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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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One of the things I love about the official history of the RFC and RAF in the First World War is all the maps -- multi-panel fold-out jobs showing where bombs fell in London during the Gotha raids, or the Allied front in Macedonia. That's not to mention the accompanying slip-cases stuffed full of more maps of the paths taken by Zeppelin raiders and the like. I could pore over these for hours ...

Here are a couple of the maps (or parts thereof) showing two different kinds of barrages associated with the air defence of Britain.

Aeroplane barrage line. December, 1916.

The first one is entitled 'Aeroplane barrage line. December, 1916.' It's too big to show effectively, so I've just reproduced a portion showing the coast of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. The red squares show home defence squadron HQs: 33 Squadron at Gainsborough and 76 Squadron at Ripon. The red triangles are flight stations, the red stars flight stations with searchlights, the blue circles are searchlight stations under squadron control ('aeroplane lights') and the black circles are warning control centres (Hull).

As I've discussed before, artillery barrages weren't the only kinds of barrages. Originally they seem to have just been barriers or walls of some kind (barrage originally referred to a dam). Here the barrage is composed of aeroplanes and searchlights, a wall erected to hopefully bar Zeppelins coming in over the North Sea from reaching the industrial cities behind the line. And it does look like a barrier: on the full map it stretches from Suttons Farm (later renamed Hornchurch) near London all the way up to Innerwick, east of Edinburgh (with extensions in Norfolk and Kent). But it's not a physical barrage, for the most part -- it's aerodromes and searchlights. Previously, home defence squadrons had been placed close to target areas, because of doubts about night navigation and interception. Experience had shown that these problems weren't as great as previously thought:

Now that it was clear the aeroplane patrols could be extended, it was suggested that the Flights situated near Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds should be moved farther east as a step towards the ultimate establishment of a barrage-line of aeroplanes and searchlights parallel with the east coast of England.1

This system worked very well against Zeppelins (as one indication, note the steep drop in casualties due to airship raids from 1917 on). But not so well against Gothas.
...continue reading

  1. H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, volume 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931), 166. The map faces 170. []

David Faber. Munich: The 1938 Appeasement Crisis. London: Simon & Schuster, 2008. A much-needed narrative history, though I'm sure it won't quite satisfy me! Mostly political and diplomatic, and mostly from the British point of view. Also some of the street-level stuff -- calls ARP Sunday gas mask Sunday.

Matthew J. Flynn. First Strike: Preemptive War in Modern History. New York and London: Routledge, 2008. From 1805 to 2003. Only looks at actual instances of preemptive war, so no knock-out blow or nuclear strategy.

Earlier this year, I mentioned that I had joined the editorial collective of Melbourne Historical Journal. Well, against all odds (or so it seemed at times!) we produced what I think is a pretty good issue. Lynette Russell graciously launched it this evening at the Re-orienting Whiteness conference, and it's now available for purchase. (Or if you can somehow restrain yourself for the moment, and you have access, it will be available on Expanded Academic ASAP in due course.)

Here's the table of contents:

Features: The Historical Significance of the Apology to the Stolen Generations

Duplicity and Deceit: Gary Foley’s Take on Rudd’s Apology to the Stolen Generations

Apologising for Stolen Time
By Chris Healy

The Apology & the Man at the Funeral
By Robert Kenny

Articles

New Perspectives on the Past: YouTube, Web 2.0 and Public History
By Megan Sheehy

'Lest We Forget': Creating an Australian National Identity from Memories of War
By Clemence Due

Babeuf and the Gracchi: A Comparison of Means and Ends
By Peter Russell

There's also a range of book (and exhibition) reviews, including one by me, of Britain Can Take It: British Cinema in the Second World War, by Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007) and The Battle of Britain on Screen: 'The Few' in British Film and Television Drama, by S. P. MacKenzie (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007). Don't buy it on that account, though -- in fact I can sum up my conclusions as follows: they're both excellent, though Britain Can Take It probably isn't worthwhile if you've got the previous edition.

Editing the journal was a great experience, and I think helped me with my own writing. Good luck to next year's collective!

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The Dawn Patrol

This post will only be of interest to Melbourne readers. Melbourne Cinémathèque is holding a season of 1930s Howard Hawks films this month, including three of his aviation classics: Only Angels Have Wings, Ceiling Zero (both on Wednesday, 3 December) and The Dawn Patrol (Wednesday, 17 December). They're showing at ACMI. I don't think I've seen any of them so I'll probably be there! Thanks to Cathy for the tip.

Image source: Wikipedia.

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I've just noticed this odd condition for the use of the Imperial War Museum's collections website:

Links to our website may only be included in other websites with our prior written permission.

Source: http, followed by a colon, then two forward slashes, then www, a dot, iwmcollections, another dot, org, a third dot, uk, another forward slash, and then terms, one last dot, and finally php.

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I received a letter from the university today, containing a form which is ominously entitled 'Completion Report for PhD Candidates'. I guess they are expecting to receive a thesis from me in the not too distant future!

One of the things I have to finalise is the title of the thesis. According to the form, it's currently called 'The Impact of Airpower on the British People, 1908-1939'. That's the bland title I picked more than 4 years ago, when I only had the vaguest idea of what I wanted to do, and it's clearly influenced by -- or lifted from -- Alfred Gollin's classic The Impact of Airpower on the British People and their Government, 1909-14. I've had a better one -- or at least, more accurate one -- picked out for a while, but wasn't sure if it's what I'm going to go with. But I'm out of time, and haven't had any bright ideas, so I'm probably stuck with it now!

To my mind, a good title should be descriptive -- it should give some idea of what it's actually about. If it's intriguing and memorable, that's a bonus. With that in mind, here's my provisional title:

The Next War in the Air: Britain and the Bomber, 1908-1941

So straightaway, this tells you the period and geographical focus -- it's early twentieth century Britain. The words 'war', 'air' and 'bomber' show that it's about aerial warfare, specifically bombing. But the first clause as whole, 'the next war in the air', hopefully suggests that it's about anticipations of bombing more than the actual thing.

I think that's all fine. But I'm not sure about the next clause, 'Britain and the bomber'. Yes, the thesis can be described as a study of the relationship between Britain and the bomber. I also chose it because I like alittle alliteration, and because it's the title of an article I cite (as is 'the next war in the air'). And it's a nod to England and the Aeroplane, too. But is it promising too much? As a study of 'Britain and the bomber' it's missing many things, such as (for example) nearly everything the RAF did or said on the subject. Or the Air Ministry or the rest of the government. That's not a problem for the thesis (I hope!) because my subject is about popular, civilian, unofficial ideas about and responses to the threat of bombing, and there's plenty of excellent histories of British air policy and RAF doctrine already out there. But maybe it's a problem for the thesis title -- it doesn't get across the idea that I'm writing about the public sphere. I could tweak it a little, and say 'British society' instead of 'Britain', or something like that. I'm a sucker for a nice turn of phrase, though, and that would spoil the things I like about it ...

The other thing to remember is that nobody will read the damn thing anyway, so it doesn't really matter too much what I call it :)