Richard Holmes and Martin Marix Evans . Battlefield: Decisive Conflicts in History

Teaching History: A Journal of Methods, Spring, 2007 by Fred R. van Hartesveldt

Richard Holmes and Martin Marix Evans (eds.). Battlefield: Decisive Conflicts in History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 376. Cloth, $30.00; ISBN 0-19-280653-X.

Richard Holmes and Martin Evans are both good writers and scholars. Holmes's works such as The Little Field Marshall (1981), Riding the Retreat: Mons to the Marne (1995), The Western Front: Ordinary Soldiers and the Defining Battles of World War I (1999), and many others (he has published twenty) mark him as thoughtful and articulate as well as an able scholar. Evans's publications tend to be more popular in nature, but nonetheless he has made real contributions to military history. In the current volume, the two are updating and revising information about battles covered in The Oxford Companion to Military History, which Holmes edited. Battles that were not covered in the Oxford Companion have been added to the current volume, if, since the original publication, scholars have shown their significance to merit doing so. The contents of Battlefield have been organized in chapters that are in part chronological and in part regional. Hence the first chapter is "The Ancient World" and the last is "Africa." Battles are generally arranged chronologically within chapters. This arrangement works well. It allows readers to find battles of interest easily. It also allows the editor to provide introductions that provide background and context for the battles in the campaign. This is an improvement on The Oxford Companion that is more completely focused on battlefield events.

For teachers and students, Battlefield will be a valuable reference book. The convenience of being able easily and quickly to find an authoritative account of virtually any strategically significant battle at any time or place will be great. While the information might be available on the Internet, one would have to question the dependability of such electronic reference. The number of wrong turns and blind alleys on the information superhighway is enormous. There is no reason, however, to think that Holmes and Evans did anything but get it right. The section introductions, setting battles in some context, will also be useful to those studying for exams and writing lectures. Those doing such work will be happy to have a copy of Battlefield on their desks.

Others, however, will find little use for this book. Holmes says on the first page of his Preface that he did not want to do a decisive battles book or "another dictionary of battles." While grouping the contents by a combination of chronology and geography and adding some introductory remarks when shifting from one place or campaign to another does add context and avoids a simple alphabetical listing, he has failed in his latter intention. This book is a dictionary of battles, a useful and well-done dictionary, but a dictionary nonetheless.

Fred R. van Hartesveldt

Fort Valley State University