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Tomn posted:Also, this has been bugging me for a while, but what the heck is a "round" when talking about Chinese duels? Every time a duel goes down it seems both sides keep bragging about "fighting for two hundred rounds," but I've never been able to find a clear explanation on what a round actually is. I figure it's the two guys riding at one another and trying to get a hit in, then wheeling back to try again until one of them dies or flees. Sort of like jousting.
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Mar 14, 2015 12:45
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Tomn posted:So here's a Chinese question for anyone out there capable of answering - we have a pretty good idea of how the Romans fought in terms of their actual tactics and formations, but do we have similar knowledge on how Chinese armies of the Han dynasty or so fought? Did they rely more on professionals, or militias, or levies, and did they favor phalanxes, pike blocks, shieldwalls, or whatnot? Also, this has been bugging me for a while, but what the heck is a "round" when talking about Chinese duels? Every time a duel goes down it seems both sides keep bragging about "fighting for two hundred rounds," but I've never been able to find a clear explanation on what a round actually is. Of course, it varies from time/place. Shang/Zhou Chinese warfare was based around bigass chariots with aristocrats in them. As the Zhou dissolves, some factions start cottoning on to the power of massed peasantry. You canlook at a lot of Qin (our eventual winners) policies and see a big push to get more people out there farming more land so more of it can be taxed so they can feed conscripts. Siege warfare was a pretty big deal at that time as well. The 'Spring and Autumn Period' marked by the decline of the Zhou and these civil wars produced a lot of political thought on how to achieve harmony and make everything better. Legalists- rule by force and fear, Confucians- lowers should their elders/elders should be worthy of respect, Lao Tzu- he who governs best governs least because something something mysticism.* One group of philosophers, the Mohists, just thought if everyone would stop loving fighting things would work out, so they studied up on military engineering and promised to join the defending side of any war. For big chunks of their history they return to God's Own Way of War, the pike and The dueling is, at least in part a product of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and its whole semi-historical deal. Like, say Homer, there's some larger than life exaggerations going on, and duels make for good stories. *Well, and a healthy dose of 'human nature/nature nature is going to conspire to gently caress you up take some deep breaths, calm down, think before you act because as a ruler if you do anything it's going to affect a lot of people.'
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Mar 14, 2015 14:10
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From what I've seen of Chinese historical fiction, one bout is indeed one pass on horseback.
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Mar 14, 2015 14:43
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Smoking Crow posted:The US has an ideological link. The upper federal legislative house is the Senate and there is a giant painting on the ceiling of the Capitol (another Roman link) of George Washington becoming a Roman God. Most high governmental buildings are in the neoclassical style, so they appear to be Roman. American cities are planned in grid systems, just like the Romans did. While that last one may sound tenuous, remember how many curved streets there are in Paris and London. This reminds me, the cities Hamburg and Berlin also have a "Senate" as their legislative bodies (they're both independent states of our federal republic). This clearly means they're the 7th and 8th Rome. 
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Mar 14, 2015 14:45
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Arglebargle III posted:From what I've seen of Chinese historical fiction, one bout is indeed one pass on horseback. I'm thinking of samurai duels, where they pass each other repeatedly, shooting arrows until one flees or falls dead.
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Mar 14, 2015 18:44
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Tomn posted:So here's a Chinese question for anyone out there capable of answering - we have a pretty good idea of how the Romans fought in terms of their actual tactics and formations, but do we have similar knowledge on how Chinese armies of the Han dynasty or so fought? Did they rely more on professionals, or militias, or levies, and did they favor phalanxes, pike blocks, shieldwalls, or whatnot? Also, this has been bugging me for a while, but what the heck is a "round" when talking about Chinese duels? Every time a duel goes down it seems both sides keep bragging about "fighting for two hundred rounds," but I've never been able to find a clear explanation on what a round actually is. China has got too long a history to make generalizations. I assume you're most interested in late-Han/Three Kingdoms armies. Here's a pretty reputable article on it. https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/html/1885/42048/3KWJin.html The Han had a professional army that was mainly posted at the frontiers of China. They spent most of their time fighting Nomads in the North and West, and included many local troops within their ranks. They were generally better armed and armoured than their enemies, but were expensive to maintain for the state. One of China's historical disadvantages was that it couldn't maintain enough warhorses to supply their armies, which had to be cavalry-dominated to effectively fight nomadic peoples. The Three Kingdoms era, however, was essentially a collapse of society. Warlords and provincial governors looking to profit from the weak Imperial state created private armies, either drawing from the border armies or training their own. Most of the early Three Kingdoms warfare is dominated by former Han armies getting trotted into Central China and wreaking havoc. The levied armies in the era are pretty poorly trained. The bulk of an army is pressed into service, and the most powerful units within an army were made up by officers and their retinues. A commander in this army was expected to bear the brunt of the fighting, make tactical and strategic decisions, maintain the morale of dismotivated peasants, and administer to several thousand of them. These officers were not only important to the army, they were important to the state, because of this disproportionate responsibility. It's why there is so much emphasis on competent officers in Three Kingdoms-related media. The idea of a teeming mass of peasants revolving around one or two officers is disturbingly similar to Dynasty Warriors, but it's apparently got a hint of accuracy. Chinese military history generally doesn't focus on individual soldiers, or even individual units. A lot Chinese "battles" span distances of 80km, but they're recorded as single incidents in the histories. Formations were very important in Chinese militaries, but they're frustrating to study. They all have fancy evocative names, but they're mostly recorded just as that, without any details as to how "Half-Moon Crane in Decadent Grass" is supposed to function.
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Mar 14, 2015 19:08
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Some of that happens a lot for us, we've just internalized a lot of it. And then The Hundreds of The Fifth Gathered used the Turtle* to counter the Flight of Flames** technique. Later Dragon Soldiers*** would adopt the Snail's Shell**** before beginning their Lightning War***** to foil Those Who Dispute/Squabble******. The Vassals of the Land******* fought The Third's of the Island of Bunnies.******** *Centurians of the fifth legion used the testudo. **volley fire ***dragoons ****caracole *****blitzkrieg ******skirmishers *******landschneke ********Spanish Tercios (other options for Spain: Thirds of the Edge, Thirds of the West, Thirds of the Lands of Metal  )
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Mar 14, 2015 19:38
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My subjects' word for themselves is War People, and that's going to be the title of my dissertation. (Kriegsvolck / Kriegsleuth). Legally speaking though, they are The People Who Gain Salt (söldner).
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Mar 14, 2015 20:19
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Just to put the subject to bed, western civilization as a whole is the modern Rome. We have plenty of columns, infighting and dicks gratified all over the place.
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Mar 14, 2015 23:29
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Bitter Mushroom posted:Just to put the subject to bed, western civilization as a whole is the modern Rome. We have plenty of columns, infighting and dicks gratified all over the place. the most roman video game 
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Mar 14, 2015 23:47
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If you're looking for modern claimants to Rome, Albania has a big fuckoff Byzantine eagle on its flag.
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Mar 15, 2015 00:26
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Bitter Mushroom posted:Just to put the subject to bed, western civilization as a whole is the modern Rome. We have plenty of columns, infighting and dicks gratified all over the place. Plus, we bitterly dispute who currently is leading Rome.
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Mar 15, 2015 00:28
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Tunicate posted:Plus, we bitterly dispute who currently is leading Rome. the corporations, maaaaaan
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Mar 15, 2015 00:50
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I say that Revolutionary France was the best modern Rome. Why, it ran the whole gamut from kicking out the king and setting up a republic to becoming an empire dominating Europe to being brought down by German invaders, and all that between 1789 and 1815. Can't beat that speed record!
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Mar 15, 2015 01:01
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:One of China's historical disadvantages was that it couldn't maintain enough warhorses to supply their armies, which had to be cavalry-dominated to effectively fight nomadic peoples I remember a lot of trade with their neighbors was based around getting horses. Why did they have so much trouble with it? Is it just that China's dry and mountainous instead of grasslandy?
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Mar 15, 2015 02:38
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Grand Fromage posted:I remember a lot of trade with their neighbors was based around getting horses. Why did they have so much trouble with it? Is it just that China's dry and mountainous instead of grasslandy? Pollution is bad for horses...which is pretty much why people in New Jersey don't have many either.
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Mar 15, 2015 02:41
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Barto posted:Pollution is bad for horses...which is pretty much why people in New Jersey don't have many either. New Jersey has tons and tons of horse farms, for some strange reason, though. 
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Mar 15, 2015 02:45
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Barto posted:Pollution is bad for horses...which is pretty much why people in New Jersey don't have many either. New Jersey can't be the sixth rome without an appropriately sized equestrian class!!!!!
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Mar 15, 2015 03:14
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Nintendo Kid posted:New Jersey has tons and tons of horse farms, for some strange reason, though. Steppe nomads need a lot of horses to properly fight Roman armies.
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Mar 15, 2015 03:29
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:China has got too long a history to make generalizations. This is a good post I just want to elaborate on some points. First of all, the Han Empire lasted for almost 400 years, so it is indeed hard to make generalizations. The technology on hand for the period seems to be this: Padded armor and scale armor Halberds, shortswords, compound bows and crossbows Chariots and cavalry without stirrups There are a few distinct periods in the evolution of the military, and it's got a lot more to do with the funding and organization of the military than technology: 1. The Early Han Around 200 BC when the Han was just getting started, the state was modeled on the Qin. The army was funded by the Emperor, meaning the western half of the Han Empire where he had his personally administered territory. The army was dominated by Warring States tactics. (That period had just ended and living leaders would have been veterans of the Qin Conquest and the uprisings that resulted in the ascension of Han Gaozu. Indeed the Emperor himself had been a lieutenant in the Qin army.) This means that the army would have relied on large blocks of halberd and crossbow infantry with chariots as the main shock element of the army. At this point the Han Empire does not incorporate the rugged terrain south of the Yangtze and is mostly composed of the North China Plain, the Loess plateau west of Chang'An, and the Sichuan Basin, all flat plains. Chariots and large blocks of infantry seem to have been tactically dominant in these settings but the army is bad at going anywhere in a hurry. 2. The Rebellion of the Seven States This is mostly important because it consolidated the emperor's power over the rest of the Empire, and ended the suzerain vassal states in the East. After 154 BC the emperor has the sort of centralized control we associate with the centralized Chinese state and thus the power to reshape the military if he sees fit. 3. Han Wudi's Military Han Wudi was the first emperor who saw fit to really shape the Han military into something new. (Remember Wudi means Martial Emperor and he would tally up over 30 years of war during his 57 years on the throne.) Han Wudi began the practice of trading tea, silk, and other finished goods to the western steppe for warhorses that would continue for the next 2,000 years. He instituted the Imperial Examination system, which included military examinations that tested officer candidates on physical strength, stamina, and knowledge of strategy and tactics. With the help of the draft, Han Wudi's army grew to the hundreds of thousands with a large cavalry corps. This army was focused mainly on expeditions outside of China, so it must have had a strong logistical branch as well. 4. The Late Han I'm not sure about the timeline, but by the late Han the military decayed like the rest of the state. See my earlier posts on the Three Kingdoms for the political and economic changes that lead to the decline of the Han state in the late 2nd century AD. By the time of the Three Kingdoms there was only one standing army of 20-30,000 strong and it was deployed in the northwest. When the Yellow Turban Rebellion hit the state was totally unprepared to deal with it and turned to governors and officials' and their volunteer armies. This is why you see in the Three Kingdoms strong corps of veteran retainers loyal to their commanders rather than the state or the army as a whole, and a lot of hurriedly levied peasants behind them. This organization is one reason why there's so much emphasis on personal prowess in the Three Kingdoms, since the peasants and also the commanders of various not-very-loyal companies would kind of wait to see which retinue won and then run away if they perceived themselves to be on the losing side. However you also have to remember that the historiography of the period is written as biography, so it will have a bias towards explaining events as the result of personal actions.
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Mar 15, 2015 04:27
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Grand Fromage posted:I remember a lot of trade with their neighbors was based around getting horses. Why did they have so much trouble with it? Is it just that China's dry and mountainous instead of grasslandy? I think it's just a question of basic economics. In the Chinese heartland, the opportunity cost of pasture land is very high: you have a huge population and always political wrangling about who gets to farm the land and how the revenue of that farming activity should be divided. Devoting the huge tracts of flat fertile earth to pasture necessary to keep the army supplied with mounts is going to be politically difficult. So for the Chinese, the cost of producing horses is relatively high because you could be producing wheat or rice on that land.* In the Tibetan Plateau or the Steppe, however, grassland doesn't produce cereal crops or cash crops or much of anything other than grass. You couldn't produce much silk or tea or rice if you wanted to, but you can produce a lot of horses. Since China, Tibet, and the Steppe are close enough to trade, it makes much more sense economically for China to trade silk and tea for horses, since producing those horses locally would be more costly than getting them in trade. Think of it in terms of tradeoff: we can stop production of 5,000 acres of tea in order to produce 1,000 warhorses, or we can trade the product of 1,000 acres of tea to Tibet for 1,000 warhorses since Tibetans can't grow tea and will accept this deal. The second option is clearly superior, regardless of who can produce more horses in absolute terms. If you ask your Senior 3 students to draw you production possibilities curves for China and Tibet, they should be able to show you why trading tea for horses makes so much more sense for China, even if China could theoretically produce all the horses it would need domestically. This is a classic example of the benefits of trade and we covered it in the first week of class, although we didn't use horses and tea. Maybe I should change the lesson to use those two things since this is such a good example now that I get to thinking about it. *From 130BC to 120 AD there were also laws about where Chinese aristocrats could get their income. Rents on their land was okay, but do too much direct trade and you lose your aristocrat card. This may have distorted how the Chinese landowners used their estates towards staple crop agriculture and away from other uses. However I think this has little bearing on the main point. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 15, 2015 04:47
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Arglebargle III posted:*From 130BC to 120 AD there were also laws about where Chinese aristocrats could get their income. Rents on their land was okay, but do too much direct trade and you lose your aristocrat card. This may have distorted how the Chinese landowners used their estates towards staple crop agriculture and away from other uses. However I think this has little bearing on the main point. What's the rationale there?
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Mar 15, 2015 04:52
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:What's the rationale there? Probably the same reason high class Romans weren't allowed to be merchants for a while?
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Mar 15, 2015 04:53
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It was part of Han Wudi's restrictions on the landed aristocrat clans to keep their economic power in check. It worked pretty well, too. The disintegration of Han Wudi's checks on the elite nobility was a major factor in the immiseration of the peasantry and petty aristocracy and the decay of the state bureaucracy of the mid 2nd century that lead directly to the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the collapse of the Han state. You can check my posts in this thread for a more detailed explanation but basically by the late 2nd century the top rank of society had accumulated virtually all of the wealth and political power in China and Chinese society promptly exploded.
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Mar 15, 2015 04:59
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[quote="Arglebargle III" post="442755090"immiseration [/quote] God I love that word. I mean, you know what I mean.
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Mar 15, 2015 05:11
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Grand Fromage posted:I remember a lot of trade with their neighbors was based around getting horses. Why did they have so much trouble with it? Is it just that China's dry and mountainous instead of grasslandy? I don't know a lot about horses, but apparently the flatness of the terrain has nothing to do with it, since the best cavalry horses were supposed to come from the Ferghana Valley, which looks like this:  Maybe it looked greener 2000 years ago but I doubt the mountains have changed. Apparently the Han fought a war with them when they stopped exporting horses. The war indemnity: horses.
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Mar 15, 2015 05:11
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Arglebargle III posted:I don't know a lot about horses, but apparently the flatness of the terrain has nothing to do with it, since the best cavalry horses were supposed to come from the Ferghana Valley, which looks like this: I see plenty of decent grazing lands, at least from a glance, in that shot to be honest.
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Mar 15, 2015 05:22
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Arglebargle III posted:I don't know a lot about horses, but apparently the flatness of the terrain has nothing to do with it, since the best cavalry horses were supposed to come from the Ferghana Valley, which looks like this: You just were unlucky with your photo. Here are some other pics from the Ferghana Valley     This is a compound bow (people buy these because they don't want to "have to learn to shoot hurr durr"):  This is a composite bow:  Turkic grave from the 8th century. Forgot where it's from. Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan. I posted it before, but can't recall where. It's a remarkable find. You can still see the birchbark on the bow, quiver and leather bowquiver 
Power Khan fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 15, 2015 09:03
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the JJ posted:*******landschneke Although I like the image of armored land snails with pikes, I think you meant "Landsknechte" ("Knecht" is cognate to "knight").
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Mar 15, 2015 09:16
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HEY GAL posted:Legally speaking though, they are The People Who Gain Salt (söldner).
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Mar 15, 2015 09:29
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How are history departments and education handled in modern China? Does the CPC dictate their approved versions of history, or is there dissent and different perspectives going on? America is still actively debating how to teach history and what to focus on, usually a "bipartisan" argument between left vs right spins, which is probably healthy and constructive, but China has a one-party system. If there's any good modern Chinese historians who write or get properly translated in English about that big crazy place that isn't suspiciously one-note shilling I'd like to learn more about them. Like a "A People's History of China" thing more critical of institutions and leaders.
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Mar 15, 2015 09:32
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Xander77 posted:Huh. I keep seeing alternate etymologies for "soldier" - the above and the coin "sou" or "soldi". Wonder which one is correct.
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Mar 15, 2015 10:13
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Thanks for the responses, everybody! That there's interesting information - and it's weird as hell to think that Dynasty Warriors might actually be moderately historically accurate. To a degree.Smoothrich posted:How are history departments and education handled in modern China? Does the CPC dictate their approved versions of history, or is there dissent and different perspectives going on? I don't know how the modern government handles it, but I do know that Chinese historians pretty much right down through the majority of its history had a real problem with trying to make everything fit into their Confucian world view, i.e. "The country collapsed because the ruler lacked virtue," instead of "The country collapsed because of a combination of failed harvests and nomadic invasions" ("Which only happened because the ruler lacked virtue," Confucian scholars would smugly reply). A salutary lesson about the dangers of looking at history with a view to making everything fit into a preconceived notion, that.
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Mar 15, 2015 11:13
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Well, I was hired as a European history teacher in China and I now teach astronomy, if that gives you any hints. More or less all history and archaeology output from China is treated as a joke in the rest of the world. The initial position on everything is not the healthy skepticism such things should be greeted with, but that it is a monumental pile of horseshit. You have to put forth a lot of effort to get over that hump before you can even move on to evaluating it critically.
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Mar 15, 2015 11:29
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Grand Fromage posted:Well, I was hired as a European history teacher in China and I now teach astronomy, if that gives you any hints. If you hint an interesting story, you need to finish it.
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Mar 15, 2015 12:40
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Grand Fromage posted:Well, I was hired as a European history teacher in China and I now teach astronomy, if that gives you any hints. Do they Chinese have as distorted a view of non-Chinese history as they do of their own? Please elaborate on this if possible.
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Mar 15, 2015 12:42
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JaucheCharly posted:If you hint an interesting story, you need to finish it. It's not that interesting. The government is cracking down on teaching anything foreign at all levels, and the local department of education (unsure if this is a city or province thing) had goons go through our school to censor it. No teaching of history by non-Chinese is allowed, no use of books not produced by the CCP, and no teaching of anything about foreign cultures. Kopijeger posted:Do they Chinese have as distorted a view of non-Chinese history as they do of their own? Please elaborate on this if possible. Using my students as the sample, most of them have next to zero knowledge of any history whatsoever, Chinese or otherwise.
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Mar 15, 2015 12:50
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Wow. That's worse then I imagined, but sounds like the kind of state regulated whitewashing of history and support of ignorance that tyrannical governments always use to suppress dissent. I started talking to Holocaust deniers, cuz /r/Holocaust is actually run by them somehow lmao, asking them what they thought of Poland and it's all wrong hateful conclusions drawn on Soviet and Nazi totalitarian propaganda, turning into these crazy hateful interpretations that dehumanize normal people's suffering who never asked for war or hate. Cherry-picked sources of neonazi books too of course, no actual historians involved. Chinese and Western relations seem very.. Not even strained, just not even there to begin with, outside of out of touch International Relations 'Great Game' grandstanding bs. Teaching and learning history and our similarities as people around the world seem like a way to make things better, but intolerance or ignorance as state policy is what leads to wars and atrocities and genocide in the first place. China needs to lighten the gently caress up on censorship and crap if they expect international cooperation and mutual understanding. Sounds like you probably are being shut down doing exactly that as an unbiased History teacher who can't even teach History. I'd love to learn Chinese history from Chinese professors and lecturers here too but I doubt that's a thriving scene. Though there is one I think at a local university that sounds like he's disrespected and not getting to teach his field of interests too by beurucrats implying he's a spy lol.
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Mar 15, 2015 13:42
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The positive is virtually all of my students except the fuckups will be going to universities in western countries, so they'll have opportunities. They also all seem to be aware their government is completely full of poo poo.
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Mar 15, 2015 14:10
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You'd think China would want all their brightest students to be going to Chinese universities and advancing Chinese art, culture, policy, business, etc. I guess every country has its own problems, kind of sad to see them happening again and again and people not wanting to learn from truthful history of themselves and other nations. Did anyone in China, or in this thread for that matter, watch Netflix's Marco Polo? I actually was a big fan of that show, not often you get to see all those Chinese and Mongolian armors and set design being authentically recreated, even if it had some bad writing, real refreshing to have a historical drama TV series set somewhere besides Rome, England, etc. I can't even find anything on Google about Chinese reactions, except that Netflix doesn't even exist in Mongolia or China haha so who knows if they could even legally watch the thing.
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Mar 15, 2015 14:40
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