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Behind The Campaign In Flanders By J. M. Anderson

1574 Words7 Pages

Mathew Smith Anderson was a renowned professor at the London School of Economics where he taught international history. He obtained his degree from Edinburgh University with a brief intermission while serving in the RAF in World War II; he would return to complete his doctoral dissertation on “British Diplomatic Relations with the Mediterranean, 1763-1778.” Finally, he received a job offer at the London School of Economics as a Lecturer. His background and education made him a viable candidate to write a book on the origin of modern military society. Dr. Anderson acknowledged that military experience and opinions could suffice for excellent books on the history of war; however, it limits the ability to armed or naval operations. He was concerned …show more content…

Anderson's book; these limitations have put his book below the standards of a historian. There was a paucity of primary sources in Anderson's bibliography; sources that provided the most accurate information included J.M. Deanne’s A Journal of the Campaign in Flanders, and Comte J.P.E de Merode-Westerloo’s Memoires du Feld-Marechal Comte de Merode-Westerloo. J.M. Deanne's work found at British Library was an older source that could provide more accurate information regarding military campaigns taken up in Flanders. Comte de Merode-Westerloo’s work is a primary source which provides a social account of his experience. There are many examples of soldiers' military experiences like that of Marshal Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban, but Dr. Anderson took on the accounts of Czar Peter I, Louis XIV, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and others. There was not a protagonist to follow within the book; there are too many characters and too broad a scope for a historian to reconnoiter. Dr. Anderson failed to take into account other primary sources from other archives across the English …show more content…

Anderson’s work created an origin of modern warfare, it failed to compare European military experience of soldiers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century with that of more recent military experience. Instead of writing so much about the numerical superiority of forces or trade, it should have taken into account the effects on the soldiers. He argued successfully that the economics of Europe of this period represented the increasing bureaucracy and expenditure of modern armies, but did not display an overall qualitative argument of experience and operations. It is more rational that the origin began at the start of the eighteenth century with more examples of meritocracy, increasing loyalty to the state, and less desertion among armies. The secondary sources were at best average, and the bibliography did not exhibit the full list of sources. More disturbing than this, is Dr. Anderson’s plagiarism of The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun. War and Society in the Europe of the Old Regime 1618-1789 cannot convince a historian to use it for their work or as a monograph for primary sources.

Bibliography
Khaldun, Ibn. The Muqaddimah. New York: Bollingen Foundation Inc., 1958.
“M.S. Anderson Writer of History Textbooks.” The Independent. 2006. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/m-s-Anderson-6105829.html
Parker, Geoffrey. “Review: War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime, 1618-1789 by M. S. Anderson.” The English Historical Review 106, no. 421 (1991):

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