Society for Military History Annual Meeting 2004
Conference Overview

     The 71st Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History is sponsored by the Department of History, and the Center for Historical Studies, University of Maryland, College Park. The program theme is "What's on Our Minds: Critical Problems in Military History." Although the range of topics is diverse, the program is unified by consideration of significant historical questions about military institutions and war. The program taken as a whole should thus provide a good measure of the current state of the field of military history as a serious form of scholarly inquiry. Many if not most of the papers address issues that are pertinent to the current policy concerns of the civilian and military leadership of the United States and other countries. The conference presentations, therefore, offer persons engaged in governmental affairs multiple opportunities to relate state-of-the-art historical observation and analysis to their own practical experience.

     The 125 papers selected by the Program Committee have been grouped into thirty-seven panels, each panel consisting of two to four papers. The five categories of panels are: (1) Military Theory and Education; (2) Personnel; (3) Technology and Economics; (4) General Military History; and (5) Professional and Research Issues, and Forms of Study. Panels are distributed into eight sessions. A session is a time-slot of two hours. There are three such sessions on Friday, 21 May; three on Saturday, 22 May; and two on Sunday, 23 May.

     In addition to the paper sessions, the conference organizers have added a special discussion group session following the first paper session in the morning of Saturday, 22 May. The special discussion group session will consist of six presentations on subjects that were regarded as important but for various reasons could not be scheduled within the main categories. The final plenary session (11:30-1:30, Sunday, 22 May) will be devoted to two papers that will review the current state of military history as a field. After a very brief commentary, the audience will be able to respond with questions or observations of their own. The conference organizers hope that this closing panel will provoke a lively general discussion about the uses and abuses of military historical scholarship in higher education, politics, and government. It will be followed by a reception that will celebrate three days of learning about things that should matter a great deal in our time of war and international crisis.

     The general welcoming reception (5:30-7:00, Thursday, 20 May) will begin with a brief remembrance of Professors Russell Weigley, the leading historian of American military history, and Gunther Rothenberg, the distinguished historian of modern European military history, who passed away earlier this year. A formal memorial statement about Russell Weigley will be made at the Awards Luncheon (12:30-1:45, Friday, 21 May).

     Undergraduate and graduate students specializing in military history are the future of the field. To encourage and support their participation in the annual meeting of the Society for Military History, the Program Committee added a special welcoming reception that will precede the general welcoming reception on the first day of the conference (4:30-5:30, Thursday, 20 May). This event will be hosted by Professor Jeremy Black, renowned for his many major contributions to Early Modern European military history. In addition, the Program Committee scheduled a panel (12:45-2:45, Saturday, 22 May) that will feature presentations by three recent recipients of a Ph.D. in history. And finally, conference scholarships offered by the Society of Military History have defrayed the conference expenses of four graduate students.

     The annual meeting's two main speakers epitomize achievement in academic historical scholarship on the one hand, and historically informed military professionalism on the other. Professor John Lynn of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign-- the author of two path-breaking books on the pre-industrial French army and most recently a broadly conceived study of the relationship of battle and culture-- will open the conference with an address entitled ""Where is the Western Way of War?" (9:15-10:00, Friday, 21 May). Commodore (Royal Australian Navy) James Goldrick--currently commandant of the Australian Defense Forces Academy, formerly commander of the multinational Maritime Interception Force off Iraq, and author of two important books on naval history--will give the banquet address entitled "History, Historians, and Military Education: Reflections of a Naval Fellow Traveler" (7:30-9:30, Saturday, 22 May).

     The History Department of the University of Southern Mississippi will host a reception at Fellini's Restaurant Room in the Hyatt Regency Bethesda Hotel to inaugerate their new program in military history (6:30-8:30, Friday, 21 May), to which all conference attendees are invited. There is a conference-sponsored field trip to the Antietam battlefield on Saturday, 22 May, which will be directed by Professor Richard DiNardo of the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College.

     The Washington metropolitan area possesses national monuments, museums, art galleries, concert halls, theaters, fine restaurants, shopping malls, and outdoor recreational sites in abundance. The Red Line metro station beneath the hotel offers convenient access to the city. Taxi service is also available at the hotel. Many eating and shopping establishments are, however, within easy walking distance (the conference will provide a guide to local restaurants and other sites of interest courtesy of the Bethesda Urban Partnership). These include two stores selling new books (Barnes and Noble, Olsson's Books) and two selling used books (Second Story Books, Georgetown Books). The collection at Georgetown Books, on Bethesda Avenue just off Wisconsin Avenue, emphasizes military history.

     In closing, the Program Committee thanks all those who offered proposals in response to our call for papers. We regret that limitations of time and space mad e it necessary to reject many fine submissions. We are proud of this program, and of the field of military history that is its source.


Program Co-chairs, Society for Military History Annual Meeting 2004:

Jon Sumida
Associate Professor
Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park

Alexander Cochran
Harold K. Johnson Visiting Professor
U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania