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I can't give a full rundown, but I CAN say that global traders who actually went all the way around the globe were a minority. It's really more things like the guy in China trading with the guy in India who trades with the guy in the Arabia who trades with the guy in Egypt who trades with the guy in Italy who trades with the guy in Germany who trades with the guy in England, that sort of thing. The trade networks were certainly global, but the actual traders usually didn't stray TOO far from home, though it was still pretty long-distance for their time. As such, large-scale travel across the world would have been relatively rare, though notable exceptions like Ibn Battuta certainly existed.
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May 15, 2015 21:16
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Tomn posted:I can't give a full rundown, but I CAN say that global traders who actually went all the way around the globe were a minority. It's really more things like the guy in China trading with the guy in India who trades with the guy in the Arabia who trades with the guy in Egypt who trades with the guy in Italy who trades with the guy in Germany who trades with the guy in England, that sort of thing. The trade networks were certainly global, but the actual traders usually didn't stray TOO far from home, though it was still pretty long-distance for their time. As such, large-scale travel across the world would have been relatively rare, though notable exceptions like Ibn Battuta certainly existed. I'd be really interested in any text with a good analysis of this. For example, it would seem Viking traders travelled pretty long distances, especially in linking Northern Europe down to the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and Northern Europe with North Africa. However, did the Viking traders just trade along the way--like, a short hop from Norway over to York over to Dublin down to Cadiz--or did they travel the whole long route, putting in for supplies but trading at a real long-distance? You seem to be asserting the former, but is there analysis of this out there?
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May 16, 2015 15:04
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Obdicut posted:I'd be really interested in any text with a good analysis of this. For example, it would seem Viking traders travelled pretty long distances, especially in linking Northern Europe down to the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and Northern Europe with North Africa. However, did the Viking traders just trade along the way--like, a short hop from Norway over to York over to Dublin down to Cadiz--or did they travel the whole long route, putting in for supplies but trading at a real long-distance? You seem to be asserting the former, but is there analysis of this out there? Ah, poo poo, sorry, I didn't mean to sound like an expert - I was just giving a general amateur overview as far as I knew from half-remembered sources about the Silk Road or the mechanics of things like the Red Sea trade. Not very many Korean traders (let alone immigrants) in Spain or vice versa, though there might have been a decent number of both in China or SE Asia. You make a good point about how much the Vikings got around, though - I know they planted themselves as rulers in Sicily and as imperial bodyguards in Constantinople, which seems to imply at least a reasonable trickle of immigration across or around the European landmass, if not from Europe to Asia.
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May 16, 2015 15:35
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Tomn posted:Ah, poo poo, sorry, I didn't mean to sound like an expert - I was just giving a general amateur overview as far as I knew from half-remembered sources about the Silk Road or the mechanics of things like the Red Sea trade. Not very many Korean traders (let alone immigrants) in Spain or vice versa, though there might have been a decent number of both in China or SE Asia. You make a good point about how much the Vikings got around, though - I know they planted themselves as rulers in Sicily and as imperial bodyguards in Constantinople, which seems to imply at least a reasonable trickle of immigration across or around the European landmass, if not from Europe to Asia. What you said may still be totally right, it might be that the vikings traded along a route, between viking settlements, and moved goods that way. I just don't actually know. Certainly it was physically and logistically possible for a Viking to get from home base in Norway down to North Africa, or all the way down rivers in Russia to the Black Sea and thence out into the Mediterranean. I just don't know and the research must be quite difficult: The only thing that'd really establish that would be journals from traders specifically detailing a voyage, and also asserting that this voyage was usual and they weren't writing it down specifically because they were bucking the trend.
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May 16, 2015 16:03
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Obdicut posted:I'd be really interested in any text with a good analysis of this. For example, it would seem Viking traders travelled pretty long distances, especially in linking Northern Europe down to the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and Northern Europe with North Africa. However, did the Viking traders just trade along the way--like, a short hop from Norway over to York over to Dublin down to Cadiz--or did they travel the whole long route, putting in for supplies but trading at a real long-distance? You seem to be asserting the former, but is there analysis of this out there? For most traders it was a matter of having, say, a boat or a bunch of camels/horses whatever and of course whatever contacts/networking along the way. It might make sense for a guy with a boat to go sail from Sweden to where ever along the rivers (quite a long way) but it makes much less sense for them to then, like, rent that boat out or put it on mothballs or whatever while they buy a bunch of horses or what ever for the overland leg of a trip. Like, yeah, they get to charge the middleman's price at the end and save on said middleman's price picking up their return cargo, but they're wasting the value represented by the boat and picking up the cost associated with the next leg. It's not so much about the distance or the difficulty as the infrastructure/capital for one leg isn't going to help for the next leg, so you let someone else do that while you put your poo poo to work where it does work. Personal, individual travel is of course possible, but tourism isn't really a thing and a lot of places kinda looked down on vagabonds and travellers because, well, how are you supposed to be supporting yourself again? Some groups made it work (Roma, e.g.) and they did get around a lot by just making themselves very mobile. But it's not like they got to a shore, chopped down a bunch of trees and built a boat to go to India or something.
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May 16, 2015 18:44
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the JJ posted:...but tourism isn't really a thing...
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May 16, 2015 19:00
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Nektu posted:Re: Globalization in earlier times. 14th century, no, they weren't global, per se. Until Columbus, the closest people came to exploring the other side of the globe were Vikings. L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland was founded by colonists from Greenland, which was a colony of Icelanders descended from Danish colonialists, and the American colony quickly failed (harsh winters?), and each of those Viking populations was weeks if not months of travel from one another, so the discovery never filtered into the European consciousness properly. People actually succeeding at circumnavigating the globe didn't happen until the 16th century. I'm not sure much emigration happened, at least in Western Europe; most common people had little experience with places far from their home and would likely not speak any other language. Nobles and royalty were exceptions for obvious reasons. I think it was described early in this thread that people tended to think of the world as constant and unchanging during this time, and most likely had little knowledge of different cultures or places; nations as we know them today didn't exist, only a kind of hierarchy of local and regional powers which tended to shift in terms of alliances over time anyway. And it's not quite true that sea trade caused the Black Death. The Mongol Empire was starting to fissure at that point, but this was a new disease at the very edge of the empire (I believe we don't have much written records from the pre-Mongol Black Sea area). Supposedly out of desperation they catapulted plague corpses into the city of Caffa which finally led to the fall of the city after a long siege, and it was Genoese and Venetian ships fleeing Caffa that spread the disease from there. Most of those ships never even made it home. Roger Crowley has written in detail on the history of the Venetian empire and touches on its interactions with Genoa, Pisa, Rome and Constantinople as well as trade with ports around the Mediterranean and Black Sea in the Middle Ages. This is a really good book. Sorry, I may have veered a bit too far off from your topic 
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May 17, 2015 05:24
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the JJ posted:For most traders it was a matter of having, say, a boat or a bunch of camels/horses whatever and of course whatever contacts/networking along the way. It might make sense for a guy with a boat to go sail from Sweden to where ever along the rivers (quite a long way) but it makes much less sense for them to then, like, rent that boat out or put it on mothballs or whatever while they buy a bunch of horses or what ever for the overland leg of a trip. Like, yeah, they get to charge the middleman's price at the end and save on said middleman's price picking up their return cargo, but they're wasting the value represented by the boat and picking up the cost associated with the next leg. It's not so much about the distance or the difficulty as the infrastructure/capital for one leg isn't going to help for the next leg, so you let someone else do that while you put your poo poo to work where it does work. What's your source for this? Are you just reasoning it through or do you actually have textual references? You seem to be asserting this is always true, but what you said above seems to presuppose very specific economic conditions. It's also slightly off-point: I'm not looking so much for whether the same physical boat travelled the whole way (possible but unlikely for the river voyages, totally possible for the ocean ones) but whether the people went along. I know definitely there were traders at some points in the Middle Ages who hired transport rather than owned any of it. In addition, putting ships up for entire seasons was something that was done as a matter of course.
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May 17, 2015 17:14
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Obdicut posted:In addition, putting ships up for entire seasons was something that was done as a matter of course. Wasn't putting ships up for a season something done more for the sake of maintenance and to avoid seasonally bad weather, and something you did in friendly, preferably personal territory anyways? If nothing else, if you drop a boat off at a port and then hop onto a donkey for some long-distance overland trade it seems like you'd either incur pretty hefty harbor fees or else need to hire a bunch of people to stand around making sure the boat didn't get stolen. Pretty pricey either way.
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May 17, 2015 17:27
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Tomn posted:Wasn't putting ships up for a season something done more for the sake of maintenance and to avoid seasonally bad weather, and something you did in friendly, preferably personal territory anyways? If nothing else, if you drop a boat off at a port and then hop onto a donkey for some long-distance overland trade it seems like you'd either incur pretty hefty harbor fees or else need to hire a bunch of people to stand around making sure the boat didn't get stolen. Pretty pricey either way. Again, I'm really looking for sources and not speculation, because you can come up with ways that this is fine. For example, for vikings, if they want to pull up their boats in a friendly Viking settlement who are under the same leadership, then I don't get why you think this would be a huge problem. Or if they had to pay a certain level of fees, you seem to be assuming that those fees are prohibitive. That a cost exists does not mean it's prohibitive. My question is whether or not the trade links from one territory to another were travelled by individuals following the trades along the whole length, or whether trades happened in relays, or a heavy combination of both. It might be particular to an individual trade routes, too. So, i'm looking for resources on this. Cursory google scholaring hasn't produced much of anything.
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May 17, 2015 17:44
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Obdicut posted:I'd be really interested in any text with a good analysis of this. For example, it would seem Viking traders travelled pretty long distances, especially in linking Northern Europe down to the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and Northern Europe with North Africa. However, did the Viking traders just trade along the way--like, a short hop from Norway over to York over to Dublin down to Cadiz--or did they travel the whole long route, putting in for supplies but trading at a real long-distance? You seem to be asserting the former, but is there analysis of this out there? Do you want information specifically on the Vikings or on pre-1500 travel generally? This seems like it might be of interest if the former: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/european-history-1000-1450/varangians-byzantium?format=PB These books seem like they'd be of interest if it's the later: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/european-history-1000-1450/mediaeval-trade-and-finance?format=PB http://www.cambridge.org/us/academi...01625?format=PB http://www.cambridge.org/us/academi...01200?format=HB http://www.cambridge.org/us/academi...genoa?format=PB Really though you need to go through publishers' websites to find all the good stuff. Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, and Boydell (especially for military stuff) are your go-to choices.
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May 17, 2015 18:56
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Do you want information specifically on the Vikings or on pre-1500 travel generally? I'm interested in trade, not travel. The difficulty of this sort of research is I'm looking for the ordinary, not the extraordinary. So this one: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/european-history-1000-1450/mediaeval-trade-and-finance?format=PB is exactly what I'm curious about.
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May 17, 2015 20:38
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It's also important to note that while it isn't as if Venetians traveled from Venice to China by boat, disease could easily play leap frog between smaller trading hubs. average people during the late middle ages/early modern times wouldn't have moved much but merchants and armies certainly did. You can have an event where Persian traders bring a disease from India to the Levant, and then Venetian traders bring it to port in Venice. Venice launches a military campaign against Milan and then a mercenary company from Milan goes to fight for the Habsburgs in Germany, yada yada yada.
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May 17, 2015 23:03
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Obdicut posted:I'm interested in trade, not travel. The difficulty of this sort of research is I'm looking for the ordinary, not the extraordinary. So this one: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/european-history-1000-1450/mediaeval-trade-and-finance?format=PB is exactly what I'm curious about. Well that should be one of the easiest to get through interlibrary loan, but note that it was published in the 20s. I don't know what follow-up works there are to read on the subject unfortunately
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May 18, 2015 03:26
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Well that should be one of the easiest to get through interlibrary loan, but note that it was published in the 20s. I don't know what follow-up works there are to read on the subject unfortunately My dad is a medievalist but if I ask him he'll just recommend looking for primary sources because that's what he'd do. It's a hard world out there for a dilettante.
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May 18, 2015 04:16
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:is there a book for this? Sounds very interesting. From way back, but I thought I'd also point out that Sweden (today) has one of the lowest murder rates in the world -- about 6.5 times less than the rate in the USA, and 9 times less than the global murder rate. Sweden in the 14-1500s was going through near-constant war and famine, whereas Sweden today is about as stable and has about as high a standard of living as it gets. I don't really know what would be the fairest comparison, but that 100 times figure basically only has a meaning if you're Swedish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
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May 18, 2015 10:54
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Lead out in cuffs posted:From way back, but I thought I'd also point out that Sweden (today) has one of the lowest murder rates in the world -- about 6.5 times less than the rate in the USA, and 9 times less than the global murder rate. Sweden in the 14-1500s was going through near-constant war and famine, whereas Sweden today is about as stable and has about as high a standard of living as it gets. I don't really know what would be the fairest comparison, but that 100 times figure basically only has a meaning if you're Swedish. I mean according to that chart I linked, Sweden had somewhere in the range of 45 murders per 100k. Factor in justified homicide, and the 100x figure becomes pretty easy to swallow for many stable countries, not just Sweden. Also, the global average is thrown off somewhat by Honduras, which has almost double the rate of the next most lethal country (Venezuela). Now, it's also worth considering that the data from the chart I posted is over 50 year spans, so periods of peace should reduce it somewhat. Still, only Honduras (with 90 murders per 100k) surpasses the 15th c. Swedish average, and it has been dealt a particularly poor hand.
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May 18, 2015 13:09
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:I mean according to that chart I linked, Sweden had somewhere in the range of 45 murders per 100k. Factor in justified homicide, and the 100x figure becomes pretty easy to swallow for many stable countries, not just Sweden. Also, the global average is thrown off somewhat by Honduras, which has almost double the rate of the next most lethal country (Venezuela). Now, it's also worth considering that the data from the chart I posted is over 50 year spans, so periods of peace should reduce it somewhat. Still, only Honduras (with 90 murders per 100k) surpasses the 15th c. Swedish average, and it has been dealt a particularly poor hand. Oh, I'm not disputing that the middle ages were more violent than most places today, just the degree of difference being a hundred-fold. In fact, 50-fold seems closer for the more stable countries (most of Europe, some parts of Asia and Oceania), while for the USA (which is kinda the goon baseline), 10-fold would be more accurate. What's notable is that there are quite a few countries with murder rates within the range (or at least less than two-fold difference) of mediaeval Europe: Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, etc. Also an interesting factoid: the murder rate in Detroit is about 45 per 100k, so on par with the mediaeval. Anyway, the point is that a murder rate of 45/100k is not a situation where murder was a common, every-day event (as one poster was trying to say). Hell, if you lived in a town of 1,000 people, that's about one murder every 20 years. Given the relative lack of social connectivity and propagation of information, your chances of even hearing about a murder over the course of your entire life would be pretty slim.
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May 18, 2015 21:02
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Question for the reenactors/weapon enthusiasts: What would a medieval suit of armour look like, crafted with the best modern materials and technology? Lets say someone in 2015 decided to create a suit of armour with the same intended use as a 1400 full plate mail suit - protection from sword / arrow / axe etc medieval combat. I'm guessing something like a more heavy duty version of riot police? A perspex glass facemask anyway? Would hardened plastic with some sort of kevlar ant-stabbing undermaterial be better than some sort of metal alloy?
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May 19, 2015 15:16
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Blut posted:I'm guessing something like a more heavy duty version of riot police? A perspex glass facemask anyway? Would hardened plastic with some sort of kevlar ant-stabbing undermaterial be better than some sort of metal alloy?
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May 19, 2015 17:34
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So you want armour made with modern materials but it only has to stand up to medieval weapons?
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May 19, 2015 18:55
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Rent-A-Cop posted:All the modern cut/puncture armor I've ever used was essentially just chain mail with some kind of fabric cover. I imagine it's tough to beat a fine metal mesh for protection against spikes and blades. To be fair, modern stab vests are only rated against a fraction of the penetration force of a medieval weapon. Even a level three vest only protects against 65J of force, while a sword can easily deliver twice that. Knives and broken glass they can deal with, but martial weapons or arrows and bolts are another matter - never-mind an armor-piercing weapon like a poleaxe. Rabhadh posted:So you want armour made with modern materials but it only has to stand up to medieval weapons? Frankly it's pretty unlikely that we'd be able to do much better these days, unless we get into million-dollar robotic titanium armor territory. There's been promises made of plastics with material improvement over steel, but generally they lack the durability and breadth of resistance of metal. You could, for example, make armor out of carbon nano-tube that would be lighter than steel , but the relatively short strands means that it would also be highly susceptible to breakage and frangibility - a single impact might cause it to be irreparably damaged. Kevlar has similar issues, because it is designed to trap penetrations within the material rather than repel them, which means it has very limited re-usability. And there are other considerations as well, as advanced materials frequently have significant environmental limitations; Kevlar, for example, can be ruined by exposure to water or extreme temperatures. If we made a modern version of medieval armor, the upgrades would probably be along the lines of comfort and usability, rather than defensive performance. We'd use higher grade steel to allow the plate armor to be thinner and lighter, and strengthen the joints and openings with very durable Kevlar. We could add foam grips to the gauntlets and potentially improve vision by using clear plastic (though fogging and penetrative weakness would be real concerns). And we could improve upon the overall design to make it easier to put on and take off alone, such as using Velcro fasteners or elastic materials. In the end though, I don't think that you'd see a significant improvement. Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:39 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 19:23
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I imagine the biggest difference would be the quality of chainmail. I'm fairly certain between titanium, new steel alloys, etc, we probably have something that can retain the same strength to breakage while having far smaller rings and thus negating the chance to stab someone in the armpit or whatever. Maybe that stuff that can resist shark bites? That and just overall better quality plate that is probably slightly lighter then historical examples. Padding might be better too, kevlar under chainmail with some padding would be nigh impenetrable to any edged or thrusting weapons.
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May 19, 2015 19:31
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The stuff that is being developed for the protective elements of the TALOS suit and things like it are pretty incredible. They'll probably take the final form of three layers: a lightweight padded layer containing the environmental and electronic stuff, some sort of edge-and-point resistant fabric layer, and then segmented composite armor plating on top of that. If you couple those three things together (padding, stab/edge/point resistant fabric, and hard armor) with modern materials it'd be very, very difficult to do any serious damage with any handheld medieval weapon. If you weren't having to build such a suit to be bullet resistant you could also make it quite a bit lighter than either a steel set or armor or modern ballistic sets.
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May 19, 2015 19:39
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bewbies posted:If you couple those three things together (padding, stab/edge/point resistant fabric, and hard armor) with modern materials it'd be very, very difficult to do any serious damage with any handheld medieval weapon. If you weren't having to build such a suit to be bullet resistant you could also make it quite a bit lighter than either a steel set or armor or modern ballistic sets.
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May 19, 2015 20:11
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Of course if you're not dead-set on the whole "suit" thing you can encase a man inside 70 tons of steel, ceramic, and depleted uranium, attach a 1,500HP turbine, and let him crush his enemies beneath his iron treads. Also see them driven before you, and an added bonus of women lamenting.
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May 19, 2015 20:28
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I think I just found my favorite helmets of all time.   Savoyard helms, supposedly called death’s head helmet in German(not sure if this is true?)  Myeeah!
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May 20, 2015 05:04
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Of course if you're not dead-set on the whole "suit" thing you can encase a man inside 70 tons of steel, ceramic, and depleted uranium, attach a 1,500HP turbine, and let him crush his enemies beneath his iron treads. Long before I'd ever played Civilization we'd be watching old movies on TCM and AMC and they had a lot on set in Rome and in World War 2 and I would wonder just how many legionnaires would it take to beat a tank? And you know what? You people. You people ruined it. Now I can't even masturbate anymore without considering the logistics of supplying a time travelling sherman tank, either with food, water and amphetamines for the crew and fuel and ammunition for the tank itself. I can't even get it up without worrying about the dizzying chemical mechanics involved in the production of petroleum derivatives. About the quality of the oil itself. Wanting for oil, about the process of deriving synthetic fuel from coal deposits across the far flung provinces and how many days it would take to travel to theater and how many kilocalories per man hour would be needed for a crew of sailors for it to arrive. Innocence lost, my friends.
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May 20, 2015 05:52
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Frostwerks posted:Long before I'd ever played Civilization we'd be watching old movies on TCM and AMC and they had a lot on set in Rome and in World War 2 and I would wonder just how many legionnaires would it take to beat a tank? And you know what? You people. You people ruined it. Now I can't even masturbate anymore without considering the logistics of supplying a time travelling sherman tank, either with food, water and amphetamines for the crew and fuel and ammunition for the tank itself. I can't even get it up without worrying about the dizzying chemical mechanics involved in the production of petroleum derivatives. About the quality of the oil itself. Wanting for oil, about the process of deriving synthetic fuel from coal deposits across the far flung provinces and how many days it would take to travel to theater and how many kilocalories per man hour would be needed for a crew of sailors for it to arrive. The great thing about gas turbines and really crappy diesels is that with some good tinkering, they run on pretty much anything that burns. You can have your olive-oil powered (diesel) Sherman now. Or an Abrams. I think tanks would be impervious to infantry, but not engineering. Imagine a tiger trap for a tank. I think the Romans could probably whip something like that up overnight.
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May 20, 2015 06:23
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Kaal posted:If we made a modern version of medieval armor, the upgrades would probably be along the lines of comfort and usability, rather than defensive performance. We'd use higher grade steel to allow the plate armor to be thinner and lighter, and strengthen the joints and openings with very durable Kevlar. We could add foam grips to the gauntlets and potentially improve vision by using clear plastic (though fogging and penetrative weakness would be real concerns). And we could improve upon the overall design to make it easier to put on and take off alone, such as using Velcro fasteners or elastic materials. In the end though, I don't think that you'd see a significant improvement. Thats exactly what I was wondering, thanks Kaal (and the other posters who responded). I was having the standard "full plate armour was bulky and useless" debate with a colleague and my point was it was effectively maximised for its purpose of the day, and that even with modern materials tech it wouldn't look/function a huge amount differently. But thought I'd ask the experts here. Glad to see I wasn't too far off!
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May 20, 2015 17:57
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Blut posted:Thats exactly what I was wondering, thanks Kaal (and the other posters who responded). I was having the standard "full plate armour was bulky and useless" debate with a colleague and my point was it was effectively maximised for its purpose of the day, and that even with modern materials tech it wouldn't look/function a huge amount differently. But thought I'd ask the experts here. Glad to see I wasn't too far off! Well I'm certainly no expert and others may have a different opinion. But I think that fundamentally full plate armor was highly effective against the weapons that it faced, to the point that it took highly expensive reforms and innovations to finally make plate armor obsolete on the battlefield. Unless we could develop armor that could shrug off lances, poleaxes and crossbows, and I'm not sure that we could*, there isn't much more that a fully armored medieval knight wasn't already impervious to. Our best avenue for improvement would be through superior metallurgy, and they already had some pretty excellent steel by the end. They often didn't even wear much in the way of a gambeson under their armor by the end, simply because it was unnecessary. The other area would be cost, in the sense that we could produce higher-quality munitions armor more cheaply, which means that the average foot soldier would have better access to superior plate. *I should include a caveat here that medieval armor already had a high level of performance against anti-armor weapons, but the concussive and penetrative force of being hit by a bolt launched by a 1000+ lb crossbow or a lance backed up with a ton of horse moving at 25 mph remained a formidable one. Kaal fucked around with this message at 08:22 on May 21, 2015 |
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May 20, 2015 22:58
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Basically instead of investing in an industrial economy that can churn out anti-melee armour, invest in an industrial economy that can churn out lots of rapid-firing guns.
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May 21, 2015 04:07
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Blut posted:Thats exactly what I was wondering, thanks Kaal (and the other posters who responded). Not to mention the idea that full plate was bulky and useless is patently untrue. If it were useless, why would anyone use it? As for bulky, it was certainly more awkward than not wearing any armour at all (the biggest problem being visibility and helmets, in the end) but you could jump up to mount horses and do backflips in full battle plate without too many issues. In fact, as a trained knight you were expected to be able to. Armouring always changed over time in response to changing battlefield conditions and weaponry, of course.
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May 21, 2015 14:14
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No one really did use it much though. I'm under the impression that by the time proper full plate armor was really developed firearms started arriving in force.
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May 21, 2015 18:35
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Bum the Sad posted:No one really did use it much though. I'm under the impression that by the time proper full plate armor was really developed firearms started arriving in force. Firearms didn't end plate though.
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May 21, 2015 19:02
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For a good while firearms just made high quality plate more important to the dudes who wore it, although the coverage got cut down.
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May 21, 2015 19:18
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xthetenth posted:For a good while firearms just made high quality plate more important to the dudes who wore it, although the coverage got cut down. For sure, though another element that spurred the decrease in coverage was that armies were getting larger. Torso armor requires much less fitting than full body armor, and so munitions plate tended to not include leg coverage, which is certainly one of the contributors to the shrinkage of coverage in the average suit of armor.
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May 21, 2015 20:26
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Bum the Sad posted:No one really did use it much though. I'm under the impression that by the time proper full plate armor was really developed firearms started arriving in force.
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May 21, 2015 20:36
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Kaal posted:For sure, though another element that spurred the decrease in coverage was that armies were getting larger. Torso armor requires much less fitting than full body armor, and so munitions plate tended to not include leg coverage, which is certainly one of the contributors to the shrinkage of coverage in the average suit of armor. As far as I remember munitions plate isn't the same level of quality as the armor that guys who would have been wearing full harnesses decades ago wore.
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May 21, 2015 22:19
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xthetenth posted:As far as I remember munitions plate isn't the same level of quality as the armor that guys who would have been wearing full harnesses decades ago wore. Wasn't it a little thicker, though? You know, because the guy wasn't covered head to foot so they could make the remaining armor heavier - and thus more effective. Not an expert, if someone wants to school me on this I'd be happy to hear it.
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May 21, 2015 22:31
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