, in space, and in operational terms.

Chapters examine motivation and behavior during a siege and focus on examples from both the Roman Republic and the Empire: Polybius, Livy, Julius Caesar, Flavius Josephus, and Ammianus Marcellinus. Levithan examines the “gadgetary turn,” during which writers began to lavish attention on artillery and wall-damaging techniques, fetishizing technology and obscuring the centrality of the assault and of human behavior.

This volume speaks to classicists and historians of all stripes. All passages are translated, and references are accessible to nonspecialists. Military historians will also find much of interest in the volume, in its treatment both of Roman military conduct and of wider military practice.

[more]