John Keegan
First World War | |
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Notable works | The Face of Battle, Soldiers: A History of Men in Battle, The Mask of Command and other major works |
Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan
Life and career
Keegan was born in
In 1960 Keegan took up a lectureship in military history at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, which trains officers for the British Army. He remained there for 26 years, becoming a senior lecturer in military history during his tenure, during which he also held a visiting professorship at Princeton University and was Delmas Distinguished Professor of History at Vassar College.[4]
Leaving the academy in 1986,
Keegan died on 2 August 2012 of natural causes at his home in Kilmington, Wiltshire. He was survived by his wife, their two daughters and two sons.[5]
Published work
In A History of Warfare, Keegan outlined the development and limitations of warfare from prehistory to the modern era. It looked at various topics, including the use of horses, logistics, and "fire". A key concept put forward was that war is inherently cultural.[6] In the introduction, he vigorously denounced the idiom "war is a continuation of policy by other means", rejecting "Clausewitzian" ideas. However, Keegan's discussion of Clausewitz was criticised as uninformed and inaccurate by writers like Peter Paret, Christopher Bassford, and Richard M. Swain.[7]
Other books written by Keegan are: The Iraq War, Intelligence in War, The First World War, The Second World War, The Battle for History, The Face of Battle, War and Our World, The Mask of Command, and Fields of Battle.
He also contributed to work on
Views on contemporary conflicts
- Keegan stated: "I will never oppose the Vietnam War. Americans were right to do it. I think they fought it in the wrong way. I don't think it's a war like fighting Hitler, but I think it was a right war, a correct war."[10]
- Keegan believed that NATO's bombing of Serbia and Serbian targets in Kosovo in 1999 showed that air power alone could win wars.[11]
- An article in The Christian Science Monitor called Keegan a "staunch supporter" of the Iraq War. It quotes him: "Uncomfortable as the 'spectacle of raw military force' is, he concludes that the Iraq war represents 'a better guide to what needs to be done to secure the safety of our world than any amount of law-making or treaty-writing can offer.'"[12]
Criticism
Keegan was also criticised by peers, including
In his 1997 book Revolutionary Armies in the Modern Era: A Revisionist Approach (described as "too flawed to be recommended as an undergraduate text"
Detlef Siebert, a television documentarian, disagreed with Keegan's view that the deliberate targeting of civilian populations by aerial bombing 'descended to the enemy's level', although he did call it a 'moral blemish'.[18]
Honours
On 29 June 1991, as a
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1986.[21] In 1993 he won the Duff Cooper Prize.[22]
In 1996, he was awarded the
The University of Bath awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) in 2002.[24]
Works
- Waffen SS: The asphalt soldiers (New York: ISBN 0-345-32641-5
- Barbarossa: Invasion of Russia, 1941 (New York, 1971) ISBN 0-345-02111-8
- Opening Moves – August 1914 (New York: Ballantine, 1971) ISBN 0-345-09798-X
- Guderian (New York: Ballantine, 1973) ISBN 0-345-03385-X
- Rundstedt (New York: Ballantine, 1974) ISBN 0-345-23790-0
- Dien Bien Phu (New York: Ballantine, 1974) ISBN 0-345-24064-2
- ISBN 0-670-30432-8
- Who Was Who in World War II (1978) ISBN 0-85368-182-1
- The Nature of War with ISBN 0-03-057777-2
- Six Armies in Normandy (1982) ISBN 0-14-005293-3
- Zones of Conflict: An Atlas Of Future Wars with Andrew Wheatcroft (New York, 1986) ISBN 0-671-60115-6
- ISBN 0-670-80969-1
- The Mask of Command (London, 1987) ISBN 0-7126-6526-9
- The Price of Admiralty (1988) ISBN 0-09-173771-0
- The Illustrated Face of Battle (New York and London: Viking, 1988) ISBN 0-670-82703-7
- The Second World War (Viking Press, 1989) ISBN 0-670-82359-7
- Churchill's Generals (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991) editor
- ISBN 0-679-73082-6
- The Battle for History: Refighting World War Two (ISBN 0-679-76743-6
- Warpaths (ISBN 1-84413-750-3
- Fields of Battle: The Wars for North America (1997) ISBN 0-679-74664-1
- War and Our World: The Reith Lectures 1998 (London: Pimlico, 1999) ISBN 0-375-70520-1
- The Book of War (ed.) (Viking Press, 1999) ISBN 0-670-88804-4
- The First World War (London: ISBN 0-375-40052-4
- An Illustrated History of the First World War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001) ISBN 0-375-41259-X
- Winston Churchill (2002) ISBN 0-670-03079-1
- Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda (2003) ISBN 0-375-70046-3)
- The Iraq War (2004) ISBN 0-09-180018-8
- Atlas of World War II (ed.) (London: ISBN 0-00-721465-0(an update of the 1989 Times Atlas)
- The American Civil War (London, Hutchinson, 2009) ISBN 978-0-09-179483-5
Notes
- ^ "Sir John Keegan obituary". the Guardian. 5 August 2012. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
- ^ a b "Booknotes: A History of Warfare (transcript of video interview)". Booknotes. C-SPAN. 8 May 1994. Archived from the original on 9 November 2015. Retrieved 5 August 2015.
- ^ Daniel Snowman: John Keegan History Today, volume 50, issue 5.2000
- ISBN 0-375-40052-4
- ^ van der Vat, Dan (5 August 2012). "Sir John Keegan obituary". the Guardian. Retrieved 5 October 2022.
- ^ Binder, David (3 August 2012). "John Keegan, Historian of War and Warriors, Dies at 78". The New York Times. p. 10. Retrieved 29 January 2013.
- ^ Christopher Bassford, "John Keegan and the Grand Tradition of Trashing Clausewitz," War in History, November 1994, pp. 319–336.
- ^ Naval War College Archived 13 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine – Frank C. Mahncke, Naval War College
- ^ The New York Times Book Review – Sir Michael Howard
- NYTimes.com. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
- S2CID 57560780. Archived from the original(PDF) on 12 July 2017. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
I didn't want to change my beliefs, but there was too much evidence accumulating to stick to the article of faith. It now does look as if air power has prevailed in the Balkans, and that the time has come to redefine how victory in war may be won.
- ^ Scott Tyson, Ann (8 June 2004). "America's bewildering battle in Iraq follows new rules". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
- ^ Michael Howard, "To the Ruthless Belong the Spoils," The New York Times Book Review, 14 November 1993.
- ^ War in History, November 1994, pp. 319–336, Christopher Bassford available at Clausewitz.com Archived 29 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine
- S2CID 30732113.
- ^ Brown 1998, p. 1561.
- ^ MacKenzie 1997, pp. 140.
- ^ Siebert, Detlef. "BBC - History - World Wars: British Bombing Strategy in World War Two". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 7 May 2021.
- ^ "No. 52588". The London Gazette (Supplement). 28 June 1991. pp. 23–28.
- ^ "No. 55710". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 1999. pp. 1–2.
- ^ "Royal Society of Literature All Fellows". Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original on 5 March 2010. Retrieved 9 August 2010.
- ^ "Past Winners of The Duff Cooper Prize". Archived from the original on 12 September 2019. Retrieved 29 January 2013.
- ^ "Samuel Eliot Morison Prize previous winners". Society for Military History. Retrieved 25 December 2017.
- ^ "Honorary Graduates 1989 to present". University of Bath. Archived from the original on 19 December 2015. Retrieved 7 August 2012.
References
- Bassford, Christopher. "John Keegan and the Grand Tradition of Trashing Clausewitz." War in History, November 1994, pp. 319–36
- Brown, Howard (1998). "Untitled". The American Historical Review. 103 (5): 117–126. JSTOR 2649980. Retrieved 18 September 2022.
- ISBN 978-0-415-09690-4.
- Snowman, Daniel. "John Keegan", pp. 28–30 from History Today, Volume 50, Issue # 5, May 2000