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From: Benedict von Bremen
<Benedict.von.Bremen(a)... 22.06.2015
Subject:
Tagber: War and
Geography
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Sarah
K. Danielsson / Frank Jacob, City University of New York
01.05.2015, New
York
Bericht von:
Benedict von Bremen, Eberhard Karls Universität
Tübingen
E-Mail: <Benedict.von.Bremen(a)... May 1, 2015,
the conference "War and Geography" took place at the
City University of New
York's Graduate Center, where conveners Sarah K.
Danielsson and Frank Jacob
welcomed researchers hailing from three
continents. In their talks, they
explored the manifold connections of
warfare and geography. The presentations
ranged chronologically from
Ottoman naval operations in the late 15th century
to modern-day refugees
of war and spatially from the bitter cold of the
Arctic to the dusty
heat of Iran as well as from the woods of North America
to the mountains
of Korea.
In the first panel on the
interconnectedness of war, geography, and
strategy, JEFFREY SHAW (Newport)
examined the doctrine and armaments of
Japanese, Chinese, and Korean troops
in the Imjin War (1592-98). Despite
the similar geographies of their
respective mother countries, past war
experiences resulted in differing
doctrines and armaments of the three
combatant powers. The second presenter,
OLIVER KANN (Erfurt), elaborated
the role of school geography in World War I
Germany. The skills of
geography teachers such as map-reading and -making,
frequently
underestimated before the war, became important both on the battle
front
as a means of war as well as on the home front for educational
and
propaganda purposes. JAMES HORNCASTLE (Burnaby) explored how
the
Yugoslav and Greek communist resistance movements of World War
II
succeeded and failed, respectively. By showing that rugged
geography
conducive to guerilla warfare does not automatically equal success,
he
made a convincing case to take political and cultural geography,
in
addition to physical geography, into consideration. MARTIN G.
CLEMIS
(Philadelphia) presented the different approaches taken by the
U.S.
Armed Forces during the Vietnam War to represent friendly and
enemy
territory via computerized calculations. Rather than a conflict
without
a front, the U.S. war in Indochina was a war of multiple overlapping
and
ever-changing fronts that was less about winning "hearts and minds"
than
area control.
In panel number 2 on war, geography, and the
periphery, MURAT CEM MENGUC
(New Jersey) presented his reading of an Ottoman
apologetic account of a
naval campaign (1499/1500) in the Venetian
Peloponnese. Here, warfare
was equally about maritime battles above salt
water and about the
constant lack of - and quest for - fresh water. LINDA
PARKER
(Birmingham) showed the importance of peacetime civilian
arctic
expeditions for the conduct of war. Both British and German
scientists
had explored the Svalbard islands in the 1930s, only to clash over
the
archipelago because of its major strategic importance for
weather
forecasting during World War II. ELIZABETH BISHOP (San
Marcos)
elaborated on the role of the Zagros Mountains in the Cold War.
A
defensive line for the United States in a possible Third World
War
during the time of "massive retaliation," the signing of the
Baghdad
Pact caused political turmoil in the Middle East where political
borders
where often quite permeable to the exchange of peoples and
ideas.
Panel 3 on war, geography, and reception began with BENEDICT
VON
BREMEN's (Tübingen) introduction to the role of geography in
Ambrose
Bierce's American Civil War writings. Former topographical
engineer
Bierce's texts depicting different types of engagements from
small
skirmishes to big battles mirror how geography and tactics affected
each
other in 1860s warfare. TIMOTHY DEMY (Newport) showed the impact
of
World War I in British painter, veteran, and official war artist
Paul
Nash's oeuvre. His surrealist landscape paintings reflect upon
the
unfathomable destruction of landscapes on the Western Front. Turning
to
the Eastern Front, PETRA SVOLJSAK (Ljubljana) explored the experience
of
Slovenian soldiers fighting for the Habsburg monarchy against
Czarist
Russia. Especially remarkable was to these soldiers, next to the
ordeals
of warfare, the otherness of the Russian landscape in comparison
with
that of their home country. National identity and remembrance was
the
topic of KAREN SHELBY's (New York) talk on Flemish World War I
museums.
Home defense against German invaders made the case for
Flemish
nationalism vis-à-vis Walloons only stronger, as attested by
various
memorials and their depictions of the war for Flandres and not
for
Belgium as a whole.
The fourth panel on the impact of war on
geography was started off by
NINA JANZ (Hamburg) and her talk on German
military cemeteries in World
War II. These burial grounds, modeled after
officially sanctioned
designs, were to be lasting monuments to German
soldiers' heroism and
also functioned as markers for conquered Lebensraum.
Following this
presentation, SWEN STEINBERG (Dresden) gave an introduction to
his
current transnational study on U.S. American and German forestry
and
mining sciences in the era of the world wars. On both sides of
the
Atlantic, natural resources were seen as important assets in
military
confrontations, necessitating the study not only of domestic but
also of
foreign countries' resources. WOLFGANG FORM (Marburg) and
FRANZISKA
SERAPHIM (Boston) presented their ongoing project on war crimes
trials
after World War II. Their work tries to geographically locate
Allied
trials against Axis war criminals and promises to open new avenues
in
the study of global justice. Likewise, RICHARD P. TUCKER (Ann
Arbor)
hopes to shed light on the interconnection between conflicts,
refugee
movements, and the role of and impact on the environment by
attracting
scholars from different disciplines to come together.
The
"War and Geography" conference gathered military historians
whose
perspectives range from the tower tops of war memorials to flattened
and
forgotten soldiers's graves. Geography plays a role in war
from
beginning to end and beyond, starting with preparing (both
materially
and mentally) for battle to experience on the actual fighting
grounds to
the aftermath (and remembrance) of war. War is influenced by
landscapes
and war changes landscapes, but not only in a physical, but also
in a
cultural way, as the several panels of the conference were able to
show.
The interrelationship of war and geography is expressed in the arts
such
as painting, architecture, and (literary) writing. And the role
of
geography in warfare is not limited to tactics and strategies - or
the
role that physical geography plays: other geographies of mind
play
equally important roles.
Conference Overview:
War,
Geography, and Strategy
Jeffrey Shaw (Naval War College), The Imjin
War
Oliver Kann (Universität Erfurt), The "Rise" of German School
Geography
in World War I
James Horncastle (Simon Fraser University),
Mapping a Term: Geography
and its Role in the Success and Failures of the
Yugoslav and Greek
Resistance Movements
Martin G. Clemis (Temple
University), The Geography of the Second
Indochina War: Irregular War, the
Environment, and the Struggle for
South Vietnam
War, Geography, and
the Periphery
Murat Cem Menguc (Seton Hall University), The Experience of
War in the
Sea: Ottoman Eyewitness Accounts of the 1499-1500 Expedition to
the
Peloponnese
Linda Parker (Birmingham, UK), From Ice Stations to
Action Stations -
The Importance of the Spitsbergen Archipelago in the Second
World War
Elizabeth Bishop (Texas State University), Lofty and
Preciptious Chains
- The Baghdad Pact in the Zagros Mountains
War,
Geography, and Reception
Benedict von Bremen (Eberhard Karls Universität
Tübingen), Battlefield
Topography: Geography in Ambrose Bierce's Civil War
Texts
Timothy Demy (Naval War College), Landscapes of Destruction: Art
and the
Geography of the Western Front (1914-1918)
Petra Svoljsak
(Milko Kos Historical Insitute), War Memory and
Geography: The Geographical
Perception of the Slovenes in World War I
Karen Shelby (Baruch College,
City University of New York), The
Geography of Place: Exhibition Practice at
the Centennial of the Great
War
War, Geography, and Impact
Nina
Janz (Universität Hamburg), From Battlegrounds to Burial Grounds -
The
Cemetery Landscapes of the German Army, 1939-1945
Swen Steinberg
(Technische Universität Dresden), Military Utilization
and the Development of
a Global Knowledge on Resources (1914-1918/
1939-1945)
Wolfgang Form
(Philipps-Universität Marburg) / Franziska Seraphim
(Boston College),
Geographies of Justice: The Allied War Crimes Trial
Program as the First
"Global Justice Network"
Richard P. Tucker (University of Michigan), Mass
Conflict, Refugee
Movements, and Environmental Dislocations
URL zur
Zitation dieses
Beitrages
<http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/tagungsberichte/id=6036>
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