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Haha, that's more of a corollary. My main point is that after the upheaval of Spartacus (whose armies were capable of fighting Roman ones), the rising importance of cavalry, and the costs related to that, tended to reduce social change coming from the bottom. This was only counteracted once infantry tactics became more important, and was shown and understood to be able to at least survive against cavalry charge, that social change became more and more possible. This is relevant in our current age, because air forces has became the current parallel to cavalry (performing scouting duties, acting with relative impunity against forces that aren't specifically built to defend against, and required a great deal of resources to establish and maintain).
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Mar 26, 2018 02:45
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Ardent Communist posted:I mean, this is kind of what I was talking about when I referenced earlier how once infantry could effectively stand against armoured cavalry, that social change was possible once a change in tactics and armament (in this case guns and flails and the use of wagon-forts) made the warfare that the upper classes favoured obsolete. So why is it do you think that in Japan we see class mobility decline during the Edo period following the replacement of small armies of mounted archers with massed musket and pike equipped levies?
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Mar 26, 2018 02:46
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Ardent Communist posted:Haha, that's more of a corollary. My main point is that after the upheaval of Spartacus (whose armies were capable of fighting Roman ones), the rising importance of cavalry, and the costs related to that, tended to reduce social change coming from the bottom. This was only counteracted once infantry tactics became more important, and was shown and understood to be able to at least survive against cavalry charge, that social change became more and more possible. Your point is that you only have a specific set of revolts in mind that count as 'revolutionary' and they happen to by all infantry focused, and it's incredibly pointless trying to second guess which ones you count and which you totally ignore.
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Mar 26, 2018 02:50
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Squalid posted:So why is it do you think that in Japan we see class mobility decline during the Edo period following the replacement of small armies of mounted archers with massed musket and pike equipped levies?
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Mar 26, 2018 02:51
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Ardent Communist posted:Haha, that's more of a corollary. My main point is that after the upheaval of Spartacus (whose armies were capable of fighting Roman ones), the rising importance of cavalry, and the costs related to that, tended to reduce social change coming from the bottom. This was only counteracted once infantry tactics became more important, and was shown and understood to be able to at least survive against cavalry charge, that social change became more and more possible. infantry and cavalry work together, they are equally important parts of the same force this is like someone described the middle ages to you at the end of a game of Telephone also LOOK AT THE THINGS I SAID ABOUT CAV, you didn't respond to any of it
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Mar 26, 2018 02:58
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Ardent Communist posted:Haha, that's more of a corollary. My main point is that after the upheaval of Spartacus (whose armies were capable of fighting Roman ones), the rising importance of cavalry, and the costs related to that, tended to reduce social change coming from the bottom. This was only counteracted once infantry tactics became more important, and was shown and understood to be able to at least survive against cavalry charge, that social change became more and more possible. Infantry of just about every era always been capable of surviving and winning against cavalry charges, you ignorant clown. Infantry was always incredibly important throughout the medieval period, and even medieval soldiers who were mounted were perfectly happy to dismount and fight on foot when the tactical situation called for it (which was often). There is no period where your fantasy image of glorious peasant revolutionaries were capable of overthrowing powerful states with ease exists, because effective military forces as a whole are incredibly expensive and difficult to maintain. The people who talk about an "infantry revolution" in the medieval period are wrong, but what they're really getting at is not any sort of tactical shift. It's the growth of the state, in its power, resources, and organization, that allows states to form larger, more effective military forces and raise large units of heavy infantry for longer periods of time.
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Mar 26, 2018 03:00
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also if those soldiers mutiny (which they do frequently, both infantry and cav) it isn't on the behest of "the poorest in society," it's for their own interests, because they view themselves as a separate group, an Estate of their own not only are they not peasants, they didn't even used to be peasants, a disproportionate number of them have an urban background
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Mar 26, 2018 03:02
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Well, I guess I'd mention how military power was centralised very efficiently in the daimyos and the shogun, and economic conditions and general quality of life improved in a manner not particularly skewed towards the people on top. I'd also be willing to bet that the caste system was rigidly enforced. Fair enough Fangz, I could be misinformed. Would you note any revolutionary revolts whose forces were based in cavalry?
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Mar 26, 2018 03:03
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While you can find examples of rebellions suppressed due to a lack of ways of dealing with cavalry, plenty of them got suppressed elsewhere as well. Stuff like the Peasant's Revolt in 1381 did not fail because of knights. Like we established when we discussed this several pages ago, most attempts at 'social change coming from the bottom' fail, and they've always failed throughout history. Weaponry is only one small reason, more commonly they are poorly led, their revolt poorly planned, they don't find mass support, and their opposition is too strong and too well prepared. And when they succeed, a lot of the time their leadership turn out to be arseholes. EDIT: ^^^ I literally just said that your definition of 'revolutionary' is known only to yourself.
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Mar 26, 2018 03:04
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Fangz posted:Your point is that you only have a specific set of revolts in mind that count as 'revolutionary' and they happen to by all infantry focused, and it's incredibly pointless trying to second guess which ones you count and which you totally ignore. I love also that he counts Spartacus as one of his properly "revolutionary" figures when we have very little evidence on Spartacus' motivations or objectives besides "didn't like being a slave" and "pissed off at Rome." Is the idea here that Spartacus was going to march around the Mediterranean world on a grand anti-slavery crusade had he won?
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Mar 26, 2018 03:04
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Ardent Communist posted:Well, I guess I'd mention how military power was centralised very efficiently in the daimyos and the shogun, and economic conditions and general quality of life improved in a manner not particularly skewed towards the people on top. I'd also be willing to bet that the caste system was rigidly enforced.
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Mar 26, 2018 03:04
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cavalry evolved into the armor force as a means of making and exploiting breakthroughs
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Mar 26, 2018 03:06
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Ardent Communist has done a good job here of illustrating why grand theories of history have largely fallen out of fashion. When you advance an argument like "all swans are white," someone only needs find one swan that's black to tear down your entire premise. In this case Ardent Communist has already recognized this weakness and modified his statements with such words as "generally," and "tends," which I presume are used to suggest that he means for his argument to be probabilistic. I.E. that societies in which armies are primarily composed of armored cavalry "tended to reduce social change coming from the bottom." By his logic no single counter-example can disprove his thesis, as it might simply be an aberration from the larger trend. Of course if he's going to make a statistical case, he really aught to offer statistical evidence. . . Squalid fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 03:18
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Fangz posted:Janissaries revolted a shitload of times. The Janissaries are super-interesting structurally because their whole thing was that while they were slaves, they were slaves to the STATE, not to the SULTAN. So as you look upper and upper in the ranks, they're increasingly civil servants who aren't allowed to quit, until you hit the tippy top, where the only thing they have to worry about is whether the state's non-Janissary leadership agree with them.
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Mar 26, 2018 03:20
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You guys are getting really defensive, and I'm not sure why. At no point did I say infantry wasn't capable of standing up against cavalry if well-led and with effective use of terrain. At no point did I say that infantry or cavalry revolting led to revolutionary change, I'm not disagreeing they saw themselves as a different class and their revolts were in their own interest. I said that infantry requires less resources to establish and maintain than cavalry, thus cavalry tended to have a reactionary mindset, and revolutionary forces tended to be infantry based (not necessarily made up of infantry forces that have revolted but civilians taking up weapons). At no point did I say that there was a point in which cavalry no longer had a role to play in warfare, and neither that they were the only relevant arm. Merely that the prevailing opinion of the time was that cavalry was the decisive arm. Did the sforza revolt establish new relations between classes or was it a family taking power from another family and things continuing for the majority of the population same as before? You're right in that we don't understand Spartacus' motivations, or his end-goal. However, his actions in freeing slaves, arming them and training them to fight against the dominant power, unless defeated by Rome, would have far-reaching and long-lasting effects on Roman society, and that was why Rome feared him so much, and acted so cruelly against his forces once defeated.
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Mar 26, 2018 03:21
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GreyjoyBastard posted:The Janissaries are super-interesting structurally because their whole thing was that while they were slaves, they were slaves to the STATE, not to the SULTAN. So as you look upper and upper in the ranks, they're increasingly civil servants who aren't allowed to quit, until you hit the tippy top, where the only thing they have to worry about is whether the state's non-Janissary leadership agree with them. like those civil servant serfs in either this thread or the Roman thread
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Mar 26, 2018 03:21
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Ardent Communist posted:However, his actions in freeing slaves, arming them and training them to fight against the dominant power, unless defeated by Rome, would have far-reaching and long-lasting effects on Roman society, and that was why Rome feared him so much, and acted so cruelly against his forces once defeated. you overestimate people you label "revolutionary" and, by reflection, yourself
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Mar 26, 2018 03:23
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Squalid posted:Ardent Communist has done a good job here of illustrating why grand theories of history have largely fallen out of fashion. When you advance an argument like "all swans are white," someone only needs find one swan that's black to tear down your entire premise.
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Mar 26, 2018 03:27
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HEY GUNS posted:think about the entire loving country(?) of genoa for a counterexample I'm the guy looking at the portrait painter even though I shouldn't be e: not that guy, the other guy Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 03:30
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Gnoman posted:A big part of it seems to have been that the device was so secret that proper training in maintenance and use simply wasn't given until fairly late. This lead to the stabilizer gaining a poor reputation, despite it performing quite well when used properly. Questionnaires about the M4A4 led to whole British regiments either loving or hating the thing, so it does probably have to do with training and specifics of how the equipment was used.
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Mar 26, 2018 03:30
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We're not being defensive. We're mocking your ignorant bullshit, because there's a lot of people here who professionally study these subjects and we're being condescended to by a dumbfuck tankie who seems to have replaced his brain with Stalin's mummified dick. Eric Hobsbawm would blow his brains out if he ever had to read something so goddamn stupid as the drivel you post in this thread.
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Mar 26, 2018 03:32
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Ardent Communist, what do your class-based military theories say about dragoons?
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Mar 26, 2018 03:40
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Ardent Communist posted:What? I'm not trying to advance a theory that stands up in literally all cases, because the world is a strange and wonderful place, with massive variation and luck playing a role. I'm merely advancing a theory that seeks to explain general trends. You could say most liquids get more dense as they freeze, but then water serves as a counter-example. Yes but you haven't offered any evidence that this general trend exists. There are many circumstances where history seems to run counter to your claims, and it's not at all clear that looking at history in totality it would generally follow as you would expect from your thesis. The effect you are attempting to describe is also extremely vulnerable to confounding variables. For example if industrial societies both tend to produce armies with a greater ratio of infantry to cavalry, AND are more likely to undergo social revolution, someone who looks just at army composition and frequency of class conflict might mistakenly find a relationship between the two when it is in fact the third variable that is driving the effect.
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Mar 26, 2018 03:41
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Ardent Communist posted:Haha, that's more of a corollary. My main point is that after the upheaval of Spartacus (whose armies were capable of fighting Roman ones), the rising importance of cavalry, and the costs related to that, tended to reduce social change coming from the bottom. This was only counteracted once infantry tactics became more important, and was shown and understood to be able to at least survive against cavalry charge, that social change became more and more possible. That's a weird perspective on the Roman military. I was under the impression that Rome's decreasing social mobility didn't come from the lack of meritocracy in the military, but decaying social institutions. The big issue with soldiers losing their social mobility was more because individual soldiers couldn't maintain their own farms or maintain their own wealth on campaign while the richest Romans could expand and buy up land from impoverished farmers. I'm not really sure if that issue was exactly solved, but the fall of the republic and rise of the empire and the new conquests full of land that could be handed out to soldiers probably alleviated things somewhat. There must've been some kind of mobility going on, because a few centuries later, the military had drifted far enough from the class system in Rome that the emperors it started installing were considered unacceptable to the elites in Rome, but there was a lot else that went on in the intervening centuries. I don't think Roman armies even started becoming heavy with cavalry, let alone elite noble classes specializing their entire lives in cavalry, until the late empire. edit: Oh yeah, and as for the air force being the modern equivalent to cavalry, I don't know if they fit the concept you're trying to lay forth here of the cavalry being exclusive, genetic elite. I've heard issues with the military in general not getting much new blood, but I imagine if any part of the armed forces would have the luxury of many new applicants, it'd be the air force. SlothfulCobra fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 03:41
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What? When have I spoken condescendingly to you or said that my understanding is greater than yours? I've merely advanced a different opinion, and attempted to defend it using facts and opinions, the same as you? So you're saying that I'm an idiot, and actually, the material conditions of warfare have absolutely no effect on the possible success of revolutionary change, that cavalry and infantry have always had the exact same role and importance in warfare in a stable equilibrium and no changes in tactics have ever occurred? I'm just trying to understand what your argument is, perhaps you could outline it?
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Mar 26, 2018 03:45
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Maybe you could better outline what you mean by revolutionary change, Ardent Communist? For example is the replacement of the achaemenid persian elite and their armies of mounted archers by A Hellenic elite with mostly pike based armies a revolutionary change or not?
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Mar 26, 2018 03:53
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Well, I'm more speaking of revolutionary change as a change in social relations. That is a change in the military make-up of the dominant military, which could result in revolutionary change but doesn't necessarily have to. You could argue that the massive cultural shift that came following that change-up was revolutionary, as Hellenistic ideas permeated throughout the areas of Alexander's conquest.
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Mar 26, 2018 03:59
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mamluks were slaves and heavy cavalry and they later became the ruling aristocracy of egypt, what do the communist theories say about them?
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Mar 26, 2018 04:05
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were the soviet cavalrymen aristocrats?
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Mar 26, 2018 04:07
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is eating your meds reactionary?
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Mar 26, 2018 04:09
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SlothfulCobra posted:edit: Oh yeah, and as for the air force being the modern equivalent to cavalry, I don't know if they fit the concept you're trying to lay forth here of the cavalry being exclusive, genetic elite. I've heard issues with the military in general not getting much new blood, but I imagine if any part of the armed forces would have the luxury of many new applicants, it'd be the air force. the us air force IS tremendously reactionary though but that's due to an accident of history, not any sort of necessary development: their academy happened to be built near a center of Evangelical Protestantism and the evangelicals started evangelizing them. if our army academy had been put there i don't doubt the same thing would've happened
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Mar 26, 2018 04:09
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ardent communist, what does it mean to you that the us navy is (according to rumor) full of furries and weebs
HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 04:12
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Ardent Communist posted:Well, I'm more speaking of revolutionary change as a change in social relations. That is a change in the military make-up of the dominant military, which could result in revolutionary change but doesn't necessarily have to. You could argue that the massive cultural shift that came following that change-up was revolutionary, as Hellenistic ideas permeated throughout the areas of Alexander's conquest. Would you define the set of civil wars that Constantine won to be revolutionary, as one of the consequences was Christianity becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire? It doesn't have anything to do with the infantry/cavalry thing, but I'm curious.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:20
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Let me see if I follow the chain of logic here. 1) Cavalry are more expensive to raise and maintain than infantry. 2) Cavalry are therefore inherently more reactionary/liable to enforce the values of their employers, the ruling classes. 3) The infantry, meanwhile, go the other way - since they require fewer resources, they do not have that inherent strain of reaction or loyalty to the ruling classes. 4) Therefore, the cavalry are inclined to help suppress revolutionary revolt, while the infantry are more ambivalent. 5) Furthermore, when cavalry is the dominant arm of the military, this means that revolt is impossible because the revolting classes do not have the resources to raise the cavalry arm necessary for victory against the ruling classes. 6) When cavalry loses its dominant military role, it becomes possible for revolutionaries to gain victory because they can afford to recruit, arm, and train the infantry arm that is necessary for victory. Is that an accurate summary of your position?
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Mar 26, 2018 04:32
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Ardent Communist posted:So you're saying that I'm an idiot, and actually, the material conditions of warfare have absolutely no effect on the possible success of revolutionary change, that cavalry and infantry have always had the exact same role and importance in warfare in a stable equilibrium and no changes in tactics have ever occurred? I'm just trying to understand what your argument is, perhaps you could outline it? Yes, I am saying that you are an idiot, but everything else is you completely failing to understand the point. I'm not going to bother to address your nonsense about the conditions of revolutionary change in much detail, because that is a weird thing you've personally come up with for purpose of huffing your own farts. It's not how people in the vast majority of the past we study would have conceived of themselves and it's not an especially useful or interesting thing to try and understand. It tells us nothing and teaches us nothing except what we already knew, which is that you are a tankie who doesn't read actual history very much, if at all. Actual Marxists historians like Hobsbawm saw class conflict as an important lens through which to view history, but their work was much more complicated and nuanced than dumb poo poo like "cavalry is a reactionary concept." Judging by the things you post, I don't think you even read the people who have contributed the most to your own claimed ideology. And no, cavalry and infantry have not remained static in their roles and uses throughout all of history. Those terms (again) aren't really all that useful to apply in such general terms and it doesn't make much sense at all to analyze military history over enormously broad periods to see whether "cavalry" or "infantry" has the upper hand in any given era. In the majority of the medieval period, for example, you can't really discuss the "cavalry" as a totally distinct thing from the "infantry." Mounted troops frequently and readily dismount to fight or remount in the middle of a battle if they saw a good opportunity. A soldier may have signed his contract as a mounted archer with no intention of ever engaging in combat from horseback (if you were English). Medieval soldiers weren't signing up for Henry V's 5th Mounted Yeomanry Regiment. Roles in combat became much more specific and defined by the day of Heygal's rowdy fightboys and later, which is again a product of the growth of the power/organization of the state. In the medieval period, being paid as a mounted soldier did not necessarily mean that you were intended or intending to fight from horseback, the way it would if you enlisted as a member of a cavalry regiment of later periods. It meant that you were of sufficient income to afford to bring a horse to war (and have better equipment in general than soldiers without horses) and were therefore due additional compensation because you need to maintain the horse(s). If you're a hussar at Waterloo, it means you are have been paid and equipped to fulfill the specific tactical role of the hussar. Your horse was probably supplied by the army; you weren't personally acquiring the horse or the rest of your kit (unless you're an officer, in which case you pay for all of your poo poo yourself). A Napoleonic hussar probably isn't dismounting to fight on foot a lot of the time; that's what the line infantry has been paid, equipped, and trained to do. When talking about the actual changes in tactics and military organization, you need to be specific about what you're talking about and look at the actual particularities of the era in question and examine why those things happened and how people at the time thought about them. It's not about weighing "infantry" vs "cavalry" in the abstract like a video game and trying to assess whether a dude stabbing people from horseback is more progressive or reactionary than a dude stabbing people on his own two feet is stupid.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:32
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Well, firstly I should say I'm not taking my marching orders from Moscow, this is merely me attempting to understand something I've thought and subject it to group thought. I can't say I've read any communist (marxist might be more accurate) readings about the Mamluks, but if I had to guess their existence as separate class, which was maintained for centuries, probably prevented any sympathy to the general masses, which meant that their eventual seizure of power didn't result in massive change for the general population, so it was more of a palace coup than a revolution. But perhaps more learned people have written about it, I can't say. Soviet Cavalry weren't aristocrats, they were organized from the workers and peasants. Although the Red Army was smart enough to take politically reliable tsarist officers, and ensure they were watched by political commissars, and certainly the cavalry wing may have had more former aristocrats if the Russian army prior to the revolution favoured cavalry as the glory arm. A good example of this is the French revolution, where at least initially the cavalry wing of the revolutionary forces was weak as most of the pre-revolutionary army's aristocrats were based in the cavalry. Luckily, the artillery wing (the Queen of battle) was more based on middle classes, and thus more sympathetic to the revolution. I can't really speak of the U.S. Navy, I haven't done much reading into it, insofar as it's socio-economic make-up. I do know that both the German and Russian navy was more revolutionary than their respective armies, and thus played a leading role in the revolutions of 1904, 1917 and 1918. This was because of their sailors being more likely to come from towns and cities, where technical know-how was more valued, than the peasants that made up the majority of their armies. As for Constantine, that is a very interesting question and could be a good avenue for further discussion. Christianity is very interesting because it had a revolutionary origin, in the teaching of Jesus to no longer worship material possessions but charity for your fellow man, and was persecuting for this by the Romans and their local authorities, but then it is co-opted by Constantine, and those teaching gradually fall by the wayside and the massive wealth and power accumulation that leads to the Catholic Church forming its own state starts developing. The revolutionary nature of the act is debate-able, since many prior roman traditions and holidays were adapted to the new religion. It did however, begun the growth of the clergy as a class, which is revolutionary I suppose.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:46
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HEY GUNS posted:the british air force were mostly toffs in ww1, but the french air force wasn't, it's why they were so popular and had trading cards and stuff: they were the peoples' heroes I had kinda figured it had something to do with the air force requiring more technical experts than the other branches so it draws more on the educated middle class which has trended conservative. I guess if we're talking about the academies then everyone is pretty much like that anyway regardless of branch. That the evangelicals were able to recruit a bunch of college kids must make them the most successful western religion in living memory holy poo poo.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:48
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Tomn posted:Let me see if I follow the chain of logic here. As for the 5th point, nothing is impossible, merely that revolutionary change is more difficult because victories in the field are more difficult.
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Mar 26, 2018 04:54
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Ardent Communist posted:The make-up of revolutionary armies tending towards infantry where is that photo of budyony on a horse holding a flag with a slogan on it like it is 1622 and he is about to go sack something I NEED IT
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Mar 26, 2018 04:56
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HEY GUNS posted:ardent communist, what does it mean to you that the us navy is (according to rumor) full of furries and weebs Can confirm this is a fact. Whole ships worth of weebs hoping to get stationed in Japan
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Mar 26, 2018 05:19
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