Military welfare history: what is it and why should it be considered?

Abstract

Military welfare is a major yet abstract sub-field of warfare studies and warfare history, which interrogates the multitude of welfare, care, medical provisions and social policies that have existed at different times and within different social and political spaces relative to and for the benefit of armed forces personnel and their families or dependents. As a scholarly project military welfare history is both well developed and still evolving. It comprises a substantive community of scholars who have produced a robust body of literature. Yet, despite all of the scholarship that has existed since the 1960s, and more especially since the 1990s, military welfare history remains estranged from mainstream warfare history. Thus, it is the purpose of this special edition to encourage transformation in three ways: firstly, by highlighting or reacquainting a cross-section of scholars with the existence of this diverse but exclusive sub-field of warfare and welfare history that has existed as long as warfare itself; secondly, by highlighting the diversity of recent and current scholarship in this sub-field, and thirdly, by highlighting the existence of an academic network that has the explicit purpose of bringing together scholars in this diverse sub-field.