Where does theory go in military history?

This article presents a critique of Whiggish approaches to military history. It begins with this quotation from Dennis Showalter – ‘military history is arguably the last stronghold of what historiographers call the “Whig interpretation”’ – and notes that Showalter’s assessment was a reflection on both the general absence of theory and the linked poverty of the fallback theoretical basket of the subject, with such staples as War and Society, Face of Battle, and Military Revolutions. Recognizing the shortcomings of numerous approaches to military history, the author identifies the challenge – writing military history that incorporates multiple regions and takes a global approach. As the author concludes, the problem for the historian remains how best to address the complex interactions of, in particular, change and continuity, structure and conjuncture, the West and the wider world, and to do so to produce an account that is able to identify and probe crucial issues and key questions.

Introduction

The introduction to The Oxford Handbook of the American Civil War provides an overview of historical scholarship regarding the effect of military campaigns on nonmilitary resources and people. Using war and society methods, it explores the consequences of military campaigns in the political, social, and environmental spheres. Topics covered in the introduction include movement, deportation, and depopulation among civilians; refugees; military action and emancipation; insurrection; guerrilla warfare; resistance to Federal authority on the Great Plains and in the Southwest; gender; African Americans, Hispanos, and Native Americans; locations of localized total war; military conscription in the Confederacy; cities, rural areas, and the natural environment; the synergy between war and politics; religion; spatial, and temporal analysis of military campaigns; logistics; the soldier experience; and medical care.

supply of the Neapolitan army between the 18th and 19th centuries. Giacinto Cafiero asientive active de viveri e foraggi

This article, following the scholarship on war and society studies, “[…] aims to reconstruct the rise of Don Giacinto Cafiero, experienced merchant, and one of the most important asientist active in the Kingdom of Naples between the 1799 Revolution and the French decade (1806-1815). In detail, the article tries to clarify the tricky role of Cafiero, his commercial activity, his profits and his logistical network during the years of the “Partito Generale de Viveri e foraggi” (1800-1804). Therefore, we shall reconstruct the most important aspects of this task such as bread-making or the supplying of garrisons, fortresses and prisons. Furthermore, the description will also deal with some collateral questions including piracy issues, port administration and charter contracts.

Extraordinary curtailment of massive typhus epidemic in the Warsaw Ghetto

The highly dependent interplay of disease, famine, war, and society is examined based on an extreme period during World War II. Using mathematical modeling, we reassess events during the Holocaust that led to the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto (1941–1942), with the eventual goal of deliberately killing ~450,000, mostly Jewish residents, many through widespread starvation and a large-scale typhus epidemic. The Nazis justified genocide supposedly to control the spread of disease. This exemplifies humanity’s ability to turn upon itself, based on racially guided epidemiological principles, merely because of the appearance of a bacterium. Deadly disease and starvation dynamics are explored using modeling and the maths of food ration cards. Strangely, the epidemic was curtailed and was brought to a sudden halt before winter, when typhus normally accelerates. A far more massive epidemic outbreak was prevented through the antiepidemic efforts by the often considered incompetent and corrupt ghetto leadership and the Herculean efforts of ghetto doctors.