Prof. Mark Grimsley
363 Dulles Hall
Tel. 292-1855
E-mail: grimsley.1@osu.edu


This is a graduate readings course focusing on selected themes in American military history from the colonial period to the eve of the First World War.

Office Hours

Mondays, 10:30-11:30 a.m.; Thursdays, 2:30-3:30 p.m.; and by appointment.

Enrollment

All students must be officially enrolled in the course by the end of the second full week of the quarter. No requests to add the course will be approved by the department chair after that time. Enrolling officially and on time is solely the responsibility of each student.

Requirements

Two six-page book reviews; one 10-to-12 page review essay based on the required and supplementary readings (as well as readings you may discover on your own).

Book Review 1 (20% of course grade) is due October 10.

Book Review 2 (20% of course grade) is due October 31.

Comparative Review Essay (30% of course grade) is due December 5.

Class Participation counts for 30% of the course grade.

Papers are due in class on the date specified. Late papers will be penalized a full letter grade for every day they are overdue. No "Incompletes" for the course will be granted.

Week 1. INTRODUCTION

Don Higginbotham, "The Early American Way of War: Reconnaissance and Appraisal," William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, vol. 49 (1991): 230-273.

John A. Lynn, "Clio in Arms: The Role of the Military Variable in Shaping History," Journal of Military History, vol. 55, no. 1 (January 1991): 83-95.

John Shy, "The Cultural Approach to the History of War," Journal of Military History vol. 57, no. 5 (special issue; October 1995): 13-26.

Week 2. THE EUROPEAN INVASION: MESOAMERICA

Required: Ross Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest. (1994)

Supplemental:

Ross Hassig, War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica (1992)

Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 (rev. ed., 1997).

Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico (1994)

Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (1984)

Week 3. THE EUROPEAN INVASION: NORTH AMERICA.

Required: Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (1995).

Supplemental:

James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (1985).

John E. Ferling, Struggle for a Continent: The Wars of Early America (1993).

Adam J. Hirsch, "The Collision of Military Cultures in Seventeenth-Century New England," Journal of American History 74 (March 1988).

Daniel Richter, "War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, vol. 40 (1983).

Week 4. THE COLONIAL MILITARY EXPERIENCE

Required: Fred Anderson, A People's Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years' War (1984).

Supplemental:

Peter E. Russell, "Redcoats in the Wilderness: British Officers and Irregular Warfare in Europe and America, 1740 to 1760," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, vol. 35 (October 1978).

Harold E. Selesky, War and Society in Colonial Connecticut (1990).

Ian K. Steele, Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the "Massacre" (1990).

James Titus, The Old Dominion at War: Society, Politics, and Warfare in Late Colonial Virginia (1991).

Week 5. THE REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIER: THE UNITED STATES.

Required: Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character (1979).

Supplemental:

John Shy, A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for Independence (1976)

Richard Buel, Dear Liberty: Connecticut's Mobilization for the Revolutionary War (1981).

James Kirby Martin and Mark E. Lender, A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789 (1982)

Week 6. THE REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIER: FRANCE.

Required: John A. Lynn, The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791-1794 (1984)

Supplemental:

Geoffrey Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870 (1986)

Alan Forrest, Conscripts and Deserters: The Army and French Society During the Revolution and Empire (1989)

Week 7. ORIGINS OF MILITARY PROFESSIONALISM.

Required: William B. Skelton, An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784-1861 (1992)

Supplemental:

Edward M. Coffman, "The Long Shadow of The Soldier and the State," Journal of Military History 55 (Jannuary 1991).

Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State (1956).

Christopher McKee, A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of a U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815 (1991).

James L. Morrison, Jr., "The Best School in the World": West Point, The Pre-Civil War Years, 1835-1866 (1986).

Week 8. THE COMMON SOLDIER OF THE CIVIL WAR.

Required: Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (19870

James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997)

Supplemental:

Earl J. Hess, The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat (1997)

James M. McPherson, What They Fought For, 1861-1865 (1994)

Reid Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences (1988)

Week 9. THE CIVIL WAR: TOWARD TOTAL WAR

Required: Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865 (1995)

Charles Royster, The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans (1991)

Supplemental:

Mark E. Neely, "Was the Civil War a Total War?" Civil War History 37 (1991): 5-28.

Stig Forster aand Jorg Nagler (eds.), On the Road to Total War : The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871 (1997)

Week 10. No class; Thanksgiving holiday

Week 11. ANGLO-SAXONS AT WAR

Required: James O. Gump, The Dust Rose Like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu and the Sioux (1994)

Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders (1900)

Supplemental:

Thomas W. Dunlay, Wolves for the Blue Soldiers: Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the U.S. Army 1860-1890 (1982)

Thomas C. Leonard, Above the Battle : War Making in America from Appomattox to Versailles (1977)

Brian M. Linn, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899-1902 (1989).

Anthony May, Battle for Batangas: A Philippine Province at War (1991).

Stuart C. Miller, "Benevolent Assimilation": The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903 (1982).

Donald R. Morris, The Washing of the Spears : The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation Under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879 (1965)

Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa : White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912 (pb, 1992)

Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (1985); Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century America (1992) [Part I only]

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