Workshop: for a Cultural History of War: Sources, Themes and Problems (15th-19th Centuries)

One of the common features of all past and present wars, regardless of the means, strategies and tactics adopted, is the central role of the word. Written or spoken, the word is necessary to justify, motivate, understand, exalt, and pass on. Widespread or localized conflicts have been fought on paper even long after their formal conclusion with the signing of a peace, a treaty or an ephemeral truce, through narratives aimed at arousing in contemporaries and posterity admiration for acts of courage or thoughtful planning, empathy towards the sufferings of winners and losers, pity towards the victims, deprecation of real or presumed misdeeds.
This laboratory assumes that no contemporary or subsequent source relating to a conflict could be neutral and fully objective. The narration of the facts and the perspective on long-lasting phenomena appear conditioned by the author's cultural background, origin, education, social position, the role he or she may have played in the events described, and finally by the motive and the occasion of writing. Furthermore, both wars between sovereign powers and local powers' struggles are fought by leaders competing to gain the necessary legitimacy in order to pursue antithetical political, economic or ideological goals. But any conflict can be also seen as an intersection between the individual paths of those who participate at every level, marked by their individual desire to gain a profit, acquire the favour of their superiors, promote their own social progress and, sometimes, guarantee their survival in an uncertain and dangerous present.
Through the analysis of published and unpublished written sources, the laboratory intends to provide the essential tools for a critical approach to war narration, starting from the analysis of the authors' background, social role and motives. The laboratory also intends to offer an overview of the complex dynamics through which conflicts and the societies involved have influenced each other.

The workshop aims to provide the cognitive tools necessary to:
1) become familiar with the most up-to-date classification criteria of historical sources;
2) become familiar with some of the main digital archives, databases, catalogues and online repertoires for military historical research;
3) understand the reciprocal influences between forms and purposes of war, on the one hand, and the involved societies' frame, on the other;
4) critically examine the narratives of past and present conflicts, evaluating the interests and purposes of those who produce them;
5) compare sources relevant to the same war event and formulate hypotheses on the reasons for the discrepancies between them;
6) identify the relationship between the narrator, the object of the narration and the form of the story, through bibliographic and archival research which makes it possible to outline the context, as well as to specify the occasion and the reasons for the production of the source.