Introduction to the Second Edition
This Guide was born in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Having traveled there to read seventeenth-century military literature, I began by assembling a list of essential works from Pohler’s invaluable bibliography. But to conserve my valuable time in Paris, I consulted the copy of the National Union Catalog kept at the B.N. to see which books I might find in Chicago or even in Champaign. I was surprised to see how much of my list was available in the Midwest. Then and there I resolved to make a systematic search for sources that I could use at home, without the expense of an international journey.
The noted French historian Richard Cobb once relegated American scholars to a secondary role in European historical writing because they were hampered by only occasional and limited access to archival documents. This Guide is intended to improve that access by alerting midwestern scholars to the rich funds of original materials stored in their own back yard. Less an erudite exercise than a practical tool, the Guide does not pretend to list everything that has been published, but only those items that exist in the heartland. It will help to free midwestern historians from exclusive reliance upon infrequent and costly expeditions to the old country by allowing them to benefit from the kind of four or five day research forays that Europeans can make. In particular, I hope that it aids graduate students to do creative research with primary sources early in their student careers. It is sad to see energetic students with exciting ideas crash in seminar because they cannot locate sources to test their hypotheses.
This second edition of the Guide represents considerable revision and addition. However, while it is twice as long as the original, this second effort must remain incomplete. George Satterfield and I based the first edition on searches of the card catalogs in four libraries. In order to expand the entries for the second edition, we took the first as our beginning, and used the list of authors and works there to search the National Union Catalog for further entries. Besides an increased number of entries, the other major difference between this volume and the Guide’s first version is the provision of an index, which should make the book far more useful.
When the first edition appeared two years ago, we regarded it as a work in progress and promised a more expanded collection sometime down the road. This is it. However, the labor that went into this volume has been so great that we have no plans to offer a third edition in the future.
Once again I must plead guilty that this volume speaks in a decidedly French accent, since both George and I specialize in French history. This is true both in its emphasis on French works and in its organization. However, we have done our best to include works in English, German, Spanish and other languages.
In setting up the sections, we decided on a reasonable breakdown of works as either treatises, dealing with military topics in general, or histories, dealing with particular wars or eras of conflict. Treatises are listed by date of publication and histories by the wars they discuss. When a work covers several conflicts, as in the case of a general’s memoirs, it appears under “miscellany” by century. Since in many cases it was difficult to decide where to place a particular work, the reader is advised to consult the index of authors as well as the various sections of this Guide in order to locate all the works by a particular author.
Some modern editions have been cited when it seemed relevant, but in general we have restricted ourselves to works written and published in the early modern era. We took 1789 as our cut-off, since the French Revolution heralded a new epoch.
Why have we lavished this effort on the early modern period, particularly when military history is usually practiced with a present-minded orientation? The early modern era holds the answers to some of the most fundamental questions in history. I am reminded of those Renaissance scholars who collected and studied classical works in the firm conviction that they held great universal truths that could be unlocked through humanistic scholarship. It gave Italian libraries something of the air of excitement and discovery that today hangs about scientific laboratories. I see my own chosen field of study in much the same way as Renaissance humanists viewed Plato and Cicero. The examination of the three centuries between 1500 and 1789 can illuminate the absolutely fundamental relationship between war and history, in particular how military institutions shaped societies and states. A proper understanding of the military variable in early modern Europe may even spawn a new vision of history to compete with those that stress economics and class alone. Our Guide is meant to encourage and facilitate scholarship in this vital area.
John A. Lynn
September 1993