Whispering Thoughts No 47 Military History Part II: The Philosophy

25 April 2024                                                                                          

The study of military history is encompassed in a broad philosophical and methodological perspective. However, its philosophical underpinnings produce several questions that must be answered to have a clear understanding of the depth of the subject. What is the philosophy of military history? What are the basic assumptions that military historians make in studying war and warfare? Have these assumptions been critically examined? How is the past being explained within the philosophical ambit? The explanation of its philosophy is broadly based on the Theory of Causation.

The Theory of Causation states that whatever happens (action) and whatever is (being) must have a cause, from which the ‘happening’ or ‘being’ flow as the effect. Ancient philosophers have posited that in Nature there is nothing that does not have a cause for its being or for any happening. Causation is when something influences another thing, which could either be a process or an event, leading to some change or production of something, which is the effect, and the ‘thing’ that influences another is the cause. Philosophers from antiquity agree that everything in Nature has a cause; causality implies change; and change is the transformation of something into another thing.

Ancient military historians have mostly studied victories, the deeds of successful and heroic military leaders who were normally kings and autocratic generals, most often from a victor’s perspective. These victories influenced the broader flow of history and therefore were important events to be studied. The military history narrative served a dual purpose.

As a corollary, military history also studies ‘decisive battles’. Decisive battles are subtly different to battlefield victories, they are battles that caused the alteration of the course of history. In analysing such battles, the spectrum of causation goes on the one end, to the influence of great military leadership in shaping the outcome, to the other end where leadership played no role at all in influencing the course of battle. If great leadership is accepted as having been influential to the outcome of the battle, then its impact must be studied in detail. It would also mean that the great leader—a military general—in question was the cause of changing the outcome of the battle, which was the effect.

Since leadership often plays a decisive role in determining the course of battle, it becomes necessary to explain the greatness of leaders. Distinction in leadership does not have a universal definition—it ranges from being considered favoured by the Gods, to displays of bravery and daring, to being brilliantly intelligent and innovative, to achieving professional mastery of the art and science of war.

Military history essentially argues that since the outcome of battles directly affect the course of history, it follows that leaders who control battles indirectly control history—an assumption that is open to debate. Even so, in the broader sweep of military history, the influence of great and inspired leadership cannot be ignored; it influences the flow of events, to a greater or lesser degree, dependent on a number of disparate and external factors. The entire assumption is applicable in a very broad appreciation and may not hold true if tactical nitty-gritty is analysed and projected as being influential in history.

On the other end of the spectrum is the argument that the actions of leaders, great or otherwise, have no impact or relevance to the outcome of battle. The contention is based on the belief that the complexity of the event, the difficulty in controlling battles, and the constantly evolving multiplicity of possible optional paths that lead to the result being purely a matter of chance. This reasoning makes the course of history unpredictable although the outcome of events—battles in this case—cannot be random or arbitrary. An analysis of the flow of events always provides a backward trace from the effect to the cause, a contingency that is often used to deny the influence of great leadership in military history. As in most cases where the available spectrum of options has extremes, reality lies somewhere in between the two extremes.

A third factor also influences military history. The underlying historical experiences and their narratives are impacted by the influence of existing and evolving social structures on the development of military organisations, its fighting ethos, and philosophical assumptions. From a military history perspective, while considering the impact of events on the broader flow of history, modern narratives have been influenced by technology and its impact in shaping the patterns of warfare. There is no doubt that technology, in extremis, can be disastrous, as in the case of nuclear war. While technology does impact the conduct of war, a military historian must bear in mind that the use of technology does not change the nature of war. The impact of technology is not merely a function of its availability; its employment is affected by social and cultural aspects that are fundamental to societies and nations.  

There can be no single cause for historical trends, which are the effects. The causes are many and can be detected in the military structures, social constraints and great leadership, which remain the more important causes. Even so, the complexity of war interacts with the three causes and the effects created play important roles in shaping the military history narrative, which form an indelible part of the history of the nation.

The writing of military history has evolved over time, influenced by the changing context of war, its conduct in terms of accepted morality and ethics, and the employment of available technology. In ancient times, heroic war tales propagated in the oral tradition were mostly for the entertainment of the warriors themselves. These subsequently evolved into written narratives that were propagandistic literature that glorified the rulers, a trend that has been adopted by modern states in a slightly altered form.

Military historic writings were common in the ancient Greco-Roman world, China, and the Indian sub-continent. However, language barriers, their internalised world outlook in the classical era, western military domination during medieval times, and colonisation in the modern periods, denied opportunities for Chinese and Indian histories to gain sufficient traction and be considered mainstream military historical narratives. Oriental military writings and its philosophies were stifled by rampant colonialism and the accompanying racism that consciously relegated Eastern intellect to inferiority. Narratives emanating from the Greco-Roman world, and its follow-on Western civilisations, flourished and came to dominate the genre across the world. The Eurocentric bias to military history is therefore a simple historiographic fact.

The 19th century was a period of significant and rapid changes in recording history, particularly military narratives—a period in which the modern discipline of history evolved to its current form. The writings were again Eurocentric, even though the rest of the world was in convulsions whose effects are still reverberating across the globe. From mid-19th century to the end of World War II, military history narrative moved decisively towards theoretical analysis.

The discipline of military history came to be dominated by the likes of Antoine Henri Jomini, a Swiss soldier who served with and against Napoleon, and Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian officer who fought against Napoleon. Towards the end of 19th century, Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian Corbett developed the intellectual framework for naval theory and indelibly linked naval strategy to national security for all maritime nations.

[Part III will cover the intellectual developments of the 20th century that influenced the progress of military history as an independent discipline]

Sanu Kainikara

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