War and Man's Past

Military historians notoriously suffer from an identity anxiety. So, too, it is said, do economic, social and cultural historians, suspecting that general historians tacitly and patronisingly regard them as partial and peripheral practitioners of the craft. Military historians conceal the affliction in a more acute form, however, since they know that war is not a 'nice' subject, like culture, nor a rigorous or 'significant' system of study, which is what economic and social historians claim for their work. War, they are made to feel, is an aberrant activity, which distorts and disrupts the proper rhythms of man's life and would not happen in a world run by people with the right training – say in general history, or even in its cultural, economic and social dependencies.