2. Early warrior authority

This chapter describes the creation of warriors as an early status group. Minamoto Yoritomo won the Gempei War, an event that allowed him to create his own mini government in Kamakura, later referred to as the Kamakura shogunate. The chapter describes how some warriors gravitated to Kamakura, joined Yoritomo’s bureaucracy, and interacted with each other and the non-warrior nobles in Kyoto. It also highlights the important role of women in the formation of early warrior authority. Yoritomo died early on during this Kamakura Period (1185-1333) and several warrior families, along with their noble allies, struggled to dominate the warrior regime. The Hōjō emerged victorious and had to fight against the invading Mongols. In so doing, the Hōjō begin to dominate warriors throughout Japan. This chapter also introduces several sources of warrior “law” and conduct that show the influence of non-warrior elite culture on warrior culture and behaviour.

Living by the Sword

This book sharpens the readers' knowledge of swords as it traverses through a captivating 1,000 years of French and English history. The book reveals that warrior culture, with the sword as its ultimate symbol, was deeply rooted in ritual long before the introduction of gunpowder weapons transformed the battlefield. The book argues that objects have agency and that decoding their meaning involves seeing them in motion: bought, sold, exchanged, refurbished, written about, displayed, and used in ceremony. Drawing on evidence about swords in the possession of nobles and royalty, the book explores the meanings people attached to them from the contexts in which they appeared. These environments included other prestige goods such as tapestries, jewels, and tableware — all used to construct and display status. The book draws on an exciting diversity of sources from archaeology, military and social history, literature, and material culture studies to inspire students and educated lay readers to stretch the boundaries of what they know as the “war and culture” genre.

Clausewitz, Keegan, and the Big History of Warfare

As a social phenomenon, is war subordinate to politics, as Carl von Clausewitz argued in the early nineteenth century, or, instead, is it the product of an instinctive ‘warrior culture’, common to all peoples and times and beyond politics, as John Keegan suggested in the late twentieth? Should we emphasize ‘essential historical elements in the search for a tem-poral continuum in warfare? In this article, we stress the relevance of the ‘perennity of war’ thesis, and the impropriety of a dichotomy between political rationality vs. instinct. The results of the clash between these two strands of thought about the origins of warfare face limitations due to the absence of a temporal ‘play of scales’, so that short-term approaches emerge as incompatible with macro-historical views. We suggest that a deep understanding of the phenomenon of warfare must consider the interaction and the feedback between processes at different time scales.

Clausewitz, Keegan, and the Big History of Warfare

As a social phenomenon, is war subordinate to politics, as Carl von Clausewitz argued in the early nineteenth century, or, instead, is it the product of an instinctive ‘warrior culture’, common to all peoples and times and beyond politics, as John Keegan suggested in the late twentieth? Should we emphasize ‘essential historical elements in the search for a tem-poral continuum in warfare? In this article, we stress the relevance of the ‘perennity of war’ thesis, and the impropriety of a dichotomy between political rationality vs. instinct. The results of the clash between these two strands of thought about the origins of warfare face limitations due to the absence of a temporal ‘play of scales’, so that short-term approaches emerge as incompatible with macro-historical views. We suggest that a deep understanding of the phenomenon of warfare must consider the interaction and the feedback between processes at different time scales.

America’s First Freedom: Blood Sacrifice and the Second Amendment in the American Rifleman 1975-2019

Beginning in the 1970s, the NRA began transforming defense of the Second Amendment into quasi-religious obligation but how this transformation occurred has only recently begun to be understood. This paper contributes to the understanding of how the NRA influenced the transformation of the cultural meaning of the Second Amendment by linking historical American narratives about masculine sacrifice to antigovernment new warrior culture following Vietnam, filling them with Christian nationalist language that rejects government authority to limit the Second Amendment. Using the NRA’s most mainstream and longest running magazine the American Rifleman, I demonstrate how the transformation of the cultural meaning of sacrifice underlies the transformation of meaning of the Second Amendment. This paper explores how the meaning of “sacrifice” in America’s gun culture transformed, alongside what it means to “be a Christian” as well as a “good citizen”. I demonstrate how the anti-government New Warrior culture has merged with Christian nationalist rhetoric to move the Second Amendment beyond the rule of law. Finally, I demonstrate how recently-ousted NRA president and retired Marine Corps LTC Oliver North symbolically embodies the New Christian anti-government Warrior.

Utopia: Entering the fortress of Europe's warrior culture

Utopia repeatedly sets forth the rhetorical strategy of using pleasant and healing words to “enter” or “flow” or “steal into” (influere) fortresses of hardened opinion and custom without arousing warlike passions to keep them out. An important part of this strategy is the creation of a character who denounces major instances and causes of injustice but who nonetheless supports war and other means of force at the expense of law in rectifying that injustice; another part of the strategy is the creation of a character and a plot that embody the “indirect” rhetorical approach aimed primarily at long-term persuasion needed to improve laws and institutions.

Iliad, Part 1

The Iliad concerns not only heroic war but also heroic education. This chapter begins by considering the poem’s treatment of the relationship between natural aptitudes and acquired skills and discusses the lengthy scene of instruction (Iliad 23) in which Nestor coaches his son Antilochus on winning a chariot race. It describes the normative heroic curriculum, which includes training in public speaking, warfare, and the value system underpinning warrior culture: fathers repeatedly drive home to their sons the importance of enhancing familial glory and avoiding the shame that is associated with cowardice on the battlefield. The chapter also considers the motives underlying parental tenderness, including the project of inculcating habitus (Pierre Bourdieu’s term), and analyzes Iliadic instances of instruction via injunctions (hupothēkai), general reflections (gnōmai), and exemplary tales (paradeigmata).

“This Is a Man’s Job”: Challenging the Masculine “Warrior Culture” at the U.S. Air Force Academy

This article explores models of identity at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Drawing on qualitative data gathered through a number of focus groups with cadets, it finds that despite technological changes that have revolutionized the battle space and policy efforts to shift the cultural identity of the forces, ideal identities remain infused with concepts that value the classical model of the heroic masculine. It suggests that functionally, this highly prized “warrior” ethos is becoming less relevant but could have the effect of undermining efforts to “diversify” the Academy. In the absence of a fundamental reconsideration of what constitutes the “ideal” air force officer, efforts to alter the demography and exclusionary culture at the Academy will be stymied.