Military Welfare History Network

Military welfare history?

What is military welfare history?

It is the historical study of the social, economic and medical programs or provisions afforded by state and non-state actors to persons within or affiliated with militaries. Namely active service personnel, service families, veterans and their families, and widows and orphans.

Is military welfare history a field of historical scholarship?

Owing to the diversity of disciplines, fields and topics that feed into it, military welfare history is best described as a perspective. It is a point of intersection that builds bridges and brings multiple disciplines, fields, and topics into conversation. There is no single military welfare methodology.

Impact of Service?

Military welfare history can perhaps also be summarised in a simple phrase: the impact of service. That impact is studied through a multitude of disciplinary and scholastic prisms, and across multiple chronological periods, societies, nationalities, cultures, and geographical regions. The scope of military welfare history is broad because while military welfare (or benefits) clearly begins with soldiers and veterans, it by no means ends with them. This field also interrogates how their service affects their families, dependents, and friends. In addition, military welfare history incorporates all the changes to a society due to this service, including but not limited to policies, perceptions, ideologies, provisions, and infrastructures.

Learn more about MWH

To learn more about what ‘military welfare history’ is and what the Military Welfare History Network is and does, you can read watch, or listen to the following:

For a national case study, as well as more discussion of military welfare history, listen to

Core Terminologies

Military:
The focus of the network will be all armed forces, both regular and irregular, including armies, navies, air forces, militias and paramilitary formations.

Welfare:
For the purposes of this network ‘welfare’ is defined in the broadest possible sense, covering all manner of welfare, care and medical provisions afforded to service personnel, their families (partners and children) and other dependants.

This includes all relating ideologies, provision, organisations and infrastructures coming from government, charity, philanthropy and the military, and includes government allowances and pensions, regimental provisions, charitable funds, philanthropic education, employment and nursing schemes, housing schemes, and both convalescing and medical provisions.

It engages with a variety of themes, including gender (masculinity and feminism), poverty, popular culture, religion and civil-military relations, from both historical and social sciences perspectives. In doing so the network seeks to draw together historians and social scientists who work in and across all geographical and cultural spaces, chronologies and thematic areas.