Clifford Rogers
United States Military Academy
Clifford J. Rogers is a professor of history at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has also been a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Swansea University, an Olin Fellow in Military and Strategic History at Yale, and a Fulbright Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London. His book War Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327-1360 won the 2003 Verbruggen Prize awarded by De Re Militari. Rogers is the editor of the three-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology, which received a Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History, The Wars of Edward III: Sources and Interpretations, and The Military Revolution Debate. He is co-Senior Editor of the 71-chapter interactive digital military history textbook The West Point History of Warfare, which received the 2016 Society of Military History - George C. Marshall Foundation Prize for the Use of Digital Technology in Teaching Military History. Rogers is a Graduate of Rice University and The Ohio State University.
Undergraduate Syllabus
Ancient and Medieval Warfare
HI370 is devoted to the military history-- broadly conceived--- of the ancient and medieval periods in Europe (and, secondarily, the Middle East), from the dawn of recorded history to the mid-fifteenth century AD. It is not, however, merely an extension backwards in time of HI 301/302. Although it deals with the history of the military art over that period (i.e. with developments in strategy, tactics, weaponry, etc.), it is equally concerned with “war and society” issues: how various military systems have affected and been affected by the societies of which they are a part. In addition, this course is intended as a workshop in historical methodology, in which you will have the opportunity to work with a wide variety of primary sources and compare what you get out of them with what professional historians have taken from the same materials. Even if you do not plan to be a historian, this will provide you with an excellent opportunity to hone your critical thinking skills.