Military History

Military history is a humanities discipline within the scope of general historical recording of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, their cultures, economies and changing intra and international relationships. A conflict may range from a melee between two tribal groups to conflicts between national militaries, and a world war of coalitions affecting the majority of the global human population. Military historians record and analyse the events of military history, the product of which forms an important part of how societies and their leaders formulate future plans and policies for societal development.[1]

While human conflict has been a constant factor in the process of human social evolution over thousands of years, its historical recording only spans six millennia. There is much disagreement about when it began.[2] Some believe it has always been with us, derived from conflicts with other species; others stress the lack of clear evidence for it in our prehistoric past, and the fact that many peaceful, non-aggressive societies have, and still do exist (See Otterbein, Fry and Kelly in bibliography below). In War Before Civilization, Lawrence H. Keeley,[3] says that approximately 90-95% of known societies engaged in at least occasional warfare, and many fought constantly.[4]


















The essential subjects of military history study are the decision making processes of the belligerents, the society's willingness and ability to economically support war, the methods, strategic, operational and tactical used by the armed forces to achieve goals, and how these changed through the past 5,000 years of recorded history.

Through the study of history, the military command seeks to not repeat past mistakes, and improve upon its current performance by instilling an ability in commanders to perceive historical parallels during a battle, so as to capitalize on the lessons learned from the past. The main areas military history includes past conflicts, their sustainment, military command, application of doctrine known as military art art and science, and the application of technology in specific military services.

The discipline of military history is dynamic, changing with development as much of the subject area as the societies and organisations that make use of it.[5] The dynamic nature of the discipline of military history is largely related to the rapidity of change the military forces, and the art and science of managing them, as well as the frenetic pace of technological development that had taken place during the period known as the Industrial Revolution, and more recently in the nuclear and information ages. How the change is studied, has as much to do with methods used by military historians, as the influence on these methods which are often biased towards being primarily European and technological,[6] revolutionising how warfare is understood when compared to the previous history. This process has necessitated a periodisation of history to highlight the short spans of dramatic change between increasingly shorter periods of relative stability in development of military forces.