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You mean the iron age?
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Jun 29, 2021 10:46
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If medieval armies had to go back for the harvesting season every year how did Roman armies manage to stay in the field for multiple years at a time? Or are both statements factually untrue? Maybe a better question is how did the capability to wage multi year wars with large armies shift from the 3rd to 17th centuries?
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Jun 30, 2021 09:13
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Sri.Theo posted:If medieval armies had to go back for the harvesting season every year how did Roman armies manage to stay in the field for multiple years at a time? I think there's a lot of different things going on in this question. First off, when the wars were happening in Italy, Roman armies did go home at the end of the campaigning season. I think a lot of the problem is less that there literally won't be enough labor to harvest and the countryside will starve if you kept the army in the field (and to the extent that that was a problem, Rome mitigated it by having its first overseas excursion be in the breadbasket of Sicily). It's more that, for much of history, the average soldier was also a small farm owner (or managing serf). They wanted to be home in time to take care of their farm and make sure the land was maintained, and make sure their family wasn't put into a bad place by having one less pair of hands. When your entire army is like that, trying to force them to stay in the field is a potential mutiny on your hands. I suspect this pressure was a major portion of why so many states either eventually moved towards either professional armies or mercenaries, where the soldiers are wage laborers, not conscripts itching to get home. Rome eventually did move in that direction, but there was a period of a century or so where campaigns would routinely take an average farmer away from their farm for multiple years. And it was absolutely ruinous on the farmers--it was a well documented problem that conscripts would go home, see their land in un-maintained shambles, realize they didn't have nearly enough money to support themselves while they got it back together, and then just sell it to a wealthy man who could absorb the temporary loss and then work the land with slaves. So why did Rome manage to have the political will to convince or coerce farmers to take multi-year excursions in Greece or Spain, during the transition period? I'm not really sure. I suspect the answer is the same as to the question of why didn't Rome surrender after losing a full 20% of their adult male population over two years during the second punic war. That entire century was full of Roman (and Roman-ruled Italian) soldiers suffering incredible losses, both in terms of lives and their property back home, but they kept plugging along and successfully raising new armies to fight losing wars where the soldiers stood to lose their homes even if they won. I've never really read an explanation that really felt satisfactory to me, and I think it's one of the enduring questions of Roman history. All of this is put together from random bits and pieces of things I've read, none of which were directly addressing this exact question, so it's possible I'm off-base. I'm not a demographic military historian. Though I do have a book on the way which may attempt to go into this question, because it's a comparative history of the ability of the various Mediterranean powers to raise money and armies during the period in question. cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jun 30, 2021 |
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Jun 30, 2021 09:41
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Sri.Theo posted:If medieval armies had to go back for the harvesting season every year how did Roman armies manage to stay in the field for multiple years at a time? The main reason the armies were able to campaign for longer than the summer season was looting. The surrounding countryside was looted for supplies, and the promise of loot from cities or the promise of more land from the conquered areas was a motivating factor for the farmer soldiers to stay campaigning. Cheetah7071 raised some very good points about the problems.
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Jun 30, 2021 12:34
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ChubbyChecker posted:The main reason the armies were able to campaign for longer than the summer season was looting. The surrounding countryside was looted for supplies, and the promise of loot from cities or the promise of more land from the conquered areas was a motivating factor for the farmer soldiers to stay campaigning. Cheetah7071 raised some very good points about the problems. Yeah Cheetah7071 has some good points and the issues with failing farms and soldiers are well known. But obviously Rome survived it for centuries - and I’m pretty sure medieval armies looted just as much as Roman ones.
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Jun 30, 2021 12:45
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Sri.Theo posted:Yeah Cheetah7071 has some good points and the issues with failing farms and soldiers are well known. But obviously Rome survived it for centuries - and I’m pretty sure medieval armies looted just as much as Roman ones. The main difference between Roman and medieval armies was that the Roman state was much better organized and more centrally led, so it could regularly field much larger armies. And yeah, looting was the main method of supplying armies until the industrial era.
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Jun 30, 2021 12:55
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The Roman state vs a European medieval state is a gargantuan difference in state capacity and organization. Largely the defining aspect of a "medieval age" is the government structure, centered around vassalage. If you're The King of the Franks, you have some direct administration of a small area, and then you have a much much larger amount of land that is controlled by varying types of aristocrats who are notionally loyal to you but might find reason to be loyal to somebody else. Who your soldiers are is going to vary considerably: within your direct administration, you'll have some full on warriors who are ready to rumble for you whenever, and then you can levy some peasants, and outside your direct administration you basically have the ability to tell your various landholders that they owe you x guys for y time usually including themselves (and this will all vary depending on the terms of vassalage). What this means is that there basically isn't an organized bureaucracy managing this, and there aren't soldiers who work for the state so much as a complex chain of personal relationships. There's only so many people you can have personal relationships with, and you're trying to get around that pretty low limit with "and you bring your friends too," but each additional level of this introduces more complexity and uncertainty, which harms the ability to make armies particularly large or sophisticated regardless of the sophistication of individual soldiers. Now there's a lot of wrinkles in all of this. For one thing a lot of medieval warfare had very limited objectives - for every war with a few thousand troops on each side you'll run into a hundred with like 40 dudes. For another there are medieval wars that had multi-year operations, just very few of them because, again, the majority of wars were very small scale. And while peasant levies were a critical factor in larger operations, people like knights and professional sergeants at arms (such as in militant orders) had no particular need to stop operations for harvests and whatnot.
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Jun 30, 2021 13:32
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Another important difference between Rome and medieval kingdoms is the massive difference in population, resources, and transportation capability. The Roman empire was much larger then any medieval kingdom. Even the Carolingian Empire at its peak had at most 20 million people (and maybe as little as 10 million). By contrast, The Roman empire at its peak in the mid second century had 60-70 million inhabitants. This provides a tax base and labor force an order of magnitude or more larger then most medieval kingdoms. Rome was also far more urbanized then any medieval kingdom. In order for urbanism on the Roman scale to be possible, a robust supply network needs to exist to ship food and other needed supplies into the cities. That same supply network could be utilized (at least to a certain extent) to supply an army in the field. This was especially true for garrisons that did not move very often, since they could not rely (entirely) on looting their home base to survive. However, since garrisons were generally in the same place for years at a time, they could receive shipments of food much like a city could, using the same logistical institutions. Rome had a major advantage over all the medieval kingdoms here, since it controlled the entire Mediterranean coast. This gave Rome an unparalleled ability to ship things by sea. The logistical advantages gained from controlling the whole Mediterranean are hard to overstate.  This graph shows the number of known shipwrecks in the Mediterranean by the century of their sinking. The amount of shipping in the Mediterranean going on in the Roman era dwarfed the amount that occurred in the medieval era. This shipping capacity, plus the sheer size of the Roman empire, allowed for resources to be moved around to where they were most needed. Egypt and other productive agricultural areas produced a massive grain surplus, so that could be shipped to Rome, Antioch, Constantinople, or to an army. Silver mined in Spain could be shipped east, minted into coins, then shipped across the empire to pay soldiers. The Roman road system was also superior to almost all medieval roads, allowing overland transportation to occur far more easily as well. Medieval kingdoms generally lacked the variety of lands and resources the Romans had, as well as lacking the transport capabilities to move materials around on anything close to the scale of the Romans.
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Jun 30, 2021 20:02
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Tulip posted:
I once heard an example that if five dudes with swords went to a field and beat up each other for an hour it was considered war.
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Jun 30, 2021 20:19
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Fish of hemp posted:I once heard an example that if five dudes with swords went to a field and beat up each other for an hour it was considered war. The war of the SCA dudes down on the quad every Saturday morning. (Posted with great affection for any SCA dudes in this thread. Love you guys, really!)
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Jun 30, 2021 20:35
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Sri.Theo posted:Yeah Cheetah7071 has some good points and the issues with failing farms and soldiers are well known. But obviously Rome survived it for centuries - and I’m pretty sure medieval armies looted just as much as Roman ones. At a relatively early stage in Roman history they were fighting a war against - I think - the Sabines (? I can't look this up because I lent out my Livy book) where the soldiers said they were going to go home during a siege if the senate didn't start paying them in cash during service. Most of the Roman wars early on are in Italy or close to it and like Cheetah said there was a considerable amount of looting, but also some expectation that merchants and farmers would be willing to sell produce to an army. Future wars almost always involved Rome supporting one faction over another during their invasion, you need local allies in any war and if you look into Roman history you'll see this. Those allies often stood to gain considerable if the war went well and could do things like shelter and supply a Roman army if needed. As for the idea of the citizen-soldier, this was a notable problem but over time Rome transitioned into a state with a full time professional army. As this was happening there was also a change in land ownership, it was concentrated into the hands of wealthy slave-owners, and an increase in the number of slaves from the successful wars. In other words, the Roman ideal of the citizen-farmer-soldier who defends his country from foreigners was replaced by professional soldiers in service to rich guys who had slaves do all the farming.
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Jun 30, 2021 22:42
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FreudianSlippers posted:The American Empire stopped being American once they introduced New Coke. The later Resurrection of original taste Coca Cola Classic heralded in a new era of a similar but still culturally distinct country which should not be considered as being the same entity but rather a successor state. Quoting this post from last year to say this is unironically correct and there was a big change in American culture around this time far bigger than the transition from the 70s to the 80s
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Jul 1, 2021 07:23
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Stairmaster posted:Quoting this post from last year to say this is unironically correct and there was a big change in American culture around this time far bigger than the transition from the 70s to the 80s Let's see... that was around the same time as my birthday. Yes, this checks out 
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Jul 1, 2021 07:28
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Worth pointing out that the Roman state was a mediaeval state of course, as was the Ottoman Empire. It's not western european feudalism all the way down when it comes to organising armies.
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Jul 1, 2021 11:52
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feedmegin posted:Worth pointing out that the Roman state was a mediaeval state of course, as was the Ottoman Empire. It's not western european feudalism all the way down when it comes to organising armies. Is this a "when did the Roman Empire really end" quip? Or do you have a different definition of "mediaeval"? I thought the end of the Western Roman Empire was literally the definitional starting point of the middle ages?
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Jul 1, 2021 22:26
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Is this a "when did the Roman Empire really end" quip? Or do you have a different definition of "mediaeval"? I thought the end of the Western Roman Empire was literally the definitional starting point of the middle ages? The word "western" is carrying a lot of weight in your post
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Jul 1, 2021 22:40
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Is this a "when did the Roman Empire really end" quip? Or do you have a different definition of "mediaeval"? I thought the end of the Western Roman Empire was literally the definitional starting point of the middle ages? People all get pissed off if you say the Byzantines don't count as Roman.
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Jul 1, 2021 22:56
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feedmegin posted:Worth pointing out that the Roman state was a mediaeval state of course, as was the Ottoman Empire. It's not western european feudalism all the way down when it comes to organising armies. When did the mediaeval era begin then?
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Jul 1, 2021 23:06
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Ola posted:When did the mediaeval era begin then? In the Iron Age.
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Jul 1, 2021 23:07
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Ola posted:When did the mediaeval era begin then? I think most historians would answer that that question is misleading and attempting to assign hard boundaries to historical periods is hopelessly oversimplifying. That said, Rome losing half its extent is a reasonable breaking point if you want to have one. But half isn't all--the other half kept on chugging for another millenium after what you hear of as the "fall" of Rome. In fact, the fall of Constantinople is often used as a hard date for the end of the middle ages
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Jul 1, 2021 23:09
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I prefer 1492 to 1453 to the beginning of the early modern period, though. If any single event has the right to define an entire era of history, I think it's the beginning of the Columbian exchange.
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Jul 1, 2021 23:12
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cheetah7071 posted:I think most historians would answer that that question is misleading and attempting to assign hard boundaries to historical periods is hopelessly oversimplifying. Ah, so it's a global concept, like GMT. I wonder if anyone told the Inca and the Inuit they had to reset their calendars.
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Jul 1, 2021 23:19
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Ola posted:Ah, so it's a global concept, like GMT. I wonder if anyone told the Inca and the Inuit they had to reset their calendars. The Spanish, English, and French (and Dutch, and Portuguese, and Russians, and more) were more than happy to inform them.
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Jul 1, 2021 23:23
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Ola posted:Ah, so it's a global concept, like GMT. I wonder if anyone told the Inca and the Inuit they had to reset their calendars. It's not like Anatolia is all that far from Germany or France. Southern Italy and the Balkans were Byzantine until 1204. The Byzantine empire straddled Europe and Asia, and had plenty of interaction with western europe. And like, mentioning calendars is just bringing up how fuzzy era boundaries are. Of course the Inca weren't changing their calendars--but neither were Spaniards or Italians!
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Jul 1, 2021 23:26
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There's definitely some periodisation - for one, most people will agree there was a shift in European history in the 16th centuryish, and we go into the "Early Modern" period. The "Medieval" Period ends sometime around the late 1400s and early 1500s. When it begins is a different question. "Late Antiquity" continues at least till the rise of Islam and usually a decent chunk after that, but then as you move away from Roman power structures to newer local ones it morphs into some kind of Early Medieval Period. Good luck putting a date on it though, and outside Europe it makes no sense.
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Jul 1, 2021 23:29
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Yeah I wasn't trying to imply that things were the same in 900 as they were in 400 and that there's no sense in calling them periods. Just that trying to answer the question of "when did the middle ages begin" with anything more precise than "I dunno, somewhere in the 5th or 6th centuries? Maybe the 7th?" is probably overstating your case. And trying to tie it specifically to Romulus Augustulus being deposed, which is a fairly minor event in the scheme of things, is something which doesn't really make any sense. Though if you absolutely have to have a specific year for whatever reason, it's not much worse than any of the other candidate dates.
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Jul 1, 2021 23:34
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cheetah7071 posted:It's not like Anatolia is all that far from Germany or France. Southern Italy and the Balkans were Byzantine until 1204. The Byzantine empire straddled Europe and Asia, and had plenty of interaction with western europe. I was being a bit sarcastic. There are zero problems assigning hard boundaries in time and place to this historical period, because it's not an attempt to standardize global time like GMT, nor is it some geological period where the Earth went through a particular phase in its orbit or whatever and it happened equally to everyone on it. Of course it's eurocentric and ill-defined, it was barely over when some European guy wrote it down. We don't have to nuance it to fit modern understandings of history, because it isn't a modern concept.
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Jul 1, 2021 23:44
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Ola posted:I was being a bit sarcastic. There are zero problems assigning hard boundaries in time and place to this historical period, because it's not an attempt to standardize global time like GMT, nor is it some geological period where the Earth went through a particular phase in its orbit or whatever and it happened equally to everyone on it. Of course it's eurocentric and ill-defined, it was barely over when some European guy wrote it down. We don't have to nuance it to fit modern understandings of history, because it isn't a modern concept. I mean you led with asking "when did the middle ages begin" to a statement that there was a medieval roman empire, which is true with any reasonable definition of "medieval"
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Jul 1, 2021 23:49
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Stairmaster posted:Quoting this post from last year to say this is unironically correct and there was a big change in American culture around this time far bigger than the transition from the 70s to the 80s That's by far the best post I've ever made and I don't even remember making it. Must've been drunk.
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Jul 1, 2021 23:52
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We need to divide this into Classical, Late Classical, Early Late Antiquity, Late Antiquity, Early Middle Ages, Middle Ages, High Middle Ages, and Late Middle Ages Personally for the whole mess, the rise of Islam and the adoption of the printing press make sense to me as tentpost moments through the whole "Rome to Renaissance" smear, but it's all loving arbitrary anyway and the periodization is mostly a concept that some Venetian and Florentine dudes came up with for making fun of Germans and Greeks. e. those guys were probably drunk too so it comes full circle
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Jul 2, 2021 00:01
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cheetah7071 posted:I mean you led with asking "when did the middle ages begin" to a statement that there was a medieval roman empire, which is true with any reasonable definition of "medieval" That was the *chomp* of taking the bait. And the statement was "the Roman state was a mediaeval state", which in my opinion incorrectly reads the period as a GMT-concept. If you associate it with direct continuation of government rather than time, you might as well say that the 1200s are antiquity because the Roman Empire was in antiquity and the Roman Empire was still around in the 1200s.
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Jul 2, 2021 00:12
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Ola posted:That was the *chomp* of taking the bait. And the statement was "the Roman state was a mediaeval state", which in my opinion incorrectly reads the period as a GMT-concept. If you associate it with direct continuation of government rather than time, you might as well say that the 1200s are antiquity because the Roman Empire was in antiquity and the Roman Empire was still around in the 1200s. this post is nonsense lol
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Jul 2, 2021 00:16
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I do not understand
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Jul 2, 2021 00:21
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The Roman empire still exists, it's called Catholicism.
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Jul 2, 2021 00:21
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Ola posted:That was the *chomp* of taking the bait. And the statement was "the Roman state was a mediaeval state", which in my opinion incorrectly reads the period as a GMT-concept. If you associate it with direct continuation of government rather than time, you might as well say that the 1200s are antiquity because the Roman Empire was in antiquity and the Roman Empire was still around in the 1200s.
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Jul 2, 2021 00:28
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Roman empire falls when Theodosius I dies. Later acceptable dates would include when the Vandals take Carthage or when they smash the roman fleet at Cape Bon. The latter of which would make for a  movie.
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Jul 2, 2021 00:44
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Rome fell in 1204. Final answer. The best joke answer is 1922.
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Jul 2, 2021 00:46
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I'm partial to 1798
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Jul 2, 2021 00:48
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I'm partial to 1798 drat that is a good one. Don't think I've heard it before
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Jul 2, 2021 00:51
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packetmantis posted:The Roman empire still exists, it's called Catholicism. fact check: new jersey is in fact only 34% catholic
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Jul 2, 2021 01:05
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