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This course is an attempt to look at war and the societies that fight them on a grand, even epic scale. The core of the course consists of historical monographs. Most are syntheses that reflect the state of the art; they are the culmination of generations of scholarship. They address big questions in elegant and often moving ways. The primary concern of the participants should be with the theoretical implications of the arguments and not with the details per se. The details, I believe, are essential in order to sustain any generalization worth making but are not an end in and of themselves. The reading is very heavy but I firmly believe that engaging these literatures will be profoundly important to the intellectual development of the participants.
This is a course about order, conflict and violence at a time when the United States is engaged in a ‘non-traditional’ war with no potential end in sight. With the exception of Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars I have not assigned readings that directly address the contemporary situation; however students are expected to keep up to date with current events and should engage the theoretical and historical literatures used in the class with these happenings in mind. To what extent do the insights offered by the scholars discussed in class help or hinder an attempt to make sense of our world? In addition to a major newspaper (New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal among others), participants should look at articles about Iraq and Afghanistan in The Economist, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Review .
All participants are expected to view the outstanding PBS Frontline documentaries on the wars available for on-demand viewing at their website.
Week 1: Introduction
Film Screening: The Fog of War.
Week 2: Preliminary Thoughts: Order, Conflict and Violence in Contemporary South Asia
Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars, New York: Penguin, 2004.
Week 3: Political Science and Order, Conflict and Violence 1
Kalyvas, Stathis (et. al. eds.) Order, Conflict and Violence, New York: Cambridge UP, 2008.
Week 4: Political Science and Order, Conflict and Violence 2
Scott, James. Domination and the Arts of Resistance, New Have: Yale UP, 1992.
Week 5: Conceptual Issues 1: Warfare
Keegan, John. A History of Warfare, New York: Vintage 1993.
Week 6: Conceptual Issues 2: Killing
Grossman, Dave. On Killing, New York: Back Bay Books, Revised Edition 2009.
Sapolsky, Robert. “A Natural History of Peace” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2006.
Week 7: War and Society Approaches to Order, Conflict and Violence
Raaflaub, Kurt and Nathan Rosenstein (eds.), War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001.
Week 8: Roman and Barbarians
Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, New York: Oxford UP, 2006.
Week 9: Religion and Order, Conflict and Violence 1
Brown, Peter. The Rise of Western Christendom, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
Week 10: Religion and Order, Conflict and Violence 2
Kennedy, Hugh. The Great Arab Conquests, New York: Da Cap Press, 2007.
Week 11: Religion and Order, Conflict and Violence 3
Bartlett, Robert. The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950-1350, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
Week 12: Religion and Order, Conflict and Violence 4
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. New York: Penguin, 2005.
Week 13: Race, Institutions and Civil War
McPherson, James. Battle Cry Freedom, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
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Required Books:
Keegan, John. A History of Warfare, New York: Vintage 1993.
Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, New York: Oxford UP, 2006.
MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History. New York: Penguin, 2005.
Raaflaub, Kurt and Nathan Rosenstein (eds.), War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001.
Bartlett, Robert. The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950-1350, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
McPherson, James. Battle Cry Freedom, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Brown, Peter. The Rise of Western Christendom, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
Kennedy, Hugh. The Great Arab Conquests, New York: Da Cap Press, 2007.
Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars, New York: Penguin, 2004.
Dalrymple, William. The Last Mughal, New York: Vintage, 2008.
Grossman, Dave. On Killing, New York: Back Bay Books, Revised Edition 2009.
Scott, James. Domination and the Arts of Resistance, New Have: Yale UP, 1992.
Kalyvas, Stathis (et. al. eds.) Order, Conflict and Violence, New York: Cambridge UP, 2008.
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