ABSTRACT
It is something of a cliché to say warfare influences society as much as society influences warfare. The motives that drive war are socially constructed, and the norms and practices by which war is waged are socially derived. The conduct of war is as much a social experience as it is a personal and political one; it is at once shared, singular, and exploitable. The history of war and society helps readers understand these three dimensions, and not only these. But perhaps the most important contribution such history can make, as Michael Howard (1975) has demonstrated, is that the extent to which we appreciate how much war and society transform each other is contingent on what we know about each. And what we know about each will change, so says Howard, as we gain distance from the defining historical events of a period, such as world wars and radical cultural movements.
