Best school for history of warfare, including the military academies?
Probably one of the military academies, like you mentioned.
1 Like
West Point’s history department is exceptional. Military history is studied to prepare cadets for their future. Take a look at their recent WW II book
1 Like
West Point may have a military history department, but do they offer courses on the Vietnam War or the Civil War and Reconstruction? The University of Florida does, which is good. The thing is, the private schools, which I can get accepted to, offer classes in subjects that I just don’t care about.
The service academies have tremendous incentives to get war history right. For them, teaching the right lessons can mean lives saved and future wars either avoided or won. For other colleges, it is just a department.
1 Like
Most undergraduate programs in history will require that distribute to some extent your coursework across geographic regions and periods. At the undergraduate level, you might be able to focus on a subspecialty, such as the history of warfare, to a limited extent (e.g., 4-5 courses). History is a strong department at many universities and many departments will offer an adequate number of courses focused on the history of warfare. Therefore, you should focus on getting into the best university which will admit you and which you can afford, rather than just focusing on one subspecialty or dismissing a department because they don’t currently offer a course on a specific specialized topic. In other words, be open to broadening your interests. Most students discover new interests or change their initial interests once they are in college.
That said, certain departments do have more faculty members or more extensive course offerings in military history and several offer subspecialty training in that field (mostly at the graduate level). Some universities to check out include Ohio State, North Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A & M, Duke, Penn State, Kansas, and Kansas State. A number of British universities also offer that subspecialty.
1 Like
Gettysburg might interest you, but it clearly is strongest in Civil War history.
1 Like
In an effort to assess who has the most interesting history curriculum, I have a few questions about whether any history departments talk about the following totally awesome history subjects:
American history: Betsy Ross having sex with a Hessian
Japanese history: the meiji restoration and Saito or the Shinsengumi
classics: anything about the inception of the word “equites” for a class of people between plebian and patrician
European history: the story of Henry VIII and his wives including the bride left at the altar and the near sentencing of Elizabeth I to death
military history: the talk between McClellan and Lincoln after the battle of Antietam and what exactly the disagreement was there
Russian history: Rasputin, how he hypnotized Alexi to stop hemophilia, how sinned and forgave, and how he ingested much arsenic before being drowned in the Volga.
It appears you’re looking for a War History Trivia department, which you’re unlikely to find.
1 Like
Any American university is going to make you take unrelated courses.
If you’ve got the money and stats to get in, and would be happy studying abroad, you could take a look at King’s College London (part of the University of London). They have a very well respected War Studies Department:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/war-studies-ba.aspx
1 Like