Andrew Preston
Cambridge University
Andrew Preston is a Professor of American history and fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge. He served as president of the Society for the History of Foreign Relations in 2020-21. His publications include Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy, which won the 2013 Charles Taylor Prize, and The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam and Nixon in the World: U.S. Foreign Relations, 1969–1977. He is currently working on a book on the idea of “national security” in American history and co-editing (with Lien-Hang Nguyen) Vol. 2 of the forthcoming 3-volume Cambridge History of the Vietnam War. With Beth Bailey, he co-edits a book series with Cambridge University Press, "Military, War, and Society in Modern American History." Preston was educated at the University of Toronto, the London School of Economics, and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University.
graduate Syllabus
War and Society in Modern American History
What is military history today? Is it traditional “drum-and-bugle” or “operational” history, which examines how wars are fought and won on the battlefield? Or is it what’s called the “new military history” (though it’s not so new anymore), often also known as the study of “war and society,” the more appropriate focus? Despite its title, this course doesn’t take a side in this debate, but is instead premised on the notion that both approaches are equally valid but not always equally relevant; and upon the notion that students of American history don’t always give proper attention to the important influence of military affairs on other aspects of U.S. history (women’s suffrage? civil rights? immigration? suburbanization? Yes to all of the above). In studying the broader course of the history of the modern United States, and how it has been significantly shaped by the military and warfare, this MPhil option aims to give students a better awareness of the capaciousness of military history and, with it, a better understanding of some of the most exciting trends in American historiography.