‘Occupation is an ugly word, not one Americans feel comfortable with, but it is a fact’. These words of Paul Bremer, the newly appointed head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in May 2003, encapsulate common sentiments at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Military occupation engenders considerable passion and has always done so, even if the general disrepute into which the language and practice of military occupation has fallen is of more recent provenance. The passion is evident in the encounters between occupants and occupied, in the memoirs and histories that flourish in the immediate aftermath of occupation, in the memories of participants who would prefer to forget the experience of occupation, and even in the historical studies devoted to occupations. It is, therefore, not surprising that some occupations at least have generated an enormous literature, most notably those of the Second World War and its aftermath.

What is more surprising is that this has not led to any systematic comparative historical study of military occupation as a distinct phenomenon. Even within the context of multiple occupations by a single occupant, study of national experience predominates. This is true of occupations by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, where comparative analysis has gone further than in any other case. Interestingly, after some initial reflections comparing Allied occupation policies in and after the same war, a national focus has almost entirely dominated attention. Beyond these cases comparative study is extremely rare, though the frequency of occupation in the relations between France and Germany has induced some comparative reflection. The task of beginning to write the history of military occupations in general, however, is still outstanding, despite the call for such a historiographical shift by Philippe Burrin, a noted historian of the occupation of France during the Second World War.

Political scientists engaged in such study are even rarer, there being only two works of any substance, both recent and both having quite specific foci distinct from what would be required of histories of military occupation in general. There are recent legal studies that have focused on international territorial administration and which have a strong comparative and historical dimension but these have separated out international territorial administration from military occupation and reach no further back than the administration of the Free City of Danzig and the Saar by the League of Nations after the First World War.