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This article outlines a conceptual framework to analyse the norms and values influencing the behaviour of soldiers in the past. It will argue that military culture is a specific form of institutional culture and that viewing armies from this perspective offers new insight into how they functioned and the nature of their interaction with state and society. It also addresses definitions of militarism, arguing that these generally blur distinctions between cultural and material factors. By disassociating military culture from particular forms of rule or modes of production, it can be studied in societies where it has been forgotten or hidden in the historical memory.

THIS article outlines a conceptual framework to analyse the norms and values influencing the behaviour of soldiers in the past. It will argue that military culture is a specific form of institutional culture and that viewing armies from this perspective offers new insight into how they functioned and the nature of their interaction with state and society. There is a long-standing interest in attitudes to war and peace, and in the general place of war in wider historical change. Developments in military technology, tactics, and organisation have also been the focus of considerable attention.1 The cultural dimension tends, however, to be subsumed within the debates on militarism and military-civil relations, or viewed as an aspect of violence by anthropologists and social scientists.2

Rather than offering the last word on the subject, this article intends to move the debate forward by providing an alternative to current approaches. The framework outlined here proposes a way to disentangle armies as institutions from a variety of teleologies, such as connections to particular constitutional forms, or modes of production. Until now, this subject has sat uneasily between history and political science, with specialists in both disciplines displaying some reluctance to take cognisance of what their colleagues elsewhere are doing. Historians have remained entrenched behind their empirical parapets, wary of fitting their specific case studies into theoretical models. Political and social scientists, working with at least one eye on the present, require frameworks for comparative analyses of long-term developments. Of necessity, they often force-march their data, regarding those awkward, specific examples that fall out along the way as acceptable losses. What follows does not pretend to resolve all these cross-disciplinary tensions, but it does hope to establish clearer terms for research and to indicate gaps in current knowledge. Unavoidably, this entails some engagement with theory, but the argument will also be grounded in examples, primarily from European and Latin American history since the sixteenth century.

The first task is to identify the chief elements of institutional culture in general and that of military institutions in particular. This discussion will form the bulk of the piece, but the concluding section will also consider whether military culture is distinct from militarism and, if so, what relationship may exist between the two. In doing so, it will pay considerable attention to change over time, particularly the transition from early modern to modern militaries, because the emergence of a distinct military culture is generally thought to have been a part of this process. This transition has been viewed within military history from a European perspective that suggests a two-stage development. Permanent "standing armies" emerged from the later fifteenth century and are generally thought to have been composed largely of mercenaries outside direct state control. These forces were first integrated into the state by subjecting them to bureaucratic supervision, and then integrated into society by making citizens into soldiers. This second stage is generally assumed to have been begun by the French Revolution with its levee en masse in 1792, and completed with the combination of universal conscription and manhood suffrage introduced across Europe between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.3 The cultural aspect of this process is viewed generally from the perspective of the officer corps, which is regarded as the incubator and carrier of military values. Military culture is reduced to little more than an extension of an aristocratic ethos that shifted from medieval chivalry through the early modern cosmopolitan cavalier to become a conservative, reactionary force in the nineteenth century. This perspective is deeply rooted within social and political science, since the influential studies of the 1960s and 1970s drew heavily on this historical model to underpin their discussion of "professionalisation" of the officer corps and its tendency towards praetorianism.4

Definitions

The approach here defines culture as the values, norms, and assumptions that guide human action. Culture enables choices to be made by predisposing people to interpret situations in a limited number of ways. Screening out other options makes action possible by reducing the otherwise bewildering range of alternatives to a more manageable number from which a "rational" choice can be made.5 Military culture implies the existence of a specific institution, since the contention here is that it is different from a culture of violence, though it may well be part of that, too. The institutional character of military culture imparts a collective coherence that is lacking in other attitudes to violence, such as the practice of duelling.6

For this reason, what follows excludes discussion of the experience of combat and its meaning for the individual.7 It also deliberately avoids close engagement with what has been labelled the "culture of war," because the approaches associated with this term have considerable methodological drawbacks. One useful element is strategic culture that examines the perception of risk, goals, and the relative willingness to use force. As will be shown, this can be subsumed within the element of "mission" in military culture. Other aspects of the culture of war are more problematic as they suffer from either too little or too much emphasis on structure.8 Much of the writing concentrates on the culture of killing by individuals, paying scant attention to how such activities can be organised on a mass scale and sustained over time. Explanations generally rely on identifying a particular group as carriers of a warrior ethos instilling their values into others through some sort of acculturation process. This risks ignoring how those warriors may themselves be influenced by others' behaviour. Other works overemphasise structure by relating culture to specific models of military organisation, as in claims for the existence of a distinct "western" form of warfare constituting the sole, universal practice since ancient Greece.9 Attempts to refute this include theories of "military style," with change explained through the evolution of paradigmatic armies emerging periodically, forcing others to adapt either through emulation or by developing alternative, more effective forms.10 Such ideas can be useful, but they risk setting up models of competing systems with one (generally western) as a yardstick of "efficiency." We need a framework to understand why similar forms of military organisation, weaponry, and the like can be combined with apparently very different cultures. One example from another historical field is Dipesh Chakrabarty's findings demonstrating differences in Indian and English working-class culture despite the similar institutional setting of capitalist enterprise.11

A recent study has identified the early modern period of European history as an age "of institution building" related directly to state formation. This process began unevenly, varying from fourteenth-century Italy to sixteenth-century England, but generally crystallised around 1700 to give a landscape of distinct institutions. Standing armies identified as leading examples of these are associated with "rich institutional cultures," yet these have not been subject to scrutiny.12 Existing work on armies also suffers from problems common to that on other institutions in that it concentrates on formal frameworks, such as their constitutional position and how they were supposed to function, rather than the cultural practices within them. All institutions depend on the interaction of their members who are guided by informal customs and procedures, as well as explicit, written norms. Such interaction can change over time, creating discrepancy between underlying assumptions and formal rules. This has been viewed in negative terms as "inefficiency" or "corruption," yet is an integral part of institutional development. Moreover, as the studies of military professionalism already make clear, an institution can develop its own identity and interests that may conflict with the formal goal of the organisation. Finally, individuals can be members of several institutions either simultaneously, or over a lifetime, creating possible conflicts of loyalty, as well as transmitting culture from one to another. All of this suggests that we need to view institutions as something more than formal frameworks.

An institution can be defined as an established, significant, and recognised practice, relationship, or organisation in a society or culture. Some theorists try to distinguish between "institution" and "organisation," using the former exclusively to identify specific culture practices, as in the "institution of marriage." This distinction is common within sociology, psychology, and business studies, but often leaves the term "organisation" as too broad to be of much use in historical analysis.13 For our purposes here, an institution can be regarded as a specific type of organisation that exhibits three characteristics. First, it can be identified through its members, either narrowly in the sense of qualified members of a professional body, such as the Institute of Civil Engineers, or more broadly as all those associated with it, extending to the patients and ancillary staff, as well as the doctors and nurses, in the case of a hospital. Institutions are frequently identified with buildings or some other specific location as the clearest outward sign of their existence. These are indicative of a second key point that institutions require symbols to distinguish members from nonmembers and to serve as a focal point for identity. Finally, institutions are characterised by a three-fold interaction: internally amongst members, between these and nonmembers, and collectively with other institutions, including the state.

Institutions do not develop in a vacuum. Opinions about the factors shaping their development and culture differ considerably.14 For example, the "population-ecology model" argues that institutions are shaped by their environment, so that changed circumstances will call forth new forms of organisation. The "resource-dependency" approach retains the emphasis on environment, but shifts the focus to the internal process of securing the means to perpetuate the institution and enable it to carry out its role. As resources are scarce, environment limits the strategic choices that can be made and so restricts the possible paths of development. Rational Choice Theory interprets institutions as goal-orientated organisations whose culture is shaped by their mission. Marxists see institutions as the products of underlying socio-economic relations and seek to identify their relationships to class structures and interests. Finally, the "institutional model" highlights how patterns of behaviour become entrenched over time, pushing development in certain directions. All these approaches have certain merits, but none alone offers a wholly convincing explanation. However, there is no reason to see them as entirely mutually exclusive.

Despite often considerable differences in function, size, duration, and impact, institutions tend to follow similar normative paths and be concerned with similar issues. Each has a mission that defines its purpose and legitimates its existence. Each must define its relationship to the state and other institutions. Each has a social basis and relationship to society. Each has an internal structure that embodies its norms and assumptions. Each requires resources to survive and function. The following discussion is structured around these aspects that will permit comparison between armies and other institutions. For the sake of clarity, it will concentrate on land armies as the main example of military institutions, but the theoretical model can be applied to other armed organisations like militias, navies, and air forces.

What follows is not intended to suggest there is a linear model of development with a single "ideal type" of military institution as an inevitable outcome. Armies were not necessarily moving towards fulfilling all the criteria outlined here, with a partial match implying an "underdeveloped" culture. It might be objected that the range of examples used here will simply reproduce the Eurocentric character of much military history; however, this choice is deliberate. Latin American militaries were, to a considerable degree, moulded in the image of European models. Such models have been profoundly influential, at least over the last five centuries, if not invariably superior militarily or otherwise to alternative forms. European and "Europeanised" militaries thus already constitute a valid field for study. More fundamental, for present purposes, is that the juxtaposition of European and Europeanised militaries reveals major differences in culture despite the ostensibly similar institutional setting.

Above all, the approach outlined here does not advocate taking armed forces out of context and studying them in isolation from political, social, economic, or other factors. Instead, the aim is to establish a framework that permits comparisons across time and space, by suggesting the principal areas to be investigated. The study of an army's mission and relationship to the state is clearly related to the political context in which it operates, while its social basis appears through its relationship to society. Examination of its access and use of resources entails understanding of the economic context. The cultural setting will be most apparent in the force's internal structure and understanding of its mission, yet will clearly influence the other three characteristics as well since these involve questions of perception and meaning. It is unlikely that a particular military culture will be fully integrated, with a single set of norms and values shared by all personnel. More commonly, military culture is fragmented, exhibiting different, possibly contradictory attitudes and behaviour within the same army. Far from invalidating the approach, it underscores the institutional character of military culture, since the strength and cohesiveness of an army as an institution will determine to what extent its personnel think and act in ways distinct from other members of their society. Only empirical studies can offer specific explanations for the individual culture of each army and why it might differ from other forces.

Mission

A mission provides an institution with a common purpose that justifies its existence and claim on resources, as well as the self-worth, rewards, and privileges of its members. A mission is rarely singular, identified with one clear task, but often has a primary purpose from which other, subsidiary tasks are derived. The formal primary task of all military institutions is external defence, though this is never unambiguous and can be pushed into the background by other, generally less-explicit goals like domestic policing and repression. These tasks are often interpreted as serving the interests of the ruling elite who "sell" protection to their subjects in return for labour and tribute.15 Armies have also frequently assumed a national-representative role, generally with a distinct ideological dimension that regards soldiers as the promoters of national development and modernisation.

The latter is instructive, since it reveals how an institution's underlying sense of purpose can diverge from its formal mission. For example, the formal constitutional function of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American armies has been national defence, yet all developed a strong sense of themselves as the true guardians of La Patria, entitling them to intervene when this appeared in danger. Citing a failure to push through necessary reforms, the Brazilian army removed Emperor Pedro II in 1889, abolished the monarchy, and established a republic, with senior officers as its first two presidents.16 However, as this case shows, material and other sectional interests were often present too, since the Brazilian officers were also propelled by long-standing grievances over pay, promotion, and social status, as well as by dissatisfaction with a monarchy that clearly favoured the navy above the army.17

The study of military intervention in Latin America distinguishes an "age of the caudillos," or strongmen with armed retinues who generally exercised control of many states from the post-independence era around 1825 to the later nineteenth century. They usually held military ranks, while their forces were often subdivided into units with some formal military training and even modern equipment. Although these irregular and provincial forces could act as elements of a national army, they lacked overall identity and coherence. Loyalty was determined through a mixture of economic dependency, patronage, and kinship. Backed by these forces, the caudillos struggled for control of government, provincial autonomy, and economic resources. The pattern of intervention changed as armies assumed greater coherence from the 1870s, and began acting as institutions, even if those in charge did not always command the support of all personnel.18

The foregoing suggests that an army needs a sufficient level of institutional development and cohesion to adhere to a recognised mission, rather than group or individual interests. Such a mission has two elements. One is the formal, explicit ideological goal that legitimises the institution's existence and serves as a rationale for its behaviour and the action and status of its members. This primary goal can also justify a range of subsidiary, but nonetheless important aims, as in the case of military intervention in the name of La Patria. The second element is the intention to perpetuate the institution and to enable it to carry out its ideological function. Members of an institution often have difficulty distinguishing between this system-sustaining element and their ideological goal, particularly when their own material interests are at stake. Nonetheless, a sense of mission is intimately related to an institution's identity and development and is kept alive in the minds of its members through powerful motivating myths and rituals. These include the commemoration of key individuals and events associated with the institutional mission during formative periods in its history. Such associations can change over time as different elements of the mission assume greater significance, or new roles are adopted. For example, the nineteenth-century Chilean army prided itself on its strict adherence to its constitutional role in national defence whilst the forces of neighbouring countries tore themselves apart in bloody internal struggles. This attitude was reinforced by a series of spectacular victories over the less-cohesive Peruvian and Bolivian forces in the War of the Pacific, 1879-84, and sustained the Chilean military even after its defeat in the civil war of 1890-91 when it unsuccessfully backed the constitutionally elected president against congressional opposition assisted by the navy. Many officers became increasingly concerned for national welfare following the First World War and global depression, prompting them to become more politically active by 1924. They struggled to reconcile their new ambitions with their past traditions. For example, a group of officers forced the government to adopt a new constitution in 1925, but worded this document expressly to exclude the military from politics. More substantial intervention followed in 1927-31, but did not displace the general conviction amongst officers that they were loyal to the constitution. There was no official commemoration of the revolts and mutinies. Instead, the country continued to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Iquique, a naval victory in the War of the Pacific, as a national holiday. Nonetheless, the activism of the early twentieth century established a new tradition of involving the military in politics at times of national crisis. This was formalised by legislation passed in 1941 entrusting supervision of national elections to the armed forces. The tradition of subordination to the constitution transmogrified into that of political arbiter, a belief that played a significant part in the 1973 coup that began the seventeen-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.19

The past also shapes how an institution will confront new problems. In the case of an army, this is expressed through its military doctrine that rests on its experience of past conflicts and what it knows about its likely enemies. The legacy of the most recent conflict exercises a powerful influence on military doctrine, even for those armies that believe they are in an era of rapid change. The Prussian army spent the first half of the nineteenth century coming to terms with the Napoleonic Wars, before fighting three swift, decisive wars against Denmark, Austria, and France between 1864 and 1871 that accompanied the process of German unification.20 These in turn made a deep impression on postwar thinking. The army now saw its mission as defence of the newly forged national unity against other European great powers. In envisaging further major conventional wars against France and Russia, it was forced to juggle the requirements of quantity and quality by extending conscription whilst retaining a socially exclusive, professionally dedicated officer corps. Yet, the latter stages of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 had seen German forces under attack from French guerrillas. Coupled with growing awareness of the adverse psychological impact of modern combat on conscripts, the German high command became increasingly concerned at the spectre of "peoples' war" in which it would be difficult to limit conflict to conventional warfare. Taken together, these concerns encouraged the conviction that the army must win a swift, decisive victory to prevent Germany being overwhelmed by its enemies' superior resources and numbers, and to stop war "degenerating" into a protracted struggle against a hostile population that would brutalise German soldiers and inhibit adjustment to postwar civilian life. The result was an ambivalent attitude to "total war" embodied in the infamous Schlieffen Plan intended to defeat France before Russia could mobilise.21

The example of the wars of German unification also suggests that the nature of past experience exerts a significant influence. In Germany's case, the brilliant victories fostered a fragile confidence, mixing arrogance with unease following the unsettling experience in the latter stages of 1870-71 and the growing awareness that subsequent technological change was posing new challenges to past methods. The French army was forced to confront a legacy of defeat and national humiliation that complicated its relationship to both state and society. The French public chose to commemorate the war as a valiant defence and national sacrifice that was more glorious than the German victory.22 The new Third Republic had been born from the chaos of defeat and civil unrest and had no desire to jeopardise its legitimacy by questioning this myth, despite the exaggeration of popular resistance relative to the performance of the regular army. The latter was seized by indecision as to how best to respond to the events, as defenders of the old professional army quarrelled with advocates of genuine universal conscription.23

Relationship to the State and Other Institutions

Armies differ from other institutions in that their primary mission entails a readiness to take life and destroy property. Commercial corporations may seek to supplant their rivals, but they do not intend their organised physical destruction. This imparts a special nature to the relationship between the army and the state, because it is through the latter that soldiers receive sanction to break taboos that inhibit the rest of society from killing. The state legitimises the military mission through the ideology of just war, something which in European history became increasingly secularised from the sixteenth century as "reasons of state" and "national interests."24

The army's relationship to the state has been studied from the perspective of its formal constitutional position and the role of military institutions in state formation. The general point of departure in this literature is Max Weber's definition of the state as possessing a monopoly of legitimate violence within a given territory.25 Armies have been seen as both agents and consequences of state formation. State formation involved the suppression of other sources of power, either by directly eliminating them or by subordinating them to centralised political authority. Armed force was used to crush organised resistance and prevent external interference. The establishment of a state monopoly of violence underpinned the military's existence by resolving the question of whether they should be there at all. The ability of a state to sustain its armed forces over prolonged periods assisted their institutional development and helped define their mission. It also determined the extent to which the army remained autonomous and how far it could set its own goals. States that do not fully monopolise organised violence have been less able to control and direct their armed forces than those that have asserted such authority. Centralisation and military cohesion are clearly linked. Decentralised states generally have similarly decentralised armed forces, often loosely organised without clear institutional identities, as illustrated by parts of postcolonial Africa.26 The Weberian approach is useful up to a point, provided it is recognised that even those armies that remain in their barracks often exert a discrete influence on politics. The key point here is that whilst political and military power clearly have some connections, they are nonetheless distinct and should not be conflated as a single category.

The army's relationship to other institutions has received less attention. Of these, the most important are other, potentially competing, armed organisations, including those of other states, as well as the variety of national guards, militias, gendarmerie, and paramilitary forces that are often found within the same country. Armies have faced challenges from other regular branches of service that compete for resources and influence. For example, armies and navies have struggled over the control of amphibious units, like marines, while air forces have fought to emancipate themselves from the supervision of generals and admirals. The European experience also includes important colonial armed forces. These often emerged autonomously, like the separate land and sea forces used by the English and Dutch chartered trading companies to seize and defend shares of colonial markets. Those of the English East India Company, established in 1601, remained distinct even after the crisis of the Indian Mutiny in 1857-58. Though reorganised as the Indian Army in 1858-60, the force retained its subdivision into the three "presidencies" of Bombay, Bengal, and Madras until 1895, while the Punjab Frontier Force remained outside the direct authority of the British commanderin-chief. Similarly, the Dutch maintained a separate East Indies army and navy until the loss of their colonies in the wake of the second World War.27

The distinctiveness of colonial forces' military culture extended beyond organisational differences. Regardless of the importance attached to empire by metropolitan governments, colonial forces always assumed a degree of autonomy. European models and modes of thinking had to adapt to different terrain and enemies, while the recruitment of natives, either directly or as auxiliaries, profoundly altered the social basis of colonial armies. Service in the colonies was also viewed differently by the home population, often necessitating different methods to recruit the European element than those employed for national defence.28 The tension between "European" and "native" pervades all aspects of colonial military culture that is marked by a corresponding degree of ambivalence. For instance, European-born officers frequently refused to adapt to local conditions for fear of "diluting" their core values, yet also often expressed grudging acknowledgement of native superiority in field craft, tactics, and even weaponry.29

The different culture of colonial forces has had political repercussions. Colonial armies were generally regarded as secondary to homebased forces in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe, since their task was to combat racially "inferior" enemies. Yet, service in frequent frontier conflicts and against endemic insurgency gave many colonial soldiers a sense that they embodied true martial values, whilst their metropolitan cousins had "gone soft" in their comfortable peacetime billets. This could prompt intervention in metropolitan politics if combined with grievances over resources or perceived neglect, as in the case of the opening stages of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), or the coup attempt by the Algerian-based generals that precipitated the collapse of the French Fourth Republic in 1958.

Politics is at the forefront in studies of institutional rivalry amongst home-based forces. However, most analyses are marred by the assumption that forms of military and political organisation are automatically related, as in the customary association of democratic, republican government with militias or citizens-in-arms, and authoritarian regimes with professional standing armies. These ideas have their origins in the work of Otto Hintze and Harold Lasswell. Their conclusions dominated the influential North American political and social science literature of the 1960s and 1970s that argued the way to curb militarism was to restrict soldiers to their "proper" sphere of national defence through better professional training.30 Opponents of strong monarchy in sixteenthand seventeenth-century Europe championed a variety of militias and levies as alternatives to a single, centralised royal army. These alternatives were expressed through the lens of the Humanist revival of classical antiquity and associated with notions of civic liberty and "free" nobility. They proved particularly influential in the Anglophone world through their transmission via the Elizabethan militia system to colonial North America where they found later expression in the association of the right to bear arms with personal freedom.31 By contrast, continental European absolute monarchy became identified with the standing army allegedly composed of "foreign mercenaries" less likely to sympathise with an oppressed population. The two traditions seem epitomised by the employment of German auxiliaries by George III to fight the American revolutionaries in 1775-83.32

These associations derive from political debate, rather than historical experience. Forms of political and military organisation become interrelated only when there is serious disagreement over the direction of state formation. Where one form of military organisation becomes identified with established political arrangements, opponents of those in power promote alternatives as both militarily and politically superior. Actual organisation generally remains mixed, as in the case of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century wars and rebellions in Europe. For instance, parliaments and Estates opposed militias when these were suggested by monarchs as alternatives to expensive mercenaries, since they knew both were equally unpopular with peasants who wanted neither to serve nor to pay war taxes in lieu. Estates that fought monarchs hired mercenaries and organised their own regular armies, as in France during the Wars of Religion (1562-98) and in the Bohemian revolt (1618-20) at the start of the Thirty Years' War. The English Parliament defeated Charles I thanks to the New Model Army, and laid the basis for subsequent world empire through naval and fiscal reforms.33

The ideological distinction between "peoples' war" and limited "cabinet wars" only took shape in the wake of the French Revolutionary Wars, and was accompanied by practical disagreements over how best to cope with conflicting demands of quality and quantity in military organisation. One example was how the creation of the Landwehr, or reserve militia, in Prussia and the German states in 1813 became enmeshed in campaigns for a more liberal, constitutional monarchy. Such discussions were never clear cut, since much of the conservative opposition to the Landwehr came from those concerned to limit the militarisation of society and who believed that small, professional armies would secure swifter, less costly victories.34 Equally, forms of military organisation associated with personal freedoms in western political ideas have often proved oppressive in other contexts. For example, U.S. intervention in Central America and the Caribbean after 1898 saw the replacement of local conventional armies with national guards, intended to support more democratic politics. The stated intention was that these new forces were better suited to democracy; in practice they were a way of imposing congenial collaborating regimes and bringing the U.S. Marines back home. The national guards swiftly became vehicles for new brutal dictatorships, such as that of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua in 1936-56. The much-publicised abolition of the Costa Rican army in the constitution of 1949 was followed by the creation of a much larger and better-equipped civil guard trained by American instructors to fight communism.35

Alongside the state and other armed services, we need to consider the army's relationship to other institutions such as the church. Discussion of the military mission has already highlighted the significance of religion in shaping attitudes to killing and the use of organised violence. Churches and religious figures have frequently found a formal place within military institutions, for example, in the appointment of regimental chaplains. Such instances can give rise to conflict over jurisdiction and even criticism of military personnel, their mission, and wider culture, as in the case of eighteenth-century Prussia, where pietistically inclined Lutheran pastors did not always cooperate with the crown's efforts to use faith to reinforce loyalty and subordination.36 Other examples include the often problematic relationship between armies and political parties, especially those associated with communism and fascism in the twentieth century.

Relationship to Society

All institutions require a social basis and a means to recruit new members and induct them into their culture. Organisational theory identifies the issue of "substitutability" as crucial to institutional survival. No member can be indispensable. Either an institution must have substitutes with similar skills and expertise, or it must be able to replace members through internal promotion or external recruitment.37 Clearly, substitutability is a cultural construct since it derives from what those selecting new members perceive as desirable or essential qualities in new recruits. Further issues include how far an institution and its members are embedded in their social context and the extent to which they are open to ideas beyond their own institutional culture, such as religion or political beliefs.

These questions have been explored through the "war and society" approach of the "new military history" since the late 1960s that concentrated on methods of recruitment, social composition, and the way armies can function as social communities.38 Much of this research has been dominated by attempts to identify connections between armies, or at least their officers, and wider class interests. German history provides a good example. The creation of the Prussian army in the mid-seventeenth century is presented as the outcome of a "historic compromise" between the crown and nobility at the expense of peasants and bourgeoisie. In return for surrendering political initiative to the crown, the feudal nobility were given a monopoly of military and bureaucratic posts. Military jurisdiction allegedly reinforced feudal jurisdiction thanks to the system of conscription adopted by 1733. Though this limited conscription was replaced by more universal service by 1814, the aristocracy retained a tight hold on the senior ranks well into the twentieth century. The prominent role of the aristocracy in army and state is regarded as a key feature of "German militarism" and an explanation for that country's international belligerence.39

This approach suffers empirical and methodological problems. While the Prussian officer corps was dominated by noblemen and better-off commoners, not all families from these groups had relations in the armed forces or bureaucracy. Instead, officers and civil servants tended to come from families with established traditions of service to the state. This pattern is found elsewhere in the phenomenon of "military" or "naval families." It extends down the hierarchy to the rank and file in countries practising voluntary enlistment, where sons followed fathers in joining the local regiment, and some regions, such as North East England and Clydeside, have provided a disproportionate number of recruits to the British army. While there are clearly links between social and military hierarchies, these findings suggest that we should also look beyond issues of class in order to identify what shapes military culture.40

One possibility has been the recent application of Erving Goffman's concept of a "total institution" to the study of the Brazilian army.41 A total institution is one that seeks to control its members by breaking down the spheres of work, sleep, and play that structure much of human existence. Members are physically separated from society and subjected to a tightly controlled and regimented daily routine related explicitly to the institution's mission. Examples include mental asylums, monasteries, and prisons, but also less-obvious cases such as merchant ships at sea. Each is further characterised by an internal hierarchy with a small, supervisory "staff directing and managing a much larger number of "inmates." The latter perform their daily routine in company and are treated alike and required to do the same thing together. Distinctions between inmates and staff, and between the institution and the outside world, are maintained through distinctive clothing, forms of address, and location within a closed environment. According to Goffman, staff and inmates develop separate social worlds "jogging alongside each other with points of official contact but little mutual penetration."42 The institutional "plant," in the form of buildings and other assets, is identified with both groups, but is regarded as somehow only "belonging" to the staff. This internal division raises important questions about the motivation of the subordinate group. Normal economic forces do not apply, because the institution provides accommodation, clothing, food, and many other basic needs, whilst restricting how inmates spend any income they earn. Interaction with society is limited. Entry into the institution removes inmates from previous support networks, like families, or at least restricts access.

Some aspects of this model clearly resonate with past military culture. Early modern European armies constituted separate corporate groups with their own legal privileges. The implementation of standardised drill and related physical training also resembles Goffman's model.43 Prussian soldiers were woken at 4:00 A.M. in the second half of the eighteenth century. They stood to an hour later and began training at 6:00 A.M. Arms drill followed at 7:30, with battle drill between 8:30 and 12:00. The afternoon was spent cleaning equipment. Curfew was imposed at 9:30 P.M., or earlier in winter. However, two-thirds of personnel were on extended leave for most of the year, while even those with the colours generally had every third day off-duty. Moreover, only a small proportion of eighteenth-century European soldiers lived in barracks, and those who did often shared them with their families. When barracks became more common in the nineteenth century, their internal design changed, as communal dormitories replaced smaller rooms.44 Veterans were also lodged in buildings closely resembling Goffman's asylums from the later seventeenth century, but only a small proportion of former servicemen entered such establishments, while for most nineteenth-century soldiers, barracks formed only a brief part of their lives before they were discharged back into civil society.45

Studies of national service also question the extent to which it shaped conscripts' lives and attitudes, and question Eugen Weber's belief that it assisted in forging national identity. Russian soldiers depended on local society for their daily needs before the later nineteenth century and often slept in peasants' houses, leading one study to conclude that, despite fundamental military reforms between 1861 and 1881, "the peasant remained a peasant even while in uniform."46 Nonetheless, military service made peasants into agents of the state and subjected them to different forms of supervision and daily routines.

The problems with Goffman's model illustrate the difficulties in disentangling armies and societies. Stock assumptions that armies reflect the societies that create them risk oversimplifying a complex relationship. Military hierarchies rarely completely reproduced social stratification. Yet, military institutions were never completely "total" either. Soldiers brought their "social baggage" with them on campaign, maintaining ties to families and other people with little or no connection to the military. Soldiers are more likely to follow common norms if the army in which they serve is institutionally distinct and cohesive. And the degree of cohesion depends to a considerable extent on an army's internal structure.

Internal Structure

The internal structure of an institution can be analysed according to its complexity, formalisation, and centralisation. These elements provide the framework within which the processes of power, leadership, communication, and change can operate.47 The outward aspects have been studied extensively for military institutions. As armies grew larger, their internal structures became more complex through their subdivision into standardised, permanent units, and then the grouping of these into intermediate hierarchies of regiments, brigades, divisions, and corps. The flow of information, resources, and personnel within this structure became formalised through written regulations that permeated every level. These structures were also highly centralised, reserving key decisions for the senior ranks, and strictly delineating responsibilities throughout the junior levels.

Less attention has been paid to the more informal aspects, such as strategies for fostering loyalty, or defusing conflicts that cannot be dealt with through official channels. There has been a tendency to adopt contemporary verdicts on such activity and see it as corruption or inefficiency. For example, early modern European company officers regularly circumvented official regulations by falsifying accounts and pocketing soldiers' pay. Such practices were, in fact, vital to the internal economy at a time when most governments frequently defaulted on what they owed their personnel and officers were responsible for the procurement of food and other resources. Desertion was another structural characteristic of a military system that was regularly unable to provide for its personnel's basic needs.48 What is important here is not the deviation from official norms, but how such practices became part of an army's culture. Internal monitoring can become opaque or be subverted for material or ideological reasons, so that it can be difficult for members of an institution to tell whether it is functioning "properly." For instance, the Austrian high command blamed its defeats in 1859 and 1866 on underfunding, when poor accounting and planning, in fact, squandered relatively liberal financial support from the government.49

Inertia can set in, making it hard for an institution to adapt to new challenges. Procedures become routine, even ritualised, and lose touch with their original purpose. Military institutions are especially prone to this, given their veneration of tradition. Screening and filtering practices in appointments and promotions contribute to this as those in charge seek people most like themselves to fill vacancies. Patterns become established, leading to certain ways of "getting on," so that unorthodox behaviour is discouraged. Vested interests lead post holders to identify with "their" role, that has to be defended against those seeking change. Individual personality also plays a part as two people in the same position may act very differently, and often forceful characters carve out considerable informal influence extending well beyond their official competence. One example would be the "military cabinet" in Imperial Germany that influenced political decisions thanks to its direct access to the Kaiser.

There is some evidence that the norms and values of wider society influence the internal structure of military institutions. As in the case of the linkage of military and political organisation, this relationship is far from simple. For example, France and Russia developed different approaches to military justice in the first half of the nineteenth century, reflecting not only varying levels of education and socio-economic disparities, but also fundamentally diverging attitudes to the relationship between army and authority. Russians saw their army as firmly subordinate to Tsarist rule and encouraged a distinct sphere of military justice detaching it from civil society. The French regarded soldiers as citizens and integrated military law within a wider national framework. However, by the 1850s France was moving to separate military and civil jurisdictions more clearly, while Russia was revising its draconian system.50

The fact that institutions within the same field of activity tend to develop similar internal structures suggests that other factors may also be at work. Organisational theory labels this trend "institutional isomorphism" and identifies three reasons.51 Government regulations and wider cultural expectations can impose a degree of standardisation. Armies are partly immune to such external influence, since they are unique institutions in most states. Nonetheless, they share many common characteristics with other armed organisations, such as militias, national guards, and police forces, as well as with the state bureaucracy. Normative pressures are a second factor that develops as the workforce becomes more professional and demands similar treatment across separate institutions. One example would be common pay scales for academic staff working in different universities. Again, military institutions are only partially subject to such pressures, though the relatively cosmopolitan character of the officer corps of eighteenth-century European armies certainly spread some common assumptions.52 Mimicking other institutions is a third factor and has been far more significant in military development. The widespread emulation of the Prussian General Staff after its mid-nine-teenth-century victories offers a good example.53 However, it is important to note how external examples are filtered through the local context and the existing culture of each army. The British response to Prussia's victories was influenced by general prevailing factors, such as developments in weaponry, as well as by its own experience in colonial conflicts and its dealings with its government and society.54 Further illustration is provided by the difficulty experienced by Turkey, Japan, and other countries in importing European military practices and technology in the nineteenth century.55

The development of the internal structure of military institutions is generally linked to a wider process of social discipline by which states sought first to subordinate and regiment their own institutions, and then to use these to shape the behaviour of their subjects.56 This process has been studied through the imposition of written regulations and their relationship to changing military technology and tactics. Much of this is discussed through the paradigm of the "military revolution" for European history. Regardless of variations in emphasis, all commentators agree that the new combination of gunpowder weapons, shock tactics, and large formations introduced from the later fifteenth century was related to the imposition of disciplinary codes.57

These served a practical purpose in enabling armies to function, since the new weapons were highly ineffective unless used in a coordinated, planned fashion. However, the codes also served an ideological purpose in addressing a key problem related to the military mission. Soldiers' status was undermined by the social stigma of killing that transgressed prevailing moral and theological norms. The new military codes dealt directly with this by identifying enemy soldiers as legitimate targets, whilst stipulating dire punishments for violence against women, children, and the elderly. Whilst all early modern armies experienced great difficulty in enforcing their regulations, adherence to a more-orless explicit code of conduct nonetheless became an integral part of military honour. Such rules could be suspended under certain circumstances, for example in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century wars between Christians and Ottoman Turks, or later in colonial conflicts with non-Europeans.58 Otherwise, unimpeachable conduct was emphasised to disassociate soldiers' daily routine from the moral ambiguities of their primary mission. The linkage of codified procedures to a hierarchical chain of command may have served a further psychological function in distancing decisionmaking from actual implementation. This space provides senior officers with an intellectual detachment, enabling them to plan mass slaughter and other actions they would not contemplate in another social environment. Those further down the hierarchy can feel relieved from responsibility for their actions by the rhetoric of "following orders."59

Resources

The inability of early modern states to provide adequate, regular wages for their soldiers undermined official attempts to enhance soldiers' social status. Poor pay and conditions compounded the moral ambiguities inherent in the "trade of war" to push soldiers to the fringe of respectable society. This persisted well into the nineteenth century in many countries, such as Britain and Brazil, where the navy enjoyed far higher social standing. The ability of the wealthy to dodge the draft in Brazil contributed to this as the ranks were filled with the poor and those considered racially inferior.60 These examples indicate that resources are not simply required to enable institutions to function, but are also integral to their relationship to state and society, and to the motivation and identity of their members.

There are three types of resources that affect military culture. Money has long been perceived as the "nerves of war" and is clearly significant as a means to acquire other resources required to carry out the military mission, as well as a direct reward for personnel. The level of pay and of general military funding also affects soldiers' confidence in their army and its ability to fulfil its mission. Technology is a second factor that has received considerable attention, but generally from a rather narrow perspective as the development of weaponry, rather than the impact of bureaucratic procedure, accounting practices, or other less-obvious aspects.61 Much military history is marred by a reductionist technological determinism that sees advances in weaponry as the main driving force behind change.62 Decisions to adopt particular weapons tend to be explained in rational terms of their cost and their effectiveness in battle. However, the decisions surrounding the adoption and use of particular weapons are complex and involve factors other than technical specifications. Much of the resistance to technological change in nineteenth-century Europe was due not to the innate social conservatism of commanding officers, but to practical caution as the utility of new weapons was often unproven and their practical application uncertain.63 Elsewhere, officers were bedazzled by the sales techniques of European arms manufacturers and military missions that pressed them to buy weaponry they were often ill prepared to use.64 The production, design, and artistic significance of weaponry has been widely studied, but knowledge of their cultural association is limited.65 Yet, particular weapons clearly assumed symbolic importance within military institutions and played a major role in how armies presented themselves to the wider public, including their enemies. Some work has been done on the social significance of uniforms, but this largely remains to be integrated within a wider history of military culture.66

Education is the third key resource. It is important to determine the level of knowledge and the facilities available for its dissemination, as well as the extent to which these are available throughout the institution, or restricted to a select few. Studies of military education largely concentrate on its role in professional preparation, and the extent to which this inclines officers to intervene in aspects of life outside their primary mission. Education and other forms of training have served to reinforce institutional identity and foster traditions, as well as enhance the social status of military personnel. The relationship between military training and other educational opportunities has varied, as have their curricula. Military education has generally been closely linked to other programmes intended to train people for state service, and its curriculum receives much of its legitimacy and social value through this connection.67 In this way, it can become an avenue to social advancement amongst those who have little or no intention of graduating as officers. For example, the Karlsschule established by the duke of Württemberg in 1770 as a school for officers' children rapidly became popular amongst civilians seeking state employment. They were also attracted by its emphasis on technical subjects like mathematics and engineering, as well as by its relative openness to Enlightened philosophy, in contrast to the duchy's university in Tübingen that remained dominated by the Lutheran clerical establishment. This readiness to embrace new ideas prompted the government to close the Karlsschule in 1794, for fear that it was spreading the doctrines of the French Revolution.68 Graduates of other military schools have also become convinced they should become agents of reform and social change. However, this becomes part of military culture only if they see the army as their field for action, or as a vehicle for wider change. For example, the "Military Society" in Berlin in 1801-5 became associated with those seeking change within Prussian army, state, and society.69

For this reason, many soldiers have viewed military academies with suspicion. Specialised military academies emerged in the later sixteenth century in Europe, particularly in the Netherlands and smaller German territories. However, it was not until the mid-to-late nineteenth century that a significant proportion of officers underwent formal training, apart from those in the so-called "specialist" branches like the artillery and engineers. Significantly, these branches lacked the prestige attached to the infantry and cavalry, while there were considerable tensions between those who favoured practical experience, and those advocating "scientific" training.70 Military education also fuelled generational conflict within some armies, particularly in nineteenth-century Europe and Latin America, when long-serving senior officers were frequendy less well educated than many of their subordinates.

Nineteenth-century experience also points to the significance of inter-institutional exchange in the development of military education. Chile, Argentina, and other Latin American countries reformed their training under the influence of French and German military missions from the 1870s, replacing instruction modelled on the late eighteenth-century mix of humanities and technical education, with a more specialised curriculum. The structure also became more hierarchical as officers' training was split into general academies for junior ranks, and more exclusive schools for those destined for the general staff or command. Separate establishments were set up for noncommissioned officers, while the training of the rank and file was also reorganised.71 The senior staff colleges became particularly influential, thanks partly to the spread of service journals that disseminated ideas for wider discussion within the army. Notably, the Brazilian Escola Superior de Guerra (ESG), established in 1949, and the Peruvian Centro de Altos Estudios Militares (CAEM), set up the following year, both played a significant role in their respective countries' history in the later twentieth century. Fuelled by the earlier influence of positivism on the officer corps, these two colleges propagated sophisticated doctrines linking national security to economic development and geopolitics, providing the intellectual underpinning to prolonged periods of military intervention in political and social life. The Brazilian army attempted to impose its ideas on the rest of society through its "Moral and Civic Education" that replaced the previous school curriculum in 1968. Other countries have tried this, often with the backing of civilian governments such as in nineteenth-century Turkey and Tsarist Russia, but generally with very limited success.72

Militarism and Military Culture

Attempts to use the army as the "school of the nation" point to the issue of the spread of military culture to other parts of society. Research has treated this aspect under the heading of "militarism," a highly problematic and ill-defined term. Existing work on militarism suffers several drawbacks. First, it is skewed by Eurocentricism, or more particularly, a fascination with Prussia-Germany as the yardstick to measure all other militarisms. Second, it is concerned primarily with the twentieth century and looks further into the past mainly to trace the "origins" of later phenomena. It shares much of the technological determinism of wider military history, linking militarism to industrialisation and other modernisation theories and identifying "feudal," "absolutist," "citizen-nationalist," and the like as distinct phases in chronological order.71 Much of the discussion was also dogged by Cold War dogma, distinguishing between a liberal west and a communist east, each accusing the other of being more militaristic. Finally, the term lacks any real definition and risks simply denoting anything to do with military institutions and warfare in general.

Nonetheless, it is possible to identify two broad traditions since the term first entered scholarly discourse in the 1860s.74 Anglophone writers have tended to see militarism as some kind of "improper" influence of soldiers in politics and other spheres of life, distinguishing between a "military way" to denote "normal" preparations for war, and militarism meaning "an undue preponderance of military demands."75 Germans and others regard it as a state of mind, but one that is generally condemned as dangerous or immoral.76 Both perspectives are essentially subjective value judgements. The same is often the case with the alternative term "militarisation" that has been defined as "militarism viewed as a process," meaning the "active preparation for war through the mobilization of human, technological, and economic resources," especially if this is done in peacetime.77

Matters become clearer if the two terms are distinguished, with militarisation denoting the capacity to wage war, and militarism the mental and cultural willingness to embark on it. The two are clearly related, but not identical, as there are many cases of poorly prepared states star