Brian R. Price

Brian R. Price is an American University professor, author, editor, publisher, martial arts instructor of the Italian school of swordsmanship, reconstructive armorer, and member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. He is Assistant Professor of History at Hawai'i Pacific University, where he offers courses in the history of warfare, in counterinsurgency, and in strategy at the graduate and undergraduate levels, leveraging his long study of medieval topics and his recent experience in Afghanistan as an advisor. He speaks regularly at conferences both for his current field on counterinsurgency and in his earlier, and now secondary field, on chivalric topics. He began his independent studies in 1990, but began to shift his interests as the Afghan and Iraq wars progressed, increasingly emphasizing aspects of modern military theory, especially ways through which culture, doctrine and military practice interweave. This remains the center of his research agenda today. Recently he has spoken at the UK Ministry of Defence, appeared on television to discuss the situation in Ukraine, and given a paper at the World History Conference.

Price is perhaps best known for his work, Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction, which has been favorably reviewed and sold more than 20,000 copies worldwide. It was cited more than 35 times in the recent 2013 Ph.D. Dissertation by Nikolaus Dupras. ". Dupras writes, "Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction is one of the most complete accounts written on the armourer’s art. Geared heavily towards technique, it is intended as a manual which discusses the steps of armour-making from design to fabrication. Though not comprehensive, the complexity of the task is well represented."

Price originally founded The Chivalry Bookshelf in 1992 to publish Chronique, the Journal of Chivalry, but eventually began publishing books about Western Martial Arts, arms and armor, and the subject of chivalry. The press produced twenty-six titles between 2001 and 2010, when Price suspended operations in order to prepare for deployment to Afghanistan. He and his wife Ann also jointly ran Revival Enterprises during the same period, which developed a popular line of leather and sundries for re-enactment and Western martial arts practitioners.

Previously he co-founded the American Company of Saint George, a medieval-styled "tournament society" that, together with Chronique: The Journal of Chivalry, helped to inspire many other similar tournament societies throughout North America, in Europe and in Australia. Price is a co-founder and, until early 2011, was the long-time curriculum director of the Schola Saint George school of Historical European martial arts. Currently he teaches swordsmanship in Honolulu and remains affiliated with the Schola Saint George.

Background

In 2011-12 he served in Afghanistan as a senior socio-cultural advisor for the Human Terrain System, working with NATO, American and Afghan forces. His work there focused on the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), their internal dynamics and their relationship to American and NATO forces as related to counterinsurgency theory and practice. He made use of local and oral history techniques in his unique approach and gathered oral histories on ANSF officers and civilians.

Price graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.A. in Political Science/Economics in 1990, and in 2006 entered the University of North Texas to pursue a doctorate in history. He won a competitive dissertation fellowship in 2010, completing his degree in May, 2011. He taught courses there in U.S. and world history as a Teaching Fellow from 2008 to 2010.

Price had previously operated an armour workshop, Thornbird Arms, from 1984 to 1990, and worked in the computer software, information technology and internet industries from 1993 to 2000.

Western Martial Arts

Beginning about 1981, Price's exposure to the Western Martial Arts developed through his participation in armored full-contact sport combat through the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) in Southern California, in which he participated under the SCA pseudonym of Brion Thornbird ap Rhys, eventually rising to the rank of King of the Kingdom of Caid in 1988. In 1984, Price founded a small armory, Thornbird Arms, directed at the SCA's market for functional historically accurate armor, which he operated until 1990. In recognition of his expertise in "armouring" and his research into the historical combat system of Fiore dei Liberi, the SCA kingdom of Ansteorra elevated Price to its "Order of the Laurel" in 1986 and, in 1987, he was elevated to the SCA's "Order of the Chivalry" (KSCA) for his skill in SCA Armored Combat by the reigning King and Queen of the Kingdom of Caid. Price was awarded the "Queen's Cypher" and the "Princess's Favor" in 1992 by the Kingdom of the West, the "Queen's Guard – Knight Counselor" in 1998, as well as the "Defender of the West" in 2000. Price is also a warranted Armored Combat Authorizing Marshal "At Large" of the Kingdom of Ansteorra.

In addition to producing historically accurate armor for SCA members, Price wrote the instruction book Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction. This book remains the most popular introduction to the field and has provided a springboard from which a generation of armourers working in the medieval style have emerged.

In the 1990s, Price was also instrumental in establishing the Company of Saint George, a "Tournament Company" within the SCA dedicated to staging historically accurate tournaments and pas d'armes in an SCA context. In 2000, a part of the Company of Saint George developed into the Schola Saint George school of Western Martial Arts, co-founded by Price and Robert Holland in Union City, California. Price directed the Schola Saint George, expanding it to Texas and other regions of the United States and abroad. Currently the SSG has branches in Dallas, Atlanta, Charleston, Boston, Little Rock, Moscow, Latvia, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in Honolulu.

Under Price's impetus, the Schola Saint George organized the first annual Schola Saint George Medieval Swordsmanship Symposium in May, 2001. It was one of the first conferences in the United States dedicated to bringing together scholars and practitioners of the Historical European Martial Arts, and the largest of its kind up to that time.

In 2004, Price was inducted into the United States Martial Arts Hall of Fame as a Medieval Weapons Master. He is also a member of the American Teachers Association of the Martial Arts.

In Afghanistan he won letters of commendation for his service to both NATO and American units.

Writing, editing and publishing

Price's early work included The Book of the Tournament, Historical Forms of the Tournament for SCA Combat: History, Resources, Examples, and Arming Yourself in the Style of the 14th Century, were written principally for the Society for Creative Anachronism (sometimes under his SCA pseudonym "Sir Brion Thornbird") and were sometimes published by the SCA as well.

In 1996 or 1997, Price also contributed two articles, "On Chivalric Virtues" and "Winning and Losing," to Facets of Knighthood, an anthology of poetry, stories and articles concerning knighthood and chivalry edited by a fellow SCA member, "Cormac the Traveller" (a/k/a Peter Martin), and published by Outlaw Press.

Price republished and expanded his 1991 monograph, The Book of the Tournament, as a book under his The Chivalry Bookshelf imprint in 1996 and, again, in 2002.

In 1999, as a monograph, and, in 2001, as a book, Price published his "translation into modern English" of Ramon Lull's Book of Knighthood & Chivalry, which became widely used as a textbook. The book was republished again in 2002 as a paperback by The Chivalry Bookshelf and Boydell & Brewer and again in 2004 by The Chivalry Bookshelf and Greenhill Press.

Price'sTechniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction, was published by Paladin Press in 2000.

In 2001, Price published the first U.S. edition of Bengt Thordeman's 1939–1940 two-volume Armour from the Battle of Wisby, 1361 as a single volume, and Secrets of German Medieval Swordsmanship: Sigmund Ringeck's Commentaries on Johannes Liechtenauer's Verse, translated and interpreted by Christian Henry Tobler.

The Chivalry Bookshelf published several more notable works by other authors concerning the history of chivalry, arms and armor or Western Martial Arts in 2002, including:

• The Arte of Defence: an introduction to the use of the rapier, by William E. Wilson
• De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi: 15th century swordsmanship of Master Filippo Vadi, translated by Luca Porzio with a commentary by Gregory Mele
• Jousts and Tournaments: Charny and the Rules for Chivalric Sport in Fourteenth-Century France, translated and with a commentary by Dr. Steven Muhlberger
• SPADA: An Anthology of Swordsmanship in Memory of Ewart Oakeshott, edited by Stephen Hand

That same year Price also contributed an article, "In the Lists: The Arthurian Influence in Modern Tournaments of Chivalry," to an independently published anthology, King Arthur in Popular Culture, edited by Elizabeth S. Sklar and Donald L. Hoffman.

From 2003 through 2006, The Chivalry Bookshelf continued publishing notable books concerning the history of chivalry and Western Martial Arts, including:

• The Medieval Art of Swordsmanship: a facsimile & translation of Europe’s oldest personal combat treatise, Royal Armouries Ms. I.33, by Dr. Jeffrey L. Forgeng
• Medieval Sword & Shield: the Combat System of Royal Armouries MS I.33, by Stephen Hand and Paul Wagner
• Fighting with the German Longsword, by Christian Henry Tobler
• The Swordsman’s Companion, by Guy Windsor
• The Art of Dueling: 17th Century Rapier Combat as Taught by Salvator Fabris, by Salvator Fabris, translated by Tomasso Leoni
• SPADA 2: An Anthology of Swordsmanship, edited by Stephen Hand
• Teaching and Interpreting Historical Swordsmanship, an anthology edited by Price, to which he also contributed three of its seventeen articles: "The One True Way," "Seven-iron, Please!" and "In a Few Pages: Fighting between the Poste of Fiore dei Liberi"
• Deeds of Arms: Formal Combats in the Late Fourteenth Century, by Dr. Steven Muhlberger
• The Royal Book of Jousting, Horsemanship, and Knightly Combat: a Translation into English of King Dom Duarte’s 1438 Treatise Livro da Ensinança de Bem cavalgar Toda Sela (The Art of Riding in Every Saddle), translated by Antonio Franco Preto and edited by Dr. Steven Muhlberger.
• The Duellist's Companion: a Training Manual for 17th Century Italian Rapier, by Guy Windsor
• English Swordsmanship: the True Fight of George Silver. Vol. 1, Single Sword, by Stephen Hand
• Fighting with the Quarterstaff: a Modern Study of Renaissance Technique, by David Lindholm
• Academy of the Sword: wherein is demonstrated by mathematical rules on the foundation of a mysterious circle the theory and practice of the true and heretofore unknown secrets of handling arms on foot and horseback (1628), by Gerard Thibault d’Anvers, translated by John Michael Greer
• In Service of the Duke: the 15th Century Fighting Treatise of Paulus Kal, translated by Christian Henry Tobler

In 2007, Price published Fiore dei Liberi's Sword in two hands: a full-color training guide for Medieval longsword based on Fiore dei Liberi's Fior di Battaglia, which is also the most recent book published by The Chivalry Bookshelf. In February, 2011, Price announced that "there will be no further Bookshelf titles except for my own, and there are only three of these planned, if they ever come out."

In July 2010, Price published in Knight Templar Magazine, "Isn't Chivalry Dead?", a shortened version of the article he had published earlier in Chronique.

In May, 2011, his dissertation, The Martial Arts of Medieval Europe, was accepted by the University of North Texas Department of History and is currently in revision for publication by an undisclosed press.

Between 2011-2012, he wrote more than seventy classified and unclassified analyses reports on topics relating to counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan.

In 2013-2014, while developing more than eleven courses for Hawai'i Pacific University, he reviewed four books for the Journal of Military History.

Controversies

In 2009, Dr. Yuri Cowan, a postdoctoral Research Fellow concentrating on "nineteenth-century poetry, historiography, medievalism, and the history of the book" at Ghent University, Belgium, and a member of the William Morris Society, edited the Kelmscott edition of The Ordination of Knighthood for the "Morris Online Edition," a web-based scholarly edition of the works of William Morris published at the University of Iowa Libraries website.

In the Headnote: Introduction, Cowan accused Price of plagiarizing William Morris's translation of the Ordène de Chevalerie in Price's 2001 The Chivalry Bookshelf edition:

But perhaps the most striking instance of the afterlife of this volume is a little book published by The Chivalry Bookshelf in 2001, entitled Ramon Lull’s Book of Knighthood and Chivalry and the anonymous Ordene [sic] de Chevalerie (“translated by William Caxton / Rendered into modern English by Brian R. Price”). This book is avowedly a work of enthusiasm by Price, who writes in his introduction that “with the growing convergence between students of chivalric lore, reenactors, Western martial artists, and medievalists – the time seems right to release this new version. I hope it brings much pleasurable contemplation and provokes thought along [sic] what it meant – and what it means – to be a knight” (iii). There is no reason why Price should have included both works together, except that William Morris had once done so in his Kelmscott edition of 1892–3. In fact, a close look at Price’s edition reveals that he has stolen Morris’ translation verbatim for the entire text of the Ordène, and gives Morris no credit whatsoever. Indeed, he does not mention Morris even once throughout his entire introduction, nor anywhere in the book [5]. Although Morris’ work is certainly in the public domain, Price’s appropriation of it without attribution is a decidedly unchivalrous piece of plagiarism. And yet this lately pirated edition, too, is an example of the long reach of Morris’ influence in unexpected places – as a translator, as a medievalist, and as a shaper of the canon.

[5] In his introduction, Price repeatedly emphasises the “anonymity” of the Ordène. It is possible that, owing to Morris’s rather medieval humility in not appending his own authorial name to the translation of the Ordène, Price understood the translation of the Ordène in the Kelmscott volume to be Caxton’s – suggesting at least that Morris’s medievalising idiom was convincing!

The complaint, however, is misleading. Whereas the cover of the book and the title page both name the book as "Ramon Lull's Book of Knighthood and Chivalry & the Anonymous Ordene de Chevalerie" without reference to any translators, and the endicia lists "Ramon Lull's Book of Knighthood and Chivalry/Translated by William Caxton/Rendered into modern English by Brian R. Price", the back of the dustjacket does include a paragraph crediting Morris as the translator of the Ordene de Chevalerie.

In March, 2011, Will McLean, an illustrator, author and independent medieval scholar, accused Price of plagiarizing and infringing his copyright on certain of McLean's illustrations for Dr. Elizabeth Bennett's translation of King Rene's Tournament Book by reprinting them without credit or permission in Price's Chronique No. 10(in 1994). Mr. Price notes that none of these complaints were ever substantiated nor brought to his attention prior to McLean's public complaint, itself made in support of the allegations by the Chivalry Bookshelf authors noted below, with whom McLean maintains a working relationship. The Chronique issue in question was published in 1994, but the above claim seems to date from 1997, and no record of correspondence or complaints from McLean to Price have been shown.

In early 2011, allegations were made by several authors who had left the Chivalry Bookshelf to found a competing concern, that royalty payments were withheld since 2006 and over the role of a Chivalry Bookshelf affiliated editor in the production of the Filippo Vadi treatise discussed above. The controversy, was part of Price's decision to hand off leadership of the Schola Saint George. Price maintains that the handing over of the SSG's presidency was already in progress owing to his unexpected deployment to Afghanistan, for which he was in training at the same time.

Although started as a legal challenge, the dispute with former Chivalry Booskshelf authors was eventually settled out of court while Dr. Price was serving in Afghanistan.

See also

Historical European Martial Arts

Western Martial Arts

Italian school of swordsmanship

External links

• The Chivalry Bookshelf
• Schola Saint George
• Society for Creative Anachronism

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