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James Jordan
HIS 165
Dr. Scott
17th September 2002
King Philip’s War
Jill Lepore’s book on King Philip’s War falls into the category of “new” military
history and investigates the conflict by making use of the fairly recent developments in
military scholarship. The Name of War and books like it could not have been written
without the contribution of Russell F. Weigley who, in 1973, is believed to have
produced “one of the most important interpretations of American military history” by
directing his research further than the mere study of battle (MP, 2). In fact, “beyond the
drum and trumpets” is precisely where Lepore attempts to explore and in doing so marks
a clear distinction between her research and that of the military historians of the old order
who tended to concentrate on the actual fighting (MP, 1). Without Weigley and the wave
of New Social History that permeated the 1970’s and beyond, the mindset that has been
taken on by the “new” military historians might never have been brought to the fore, thus
rendering a book like Jill Lepore’s book entirely impossible to write.
“Old” military history is the term applied to studies connected to the battlefield of
war and, more often than not, the “big” men such as the generals, admirals, kings and so
on. Much emphasis is placed on the number of combatants on each side, the number of
men who died, what weapons each side had, and their effectiveness in the field. Besides
making interesting reading, the main purpose of “old” military history was to learn from
past mistakes, and to make use of previous commanders’ tactics in order to emulate their
victories or succeed where they had failed. Men were not viewed as individuals but as an
abstract number on a piece of paper; their thoughts, aspirations and fears were not
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considered important enough to be included in any “history” of warfare. Only if a man
were to exceed his orders in gallantry or some great act of heroism then he might expect a
mention in dispatches, but other than that he was just a pawn to be sacrificed and then
forgotten. “Old” military history tended to focus on the “how,” “what,” and “when”
questions concerning warfare; the important issue was that the battle had taken place, the
war had been won or lost, and the subsequent consequences of that victory or defeat. Jill
Lepore’s book, while providing lists of death tolls, statistics and some battle narrative,
most certainly does not fall into the “old” military history category – it is very much a
history book following the current trends in the discipline.
In order to explain why The Name of War is a historical text of the times and not
of the old order it is important to distinguish between the two main approaches to military
history and thus present a definition of the newer one. “New” Military focuses more on
the “why” questions of history and so prompts investigation into the previously forgotten
areas of warfare. Due to the progress made in the last thirty years one can now read
about the soldiers’ viewpoint: their motivation, their hopes and fears, and even what they
thought about the enemy. Women and minorities are also included so as to discern the
broadest and deepest picture of war possible. Religious issues, too, are put under the
spotlight insofar as how they affected the rationale behind the war, its part in the
justification for it, and treatment of the enemy, and so on. As John Whiteclay Chambers
II and G. Kurt Piehler have written, [“new” military history] “seeks more widely to
understand the connections between war and the military and other aspects of society:
political, social and economic systems, technology, and culture” (MP, 1). All in all,
“new” military history seeks to uncover every possible source of information concerning
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the particular war/ conflict; leaving no stone unturned, this approach brings to light all
aspects concerned rather than just the “main” features.
Lepore makes it clearly evident that she is writing from the “new” military history
perspective in the introduction when she states, “the central claim” of her book is that
“wounds and words—the injuries and their interpretation—cannot be separated” (Lepore,
x). Here Lepore sets out not to write about a war insofar as battlefield tactics, etc, but to
bring forth the idea of language into the memory of war asserting that “how wars are
remembered can be just as important as how they were fought and first described”
(Lepore, x). She investigates the reasons that brought war to New England in 1675,
claiming that the colonists were afraid of losing their “Englishness” –their civility,
customs and culture—while the Indians fought against the “English acquisition of land
and the introduction of livestock, that dramatically undermined Algonquian subsistence
practices” (95). Fifty years ago interpretations such as these would never have seen the
light of day because there was just no call for this kind of approach at that time. Lepore
further emphasizes her allegiance to the fairly recent developments in military
scholarship by investigating the notion of order in New England in the period preceding
King Philip’s War. An “old” military historian would merely have cited the destruction
of homesteads and property as causes for the war instead of considering the reasons why
the loss of habitations affected the colonists so much. Lepore contends that these
particular losses became the immigrant New Englanders’ “central crisis of the war” (77).
With this approach, one gets both reasons and a sense of understanding of why the
conflict came to boil and was continued for two bloody years. Finally, what distinguishes
Lepore’s book from “old” military history is her description of the “Great Swamp Fight”
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which, in an “old style” text of King Philip’s War, a whole chapter is devoted to it as a
major engagement of the hostilities. The Name of War barely pays lip service to this
“great fight” thus placing her outside the limited confines of documenting the tactical and
logistical aspects of it and allowing her instead, to investigate the “battle” on a number of
different levels.
By the way she describes the “Great Swamp Fight” Jill Lepore illustrates the fact
that she writes not merely descriptively about King Philip’s War but also interpretively,
because to her the fight did not really mean much more than a load of dead bodies. From
her book one discerns the different reasons for the war, their origins, why the war was
continued and, most importantly, how the war was remembered by the colonists who had
the all so important “literal advantage” over the Algonquian Indians. Purely and simply,
this text and the wealth of information it offers would have been impossible to write
before the wave of New Social History swept through the discipline in the 1970’s
because of the approaches she takes, the points she makes, and the conclusions she offers.