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I think it depends on the native american group and the situation. Like with the Comanche, if they're on a deep raid into Mexico, of course you don't hold your ground you fuckin' idiot, this whole operation is built on high mobility to avoid defensive confrontations. But then much later when they were actually having to defend their territory I think things were different. Although I also think Caesar wouldn't do to well on trying to invade Mexico like the Comanche did on the regular. Can't pull the same routine of allying with one tribe against another in a more unified country, and if he was coming from the Comanche heartland instead of Italy, he'd have way less logistics to support his personal conquest. Much easier to take what you can get and skedaddle.
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Jun 26, 2021 19:51
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Silver2195 posted:I think this statement needs to be understood in its context, which is to criticize the idea of trans-historical "warrior values." The point is that our word "courage" elides the difference between virtues that are in a sense opposites. Yeah but just because the words and signifiers change didn’t mean the human feelings we encounter when we kill other people have changed. Priam and Achilles still resonate, the anger of the psalmist at his enemies still is something we can feel. It’s a fact that our symbols and context are different. But I don’t think that fact rules out an ability to finding shared experiences in ancient writings about war. People who kill other people will share at the very least having engaged in that act.
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Jun 26, 2021 20:09
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think it depends on the native american group and the situation. Like with the Comanche, if they're on a deep raid into Mexico, of course you don't hold your ground you fuckin' idiot, this whole operation is built on high mobility to avoid defensive confrontations. But then much later when they were actually having to defend their territory I think things were different. The point in question in the essay is more specifically comparing the Native American practice of "counting coup" and Greek/Roman concepts of disciplined cohesion, particularly for infantry. Both of these get valued by their respective societies as "prestigious," "honourable" and "courageous," but when you compare them, what's being praised or valued is actually mutually exclusive or incompatible between these two concepts of courage, to the extent that an action that constitutes courage in one culture could be considered cowardly or shameful by the other. This is a subordinate, illustrative point en route to arguing against the concept of there being such a thing as a "universal soldier" or "warrior."
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Jun 26, 2021 21:02
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CommonShore posted:The point in question in the essay is more specifically comparing the Native American practice of "counting coup" and Greek/Roman concepts of disciplined cohesion, particularly for infantry. Both of these get valued by their respective societies as "prestigious," "honourable" and "courageous," but when you compare them, what's being praised or valued is actually mutually exclusive or incompatible between these two concepts of courage, to the extent that an action that constitutes courage in one culture could be considered cowardly or shameful by the other. Yes, and his implicit argument is that the fact that battle tactics are different means that historical people are fundamentally incapable of generalization; his imaginary Cheyenne warrior is psychologically incapable of considering any action other than fighting in the exact Typical Cheyenne Way to be courageous or praiseworthy. It's a lot like saying there's no such thing as a universal human experience with comfortable temperature, because Napoleon's soldiers spent their time in Russia complaining about how cold it was and how they wished they could heat up, and Nixon's soldiers were always bitching about how hot Vietnam's jungles were and how they wished they could cool down, so what's being valued is mutually exclusive. And he steps beyond that and makes the argument that, essentially, the idea of being too hot would be utterly foreign to one of those French soldiers and that the definition of comfort is different between them. Which is utter nonsense, but since his entire premise is that generalization is impossible, he has to assert that everyone in history already agreed with his premise. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Jun 26, 2021 |
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Jun 26, 2021 22:33
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It's more an argument about societal values than individual judgements.
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Jun 26, 2021 22:39
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Anyone here have an opinion on Soldiers and Silver cited in that essay? It sounds interesting but $55 hardback with no paperback option is a bit pricy to buy sight unseen and all the reviews focus on its scholarship without addressing questions like "is it comprehensible" or "is it for lay people or people who are already knee deep in demographic spreadsheets"
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Jun 27, 2021 03:47
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Tunicate posted:Yes, and his implicit argument is that the fact that battle tactics are different means that historical people are fundamentally incapable of generalization; his imaginary Cheyenne warrior is psychologically incapable of considering any action other than fighting in the exact Typical Cheyenne Way to be courageous or praiseworthy. His premise is subverting a particular myth that gets widely repeated by bad historians. A lot of his articles start out that way, and provide a lot of good information to back up his point. He's also pretty active at replying to comments, if you want to take it up with him.
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Jun 27, 2021 04:27
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Yeah I think his point is much more "there is no generalized warrior because their differing cultures value different things, so do not try to backport a modern warrior culture into the past and think that it will match". But yeah absolutely take it up with him, sounds like an interesting discussion.
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Jun 27, 2021 05:03
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Bongo Bill posted:It's more an argument about societal values than individual judgements. Sometimes it is very problematic to tell people who are inside of a thing, from outside the thing, that the thing is not real. Even if it is about societal values and not individuals.
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Jun 27, 2021 06:50
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I'm reading Chris Wickhams Inheritance of Rome (500-1000 A.D) and it's pretty interesting and made me think about a couple of things. 1: The Arab conquest involved lots of deal cutting and collaborating from locals as he notes that many Visigoths, Italians and of course Coptic Christians welcomed the Arab as liberators so there is still lots of construction activity and involvement in government from locals until after the period covered by the book. 2: The actual amount of land controlled by British Petty kings was truly pathetic basically controlling a couple of villages and a hill fort or whatever while they fought each other with maybe a couple of hundred guys; no wonder why the Vikings ran over them. 3: Visigothic Spain was basically a theoretical concept until basically right near the end with large chunks of being ruled by local ex-romans paying superfical homage to the Kings who spent most of their time hanging out in Aquitaine even after getting their butts handed to them by the Franks.
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Jun 27, 2021 16:22
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People understand the concept of courage and it's pretty universal among cultures. People have different ideas of what is courageous or just stupid and this can also differ in cultures and how this shows in military engagements is both fascinating and important to know to not paint all people under the same brush, especially when it's put under warrior machismo poo poo.
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Jun 27, 2021 16:51
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Lawman 0 posted:2: The actual amount of land controlled by British Petty kings was truly pathetic basically controlling a couple of villages and a hill fort or whatever while they fought each other with maybe a couple of hundred guys; no wonder why the Vikings ran over them. Sounds like AC Valhalla is a lot more historically accurate than I thought.
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Jun 27, 2021 17:25
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Zopotantor posted:Sounds like AC Valhalla is a lot more historically accurate than I thought. I mean I'm being really mean here and mostly referring to the earlier period but like even the later retinues are still tiny. Which is why Alfred has the insight to go "...what if we built walls and gave the fyrd things other than sharp sticks???" and then suddenly wins.
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Jun 27, 2021 17:43
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Like all the post roman kingdoms were messes but nowhere degenerated as badly as Britian.
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Jun 27, 2021 17:46
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Lawman 0 posted:Like all the post roman kingdoms were messes but nowhere degenerated as badly as Britian. Why was this, anyway? Was it just that they were one of the farthest-flung provinces so never got built up as much in the first place, and an island to boot, so they were fairly isolated from their neighbors unlike the territories in continental Europe which were in constant contact with each other and the Germanic/other tribes?
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Jun 27, 2021 18:00
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“Degenerated” seems a bit like a slur . What do you mean by that
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Jun 27, 2021 18:02
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Fuschia tude posted:Why was this, anyway? Was it just that they were one of the farthest-flung provinces so never got built up as much in the first place, and an island to boot, so they were fairly isolated from their neighbors unlike the territories in continental Europe which were in constant contact with each other and the Germanic/other tribes? Them being isolated with the Romans solely in control set them up. Then the Legions left abruptly, but assured everyone they'd be back as soon as the troubles on the continent were settled. So there was this rather long awkward pause while everyone awaited the Romans' return, then the realization that they wouldn't be back hit and it devolved into a mad scramble to fill the power vacuum.
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Jun 27, 2021 18:06
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Yeah I'm curious how it actually compared with other kingdoms at the time, and the Vikings. This period is not my forte at all but the other day I saw a map (actually in another ACOUP post--I really gotta get back to reading actual books again) of the actual royal holdings of the king (not even petty king) of France in the 10th century, and while it's more than a handful of villages it's still not very much: In the first post in that series he goes over some example numbers too: quote:Warfare in medieval Europe was generally a relatively small affair. While a lot of attention is paid to wars between kings – the Hundred Years War, War of the Roses, etc. – the vast majority of conflicts were small, between local lords with limited holdings. This kind of warfare often involved ‘armies’ of only dozens or hundreds of men. In the past, I’ve had students read excerpts from the many complaints of Hugh V of Lusignan (dating to 1028) – Hugh is perpetually in military conflict with his neighbors, but the scale of such conflicts is tiny – he takes just 43 horsemen to try to win a castle and some land, for instance (yet it is a large enough force that his Lord, the Count of Aquitaine, is aware he’s taken it and orders him back to court). But the actual holdings of a ruler weren't so relevant -- nobody in western Europe (feel free to correct me if wrong) was mustering thousands by themselves; they simply didn't have the administrative ability to do so. They combined their forces with those of their vassals, who did with their vassals and so on.
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Jun 27, 2021 18:12
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Fuschia tude posted:Why was this, anyway? Was it just that they were one of the farthest-flung provinces so never got built up as much in the first place, and an island to boot, so they were fairly isolated from their neighbors unlike the territories in continental Europe which were in constant contact with each other and the Germanic/other tribes? Added to the empire later and left it earlier. Never achieved a high degree of urbanism and was much more economically dependent on the army’s presence than most provinces. Eventually it fell out of the imperial orbit because everyone given the military command there started to say “gently caress this” and take their command to France instead. In some ways more similar to transrhine Germany or Dacia than it is to the major provinces of Western Europe.
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Jun 27, 2021 18:13
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Koramei posted:Yeah I'm curious how it actually compared with other kingdoms at the time, and the Vikings. This period is not my forte at all but the other day I saw a map (actually in another ACOUP post--I really gotta get back to reading actual books again) of the actual royal holdings of the king (not even petty king) of France in the 10th century, and while it's more than a handful of villages it's still not very much: Well…Hugh Capet at his coronation isn’t exactly a great example of a powerful medieval king of France. He was one of a number of tenth century aristocrats with a Carolingian connection who played politics with the dukes, the bishops and the Ottonians and eventually got an elective crown out of it. He had a very complex path to power and it’s not completely inaccurate to say that he was crowned because he was the guy the dukes saw as least likely to make trouble for them. For a long time under King Lothair, as Duke of the Franks, he had been the second figure in the court, with a vested interest in subverting the king’s power and buddying up with anyone else who felt a weak king was in their interest. So when eventually crowned, he could win the approval of the big regional nobles but he certainly couldn’t subject them by force. (If you want to get technical he was also never the “king of France” but the “king of the Franks”. The former term would not be used until Philip Augustus.) BUT, it’s important to remember that Hugh Capet grew up in and in a sense usurped a Carolingian monarchy whose power had already collapsed. Charlemagne himself had armies on the order of 30,000 on some of his campaigns, though it’s hard to imagine that forces of this size stayed together for more than one season. His direct descendants with their reduced realms could still levy large armies of at least 10,000. It’s over the course of the ninth and tenth centuries that this central military power starts to fall apart and you get a landscape of self-promoting douchebags like Hugh of Lusignan who have enough of a retinue to make trouble for everyone who claims direct authority over them. There were poo poo tons of these violent barons about, none of them very significant; the reason why the Lusignans seem to stand out is just because they went on to get famous through the Crusades.
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Jun 27, 2021 18:46
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euphronius posted:“Degenerated” seems a bit like a slur . What do you mean by that There is a clear decline in societal complexity and capability.
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Jun 27, 2021 19:21
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Lawman 0 posted:I mean I'm being really mean here and mostly referring to the earlier period but like even the later retinues are still tiny. Which is why Alfred has the insight to go "...what if we built walls and gave the fyrd things other than sharp sticks???" and then suddenly wins. Sharp sticks failed our fathers and by God they'll fail us too! 
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Jun 28, 2021 04:54
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Got my dream internship interpreting living history in, right now, the roman germanic iron age (-200 to 700 for the purposes of this museum), but the problem is, I know very little about this period still. Can anyone recommend primers with dates and overviews that don't repeat untruths and myths?
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Jun 28, 2021 07:31
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I've never really gotten a straight answer on what "Iron Age" actually means. Like yeah, you have Iron, but It doesn't really fit into the Stone Age>Bronze Age>Classical narrative. You see Germanic Tribes getting referred to as "Iron Age" all the way into AD while at the same time no one refers to Ancient Rome or Greece or really any literate civilization as "Iron Age". It almost seems like it's purely a question of writing. Like if you had writing you're "Classical" or "Antiquity" but if you didn't you're a filthy Iron Age savage.
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Jun 28, 2021 13:50
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ChaseSP posted:People understand the concept of courage and it's pretty universal among cultures. People have different ideas of what is courageous or just stupid and this can also differ in cultures and how this shows in military engagements is both fascinating and important to know to not paint all people under the same brush, especially when it's put under warrior machismo poo poo. Exactly this. What one person views as fantastically brave and heroic may be seen as phenomenally stupid and pointless by someone whose cultural views and expectations are different, and vice-versa.
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Jun 28, 2021 13:52
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galagazombie posted:I've never really gotten a straight answer on what "Iron Age" actually means. Like yeah, you have Iron, but It doesn't really fit into the Stone Age>Bronze Age>Classical narrative. You see Germanic Tribes getting referred to as "Iron Age" all the way into AD while at the same time no one refers to Ancient Rome or Greece or really any literate civilization as "Iron Age". It almost seems like it's purely a question of writing. Like if you had writing you're "Classical" or "Antiquity" but if you didn't you're a filthy Iron Age savage. This is the case with almost all academic ideas that get catchy names. But the curveball here is that these were actually invented in antiquity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man We're still in the Iron Age according to Hesiod, apart from that bit about babies with grey hair I guess. Bonus, the Ages of Man also include the inspiration for gold, silver and bronze medals handed out in sports.
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Jun 28, 2021 13:57
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quote:"Their armor was forged of bronze, as were their homes, and tools. " I'm guessing that means home goods, not a bronze house
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Jun 28, 2021 16:24
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Yeah the reason why "Iron Age" doesn't jive with "Classical Age" is because those are points on different measurements. One is a question about material production, another is a question about intellectual history. They're heavily related, but so are temperature and pressure, and "seventy five degrees celsius" and "seventy five pascals" are still measuring pretty different things.Brawnfire posted:I'm guessing that means home goods, not a bronze house A bronze house is a good incentive to get out of the house during the day I suppose.
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Jun 28, 2021 17:07
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galagazombie posted:I've never really gotten a straight answer on what "Iron Age" actually means. Like yeah, you have Iron, but It doesn't really fit into the Stone Age>Bronze Age>Classical narrative. You see Germanic Tribes getting referred to as "Iron Age" all the way into AD while at the same time no one refers to Ancient Rome or Greece or really any literate civilization as "Iron Age". It almost seems like it's purely a question of writing. Like if you had writing you're "Classical" or "Antiquity" but if you didn't you're a filthy Iron Age savage. My area is -200 BC to 600 after in the Germanic areas, Denmark specifically where possible.
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Jun 28, 2021 17:32
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I think "iron age" is a term that emerged via archaeology and "classical" from history. So it's not really surprising that different disciplines split the timeline up differently, because they're looking at different things.
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Jun 28, 2021 17:36
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Stone/Bronze/Iron age classification is also extremely Eurocentric; it just doesn't work in the Americas.
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Jun 28, 2021 17:39
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It’s not even used in Egypt iirc.
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Jun 28, 2021 17:40
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cheetah7071 posted:I think "iron age" is a term that emerged via archaeology and "classical" from history. So it's not really surprising that different disciplines split the timeline up differently, because they're looking at different things. "Iron Age" seems to be used to designate an era when they had iron technology but still lived as subsistence farmers in temporary or low-tech homes with a primarily tribal organization for government. In Britain (and most of Europe) it seems to apply from ~1000 BC until the Romans show up.
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Jun 28, 2021 17:41
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yes okay but could you help me with some resources instead of kvetching about the proper terminology?
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Jun 28, 2021 17:47
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Tias posted:yes okay but could you help me with some resources instead of kvetching about the proper terminology? Well, no, because I studied Archaeology (field school, etc) in a US University. One of the first lessons taught was "the Stone/Bronze?Iron thing is obsolete at best, more likely it is actively harmful. Don't ever use it."
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Jun 28, 2021 17:52
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It was originally only ever meant to apply to Scandinavia / the Germanic regions, it just got a wider and wider spread because it's convenient. But then yeah you have things like West Africa that skipped bronze altogether, or China where the its late "Stone Age" societies seem to have had comparable complexity to contemporaneous Near Eastern Bronze Age ones.
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Jun 28, 2021 18:01
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Plus the whole concept starts to break down when you start finding bronze prestige goods in the Neolithic...
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Jun 28, 2021 18:21
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Don't remember who it was but I read a book that said in the near east bronze was not first used to weapons and tools, but for statuary since it had a different sheen than copper which might be desirable. And the Sumerians sort of created demand for bronze, I think the book argued.
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Jun 28, 2021 18:29
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Cessna posted:Well, no, because I studied Archaeology (field school, etc) in a US University. One of the first lessons taught was "the Stone/Bronze?Iron thing is obsolete at best, more likely it is actively harmful. Don't ever use it." I think he just wants resources about Germanic society from 200 BCE to 700 CE? Epicurius fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 19:57
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Yes!!
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Jun 29, 2021 06:52
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