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I've had a few inbound links from forums in the last few days, including this one. It's nice to be linked to, but in this case one of the participants, kyt, has a bit of a rant about my snobbishness:

The blogger does seem to have a certain, for want of a better word, snobbishness. He keeps saying academics this and academics that. For example, in his section on Unwritten books he writes about books that academics haven't written. The areas that he is concerned with cover ones where there are lots of books. OK, so they aren't written by university lecturers, but are these people the only ones who can validate a subject? What about the plethora of books written by enthusiasists? People who have devoted there lives on researching and writing on subjects, on top of holding down a day job? My shelves are full of books written by these sort of people, and they are excellent.

And I have read books by "accredited" academics which are dry, boring and so turgid that they fail to convey any true sense of the subject.

Well, I'd have to say I'm mostly guilty as charged -- but I don't see what's so wrong with that! The reference is to my post on books which historians have neglected to write. Yes, I did say academic historians, but then I'm an academic in training (whether or not I ever become one), so of course my orientation is going to be towards academic works.

But more than that, on the whole I do think academic histories are better than non-academic histories. If I didn't think there was some value in thinking and writing like an academic historian, presumably I wouldn't be doing a PhD in history. In general, books written by academic historians are better contextualised, less narrow in their focus than those written by non-academics. They usually better referenced -- I have a very low tolerance for books with no endnotes, or with only a half-page of further reading!

Which is not to say that I just reject histories written by non-academics out of hand -- after all, they are often interested in subjects that the academics don't seem to be, and that's a good thing. I can think of a number which I have praised on this very blog, such as Waiting for Hitler by Midge Gillies, a journalist. Another one which at least one regular here rates very highly is The Paladins by John James, a psychologist. I think The Paladins shows some of the advantages and disadvantages of an outsider's perspective. One of James' big points is that you can use the monthly Air Force Lists (which show the rank of every officer, the location of all commands, the distribution of squadrons, etc) to chart the growth of the RAF between the wars, in a way which is independent of the usual minute analysis of CID meetings and the Ten Year Rule and so on. And he criticises academic historians for neglecting this source, quite fairly. But on the way James makes some blunders of his own. So averse to any form of archival research is he that he is reduced to guessing things that he could easily find out, such as the function of various squadrons. That's the sort of mistake that an academic training in history would (should!) teach one to avoid.

I guess the upshot of all that is that for me, it's not so much a question of whether a history is actually written by an academic, but of how closely the book itself conforms to the academic model of research and writing. If that makes me a snob then so be it!

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The 19th Military History Carnival has been posted at Military History and Warfare. For my pick from this edition I can't go past the first entry, on the interwar RAF at Thoughts on Military History. It's part of the first chapter of his thesis, and it's a very good overview of the financial and operational problems faced by the RAF. I particularly like Ross's point that the perception that the RAF was all about strategic bombing was never wholly true -- it always devoted brainpower and scarce resources to problems such as army co-operation. And the perception has distorted the historiography since then. If I had to quibble, then it would be with this part:

The RAF also had to deal with the gradually changing geo-strategic situation in Europe. For example, in the mid-twenties, in a period of deteriorating relation with France, the RAF had to deal with the potential threat of what has been described as the French air menace. This, coupled with the emergence of the threat of Germany in the 1930’s led to the materialisation of a distinct home fighter force based around the concept of strategic air defence. This force starting out in 1923 as the Home Defence Air Force with a projected strength of 52 squadrons would eventually emerge as RAF Fighter Command.

There's nothing actually incorrect here, but from my own parochial perspective I'd want to stress that while it is true that HDAF did eventually lead to Fighter Command, in theory it was supposed to be composed of 2 bomber squadrons for every fighter squadron. It was to be a striking force, not primarily an air defence force: it would defend Britain by bombing the enemy. Of course, in practice it had more fighter squadrons than bombers, because they were cheaper to build, and once the supposed French threat disappeared there was no urgency to complete the whole HDAF programme until Hitler came along. But as I say, nothing in what Ross wrote actually contradicts any of that, it's just me being nit-picky :)

Bonus! Because I forgot to nominate anything for the Carnival this time around, here's one I would have nominated from The Bioscope. It's about the 1916 film The Battle of the Somme, which was recently issued on DVD by the Imperial War Museum. A hugely important film and a very illuminating post.

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... is who to nominate for the 2008 Cliopatria Awards for the best history blogging of the year. (Why, what did you think I meant?) There are six categories: best group blog, best individual blog, best new blog, best post, best series of posts, and best writer. Nominations close at the end of November and winners are announced in early January.

Nominate early and nominate often!

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No, I'm not heading for Venus, nor am I travelling back in time in the USS Nimitz. But it is the final countdown nonetheless. I'm in the last few months of my PhD, and plan to submit it in late February 2009, just under four months away. I'm on track for that, I think -- I'm halfway through the last chapter now, and then there's just the conclusion to go, and then the process of serious redrafting begins. As far as word limit goes, the thesis as a whole is currently just under 80,000 words, which is just about perfect -- according to the PhD handbook, I should 'aim to write a thesis of 80,000 words', but can write 'up to 100,000 words without seeking special permission'. So it should end up comfortably within that range (though that may depend on how much of my grotesquely excessive verbiage I cut from the earlier chapters!)

Between that and the fact that I'm a little burned out after the interminable Sudeten crisis, I probably won't be blogging as often as usual for the next little while. But I won't be going on hiatus, so please check back every so often!

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XVIII Military History Carnival is up at Chronologi Cogitationes. This month I'm picking a post from a new blog, Wacht Am Tyne, on the centenary of the first flight (powered, controlled, heavier-than-air) in Britain, which was achieved by Samuel Franklin Cody on 16 October 1908. (I had a photo of British Army Aeroplane No. 1a in an earlier post.) Three reasons: firstly, because I was going to write about this myself but completely forgot; secondly, because it's an interesting post even though (or because) it's not at all the one I would have written; thirdly because, according to the blog's About page, it's intended for:

anyone who enjoys reading about military history, has ever gone to the IWM on their own, or has ever re-enacted the Battle of Waterloo using condiment packets and empty glasses at their local

Check (obviously), check, and check ... well, actually I can't remember doing Waterloo -- Cannae was always my favourite, and more recently Trafalgar, but I think that's close enough for me to be in the target demographic!

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So the Sudeten crisis experiment has ended. How useful has it been?

I think it's been a very different view of the crisis. It's small-scale, not big-picture; confused, not lucid; bottom-up, not top-down (well, sorta: it could be more bottom-up). Most accounts that I've read are from the diplomatic-political-military point of view: Chamberlain's decision to fly to Berchtesgaden, Churchill's denunciations of the Munich agreement, the lack of readiness of the RAF to defend London. Some of these things are not apparent from the day-to-day press accounts, while others are, but take on a different complexion. For example, Plan Z -- Chamberlain's flight -- was not the sudden, impulsive act that it appeared to be from the press accounts which appeared on 15 September. He had in fact conceived of the idea days earlier -- he announced it to Cabinet on 12 September, and had discussed the idea with Halifax even earlier. Churchill does appear in the press record from time to time, but his voice was only one among many, even among appeasement's critics, and not the loudest. His years in the wilderness seem much more significant in retrospect: 1938 was not 1940. And the RAF is practically nowhere to be seen. Nobody's questioning whether it's ready for war or not, whether it can defend London or bomb Berlin -- with very few exceptions, it's just ignored, as being of no account.

The things which stand out for me are fourfold, corresponding to the evolution of the crisis itself. Firstly, there are the events on the ground in Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland itself. The accounts publish in the British press likely were not fully accurate -- rarely were British correspondents there in person, and some reports came from the Nazi-influenced German press, which definitely can't be taken at face value. But it's clear that there was real tension and some violence between Sudetens and Czechs, and this seems to have convinced people that there was a real problem that wasn't going to go away.
...continue reading →

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This month is when I should be doing another of my state of the military historioblogosphere posts, but obviously I'm not. Mostly this is because I don't have time to gather the data, due to all the Sudeten post-blogging I've been doing lately. But also, once more there's only been a relatively modest growth in the number of military history blogs listed at Cliopatria, so my sense is that there wouldn't be much change to talk about anyway. I may or may not revive these posts in the future.

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The 17th Military History Blog Carnival has been posted at Military History and Warfare. (It was posted nearly a week ago, but I've been busy ...) The most interesting post for me this week is on the Maginot Line, by the carnival host. He points out that, though much-maligned, the Maginot Line did its job: the Germans generally avoided a frontal assault in 1940. Even at the time of the Armistice, most of the Line still held out. Of course, that raises the question of what would have happened if the Line had been fully extended to protect the border with Belgium? Would the Germans have tried to penetrate it? Or would the Sitzkrieg have lasted for years instead of months? Even if successful, a German Army exhausted from battering its way through would not have been able to even think about invading Britain in 1940, and maybe the USSR would be off for the following year, also. Which could, paradoxically, have been very bad for Britain ... Rommel might have gotten more resources and so goodbye Egypt and Suez. Or maybe Sealion would happen in 1941. Ah, the pleasures of counterfactual history and just making stuff up!

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Tomorrow I'm starting a bit of an experiment, an idea I had after doing a post on Human Smoke a few months back. We're coming up on the 70th anniversary of the Sudeten crisis, which, as I noted recently, was a crisis long before Munich had anything to do with it. Long before. The Munich Conference was on 29 September 1938, but the Sudeten issue was already prominent in British newspapers a full month earlier, and didn't start to fade until early October.

So, what I thought I'd do is put up a post every day showing how the crisis was unfolding in the press on the same date 70 years ago. Hopefully this will convey something of the steady rise -- and sharp decline -- of tension: from concern, to anxiety, to fear, to intense relief. I'll start with 29 August 1938 and go through to 8 October (six days out of every seven, at least -- I haven't looked at any Sunday papers), and will draw on The Times, the Manchester Guardian and the Daily Mail, as well as a couple of weeklies, the Spectator and the New Statesman. (George Orwell started keeping his diary in early August 1938, so I'll be keeping an eye out for his thoughts on the crisis too.) I'm not exactly sure how I'll write the posts, but they won't be very dense, at least at first: maybe just the headlines, to show what a not-particularly interested reader might pick up just by flicking the pages. We'll see how it evolves.

This means that my more usual fare will be thin on the ground for the next 5 or 6 weeks, so apologies to those wanting more aeroplanes and bombs!