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Also not sure a bunch of aristocratic bellends thinking of their peasants as worth less than horses is actually much of a rebuttal.
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Feb 18, 2024 17:13
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bob dobbs is dead posted:the shang were finished by 1000 bc, confucius was born 551 bc... Where'd shang come into play?
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Feb 18, 2024 21:46
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Tulip posted:Where'd shang come into play? Two posts above the one you replied to.
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Feb 18, 2024 22:27
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I read somewhere recently that cities in the western Roman Empire scrambled to rebuild their walls in the 4th century as Rome lost its ability to proactively defend its territories. Prior to that, just how widespread was the ability to forgo encompassing fortifications in Roman territory? Are there other examples in the ancient/medieval world of such relative peace coming about at scale? Did this defensive urban posture of the post-4th-century status quo effectively only loosen once cannonry forced drastic changes on fortifications?
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Feb 19, 2024 07:10
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A lesser version of that was not keeping the walls clear, with wooden structures abutting them on both sides.
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Feb 19, 2024 07:17
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I'm sure there's a book somewhere that's documented the walls of every Roman city if you want a full answer. A lesser answer is that there were many Roman cities without walls for centuries--whether a city had a wall or not just depended on if they felt like there was a threat. For the heart of the empire, there were no real military threats so no need to waste resources constructing walls. But in the same period where Italian cities have no fortifications you see walls in places like Britannia. It's not unique, I know offhand that Heian-kyo didn't have walls. Walls were the norm though, you had to be real confident to not build at least some kind of fortifications. I wouldn't be surprised if the Romans had the largest amount of unfortified cities prior to the modern era. Places like China had long periods of stability and safety but didn't get rid of walls. There are variations in how well maintained they are though. When there's not a major threat you find walls falling into disrepair and suburbs building right up alongside them, which renders them mostly useless for defense. That can all be cleared out and fixed up when needed. Even Constantinople, the walliest of walled cities, nearly every story of a siege starts with the inhabitants frantically fixing the walls before the enemy arrives.
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Feb 19, 2024 07:35
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I imagine having the bigger fancier walls also makes them a pain in the rear end to maintain, especially when you mostly rely on them being a deterrent to would-be invaders, so there'd be a lot of work that's put off until the walls are actually expected to be used. Also wouldn't be surprised in some cases where walls even in stable areas are treated more as boundary fences than fortifications, discouraging thieves, animals and peeping toms from wandering in and out.
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Feb 19, 2024 08:00
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There were certainly plenty of cities with wooden walls that wouldn't stand up to a real army assault (not to say wooden walls are useless against an army, a good wooden wall and ditch setup can do a lot) but were useful for everyday security.
Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Feb 19, 2024 |
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Feb 19, 2024 08:13
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I imagine having the bigger fancier walls also makes them a pain in the rear end to maintain, especially when you mostly rely on them being a deterrent to would-be invaders, so there'd be a lot of work that's put off until the walls are actually expected to be used. Walls can be used for lots of things for sure. The walls of my apartment are not designed to stop anti tank rounds. Lead out in cuffs posted:Two posts above the one you replied to. Ah right, OK. Yeah pretty orthogonal to the point I was making, which is that "a society that strictly and 100% of the time considers humans better than all non-humans" is quite rare, and I'm not even sure it ever really existed. We have Enlightenment thinkers who advocated for it but I don't think it'd be fair to say they successfully convinced their people to get on board. Like I don't think it'd be fair to treat Descartes as a representation of the popular beliefs of his era.
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Feb 19, 2024 08:22
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Walls (or just fences) also forced people bringing livestock and other goods to the city marketplace to go through a gate where the taxman would collect duties.
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Feb 19, 2024 10:18
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Confucian ideology doesn't seem that toxic but it's Korean Joseon era neo-Confucianism that seems truly deranged and toxic. Like just constant factionalism and infighting over which one should be influencing the King, using all manner of justification like mourning rituals. So much so that it almost certainly sabotaged the Joseon response to the Hideyoshi invasions.
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Feb 19, 2024 10:49
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Wanna talk about toxic I was reading about Hideoyoshi being such an angry piece of poo poo he killed his own nephew and heir and all their children and associated female relatives and kids thereby weakening his rule and leading it its demise shortly after his death. Whatta dick!
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Feb 19, 2024 14:58
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I remember hearing about how Charlemagne was also against individual cities and towns being fortified, so he ended up making the territories in his dominion more vulnerable for when the Vikings started popping out of nowhere to raid all over the place. It took a while to rebuild enough fortifications to fend off incursions. Fortifications often are very inconvenient in general. They force people through bottlenecks going in and out of the city, they force the people living there to be much more concentrated and dense than they would otherwise, and they're also just a lot of material that has to be maintained if you want it to be usable (people tended to have a habit of stealing and reusing material of unused structures). I think that played into why most medieval castles also got abandoned, because while a city or town has a lot more momentum to keep it going from the amount of people and industry there, a lot of castles are just personal residences with a bunch of inconvenient fortifications built on some defensible point in the middle of nowhere, so the owner of the castle can just kinda end up leaving it fallow when they don't feel the need to be ready to pull back into a defensive position against potential attackers, and instead live in a much more convenient manor. A century or so of no big wars penetrating deep into the country, no big bandit movements to defend against, and not really trying to get into a position torise up against the main government yourself, and it's easy for the place to fall apart.
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Feb 19, 2024 15:18
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Cugel the Clever posted:I read somewhere recently that cities in the western Roman Empire scrambled to rebuild their walls in the 4th century as Rome lost its ability to proactively defend its territories. Prior to that, just how widespread was the ability to forgo encompassing fortifications in Roman territory? Are there other examples in the ancient/medieval world of such relative peace coming about at scale? Did this defensive urban posture of the post-4th-century status quo effectively only loosen once cannonry forced drastic changes on fortifications? ACOUP has a series about fortifications and they way they developed through uh... all of european history. https://acoup.blog/2021/10/29/collections-fortification-part-i-the-besiegers-playbook/ The short version is that Roman cities really only started to put walls up in the 4th century because it was only then that they realistically needed defense against raiding.
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Feb 19, 2024 17:22
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A lot of the time the purpose of a castle isn't even to defend against an enemy army per se; a fortified town or lord with a castle could force their lord to come to the negotiating table over disputes because threats of force were a lot less viable. "Obey me or I'll bring an army and kick your rear end" is one of the tools a king has for asserting authority and it just isn't a plausible threat when you have a fortification that can't really be taken by the siege techniques the king has access to
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Feb 19, 2024 18:43
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SlothfulCobra posted:I remember hearing about how Charlemagne was also against individual cities and towns being fortified, so he ended up making the territories in his dominion more vulnerable for when the Vikings started popping out of nowhere to raid all over the place. It took a while to rebuild enough fortifications to fend off incursions. Yeah there are lots of instances of short term wall removals. New king rolls in, takes a place, tears down the walls so it's easy for him to come back and take the town again if he needs to.
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Feb 19, 2024 18:48
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CommonShore posted:ACOUP has a series about fortifications and they way they developed through uh... all of european history. Grand Fromage posted:Yeah there are lots of instances of short term wall removals. New king rolls in, takes a place, tears down the walls so it's easy for him to come back and take the town again if he needs to. This literally goes back to some of the oldest city walls (Uruk ~3,000 BCE) and the oldest known empire (Sargon ~2,300 BCE). inscription copied from victory stele, sometime around 2,300 BCE posted:Sargon, king of Akkad [...] he defeated the city of Uruk and tore down its walls
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Feb 20, 2024 08:51
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Wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't uncommon to tear down the walls of a city you conquered and take them back to build your own walls.SlothfulCobra posted:I think that played into why most medieval castles also got abandoned, because while a city or town has a lot more momentum to keep it going from the amount of people and industry there, a lot of castles are just personal residences with a bunch of inconvenient fortifications built on some defensible point in the middle of nowhere, so the owner of the castle can just kinda end up leaving it fallow when they don't feel the need to be ready to pull back into a defensive position against potential attackers, and instead live in a much more convenient manor. A century or so of no big wars penetrating deep into the country, no big bandit movements to defend against, and not really trying to get into a position torise up against the main government yourself, and it's easy for the place to fall apart. Makes sense, and I wonder if the idea turned into the fairytale castle came from castles being expanded on or rebuilt more as luxurious dwellings and seats of power for the rulers, no longer expected to act as fortifications but practical in other senses. Even Game of Thrones notes how a castle becomes a liability at best if it no longer serves a practical purpose, no matter how big and impressive.
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Feb 20, 2024 12:29
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Old kingdom is older than Sargon by a bit I think
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Feb 20, 2024 12:35
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think that played into why most medieval castles also got abandoned, because while a city or town has a lot more momentum to keep it going from the amount of people and industry there, a lot of castles are just personal residences with a bunch of inconvenient fortifications built on some defensible point in the middle of nowhere, so the owner of the castle can just kinda end up leaving it fallow when they don't feel the need to be ready to pull back into a defensive position against potential attackers, and instead live in a much more convenient manor. A century or so of no big wars penetrating deep into the country, no big bandit movements to defend against, and not really trying to get into a position torise up against the main government yourself, and it's easy for the place to fall apart. In the English Civil War case (when fortified manor houses are also a thing) you also see castles being intentionally wrecked (slighted is the technical term) when the defenders lose a siege, so it can't be re-used in the same manner - Kenilworth Castle for example.
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Feb 20, 2024 12:42
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euphronius posted:Old kingdom is older than Sargon by a bit I think By about 300 years. Old Kingdom Egypt goes way back. Only reason Old Kingdom Egypt doesn't credit for being the first "empire" is that people think of Egypt as being ethnically and culturally homogenous and so don't generally consider a state that "only" rules Egypt to be an empire.
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Feb 20, 2024 18:02
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CrypticFox posted:By about 300 years. Old Kingdom Egypt goes way back. Only reason Old Kingdom Egypt doesn't credit for being the first "empire" is that people think of Egypt as being ethnically and culturally homogenous and so don't generally consider a state that "only" rules Egypt to be an empire. Which probably played a big role in why Sargon ripped down all those city walls, being as he and his elite were Akkadian, and those were all Sumerian city-states. IIRC there are records of a massive rebellion of those cities against him, too.
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Feb 20, 2024 18:17
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Uniting upper and lower Egypt qualifies as an empire to me at least. It’s an enormous state
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Feb 20, 2024 18:18
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Which probably played a big role in why Sargon ripped down all those city walls, being as he and his elite were Akkadian, and those were all Sumerian city-states. IIRC there are records of a massive rebellion of those cities against him, too. Sargon was also riffing on traditions that were at least 400 years old by then. The big wars between Umma and Lagash saw them tearing down each other's walls (and then quickly rebuilding them as soon as the other side's army had wandered off).
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Feb 21, 2024 06:49
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"Tearing down walls" sounds like a hellishly difficult job. Is it easier with mudbrick, at least?
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Feb 21, 2024 08:21
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Tree Bucket posted:"Tearing down walls" sounds like a hellishly difficult job. Is it easier with mudbrick, at least? Enslave the populace and get them to do it. Massed slave labor were you don't care about causalities can accomplish much ~ engraved on a tablet in a ruined city.
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Feb 21, 2024 09:05
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Steal all the walls, take them home to fortify your own city to replace the walls your enemy stole from you.
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Feb 21, 2024 09:43
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Tree Bucket posted:"Tearing down walls" sounds like a hellishly difficult job. Is it easier with mudbrick, at least? As good a reason for building a victory monument as any!
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Feb 21, 2024 10:19
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Steal all the walls, take them home to fortify your own city to replace the walls your enemy stole from you. It turns out there was actually only one set of walls built during the Bronze Age. But everyone kept stealing them.
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Feb 21, 2024 10:23
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Going back in time and making a fortune as a used walls salesman.
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Feb 21, 2024 10:25
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Couldn't you just put a sign saying 'free mudbricks' on the wall and come back tomorrow? I guess low literacy rates might foil this plan.
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Feb 21, 2024 10:33
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Steal all the walls, take them home to fortify your own city to replace the walls your enemy stole from you. A tradition that would continue all the way until the 15th century, when Mehmed determined that, given the massive amount of labor that moving the Theodosian walls would have required, it would be more practical to rename Constantinople and claim they had moved the walls to a new city.
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Feb 21, 2024 13:39
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it's more that constantine was hella right about byzantium being an amazing place to put the capital of an empire
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Feb 21, 2024 18:00
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bob dobbs is dead posted:it's more that constantine was hella right about byzantium being an amazing place to put the capital of an empire Why do you write like an imbecile?
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Feb 21, 2024 19:38
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we peer reviewing these posts? i didnt know we were peer reviewing these posts, mr reviewer number 2
bob dobbs is dead fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Feb 21, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 19:43
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Comstar posted:Enslave the populace and get them to do it. Massed slave labor were you don't care about causalities can accomplish much ~ engraved on a tablet in a ruined city. Mass slave labor was actually not really practiced in Ancient Mesopotamia (or Egypt, at least for most of its history). Generally, large scale construction projects like building (or demolishing) city walls were done through mobilization of corvee labor and/or the labor of individuals who received land from the crown in exchange for labor service to the state during part of the year.
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Feb 21, 2024 19:44
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Ancient people just love to physically move large blocks
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Feb 21, 2024 19:48
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Stonehenge was just a hobby project of people who are really into rock moving
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Feb 21, 2024 19:51
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Why do you write like an imbecile? posting does not require APA format
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Feb 21, 2024 19:53
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cheetah7071 posted:Stonehenge was just a hobby project of people who are really into rock moving Druids rock
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Feb 21, 2024 19:59
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