Educating Professional Soldiers in Military History
A Public Lecture by Dr Mesut Uyar
Military history as a discipline has always been seen and classified as part of military education. Not surprisingly there is a common conception – albeit a wrong one – that military academies and staff colleges are the bastions of military history. Very few people notice that most of military historians are actually working in civilian universities and military history programs in universities have generally better academic ratings. Although military leaders seem to place great emphasis on drawing lessons from military history, it appears that military history programs in higher military educational institutes are simply not flourishing and actually losing ground. Then the obvious question is what is going on with professional military education? Is military history, as an academic discipline, an essential part of the current professional military education? If not, why is that? And finally, what is the way ahead?
This presentation is an effort to analyse these questions within the history of professional military education. The presentation will not spend time justifying the need for the study of military history.
About the Presenter
Dr Mesut Uyar is a Professorial Fellow at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. He is also retired Turkish Army colonel with multiple combat and peacekeeping tours in Turkey, Afghanistan, Georgia and Bosnia. He was wounded twice in action. Dr Uyar is a war studies and military history expert specializing in late Ottoman and modern Turkish military. He is the author or co-author of 12 books including most recently The Ottoman Army and the First World War (2021) and numerous articles and book chapters.
