BELLESILES UPDATE: Military historian Kevin Hurst writes:

I am a historian employed by the Navy at the Naval Historical Center and I have been slavishly following the Bellesiles controversy for nearly two years. Bellesiles, and his defenders, are fond of pointing out that the probate records represent only a small fraction of Arming America. I guess I forgot the part in Grad school where they said it was OK to make things up as long as most of your footnotes are accurate. Regardless, Bellesiles’ errors and misrepresentations extend into every area of his book where I feel qualified to pass judgement, particularly military history and weaponry. For instance, he strongly implies that bayonets were much more effective than muskets on the battlefield of the late 18th century, a ridiculous notion, and misleading[ly] refers to the Paoli Massacre as a battle to confuse ignorant readers on this point. (At Paoli, the British suprised Anthony Wayne’s troops in the middle of the night and used bayonets to avoid alerting the Americans before they entered the camp) Given that he also sees bows as vastly superior to muskets, one is left to ponder why the musket and bayonet ever superceded archery and the pike? One could go on for quite some time with regard to Bellesiles’ apparent ignorance of military history.

Unfortunately, few of the academic reviewers of the book were even minimally competent to discuss military history, so they accepted his version at face value. Most of the reviewers I read took Bellesiles to task for mistakes he committed in their respective areas of expertise. However, all seemed to think these mistakes isolated incidents in an otherwise persuasive book. I think Bellesiles correctly judged that academics loathe military and diplomatic history by and large and that he could get away with almost anything he said in that area (“In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”). The probate records ended up tripping him up because they could not be spun as a “difference of interpretation” as Knopf is fond of saying about the controversy. In any case, no one can say that the book is solid if the probate records are ignored. Bellesiles brings the same level of mendacity to his discussions of military topics in the book.