War and Society:
A New Interdisciplinary Degree for Students of the
University of Wales Swansea
War is one of the
most spectacular of historic events. It is a subject of great fascination
because it is seen as bringing about violent change in a highly dramatic way. It
also inflicts terrible suffering and degradation and yet evokes great bravery.
We want to understand how and why men and women are able to endure such horrors
and also to inflict them on others.
Yet understanding is
not easily achieved. There has been much discussion recently about the
‘Western way of War’ which, it has been alleged, was first developed half a
millennium before Christ. But is there any such thing as a ‘Western way of
War’ which is peculiar to a particular culture, or are there simply many ways
of waging war which cultures use and change as they think appropriate? Simple
explanations clearly are insufficient. We live in a society infatuated with
technology and it is conventional to believe that technological superiority wins
wars. But in what sense was the war in Iraq ‘won’ when the ‘victors’ are
unable to impose their preferred political solution on that country? How far is
the waging of war now influenced by the way it is reported?
It is our perception
that war cannot be approached and understood through the medium of a single
discipline because a whole range of disciplines has something to offer the
student. It is for this reason that we have developed a new interdisciplinary
degree, ‘War and Society’. There is an emphasis on European warfare, but
this is never Eurocentric in the sense that everything must be related to and
measured by European development. We seek to look at war across a wide span of
time – from the Greeks to the Gulf War. But various disciplines contribute to
this – American Studies, Development Studies, Classical and Egyptian Studies,
History, Literatures, Media Studies, Politics and International Relations and
Sociology, Anthropology, amongst others.
While students are
given an all-round grounding in the understanding of war, the structure of the
course leaves them free to concentrate and to develop their own approaches. In
particular, it offers the opportunity to undertake a dissertation of the
student’s own choosing under the supervision of a specialist in an area the
student finds to be of particular interest.
Some Books of Particular Interest
J.Black, European Warfare 1453-1815
(Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1999).
V.D.Hanson, The Western Way of War
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
If You Want to Know More Contact:
Professor John France, Department of History, University of Wales Swansea,
Swansea SA2 8PP.