Grand Narratives and Gendered Wars and Societies

Abstract

The study of twentieth century US military history has changed dramatically in the last forty years, in no small measure due to the increasing number of historians who approach the field through a focus on war and society and gender history. Once considered ‘ new ’ , these fields are now older than many practising historians and have become common specialisations among them. Whether or not the study of wars, societies, and gender have dismantled any perceived standard narrative of military history, however, might depend on whom you ask. This essay examines how the intertwined fields of war and society and gender history have challenged conventional military history narratives at the individual, institutional, and structural levels. While drawing primarily on recent works about the twentieth century United States, many of the topics, methods, and questions of these approaches also characterise the history of other time periods and other regions of the world. 1 Historians of wars and societies and of gender argue that it is impossible to separate the experiences and institutions of military and wartime service, or even the framing and conduct of war itself, from the societies that mobilise and deploy armed forces. Military histories, they insist, are also histories of gender, of race, class, religion, sex, and region. Nothing about militaries or wars is univer-sal or natural; no decision is made free of social and cultural context. These historians understand the relationship between societies, militaries, and conflict as determinative, inseparable, and mutually constructive. In the context of the United States in particular, they see military and wartime needs as fundamental to all foreign and domestic policies. War and society and gender history, as dedicated historical fields, emerged from the same historiographical developments and are in many ways inseparable. Both