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New Perspectives on the History of the Military–Industrial Complex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Abstract

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Type
Introduction
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Copyright © The Author(s) 2011. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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References

1. Farewell Address by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 17, 1961.

2. The number of books published on the subject peaked in the early 1970s. See, for example, Schiller, Herbert I. and Phillips, Joseph D., ed., Super-State: Readings in the Military-Industrial Complex (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970);Google Scholar Melman, Seymour Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War (New York: McGraw Hill, 1970);Google Scholar Lens, Sidney The Military-Industrial Complex (London: Kahn & Averill, 1971);Google Scholar Rice, Berkeley, The C-5A Scandal: An Inside Story of the Military-Industrial Complex (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971);Google Scholar Pursell, Carroll W. Jr., ed. The Military-Industrial Complex (New York: Harper & Row, 1972);Google Scholar Sarkesian, Sam C. The Military-Industrial Complex: A Reassessment (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1972);Google Scholar Rosen, Steven ed., Testing the Theory of the Military-Industrial Complex (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1973).Google Scholar For a concise, much more recent overview of the subject, see Roland, Alex The Military-Industrial Complex (Washington: American Historical Association, 2001).Google Scholar

3. Wright Mills, C. The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Melman, , Pentagon Capitalism; Mary Kaldor, The Baroque Arsenal (New York: Hill & Wang, 1981).Google Scholar

4. Horowitz, David ed., Corporations and the Cold War (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Franklin Cooling, B. ed., War, Business, and American Society: Historical Perspectives on the Military-Industrial Complex (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1977);Google Scholar Smith, Merritt Roe, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977);Google Scholar Franklin Cooling, B. Gray Steel and Blue Water Navy: The Formative Years of America’s Military-Industrial Complex, 1881–1917 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1979);Google Scholar Koistinen, Paul A.C. The Military-Industrial Complex: A Historical Perspective (New York: Praeger, 1980),Google Scholar Koistinen has continued to write broad historical surveys of the subject. For the most recent volume in his multivolume study, see Koistinen, , Arsenal of World War II: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1940–1945 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004).Google Scholar

6. Weir, Gary Building American Submarines, 1914–1940 (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1991);Google Scholar Weir, , Forged in War: The Naval-Industrial Complex and American Submarine Construction, 1940–1961 (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1993);Google Scholar Vander Meulen, Jacob A. The Politics of Aircraft: Building an American Military Industry (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991);Google Scholar Davidson, Joel R. The Unsinkable Fleet: The Politics of U.S. Navy Expansion in World War II(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996);Google Scholar Hackemer, Kurt The U.S. Navy and the Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex, 1847–1883 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001);Google Scholar Roberts, William H. Civil War Ironclads: The U.S. Navy and Industrial Mobilization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).Google Scholar

7. Hooks, Gregory Forging the Military-Industrial Complex: World War II’s Battle of the Potomac (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991);Google Scholar Sparrow, Bartholomew H. From the Outside In: World War II and the American State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Katznelson, IraFlexible Capacity: The Military and Early American Statebuilding,” in Shaped by Trade and War: International Influences on American Political Development, ed. Katznelson, Ira and Shefter, Martin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 82110;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Angevine, Robert G. The Railroad and the State: War, Politics, and Technology in Nineteenth-Century America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004);Google Scholar Wilson, Mark R. The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).Google Scholar

8. For example, Weir, Gary Building the Kaiser’s Navy: The Imperial Naval Office and German Industry in the Tirpitz Era, 1890–1919(Washington, DC: Naval Institute Press, 1992);Google Scholar Green, Michael J. Arming Japan: Defense Production, Alliance Politics, and the Postwar Search for Autonomy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995);Google Scholar Conca, Ken Manufacturing Insecurity: The Rise and Fall of Brazil’s Military-Industrial Complex (Boulder, CO: L. Rienner, 1997); David Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain, 1920–1970 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006);Google Scholar Tooze, Adam The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (New York: Viking, 2006);Google Scholar Engel, Jeffrey A. The Cold War at 30,000 Feet: The Anglo-American Fight for Aviation Supremacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Engel, Jeffrey A. ed., Local Consequences of the Global Cold War (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007);Google Scholar Felice, EmanuelState Ownership and International Competitiveness: The Italian Finmeccanica from Alfa Romeo to Aerospace and Defense (1947-2007),” Enterprise & Society 11 (2010): 594635.Google Scholar

9. Much of this literature has focused on regional economic development in the age of the MIC. See, for example, Markusen, Ann R. The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991);Google Scholar Schulman, Bruce J. From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938–1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991);Google Scholar Lotchin, Roger W. Fortress California, 1910–1961: From Warfare to Welfare (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992);Google Scholar Scranton, Philip ed., The Second Wave: Southern Industrialization, 1940–1970 (Atlanta, GA: Georgia Technological Institute Press, 2002).Google Scholar There is also a rich literature on the military’s role in nineteenth-century economic development in the West: for example, Prucha, Francis Paul Broadax and Bayonet: The Role of the United States Army in the Development of the Northwest, 1815–1860 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1953);Google Scholar Miller, Darlis A. Soldiers and Settlers: Military Supply in the Southwest, 1861–1885 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989);Google Scholar Smith, Thomas T. The U.S. Army and the Texas Frontier Economy, 1845–1900 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

10. Smith, , Harpers Ferry Armory; David F. Noble, Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation (New York: Knopf, 1984);Google Scholar Smith, Merritt Roe ed., Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985);Google Scholar Leslie, Stuart W. The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993);Google Scholar Abbate, Janet Inventing the Internet (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999);Google Scholar Roland, Alex and Shiman, Philip Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence, 198f3–1993 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002);Google Scholar Heinrich, ThomasCold War Armory: Military Contracting in Silicon Valley,Enterprise & Society 3 (2002): 247–84;Google Scholar Lécuyer, Christophe Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930–1970 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007);Google Scholar Duffner, Robert W. The Adaptive Optics Revolution: A History (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009).Google Scholar

11. Some might argue that such critical distance is necessary. For an example of a recent work that differs in tone and approach remarkably little from older treatments of the MIC, see the film Why We Fight (E. Jareki, dir., 2005).

12. Two pioneering studies of the privatization of combat operations are Singer, P.W. Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003);Google Scholar and Avant, Deborah D. The Market for Force: Privatizing Military Security (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On privatization of weapons production in the U.S. defense sector during the cold war, see Friedberg, Aaron In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Antistatism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar