|
The professional staff is separate from commission purchase. Off the top of my head, the French got rid of commission purchase following the Seven Years' war in 1763.
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 16:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 09:57 |
|
|
It's also a good way to get rich people to pay for the military. Good example: the quality of officers who bought their way in during the ACW was uneven, to say the least, but they were a substantial source of money for raising troops during the early years. At a certain point a couple hundred dudes in funny uniforms (because the rich dude thought they looked cool) being led by a dilettante is still better than a big, empty hole in your line.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 17:54
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:It's also a good way to get rich people to pay for the military. There's also an element of, before fire and manoeuvre became a relevant doctrine you don't actually need to be that good an officer to lead a standard foot regiment. Go to here, have your ncos line everyone up, try not to run away.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 17:56
|
|
|
Cast_No_Shadow posted:There's also an element of, before fire and manoeuvre became a relevant doctrine you don't actually need to be that good an officer to lead a standard foot regiment. Go to here, have your ncos line everyone up, try not to run away. Sorry, but no. At the bare minimum you need to know how to drill your men, how to handle them under fire, and how to maneuver the unit so that they don't lose cohesion. Something as basic as a quick time march across an open field to move the line forward 200 yards is a lot more difficult than you would think. A lot of that is going to come down to the officering between fights: basically how good of an administrator are you? Even in a battle, however, it's not all just stand in line and receive fire.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 18:05
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Sorry, but no. At the bare minimum you need to know how to drill your men, how to handle them under fire, and how to maneuver the unit so that they don't lose cohesion. Something as basic as a quick time march across an open field to move the line forward 200 yards is a lot more difficult than you would think. A lot of that is going to come down to the officering between fights: basically how good of an administrator are you? You're correct, and I shouldn't have posted with such an authoritative tone on that one as I'm getting beyond my depth when it comes to actual battlefield tactics. So how does the army handle a potential chumly failson buying a regiment and being dog poo poo as an officer? Competent junior officers and ncos? The hardest to gently caress up assignments? Let them fail enough to fire them?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 18:16
|
|
|
Cast_No_Shadow posted:You're correct, and I shouldn't have posted with such an authoritative tone on that one as I'm getting beyond my depth when it comes to actual battlefield tactics. Don't know about Napoleonic UK etc, but in the ACW it was basically feed them into the meat grinder and let nature sort it out. edit: that said, from what I recall the Union pretty quickly put some requirements in such as previous military service. The real wild west rich kid playground stuff was mostly the early war and the Confederacy suffered more from it. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Apr 1, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 18:17
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Don't know about Napoleonic UK etc, but in the ACW it was basically feed them into the meat grinder and let nature sort it out. Ahh so let them gently caress up enough the other guys fire them
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 18:21
|
|
|
Cast_No_Shadow posted:Ahh so let them gently caress up enough the other guys fire them Are soldiers really so cheap back then that letting a bunch of random captains and lTs kill off a ton of NCO's and Enlisted by being stupid viable?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 18:24
|
|
|
Defenestrategy posted:Are soldiers really so cheap back then that letting a bunch of random captains and lTs kill off a ton of NCO's and Enlisted by being stupid viable? The people raising the regiments (or their backers) are the ones footing the bill, and in the specific case of the ACW you have a small kernel of professional officers and NCOs on both sides quickly bulking out large armies with a poo poo ton of untrained volunteers, and later conscripts. It's a pretty interesting conflict in terms of watching two militaries professionalize in real time. The Union Army in 1861 is a loving goat rodeo, while the same army in 1865 is probably the best trained, best equipped force on the planet. That said, not all of them where incompetent. One is the guy who raised the Louisiana Tigers Zouave regiment. The guy was basically a mercenary who traveled around trying to start revolutions in Latin America in the 1840s-50s with the financial backing of rich southerners. The basic idea being that if you could successfully spark a revolution in Cuba or Mexico you could put in a US-friendly regime and eventually annex it as another slave state, kind of like what happened in Texas. The guy was pretty wild and was good at getting rich southerners to open up their wallets for his military adventures. Still didn't keep him from getting killed in the first year of the war, though.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 18:33
|
|
|
Defenestrategy posted:Are soldiers really so cheap back then that letting a bunch of random captains and lTs kill off a ton of NCO's and Enlisted by being stupid viable? So the thing for a lot of history killing soldiers wasn’t battle, but diseases. So a more important function would be camp discipline, followed by march discipline, followed by actual battlefield ability. Also for a lot of the junior officers, poo poo that got their NCOs and enlisted men killed would get themselves killed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 18:43
|
|
|
Defenestrategy posted:Are soldiers really so cheap back then that letting a bunch of random captains and lTs kill off a ton of NCO's and Enlisted by being stupid viable? It takes 10000 casualties to train a general, so better get on it early 
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 18:46
|
|
|
vuk83 posted:So the thing for a lot of history killing soldiers wasn’t battle, but diseases. Wouldn't "Don't cause dysentery with poor camp management" and "Don't buy your men maggot infested food." fall under the jurisdiction of these kinds of officers who may or may not have any idea of how to keep a military marching?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 18:46
|
|
|
vuk83 posted:So the thing for a lot of history killing soldiers wasn’t battle, but diseases. One of the ways you can tell a good general from a bad one is by looking at how fast their army moves. Grant and Sherman were very good staff officers and they kept their armies moving fast on the strategic scale, which requires excellent camp organization and accordingly reduces deaths. Arguably, a general's main job is to build that organization. Off the top of my head, dysentery alone killed ~50k soldiers on each side. One way to reduce that? Keep moving to new water sources.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 18:52
|
|
|
Soldiering is a hard life, even if you have lots of money to try and make your bit of it more comfortable. There would always have been a strong element of self-selection, if you are a rich toff you really don't need to go into the army for status, so anyone doing it at some level wanted to be there. For the not rich toffs you deal with bad officers the same way everyone everywhere deals with incompetent co-workers - by finding ways to work around them. The British Napoleonic Officer corps might have been a bit of a social club that looked down on shop talk, but nobody anywhere wants to be friends with a fuckup.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 18:53
|
|
|
Defenestrategy posted:Wouldn't "Don't cause dysentery with poor camp management" and "Don't buy your men maggot infested food." fall under the jurisdiction of these kinds of officers who may or may not have any idea of how to keep a military marching? You're approaching this from the standpoint that having officers who know what they're doing is better than officers who are idiots. Which is correct. But for a lot of militaries before ~1815-1870 or so the real question is whether having a grab bag of mixed quality officers is better than no officers, and frequently whether having ?? quality soldiers led by ??? quality officers is better than no soldiers led by no officers. Militaries go through a massive process of professionalization in the 19th century. Part of that is having people do it as an actual profession that they spend their entire lives studying, part of it is establishing a bureaucratic apparatus to house and equip standing armies full time, part of that is just the notion of the standing army as a normal thing taking over. I'm kind of burying the lead with that one, because standing armies were an incredibly controversial topic throughout the 18th century, and there was a LOT of resistance to having what amounts to a professional officer corps. If you want some apples to apples touchstones, look at the Parliamentarian forces during the English Civil War (1650s), the English Army during the rough period of the American Revolution a hundred years later, the post-Napoleonic English Army ca. Crimea, and the English Army right after WW2. That is four data points about a hundred years apart that are all a relatively modern militaries with at least blushingly modern governmental apparatuses and each one exhibits some very different attitudes toward the role of organized militaries in the state, standing militaries, and where officers fit into all that. All of this exists on a sliding scale, there's no single moment where people start setting up military academies and being a career military officer is a respectable thing for a person to do with their life, just the same as there's no single moment where countries develop the modern tax systems that make standing armies possible.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 19:00
|
|
|
quote:For all of its flaws and abuses — and there were many — the purchase system nevertheless endured for approximately two centuries. This can only be explained by the fact that it gave the country what it wanted — a cheaply financed officer corps that in no way threatened the established order, mainly because the social background of the officers themselves generally comprised a principal prop to that order. Because most commissions were purchasable and salaries were so outrageously low, it was fairly obvious that only men of independent means could actually afford a career in the army. Provision was made to some extent for indigent but talented individuals, but, for the most part, the English did not desire to see command of the military devolve upon a body of mercenaries.(16) It was far more preferable, both economically and politically, to draw the officers from that part of society most concerned with the preservation of its order and stability, the wealthy and landed classes. http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol046cs.html
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 19:33
|
|
|
So the Prussians did a lot of stuff professionalising staff officers. But for line officers didn't it start with artillery corps? I know for the 18th/19th century British army they were the first (and for a long while only) part of the army where you absolutely had to go train at an academy of some sort before you were allowed to be an officer and promotion was based on experience. Likely because it turns out knowing the right maths and how to set up and fire guns correctly was somewhat important for the artillery.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 19:36
|
|
|
Cast_No_Shadow posted:So the Prussians did a lot of stuff professionalising staff officers. For the British Army the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich started in the 1740s and provided professional training to artillery and engineer officers; the commission purchase system only applied to the infantry and cavalry. The technical corps had to have men of specific ability and training that could not be either imbued by upbringing or learnt in the field The Royal Navy introduced the Examination for Lieutenant in 1677 (having already required warrant officers in technical trades to sit examinations and show a countersigned journal of experience before receiving their warrant). I have seen that year written of as a watershed not only in British military training but the progress of the Enlightenment; the first time a King's officer was required to earn his rank and prove his ability against an objective standard, where birth, family, patronage and wealth had no bearing on progress. The quote provided by Fangz above makes two really good points, I think; first that whatever its obvious weaknesses and infamous negative examples, the Purchase system provided the British with an army that pretty much did what was needed of it, and often with startling success. The same generally applied to other countries that used a similar system. Second, that it only really began to fall short in the long peace between Waterloo and Crimea, where no forays against European peers and colonial expeditions did not serve to deter those primarily interested in personal prestige and social status. You wouldn't buy a commission in the Revolutionary or Napoleonic Wars just because you liked the uniform, the status and the potential to make cash - you usually had to have at least some desire and mettle to lead and fight. But the 1830s were a different matter. And the work the Army did in the interbellum didn't serve to either change the dilletantes' ways by experience or clear them out. Although it would be grossly simplistic to describe the role of a pre-industrial army officer as 'simple' or 'easy', I don't think it's unfair to say that the industrial era changed the pace and scope of land warfare to the extent that it became a business for professionals with technical training.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 20:13
|
|
|
I think one other point worth noting is that even if the system produces a bunch of duds, if your enemies are using the same system your dud rate isn’t putting you at a competitive disadvantage. Accept that a certain degree of incompetence is the price of doing business and move on. There’s also the point to be made that from what I recall from this thread the commission system was a step up from what preceded it, IE noble officers only, with someone getting put in charge because their great grandfather earned himself a dukedom. Commissions at least ensured you got interested people with a direct stake in the business defraying the administrative costs.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 20:19
|
|
|
lmao: quote:As a result, the British officer enjoyed one of the highest reputations for courageous and valorous conduct in Europe, citation needed
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 20:19
|
|
|
Re: Civil War officers While the formal pool of educated candidates for officer positions was small (existing US army or those with formal military education that had left service), a much larger pool of private citizens with military or para-military experience existed. The Seminole Wars and the Mexican-American War were well within living memory and beyond Regular US forces, a significant number of private citizens and state militiamen would have seen service in those fights. Still more, especially prominent local citizens were servants in their local militias with at least some cursory drill and understanding of basic military matters. Many of these men would have offered their services to local state governments at the outbreak of war and received commissions to lead regiments and brigades. They have been in line for rapid promotion as their superiors were killed or wounded. In many cases, local state governments would ask men with military experience to help raise troops at the beginning of the war and be commissioned as the regimental commanders upon completing that duty. Another source of individuals with military backgrounds came from the immigrant population, especially in the north. Right before the ACW broke out, the US saw a wave of German and Irish immigration roll through the country and many of these individuals who had served in European militaries were picked to raise and lead regiments belonging to their ethnicity. In the Federal army, there were many regiments of "Dutchmen" were English was not the language being spoken at camp. I'd say the lionshare of men who did receive command of regiments on up did have somewhat of a military background if they were not outright serving or recently lapsed junior officers in the regular forces. The second group of individuals up for filling the immediate roles as officers would have been the literate class like bankers and lawyers. Some of these would have been independently wealthy and could assist the state with the cost of raising and equipping troops for battle. As mentioned being rich and paying for the war effort helped a great deal in securing a commission by the State government and these individuals retained their commands when the units were federalized and joined the war effort. By this point in time, the US army did have standardized manuals of instruction so as long as you could read and follow instructions it wouldn't be too tall a task. This second group tended to lead units raised after the immediate outbreak of war after the existing pool of men with military service had already secured commissions and commands and would have entered service as field or company-grade officers. With the casualty rates of officers being what they were in the war, promotions were usually easy to be had. Still, there was very much an upper limit where those without formal military education could rise. Outside of a few handfuls of individuals who were exceptional in political influence, the best an amateur who started as a junior officer could realistically hope for was a brigade command or in some cases a division. Anything above was exceptionally rare. And it got more so as the war went on as poor performance on the battlefield led to being sidelined in backwater commands, or just being mustered out of the army altogether. While the example of men like John McClernand, Daniel Sickles, Benjamin Butler, Nathan Forrest, and John Palmer who were men with either minimal or non-existing prior military experience were given Corps commands, the vast majority of men that commanded divisions and corps had some level of formal military education. wiegieman posted:One of the ways you can tell a good general from a bad one is by looking at how fast their army moves. Grant and Sherman were very good staff officers and they kept their armies moving fast on the strategic scale, which requires excellent camp organization and accordingly reduces deaths. Arguably, a general's main job is to build that organization. Most generals in the ACW inherited the supply and logistics conditions of their AO and could do little or nothing about it. In the ACW, that task usually fell to civilians drafted into military service. Building a good staff was a necessary part of being a good commander but that wasn't what made Grant or Sherman stand out. If anything, they benefitted by rising to high command right when the Federal supply and logistics system was fully fleshed out and faced Confederate opponents who increasingly were incapable of supplying its armies in the field. Disease accounted for more casualties than battle in the ACW. A properly handled camp could remain idle for months without major incidents of disease, it just took effort. Joe Hooker was the one who famously fixed the camp conditions for the Army of the Potomac and brought it down to manageable levels.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 20:23
|
|
|
Tomn posted:I think one other point worth noting is that even if the system produces a bunch of duds, if your enemies are using the same system your dud rate isn’t putting you at a competitive disadvantage. Accept that a certain degree of incompetence is the price of doing business and move on. I don't know that they're related, but also keep in mind that hereditary rights and the rights to do government functions were being sold anyways. Tax farming is the classic example. The idea that you can't just sub-contract out your feudal rights and the basic mechanisms of government is a fairly modern notion, all things considered, and really has a lot to do with increasing needs of the state to raise taxes for ever more expensive ventures without the inefficiencies inherent in a bunch of middlemen taking their cut. If you want to read more on this, Ertman's Birth of the Leviathan is the classic text.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 20:26
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Militaries go through a massive process of professionalization in the 19th century. Part of that is having people do it as an actual profession that they spend their entire lives studying, part of it is establishing a bureaucratic apparatus to house and equip standing armies full time, part of that is just the notion of the standing army as a normal thing taking over. I'm kind of burying the lead with that one, because standing armies were an incredibly controversial topic throughout the 18th century, and there was a LOT of resistance to having what amounts to a professional officer corps.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 20:45
|
|
|
My Grandpa said his great-great Uncle (i can't remember how many greats tbh) fought in the American Civil War for the Union. I have his name and I know the town he was from in New York state. How would I go about finding more information on him? My Grandpa has unfortunately since passed away so that's all the info I have.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 20:53
|
|
|
Nessus posted:From what I have read, this is actually a major part of why we have our lovely wonderful Second Amendment to the Constitution here in America, because the Continental Congress was deathly afraid of the evils of a standing army. From what I have read, the levied militia whose yeoman republican virtue was supposed to so doughtily defend the states amounted to mostly filler to the actual professional soldiers, and the whole nascent rebellion George Washington put down by his personal authority was motivated by Congress being unwilling to pay out to the Continental Congress's de-mobilized officers. Pretty much all the things that the founding fathers had massive hang ups about go back to the English Civil War. The argument against standing militaries wasn't grounded so much in yeoman republican virtue as it was the fear that a standing army would be used to suppress the political opponents of whoever was in charge. If you go back to the 1640s this is one of the major flash points between Parliament and the Crown that eventually led to the ECW. Parliament wanted more power, the Crown didn't want to give it, and that's a problem if the King is the one with the armies. Same with tons of other poo poo. The revolutionary ideology of the American revolutionaries has a very clear through line from the ECW Parliamentarians, as filtered through Locke. If you read up on the ECW a whole lot of what Jefferson et al are saying in the 1770s all of a sudden makes a whole lot more sense. Remember: the colonists who rebelled against the king in the 1770s were, for the most part and certainly at the level of the elite, culturally British and were steeped in a political culture that was still reeling from a few decades of civil war, a regicide, a dictatorship, and the restoration of monarchy.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 20:54
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Pretty much all the things that the founding fathers had massive hang ups about go back to the English Civil War. The argument against standing militaries wasn't grounded so much in yeoman republican virtue as it was the fear that a standing army would be used to suppress the political opponents of whoever was in charge. If you go back to the 1640s this is one of the major flash points between Parliament and the Crown that eventually led to the ECW. Parliament wanted more power, the Crown didn't want to give it, and that's a problem if the King is the one with the armies.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 21:00
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Remember: the colonists who rebelled against the king in the 1770s were, for the most part and certainly at the level of the elite, culturally British and were steeped in a political culture that was still reeling from a few decades of civil war, a regicide, a dictatorship, and the restoration of monarchy. And this also plays into the structure of the British Army going forward. Firstly, it continues as a series of regiments - 'armies within armies' - with their own geographic recruiting areas so that power is diffused through both society and the country. Secondly, it draws its legal existence (and budget) from parliament, not the monarch. Thirdly, although the monarch is the font of power and the name on commissions, the purchase system for those commissions ensures that the upper and upper-middle tiers of society are the ones who are able to hold those commissions. The purchase system also stops a monarch from just filling the officer ranks with their family, friends and toadies...even if the whole point was that anyone rich enough to buy and maintain a commission would be part of the status quo and so compelling a certain amount of toadying. From the Bill of Rights to the present day, the standing Army had to be permitted by parliament passing a specific Act every five years, and of course a budget has to be passed every year to fund that army to actually function. Since 2005 when the legal basis for all three armed services was consolidated, that applies to the RN and the RAF as well, but until then they existed in perpetuity since they were 'Royal', while the Army was - is - not.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 21:03
|
|
|
Americans are also biased against the founding fathers ideals ironically because the US managed to walk the narrow path and avoid any military coups in its history. Many a republic has ended with an overly popular military leader stepping in. In hindsight Jefferson might seem ridiculous and overly fearful, but at the time when Hamilton's treasury dept was laying bureaucratic foundations never envisioned by the framers and the man himself was salivating at the thought of a general ship the idea that an unscrupulous man would sell out the country for his own gain was not out of the question.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 21:40
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:Americans are also biased against the founding fathers ideals ironically because the US managed to walk the narrow path and avoid any military coups in its history. Many a republic has ended with an overly popular military leader stepping in. In hindsight Jefferson might seem ridiculous and overly fearful, but at the time when Hamilton's treasury dept was laying bureaucratic foundations never envisioned by the framers and the man himself was salivating at the thought of a general ship the idea that an unscrupulous man would sell out the country for his own gain was not out of the question. the other danger of course is a scrupulous man doing it for his country - this seems to be distressingly common, too.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 21:41
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:If you want to read more on this, Ertman's Birth of the Leviathan is the classic text. A quick, pop history that touches on this is Patrick Wyman’s The Verge.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 21:43
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:Americans are also biased against the founding fathers ideals ironically because the US managed to walk the narrow path and avoid any military coups in its history. Many a republic has ended with an overly popular military leader stepping in. In hindsight Jefferson might seem ridiculous and overly fearful, but at the time when Hamilton's treasury dept was laying bureaucratic foundations never envisioned by the framers and the man himself was salivating at the thought of a general ship the idea that an unscrupulous man would sell out the country for his own gain was not out of the question. I was struck by a point made on twitter the other day that the US and UK are basically the only countries in the world that have institutions that have survived intact for 250+ years and there's a certain complacency/confidence that comes with that that many other countries just don't have.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 21:55
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:Americans are also biased against the founding fathers ideals ironically because the US managed to walk the narrow path and avoid any military coups in its history. Many a republic has ended with an overly popular military leader stepping in. In hindsight Jefferson might seem ridiculous and overly fearful, but at the time when Hamilton's treasury dept was laying bureaucratic foundations never envisioned by the framers and the man himself was salivating at the thought of a general ship the idea that an unscrupulous man would sell out the country for his own gain was not out of the question. Something that struck me when reading about early US history is the difference between people who saw themselves as military men and people who saw the military as fundamentally dangerous. The former group seemed much more comfortable with order and hierarchy, both because they trusted their military comrades and simply because an army needs hierarchy to work. And the latter group was much more willing on average to tolerate disorder; see for example Jefferson’s nonchalance about the French Revolution and contempt for what he saw as the attribution of excessive preeminence to the office of President. I have to think that a big factor preventing military coups in the US was Washington’s legend as a modern Cincinnatus, which established eagerness to relinquish power as a core military virtue.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 22:13
|
|
|
BalloonFish posted:For the British Army the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich started in the 1740s and provided professional training to artillery and engineer officers; the commission purchase system only applied to the infantry and cavalry. The technical corps had to have men of specific ability and training that could not be either imbued by upbringing or learnt in the field For Britain it should also be noted if the idea was just to earn lots of money then the army was a bad option. You went into the Army only because you wanted to and had some motivation to do well (even if you were an inbred fuckwit who did more harm than good). Even the money that could be made in the Napoleonic Royal Navy was fairly small compared to being a part of the British East India Company, once you get the post Napoleonic era then even the RN was not a place to earn money (while the anti-slavery patrols in West Africa made some decent prize money, the attrition rate amongst the RN crews was bad, and only beaten by the horrific death rates in the slave ships). This can filter out a number of bad officers who were only money obsessed as they were busy squeezing every last rupee from the corpse of the Mughal Empire.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2024 22:57
|
|
|
Nessus posted:From what I have read, this is actually a major part of why we have our lovely wonderful Second Amendment to the Constitution here in America, because the Continental Congress was deathly afraid of the evils of a standing army. From what I have read, the levied militia whose yeoman republican virtue was supposed to so doughtily defend the states amounted to mostly filler to the actual professional soldiers, and the whole nascent rebellion George Washington put down by his personal authority was motivated by Congress being unwilling to pay out to the Continental Congress's de-mobilized officers. You know, come to think of it, the idealization of the sturdy independent yeoman farmer as the bedrock of the nation seems remarkably common and enduring. The Romans had their thing where free independent farmers were supposed to be the core of the army and the wellspring of republican virtue, but I've been reading an economic history of China lately and it's remarkable how many dynasties based their economic policy mostly around "How do we ensure a sufficient supply of free, independent yeomen farmers (who can therefore provide the manpower for our armies)?" and fretting about how wealthy magnates keep buying up land and robbing the yeomen of the land they need to keep being, well, yeomen - no republican virtues required or mentioned. Then we have the British idolization of the yeoman bowman, the American republican yeomen as mentioned above and much later the Nazis even got in on the game by imagining Russia becoming a giant colony of Aryan soldier-farmers. I imagine it crops up commonly in pre-modern contexts because free, independent farmers DO form a useful manpower pool for an agrarian state looking to beef up their military (and someone tied to the land is easier to track and recruit than some wandering odd-job man), but it's interesting how the cultural cachet of free farmers survived well into modernity even in contexts where it makes little sense outside of ideology.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2024 02:17
|
|
|
I also wonder if it's because agricultural families tend to have way more children than city dwellers, but I don't know how far back that pattern holds
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2024 03:22
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
Kvlt! posted:My Grandpa said his great-great Uncle (i can't remember how many greats tbh) fought in the American Civil War for the Union. I have his name and I know the town he was from in New York state. How would I go about finding more information on him? My Grandpa has unfortunately since passed away so that's all the info I have. [Town Name] Historical Society would be my first go to. I can’t speak for the whole state, but at least everywhere I’ve been even the tiniest bullshit towns have one.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2024 03:32
|
|
|
Well there's also the fact that throughout most of the history of civilization, the majority of people were somehow involved in agriculture, and even the ones who aren't usually may pitch in come harvest time, and even when you're in a period when cities are on the rise as the source of political power, the relative price of food was a big thing that would set the mood of the era, whether people feel like the times are good or bad, much like the American president's levers on gas and the economy. Present day governments along with agricultural technology has generally gotten good enough that relative grain prices aren't much of a concern to most people anymore, but up through the 19th century until fairly recently most countries were just a bad year before massive unrest. Wars come and go, but the desire for lunch is constant and forever.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2024 04:03
|
|
|
Would the offseason farmers building the pyramids count as yeomen?
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2024 04:04
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:[Town Name] Historical Society would be my first go to. I can’t speak for the whole state, but at least everywhere I’ve been even the tiniest bullshit towns have one. Thank you!! this was incredibly helpful. I looked it up and they do have one, which led me to a website for the graveyard hes buried in, where I was able to piece together some more info and find out he fought at the battle of lookout mountain! pretty cool
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2024 05:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 09:57 |
|
|
Kvlt! posted:Thank you!! this was incredibly helpful. I looked it up and they do have one, which led me to a website for the graveyard hes buried in, where I was able to piece together some more info and find out he fought at the battle of lookout mountain! pretty cool Yeah, I had a similar thing where I wanted to know about the specifics of when the local bullshit hamlets were settled and by whom. Turns out that’s super easy to find out.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2024 05:22
|
|