Ian C. Hope. A Scientific Way of War: Antebellum Military Science, West Point, and the Origins of American Military Thought .
2016; Oxford University Press; Volume: 121; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ahr/121.3.935
ISSN1937-5239
Autores Tópico(s)Chinese history and philosophy
ResumoFor at least half a century, the critiques of Samuel P. Huntington and Russell F. Weigley have largely dominated the historical consensus on the United States Military Academy at West Point and the American regular army before the Civil War. For most of the nineteenth century, the argument goes, West Point’s purely “military” education was lacking. Supposedly the nation’s military academy was really an engineering school; whatever strategic thought existed in the Academy consisted of a narrow and uncritical focus on the writings of Antoine Henri Jomini. The American approach to war, exemplified at West Point, was “narrowly technical, restrictively ‘Jominian’” (4), and it inhibited the professionalization of the officer corps. According to this critique, in other words, the antebellum U.S. Army officer may have been a competent engineer, but he was not a thoughtful strategist. Ian C. Hope’s persuasively crafted book A Scientific Way of War: Antebellum Military Science, West Point, and the Origins of American Military Thought makes it impossible to simply accept those assumptions any longer.
Referência(s)