Since others have made the case for a political bias against military history, let me make the case for an adverse judgment based on the real shortcomings of military history. To begin with, those who compare us with women's history, ethnic history, and so on, overlook the fact that such fields have created categories of historical analysis that command the attention of historians in other fields. The fact that the more mediocre scholars dress up commonsense ideas in the language of gender, or construct pseudosophisticated towers of Babel, should not blind us to the fact that the best gender history is imaginative and illuminating. Much more damaging is the fact that we military historians have yet to create a category of historical analysis with anything like the interpretive power of gender, race, or class. We military historians can point out again and again that much historical change occurs violently, but that's not enough.
Any rube can see that such is the case.
Indeed, most of our intellectual definitions are borrowed from diplomatic, government, and professional military authorities. We haven't examined our field afresh. Women's historians sometimes seem morbidly absorbed with theory. We're not nearly theoretical enough. I think it's nuts to assert that the rest of the historical community isn't interested in the military dimension of human affairs.