Undergraduate Course: War and History, 1350-1750 (HIST10481)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 40 |
ECTS Credits | 20 |
| Summary | This course provides an opportunity for students to engage with key themes and debates relating to the nature of war in medieval and early modern Europe. Students will engage with a wide range of sources (including objects, images, and texts) and historical fields (primarily social, cultural, and intellectual) to consider how war was justified, waged, supported, experienced, and remembered between c.1350 and c.1750. |
| Course description |
War in History explores the nature and impact of war in European society during a period often considered to be critical for the development of modern warfare and modern ideas about the relationship between civilians and soldiers. The course is therefore not a traditional survey of the history of wars in Europe, but is structured around key arguments and themes which include: cultural and human behaviourist models of violence; the relationship between war making and state making; the delineation of civil and military spheres; the invention of the civilian as a protected person in war; the development of notions of war crimes; the gendering of war; the 'military revolution' (or evolution); ideas of cultural or psychological transformation; the role of irregular forces; and the place of 'shadow agents' or non-combatants such as spies and foragers in war-related and war-supporting roles.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | A pass in 40 credits of third level historical courses or equivalent.
Before enrolling students on this course, Personal Tutors are asked to contact the History Honours Admission Administrator to ensure that a place is available (Tel: 504030). |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- demonstrate a coherent grasp of key political, religious, social and cultural themes and debates in the history of war in Europe between c.1350 and c.1750;
- read, analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship in the history of medieval and early modern war;
- understand, evaluate and utilise a variety of primary source material;
- develop and sustain scholarly arguments in oral and written form, by formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence;
- demonstrate independence of mind and initiative; intellectual integrity and maturity; an ability to evaluate the work of others, including peers.
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Reading List
Primary
Christine de Pizan, The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry (1410), trans. Sumner Willard, ed. Charity Cannon Willard (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999) OR
Gregory M. Reichberg, Henrik Syse, and Endre Begby (eds), The Ethics of War: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Blackwell, 2006)
Secondary
Jeremy Black, 'Patterns of Warfare, 1400-1800', in The Cambridge World History. Vol. 6: The Construction of a Global World, 1400-1800 CE. Part 2: Patterns of Change, ed. Jerry H. Bentley, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 29-49
Joanna Bourke, 'New Military History', in Matthew Hughes and William J. Philpott (eds.), Palgrave Advances in Modern Military History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 258-80
Erica Charters, Eve Rosenhaft and Hannah Smith (eds.), Civilians and War in Europe 1618-1815 (Liverpool University Press, 2012)
Carol Cohn, 'Women and Wars: Toward a Conceptual Framework', in Carol Cohn (ed.), Women and Wars (Polity Press, 2013), 1-35
Valentin Groebner, Defaced: The Visual Culture of Violence in the Late Middle Ages, trans. Pamela Selwyn (Zone Books, 2004)
Yuval Noah Harari, The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450-2000 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
Ioanna Iordanou, Venice's Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Erika Kuijpers and Cornelis van der Haven (eds.), Battlefield Emotions 1500-1800: Practices, Experience, Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
Isabella Lazzarini (ed.), A Cultural History of Peace in the Renaissance (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Karma Nabulsi, 'Evolving Conceptions of Civilians and Belligerents: One Hundred Years after the Hague Peace Conferences', in Simon Chesterman (ed.), Civilians in War (Lynne Rienner, 2001), 9-24
Len Scales, 'Bread, Cheese and Genocide: Imagining the Destruction of Peoples in Medieval Western Europe', History, 92/3 (2007): 284-300 |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
The ability to think critically and reflectively about the changing nature of conflict.
The ability to think critically and reflectively about the changing nature of debates about the role of war in history.
The ability to recognise and critically analyse the wide variety of written, visual, and physical evidence for war.
The ability to interpret evidence effectively and to present it to both academic and non-academic audiences. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Stephen Bowd
Tel: (0131 6)50 3758
Email: Stephen.Bowd@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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