Edward Mead Earle and the Unfinished Makers of Modern Strategy

The American historian Edward Mead Earle has until recently escaped the attention of historians of war, although his edited volume of 1943, Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, was a seminal work in the field, widely read by military historians. Whilst recent scholarship has sought to situate Earle as a key figure in the pre–Second World War development of American security studies, this article emphasizes Earle’s role as a historian compiling a volume which was distinctly historical in approach, tone, and scope. His plans for a revised second edition never came to fruition, so Makers remained an unfinished work.