Biography: John Grenier is a retired Air Force officer, former professor of history at the United States Air Force Academy. Author of two books, this one and The Far Reaches of Empire: War in Nova Scotia, 1710-1760. He is currently the Artillery Branch Historian at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. This book won the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History in 2006. Earned his PhD at Colorado with Fred Anderson.
Overview: The First Way of War Challenges the Russell Weigley assertion of two distinct American ways of war. Weigley, and others, focus too much on grande guerre rather than the realities of petite guerre. He asserts that for the first 200 years of European presence in North America, the colonials developed a distinct way of fighting that focused on destruction. In his research he set out to answer how Americans developed a way of war that combined unlimited ends and irregular means? What cultural, societal, or military factors contributed to it? Who fought in those wars and why? And, what made early American war distinctive?
Thesis: Early Americans created a military tradition that accepted, legitimized, and encouraged attacks upon and the destruction of noncombatants, villages, and agricultural resources. Most often, early Americans used the tactics and techniques of petite guerre in shockingly violent campaigns to achieve their goals of conquest. In the frontier wars between 1607 and 1814, Americans forged two elements—unlimited war and irregular war—into their first way of war.
Scope of Book:
- Traces the evolutionary path of this way of war across two centuries by using the wars and skirmishes fought during that time as case studies. Shows the importance of this first way of war in military history.
- Explains the extravagant violence of the American vs Indian conflicts. Assets that racism didn’t solidify as a factor until the mid-18th century. He shows that instead of racism leading to violence, violence led to racism.
- The first way of war explicitly focused on noncombatant populations.
- Defines this type of war by many names now, “irregular,” “guerrilla,” “partisan,” or “unconventional.”
- Early Americans understood it as: disrupting enemy troop, supply, and support networks; gathering intelligence through scouting and the taking of prisoners; ambushing and destroying enemy detachments; serving as patrol and flanking parties for friendlies; operating as advance and rear guard for regulars; and—most important—destroying enemy villages and fields and killing and intimidating enemy noncombatant populations.
- During the colonial period Americans found that this was the most effective means to wage war and throughout the 17th and 18th century, they perfected it. This was the seed from which the rest of American military history grew.
- This way of war thus became the preferred tool of conquest.
- Laments that by the mid 19th century, the US’s great military theoreticians ignored this way of war to align the US military with that of its European contemporaries. Shows how the AmRev, Civil War, and WWII occupy most American’s popular imagination of its wars as a result.
- Nevertheless, Grenier discusses the post-WWII trend of limited war and now our first way of war has become incompatible with the modern professional soldier.
- Shows the evolution of this way of war to its zenith in the Seven Years War.
- Asserts initial American Army tried to fight like Europeans in the Indian wars following the revolution by restricting rangers from practicing this type of war on the frontier. This didn’t last long.
- Quickly returned to First Way of War tactics, espoused by Anthony Wayne and later, Andrew Jackson to subdue Indian tribes and “open” more of the continent to settlement.
Methods and Organization: Addresses the new approach of military history by contextualizing warfare through the examination of social, cultural and economic dimensions while not forgetting that the essence of war is killing and destruction—key to explaining the origin of the American martial tradition. Organized into seven chapters beginning with the initial Jamestown settlement and the conflict that began soon after through the end of 1814.
Commentary: An interesting refutation of the ideal of American fighting style. The most interesting chapter was perhaps his description of petite guerre in British and Continental European history. The Brits seemed to reject it for a long time, which helped sew their defeats in North America. His writing is lucid and engaging which helps him make a very convincing case on the origins of an American First Way of War. His thesis then shows a clear linkage to William Tecumseh Sherman’s efforts on the march to the sea, as well as strategic, fire, and atomic bombing in WWII.