For centuries Western military theory and practice focused on wars conducted in Europe among Europeans. Wars between the European powers and other peoples were thought to be unimportant by students of military affairs, and wars between non-Europeans were viewed as distant and irrelevant. Attention was focused on Great Power confrontations, and the many "little" wars fought throughout the globe were ignored or given short attention.
As the twenty-first century approaches and the threat of war between the superpowers declines, our attention is drawn to conflicts between nations or ethnic...

In 1855, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis dispatched Maj. Richard Delafield, Maj. Alfred Mordecai, and Capt. George B. McClellan to the battlefields of Crimea to observe the European military in action. American military commanders had studied European armies before, but the Delafield Commission was the most ambitious military observation mission up to that time, and the first to observe an on-going war. Although historically underrated, the commission and the members' reports constituted an important step in the development of U.S. military professionalism. In "The Delafield Commission and...

The remarkable Confederate career of Prince Camille de Polignac--French aristocrat, professional military man, and solider of fortune-has gone largely unnoticed because most of his service occurred in the relatively neglected western theater of the American Civil war.
While in Louisiana in early 1863, after serving under Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard and Gen. Braxton Bragg, newly promoted Brigadier General Polignac took over a brigade of unruly Texans. In many ways it was a last chance for both Polignac and the brigade. Lieutenant General Richard Taylor, disgusted with the insubordinate Texans,...

Between 1950 and 1953, 138,600 Army National Guardsmen -- 43 percent of the force -- were called up for federal service. In Under Army Orders William M. Donnelly illuminates one of the more obscure aspects of U.S. involvement in the Korean conflict, focusing on what it meant to be a citizensoldier caught up in an international struggle that raged both hot and cold.
Donnelly begins by examining the reconstitution of the guard after World War II. Next he offers the first indepth look at the army's use of the guard during the Korean conflict, detailing the experiences of guard units...

During the First World War, nearly half a million immigrant draftees from forty-six different nations served in the U.S. Army. This surge of Old World soldiers challenged the American military's cultural, linguistic, and religious traditions and required military leaders to reconsider their training methods for the foreign-born troops. How did the U.S. War Department integrate this diverse group into a united fighting force?
The war department drew on the experiences of progressive social welfare reformers, who worked with immigrants in urban settlement houses, and they listened to...

A veteran of the American Revolutionary War, the Continental gondola "Philadelphia" is the oldest intact warship currently on display in North America. After its recovery from the bottom of Lake Champlain in 1935, the fifty-four foot long "Philadelphia"," " armed with three cannon and eight swivel guns, was moved to the newly constructed building housing what is now the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution.
Since then "Philadelphia" has testified to the heroic struggle between a hastily built fleet of American warships and an overwhelmingly superior British...

The Korean conflict was a pivotal event in China's modern military history. The fighting in Korea constituted an important experience for the newly formed People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), not only as a test case for this fledgling service but also in the later development of Chinese air power.
Xiaoming Zhang fills the gaps in the history of this conflict by basing his research in recently declassified Chinese and Russian archival materials. He also relies on interviews with Chinese participants in the air war over Korea. Zhang's findings challenge conventional wisdom as he...

Echoing from the mountainous Vosges front of World War I come the rare accounts of an elite French foot soldier--a chasseur a pied. Robert Pellissier, born in France in 1882, had grown up in the United States and was teaching at Stanford when the Great War broke out in his homeland. Returning as a volunteer, he saw uninterrupted months of trench warfare in the Vosges mountains of Alsace, the only region where French troops actually captured German territory, a sector largely neglected in World War I literature.

Pellissier's diary and his letters to relatives in America show a panorama of...

Col. James V. Young spent almost twenty years in Asia, including fourteen in Korea. Here, he writes with the expertise of an old Korea hand about a period that saw South Korea develop from an agrarian economy to a modern industrial state.
Young volunteered in 1969 for a new program aimed at creating area specialists within the military. In 1975, after four years of training in Korean language and culture, he witnessed how American diplomats convinced Park ChungHee, the South Korean president, not to develop his own nuclear weapons.
Later, from the perspective of a military attache,...

Based on the journal of John Clifford Brown, a veteran of the Philippine-American War, "Title" reveals the inner workings of a young man seduced by adventure. Educated as an engineer at M.I.T., Brown enjoyed the life of a typical New England gentleman until the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898. Brown then enlisted in a volunteer regiment with a commission as a captain, but his outfit never made it to Cuba. The experience heightened his desire for excitement, however, and in 1899, against the wishes of his family, he re-enlisted in the military--this time without an officer's...