The Study of War History at Oxford, 1862–1990

The Chichele professorship of the history of war at Oxford is just eighty years old, but the work in this academic area at Oxford predates that at any major university in the English-speaking world. As a subject of major academic interest, military history with strategic and defence studies have only in relatively recent years spread more widely, with a fully established centre at King’s College, London, and a number of more recently created university posts in the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and South Africa, as well as in Canada and the United States. With the rapid proliferation of the subject in universities today, the story of the study of war history at Oxford provides some longer-range perspective in the way in which one university dealt with the subject, within the broader context of general academic development, the parallel contributions of the service colleges and the changing experience of the forces themselves.