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WoodrowSkillson posted:As for the "shield shoving match" theory, that's mostly fallen out of favor. There are accounts of that occurring, but normally as a bad situation no one wanted. You don't give your guys spears and then make them hold on to a 9 foot stick while trying to shove other guys with their shield, if the shoving match was the plan going in. A phalanx (the normal recipient of the "shoving match" theory) would fight by keeping their shields locked together with the spears poking out over the shields. they then advanced to within spear range and stabbed at one another, trying to get the enemy in the side or neck or leg, maybe 3 ranks over. If something happened to open up a section of the line, they might charge in to try and break the enemy. The shoving matches are things that can happen when say, a cavalry charge hits the flank and shoves everyone closer, or they are flanked by other infantry and the lines are crushed together with no escape, or any of a billion other things goes wrong and causes press of people. I actually think this is an decent overview. There are a few missing aspects for an 11th or 12th century infantry encounter, one being the role of thrown spears and another being the presence of non-spear weapons like pikes, Dane axes, and gisarme. You can also look at cavalry as a tool to destroy these formations head-on. William the Breton mentions that at Bouvines there was a particularly stout ring of low country foot-soldiers that was eventually destroyed by a combination of infantry and cavalry. Also it was hoplites, not phalangites, who overlapped their shields.
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Oct 15, 2016 13:49
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A long time ago, I read a PDF about crowd dynamics and how they might've applied to ancient warfare. I can't remember the details of the argument exactly, and I don't think the paper was prescriptive about how the tactics of the time were actually supposed to work. It included some interesting notes about how forces build up in crowds and how people can get crushed to death as a result (it drew on modern-day accident accounts, IIRC). I always wonder how these sorts of things were intuitively understood by people involved in medieval battles. I think I read something similar in The Great Warbow by Matthew Strickland*, where noticeable compaction of the French army occurred because people had a natural tendency to shy away from direct arrow fire. *or it could be some other book that mentions Agincourt.
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Oct 15, 2016 14:08
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:I actually think this is an decent overview. There are a few missing aspects for an 11th or 12th century infantry encounter, one being the role of thrown spears and another being the presence of non-spear weapons like pikes, Dane axes, and gisarme. You can also look at cavalry as a tool to destroy these formations head-on. William the Breton mentions that at Bouvines there was a particularly stout ring of low country foot-soldiers that was eventually destroyed by a combination of infantry and cavalry.
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Oct 15, 2016 14:09
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Lmao. So his point that the Normans are not French is an extremely silly one. They spoke a lang d'oil and were more or less mutually intelligible with men from the Ile de France. Moreover, they owed fealty to the king of France and had culturally become essentially Frankish (I actually prefer this term to French tbh). What does he think the Normans are if not Frankish? Is he one of the stupid fuckers who wants to see the Normans as some kind of viking people?
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Oct 15, 2016 14:50
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Grenrow posted:What does he think the Normans are if not Frankish? Is he one of the stupid fuckers who wants to see the Normans as some kind of viking people? a future ukip voter every one of 'em, dontchaknow
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Oct 15, 2016 14:51
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Grenrow posted:What does he think the Normans are if not Frankish? Is he one of the stupid fuckers who wants to see the Normans as some kind of viking people? Normans were the white trash of the eleventh century.
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Oct 15, 2016 14:51
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Normans were the white trash of the eleventh century. They're the Union in the ACW, kicking the rear end of the backward & evil traitors (England)
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Oct 15, 2016 15:09
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:They're the Union in the ACW, kicking the rear end of the backward & evil traitors (England) That's odd, I don't recall the Union committing something close to genocide on the South.
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Oct 15, 2016 15:26
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To illustrate how far removed these nobles were from modern concepts of nationalism Gerald Fitzgerald the 8th earl of Kildare once wrote a letter to the Gherardini of Florence who he believed was one of his distant relatives based solely on how similar their names sounded.
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Oct 15, 2016 16:22
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Rabhadh posted:To illustrate how far removed these nobles were from modern concepts of nationalism Gerald Fitzgerald the 8th earl of Kildare once wrote a letter to the Gherardini of Florence who he believed was one of his distant relatives based solely on how similar their names sounded.
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Oct 15, 2016 16:26
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I'm actually 5000 posts behind in the mil hist thread since I stopped forumsing for a while
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Oct 15, 2016 16:36
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The penultimate strip is relevant
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Oct 15, 2016 18:10
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Grenrow posted:What does he think the Normans are if not Frankish? Is he one of the stupid fuckers who wants to see the Normans as some kind of viking people? I think there is an important distinction to make between the royal French and the Normans, and some of this distinction is contemporary. Wace, for example, mentions how the French have "always tormented the Normans" or something like that. It's more important as a political than cultural distinction, though those kind of things are a bit blurry. ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:That's odd, I don't recall the Union committing something close to genocide on the South. Then you must only have heard about Sherman's March from Yankee propaganda!  Anyway, i was kidding dude. Your hate boner for the Normans is weird. The Harrying is a horrifying and unjustifiable event, but that opinion was shared by contemporary and near-comtemporary Norman observers. It's also atypical of Norman warfare and it's weird to hold an entire people culpable, especially when you don't know anyone who was killed and they're more reviled than lionized in popular memory.
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Oct 15, 2016 18:35
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HEY GAL posted:did you see the japanese/italian guy someone posted in the other thread? i'm imagining someone trying to explain nationalism to him That was just a bad wikipedia paragraph. He was a dude born in Japan and sent out as an envoy to Spain, because his Japanese lord wanted Phillip II and the Catholic Conspiracy to blow up Osaka castle with gunships. He spent 7 years in transit, converted, and received a Roman title from the Pope before he went back to Japan. I think the Japanese might have had a better understanding of nationalism than most, Japanese history had a bunch of highly centralized governments relative to the time, and Japan itself is tiny in terms of habitable land and transit time. Maybe having your head of state be the same as your prime religious authority helps? I like that the samurai diplomat met a guy in New Spain named Domingo Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, who was working as a historian. That's one of those "What is nationalism even" moments. Slim Jim Pickens fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Oct 15, 2016 |
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Oct 15, 2016 18:58
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Sherman's . . . boner . . . is weird. . . horrifying and unjustifiable . . . and . . . atypical. lol owned bitch
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Oct 15, 2016 18:58
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Anyway, i was kidding dude. Your hate boner for the Normans is weird. The Harrying is a horrifying and unjustifiable event, but that opinion was shared by contemporary and near-comtemporary Norman observers. It's also atypical of Norman warfare and it's weird to hold an entire people culpable, especially when you don't know anyone who was killed and they're more reviled than lionized in popular memory. Particularly since there are plenty of them elsewhere with nothing to do with it, like Sicily.
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Oct 15, 2016 19:33
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Disinterested posted:Particularly since there are plenty of them elsewhere with nothing to do with it, like Sicily. It me (Not really, my ancestry is all Carpathian Slavs & Brits)
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Oct 15, 2016 19:43
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:It me I hope you plan to be buried in a porphyry tomb.
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Oct 15, 2016 19:45
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Disinterested posted:I hope you plan to be buried in a porphyry tomb.
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Oct 15, 2016 19:47
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HEY GAL posted:who in this thread doesn't I'm sure someone hates the Eastern Roman Empire itt.
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Oct 15, 2016 19:49
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Disinterested posted:I'm sure someone hates the Eastern Roman Empire itt.
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Oct 15, 2016 19:50
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HEY GAL posted:on the contrary, this thread and the christianity thread are 100% Pro Eastern Roman Empire Zones Hugbox! Safe space!
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Oct 15, 2016 19:52
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Disinterested posted:I hope you plan to be buried in a porphyry tomb. Doesn't everybody??? So I actually have a question that could either turn into a shitshow or be really interesting: at what point does a people become native? This is relevant to the thread in particular when thinking about two colonized regions, specifically the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Al-Andalus, but also of course has relevance to modern states in the Americas & elsewhere. I'm not sure what the time limit is for people becoming "natives" to a region, it's tricky and probably dependent on super-subjective and retrospective criteria. Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Oct 15, 2016 |
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Oct 15, 2016 19:53
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Doesn't everybody??? Unless it's impossible to construe you as unbrokenly aboriginal then I think common consent is the only real factor, I don't think you can put a timer on it or set strict criteria. To bring up a yet more controversial topic, there are attempts made on both sides of the Israel/Palestine debate to construe the other as not native (Palestinians) or not related to the aboriginal people (Khazar conspiracy). On the other hand, we were posting just moments ago as if Saxons and the English were fully overlapping. I'm not sure. Tough question. I suppose it also relates to how a people integrates, in line with various aspects of identity: Jews are always an Other. Norman Sicilians, on the other hand, have a relatively syncretic attitude to government. But Normans retain a distinct Norman identity for a while even when they integrate with a local culture. Yeah I have no answers here.
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Oct 15, 2016 20:02
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Disinterested posted:lOn the other hand, we were posting just moments ago as if Saxons and the English were fully overlapping. In the sense of "Anglo-Saxon" (rather than saxons from saxony) they *were* fully overlapping by 1066. People from York to Yeovil considered themselves "English", that's what I meant in this post Rodrigo Diaz posted:
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Oct 15, 2016 20:11
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:In the sense of "Anglo-Saxon" (rather than saxons from saxony) they *were* fully overlapping by 1066. People from York to Yeovil considered themselves "English", that's what I meant in this post I know, I'm just remarking that this identity exists in the face of historic migration.
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Oct 15, 2016 20:24
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There's really no definite answer. Even if you and your family have become fully entrenched and part of the community, others may turn on you if the political situation prompted it. I think a lot of muslims in america were thought of as entirely native before islamophobia started sweeping the US to make people think of them as totally foreign. Back in medieval times, I think people would've mostly cared about being native to their own village rather than to their country. I'm really not sure if they really bothered much about who was ruling them unless they were part of the aristocracy.
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Oct 15, 2016 21:07
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Doesn't everybody??? Well, I'd say it has something to do with oblivion or whatever the english word is and that relates to groups that they settled in with. Customs merging and people not recalling that or how it was different before. Otherness that slipped the mind when people merge?
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Oct 15, 2016 21:10
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SlothfulCobra posted:Back in medieval times, I think people would've mostly cared about being native to their own village rather than to their country. I'm really not sure if they really bothered much about who was ruling them unless they were part of the aristocracy. This is a really controversial topic, and nobody's really sure how affinities were structured for medieval people, but I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to insist there aren't working regional identities or loyalties to liege lords.
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Oct 15, 2016 21:15
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Doesn't everybody??? Being Anglo-Irish in early modern Ireland meant you spoke English (or Hiberno-English I guess) to the English, telling them that you were the Kings most loyal subject. At the same time you spoke Irish to your Gaelic allies, telling them to raid and burn the pale so you could swoop in and restore order to gain favor with parliament. By the time protestantism arrives, a lot of the Anglo-Irish have gone native in speech, dress and customs, audience dependent of course.
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Oct 15, 2016 22:34
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SlothfulCobra posted:Back in medieval times, I think people would've mostly cared about being native to their own village rather than to their country. I'm really not sure if they really bothered much about who was ruling them unless they were part of the aristocracy. So there seems to have been a stronger collective identity than just one's village (such as Wace above) but I certainly agree the particular overlord mattered less then than now. Rabhadh posted:Being Anglo-Irish in early modern Ireland meant you spoke English (or Hiberno-English I guess) to the English, telling them that you were the Kings most loyal subject. At the same time you spoke Irish to your Gaelic allies, telling them to raid and burn the pale so you could swoop in and restore order to gain favor with parliament. See this is very interesting and is both somewhat "predictable" (by a certain rationale) and also "surprising" (by another rationale) But all good posts! My personal theory is that three generations of death beyond the original invaders (i.e. so you don't remember talking to your settler great grandparents) is one of the key *internal* cultural markers. I think history through family is seriously understated in the anglophone sphere as a mode of transmission. But these are just my musings on an area I haven't studied heavily.
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Oct 15, 2016 23:06
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On the subjects of 1066 never forget and absolute monarchy, I read in I think G M Trevallyn's Social History of England (which I'm sure the scholarship of is well out of date) claims to the effect of early Norman England being something close to an absolute monarchy as rebellion by newly instated Norman lords would have been suicidal, caught between the king and their likely to be rebellious subjects. Comments? As to the English referring to themselves as such pre conquest it should be noted that, AFAIK, the term derives from Angle, i.e. Anglish. Does anyone care to comment on the terms dispersal through England? As common in Saxon and Jute areas? Also could someone expand on the Normans not being a Norse people? Culturally, by ancestry or what? Also SEXMAN I find your distaste for the Normans endlessly amusing, never stop.
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Oct 16, 2016 02:31
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Give England back to the Welsh and the Cornish, I say.
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Oct 16, 2016 02:37
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Vaginal Vagrant posted:On the subjects of 1066 never forget and absolute monarchy, I read in I think G M Trevallyn's Social History of England (which I'm sure the scholarship of is well out of date) claims to the effect of early Norman England being something close to an absolute monarchy as rebellion by newly instated Norman lords would have been suicidal, caught between the king and their likely to be rebellious subjects. Comments? Well the Normans inherited a very centralised Kingdom, which is just a marriage made in heaven, because Normans are also big on intensifying government in the early middle ages. What defines medieval (and present day England) as truly different is that at English law, the King is the owner of all real property; everyone else only owns an estate in the land - there are no true allods. Contrast this with pre-Philip II France, and the idea that the kingdom of France is much of a kingdom at all is kind of a joke. The counts of Toulouse, appropriately, see themselves as kings in their own kingdom - it's just easy to let the French kingship continue because getting rid of a king that never bothers you is more trouble than it's worth. And then again in Germany, where Emperors were seldom big enough landholders to substantially outweigh their vassals, kingship is elective, and earlier monarchs are utterly reliant on itinerant monarchy, which limits the growth of a stable and centralised polity. Once the Kings of France break out with Philip II and slam the English and their more wayward vassals, they can set up with a pretty centralising project all of their own, a project that is assisted by growing literacy and the development of the legal profession. Likewise parts of the empire are run in a highly sophisticated and intensive, though not absolutist way; say, the Rhineland. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Oct 16, 2016 |
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Oct 16, 2016 02:47
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Give England back to the Welsh and the Cornish, I say. These loving Anglo-Saxon bastards refuse to speak a single word of Common Brittonic. Instead they strut about like they own the plac speaking their Germanic moonspeak. Bastards should gently caress off home to Saxony or Jutland or wherever the hell they came from.
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Oct 16, 2016 03:21
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Doesn't everybody??? The UN has a handy definition: Indigenous communities, peoples, and nations are those that, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing in those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop, and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.
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Oct 16, 2016 16:38
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Can someone expand on the role of the blacksmith in medieval societies? I was watching Vikings and got to the part where they executed the blacksmith, which strikes me as weird because it was such a valuable trade. I don't think a blacksmith would be immune to punishment but I've got some notion in my head that it would have been handled differently.
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Oct 16, 2016 19:03
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Poldarn posted:Can someone expand on the role of the blacksmith in medieval societies? I was watching Vikings and got to the part where they executed the blacksmith, which strikes me as weird because it was such a valuable trade. I don't think a blacksmith would be immune to punishment but I've got some notion in my head that it would have been handled differently. Fun fact: the societies that Vikings present didn't even have the death penalty. A blacksmith was like any other tradesperson, really. Someone who knows how to do something that other people necessarily can't do, but making stuff that's actually important for everyday life (nails, horseshoes, whatever) weren't big secrets to make.
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Oct 16, 2016 19:34
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Alhazred posted:The UN has a handy definition: Noted garbage organization the UN publishes garbage definition. Indigenous doesn't mean victims of colonialism. Like you can have indigenous Swiss, who I presume aren't. Their ancestors probably weren't the first people to live there either. What we mean by indigenous is probably different to the ancient Greek autochthonous, literally sprung from the earth. Where I live, the South Island of New Zealand, the Ngai Tahu tribe is the primary (only?) recipient of government grants in the form of treaty of waitangi settlements. It will often be referred to and considered as indigenous, despite invading and displacing other tribes I think around the end of the seventeenth century. It's a really loaded term that gets used for political goals. Its meaning is completely dependant on use. As a thought experiment, who are the indigenous people of Britain?
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Oct 17, 2016 03:34
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The people living in Brittany, France.
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Oct 17, 2016 04:11
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