History 61A Jankowski
Spring 2015 Golding 115 Golding 115
History 61A
Cultures in Conflict
Course Theme and Learning Goals
This lecture and discussion course, cross-listed between History and International and Global Studies, examines the intersections between culture and armed conflict from prehistory to the present. It asks whether cultural differences alone have led to conflict, and if so how; how ways of war reflect cultural systems and values; and how war itself establishes cultural identities. It concludes by asking why globalization, usually taken to mean the integration of nations and peoples through trade, technology, media, and other forces, has been accompanied by a recurrence of national, religious, and ethnic conflicts in so many parts of the world.
Upon completion of this course, students should be familiar with the nature and causes of major cultural conflicts – why some cultures that regard each other as alien enter into conflict and why others do not, the differing forms such conflicts take, how states and political regimes affect the likelihood of their outbreak, and how the reasons for their appearance or reappearance today may lie buried deep in the past.
Course Requirements
Requirements for the course include attendance at all classes, an in-class midterm exam, a two-hour final exam, and four 3-4 page papers each due on the date indicated below (Jan. 29, Feb. 26, April 2, April 21) on the topic that day. We will discuss these in class. The midterm, the final, and the papers will each account for one third of the course grade, but classroom participation is important and will be taken into account in determining the final grade.
Readings
Readings for each class are indicated below. I would suggest that you purchase the following books, which will also be placed on reserve in the library, and which are accompanied in the syllabus below by a single asterisk (*):
John A. Lynn, Battle. A History of Combat and Culture (Westview 2003) ISBN 10 0-8133-3372-5 (pbk)
Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy (Cambridge, 2005) ISBN 0521538548
Victor Davis Hanson, Culture and Carnage (Anchor 2002, paper)
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations (Touchstone 1997, paper) ISBN 9780684844411
Gellately and Kiernan, The Specter of Genocide in Historical Perspective
Keeler War before Civilization ISBN 9780195119121
The other readings are on the course website, and are accompanied in the syllabus below with a double asterisk (**).
If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to have reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately.
Schedule of Classes and Assignments
1. Tuesday, January 13: Introduction
2. Thursday, January 15: Conflict among hunter-gatherers
Read: Keeley, chaps 1-4*
3. Tuesday, January 20: Neolithic conflict
Read: Keeley, chaps 7-9*
4. Thursday, January 22: War and early state formation
Read: Kristian Kristiansen, “The Emergence of Warrior Aristocracies in later European prehistory” in John Carman and Antony Harding, eds., Ancient Warfare (Sutton, 1999): 175-190
5. Tuesday, January 27: Ancient war:
Read: Lynn, chap. 1*; Tacitus, “War and the Germans” and “Germanicus’ Campaigns on the Rhine”, in Gérard Chaliand, The Art of War in World History (Berkeley, 1994): 165-173**
6. Thursday, January 29: Ancient war: inter-religious war
Read: Deuteronomy, ch. 20, and Dead Sea Scrolls, “The War Rule” in Chaliand, Art of War, 59-63**; Michael Walzer, “The Idea of Holy War in Ancient Israel”, The Journal of Religious Ethics , Vol. 20, No. 2 (Fall, 1992): 215-228**
First 3-4 page paper due: Are monotheistic religions more warlike than polytheistic ones?
7. Tuesday, February 3: medieval war: state vs. non-state
Read: “The Mongols in the Eyes of the Europeans,” in Bertold Spuller, History of the Mongols, 71-114**
8. Thursday, February 5: medieval war: ways of war
Read: Lynn, chap. 3*
9. Tuesday, February 10: medieval war: religious war
Read: “The Call to Arms” in Christopher Tyerman, ed., Chronicles of the First Crusade (Penguin, 2012): 1-29**; Ibn Shaddad, “The Fall of Acre” in Chaliand, Art of War, 405-409**
10. Thursday, February 12: early modern: dynastic and religious conflict
Read: Steven Gunn, “War, Religion, and the State” in The Oxford History of Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1999): 102-133**
NO CLASSES FEB. 16-FEB. 20
11. Tuesday, February 24: early modern: dynastic and religious conflict
Read: Steven Gunn, “War, Religion, and the State” in The Oxford History of Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1999): 102-133**
12. Thursday, February 26: early modern: state vs. non-state
Read: Hanson, chap.1, chap. 4;* Inga Glendinnen,”Aztecs” in Keegan, Book of War, 84-90**
Second 3-4 page paper due: state and appraise Hanson’s general argument (from Chapter 1) and its specific application (chapter 4)
13. Tuesday, March 3: early modern: Christian vs Moslem
Read: Busbecq, “The Sultan in the Field” in Chaliand, Art of War, 457-459**; Andrew Wheatcroft, “The Fall of Constantinople” and Hurtad de Mendoze, “Such Botching, Disorder, and Chaos” in Keegan,The Book of War (London and New York, 1999), 60-74**
14. Thursday, March 5:Midterm
15. Tuesday, March 10: modern: national wars
Read: Mann, chap. 3*; Lynn chap. 6*
16. Thursday, March 12: modern: state vs. non-state (imperialism)
Read: Lynn, Chapter 5*, Hanson, Chapter 8; “The Zulu Army”, in Chaliand, Art of War, 747-753*
17. Tuesday, March 17: modern: World War I as cultural conflict
Read: “War and Culture” in Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction (Oxford, 2007): 159-210*
18. Thursday, March 19: modern: WW2 as cultural conflict
Read: Lynn, chapter 7*; “Germany Strikes east” and “The “Criminal Orders” in Frans Coetzee and Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee, The World in Flames (Oxford, 2011): 91-95**
19. Tuesday, March 24: genocide (i)
Read: Mann, chap. 1, 2*; “Defining Genocide” in Coetzee, World in Flames, 312-315**
20. Thursday, March 26: genocide (ii)
Read: Mann chaps 5, 6, 7*; “Wannsee Conference” in Coetzee, World in Flames, 324-326**, and “Himmler and the Final Solution”, ibid, 337-338**
21. Tuesday, March 31: war and political culture (i)
Read: Friedrich von Bernhardi, “The Right to make War”, in Germany and the Next War (tr. Allan Powles, New York, 1914):16-37**; Colmar von der Goltz, “The Nation in Arms” in Chaliand, Art of War, 808-812**; V.I. Lenin, “Advice of an Onlooker” and Leon Trotsky, “The Armored Train”, ibid, 871-879**; Adolf Hitler, “War and Colonization in the East” and “Proclamation to the German People”, ibid, 943-948**
22. Thursday, April 2: war and political culture (ii) “democratic peace”
Read: Christopher Layne, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace”, International Security , Vol. 19, No. 2 (Autumn, 1994): 5-49**
Third 3-4 page paper due: critique the notion of the democratic peace
NO CLASSES APRIL 3 – APRIL 10
23. Tuesday, April 14: new national conflicts
Read: Gellately, chapter 17*
24. Thursday, April 16: new religious conflicts
Read: “Religion and terrorism” chap. 2 in Michael Cromartie, ed., Religion, Culture, and International Conflict (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005)**
25. Tuesday, April 21: Globalization and Cultural conflict today: Huntington, 19-78
Fourth 3-4 page paper due: state and critique the argument that Huntington presents in Part IV of his book (you may use other parts of the book as well)
26. Thursday, April 23: Conclusions
Tuesday, April 28: Brandeis Friday