Canadian Military Historical Analysis

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Through the ages the nature of the writing of Canadian military history, much like any other form of history, has changed and progressed through time often being impacted by the criterion set by the politics and society of the time period to which it belongs. This paper will attempt to follow the transformation of the writing of Canadian military history focusing mainly on the Army Historical Section, and drawing conclusions mainly from three specific academic works of Canadian military historians written many years after; Tim Cook's Quill and Canon: Writing the Great War in Canada (2005) and Clio's Soldiers: Charles Stacey and the Army Historical Section in the Second World War (2002) as well as Broken Promises: A History of Conscription in…show more content…
He, like many others at the time, used his political and social influence to feed into these generally romanticized ideas regarding the actions of the Canadian Army, and he began purchasing newspapers and mixing with the social elites in an attempt to receive a prominent political position. This method proved successful and Aitken was elected to the House of Commons and knighted shortly before the Great War began, further displaying the period-popular ideologies pertaining to prominent individuals and the apparent “cult of personality” they were included in.[9] A short time later, Aitkens convinced Canada's Minister of Militia and Defence, Sir Sam Hughes, to appoint him Canadian Eye Witness at the battlefront where he would send correspondence back to Hughes and then prime minister, Sir Robert Borden.[10] Being that Aitkens was, like Duguid, not professionally trained as a historian his reports take on a more journalistic form, and were published throughout Canada, further highlighting the role of the CEF and its deeds. With his publication of Canada in Flanders in 1916, Cook states that, “Aitken emphasized the Canadian colonial spirit that had forged these frontiersmen into efficient soldiers. It made for stirring reading, went through more than thirteen reprints, and sold a quarter of a million copies.…show more content…
This gave him even more control over the official war records and he came to believe he was the guardian of the CEF's memory, and that “others could not be trusted to study the war records that would allow them to pass judgement on the actions of his fellow veterans.”[12] These particular mentalities were shared by others as well, as Tim Cook explains in his article Clio's Soldiers: Charles Stacey and the Army Historical Section in the Second World War, “Duguid had certainly become Canada's expert on the Great War, but, except for a few articles and the first volume, he seemed unable to complete the work. In contrast, there were dozens of unofficial histories - one even by the radical historian Frank Underhill which must have galled some of the more conservative serving officers - and numerous regimental histories. It seemed clear that the army had brushed aside the memory of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who had fought in the Great War by denying them an official account of their actions or access to the war records to fashion their own historical manuscripts.”[13] From 1919 to 1938, almost sixty regimental histories were published, including nearly two dozen full length monographs many edited and researched by Duguid and his staff at the Army
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