From H-War Discussion Network, January 17, 2007 (hat tip to Janet G. Valentine for the heads up):
Last fall, the list discussed the state of the profession in light of a National Review article bemoaning the decline of military history. My concern at the time was that our evidence for this decline was entirely anecdotal.
The American Historical Association has actually produced some data. Using its guide to history departments, which lists faculty by specialization, the Association has tracked changes in the geographic and thematic interests of historians from 1975 to 2005. For those not familiar with the guide, faculty may choose three geographic and thematic areas of interest / specialization. I, for example, am listed as “Russia/ USSR, military, South Asia.”
In the online tables, more detailed than the information on offer in the January 2007 issue of Perspectives, we do not find a clear decline in military history. The table can be referenced [here]:
In 1975, 2.4% of the 4,367 faculty (hence, just over 100) identified as military historians. 29.9% of departments had a military historian on the faculty. Percentages fluctuated over the next 30 years, but by 2005 had fallen to 1.9% of 15,487 faculty. While a relative decline, that implies an absolute increase in the number of military historians to nearly 300. The proportion of departments with a military historian on staff increased to 35.2%.
This marks military history as distinct from economic and diplomatic history, both of which have suffered much more pronounced relative decline, though even those have grown in absolute terms.
Best,
Dave Stone
Kansas State University
Yesterday another list member offered this caveat:
I am willing to accept Dave Stone’s basic premise that there has not been a true decline in the number of military historians, but without examining his figures in detail, I wonder whether government positions may not have distorted the results.
1974 was a trough year for military history in the U.S. Army, with military history being generally neglected. Only the U.S.M.A. plus one service school (U.S. Army Armor School) keeping the subject in the curriculum.
Since then, history has fluctuated up and down, but overall there are still more Army historians today than there were in 1974. I say this because the basis of Dave’s data, the AHA guide to history departments, includes a number of government organizations including my own Department of Military History at the Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth. Does the figure of 300 include the 25 military historians in my department, plus about a dozen elsewhere in this college? That alone could throw the results off!
Jonathan House
7 Comments
I just posted to H-War a follow-up to Jonathan House’s question. For those who aren’t on that list, the study’s author Robert Townsend told me that only US college / university faculty were included, not governmental or non-academic organizations.
The other question I have is how accurate the directory is. Is the information based on actual members of the AHA. I am no longer a member of the AHA, and I was only a member of the org. when I was on the market. From my own anecdotal experience, the AHA’s claim that it represents the profession ex cathedra is in decline due to the rise of specialist orgs like SHAFR, SHA, and SHEAR, to name the ones I know of amongst Americanists. As far as I could tell when I was a graduate student, there certainly was no special cachet to presenting a a paper at the AHA, which is fundamentally seen as a job fair more than anything else.
WWSH
BTW, I would like to say that my lack of membership in the AHA is due in part to some profound question of principle, but I think the real reason is that I’m too cheap to pay the annual membership fee.
WWSH
It’s a guide to departments, not simply a membership directory, and so its list is reasonably comprehensive, and not limited to AHA members only.
So is the data on specialization based off of surveys of individual faculty in each department? I think I may have actually filled out a form of some kind, but I wonder if all faculty bother to fill these sorts of things out–the appeal of the directory is that it bases itself on how historians identify themselves. But if there are faculty who don’t bother to fill the form out (and anyone with any experience in academic admin knows that this is very possible), then the sample can get skewed.
WWSH
I doubt its important, but I checked a recent edition of the directory, and my specialties are listed as “American Civil War” and “Western Civilization.” This is what I teach, but it is not what I consider myself–19th Century American Military History/U.S. Civil War. This, of course, is not the fault of the AHA, since I choose to not be a member, but I wonder how many other non-member faculty members also get the specializations slightly off.
WWSH
Speaking of the AHA, military history, and jobs….there sure were not that many military history jobs in the academy this year as far as the AHA job process. A few at West Point, one at Alabama. The “biggies” at Wisc. amd Ohio St. could be included, don’t really count for those new folks on the market.