Race and Gender in Modern Western Warfare

David Ulbrich, Bobby A. Wintermute

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783110588798
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book fills a gap in the historiographical and theoretical fields of race, gender, and war. In brief, Race and Gender in Modern Western Warfare ( RGMWW ) offers an introduction into how cultural constructions of identity are transformed by war and how they in turn influence the nature of military institutions and conflicts. Focusing on the modern West, this project begins by introducing the contours of race and gender theories as they have evolved and how they are employed by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars. The project then mixes chronological narrative with analysis and historiography as it takes the reader through a series of case studies, ranging from the early nineteenth century to the Global War of Terror. The purpose throughout is not merely to create a list of so-called "great moments" in race and gender, but to create a meta-landscape in which readers can learn to identify for themselves the disjunctures, flaws, and critical synergies in the traditional memory and history of a largely monochrome and male-exclusive military experience. The final chapter considers the current challenges that Western societies, particularly the United States, face in imposing social diversity and tolerance on statist military structures in a climates of sometimes vitriolic public debate. RGMWW represents our effort to blend race, gender, and military war, to problematize these intersections, and then provide some answers to those problems.

1Western Warfare as a Crucible for Constructions of Race and Gender

Scope and Conceptual Frameworks

The concepts of race and gender as categories of social and biological differentiation have become so ingrained in our lives that many take their perceived legitimacy for granted. In both cases, the terms have developed their own taxonomies of meaning, with different levels of value and definition attached to them. “Gender” has come to signify both the physical aspects of identity based upon sexual characteristics, as well as the behavioral norms associated with each sex as assigned by society and nature. In turn, “race” identifies biological difference related to several physical aspects, including skin color, stature, hair type, and other physical indicators, as well as language groups, cultural norms and practices, physical predisposition to certain illnesses, and other less-readily identifiable factors. At their core, both “race” and “gender” exist as terms used to connote subjective difference – real and imagined, for good and for ill – between sectors of the human population. In turn, this creation of difference, the categorization of an “us” and an “other,” is critical to the establishment of formal and informal social and cultural roles. These roles are in turn accorded certain legitimacy, forming the bedrock of power relationships and hierarchical entitlements in societies. In other words, we perceive ourselves and those like “us” in certain ways because of certain social categories and geological characteristics, while also perceiving “others,” because of their different social categories and biological characteristics. We all see ourselves and others through particular lenses tinted by racial, gendered, and behavioral assumptions, which affect our beliefs, actions, and policies to varying degrees.

“Race” and “gender” are absolutely central to our understanding of ourselves and our relative statuses in society. In their most basic sense, they are unchangeable characteristics and markers not only signifying basic physical difference, but also a complex skein of real and imagined social roles both rooted in tradition and are constantly in flux. While these roles are generally recognized and understood, all too frequently this takes the form of uncomfortable stereotype and imagined identity. Perhaps it is a signal difference of Western cultures that these roles and norms are constantly debated and renegotiated, in recognition of the impacts of technology and information on our society. Or maybe it is a process that is older than our own short-lived perceptions of identity based on national origin.10

On the whole, race and gender exist on at least three planes of cognitive perception. First, they are both related to physical conditions and factors. Gender identity in large part is related to the possession of specific sexual organs and physical conditions; and racial identity is also largely related to the possession of specific physical characteristics related to the point of inherited biological origin. Second, aside from the immediate effects of these physical characteristics, there are no other significant emotional and cognitive differences between the sexes and different racial types. Third, those differences which are identified and presented are socially and culturally constructed – in essence, the various “characteristics” and “identities” associated with race and gender are created by societies to reflect cultural norms and power relationships.11 In short, “race” and “gender” are socially constructed forms of identity that, while tied to the perception of physical difference, more accurately reflect both individual and communal negotiations of status and value in specific cultures.

Based on the assumptions fleshed out in this introduction and applied in later chapters, Race and Gender in Modern Western Warfare fills a gap in existing literature associated with three fields: the histories of race, gender, and war. Building upon the intellectual foundation of the “war and society” and “new military history”12 schools, we seek to craft a synthetic primer for understanding how social constructions of identity are transformed by war, and how they in turn influence the nature of military institutions. Largely focused upon Western case studies, we begin by introducing to the contours of race and gender theories as they have evolved and are employed by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, literary critics, and other groups.13 We then apply a mixed chronological narrative and analytical historiography to a series of case studies, ranging from nineteenth century conflicts through the Global War on Terror. Exploring how and why constructions of race and gender existed before, transformed during, and resettled after specific conflicts provide useful springboards to understanding critical fault lines of race and gender identity and perceptions. Military conflicts function like seismic ruptures, rendering said fault lines visible, laying bare deeper cultural and social assumptions. Accordingly, this book should not be viewed as an attempt to simply create a list of “great moments in race and gender during wartime.” Rather we hope to help our readers envision a meta-landscape in which they may identify for themselves disjunctures, flaws, and critical synergies in the traditional memory/history of a largely monochrome/male-exclusive military experience. Considering that war is accepted as the most complex and perhaps most significant human interaction, it is remarkable that so much of its history in the West has been predicated on its being a singular gender-based phenomenon, with little consideration of the impact of ethnic and racial based motivators for accelerating the level and breadth of violence toward enemy combatants and civilian communities. The final chapter considers the current challenges that Western societies face in imposing social diversity and tolerance on statist military structures, in the face of both strong public opposition (at times) and ongoing military conflict.

The Origins of Race

What is “Race”? Is it a legitimate classification schema, or is it a flawed tool for assigning difference according to rules and factors established by one group seeking to preserve a status quo against others? In his book “Race” is a Four-Letter Word, anthropologist C. Loring Brace adopts a two-tiered method of accounting for real physical difference and the cultural need for assigning difference. He is careful to note that, with few exceptions, “race” was an unknown concept throughout much of human experience.

Drawing on ideas of British biologist Julian Huxley in the 1930s, Brace rejects the use of “race” as a categorization of real physical difference in human beings. Instead he substitutes the term “clines” – itself a term used to demarcate degrees of variation in specific physical traits – to identify how human beings fit into different groups and subgroups separated by what are actually minor biological differences. These physical characteristics include, but are not limited to, skin color, tooth size, blood type, hair color, and the presence of a sickle-cell hemoglobin factor. Prior to the Age of Exploration, these various clines were almost overwhelmingly geographically centered in specific regions of the globe; and thus accounted for a perceptual differentiation between human populations that would later form the context for racial classification.14

Yet there remained the issue of differentiating populations from each other. Certainly, the Ancient Greeks and Romans considered themselves superior from other groups on the basis of race. Plato and Herodotus described the Greeks as a people separate from outsiders – “barbarians” being a term introduced to describe all non-Greeks – on the basis of their language, religious and cultural practices, and forms of governance. However, these differences were usually based upon cultural behaviors and perception, not physical difference.15 What of the differences identified in the Old Testament, related to the divine punishment assigned the descendants of Noah’s son, Ham, following his attempt to shame his drunken, naked father? It appears Judeans and early Christians alike viewed this as a metaphysical parable, with Ham’s progeny interpreted as heretics and heathens, not sub-Saharan Africans.16 But then what of Roman identification of the Gauls, Celts, Germans, and other so-called barbarians as being inferior? Again, the emphasized difference was not predicated on racial characteristics, but on cultural factors – specifically the absence or weakness of legal and political institutions (by Roman standards) in these areas as dictating their lesser status.17

It becomes clear, therefore, upon closer study that “race” – as a classification scheme based upon physical difference alone – was an unfamiliar concept in the Ancient World. Even in the Middle Ages, race was not considered a significant factor establishing identity; religion served as a more precise defining “us” and “them.” Not until the Age of Exploration do we see racial identity begin to be defined as a means of categorization and classification.

A second factor is the idea that individuals had relatively little contact with others outside of their own communities. For centuries most people lived very stationary lives, isolated on their farms and villages. With the exception of a small group of traders, pilgrims, and soldier-sailors, only rarely did individuals, let alone large groups, travel more than a day’s distance from their homes. Accordingly, before the onset of the Age of Exploration, the overwhelming majority of humankind shared a rather homogenous view of the world and its inhabitants. Aside from dialect and root language differences (which were far more common in the Middle Ages than we would expect today), religious identity, and the obvious class differences, Europeans considered the world to be populated largely by persons with shared features and physiology. While there were accounts of persons and communities different from the Western European norm, these were treated as exotic travelogues, exaggerated by the teller to emphasize the fantastical experience of a world beyond the reach of the many.

As noted, religious identity stood as a clear mark of difference, and thanks to the perennial conflict between the Muslim and and Christian worlds, became the chief indicator of difference in Medieval Europe. Terms like “Saracen,” “Muslim,” and “infidel” – all signifying Islamic religious identity – insinuated into the language of Western Europe as signifiers of difference from a perceived norm of religious conformity. Considered heretics and apostates, Islamic peoples across the Mediterranean and North African basin were targeted by Christian soldier and priest alike for conversion, enslavement, even massacre on this slim margin of cultural difference.

Interestingly, even in the face of direct exposure to persons of different physiological type, Europeans did not acknowledge any sense of racial difference. Marco Polo, Ibn Batuta, and other travelers made no distinction of racial differentiation in their encounters throughout the Mideast, India, Asia, and beyond. As Brace notes in his study, this should not be taken as a mark of the observer’s lack of sophistication: “In fact, quite the opposite; and one could suggest that they actually recorded a more accurate picture of the world than the one that has subsequently become accepted because they were forced to see it as it is, rather than skip steps. ... The world of human biological variation, then, was perceived as a gradual phenomenon and not one comprised of discrete or distinct units.”18

The first step toward defining race as a concept followed hard on the heels of the discovery of the Americas. What was to be made of the inhabitants of this New World, a people living in ignorance of the rest of the world, apparently free of original sin, yet also embracing the most demonic practices in the Spanish Catholic imagination? Were these people even subject to the rules of the Church – and thus candidates for salvation and grace – or were they animals in human form, to be exploited and treated as beasts of burden and nothing more? In the end, the decision was left to the Papacy, which decided the Native Americans were men after all, making them dependent subjects of the secular kingdoms who claimed the land upon which they lived.

The Pope’s decision could not have come at a more inconvenient time for the New World’s Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, who were realizing tremendous profits from their exploitation of Indians in silver and gold mines, salt mines, and sugar plantations. Ultimately, the Papal order was ignored in all but the most basic contexts. Throughout Spanish and Portuguese America, local indigenous peoples were either enslaved directly or subjected to near-complete peonage. Critics such as the Franciscan missionary Bartolomé de las Casas sought to preserve some sense of humanitarian dignity and rights for the dwindling indigenous population, often to no avail.19 The quandary over the future status of the Native Americans was not restricted to Spain and Portugal. After their own entrance into the great game, English and French colonial administrators in the Caribbean and North America struggled to define the status of the Indian peoples in their own spheres of control.

Compounding this issue was the perceived poor health and high mortality of Native American laborers. As observed by numerous analysts, including historian Alfred Crosby and more recently, biologist Jared Diamond, the common diseases of Europe – measles, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and smallpox – burned their way through the Americas like a Biblical scourge. By some accounts, up to eighteen million Indians died between 1490 and 1650 of these diseases, which depopulated entire sections of the North and South American continents.20 The survivors fared poorly as well. Many tribes preserved their culture through an elder-based oral history tradition. In some cases, such as the Catawba people of the Carolinas, disease and famine effectively eradicated centuries of culture and identity, so great was the death toll among the tribal elders. Bereft and rootless, the Catawba were eventually assimilated by the Cherokee and Creek nations.21 Other tribes were eradicated altogether, subject to the combination of disease and overwork in European colonial work projects. The prospect of such apocalyptic catastrophes lingered into the nineteenth century – witness the fate of the Mandan tribe in the 1830s. Once considered one of the major tribes in the upper Great Plains, they were virtually annihilated by a wave of diseases, culminating with a smallpox epidemic in 1837. Reduced to a handful of people, the survivors merged with the neighboring Hidatsa Sioux in the aftermath of the outbreak.22

Facing annihilation and marginalization at the hands of an ever-growing colonial presence along the North American fringe, some tribes adopted a hostile outlook toward the new European arrivals. In 1622, the Powhatan tribes launched a series of raids on English setters’ farm communities outside of Jamestown in the First Tidewater War. Similar violence broke out against English settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colonies after the 1637 Pequot War. Yet as military historian John Grenier notes, these early extirpative conflicts were not driven by racial intolerance to ever more brutal conduct.23 However the no-quarter character of frontier combat, and the stakes of total survival for both sides in the face of an implacable foe, certainly would facilitate the ready incorporation of a racialized ideology of hatred and distrust. Historian E. Wayne Lee pursues this lin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Foreword by Dennis E. Showalter
• Preface
• Contents
• 1 Western Warfare as a Crucible for Constructions of Race and Gender
• 2 Race and Gender in the Nineteenth Century
• 3 Race, Gender, and Warfare during New Imperialism
• 4 Gender and the First World War
• 5 Race and the First World War
• 6 Race and Gender on the Eastern Front and in the Pacific War
• 7 Gender and Race on the Homefronts in the Second World War
• 8 Race and Gender in the United States during the Early Cold War
• 9 Race and Gender During Decolonization
• 10 The Future of Race and Gender in Warfare
• Bibliography
• Index