Siddhesh Joshi (Editor)

Michael Howard (historian)

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Alma mater
  
Christ Church, Oxford

Role
  
Military Historian

Occupation
  
Historian

Successor
  
John Elliott

Term
  
1980–1989

Name
  
Michael Howard


Michael Howard (historian) wwwhistoryacukmakinghistoryresourcesintervie

Full Name
  
Michael Eliot Howard

Born
  
29 November 1922 (age 101) (
1922-11-29
)
Ashmore, Dorset

Known for
  
expanding military history beyond the traditional campaigns and battles accounts by examining the sociological significance of war

Partner(s)
  
Mark Anthony James (Civil Partnership: 2006 – present)

Titles
  
Regius Professor of History

Education
  
Christ Church, Oxford, Wellington College, Berkshire

Books
  
War in European history, The First World War, The invention of peace, Clausewitz: A Very Short Intr, The causes of wars and other ess

Similar People
  
William Roger Louis, Carl von Clausewitz, B H Liddell Hart, Harry Hinsley, Winston Churchill

Predecessor
  
Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper

Sir michael howard centre for the history of war


Sir Michael Eliot Howard (born 29 November 1922) is a British military historian, formerly Chichele Professor of the History of War, Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University and founder of the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

Contents

Howard has been described in the Financial Times as "Britain's greatest living historian".

Conversations with history sir michael howard


Early life

Howard was born on 29 November 1922 in the village of Ashmore in Dorset. He was the youngest son of Geoffrey Howard and Edith (née Edinger). He was educated at Wellington College and Christ Church, University of Oxford (with service in World War II in between). He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1946, which was later promoted to Master of Arts (MA) in 1948.

Howard joined the British Army and was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant into the Coldstream Guards on 4 December 1942. He was given the service number 253901. He fought in the Italian Campaign, serving with the 3rd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, coming ashore during the landings at Salerno in September 1943. On 27 January 1944, during the First Battle of Monte Cassino, he was awarded the Military Cross (MC) "in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Italy".

After Oxford, Howard began his teaching career at King's College London, where he created the Department of War Studies. From his position at King's he was one of the Britain's most influential in developing strategic studies as a discipline that brought together government, military, and academia to think about defence and national security more broadly and deeply than had been done before. He was one of the founders of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. From his family, education, and service in the Guards, he had extensive connections at the higher levels of British society, and he worked them astutely to further his intellectual goals. He had close connections in the Labour Party but was also consulted as an advisor by Margaret Thatcher.

Historical writing

Howard is best known for expanding military history beyond the traditional campaigns and battles accounts to include wider discussions about the sociological significance of war. In his account of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, Howard looked at how the Prussian and French armies reflected the social structure of the two nations. He has also been a leading interpreter of the writings of the German military thinker Carl von Clausewitz, including preparing the leading translation of On War with the American historian Peter Paret. In addition, in both his inaugural and concluding lectures as Regius Professor, and in his popular and influential War in European History, Howard has stressed the difference between traditional military history, which seeks to identify easily applicable lessons for the present from the history of past wars and military campaigns, and his own approach, which stresses the uniqueness of the historical past and the impossibility of deriving such lessons to guide modern strategic and tactical choices.

In 1985, he delivered the Huizinga Lecture in the Dutch city of Leiden, under the title: 1945: End of an Era.

Howard helped found the Department of War Studies and the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King's College London. He is currently president emeritus of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which he also helped to establish, and a fellow of the British Academy. Howard was knighted in 1986 and was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2002 and to the Order of Merit in 2005. In 1988 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences.

Work

  • The Coldstream Guards, co-written with John Sparrow, 1920–1946, 1951.
  • Disengagement in Europe, 1958.
  • The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870–1871, 1961. Republished by Methuen, 1981. ISBN 0-416-30750-7 OCLC 8008934
  • Lord Haldane and the Territorial Army, 1967.
  • The Mediterranean Strategy in the Second World War, 1967.
  • Grand Strategy, August 1942 – September 1943, Volume IV, Grand Strategy series, History of the Second World War (1970)
  • Studies in War and Peace, 1970.
  • The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of Two World Wars, 1972.
  • War in European History, 1976 [latest revised edition, 2009]. ISBN 0-192-89095-6 OCLC 251597992
  • Carl von Clausewitz, On War, 1977, edited and translated by M. E. Howard and Peter Paret.
  • Soldiers and Governments: Nine Studies in Civil Military Relations, 1978.
  • War and the Liberal Conscience, 1978 [new edition, 2008].
  • Restraints on War: Studies in the Limitation of Armed Conflict, 1979 edited by M. E. Howard.
  • Clausewitz, 1983 [originally a volume in the Oxford University Press "Past Masters" series, reissued in 2000 as Clausewitz: A Very Short Introduction]. ISBN 0-192-87608-2 OCLC 8709266
  • The Causes of War Harvard University Press; 2 edition (1 January 1984)
  • Strategic Deception in World War II, 1990, (Volume 5 of British Intelligence in the Second World War; series edited by F. H. Hinsley; Cambridge University Press). ISBN 0-521-40145-3
  • The Lessons of History, 1989.
  • The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World, edited by M. E Howard, George J. Andrepoulous and Mark R. Schulman. ISBN 0-300-05899-3 OCLC 30473599
  • The Invention of Peace, 2000.
  • The First World War, 2003 [reissued as The First World War: A Very Short Introduction, 2007].
  • Captain Professor: A Life in War and Peace (autobiography), 2006 ISBN 0-826-49125-1 OCLC 64313950
  • Liberation or Catastrophe?: Reflections on the History of the 20th Century, 2007
  • References

    Michael Howard (historian) Wikipedia