About the journal
War in History is the peer-reviewed journal of military history across all periods. Founded under Edward Arnold in 1994 — with Sir Hew Strachan (then at the University of Glasgow, later Chichele Professor at Oxford and Professor at St Andrews) among the founding editors — the journal was designed to integrate military history into a broader definition of history, treating war as economic, social, political, and cultural phenomenon alongside its operational and strategic dimensions.
Editorial scope has no temporal restriction: the journal carries articles on classical and medieval warfare, the military revolution of the early-modern period, the Napoleonic wars, the world wars, the Cold War, and contemporary conflict. Coverage extends across the three armed-service domains (land, naval, air) and into the social history of war, the history of military technology, the political and cultural memory of conflict, and the economic and logistical history of armies. The journal publishes articles between 7,000 and 10,000 words and has a consistent editorial preference for archive-grounded primary-source research.
Transferred to SAGE Publications with the rest of the Hodder Arnold journal list in 2006, War in History has continued under the same editorial direction and remains the principal English-language periodical for the operational and social history of war.
Scope
- military history (all periods)
- the social history of war
- strategic and operational studies
- the history of military technology
Editorial contributors
- Dennis E. Showalter
Founding Co-Editor (from 1994)
- Sir Hew Strachan
Founding Co-Editor (from 1994)
Indexing & abstracting
- Scopus
- Web of Science (AHCI)
- Historical Abstracts
- JSTOR
Indexing coverage reflects the journal’s inclusion in standard bibliographic databases during the Arnold imprint years and (where applicable) under subsequent publishers.
Bibliographic identifiers
- ISO 4 abbreviation
- War Hist.
Frequently asked
- What does War in History publish?
- The journal publishes peer-reviewed articles on war across all periods — classical, medieval, early-modern, modern and contemporary — treating war as economic, social, political and cultural phenomenon alongside its operational and strategic dimensions. Article length is typically 7,000–10,000 words.
- When was the journal founded?
- War in History was founded under the Edward Arnold imprint in 1994 and was transferred to SAGE Publications with the rest of the Hodder Arnold journal list in 2006. It continues under SAGE under the same editorial direction.
Last reviewed: