Quite aside from the problem of contributors who have barely hidden service or industrial interests colouring their arguments, even scholars notably competent as theorydeveloping social scientists or as archival historians are apt to underperform when they wander off their usual patch. The recent American RMA debate generated much more noise than illumination. A polity requires such professionalism, as Germany demonstrated negatively and repeatedly, but it requires also that the professionals charged with the making of policy and strategy should be educated in relevant historical contexts. Meanwhile, seriously misleading beliefs of a social scientific, technological, and historical kind are commonplace among officials and politicians whose professionalism centres around manipulation of a policy process. Social-scientific errors are committed by historians, while historical howlers abound in briefings by social scientists and technocrats. The debate over revolutions in military affairs (RMAs), the Big American Defence Debate of the 1990s, amply rewards the collector of errors.

Social scientists and historians are wont to compete energetically to demonstrate to each other that they are to be trusted neither when playing at home in their supposedly professional field, nor, far less, when they play away on the road on the other field of dreams.

To that end, the work treats its duty to theory building and to respect for historical data with equal gravity and, sometimes, scepticism. This book employs the kind of theory meaningful to a social scientist trying to render historical data an evidential base to advance understanding cumulatively. This new series on ‘Strategy and History’.

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