21 - German Patriotic Women's Work in War and Peace Time, 1864-90

Summary

In the early 1970s, a new generation of women's historians opened the discipline to searing attack. The critics rightly pointed out that the field's standard themes - among the most time-honored were wars and state building - had shaped the larger conceptual grid surrounding the historical narrative. Indeed, historical turning points, the basis of periodization as well as the very understanding of historical significance - all matched, more or less perfectly, major political events, wars, or revolutions. And, as traditionally defined, these topics failed to include anything about women's roles, experiences, and contributions. Not surprisingly, women's history tended early on to ally with social or labor history and made pathfinding steps across the disciplinary borders to adopt innovative theories and methods of inquiry. But time has a way of changing history, and recently women's historians have come full circle. What once was a declaration of war on the topic of war now emerges as a fruitful arena for meaningful dialogue.

Gender inquiry has a lot that is new to say about war. And once military historians move beyond biographies of generals, battle tactics, and weapons - important as these themes may be on one level - and into society, they too must confront the gender implications of their subject. For war culture rests squarely on powerful assumptions about gender roles, and the disruption of war itself seems to crystallize the complex systems of gender embedded in state structures and social values.