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The Marine Corps' Search for a Mission, 1880–1898

Jack Shulimson

256 pages, illustrated
Modern War Studies
Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-0608-5, $35.00

Book Cover ImageHeirs to a storied past and glamorized as modern-day knights, the Marine Corps--the elite fighting force in America's military--in fact has not always been so highly regarded. As Jack Shulimson shows, only a century ago the Corps' identity and existence were much in question.

Although the Marines were formally established by Congress in 1798 and subsequently distinguished themselves fighting on the Barbary Coast, their essential mission and identity remained unclear throughout most of the nineteenth century. In this enlightening study, Shulimson argues that the Marine Corps officers' inextricable ties to the Navy both hampered and aided their attempt to define their own special jurisdiction and professional identity. He reveals the processes, politics, and personalities that converged to create tense relations before Marine officers (with the Navy's blessing) eventually transcended their second-class role.

"The definitive study of the Gilded Age Marine Corps."--Allan R. Millett, author of Semper Fidelis: The History of the U.S. Marine Corps

"A lively recounting of the formative years of the modern Marine Corps. This book will be of interest and value to all historians of the United States Navy and Marine Corps and can be read with profit as well by anyone concerned with the process of modernization in late nineteenth-century America."--Graham A. Cosmas, coauthor of The U.S. Marines in Vietnam: Vietnamization and Redeployment, 1970–1971

"No other book is as detailed or enlightening on the question of the evolution of Marine Corps professionalism. . . .Includes some fascinating descriptions of Marine Corps life."--Carol Reardon, author of Soldiers and Scholars: The U.S. Army and the Uses of Military History, 1865–1920

JACK SHULIMSON is head of the histories section at the Marine Corps Historical Center in Washington, D.C., and author of An Expanding War: 1966 and The Landing and the Buildup: 1965 in the Center's series on the U.S. Marines in Vietnam.