Michael P. M. Finch

Making Makers presents a comprehensive history of a seminal work of scholarship which has exerted a persistent attraction for scholars of war and strategy: Makers of Modern Strategy. It reveals the processes by which scholars conceived and devised the book, considering both successful and failed attempts to make and remake the work across the twentieth century, and illuminating its impact and legacy. It explains how and why these influential volumes took their particular forms, unearths the broader intellectual processes that shaped them, and reflects on the academic parameters of the study of war in the twentieth century. In presenting a complete genesis of the Makers project in the context of intellectual trends and historical contingency, this book reflects on a more complex and nuanced appraisal of the development of scholarship on war. In so doing it also offers contributions to the intellectual biographies of key figures in the history of war in the twentieth century, such as Edward Mead Earle, Peter Paret, Gordon Craig, and Theodore Ropp. Making Makers contributes to an intellectual history of military history and contextualises the place of history and historians in strategic and security studies. It is not only a history of the book, but a history of the networks of scholars involved in its creation, their careers, and lines of patronage, crossing international boundaries, from Europe to the USA, to Asia and Australia. It is an investigation of ideas, individuals, and groups, of work completed and scholarship produced, as well as contingency and opportunities missed.

On the eve of the twentieth century, Joseph Gallieni and Hubert Lyautey claimed to have devised a new approach to the consolidation of colonial acquisitions. Their method emphasized the primacy of political action over military action, called for the replacement of military columns with a 'creeping occupation', stressed the importance of economic-organisational development in ensuring the lasting stability of newly-acquired imperial possessions, and called for the unification of civil and military powers in the hands of the soldier, who would act as the first administrator of the colony. This method was the culmination of colonial experiences in Tonkin and Madagascar in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Following Gallieni's career path across these colonies, A Progressive Occupation? The Gallieni-Lyautey Method and Colonial Pacification in Tonkin and Madagascar, 1885-1900 focuses first on the painful process of pacification in Tonkin, locating the emergence of the method and Gallieni's own achievements in their proper context. The volume's focus then moves across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar, where Gallieni, combining the roles of Commander-in-Chief and Governor-General, was able to play out his nascent colonial method on a grand scale. Meanwhile, his subordinates - with Lyautey at the forefront - were able to interpret his method in the execution of their missions. Drawing heavily on French archival sources, Michael Finch sheds new light on colonial conflict and consolidation during the age of European imperial expansion, illustrates the differences, gaps and transgressions that exist between the theory and the practice of pacification, and raises broader questions about the French army, empire and civil-military relations.