Volume 72, Number 3 · July 2008

Zhao Chongguo (137-52 BC), who rose to the rank of general in service to the emperors of China’s Former Han Dynasty (206/202 BC-9 AD) and became one of the greatest soldiers in Chinese history, is best remembered for his “strategy of military farms (tuntian),” evolved during his famous victorious campaign of 61-60 BC against the Qianq people, presumed ancestors of the Tibetans, on the western frontier of China. Although future Chinese official historians would claim that this strategy of using infantrymen to grow crops on frontier lands was intended to solve the problem of supplying troops on distant campaigns with food and fodder, the article which follows, based on a careful reading of Zhao Chongguo’s memorials to his emperor, demonstrates conclusively that the general’s real reason for establishing the military farms was to deny crop and grazing land to China’s frontier foes and thus “subdue the enemy without fighting,” in the words of Sun Zi. A close examination of the career of this famous soldier also has much to tell us about civil-military relations in ancient China and the strategy and tactics evolved by China’s soldiers in order to contain and ultimately defeat the formidable nomadic enemies on its frontiers.

Although inclusion into the National Guard brought uniformity, professionalism, and better equipment to state militia, it weakened the vital bonds of some militia companies with their communities. In the nineteenth century, the Richardson Light Guard of Wakefield, Massachusetts, thrived under generous patrons, a supportive town, and a relatively wealthy state government, but after it became part of the National Guard in 1916, the deep links with its home community steadily weakened, then broke. What had once been an institution of the town passed to the state, then to the federal government. Increased federal involvement helped an elite militia company become an average National Guard company.

This article investigates a long-standing historical debate over the development of electric torpedoes in the Confederate States of America. It analyzes the contributions of five individuals - Hunter Davidson, Beverley Kennon, Stephen Mallory, Matthew Maury, and Gabriel Rains - and concludes that Maury was the Confederacy’s most persistent advocate of electric torpedoes. An examination of new archival material also clarifies Maury’s relationship with fellow torpedo pioneers Davidson and Kennon. More broadly, the article explores linkages between memory, history, and technology. It argues that claims of technological priority matter, that memories are influenced by a multiplicity of factors (not all of which are easily discernible), and that technical source material can assist greatly in efforts to reconcile conflicting histories.

In 1923 Brigadier General Billy Mitchell made a short and hitherto-ignored trip to Canada to meet with prominent Canadian officials. Mitchell’s report to his superiors made clear that Canada, as an air-minded Anglo-Saxon nation, was ideally suited to join with the United States in an aerial alliance, centered on Alaska, designed to bomb Japan into submission in any future war. Although Mitchell’s plan, which was the logical culmination of his air power notions, appealed to neither American nor Canadian officials, he pushed the alliance notion until his death in the mid-1930s, as did his air power acolytes in the Army Air Corps.

The Soviet war against Finland (1939-40) is generally seen as a fiasco because the U.S.S.R. failed to conquer and absorb Finland, as Joseph Stalin had planned; and the Finns inflicted losses on the Red Army that were far out of proportion to the small size of their army and their own casualties. Access to fresh sources, archival and memoir, suggest that although the Soviets fell short of their political goals and performed dismally in combat, the Red Army was far more militarily effective than was appreciated by the Soviet military and political leadership, the German armed forces high command, and contemporary observers.

As an Army Air Forces chaplain during the Second World War, Father Victor Laketek, O.S.B., experienced homesickness, boredom, and all the seeming futility of isolated military bases far from the front. What he saw little of, at the locations where he served in Maine, Florida, California, and Canton Island, was anything like the spiritual renaissance some supposed was being brought about by the conflict. The diary he kept during these years offers a corrective to the “no atheists in foxholes” phenomenon sometimes reported by the popular press.

By mid-1966 the North Vietnamese army had built an elaborate system of truck roads and personnel trails through Laos to support and reinforce some 435,000 communist troops and guerrillas attacking South Vietnam. Interdicting movement on that system was a high priority for U.S. forces helping to defend the South. By arrangement with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the Jason group of scientists proposed a networked system of sensors and aircraft for the purpose. That system, although not totally successful, significantly affected the course of the war and presaged key aspects of the equipment and operation of America’s armed forces today.

Historians have often used a 1966 Army report nicknamed PROVN either to cast aspersions on the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam between 1964 and 1968, General William C. Westmoreland, or to praise his successor, General Creighton Abrams. This interpretation is simplistic and inaccurate. Although the report criticized aspects of the war under Westmoreland, its target was really the U.S. and Vietnamese governments. Moreover, PROVN’s conclusions were less radical and its remedies less novel than observers have tended to admit. A fresh look at PROVN reveals significant continuities in thought between Westmoreland, the report, and Abrams.

Alfred Thayer Mahan formulated his concept of sea power while reading a history book in an English gentleman’s club in Lima, Peru. This concept became the foundation for his celebrated The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1680-1783. However, Mahan never properly identified the “English Club” in his autobiographical writings. This note briefly describes the Phoenix Club (its proper name) and portrays the situation in Peru when Mahan first envisioned his concept of sea power.