Knowledge Bank

Produced by soldiers and veterans, the materials through which we seek to understand war carry war's antagonisms; they are shaped by fighting, by specific battles, by old debts and lost arguments between commanders, invoiced in the lives of their soldiers. In a way, military historiography is too close to its own subject matter. Clarity demands an exacting reflexivity, of a kind evident in the life and work of Louis Allen, a Japanese-speaking British military intelligence officer who participated in the Burma campaign and wrote its standard account, Burma: The Longest War 1941-45. Between the first and second editions of that book, Allen became embroiled in historiographical disagreement with veterans of the Battle of Sangshak. He helps guide us through some of the ways in which history is a continuation of war by other means.