It is difficult to overestimate the impact of actual and imagined wars on American culture. From the US national anthem (which describes the defence of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812) to the 2002 film We Were Soldiers, which repositions the Vietnam War as a humanitarian mission, American society is infused through and through with martial imagery and tropes. The military–industrial–entertainment complex has never been so powerful. In America today, armament industries, militaries, police forces, manufacturers, hunting organizations, movie producers, video-gamers, and gun lobbies have powerful stakes in the task of inventing more effective technologies for terrifying, maiming, and killing others.
Historians, too, have a stake in violence: they play significant roles in keeping the memory of war alive, reminding us of the lived experience of familiar conflicts such as the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and the two world wars, as well as forgotten ones (notably the 1848 war with Mexico). Some military historians recycle stories of spunk and valour; others insist that we turn our gaze to the retching suffering experienced by men, women, and children cowering in trenches or basements during bombardments. We hear a great deal about “the horror, the horror,” while also being reminded that even gruesome, antiheroic war stories can be coopted into the romanticized canon of conflict.
In Jimmy L. Bryan's edited volume, readers are offered a series of chapters addressing the cultural history of the “martial imagination.” Although Bryan clearly regards this “cultural turn” in war studies as new, he struggles to define what a “cultural” approach actually looks like. He even celebrates the “lack of definition as intellectually liberating” (6). When he does set out to define the field, he rightly distinguishes the “cultural” approach from traditional military history, with its emphasis on strategy and battles. He also claims that it is distinct from the social history of war. Instead, he notes, cultural historians “recognize that the search for meaning in the past is as much about deciphering imagined moments as it is about uncovering empirical evidence” (2). Such an approach is hardly original. Indeed, it is one of the most dominant ways historians and other social commentators have studied war in the past couple of decades. Imagination, emotion, and visual representation are central to the act of telling war stories today.
The authors of the essays in this volume are committed to history that takes seriously the ways “ordinary” Americans conceived of their worlds in times of armed conflict. They attempt to situate local contexts within wider frameworks, as in John M. Kinder's analysis of the role of American zoos in Cold War politics, where he wittily coins the term “zoological diplomacy” (23). The best essay is probably that of Kathleen Kennedy, in which she subtly dissects the way Francis Parkman writes about his own pain and the pain of others. As Kennedy shows, Parkman's attempts to find “heroic transcendence” (37) in violence were inextricably linked to his own notions of manliness and power.
Other essays seek to expose the militarization of American society (the role of religion in the Air Force), conquests and atrocities (the Texas Rangers as “killers of men”), imperialist chivalry (“gentlemen prisoners” during the American Revolution and the rescue of Evangelina Cisneros in 1898), and visual ideologies (cartoons, caricatures, and recruitment posters). Jonna Eagle draws attention to a neglected dimension of American representations of war: melodramas. She shows how the spectacle of suffering changed over the centuries, while retaining a strong emphasis on “virtuous victimization and righteous retribution” (151). Jason Phillips engages in a detailed evaluation of the writings of two Civil War soldiers – Arthur Carpenter and Ujanirtus Allen – to make an argument about the “history of the future” (198) or the way men during the war conceived of the actions in battle. The final chapter in the book sees distinguished historian Amy S. Greenberg reflecting on the cultural analysis of war and then using these reflections to persuasively show how a major event (in her case the 1848 war) could be forgotten by later commentators.
While these essays are individually insightful and interesting, they fail to cohere as a whole. Time and again, I was left wondering about the authors' notion of agency. Why and how do representations change? What do these essays contribute to the broader histories of American society and culture? At the end of this book, Greenberg asks, “What is at stake in the cultural history of warfare?” Her response is succinct: “Perhaps nothing less than peace” (231). Unfortunately, this book is a lost opportunity to contribute to this aim.
