hacker - engineering a new order

8/9/2019 Hacker - Engineering a New Order

1/28

Engineering a New Order: Military Institutions, Technical Education, and the Rise of the

Industrial StateAuthor(s): Barton C. HackerSource: Technology and Culture, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 1-27Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Society for the Historyof TechnologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3106453

Accessed: 21/03/2010 09:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Society for the History of Technology and The Johns Hopkins University Press are collaborating with JSTOR

to digitize, preserve and extend access to Technology and Culture.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3106453?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhuphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhuphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/3106453?origin=JSTOR-pdf


2/28

Engineering a New Order:MilitaryInstitutions,TechnicalEducation, and theRise of theIndustrial StateBARTON C. HACKER

Gunpowder began the military revolution that molded the modernworld. Relatively narrow technical changes in weapons and tactics onearly modern European battlefields set in train the transformation ofalmost every aspect of Western civilization, argued Michael Roberts in1956.1 Widely discussed and critically challenged, his version of theprecise nature and timing of change on the equation's military sidenow commands only qualified respect.2 But the other side of theequation, Roberts's claim of great social consequences flowing fromchanging military technique, remains substantially intact. It retainsenough plausibility, in fact, to suggest thinking about similar processesin other eras.

DR HACKERs the historian at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Earlierversions of this article were presented at meetings of the Pacific Sociological Associa-tion, Albuquerque, N.M., 1985; International Congress of History of Science, Berkeley,Calif., 1985; Symposium of the International Committee for the History of Technology,Dresden, 1986; Inter-University Centre of Postgraduate Studies, Dubrovnik, 1987;Columbia History of Science Society, Friday Harbor, Wash., 1987; and Society for theHistory of Technology, Raleigh, N.C., 1987. The author wishes to thank the severalfriendly critics who helped him reshape and sharpen his argument.'Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560-1660 (Belfast, 1956), revised andreprinted under the same title in Michael Roberts, Essaysin SwedishHistory(Minneap-olis, 1967), pp. 195-225, with a second essay on "Gustav Adolf and the Art of War,"pp. 56-81. For a recent survey of the technology, see Christian Beaufort-Spontin,Harnisch und WaffeEuropas:Die militiirischeAusriistung m 17. Jahrhundert(Munich, 1982).2Geoffrey Parker, "The 'Military Revolution,' 1560-1660-a Myth?" Journal ofModern History48 (1976): 195-214, The MilitaryRevolution: MilitaryInnovation and theRise of theWest,1500-1800 (Cambridge, 1988); Bert S. Hall and Kelly R. DeVries, "The'Military Revolution' Revisited," Technologynd Culture31 (1990): 500-507; Colin Jones,"New Military History for Old? War and Society in Early Modern Europe," EuropeanStudies Review 12 (1982): 97-108; Simon Adams, "Tactics or Politics? 'The MilitaryRevolution' and the Hapsburg Hegemony, 1525-1648," in Tools of War: Instruments,Ideas,and Institutionsof Warfare,1445-1871, ed. John A. Lynn (Champaign, Ill., 1990),pp. 28-52.? 1993 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved.0040-165X/93/3401-0005$01.00

1


3/28

2 Barton C. HackerMilitary technological change of vast scope disturbed the 19thcentury, beginning with small arms and guns vastly quicker-firingand longer-ranged than the weapons they displaced. Other changesfollowed ever more rapidly, spreading through the military system,then throughout society. Ultimately, the result was a new social,political, and economic order. Like its early modern predecessor, this19th-century transformation deserves the label military revolutionbecause its consequences far transcended strictly military concerns.The 20th-century industrial state is no less the product of a19th-century military-technological revolution than was the 18th-century nation-state of the classic military revolution Robertsspotlighted.The present undertaking is more survey than analysis, the subjectbeing far too complex for a brief essay. Accordingly, I address onlycertain aspects of the 19th-century military-technological revolution,its 18th-century roots, and its 20th-century fruits. Pragmatismlargely dictates my focus on the United States-the needed materialis more readily available in my provincial outpost-though I doinclude comparative remarks where they seem appropriate. Despitesuch self-imposed limits, this essay may still prove helpful to readersseeking an entry to published work on certain relevant topics. It mayalso serve as a sounding board for several useful themes, chiefamong them the interaction between military and other socialinstitutions. Only by understanding such interactions may we beginto explain the course and outcome of 19th-century military techno-logical change.My touchstone is the spread of a novel usage to replace, or at leastaugment, what had normally in the past been called "the art of war."During the 19th century, "military science" or "military art andscience" largely supplanted the older term. Methods of educatingofficers and training soldiers altered sharply. These changes hadimportant implications for technical education and the organizationof work outside as well as within the armed forces. Corporatemanagement, patterns of professionalization in related fields, the veryprocess of industrialization drew on military models and battened onmilitary funding. But traffic flowed both ways. Military technologyand organization also reflected outside changes. Becoming visible aswell were early signs of the complementary civilianization of thearmed forces and militarization of society that so marks the 20thcentury. Although the nature of military expertise mattered, just asdid the nature of special competence in other fields, military practiceand values played a special role in furthering the process of socialchange that created the modern world.


4/28

Engineering a New Order 3MilitaryEducation and Professionalization

Military institutions changed dramatically in the 19th century,driven in large part by technological innovation. Between 1815 and1914, soldiers traded smoothbores for rifles and grapeshot forshrapnel. Doffing gaudy colors in favor of field gray or khaki, they leftfiring lines and maneuver for ground cover and trenches. Repeatingrifles, smokeless powder, quick-firing long-range field artillery, andmachine guns multiplied firepower and expanded the killing zone.Runners gave way to telegraph and wireless, muscle to steam andpetrol. Staffs burgeoned to direct vast armies as nations prepared toput millions of men under arms. Virtually every aspect of military lifewas altered if not transformed, and the rate of change seemed alwaysto increase.3Innovations so radical scarcely passed unnoticed. Novel weaponsfigured prominently, for instance, in popular turn-of-the-centurycompendia on the progress of invention.4 Yet assessing their importsurpassed most contemporary imaginations, baffling military andcivilian minds alike.5 Indeed, many have blamed the catastrophe ofWorld War I on European armies blind to the demands of a swiftlychanging technology, though that judgment may be too harsh.6

3Recent surveys include Trevor N. Dupuy, The Evolution of Weaponsand Warfare(Indianapolis, 1980), pt. 3, "The Age of Technological Change," pp. 169-335; Rob-ert L. O'Connell, Of Arms and Men: A Historyof War,Weapons,and Aggression New York,1989), chap. 11, "Death Machine," pp. 189-211; Martin van Creveld, Technology ndWar: From 2000 B.C. to the Present (New York, 1989), pt. 3, "The Age of Systems,1830-1945," pp. 153-232.4Examples include Edward W. Byrn, TheProgressof Invention in theNineteenthCentury(New York, 1900), chap. 30, "Firearms and Explosives," pp. 394-419; Charles H.Cochrane, ModernIndustrialProgress Philadelphia, 1904), "The Race for Supremacy onthe Seas,"pp. 147-74, and "The Tools of Destruction," pp. 175-93; Robert Cochrane,The Romanceof Industryand Invention (London, n.d.), chap. 6, "Big Guns, Small-Arms,and Ammunition," pp. 152-91.5I. F Clarke, VoicesProphesyingWar, 1763-1984 (New York, 1966); Hew Strachan,European Armiesand the Conductof War (London, 1983), chap. 8, "Technology and ItsImpact on Tactics," pp. 108-29; Andrew Wheatcroft, "Technology and the MilitaryMind: Austria, 1866-1914," in War,Economyand the MilitaryMind, ed. Geoffrey Bestand Andrew Wheatcroft (Totowa, N.J., 1976), pp. 45-57; Dennis E. Showalter,"Weapons and Ideas in the Prussian Army from Frederick the Great to Moltke theElder," in Lynn, ed., Toolsof War,pp. 177-210.6John Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun (New York, 1975), chap. 5, "TheTrauma: 1914-18," pp. 111-47; Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: MilitaryDecisionMaking and the Disastersof 1914 (Ithaca, N.Y, 1984); Michael Howard, "Menagainst Fire: Expectations of War in 1914," in Military Strategyand theOrigins of the FirstWorldWar,ed, Steven E. Miller (Princeton, NJ., 1984), pp. 41-58; Tim Travers, TheKilling Ground: The British Army,the WesternFront and the Emergenceof Modern Warfare,1900-1918 (London, 1987).


5/28


6/28

Engineering a New Order 5more, asJohn Lynn notes, institutions and ideas are just as much toolsof war as hardware."

Military education was one of the areas transformed during the19th century, in both subject and method. Soldiering had begun as acraft. Like all crafts, it passed such skills as weapon-handling to novicepractitioners through the example of elders and on-the-job training.During the early modern military revolution, these "skills weredivided, simplified, rationalized, and systematized to be taught rou-tinely, quickly, and efficiently."'2 Standardized techniques for impart-ing basic skills spread to all armed forces.'3 Proving widely adaptable,they could be extended to less obviously military areas within armies,training cooks, for instance, or radio repairers.'4 Nor were theylimited to strictly military contexts. Technical training of many kindsgrew from military roots.15 Traces of that origin survive, and to this

Construction f Technological ystems:New Directions n theSociologyand Historyof Technology(Cambridge, Mass., 1987)."John A. Lynn, "Preface," in Lynn, ed., Toolsof War(n. 2 above), p. vii."Barton C. Hacker and Sally L. Hacker, "Military Institutions and the Labor Process:Noneconomic Sources of Technological Change, Women's Subordination, and theOrganization of Work," Technology nd Culture 28 (1987): 743-75, on p. 768. Vividlyillustrating the process is Jacob de Gheyn, Wapenhandelinghe an RoersMusquettenendeSpiessen The Hague, 1607), facsimile reprint as The Exerciseof Armes,with commentarybyJ. B. Kist (New York, 1971)."'Christopher Duffy, The Military Experienceof the Age of Reason (New York, 1988),chap. 3, "The Private Soldier," pp. 89-136; Alan Ramsay Skelley, The VictorianArmyatHome: TheRecruitment nd Terms nd Conditionsof theBritishRegular,1859-1899 (Londonand Montreal, 1977), chap. 2, "Army Education," pp. 85-123; Edward M. Coffman,The OldArmy:A Portraitof theAmericanArmy n Peacetime,1784-1898 (New York, 1986),pp. 156-66, 336-40, 351-57; John Shelton Curtiss, The Russian Armyunder NicholasI,1825-1855 (Durham, N.C., 1965), chaps. 6, 7; Michael D. Stephens, ed., TheEducatingof Armies(London, 1989).4C. R. Dooley, Final Report of the National ArmyTraining Detachments,Later Known asVocationalSectionS.A.T.C. [Students' Army Training Corps] (Washington, D.C., March1919); Louis E. Keefer, Scholars in Foxholes: The Story of the Army SpecializedTrainingProgram in World WarII (Jefferson, N.C., 1988); Harold Wool, The Military Specialist:SkilledManpower or the ArmedForces Baltimore, 1968); Harold E Clark and Harold S.Sloan, Classrooms n theMilitary:An Accountof Education in the ArmedForcesof the UnitedStates (New York, 1964), chap. 3, "On-Duty Education: Enlisted Personnel Courses,"pp. 27-42; Martin Binkin, MilitaryTechnology nd Defense Manpower(Washington, D.C.,1986).5MaxJ. Okenfuss, "Technical Training in Russia under Peter the Great," History ofEducation Quarterly(1973), pp. 325-45; C. R. Day, "Making Men and Training Tech-nicians: Boarding Schools of the Ecoles d'Arts et Metiers during the NineteenthCentury," in The Making of Frenchmen: Current Direction in the History of Education inFrance, 1679-1979, ed. Donald N. Baker and Patrick J. Harrigan (Waterloo, Ont.,1980), pp. 381-96; Penn Borden, "The Army and Vocational Education," in her


7/28

6 Barton C. Hackerday military training continues to transfer skills to civil society.'6 Indue course, the techniques devised for military ends proved useful forstill other purposes.'7 Among them, one of the earliest and mostpersistent involved the armed forces in modernization, teachingrecruits the basic skills of modern life.'8

Apprenticeship or on-the-job training remained the rule for thosedestined by birth to command long after that had ceased to be true forthe lower ranks or technical officers. To officers in the combat arms,infantry and cavalry above all, war remained an art, proficiencyachieved only by practice. But the 18th century saw such viewschallenged, if not overthrown.'9 Reformers conceived the possibilityof a military science allied to improved formal education for officers.20

Civilian Indoctrinationof theMilitary: WorldWarI and Future Implications or theMilitary-IndustrialComplex New York, 1989), pp. 48-71."Commission on Accreditation of Service Experiences, A Guide to the Evaluation ofEducational Experiences n the Armed Services:1954 Revision, Formal Service Courses andSchools (Washington, D.C., 1954); ibid., 1969 Edition, ed. Cornelius P. Turner (Wash-ington, D.C., 1969); A. B. Cherns and P. A. Clark, "Task and Organization: Militaryand Civilian," in Taskand Organization,ed. Eric J. Miller (London, 1976), pp. 151-72;Stephen I. Mangum and David E. Ball, "Military Skill Training: Some Evidence ofTransferability," ArmedForcesand Society13 (1987): 425-41.'7Denis Ryan, "Education in the British Army,"in Stephens, ed., Educating of Armies,pp. 75-89; W. H. G. Armytage, "Battles for the Best: Some Educational Aspects of theWelfare-Warfare State in England," in Historyand Education: The Educational Uses of thePast, ed. Paul Nash (New York, 1970), pp. 283-307; Edward Bernard Glick, Soldiers,Scholars,and Society:The Social Impact of the AmericanMilitary (Pacific Palisades, Calif.,1971), chap. 5, "The Military in Civilian Education and Training," pp. 41-61; John A.Ellis, ed., MilitaryContributionsoInstructionalTechnologyNew York, 1986). See also U.S.Department of the Army, Techniquesof Military Instruction, Field Manual No. 21-6,May 19 (Washington, D.C., 1954)."John Bushnell, "Peasants in Uniform: The Tsarist Army as a Peasant Society,"Journal of SocialHistory 13 (1980): 564-76; Cornelis M. Schulten, "Armee neerlandaiseet education nationale au dix-neuvieme siecle," in Acta of the International Commission fMilitary History, no. 5: Bucarest 10-17 VIII 1980 (Bucharest, 1981), pp. 142-51;Thomas M. Duffy, "Literacy Instruction in the Military,"Armed Forcesand Society 11(1985): 437-67; Colin Stevenson, Challenging Adult Illiteracy: Reading and WritingDisabilities in the British Army (New York, 1985). See also Nicole Ball, "Military asModernizer," in her The Military in the Development Process: A Guide to the Issues(Claremont, Calif., 1981), pp. 2-6, 24-25."G. Teitler, The Genesisof the ProfessionalOfficers'Corps(Beverly Hills, Calif., 1977);Lee Kennett, "Tacticsand Culture: The Eighteenth-Century Experience," in Acta of theInternationalCommissionof Military History,pp. 152-59; John Childs, Armiesand Warfarein Europe, 1648-1789 (New York, 1982), pp. 91-100; Duffy, TheMilitary Experienceofthe Age of Reason; Azar Gat, The Origins of Military Thought:From the EnlightenmenttoClausewitz Oxford, 1989).20KathleenHardesty Doig, "War in the Reform Programme of the Encyclopedie,"Warand Society6 (May 1988): 1-10, esp. pp. 7-8; David D. Bien, "The Army in the French


8/28

Engineering a New Order 7This, perhaps as much as any factor, accounts for the founding andspread of military schools and academies from the mid-18th centuryonward.2' During the following century, formal schooling became partof every officer's career.22By the later 19th century, the concept of military science hadbecome a commonplace. In 1878 a professor of military engineering,Colonel J. B. Wheeler, drew the distinction between art and sciencefor cadets at West Point: principles, analyses, rules "all these belong tothe 'Scienceof War.'The application of these great principles and rulesbelongs to the 'Art of War.'"23 Another officer, Captain Henry Met-calfe, expressed the meaning of science and art for many 19th-century thinkers in his classic 1885 management treatise. Science andart were allied but distinct. "Art seeks to produce certain effects,Science ... [to investigate] the causes of these effects." Regardless ofthe art, he continued, "there always seems room for a correspondingscience, collecting and classifying the records of the past so that the

Enlightenment: Reform, Reaction and Revolution," Past and Present, no. 85 (1979),pp. 68-98; William O. Shanahan, "Enlightenment and War: Austro-Prussian MilitaryPractice, 1760-1790," in East CentralEuropean Societyand War in the Pre-RevolutionaryEighteenth Century, ed. Gunther E. Rothenberg, Bela K. Kiraly, and Peter E Sugar(Boulder, Colo., 1982), pp. 83-111, esp. pp. 95-97; Charles Edward White, TheEnlightened Soldier: Scharnhorstand the "MilitdrischeGesellschaft" n Berlin, 1801-1805(New York, 1989), esp. chap. 4, "An Aristocracy of Education," pp. 87-120.2'Andre Corvisier, Armiesand Societies n Europe, 1494-1789, trans. Abigail T. Siddall(Bloomington, Ind., 1979), pp. 105-9; David D. Bien, "Military Education in 18thCentury France: Technical and Non-technical Determinants," with comments by JohnShy, Thomas P. Hughes, and Gunther E. Rothenberg, in Science, Technology,andWarfare:The Proceedingsof the Third Military History Symposium,United StatesAir ForceAcademy,8-9 May 1969, ed. Monte D. Wright and Lawrence J. Paszek (ColoradoSprings, Colo., 1971), pp. 51-80; Johann Christoph Allmayer-Beck, "The Establish-ment of the Theresan Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt," in Rothenberg et al.,eds., East Central European Societyand War, pp. 115-21; E B. Sullivan, "The RoyalAcademy at Portsmouth, 1729-1806," Mariner'sMirror 63 (1977): 311-26.22Military ducation at all levels is a major subject in Emory Upton, Armiesof Asia andEurope:EmbracingOfficialReportson theArmiesofJapan, China, India, Persia, Italy,Russia,Austria, Germany,France, and England (New York, 1878; reprint, New York, 1968). Seealso Henry Barnard, MilitarySchoolsand Coursesof Instruction n theScienceand Artof War,rev. ed. (New York, 1872); Hew Strachan, Wellington'sLegacy:The Reform of the BritishArmy,1830-1854 (Manchester, 1984), chap. 4.2, "The Rising Professionalism of theOfficers: Education," pp. 121-45; Paddy Griffith, Military Thought in the FrenchArmy,1815-1851 (Manchester, 1989), chap. 8, "The Military Schools," pp. 133-48; KarlDemeter, TheGermanOfficer-Corpsn Societyand State,1650-1945, trans. Angus Malcolm(New York, 1965), pp. 73-102; Coffman, The Old Army(n. 13 above), pp. 96-102.23J.B. Wheeler, A Courseof Instruction in the Elementsof the Art and Scienceof War:Forthe Useof theCadetsof the United StatesMilitary Academy New York, 1878), p. 7. Emphasisin original.


9/28

8 Barton C. Hackerfuture operations of the art may be more effective." Arsenal admin-istration, Metcalfe's specialty, provided a concrete example: It "is ingreat measure an art, and depends upon the application to a greatvariety of cases of certain principles, which, taken together, make up. . the science of administration."24

Pursuing the art of war could now begin from a solid base, theunderlying principles codified as military science to be taught in theclassroom. Military science gained support as an attempt to abstractand systematize a body of esoteric knowledge suited to indoctrinatingthe 19th century's growing numbers of nontraditional candidates forofficer status. Like other professionalizing fields, notably engineering,the armed forces of Europe and America faced an influx of middle-class men seeking careers.25Presumably lacking the genetic predispo-sition of their aristocratic comrades, they needed concrete and readilyreproducible examples: schematic maps all could see, war games allcould play, rules all could memorize. None of these teaching aids werenew, but their use burgeoned during the 19th century and became astaple of the 20th.26Paradoxically, military education also grew more complex andsophisticated even as some of its subjects became oversimplified andstandardized. The reoriented curricula of older schools in Europeand the United States added courses in strategy and policy to thefamiliar tactics and technology. At new schools founded for that verypurpose, postgraduate military training became first available, then a24HenryMetcalfe, The Costof Manufacturesand the Administrationof Workshops, ublicand Private (New York, 1885), as excerpted in Harwood F Merrill, ed., Classics of

Management New York, 1960), pp. 47-56, quote on p. 47.25OliverAllen Ray, "The Imperial Russian Army Officer,"Political ScienceQuarterly76(1961): 576-92; Robert A. Kann, "The Social Prestige of the Officer Corps in theHabsburg Empire from the Eighteenth Century to 1918," in War and Society n EastCentralEurope, vol. 1: Special Topicsand Generalizationson the 18th and 19th Centuries,ed.Bela K. Kiraly and Gunther E. Rothenberg (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1979), pp. 113-37;DanielJ. Hughes, "Occupational Origins of Prussia's Generals, 1871-1914," CentralEuropeanHistory 13 (1980): 3-33; John M. Gates, "The Alleged Isolation of US ArmyOfficers in the Late 19th Century," Parameters10 (September 1980): 32-45.26FrankSnyder, "What Is a War Game?" Naval War CollegeReview (Autumn 1989),pp. 47-54; Peter P. Perla, "War Games, Analyses, and Exercises," Naval War CollegeReview (Spring 1987), pp. 44-51; Garry D. Brewer and Martin Shubik, The WarGame:A Critiqueof MilitaryProblemSolving (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pt. 2, "WarGames in thePast,"pp. 45-74; John Prados, PentagonGames:Wargames nd the AmericanMilitary(NewYork, 1987); Alfred H. Hausrath, VentureSimulationin War,Business,and Politics (NewYork, 1971); John I. Alger, The Questfor Victory:The History of the Principles of War(Westport, Conn., 1982). See also Sally L. Hacker, "The Mathematization of Engineer-ing: Limits on Women and the Field," in Machina ex Dea: Feminist PerspectivesonTechnology,d. Joan Rothschild (New York, 1983), pp. 38-58.


10/28

Engineering a New Order 9required prelude to higher command.7 Strategic and other highermilitary studies in the United States proliferated in the context ofturn-of-the-century reform movements that affected military as wellas civil society.28In the 20th century such studies have become acentral feature of advanced military education.29 All such courses andprograms pointed toward professionalization, with officers educatedto wield sanctioned violence responsibly.30

'Ira L. Reeves, Military Education in the United States(Burlington, Vt., 1914); Timo-thy K. Nenninger, The LeavenworthSchoolsand the Old Army:Education, Professionalism,and the Officer Corps of the United States Army, 1881-1918 (Westport, Conn., 1978);George S. Pappas, Prudens futuri: The US Army War College, 1901-1967 (CarlisleBarracks, Penn., 1967); Benjamin Franklin Cooling, "A Suggested Guide to theCurricular Archives of the U.S. Army War College, 1907-1940," U.S. Army MilitaryHistory Research Collection, Special Bibliography no. 8 (Carlisle Barracks, Penn.,1973); Ronald Spector, Professorsof War: The Naval WarCollegeand theDevelopmentof theNaval Profession (Newport, R.I., 1977); Brian Bond, The VictorianArmy and the StaffCollege, 1854-1914 (London, 1972); AureleJ. Violette, "Reforms of Naval OfficerEducation in Russia during the Reign of Alexander II," European Studies Review 6(1976): 427-48.28PeterKarsten, "Armed Progressives: The Military Reorganizes for the AmericanCentury," in Building the Organizational Society,ed. Jerry Israel (New York, 1972),pp. 197-232, as reprinted in Peter Karsten, ed., The Military in America: From theColonial Era to the Present (New York, 1980), pp. 229-71; James L. Abrahamson,AmericaArmsfor a New Century:The Making of a GreatMilitaryPower (New York, 1981),pt. 1, "The Military Renaissance," pp. 3-62; Stephen Skowronek, Building a NewAmerican State: The Expansion of National AdministrativeCapacities,1877-1920 (Cam-bridge, 1982), chap. 4, "Patching the Army: The Limits of Provincial Virtue,"pp. 85-120; William R. Roberts, "Reform and Revitalization, 1890-1903," in AgainstAll Enemies:Interpretations f AmericanMilitaryHistory rom Colonial Times o thePresent,ed.Kenneth J. Hagan and William R. Roberts (New York, 1986), pp. 197-218; Timo-thy K. Nenninger, "The Army Enters the Twentieth Century, 1904-1917," in ibid.,pp. 219-34.2Correlli Barnett, "The Education of Military Elites," in Education and Social Structurein the TwentiethCentury,ed. Walter Laqueur and George L. Mosse (New York, 1967),pp. 15-35; John W. Masland and Laurence I. Radway, Soldiersand Scholars:MilitaryEducationand National Policy (Princeton, N.J., 1957); Gene M. Lyons and Louis Morton,Schoolsfor Strategy:Education and Research n National SecurityAffairs (New York, 1965);Lawrence J. Korb, ed., TheSystemor EducatingMilitaryOfficers n the U.S., InternationalStudies Occasional Paper no. 9 (Pittsburgh, 1976); Martin van Creveld, The Training ofOfficers:FromMilitaryProfessionalism o Irrelevance(New York, 1990).3?MorrisJanowitz, The Professional Soldier:A Social and Political Portrait (New York,1960); Jacques van Doom, The Soldierand SocialChange:ComparativeStudies n theHistoryand Sociologyof the Military (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1975); Bengt Abrahamsson, MilitaryProfessionalizationand Political Power (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1972); Maury D. Feld, TheStructureof Violence:Armed Forcesas Social Systems(Beverly Hills, Calif., 1977); GwynHarries-Jenkins, "The Education and Training of Military Elites," in Stephens, ed.,Educating of Armies (n. 13 above), pp. 13-38; Charles H. Coates and Roland J.Pellegrin, Military Sociology:A Study of American Military Institutions and Military Life(University Park, Md., 1965).


11/28

10 Barton C. HackerThough probably not the cause, profound and rapid social changenonetheless strongly colored the professionalization of armed forces,like other corporate groups during the 19th century. Radical changejustified concomitant claims to special expertise. Elaborating esotericbodies of knowledge and technique then allowed practitioners to limitaccess to the field. Codified and abstracted knowledge channeled theentry of candidates properly trained and indoctrinated. During the19th century many fields shifted from apprentice and other on-the-job methods of training new members toward school or other moreformal and abstract means of transmitting and perpetuating profes-sional culture.3' But special knowledge, special skill, and restrictednumbers only counted if a group could claim to serve higher socialpurposes. Promoting that claim was the key to professionalization.Only when society accepted professional training and competence associally needed and wanted could the newly defined corporate groupclaim special social privilege, which was, of course, the whole point.32Professionalizing groups all sought to make special schooling aprerequisite for professional entry, bureaucratic office, or masculineprivilege. Armed forces, however, were not merely one more instanceof a widespread 19th-century phenomenon. Military institutionsregularly pioneered the techniques of discipline, order, and privilegethat other social institutions adopted.33At one level, the support for adistinctive military science reflected concerns for institutional survivalduring a time of flux in technique and organization.34 More generally,

"Burton J. Bledstein, The Cultureof Professionalism:The Middle Class and the Develop-ment of Higher Education in America (New York, 1976); Konrad H. Jarausch, ed., TheTransformation f Higher Learning, 1860-1930: Expansion, Diversification,Social Opening,and Professionalizationn England, Germany,Russia, and the United States(Chicago, 1983).Compare Laurence Veysey, "The Plural Organized Worlds of the Humanities," in TheOrganizationof Knowledgein Modern America, 1860-1920, ed. Alexandra Oleson andJohn Voss (Baltimore, 1979), pp. 51-106, esp. pp. 57-64; Dorothy Ross, "TheDevelopment of the Social Sciences," in ibid., pp. 107-38, esp. pp. 116-21.32Eliot Freidson, ProfessionalPowers: A Studyof the Institutionalizationof FormalKnowl-edge (Chicago, 1986); Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism:A SociologicalAnalysis(Berkeley, Calif., 1977); Andrew Abbott, TheSystemof Professions:An Essayon theDivision of ExpertLabor(Chicago, 1988)."George A. Kourvetaris and Betty A. Dobratz, eds., WorldPerspectivesn the Sociologyof theMilitary (New Brunswick, N.J., 1977); Gwyn Harries-Jenkins, "The Sociology ofMilitary Institutions Today,"in Sociology:The Stateof theArt, ed. Tom Bottomore, StefanNowak, and Magdalena Sokolowska (London, 1982), pp. 129-45; David R. Segal andMady Wechsler Segal, "Change in Military Organization," Annual Review of Sociology9(1983): 151-70; Giuseppe Caforio, "The Military Profession: Theories of Change,"ArmedForcesand Society15 (1988): 55-69.3Samuel P.Huntington, The Soldierand the State: TheTheoryand Politicsof Civil-MilitaryRelations(Cambridge, Mass., 1959); Peter Karsten, The Naval Aristocracy:TheGoldenAge


12/28

Engineering a New Order 11however, it showed how institutions might respond to rapid socialchange and became a model of such response, often implicit butsometimes, as in engineering, overt.35Scientific management, medicalscience, social science, and a host of other 19th-century coinages, evenscience proper, all testify to the widely perceived value of coping withchange by turning lore into systematic knowledge.3 We need notignore the practical uses and social value of knowledge so arranged tosee that it benefits its possessors in more ways than one.37

Engineering Education and ManagementEngineering education, like engineering itself, had military roots.38The very term "civil engineer" appeared in the 18th century to name

of Annapolis and the Emergenceof Modern American Navalism (New York, 1972); RonaldSpector, "The Triumph of Professional Ideology: The U.S. Navy in the 1890s," in InPeace and War: Interpretationsof American Naval History, 1775-1978, ed. Kenneth J.Hagan (Westport, Conn., 1978), pp. 174-85; Skowronek, Building a NewAmericanState,chap. 7, "Reconstituting the Army: Professionalism, Nationalism, and the Illusion ofCorporatism," pp. 212-47; Gwyn Harries-Jenkins, "Professionalization in the Victo-rian Army," n TheMilitary,Militarism,and thePolity:Essays n HonorofMorrisJanowitz,ed.Michel Louis Martin and Ellen Stern McCrate (New York, 1983), pp. 93-112.S5GoranAhlstrom, Engineers and Industrial Growth:Higher TechnicalEducation and theEngineeringProfessionduring theNineteenthand Early TwentiethCenturies:France, Germany,Sweden and England (London, 1982); Daniel H. Calhoun, The American Civil Engineer:Origins and Conflict (Cambridge, Mass., 1960); Monte A. Calvert, The MechanicalEngineer in America, 1830-1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore, 1967);Edwin T. Layton, Jr., The Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibilityand the AmericanEngineering Profession (Cleveland, 1971); C. W. R. Gispen, "German Engineers andAmerican Social Theory: Historical Perspectives on Professionalization," ComparativeStudies n Societyand History30 (1988): 550-74; Kees Gispen, New Profession,Old Order:Engineers and GermanSociety,1815-1914 (Cambridge, 1990).3Frederick W.Taylor, ThePrinciplesof ScientificManagement 1911; reprint, New York,

1967); John Harley Warner, "Science in Medicine," Osiris ("Historical Writing onAmerican Science," ed. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt and Margaret W. Rossiter), 2d ser., 1(1985): 37-58; Hamilton Cravens, "History of the Social Sciences," in ibid., pp. 183-207; Don Martindale, TheNature and Typesof SociologicalTheory Boston, 1960), chap. 2,"The Birth of the Social Sciences," pp. 29-47; Sydney Ross, "Scientist:The Story of aWord," Annals of Science 18 (1962): 65-85."3SallyL. Hacker, "The Culture of Engineering: Woman, Workplace and Machine,"WomenStudiesInternational Quarterly4 (1981): 341-53, Pleasure, Power, and Technology:SomeTalesof Gender,Engineering, and theCooperativeWorkplaceBoston, 1989), esp. chap.3, "Discipline and Pleasure in Engineering," pp. 35-57; Daryl E. Chubin, "CareerPatterns of Scientists and Engineers," in Terry Connolly, Scientists, Engineers, andOrganizations Monterey, Calif., 1983), pp. 310-27; Robert Perrucci and Joel E. Gerstl,eds., The Engineers and the Social System New York, 1969).38Bertrand Gille, Engineers of the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass., 1966); George S.Emmerson, Engineering Education: A Social History (New York, 1973), chap. 2, "TheEarly Engineer, His Work and Education," pp. 22-42.


13/28

12 Barton C. Hackera new kind of practitioner: one who engineered something besidesfortifications or weapons (though roads, bridges, railways, and otherstate-sponsored civil projects may themselves betray more than a traceof military motive).9 Higher engineering education everywhere be-gan in military schools.40 Scarcely had the United States achievedindependence when George Washington urged the establishment of"Academies, one or more for the Instruction of the Art Military;particularly those Branches of it which respect Engineering andArtillery, which are highly essential, and the knowledge of which, ismost difficult to obtain."41Although other motives played a part, the1802 founding of the United States Military Academy at West Pointowed much to such concerns.42

Schools like West Point became and remained the chief way torecruit and train technical officers: engineers and gunners early,39S. B. Hamilton, "The French Civil Engineers of the Eighteenth Century," Transac-tions of the NewcomenSociety22 (1941-42): 149-59; Hans Straub, A History of CivilEngineering:An OutlinefromAncient to ModernTimes, rans. Erwin Rockwell (Cambridge,Mass., 1964), chap. 5, "The Advent of 'Civil Engineering' " pp. 105-38; Karl-HeinzManegold, "Technology Academised: Education and Training of the Engineer in theNineteenth Century," in The Dynamics of Scienceand Technology:Social Values,Technical

Norms and Scientific Criteria in the Development of Knowledge, ed. Wolfgang Krohn,Edwin T. Layton, Jr., and Peter Weingart (Dordrecht, 1978), pp. 137-58, esp.pp. 137-39.4Frederick B. Artz, The Developmentof TechnicalEducation in France, 1500-1850(Cambridge, Mass., 1966), chap. 2, "The Age of Enlightenment, 1715-1789," pp. 60-111; James E. King, Scienceand Rationalism in the Governmentof Louis XIV, 1661-1683(Baltimore, 1949; reprint, New York, 1972), pp. 274-83; Margaret Bradley, "ScientificEducation versus Military Training: The Influence of Napoleon Bonaparte on the EcolePolytechnique,"Annals of Science 32 (1975): 415-49; C. R. Day, "The Making ofMechanical Engineers in France: The Ecoles d'Arts et Metiers, 1803-1914," FrenchHistorical Studies 10 (1978): 439-60, esp. p. 440; John Hubbel Weiss, The Making ofTechnologicalMan: The SocialOrigins of FrenchEngineeringEducation (Cambridge, Mass.,1982), pp. 14-16.4"George Washington to Alexander Hamilton, "Sentiments on a Peace Establish-ment," May 2, 1783, The Writings of George Washington rom the Original ManuscriptSources, 39 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931-44), 26:374-98, as excerpted in Russell F. Weigley, ed., The American Military: Readings inthe History of the Military in American Society (Reading, Mass., 1969), pp. 3-8, quoteon p. 3.42Sidney Forman, "Why the United States Military Academy Was Established in1802," Military Affairs 29 (1965): 16-28; Russell F Weigley, Towardsan AmericanArmy:Military Thought rom Washington o Marshall (New York, 1962), chap. 4, "Dennis HartMahan: The Professionalism of West Point," pp. 38-53; Stephen E. Ambrose, Duty,Honor, Country:A History of WestPoint (Baltimore, 1966), chap. 1, "The Beginning,"pp. 1-23; Theodore J. Crackel, Mr. Jefferson'sArmy:Political and Social Reform of theMilitaryEstablishment,1801-1809 (New York, 1987), chap. 3, "The Founding of WestPoint," pp. 54-73.


14/28

Engineering a New Order 13other specialties in later years.43And, like vocational training tech-niques pioneered for troops, educational methods devised for tech-nical officers showed great adaptability. Graduates of West Pointjoined, sometimes founded, civil engineering programs and schoolselsewhere.4 Expertise derived from military technical training provedto have many uses, outside the army as well as within.45 Men trainedat West Point explored and mapped westward across the continent.They built forts, but they also built the network of roads andwaterways that began to crisscross the United States in the early 19thcentury, and then they built railroads.4In Europe, especially in France, the line between military and civilengineers often remained indistinct.47Engineering schools routinely

43PeterMichael Molloy, "Technical Education and the Young Republic: West Point asAmerica's Ecole Polytechnique, 1802-1833" (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1975);James L. Morrison, Jr., "TheBest Schoolin the World":WestPoint, thePre-Civil WarYears,1833-1866 (Kent, Ohio, 1986). See also Sidney Forman, WestPoint: A History of theUnited StatesMilitary Academy New York, 1950); Ambrose, Duty,Honor, Country;JosephEllis and Robert Moore, Schoolfor Soldiers:WestPoint and the Profession of Arms (NewYork, 1974)."James Gregory McGivern, First Hundred Yearsof Engineering Education in the UnitedStates (1807-1907) (Spokane, Wash., 1960); Calhoun, American Civil Engineer (n. 35above), chap. 2, "Creating an Engineer Supply," pp. 24-53; Frederick Rudolph, TheAmerican College and University: A History (New York, 1965), pp. 228-29; MarcusCunliffe, Soldiersand Civilians: The Martial Spirit in America,1775-1865 (Boston, 1968),pp. 170, 258-59; Christopher Jencks and David Riesman, The Academic Revolution(Garden City, N.Y., 1968), pp. 219-31; William Phelps Kimball et al., The FirstHundredYearsof theThayerSchoolof Engineeringat DartmouthCollege Hanover, N.H., 1971), chap.1, "Sylvanus Thayer Founds a School," pp. 1-17.45PaulA. Weinstein, "Occupational Convergence and the Role of the Military inEconomic Development," Explorations n EconomicHistory7 (1970): 325-46; Terry MarkAldrich, Rates of Return on Investment n TechnicalEducation in the Ante-bellumAmericanEconomy(New York, 1975); Robin Higham and Carol Brandt, eds., The United StatesArmy in Peacetime:Essays in Honor of the Bicentennial, 1775-1975 (Manhattan, Kans.,1975); Edward Bernard Glick, Peaceful Conflict: The Non-military Uses of the Military(Harrisburg, Penn., 1967).4William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West,1803-1863 (NewHaven, Conn., 1959), Explorationand Empire:TheExplorerand the Scientist n the Winningof the AmericanWest(New York, 1966); Francis Paul Prucha, Broadax and Bayonet: TheRole of the United StatesArmyin the Development of the Northwest,1815-1860 (Lincoln,Nebr., 1953), TheSwordof theRepublic:The United StatesArmyon theFrontier,1783-1846(New York, 1969); Forest G. Hill, Roads, Rails and Waterways:The ArmyEngineers andEarly Transportation (Norman, Okla., 1957); Todd Shallat, "Building Waterways,1802-1861: Science and the United States Army in Early Public Works,"Technology ndCulture31 (1990): 18-50.

47John H. Weiss, "The Lost Baton: The Politics of Intraprofessional Conflict inNineteenth-Century French Engineering," Journal of Social History 16 (1982): 3-19,"Bridges and Barriers: Narrowing Access and Changing Structure in the FrenchEngineering Profession, 1800-1850," in Professionsand the FrenchState, 1700-1900, ed.


15/28

14 Barton C. Hackerprovided the disciplined training required for those who wouldadminister the state.48They also trained the indispensable managersfor corporate enterprise.49 The matter was not so clear in the UnitedStates. In his influential study of the 19th-century rise of moderncorporations, Alfred Chandler acknowledges the West Point trainingof many of those who helped transform American economic life.Nonetheless, he explicitly rejects any direct military influencebecause few of them had much of an active army career.5 Bycentury's end, in fact, influence seemed to run the other way.Lieutenant Colonel William H. Carter, a leader in the fight for ageneral staff in the U.S. Army, could liken military leaders torailroad directors-"groups of men whose principal work was toobserve rival lines, to consider state and local laws, and to preparetheir systems to derive all possible advantage from future growth."51But this may reflect interaction and merged viewpoints more thancause and effect.Several lines of evidence suggest that, even in the United States,military models played a larger part in molding the corporate order

Gerald L. Geison (Philadelphia, 1984), pp. 15-65; Robert Fox and George Weisz, eds.,TheOrganizationof Scienceand Technologyn France,1808-1914 (Cambridge, 1980); GertSchubring, "Mathematics and Teacher Training: Plans for a Polytechnic in Berlin,"HistoricalStudies in thePhysical Sciences12, pt. 1 (1981): 161-94.48WolframFischer and Peter Lundgreen, "The Recruitment and Training of Admin-istrative and Technical Personnel," in The Formationof National States in WesternEurope,ed. Charles Tilly (Princeton, N.J., 1975), pp. 456-561; Thomas R. Osborne, A "GrandEcole"for the "GrandsCorps":The Recruitment nd Training of the French AdministrativeElitein the Nineteenth Century(Boulder, Colo., 1983); Jean Vidalenc, "Histoire militaire ethistoire de l'administration," in Histoirede l'administrationfrancaise depuis1800: problemeset methodes(Geneva, 1975), pp. 17-35, as abstracted in William Serman, "etudesd'histoire militaire francaise sur la periode 1815-1871," Revue Internationaled'HistoireMilitaire, no. 61 (1985), pp. 121-31, esp. p. 129.49C. R. Day, Educationfor the Industrial World:The Ecoles d'Artset Metiersand the Rise ofFrenchIndustrialEngineering (Cambridge, Mass., 1987); Lenard R. Berlanstein, "Man-agers and Engineers in French Big Business of the Nineteenth Century," Journal ofSocial History 22 (1988): 211-36; Maurice Levy-Leboyer, "The Large Corporation inModern France," in Managerial Hierarchies: ComparativePerspectiveson the Rise of theModernIndustrialEnterprise,ed. Alfred D. Chandler and Herman Daems (Cambridge,Mass., 1980), pp. 117-60, on p. 133; Jiirgen Kocka, "The Rise of the ModernIndustrial Enterprise in Germany," in ibid., pp. 77-116, esp. p. 97.50AlfredD. Chandler, Jr., The VisibleHand: The Managerial Revolution in AmericanBusiness (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), pp. 95, 106-7, 205, "The American System andModern Management," in YankeeEnterprise:The Rise of the AmericanSystemof Manufac-tures,ed. Otto Mayr and Robert C. Post (Washington, D.C., 1981), pp. 153-70.5"Asquoted in Karsten, "Armed Progressives" (n. 28 above), p. 251.


16/28

Engineering a New Order 15than Chandler allows or Carter implied. Management by staff and line,a key feature of the rising corporation, had self-evident militarysources.52But that was not all. Engineers in the United States not onlyhelped devise corporate organization but also came to constitute thelargest share of middle management.53 Furthermore, they instructedtheir civilian counterparts, and not only by helping to found collegesof engineering. The first book on factory management ever publishedin the United States was the handiwork of a career army officer whomanaged an arsenal; he addressed his 1885 classic less to fellow officersthan to his managerial counterparts.54Military concerns and money, sometimes direct, sometimes fun-neled through corporate intermediaries, affected higher education inmany ways. Military training on campus dated to the Morrill Act of1862 but became institutionalized in the form of the Reserve OfficerTraining Corps (ROTC) only in 1916. Engineers figured prominentlyamong supporters of this contested institution.55 During the era ofWorld War I, American schools of engineering used military modelsin organizing research laboratories, adapted their curricula to meetmilitary demands, and borrowed military test methods to evaluate

52DallasD. Irvine, "The Origin of Capital Staffs,"Journal of ModernHistory10 (1938):161-79; J. D. Hittle, TheMilitary Staff: Its Historyand Development,rev. ed. (Harrisburg,Penn., 1949); John Robert Beishline, Military Management or National Defense (NewYork, 1950); Alvin Brown, The Armorof Organization:A Rational Plan of Organization orthe ArmedForcesand, as a PreliminaryThereto,an Inquiry nto the Origins of Existing MilitaryOrganization(New York, 1953).53CharlesFrancis O'Connell, "The United States Army and the Origins of ModernManagement, 1818-1860" (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1982), DissertationAbstracts nternational 43 (November 1982), no. 1654-A, "The Corps of Engineers andthe Rise of Modern Management, 1827-1856," in Military Enterpriseand TechnologicalChange:Perspectives n theAmericanExperience,ed. Merritt Roe Smith (Cambridge, Mass.,1985), pp. 87-116; Robert D. Cuff, "An Organizational Perspective on the Military-Industrial Complex," BusinessHistoryReview 52 (1978): 250-67.4Metcalfe, Cost of Manufactures (n. 24 above). Compare Merrill, ed., Classics ofManagement(n. 24 above), pp. 47-56; Chandler, "The American System and ModernManagement," pp. 157-58. See also Russell Robb, "Organization as Affected byPurpose and Conditions," in his Lectures on Organization (Boston, 1910), pp. 1-21;Henri Fayol, "General Principles of Management," a 1916 paper reprinted in hisGeneral and IndustrialManagement, rans. Constance Storrs (London, 1949), pp. 19-42.55JoanM. Jensen, "The Army and Domestic Surveillance on Campus," in SoldiersandCivilians: The U.S. Army and the AmericanPeople, ed. Garry D. Ryan and Timothy K.Nenninger (Washington, D.C., 1987), pp. 153-78, esp. pp. 156-58. See also EdwardDanforth Eddy, Jr., Colleges or Our Land and Time: The Land-Grant Idea in AmericanEducation (New York, 1957), pp. 41, 64-65, 93-94, 163-65; Gene M. Lyons andJohn W. Masland, Education and Military Leadership:A Study of theR.O.T.C. (Princeton,N.J., 1959), pp. 28-40.


17/28

16 Barton C. Hackertheir students.5 Consequences might be as subtle as those entailed inusing personality tests and job specifications created for military pur-poses during the war.57At the other extreme lay the overt effects ofresearch channeled by military funding.58 By whatever paths, militaryvalues of order, discipline, and hierarchy pervaded engineering.59American universities, like much of American society, for the mostpart welcomed such values in the later 19th and earlier 20th centuries.After he became the first head of the University of Illinois in 1867,John M. Gregory regularly cited the value of "military order and dailychapel ... for discipline, character development, and the generaltone of the campus."6 When the United States entered World War I,colleges became enthusiastic centers for military training and educa-tion.6' They were scarcely less eager during peacetime. Youthful

5David F Noble, America by Design: Science, Technology,and the Rise of CorporateCapitalism (New York, 1977); Frederick E. Terman, "A Brief History of ElectricalEngineering Education," Proceedings of the IEEE 64 (1976): 1399-1407; Borden,Civilian Indoctrination(n. 15 above), "The Army and Higher Learning," pp. 72-96.57PaulDavis Chapman, "Schools as Sorters: Testing and Tracking in California,1910-1925,"Journal of SocialHistory 14 (1981): 701-17; Joel H. Spring, "Psychologistsand the War: The Meaning of Intelligence in the Alpha and Beta Tests," History ofEducation Quarterly12 (1972): 3-15; Richard T. von Mayrhauser, "The Manager, theMedic, and the Mediator: The Clash of Professional Psychological Styles and theWartime Origins of Group Mental Testing," in PsychologicalTestingand AmericanSociety,1890-1930, ed. Michael M. Sokal (New Brunswick, NJ., 1987), pp. 128-57; Borden,Civilian Indoctrination(n. 15 above), "The Army and the Psychologists," pp. 25-47;Martin E Wiskoff and Glenn M. Rampton, eds., MilitaryPersonnelMeasurement:Testing,Assignment,Evaluation (New York, 1989).5A. Hunter Dupree, Science n the Federal Government:A Historyof Policiesand Activitiesto 1940 (Cambridge, Mass., 1957; reprint, New York, 1964), chap. 16, "The Impact ofWorld War I,"pp. 302-25; Paul A. C. Koistinen, "The 'Industrial-Military Complex' inHistorical Perspective: World War I," Business History Review 41 (1967): 380-403;Thomas P. Hughes, AmericanGenesis:A Centuryof Invention and TechnologicalEnthusiasm,1870-1970 (New York, 1989), chap. 3, "Brain Mill for the Military," pp. 96-137;Michael Sanderson, The Universitiesand British Industry,1850-1970 (London, 1972),chap. 8, "The Universities and the War, 1914-18," pp. 214-42.

59S. L. Hacker, Pleasure, Power, and Technology n. 37 above), esp. chap. 4, "MilitaryInstitutions and Gender Inequality," pp. 58-72. See also Richard T. LaPiere, CollectiveBehavior (New York, 1938), chap. 6, "Regimental Behavior," pp. 105-29; MichelFoucault, Disciplineand Punish: The Birth of thePrison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York,1978).0Joseph R. DeMartini, "Student Culture as a Change Agent in American HigherEducation: An Illustration from the Nineteenth Century,"Journal of Social History 9(1976): 526-41, quote on 532. On character building and other latent functions of

ROTC, although focused on a later period, see Nona Glazer-Malbin, "The ROTC:Military Service on the College Campus," in Public Opinionand theMilitaryEstablishment,ed. Charles C. Moskos, Jr. (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1971), pp. 63-97.6"Dooley,Final Report of the National Army Training Detachments n. 14 above); ParkeRexford Kolbe, The Collegesn War Time and After:A Contemporary ccountof theEffect of


18/28

Engineering a New Order 17Americans would also come to enjoy such virtues, which spread tosecondary, even primary, schools via Junior ROTC and vocationaleducation.62 To many Americans, that seemed both worthwhile anddesirable. Discipline derived from military training in public schools"early impressed upon the mind of the pupil," argued an Americanobserver in 1903, "the first lessons of civil government and respect forlaw."63 uch lessons held no less value for adults.64Militarism could beone side of the coin, but civic virtue and patriotism might be theother.65In many respects, a similar pattern prevailed in England.6 Itwas, of course, even more widespread on the Continent.67

the Warupon Higher Educationin America(New York, 1919); Carol S. Gruber, Mars andMinerva:WorldWar and theUsesof theHigherLearning n America Baton Rouge, La., 1975).2WilliamH. Boyer, Educationfor Annihilation Honolulu, 1972), chap. 5, "Teaching Mil-itary Values through American Schools,"pp. 89-114; J. B. Sweet, ed., TheJunior R.O.T.C.Manual: For Use in Junior Division R.O.T.C. Units, 2d ed. (Harrisburg, Pa., 1949); Joel H.Spring, Educationand theRiseoftheCorporatetate Boston, 1972; paperback ed., 1973), chap.5, "VocationalGuidance, the Junior High School, and Adolescence," pp. 91-107.63"Military raining in Public Schools,"in Issuesof theDay;Being a Text-Bookn thePoliticalSituation,Past and Present(Chicago, 1903), pp. 432-34, on p. 432. Compare Harrison S.Kerrick, Militaryand Naval America Garden City, N.Y., 1916), chap. 45, "Safety First 'Forthe Nation' through Universal Militaryand Naval Training of Young America,"pp. 365-69; L. R. Gignilliat, Armsand theBoy:MilitaryTrainingin Schoolsand CollegesIndianapolis,1916), esp. chap. 11, "The Mental Value of Military Training," pp. 94-100, and chap. 13,"The Merits of MilitaryTraining as a System of Discipline," pp. 112-26.'Ralph Barton Perry, The FreeMan and the Soldier:Essayson theReconciliationof Libertyand Discipline (New York, 1916). See also John Garry Clifford, The CitizenSoldiers:ThePlattsburg Training CampMovement,1913-1920 (Lexington, Ky., 1972); Michael Pearl-man, To MakeDemocracySafefor America:Patricians and Preparednessn theProgressiveEra(Urbana, Ill., 1984).65Eliot A. Cohen, Citizens and Soldiers: The Dilemmasof Military Service (Ithaca, N.Y.,1985), chap. 5, "Military Service and Republican Ideology: Civic Obligation and theCitizen Soldier," pp. 117-33; Peter Karsten, "Militarization and Rationalization in theUnited States, 1870-1914," in The Militarizationof the WesternWorld,ed. John R. Gillis(New Brunswick, N.J., 1989), pp. 30-44; Morris Janowitz and Stephen D. Wesbrook,eds., The Political Education of Soldiers(Beverly Hills, Calif., 1983)."Olive Anderson, "The Growth of Christian Militarism in Mid-Victorian Britain,"English HistoricalReview 86 (1971): 46-72; Ann Summers, "Militarism in Britain beforethe Great War,"HistoryWorkshopournal, no. 2 (August 1976), pp. 104-23; C. B. Otley,"Militarism and Militarization in the Public Schools, 1900-1972," BritishJournal ofSociology29 (1978): 321-39; Ian Worthington, "Antecedent Education and OfficerRecruitment: The Origins and Early Development of the Public School-Army Rela-tionship," MilitaryAffairs 41 (1977): 183-89, "Socialization, Militarization and OfficerRecruiting: The Development of the Officers Training Corps," Military Affairs 43(1979): 90-95; R. J. Q. Adams and Philip P.Poirer, TheConscriptionControversyn GreatBritain, 1900-18 (London, 1987).67See,e.g., General Friedrich von Bernhardi, Germanyand theNextWar, rans. Allen H.Powles (New York, 1914), esp. chap. 11, "Training and Education," pp. 206-25. See


19/28

18 Barton C. HackerIndustrialization itself owed no small debt to military interests.From the late-18th- and early-19th-century development of inter-changeable parts manufacturing in navy shipyards and army arsenalsto the late-20th-century U.S. Air Force sponsorship of automatedmachine tool development, key aspects of industrial technologyemerged from military settings.8 But military example may have beeneven more important. Discipline was the key, argued Max Weber,military practice its inspiration. He thought it self-evident that "mili-tary discipline is the ideal model for the modern capitalist factory."69Lewis Mumford put the point more emphatically a few years later:"The regimentation and mass-production of soldiers, to the end ofturning out a cheap, standardized, and replaceable product, was thegreat contribution of the military mind to the machine process."70Even antimilitaristic socialists grasped the merits of military orga-nization. In 1832 the Saint-Simonian Michel Chevalier proposedmaking the army a school of arts and crafts, training youth to producerather than destroy.71Expounding Charles Fourier's system in 1846,Victor Considerant waxed eloquent over the prospects of phalanste-rian industrial armies "to carry out, as if by magic, vast projects ofgeneral utility requiring legions of workers."72Military regimentation

also Volker R. Berghahn, Militarism: The History of an InternationalDebate, 1861-1979(New York, 1982); Geoffrey Best, "The Militarization of European Society," in Gillis,ed., Militarizationof theWesternWorld,pp. 13-29; Michael Geyer, "The Militarization ofEurope, 1914-1945," in ibid., pp. 65-102; Emilio Willems, A Way of Life and Death:Three Centuriesof Prussian-GermanMilitarism, an AnthropologicalApproach (Nashville,Tenn., 1986).6Mayr and Post, eds., YankeeEnterprise(n. 50 above); Smith, Military EnterpriseandTechnologicalChange(n. 53 above); David F. Noble, Forcesof Production:A SocialHistoryofMachine Tool Automation(New York, 1984).69MaxWeber, Economyand Society:An Outline of InterpretiveSociology, rans. EphraimFischoff et al., ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (from the 4th German edition[1956; revised 1964]), 2 vols. (Berkeley, Calif., 1978), chap. 14.3.3., "The Discipline of

Large-Scale Economic Organizations," 2:1155-56. The book first appeared in 1920,posthumously; for a fuller discussion, see Hacker and Hacker, "Military Institutionsand the Labor Process" (n. 12 above), pp. 753-56.70LewisMumford, Technicsand Civilization (New York, 1934), pp. 84, 92. See alsoGautam Sen, The Military Origins of Industrialisation and International Trade Rivalry(London, 1984); Smith, Military Enterpriseand TechnologicalChange (n. 53 above), esp.Merritt Roe Smith, "Introduction," pp. 1-37.7"MichelChevalier, "Aux hommes politiques," in Religionsaint-simonienne:A tous(Paris,1832), pp. 7-22, as cited and discussed in Edmund Silberner, The Problemof War inNineteenth Century Economic Thought, trans. Alexander H. Krappe (Princeton, N.J.,1946), pp. 228-29.72VictorConsiderant, Expositionabregeedu systeme halansteriendeFourier,3d ed. (Paris,1846), p. 50, as quoted in Silberner, Problemof War,p. 238.


20/28

Engineering a New Order 19did become a model for rationalized production, though not as utopianvisionaries might have wished. Entrepreneurs and captains of industryfound much to admire, and to adopt, in the regimentation and redivi-sion of labor imposed on modernizing armies. When Marx and Engelsdescribed the labor process in capitalist factories, they turned naturallyto military metaphor: "Massesof labourers, crowded into the factory,areorganized like soldiers."73Sociologist Jacques van Doorn has lately sought to link military toindustrial revolution through the motives shared by a major architect ofeach.74Maurice of Nassau became a key figure in the military revolutionwhen he restored drill to armies in the late 16th century.75Frederick W.Taylorreshaped industrialism when he devised scientific management inthe late 19th and early 20th centuries.76Parallels between Maurice andTaylor were "not fortuitous," argues van Doom. They faced the sameproblem: welding a "goal-attainment organization" from a mass of so-cially isolated, ill-trained, and poorly motivated proletarians. Sharing amechanistic image of human behavior, they found their common answerin regimented action.77Military and industrial revolution alike "madetheir spectacular leap forward,"van Doorn adds, "bya more efficient andconcentrated organization of human effort, not by mechanization."78Andfor Taylor,at least, it was a two-way street. Militarymodels influenced hisreforms, and Taylorism found a receptive military audience.79

73KarlMarx and Frederick Engels, "Manifesto of the Communist Party" (1848), asreprinted from the English edition of 1888 in Marx and Engels, SelectedWorks: n OneVolume New York, 1968), pp. 35-63, quote on p. 41. For a fuller discussion, see Hackerand Hacker, "Military Institutions and the Labor Process," pp. 745-51.74VanDoorn, The Soldierand Social Change (n. 30 above), chap. 1, "The Genesis ofMilitary and Industrial Organization," pp. 5-28.75MauryD. Feld, "Middle-Class Society and the Rise of Military Professionalism: TheDutch Army, 1589-1609," Armed Forces and Society 1 (1975): 419-42; GerhardOestreich, Geist und GestaltdesfriihmodernenStaates, ed. Brigitta Oestreich and H. G.Koenigsberger (Berlin, 1969), translated by David McLintock as Neostoicism nd theEarlyModern State (Cambridge, 1982), chap. 5, "The Military Renascence," pp. 76-89;Gunther E. Rothenberg, "Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus Adolphus, Raimondo Monte-cuccoli, and the 'Military Revolution' of the Seventeenth Century," in Paret, ed., Makersof Modern Strategy n. 8 above), pp. 32-63.76DanielNelson, FrederickW.Taylorand theRise of ScientificManagement Madison, Wis.,1980), Managers and Workers:Origins of the New Factory System in the United States,1880-1920 (Madison, Wis., 1975); Dan Clawson, Bureaucracyand theLabor Process:TheTransformationof U.S. Industry,1860-1920 (New York, 1980).77VanDoom, The Soldierand Social Change, p. 15.78Ibid.,p. 17.79Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in theTwentiethCentury (New York, 1974), chap. 4, "Scientific Management," pp. 85-123;Nelson, FrederickW. Taylor(n. 76 above), pp. 154-67; Lieutenant G. J. Meyers, U.S.


21/28

20 Barton C. HackerMilitaryInstitutionsas Social Institutions

The rise of the modern industrial state in the 19th and 20thcenturies is but the latest manifestation of the ancient interplaybetween military and other social institutions. Military institutions arethe patterned social relationships between individuals and groups thatorganize and control the wielding of coercive force by one segment ofsociety against others, internal or external. Obviously, this definitionincludes armies, perhaps not so obviously, navies and air forces,perhaps still less obviously, police. Until the 19th century in Europe,domestic order relied on amateur or part-time constabularies, withthe army on tap if matters got out of hand.80 Police forces evolvedfrom regular military forces only in the last century or two asspecialized wielders of domestic force.81Maintaining public order inthe face of social protest or colonial unrest was at least as important asfighting crime.82 Police and army retained strong links in values,organization, and technique; donning uniforms, in fact, regularly

Navy, "The Science of Management," in ScientificManagement:A Collectionof the MoreSignificant Articles Describing the Taylor System of Management, ed. Clarence BertrandThompson (Cambridge, Mass., 1914), pp. 132-52; U.S. Army, chief of Ordnance,"The Taylor System of Shop Management at the Watertown Arsenal," appendix I toReport of the Chief of Ordnance, 1913, reprinted in ibid., pp. 741-806; Hugh J. G.Aitken, Taylorismat WatertownArsenal: Scientific Management in Action, 1908-1915(Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 17-18; Nicholas J. Griffin, "Scientific Management inthe Direction of Britain's Military Labour Establishment during World War I,"MilitaryAffairs 42 (1978): 197-201.0Tony Hayter, The Armyand Crowd Control in Mid-Georgian England (Totowa, N.J.,1978); Stanley H. Palmer, Police and Protestin England and Ireland, 1780-1850 (Cam-bridge, 1988); Samuel F Scott, TheResponseof theRoyalArmy o theFrench Revolution: TheRole and Developmentof the Line Army,1787-1793 (Oxford, 1978); Barton C. Hacker,"The United States Army as a National Police Force: The Federal Policing of LaborDisputes, 1877-1898," Military Affairs 33 (1969): 255-64.8"CliveEmsley, Policing and Its Context,1750-1870 (New York, 1984); Elaine GlovkaSpencer, "Police-Military Relations in Prussia, 1848-1914," Journal of Social History 19(1985): 305-17; Jean Vidalenc, "Armee et police en France, 1814-1914," in L'Etatet sapolice en France (1789-1914) (Geneva, 1979), pp. 135-59, as abstracted in Serman,"Itudes d'histoire militaire francaise" (n. 48 above), p. 125.8Gregory J. Pulham, "James Shaw-Kennedy and the Reformation of the IrishConstabulary, 1836-38," Eire-Ireland 16 (Summer 1981): 93-106; Celina Bledowska,ed., War and Order:ResearchingState Structures London, 1983), "Police," pp. 135-64;John Roach and Jurgen Thomaneck, eds., Police and Public Orderin Europe (London,1985); Anthony Clayton and David Killingray, Khaki and Blue: Military and Police inBritish Colonial Africa, Monographs in International Studies, Africa Series no. 51(Athens, Ohio, 1989); Cynthia H. Enloe, "Ethnicity and Militarization: Factors Shapingthe Roles of Police in Third World Nations," Studies in ComparativeInternationalDevelopment11 (1976): 25-38.


22/28

Engineering a New Order 21marked the critical, and sometimes contested, point when constablesbecame policemen.83But military institutions, as I have tried to suggest, include stillmore. Consider the host of scientists, engineers, and technicians whonow draw their funding in greater or lesser degree from militarybudgets and how that influences the course of research.84 Militaryinstitutions also must include the ostensibly civilian functionaries whostaff the Pentagon, as well as the academic theorists of nuclear warfarewho provide much of our current grand strategy.85 Yet militaryinstitutions even so broadly defined may still be conceived toonarrowly. Ultimately, the state itself is best understood in terms ofmilitary institutions.Military concerns shaped the origin of the state at the dawn ofhistory, chiefly in response to perceived needs for defense againstexternal threat, for seizing resources, and for quelling internaldissent. Moreover, because military institutions played such centralroles in the structure of civilized societies, their influence spreadwidely through the social system. Civilized societies owe much of theirdistinctive character to the constant, if sometimes obscure, interac-tions of military with other social institutions.86 Such interactions, in

83EricH. Monkkonen, "From Cop History to Social History: The Significance of thePolice in American History,"Journal of SocialHistory 15 (1982): 575-91, esp. pp. 577-78. See also Eric H. Monkkonen, Police in Urban America, 1860-1920 (Cambridge,1981), chap. 1, "The Historical Development of the Police," pp. 30-64; David H.Bayley, Patterns of Policing: A Comparative nternationalAnalysis (New Brunswick, N.J.,1985), chap. 2, "The Development of Modern Police," pp. 23-52.'Davis B. Bobrow, "Military Research and Development: Implications for the CivilSector,"Annals of the AmericanAcademyof Political and Social Science("The Military andAmerican Society,"ed. Adam Yarmolinski) 406 (1973): 117-28; David Dickson, TheNewPolitics of Science (New York, 1984), chap. 3, "Science and the Military: Knowledge asPower,"pp. 107-62; Paul Forman, "Behind Quantum Electronics: National Security asBasis for Physical Research in the United States, 1940-1960," Historical Studiesin thePhysicaland Biological Sciences18, pt. 1 (1987): 149-229; Everett Mendelsohn, MerrittRoe Smith, and Peter Weingart, eds., Science,Technology nd theMilitary, Sociology of theSciences Yearbook, vol. 12 (Dordrecht, 1988); Margaret Blunden, Owen Greene, andJohn Naughton, "The Alchemists of Our Time: The Weapons Scientists as Scapegoat,"in Scienceand Mythology n theMaking of DefencePolicy,ed. Margaret Blunden and OwenGreene (London, 1989), pp. 77-117.85FredKaplan, The Wizardsof Armageddon New York, 1983); Gregg Herken, Counselsof War(New York, 1985); Lawrence Freedman, "The First Two Generations of NuclearStrategists," in Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy (n. 8 above), pp. 735-78, TheEvolution of Nuclear Strategy,2d ed. (London, 1989); Richard Smoke, "National SecurityAffairs," in Handbookof Political Science,vol. 8: InternationalPolitics, ed. Fred I. Green-stein and Nelson W. Polsby (Reading, Mass., 1975), pp. 247-362.'Barton C. Hacker, "The Invention of Armies: The Origins of Military Institutions,Gender Stratification, and the Labor Process" (paper presented at the annual meeting


23/28

22 Barton C. Hackerparticular, promoted the rise of the modern Western nation-state,shaping and reshaping social structures, actions, and values perva-sively and persistently.87"Aprofessional army,"as Stephen Skowronekrecently observed, came to stand "next to a professional civil service asan institutional standard of the modern state."88Militarism once offered a notable instance of this linkage, but theglorification of armed force and its wielders never told the wholestory.89 t may now have become, in fact, merely an outmoded story.For the modern industrial state, the normal functioning of militaryinstitutions is perhaps better exemplified by the relationships encodedin the term "military-industrial complex."9 Though the label has lostsome of its former currency, the underlying realities of defenseeconomics remain as cogent as ever in the industrialized world.91And

of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, Chicago, August 1987); Hacker andHacker, "Military Institutions and the Labor Process" (n. 12 above), pp. 757-64;Michael Mann, The Sourcesof SocialPower,vol. 1: A Historyof Powerfrom theBeginning toA.D. 1760 (Cambridge, 1986).s'Tilly,FormationofNational States(n. 48 above); Charles Tilly, As SociologyMeetsHistory(New York, 1981); Ronald W. Batchelder and Herman Freudenberger, "On theRational Origins of the Modern Centralized State," Explorations n EconomicHistory20(1983): 1-13; Martin Shaw, ed., War, State and Society(New York, 1984); AnthonyGiddens, The Nation-State and Violence Berkeley, Calif., 1985); John A. Hall, "War andthe Rise of the West,"in TheSociologyof War and Peace, ed. Colin Creighton and MartinShaw (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y, 1987), pp. 37-53; Karen A. Rasler and William R. Thomp-son, Warand StateMaking: The Shaping of the Global Powers (Boston, 1989).8Skowronek, Building a New American State (n. 28 above), p. 85.89Thisrefers to the classic definition of militarism in Alfred Vagts, Militarism: Civilianand Military, rev. ed. (New York, 1959), esp. "Introduction: The Idea and Nature ofMilitarism," pp. 13-37. Compare Kjell Skjelsbaek, "Militarism, Its Dimensions andCorollaries: An Attempt at Conceptual Clarification," in Problems of ContemporaryMilitarism,ed. Asbjorn Eide and Marek Thee (New York, 1980), pp. 77-105.9Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., ed., The Military-Industrial Complex (New York, 1972);Benjamin Franklin Cooling, ed., War,Business,and AmericanSociety:HistoricalPerspectiveson theMilitary-IndustrialComplex Port Washington, N.Y., 1977), War,Businessand WorldMilitary-IndustrialComplexes Port Washington, N.Y, 1981); Paul A. C. Koistinen, TheMilitary-IndustrialComplex:A HistoricalPerspective New York, 1980); Bruce G. Brunton,"Institutional Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex,"Journal of EconomicIssues22(1988): 599-606. Compare Michael T. Klare, "East-Westversus North-South: Domi-nant and Subordinate Themes in U.S. Military Strategy since 1945," in Gillis, ed.,Militarizationof the WesternWorld(n. 65 above), pp. 141-65."Gavin Kennedy, Defense Economics (New York, 1983); Nicole Ball and MiltonLeitenberg, eds., The Structureof theDefenseIndustry:An InternationalSurvey(New York,1983); William J. Weida and Frank L. Gertcher, The Political Economyof National Defense(Boulder, Colo., 1987); Christian Schmidt, ed., The Economicsof Military Expenditures:MilitaryExpenditures,EconomicGrowthand Fluctuations:Proceedingsof a ConferenceHeld bytheInternational EconomicAssociation n Paris, France (London, 1987).


24/28

Engineering a New Order 23not only there. Economic order in the Third World now displaysmany of the same traits.9Other aspects of the modern social order likewise reflect theinfluence of military institutions. One example is the place of women.Historically, women played crucial, though largely overlooked, mili-tary roles, a matter of some significance in understanding theirpresent status in the armed forces.93 More important, the structure ofgender in modern society cannot be fully explained without recourseto links between military and other social institutions.9 Scouting willperhaps serve as an obvious example.95 Yet it is hardly unique. Sincethe late 19th century, military models have shaped social action asdiverse as evangelism and conservation. The military model for theSalvation Army is self-evident.6 Less obvious, or perhaps merely lesswell-known, the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s likewise

9David K. Whynes, The Economicsof Third WorldMilitary Expenditure(Austin, 1979);Saadet Deger, Military Expenditures n Third WorldCountries(London, 1986); Miles D.Wolpin, Militarization,Internal Repressionand Social Welfare n the Third World(London,1986); A. F. Mullins, Born Arming:Development nd MilitaryPower in New States(Stanford,Calif., 1987); Nicole Ball, Securityand Economy n theThird World Princeton, NJ., 1988).9Barton C. Hacker, "Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern Europe: AReconnaissance," Signs 6 (1981): 643-71, "From Military Revolution to IndustrialRevolution: Armies, Women and Political Economy in Early Modern Europe," inWomenand the Military System,ed. Eva Isaksson (New York 1988), pp. 11-29; NancyLoring Goldman, ed., Female Soldiers-Combatants or Noncombatants?Historical andContemporary erspectives Westport, Conn., 1982); Judith Hicks Stiehm, Arms and theEnlisted Woman(Philadelphia, 1989), "Women, Men, and Military Service: Is ProtectionNecessarily a Racket?" in Women,Power and Policy, ed. Ellen Boneparth (New York,1982), pp. 282-93.'William Arkin and Lynne R. Dobrofsky, "Military Socialization and Masculinity,"Journal of SocialIssues24 (1978): 151-68; Cynthia H. Enloe, "Beyond Steve Canyon andRambo: Feminist Histories of Militarized Masculinity,"in Gillis, ed., Militarizationof theWesternWorld, pp. 119-40; Carol Cohn, "Sex and Death in the Rational World ofDefense Intellectuals," Signs 12 (1987): 687-718; Paul N. Edwards, "The Army and theMicroworld: Computers and the Politics of Gender Identity," Signs 16 (1990): 102-27;Isaksson, ed., Womenand theMilitary System.95Kerrick,Military and Naval America (n. 63 above), chap. 43, "The Boy Scouts ofAmerica," pp. 347-60. See also David I. Macleod, Building Character in the AmericanBoy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA,and Their Forerunners,1870-1920 (Madison, Wis., 1983).Compare Michael Rosenthal, The CharacterFactory:Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts and theImperatives f Empire(New York, 1986); John Springhall, Youth,Empireand Society:BritishYouthMovements,1883-1940 (London, 1977).9For the founding of the Salvation Army and its early deployment, see St. JohnErvine, God'sSoldier:General WilliamBooth, 2 vols. (New York, 1935); Richard Collier,The General Next to God: The Story of William Booth and the Salvation Army (New York,1965). For its invasion of America, see Herbert A. Wisbey, Soldierswithout Swords: AHistoryof theSalvation Army n the United States(New York, 1955); Edward H. McKinley,Marching to Glory: The History of the Salvation Army in the United States of America,1880-1980 (San Francisco, 1980).


25/28

24 Barton C. Hackeradopted military forms and employed military officers to organize itsforces and direct its efforts.97 The recent creation of so-called bootcamps to impose military discipline on youthful offenders and so savethem from their own disorder testifies that the spirit still flourishes.98As products of the later 20th century, we tend to find such intimatelinks between military and other social institutions somehow aberrant,a recent product of unique, or at least unusual, factors. But only ourfailure to see the significance of military institutions for civilizedsociety is new. "All state organization was originally military organi-zation, organization for war," commented Otto Hintze in a 1906Dresden lecture. "This can be regarded as an assured result ofcomparative history."" Originating in antiquity, that view revived inthe Enlightenment, especially among the Scottish social philosophersfrom David Hume to Adam Smith.l? It eclipsed all others during the19th century as a way to explain crucial features of political, eco-nomic, and social organization. Why that insight faded after World

97MichaelW. Sherraden, "Military Participation in a Youth Employment Program:The Civilian Conservation Corps," ArmedForcesand Society7 (1981): 227-45; E. KayKiefer and Paul E. Fellows, Hobnail Boots and Khaki Suits: A Brief Look at the GreatDepressionand the Civilian ConservationCorpsas Seen throughthe Eyesof Those Who WereThere (Chicago, 1983); John C. Paige, The Civilian ConservationCorpsand the NationalPark Service,1933-1942: An AdministrativeHistory(Washington, D.C., 1985); Alison T.Otis, The ForestServiceand the Civilian ConservationCorps,1933-1942 (Washington, D.C.,1986).98Les Crabtree and Peter Douglas, "Military Discipline: Young Offenders LearnAccountability,"CorrectionsToday47 (December 1985): 38-39; Bascom W. Ratliff, "TheArmy Model: Boot Camp for Youthful Offenders," CorrectionsToday50 (December1988): 98-102; Dale K. Sechrest, "Prison 'Boot Camps' Do Not Measure Up," FederalProbation 53 (September 1989): 15-20. Alternatively, police and the courts havesometimes allowed young men to choose between enlistment and imprisonment; seeDavid Gottlieb, Babes in Arms: Youth in the Military (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1980),pp. 23-24. On military service as last resort for disadvantaged youth, see DoyleShackelford, "The Youthful Offender and the Armed Forces,"National ProbationandParole AssociationJournal 4 (April 1958), as reprinted in Military Law Review 2(September 1958): 97-106; Morris Janowitz, "Basic Education and Youth Socializationin the Armed Forces," in Handbookof MilitaryInstitutions,ed. Roger W. Little (BeverlyHills, Calif., 1971), pp. 167-210.9Otto Hintze, "Military Organization and the Organization of the State" (lecturebefore the Gehe Stiftung, Dresden, 1906), as published in The HistoricalEssays of OttoHintze, ed. Felix Gilbert with Robert M. Berdahl (New York, 1975), pp. 180-215, quoteon p. 181.'??BartonC. Hacker, "'Regularity, Order, and Prompt Obedience': On MilitaryInstitutions in Enlightenment Thought," in Actas del XVII CongresoInternacional deCiencias Hist6ricas, Madrid, 1990, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1992), 1:159-67. See also JohnRobertson, The ScottishEnlightenmentand theMilitia Issue (Edinburgh, 1985); Richard B.Sher, "Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, and the Problem of National Defense" Journal ofModern History 61 (1989): 240-68. Compare Michael Howard, War and the Liberal


26/28

Engineering a New Order 25War I is an interesting question, but one beyond the scope of thisarticle. Suffice to say the answer appears more likely to involvechanging intellectual fashion than counterevidence.l0'Illuminating interactions between military and other social institu-tions may offer one of the best reasons for studying military technol-ogy. It can provide the visible links between enduring (though notimmutable) institutions and the more superficial history of events.'02Technological innovation has historically answered more to militarypurpose than commonly allowed, ingenious weapons having heldWestern imaginations in thrall since the Middle Ages.'?0 Unfortu-nately, guides to the history of technology tend to obscure the links bymaking "military technology" a residual category: fortifications dis-appear into architecture, battleships and bombers into transportation,explosives into chemical technology."04Military technology took littlespace in his Bibliographyof the History of Technology,Eugene Fergusonexplained, "because so much of it is buried under other rubrics."105Another problem compounds this shortcoming. Military roots canwither as change ramifies throughout society, the military voicecoming to seem merely one among many others. The crucial role ofearly military sponsorship may then vanish from sight and mind:

Conscience(New Brunswick, N.J., 1978), chap. 1, "The Growth of the Liberal Con-science, 1500-1792" pp. 13-30.'?Barton C. Hacker, "Military Institutions and Social Order: Transformations ofWestern Thought since the Enlightenment," War and Society11 (1993), in press.i'This formulation of course derives from Fernand Braudel, TheMediterranean,andtheMediterranean World n theAge of Philip II, trans. Sian Reynolds, 2 vols. (New York,1972-73). See also J. H. Hexter, "Fernand Braudel and the Monde Braudellien ...,"Journal of ModernHistory44 (1972): 480-539.'03Iknow of no work that directly addresses this fascinating strand in Westernthought, but see Bert S. Hall's discussion of the medieval military technologicaltradition in The Technological llustrationsof the So-called"Anonymous f the Hussite Wars,"Codex atinus monacensis 97, Part 1 (Wiesbaden, 1979), "Introduction," pp. 11-25; Gille,Engineers of the Renaissance (n. 38 above). For more recent manifestations, see MaryKaldor, The Baroque Arsenal (New York, 1981); H. Bruce Franklin, War Stars: TheSuperweaponand theAmericanImagination (New York, 1988).04See, e.g., the annual compilations of "Current Bibliography in the History ofTechnology" in Technology nd Culture, or compare the annual indexes published forthatjournal with Barton C. Hacker, ed., "Annotated Index to Volumes 1 through 25 ofTechnology nd Culture, 1959-1984," Technology nd Culture, vol. 32, no. 2, pt. 2 (April1991), s.v. "Military Technology" and cross-references."'SEugene S. Ferguson, Bibliographyof the History of Technology Cambridge, Mass.,1968), p. 295. See also Brooke Hindle, Technologyn Early America: Needs and Opportu-nitiesfor Study (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1966), p. 47; James J. Stokesberry, "The Army andthe Development of Technology," in Higham and Brandt, eds., United StatesArmyinPeacetime n. 45 above), pp. 149-65.


27/28

26 Barton C. Hackerwitness the career of electronics, especially computers.'06 Few whoadopt technical or organizational innovations know, or care, abouttheir ultimate source, and higher education continues to bear theburden of military purposes.'07Historically, limited resources forced careful choices on a profes-sion already prone to caution by the life-and-death stakes it dealt with.Adopting new weapons remained a chancy affair when choosing oneforeclosed another. Since World War II, however, military managershave gained control of unprecedented resources and have learned toharness technological innovation.'08 Imperfect as yet and far toocostly, the techniques suggest still another military revolution in themaking.'09 The automation of warfare may remain a more distantprospect than enthusiasts claim or critics fear, but we have clearlycome around nearly full circle."?

"6Robert DeGrasse, "The Military and Semiconductors," in The Militarizationof HighTechnology, d. John Tirman (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), pp. 77-104; Thomas J. Misa,"Military Needs, Commercial Realities, and the Development of the Transistor,1948-1958," in Smith, ed., Military Enterpriseand TechnologicalChange (n. 53 above),pp. 253-87; I. Bernard Cohen, "The Computer: A Case Study of the Support byGovernment, Especially the Military,of a New Science and Technology," in Mendelsohnet al., eds. Science, Technologyand the Military (n. 84 above), pp. 119-54; MargaretBlunden, Chris Bissell, and John Monk, "Policy Making in Civil and Military Electron-ics: The Limits of Pragmatism," in Blunden and Greene, eds., Science and Mythology(n. 84 above), pp. 167-204.'07Glick,Soldiers, Scholars, and Society (n. 17 above); Barbara Barksdale Clowse,Brainpower or the Cold War: The SputnikCrisisand National DefenseEducation Act of 1958(Westport, Conn., 1981); Carl Barus, "Military Influence on the Electrical EngineeringCurriculum," IEEE Technologynd SocietyMagazine6 (June 1987): 3-9; "Science and theMilitary: Who's Pulling the Strings?" Sciencefor thePeople 20 (January/February 1988):2-48; David A. Wilson, ed., "Universities and the Military,"Annals of the AmericanAcademyof Political and Social Science502 (1989): 1-154.

"'Seymour Melman, Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economyof War (New York,1970); Franklin A. Long and Judith Reppy, eds., The Genesisof New Weapons:DecisionMakingfor MilitaryR&D (New York, 1980); Tirman, ed., Militarizationof High Technology(n. 106 above)."'Seymour J. Deitchman, New Technology nd MilitaryPower: GeneralPurposeMilitaryForcesfor the 1980s and Beyond(Boulder, Colo., 1979); Mary Kaldor and Asbjorn Eide,eds., The WorldMilitary Order: The Impactof Military Technology n the Third World(NewYork, 1979); Jonathan Alford, ed., TheImpactof New Military Technology Farnborough,Hampshire, and Montclair, NJ., 1981); Frank Barnaby and Marlies ter Borg, eds.,Emerging Technologiesand Military Doctrine: A Political Assessment New York, 1986);Carl G. Jacobsen, ed., The Uncertain Course: New Weapons, Strategies and Mind-Sets(Oxford, 1987)."'Frank Barnaby, The AutomatedBattlefield(New York, 1986); Allan M. Din, ed., Armsand Artificial Intelligence: Weaponand Arms ControlApplications of Advanced Computing(Oxford, 1987); David Bellin and Gary Chapman, eds., Computers n Battle: Will TheyWork? Boston, 1987); editors of Time-Life Books, UnderstandingComputers:TheMilitary


28/28

Engineering a New Order 27Military technological innovation transformed 19th-century armies.During the century, engineers trained in military schools, working inmilitary settings, and funded with military money spread changethroughout the social system. The reordered industrial state of thelate 20th century now floods the world with novel arms, and militarytechnological innovation once again promises (or threatens) sweepingchanges in the social order. This assumes, of course, that the 20thcentury's most remarkable innovation in the means of destruction,nuclear weapons, allows the future to happen.

Frontier (Alexandria, Va., 1988); Stephen J. Andriole and Gerald W. Hopple, eds.,DefenseApplications of Artificial Intelligence (Lexington, Mass., 1988); Les Levidow andKevin Robins, eds., CyborgWorlds:The MilitaryInformation Society(London, 1989).

hacker - engineering a new order

Documents