The Oxford Companion to Military History.

• Author: McGibbon, Ian
• Position: Books

THE OXFORD COMPANION TO MILITARY HISTORY Editor: Richard Holmes Published by: Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, 1048pp, $130.

This doorstopper-sized volume is a magnificent achievement. Having edited a companion volume myself, I have some inkling of the difficulties that editor Richard Holmes must have experienced in bringing this book to successful completion. Co-ordinating the efforts of 149 contributors, including the editors, must have been a frustrating task.

In his introduction, Holmes insists that no companion `can claim to be comprehensive', but the coverage is all encompassing. Although he notes that the main concern has been `with events in Europe and North America in the past three centuries', other periods and areas have not been ignored. The entries are generally well-written with typographical and editorial errors kept to a minimum (though not entirely absent, as is perhaps to be expected in a book of more than 1000 pages). The most serious problem noted by this reviewer was the series of incorrect dates in the entry on General Mark Clark, which has the Torch landing in North Africa taking place in November 1943, Clark assuming command of Fifth Army in January 1944 and directing his army at Salerno in September 1944 -- all one year late.

Covering warfare in all its aspects, this volume presented huge problems in determining what and who should be included. The editor and his assistants and advisers (including three Australians but no New Zealanders) have done a superb job. They have provided an excellent balance between overview articles on thematic aspects (set apart in single column boxes), particular wars and notable personalities. The only biographical entry this reviewer found curious was that on the undistinguished Australian general Gordon Bennett, who abandoned his command in Singapore in 1942 and returned to Australia and who is described as `a controversial figure, probably beyond rehabilitation'. He seems out of place in the company of Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and the many others who made a significant impact on military affairs and who have individual biographies in this work.

New Zealand's relatively short history of human habitation, its limited population, and isolation from the strategic focal points of the world ensure that it does not feature to any extent in this volume, though the efforts of New Zealand forces are mentioned in passing in a number of entries, for example on `Western Desert...