Excel Amherst

Excel Instructor Jon Brunstedt on History of War, a class offered on Excel at Amherst College.

“Can anything be stupider,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal once asked, “than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has quarreled with mine, though I have not quarreled with him?” With this statement Pascal has summed up a great mystery: What motivates members of one society to set out and attempt to kill members of another? Although it might seem simple, the answer to this question is immensely complex. This is but one of numerous big questions that are addressed in History of War at Excel Amherst.

My own interest in the study of war first came about when I was an undergraduate studying ancient history in Greece. Our professor took me to the remote site of Thermopylae, where in 480 BC several thousand Greeks – led by the legendary 300 Spartans – held off the massive Persian army. Standing at the spot where King Leonidas supposedly died, the professor recited passages of Herodotus, the primary chronicler of this event, by memory. It was an amazing moment. “What if the Greeks had lost the Persian Wars?” the professor asked. The ancient battlefield provided a magnificent setting for a subsequent discussion about the significance of this battle, and the Persian Wars more generally, for Western Civilization. Although my historical interests have since broadened considerably, I’ll never forget that experience in Greece; it ignited in me a love of history and an appreciation for how cataclysmic historical events like wars have determined the shape of the world in which we live today.

This course will deal with political, social, strategic, and cultural aspects of war. We will examine representations of war just as much as war itself, and by doing so discover that wars fought centuries ago continue to affect us. As a controversial war is being waged in the Middle East, it is perhaps a more important time than ever to scrutinize the past in order to better illuminate the present. This is precisely what we’ll do during our time together at Amherst.

Jonathan Brunstedt (History of War, International Relations): UCLA, B.A.; University of Oxford, M.Phil.; University of Oxford, Ph.D (D.Phil.) Candidate. Jonathan graduated summa cum laude from UCLA where he studied ancient and modern history. After finishing at UCLA Jonathan received an Ambassadorial Scholarship to Russia and was a one-year visiting scholar with the History Faculty at Moscow State University. He subsequently completed a two-year M.Phil., with Distinction, at Oxford, where he is currently completing his doctorate in history. Jonathan has received numerous grants and scholarships to fund his graduate study and archival research. He speaks Russian and is constantly improving his knowledge of other languages. In his spare time he enjoys tennis, running, and films, and since arriving at Oxford has taken up rowing and cricket.