Brian R. Price is an American university professor, historical fencing instructor, and member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. He taught at Hawai'i Pacific University, (where he offered courses in the history of warfare, in counterinsurgency, and in strategy at the graduate and undergraduate levels) until some time before Nov. 11, 2022, when he was not listed among the faculty there. As of Nov. 10, 2022, Price is listed as "an Associate Professor in the Department of Joint Warfighting at the Air Command and Staff College", Air University at Maxwell AFB in Alabama
Until his graduation from the University of North Texas and deployment to Afghanistan as part of the Human Terrain System in 2011-2012, Price was best known in the worlds of historical reenactment, medieval history, and the SCA. He manufactured replica armour and wrote the book Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction. Price 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 2007 until a dispute with the authors over royalties.Dr. Brian R. Price, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbrianrprice "New titles for the Bookshelf have been on hold since 2008, when I began my doctoral studies, but the titles remain popular and continue to sell" He and his wife Ann also jointly ran Revival Enterprises during the same period, which developed a line of leather and sundries for re-enactment and Western Martial Arts practitioners until they "transitioned the business in 2011 to a silent partnership."Dr. Brian R. Price, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbrianrprice Retrieved April 11, 2019 Archived at https://www.bookandsword.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/brian_r_price_linkedin_revival_enterprises.png May 2018 In addition, on 24 April 2017 the WhoIs registration for Revival Enterprises' domain revival.us was renewed with Price's name, email address, and former Texas address https://www.bookandsword.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/whois_revival_us_may_2018.png It was updated with Price's new Alamaba address in April 2021 (search whois revival.us on a Linux terminal or https://www.whois.com/whois/revival.us)
Price 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 a controversy in February 2011, was the president of the Schola Saint George school of Historical European martial arts.https://web.archive.org/web/20120225164400/https://www.scholasaintgeorge.org/index.php?Itemid=90&option=com_content&id=227%3Aannouncement-by-colin-gabriel-hatcher-newly-elected-president-of-the-schola-saint-george&catid=60%3Amartial-arts-news&view=article "25 February 2011. To all interested persons: For personal reasons the founder and President of the Schola Saint George, Brian Price, has tendered his resignation to the Schola Saint George Board of Directors. The resignation follows posts in public internet forums in which questionable business practices have been alleged against Brian. As a result of these allegations, and because of the need to address these issues privately, Brian has elected to depart from the Schola Saint George, lest the Schola’s members be adversely affected by association with the personal and business disputes Brian now finds himself involved in."
Since the controversies and overseas deployment in 2011-2012, Price's academic and public profile switched focus from chivalric culture to contemporary military affairs, counterinsurgency theory, and similar matters.Graduate Student- Brian R. Price. University of North Texas, June 23, 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20100623000931/http://military.hist.unt.edu/grad/price.html "At UNT his major fields of study revolve around medieval and early Renaissance chivalric culture ... Mr. Price is also known for his interest in the experience of the American military."
Background
From 1984 to 1990 Price manufactured replica armour through a business called Thornbird Arms until he graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.A. in Political Science in 1990. During his time in the Society for Creative Anachronism he founded two other small businesses: his small press Chivalry Bookshelf (which published new books from 2001 to 2007) and his importer of replica clothing, Revival Enterprises (still active). Although Price says that he "transitioned the (Revival Enterprises) business to a silent partnership in 2011 as interests shifted towards academia and sold it outright in January of 2012, once terms had been agreed",https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbrianrprice/ (retrieved 3 January 2023) the registration for Revival Enterprises' website was renewed with his name and Alabama address as late as April 2021.https://www.whois.com/whois/revival.us (retrieved 3 January 2023)
Price worked in the computer software, information technology and internet industries from 1993 to 2000. In 2006 Price entered the University of North Texas to pursue a doctorate in history.
In 2011-12 he worked 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 and gathered oral histories on ANSF officers and civilians.
After receiving his PhD in May 2011, Price began in 2012 as a visiting professor at Hawai'i Pacific University, teaching primarily within the graduate program for diplomacy and military studies. Although his dissertation was on medieval history, his research came to focus on contemporary military affairs. As noted above, by November 2022 Price was an associate professor in the Department of Joint Warfighting at the Air Command and Staff College in Alabama and was no longer listed with Hawai'i Pacific University.
Western Martial Arts Until 2011, Price was best known for his involvement in the Society for Creative Anachronism, historical reenactment, and 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."Brion Thornbird ap Rhys" in Compendium Caidis 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.Thornbird Arms at Knighthood, Chivalry & Tournaments Library 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 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.SSG SF Bay Area Branch at Schola Saint George website Price directed the Schola Saint George, expanding it to Texas and other regions of the United States and abroad, until his resignation as president in 2011. 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.Schola St. George Medieval Swordsmanship Symposium 2001 at The Association for Renaissance Martial Arts webpage. Accessed April 5, 2011.
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.
Price's writings from this period 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's Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction, was published by Paladin Press in 2000. 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 2001, Chivalry Bookshelf reprinted 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. From 2001 to 2006, Chivalry Bookshelf published about 20 books by prominent members of the early historical fencing movement including William E. Wilson, Tom Leoni, Stephen Hand, and Guy Windsor until a dispute with the authors about royalties (see Controversies below). As of 2023, the most recent Chivalry Bookshelf publication was Price's 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. 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 2002 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.
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.