
DATE: Wednesday, November 5, 1997           TAG: 9711050465

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   83 lines

WRITER WANTS TO GIVE HISTORY MASS APPEAL

John Keegan peered at the nearly 200-year-old bricks of Fort Norfolk, the 18th-century bastion on the Elizabeth River, and started asking questions.

``Did the British build it or the Colonials? Were the bricks made here?'' Keegan inquired of his hosts from the Norfolk Historical Society on Tuesday.

That attention to detail is what has made Keegan, 63, a historian both respected and popular worldwide. He asked as many questions as he answered, and he showed sincere curiosity about his setting.

``I rather like forts, as you may know,'' Keegan said. ``This is really lovely.''

Keegan is speaking at Old Dominion University tonight, the first of the university's Distinguished Presidential Lectures in History series. School officials feel they landed a star to launch the lectures.

With books such as ``The Face of Battle,'' ``The Mask of Command,'' ``Six Armies in Normandy,'' and his most recent, ``Fields of Battle,'' Keegan has bridged the academic and popular forms of history writing and won an enthusiastic readership in Britain and the United States.

``I very strongly believe history is a literary subject, yet a subject for everyone to read,'' Keegan said. ``When I get letters from cab drivers, and I often do, that's when I feel I've really hit the spot.''

Keegan is benefiting from Americans' resurgence of interest in history writing, paralleling the boom in television documentaries on history led by filmmaker Ken Burns and cable channels like Discovery, Arts & Entertainment and the History Channel.

``History makes good television, especially 20th-century history. And I've seen a tremendous new fashion in biographies,'' said Keegan, who has almost finished his next book, a history of World War I.

Keegan's topic tonight is ``A British Retrospective on the Second World War: The Political and Social Consequences.'' Now the Delmas Distinguished Professor of History at Vassar, Keegan made his name as a teacher and historian at Sandhurst, the renowned British military school.

As his speech tonight probably will show, Keegan does not limit his interest to the movements of armies, but explores how economics and social history shape warfare.

He spoke in some detail Tuesday about how World War II led to the current movement to unite Europe into a trading bloc with one currency, and how that is likely to affect the United States.

The U.S. government supports the ``European Union,'' but its success ironically could pose serious long-term competition to the United States, Keegan said.

``It's one of those cases where you should be careful what you wish for, because you might get it,'' Keegan said.

``I think the European Union will come about, but I think it will have a very, very rocky start. When it does happen, and if the Europeans decide to pursue the same kind of competitive policies with the U.S. that the Japanese have, then the U.S. may lose the unique position it has enjoyed since the end of the second world war.''

Part of the reason Keegan finds war an interesting subject is that he sees it as neither inevitable nor uncontrollable.

Keegan believes humanity can influence or control war to a certain extent.

For instance, he points out that after nations recoiled from the use of chemical weapons like mustard gas in World War I, the international ban on them has nearly always been observed.

``There is a deep moral repugnance about chemical weapons, which means that we only see them used by someone already considered an international outlaw or pariah,'' he said. ``Saddam Hussein is a perfect example.

``I think the same thing will eventually happen with anti-personnel land mines. They will go on being made for some time, and go on being used for some time. But eventually I think a ban will succeed.''

Similarly, Keegan noted that once Europe found the will and the way to intervene in Bosnia, it brought the fighting under control fairly rapidly.

Some historians today call such ethnic and religious fighting a ``third wave'' of warfare that can't be controlled by governments, but Keegan said he doesn't think it's all that new or necessarily hard to control. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

A SOCIO-ECONOMIC STUDY OF WAR

[Color Photo]

BILL TIERNAN

The Virginian-Pilot

John Keegan...

SPEAKING TONIGHT

GRAPHIC

[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]