history. At the same time, the Prussian, Karl von Clausewitz, sought to identify a theory of war and also identified military
history as a separate branch of history.
Categories of Military History
Approaches to military history have varied through the ages since the time of Jomini and von Clausewitz. Today, the
United States Army identifies three categories of military history:
o
Operational History: History dealing with battles and campaigns and encompassing logistics, tactics, strategy,
and leadership.
o
Administrative and Technical History: History pertaining to functional and professional activities of the armed
forces to include doctrine and training of manpower, weapons development, engineering, exploration, and
medical science in the Army.
o
Armed Forces and Society: An interdisciplinary field concerned with civil-military relations, military policy as
related to national strategy, arms control, peacekeeping, and conflict management.
These categories are not mutually exclusive. The relationship between past operations, current doctrine, training, and
weapon development is obvious. The categories are intentionally broad for this reason. A study of any given aspect of
military history will normally touch, to some degree, on all categories while emphasizing only one.
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