“Five Questions With…” is a monthly feature on our blog that profiles a member of the UVM history department. (This month with three bonus questions!)
To request a profile of a particular history department professor or staff member, or to submit questions for consideration for particular professors, please email history@uvm.edu with the subject line “Five Questions.”
This month, we are chatting with Senior Lecturer Andy Buchanan. A specialist in Global and Military history, he taught previously at Rutgers University and in the SUNY system. Buchanan has published several articles on World War II in the Journal of Contemporary History, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, and Global War Studies. He has also contributed book chapters on the American military in World War II and on the military and social history of the Champlain Valley. His first book, American Grand Strategy in the Mediterranean during World War II, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014.
What made you want to become an historian?
I come from a family of historians and a house full of history books, so I’ve always been interested in the past, but my desire to become a historian myself really came from my concern for the present and the future. I became convinced when I was quite young that if you want to understand the way the world is, you have to understand the economic, social, political, and cultural forces that made it that way.
Why Global and Military history?
Global, because the big processes of history—economic inter-relations, large-scale population movements, and the rise and fall of empires, for example—don’t operate within narrow national frameworks. “World systems” have connected large regions since antiquity, and those connections have become increasingly global in scope.
Military, because I am interested in the ways in which wars (and their close cousins, revolutions) often take place at critical moments of fracture in the broader patterns of economic and social development. War also interests me because it lends itself to examination of the relationship between determinism (large-scale economic and social factors) and contingency (including the actions of individual human beings and the play of chance) in studying the complexities of causality.
If you could live in any historical period for a week, which would it be, and why?
That’s a tough question! Right now I’m reading and writing about the Civil Wars in Britain in the seventeenth century. It was a time of radical new thinking about how human societies should be organized. It would have been fun to have taken part in those events!
What are you teaching this year?
I’m teaching a course I developed on “Global History in the Age of Total War,” which I really enjoy. It gives me a chance to discuss many of the themes I’ve touched on above. I’m also teaching the first part of the American History survey. I haven’t taught that course for a few years, but it’s always a good one—plenty of wars and revolutions and, this time around, I’m putting it in a more international context. And finally I’m teaching a Global Studies seminar on the global network of US military bases and their place in the construction of America’s post-World War II global hegemony. This is a new course for me, and I have a great group of Global Studies seniors; I hope that they’re having as much fun as I am!
Tell us about a recent archival discovery.
I’m working on a project about wartime photography by GIs posted overseas, and its place in the occupation of countries—it involves thinking about war as tourism. I have a wonderful collection of photos from a young American fighter pilot in World War II to work with; they intersperse pictures of tourist visits to Italian cities and groups of young men hanging out at the beach with scenes such as aircraft taking off on combat missions. It’s a really shocking juxtaposition. I’m not sure where it’s all going to go yet!
What are you working on these days?
In addition to the project I just mentioned (which might end up as an article) I’m working on a book examining the place of universal military service in the revolutions that produced modern capitalist nation states. It’s a huge and sprawling project, beginning in fifteenth century Bohemia and ending with the Meiji Restoration in Japan, and covering a lot of ground in between. So it’s a quite a challenge—there is a huge amount of scholarship to read and synthesize!
What’s the best historical book you’ve read recently?
I’ve just finished “Three Day Road” by Joseph Boyden. It’s a novel about two young Cree men from Canada who get caught up in the fighting on the Western Front in World War I. An interesting insight into a little-known aspect of the war, and very well written.
What are you up to when you’re not on campus?
When I’m not working on my research, I am busy as the president of a community organization that runs an old Grange hall in Whallonsburg, New York—the tiny town I live in. We organize a whole range of events from lectures and music shows to a community kitchen and space people can rent for family events. Another sprawling project! And when I’m not doing that, you can find me hiking, rock climbing, or cross-country skiing in the Adirondacks!
