Teaching World Military History: Some Reflections

Like many military historians, I was trained in graduate school via the “western” military history model, with a heavy dash of American history. That’s what I TA’d and taught at Duke, and also for my six years as an assistant professor at the University of Louisville. While I was there, however, Mark Grimsley at The Ohio State University hosted a weekend conference on “Teaching World Military History,” partly in recognition of the then newly released Christon I. Archer, John R. Ferris, Holger H. Herwig, and Timothy H. E. Travers, World History of Warfare (Nebraska, 2002). I eagerly drove up to Columbus (I think I stayed in a campground that weekend) to learn more. I was looking for a way to get beyond the western narrative: Ancient Near East (optional), Greece, Rome, Medieval, Military Revolution, Warring States Europe, Industrialization, World Wars, and Other Western Wars.