Subjective practices of war: The Prussian army and the Zorndorf campaign, 1758
-
Published:2020-10-08
Issue:
Volume:
Page:007327532095895
-
ISSN:0073-2753
-
Container-title:History of Science
-
language:en
-
Short-container-title:Hist Sci
Affiliation:
1. Early Career Fellow, Lichtenberg-Kolleg, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany
Abstract
This article integrates the history of military theory – and the practical history of military campaigns and battles – within the broader history of knowledge. Challenging ideas that the new natural philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the so-called Scientific Revolution) fostered attempts to make warfare mathematically calculated, it builds on work showing that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural philosophy was itself much more subjective than previously thought. It uses the figure of King Frederick II of Prussia (reigned 1740–1786) to link theoretical with practical military knowledge, placing the military treatises read and written by the king alongside the practical example of the Prussian army’s campaign against the Russians in summer 1758 at the height of the Seven Years War (1756–1763), which culminated in the battle of Zorndorf. This article shows that both the theory and practice of war – like other branches of knowledge in the long eighteenth century – were fundamentally shaped by the contemporary search for intellectual order. The inability to achieve this in practice led to a reliance on subjective judgment and individual, local knowledge. Whereas historians have noted attempts in the eighteenth century to calculate probabilities mathematically, this article shows that war continued to be conceived as the domain of fortune, subject to incalculable chance. Answering Steven Shapin’s call to define concretely “the subjective element in knowledge-making,” the examples of Frederick and his subordinate, Lieutenant General Count Christoph zu Dohna, reveal sharply different contemporary ideas about how to respond to uncertainty in war. Whereas Dohna sought to be ready for chance events and react to them, Frederick actively embraced uncertainty and risk-taking, making chance both a rhetorical argument and a positive choice guiding strategy and tactics.
Funder
Stiftung Preußischer Schlösser und Gärten
Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte
Bühler-Bolstorff-Stiftung Berlin
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Lichtenberg-Kolleg - The Göttingen Institute of Advanced Study
German Academic Exchange Service London
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Subject
History and Philosophy of Science,History
Cited by
1 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献