H2020Индивидуална стипендия2018–2020

PFoGMH · The Prussian Fathers of Greek Military History

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2018-10-01 → 2020-09-30
Финансиране от ЕС: 177 599 €
Участници: 1
Схема: MSCA-IF-EF-ST

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Германските автори от XIX век и техните първи академични трудове за войните в Древна Гърция са в центъра на анализа. Работата разкрива как професионалните военни от Прусия са наложили своя технически поглед върху историята, измествайки университетските професори.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

The Prussian Fathers of Greek Military History

This project examines the nineteenth-century German authors of the first academic works on Ancient Greek warfare. These scholars pioneered the writing of the military history of the Greeks, creating the methods and narratives that would dominate the subfield of history and Classics for more than a century. This work may seem like an esoteric pursuit, of interest only to academics - but in fact it was a matter of wide and deep controversy, prompting decades of feuds between the highest intellectual institutions of Imperial Germany. In the German-speaking world of the second half of the nineteenth century, military history was not the domain of university professors. It was the soldier-scholars of the Great General Staff who claimed absolute authority on the subject. Their towering status and prestige in a thoroughly militarised society allowed them to challenge classicists and historians on an area of expertise on which they tolerated no rivals. They, the professional soldiers, were the only ones who understood war, in all its ages and forms. They were the practitioners. What could academics really learn about it from reading old books in dusty libraries? Most scholars accepted the argument and refrained from writing military history - even that of societies as far back as the Ancient Greeks. The academic world accepted that it was out of its depth and discouraged its members from crossing the boundaries of their expertise. The few who did were guided in their efforts by the example of the Great General Staff; they accepted its narrow understanding of military history as a question of weapons, tactics, battles, and lessons in leadership for the present day. The template they set for the study of military history was shaped by this tight, technical, practical focus. The studies of Greek warfare produced in this period - few as they are - present us with a case study of the way questions of authority can shape academic disciplines, and the way attitudes to war can shape the way we write history. Through the study of published work (books, essays and reviews) as well as archival research, this project hopes to answer basic questions about the intellectual context of the first scholarly works on Greek warfare: why were they written? How were they justified, and to whom? What legacy did they build for the future of this subfield of Greek and military history?

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

How do our views on war affect the way we write history? The study of Ancient Greek warfare – and the strong moral judgments that have always been part of it – remains heavily influenced by the pioneering works of Prussian and Imperial German scholars, whose outlook was profoundly nationalist and militarist. The views of these scholars on Greek strategies, tactics and rules of engagement are still perpetuated in modern scholarship. New ideas have only started to gain ground in the last decade. Recent historiographical studies suggest that experts in the field are unaware of its founders’ legacy; the early scholars of Greek warfare have never been studied in their own right.The proposed research is a detailed look at the major German handbooks that appeared between 1852 and 1931 to form the foundation of the academic study of Greek warfare. It will place these works in their intellectual context by examining the life and intellectual environment of their authors. It will analyse the way these scholars’ backgrounds affected their view of history. Finally, it will trace the afterlife of their views as they were transformed from a didactic tool in the instruction of Prussian officers to an ideological weapon in the hands of American neoconservatives.This project will use the development of scholarly interpretations of ancient military methods as a reflection on changing modern attitudes to war. How do our perspectives and those of our predecessors affect our research? The professional militarism of the German scholars shaped their perception of Greek warfare as restricted and primitive; later generations, who found war more abhorrent, adapted these conclusions into an idealised image of the past, giving ideological and political power to the Germans’ harsh and unjustified conclusions.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN · LeidenКоординаторНидерландия