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| Mounted Mongol warriors |
War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies
Peter Turchin et al.
PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1308825110
How did human societies evolve from small groups, integrated by face-to-face cooperation, to huge anonymous societies of today, typically organized as states? Why is there so much variation in the ability of different human populations to construct viable states?
Existing theories are usually formulated as verbal models and, as a result, do not yield sharply defined, quantitative predictions that could be unambiguously tested with data. Here we develop a cultural evolutionary model that predicts where and when the largest-scale complex societies arose in human history. The central premise of the model, which we test, is that costly institutions that enabled large human groups to function without splitting up evolved as a result of intense competition between societies—primarily warfare.
Warfare intensity, in turn, depended on the spread of historically attested military technologies (e.g., chariots and cavalry) and on geographic factors (e.g., rugged landscape). The model was simulated within a realistic landscape of the Afroeurasian landmass and its predictions were tested against a large dataset documenting the spatiotemporal distribution of historical large-scale societies in Afroeurasia between 1,500 BCE and 1,500 CE. The model-predicted pattern of spread of large-scale societies was very similar to the observed one. Overall, the model explained 65% of variance in the data. An alternative model, omitting the effect of diffusing military technologies, explained only 16% of variance. Our results support theories that emphasize the role of institutions in state-building and suggest a possible explanation why a long history of statehood is positively correlated with political stability, institutional quality, and income per capita.
Here's a video of the spread of empire in theory and in history.
Turchin is from Russia, the son of a prominent Soviet dissident. So, this Get Big or Get Stomped logic is obvious to him. I wrote something much less sophisticated but along similar lines after a 2001 visit to Moscow.
Don't know if you already have a post in the works about this, but this story may prove to be fascinating:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/22/prabhjot-singh-sikh-columbia-hate-crime_n_3972449.html
Notice that the youths who attacked him were in a group of 20. The professor thinks it's a hate crime. The racial identity of the youths has not been revealed. Should it turn out that the youths are black, will this cease being a possible hate crime? At least, in the media narrative of it?
The prof told Buzzfeed that "most were African American": link.
DeleteMaybe it was a multiracial gang, like one of the ones in The Warriors.
I don't know it is so much Get Big or Get Stomped as it is Get Organized or Get Stomped.
ReplyDeleteThe hate crime attack took place on 110th Street in Manhattan.
ReplyDelete"Across 110th Street" is the theme song from Tarantino's "Jackie Brown:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0MsKEd6fkk
Greece was far smaller than the Persian Empire but far stronger. Western way of war is decisive mass shock battle not guerilla war.
ReplyDelete"diffusing military technology" in other words "cognitive ability" to adapt new technology & the environment... IQ? (oh my!)
ReplyDeleteFrom the abstract:
ReplyDelete"Warfare intensity, in turn, depended on the spread of historically attested military technologies (e.g., chariots and cavalry)..."
Nice horsy! (I'm a victim! It's all the fault of those evil horses that we aren't living in a primeval utopia, being authentic and all.)
It's not just the Western Way, it's the same all over the world. Guerilla war only became feasible when 'civilised' peoples became less and less accepting of genocide.
ReplyDeleteFor a large chunk of human history, any semblance of guerilla war would have brought swift and painful extinction (try it against Genghis Khan!).
So everybody knew a standup fight was what mattered, and when you lost, the victors had every right to exterminate you, unless you were willing to knuckle completely under and avoid causing any more trouble.
You're touching on a key point here, though I don't think genocide is the right word for it. A better phrase might be total war. Think of Sherman's March To The Sea, or the Anglo-American bombing of Germany. Contrast it with the laser-guided bombings if recent wars.
DeleteCounterinsurgency experts have been ascendant in the US military in recent years, but in the big picture, counter insurgency looks like a pointless endeavor. If a war is necessary, fight it in such a way that the enemy is beaten and knows it's been beaten. Otherwise, don't get involved.
It is interesting that Turchin sees no place for genes.
ReplyDeleteIt is institutions all the way down.
Funny thing is, certain peoples seem unable to discover those institutions.
Whiskey said...
ReplyDeleteGreece was far smaller than the Persian Empire but far stronger. Western way of war is decisive mass shock battle not guerilla war.
Reputed size of empires is irrelevant. Much depends on internal mobilization capacity based on politico-cultural structure as well as war-making style.
Achaemenid Empire, notwithstanding recent Hollywood fantasies and triumphalist Ancient Greek mythmaking (accepted largely intact by the likes of Victor Davis Hanson), was conquered and maintained by the core of a fairly small national military force, much as the Mongol Empire was in later centuries.
Hans Delbrück does a clear and succinct job of exploding the myth of cowardly millions of Asiatics defeated by a smaller, but superior Western force (which is also a product of the post-16th Century prism, which paradigm was more realistic).
Delbrück demonstrated through simple calculations of logistics that the size of the Achaemenid forces could not even be a fraction of what Ancient Greeks claimed. I agree with his assessment that the two sides were likely fairly well matched in number, with the advantages of terrain, "home turf" (i.e. warmaking style suited to the battlefield in question) and generalship going to the Greeks.
This does not take away from the significance of Greek victory to world history and civilization, but this simplistic, cartoonish paradigm does not reflect reality.
After all, "mass shock" of the finest Teutonic, Polish and Hungarian heavy calvary and men-at-arms could not overcome the numerically inferior nimble Mongol archers on their small ponies centuries later, leading to the complete annihilation of the finest flower of Central European chivalry in a series of battles.
As with all things, time and place, constrasting styles of warfare, morale, leadership, strategy, logistics and other myriads of factors, including chance, determine who wins and loses.
The Wobbly Guy said...
ReplyDeleteIt's not just the Western Way, it's the same all over the world. Guerilla war only became feasible when 'civilised' peoples became less and less accepting of genocide.
For a large chunk of human history, any semblance of guerilla war would have brought swift and painful extinction (try it against Genghis Khan!).
So everybody knew a standup fight was what mattered, and when you lost, the victors had every right to exterminate you, unless you were willing to knuckle completely under and avoid causing any more trouble.
Genghis Khan was a master of guerilla warfare. He rarely, if ever, fought pitched battles and almost always relied on deception (Maskirovka!), feints and surprise to overcome his enemy. He used terror where he deemed necessary, but could be very generous to his enemies who submitted or whose courage he admired. His ranks swelled often by those whom he defeated. Many of his trusted generals were his one-time rivals and competitors.
In fact, Genghis Khan's entire military strategy can be described somewhat simplistically as a highly organized and disciplined large-scale guerilla warfare based on the tremendous speed and discipline advantage his forces enjoyed against his enemies -- provided, of course, that his men were operating on terrain that favored them, the open steppes and deserts of Eurasia.
Nukes haven't made war obsolete, but they've made a certain style of war obsolete. The epic smackdown between mechanized first-world powers is finished, probably forever. That style of human organization (the mega-nation-state) will go out of business long before that style of war comes back.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who's not reading William S. Lind or Martin van Creveld on the topic of war ought to start. They argue that the real crises facing the world right now are the chaos emanating from failed states in the Third World and the declining legitimacy of governments in the First World. These developments point to a shaky future not just for empires, but for the nation-state as it was constituted after the Treaty of Westphalia.
Long story short, in the right circumstances and in the right hands, chaos and decentralization are assets instead of hindrances.
We live in an age of decline; of coming-apart. This will involve a lot of dismal, small, lower-intensity wars instead of huge traditional wars. Sorry, military buffs - you're in for a lot less Victory at Sea and a lot more Blackhawk Down.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, as Martin van Creveld points out repeatedly, war is a mutually-learning and -imitating activity.
ReplyDeleteJust as the caveman with a smaller rock learned to make a club with which to beat his erstwhile conqueror with a bigger rock (and his opponent then learned to make a bow to shoot at him from a safer distance to avoid the spear, as Homer derively describes the "cowardly" archer in the Iliad, human beings have learned, imitated and overcome his opponents. It's called adaptation. Ones who do well win and the others perish.
The modern paradigm of guerilla warfare (partisan warfare, low intensity conflict, small war, bush war, counter-terrorism, whatever you want to call it) is an organic human response of losers to winners' strength in industrial, mass-mobilized warmaking. It also plays on the inbred human emotion of "equity" (which other primates lack)... which is why van Creveld confidently claimed that if a war between the strong and the weak lasts a long time, the strong loses.
War is both a ruthless, utterly practical matter of mass life and death, but it is also theater, a contest of champions and their will. Industrial societies produce industrial media which magnify the effects of this mass psychological effect, which we often ascribe to "the home front."
"Across 110th Street" is the theme song from Tarantino's "Jackie Brown:"
ReplyDeleteand speaking of jackie brown, robert forster appeared in breaking bad this week.
damn, i'm listening to 'across 110th street' on youtube, never heard this one before. it's astounding how much better this is than year 2013 rap. i'm supposed to believe that pure garbage like drake is just as good as this?
I might finally add that the post-Wesphalian construct of "the decisive battle" to which many theorists have bolted on a supposedly coherent "Western way of war" paradigm is also an organic response to the widespread chaos, destruction, rape, murder and, most of all, disorganized and ill-disciplined freebooting of soldiery that characterized The Thirty Years War.
ReplyDeleteFor the movie buffs, I recommend "The Last Valley" (1971) with Michael Caine and Omar Sharif and directed by James Clavell.
o/t, but a piece about one of the last known "bound" Chinese women.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2429992/Han-Qiaoni-102-woman-bound-feet-toes-broken-just-2.html
Very odd how some historical facts get repeated endlessly and some go down the memory hole. Back in the 50s people knew all about what the Chinese used to do to women's feet. It was the subject of books and a film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inn_of_the_Sixth_Happiness
I'd imagine very few young people knows about it now. Wonder what the Chinese think of this bit of their history?
also o/t, a forgotten piece of post-Independence Indian history - the cover-up of massacre in Hyderabad
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24159594
"The massacres took place a year after the violence of partition in what was then Hyderabad state, in the heart of India. It was one of 500 princely states that had enjoyed autonomy under British colonial rule. When independence came in 1947 nearly all of these states agreed to become part of India. But Hyderabad's Muslim Nizam, or prince, insisted on remaining independent. This outraged the new country's mainly Hindu leaders in New Delhi. After an acrimonious stand-off between Delhi and Hyderabad, the government finally lost patience. In September 1948 the Indian Army invaded Hyderabad."
also o/t, a forgotten piece of post-Independence Indian history - the cover-up of massacre in Hyderabad
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24159594
"The massacres took place a year after the violence of partition in what was then Hyderabad state, in the heart of India. It was one of 500 princely states that had enjoyed autonomy under British colonial rule.
DVN: What nonsense! All of these kingdoms were emasculated and puppet regimes of the British.The British exarbated the reactionary rule of the zamindars(large land holders) which thrived under your beloved "autonomous rulers". One of the few good things that India did was do away with a great chunk of zamindars by instituting land reforms
When independence came in 1947 nearly all of these states agreed to become part of India. But Hyderabad's Muslim Nizam, or prince, insisted on remaining independent.
DVN: Actually this "independence" was just a ruse. He was quite chummy with Pakistan and received Pakistani logistical and military know how.
"This outraged the new country's mainly Hindu leaders in New Delhi."
DVN: What really the "mainly Hindu leaders" not just in Delhi but all over the country was the Nizam openly discriminated against his Hindu subjects by excessive taxation and denigration of their customs and he began suppressing native rebellions by letting loose the Razakars who raped,murdered and pillaged across the country side.
"After an acrimonious stand-off between Delhi and Hyderabad, the government finally lost patience. In September 1948 the Indian Army invaded Hyderabad."
DVN: And it took them barely 5 days for them to defeat this third rate Turkic(a point he emphasized by marrying the admittedly gorgeous daughter of the last Caliph who was Turkish) hoodlum who at the time was the richest man in the world due to the all wealth he and his ancestors pillaged which rightfully belonged to his Hindu subjects.
I see the BBC is still using its stock history lesson dated circa 1948 when it still smarting from its empire to those "wily Hindus" and her biased towards the beloved and loyal "martial Muslims" can be barely concealed
ReplyDeleteGreece was far smaller than the Persian Empire but far stronger."
Persia couldnt beat on its mainland but a good chunk of Greek colonies in Anatolia and elsewhere paid tribute to it. That partially negates the claim of Victor Hanson(who I otherwise respect) that Greek culture contributed to its military success.
Indeed if Thermopylae is any indication , Greeks held off the Persian advance the same reason Afghans routinely beat invaders...geography,geography,geography
Western way of war is decisive mass shock battle not guerilla war."
Oh you mean like Harminus ambush against the Roman legions? THe contintental armies battles against the British in the 1780s? Or the Boers against the British.Or the Cubans against the Spanish
Spanish irregulars against Napolean who were supported by Wellington.
The French and Russians against the Nazis in WWII.
Whiskey..must you continue to embarass yourself?
One fights conventional wars when one has the ability comnparable or greater than the enemies' but guerilla warfareis more suited to those lacking in men,weapons or logistical support but have an abundance of morale,thumos and knowledge of terrain
This is true all across all cultures and nations
I must say though the Confederates were old fashioned gents. Robert E Lee in the later years of the Civil War when it looked pretty bad for the South, vetoed any guerilla campaigns against the Union army as well as assasination of top Union leaders (including Lincoln) as he considered it quite dishonorable.
ReplyDeleteThe hate crime attack took place on 110th Street in Manhattan.
"Across 110th Street" is the theme song from Tarantino's "Jackie Brown:"
The only movie by Tarantino targeted towards adults and not overgrown adolescent fan boys(True Romance,directed by Tony Scott, is the most atrocious example of the latter)
But thats because it was based on Elmore Leonard material.
"Greece was far smaller than the Persian Empire but far stronger. Western way of war blah blah blah.
ReplyDeleteOh people do talk such rubbish. The Arab tribes were far smaller than The Eastern Roman Empire and the Persian Empire but far stronger. The Semitic way of war ....
OT: A couple months ago, Joe Biden was saying we should ban semiautomatic mag-fed rifles, and that shotguns are the "good" guns, ideal for home defense. Now that some (black - not that there's anything wrong with that) dude has killed a dozen people with a shotgun, where's the pointing and laughing at Joe Biden? Where's the call to ban shotguns? Where's Joe holding an AR-15 up as the responsible alternative to those awful shotguns?
ReplyDeleteOff topic but Cass F'ing Sunstein is on the NSA review panel...
ReplyDelete"Four of the five review panel members previously worked for Democratic administrations: Peter Swire, former Office of Management and Budget privacy director under President Bill Clinton; Michael Morell, Obama's former deputy CIA director; Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism coordinator under Clinton and later for President George W. Bush; and Cass Sunstein, Obama's former regulatory czar. A fifth panel member, Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago, leads a university committee looking to build Obama's presidential library in Chicago and was an informal adviser to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign."
Where are our Generals? What they hell is it going to take?
Looking just at SE Asia: the simulation does not understand mountains. There is a reason why there has never been a complex state in the Vietnamese-Laotian-Thai-Burmese-Chinese highlands. Read The Art of Not Being Governed by James Scott for details.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, interesting, and of course obvious once you have thought about it.
Also, on the Singh attack, the Village Voice calls it a hate crime and also mentions that most of the 25-30 kids who did it were black:
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/09/sikh_columbia_u.php
"Singh also told Buzzfeed that the incident doesn't reflect the Harlem he knows." What a twit. Singh lives in the Disneyfied "Harlem" that has resulted from Columbia's two-decade effort to buy up land and push out residents so that its white and Asian students and faculty can drink macchiatos in peace. I guess there's still some of the old Harlem left! Reminds me of that Paul Bowles story about the college prof being raped and enslaved by the "colorful" Moroccan tribes.
Dr Van Nostrand said...
ReplyDeleteThe hate crime attack took place on 110th Street in Manhattan.
"Across 110th Street" is the theme song from Tarantino's "Jackie Brown:"
The only movie by Tarantino targeted towards adults and not overgrown adolescent fan boys(True Romance,directed by Tony Scott, is the most atrocious example of the latter)
But thats because it was based on Elmore Leonard material.
I always gauge if someone is on the same wavelength as me if they agree with me that Jackie Brown is Tarantino's best work.
DVN asked: Whiskey..must you continue to embarass yourself?
ReplyDeleteHunsdon said: To ask the question, sir, is to answer it. Whiskey's gonna whiskey.
Van Nostrand, if you don’t want to be regarded as a “wily” Hindu, you should probably stop trying to pull one over your ignorant memsahib hosts. The Indian annexation of Hyderabad was just one in a string of opportunistic territorial acquisitions by the Republic of India, post independence, including Junagadh, Kashmir, Goa, and Sikkim by using the military they inherited from the British. None of these places are particularly interesting or of any strategic importance to anyone that matters so they’ve been mostly forgotten in the overall historical narrative with the exception of Kashmir due to its Islamic terrorism.
ReplyDeleteThe Nizam of Hyderabad did prefer independence to joining Pakistan because he was arrogant enough and stupid enough to believe it could be achieved. There was no possibility of Pakistani aid because Hyderabad was surrounded on all sides by India. All of the excuses as to why India invaded Hyderabad are post-facto rationalizations for Patel’s and to a lesser extent Nehru’s irredentism. They wanted the land, and they were going to get it.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If Muslims demand the right to be ruled by Muslims, Hindus should have the same. And considering all the damage the Muslim invasions have done to India, it’s understandable that the natives would want a little payback when the opportunities arose. That said, you don’t need to piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
You're touching on a key point here, though I don't think genocide is the right word for it. A better phrase might be total war. Think of Sherman's March To The Sea, or the Anglo-American bombing of Germany.
ReplyDeleteOur current definition of total war is a pale shadow of its medieval counterpart. Total war was the Mongols whacking in its entirety any village or town that harmed the handful of Mongol troops left to administer the area.
Genghis Khan was a master of guerilla warfare. He rarely, if ever, fought pitched battles and almost always relied on deception (Maskirovka!), feints and surprise to overcome his enemy.
ReplyDeleteThere's some confusion here between mobile and guerrilla warfare. The Mongols were masters of mobile warfare, having perfected it under the tutelage of Genghis Khan. Guerrilla warfare relies on local support for manpower and supplies. It's not particularly mobile, because it's rooted in the area from which it draws sustenance.
"The Wobbly Guy said...
ReplyDeleteIt's not just the Western Way, it's the same all over the world. Guerilla war only became feasible when 'civilised' peoples became less and less accepting of genocide."
But guerilla war was often waged in the past, although it might not have been called that at the time. It might only have come down to us in history under the label of banditry or lawlessness. And while it is true that conquerors in the past may not have necessarily been opposed to genocide on moral grounds, they often had practical reasons for not attempting it: like that it was too difficult to implement, or because they wanted the vanquished to work the land and provide tribute.
"Genghis Khan was a master of guerilla warfare. He rarely, if ever, fought pitched battles and almost always relied on deception (Maskirovka!), feints and surprise to overcome his enemy. He used terror where he deemed necessary, but could be very generous to his enemies who submitted or whose courage he admired. His ranks swelled often by those whom he defeated. Many of his trusted generals were his one-time rivals and competitors.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, Genghis Khan's entire military strategy can be described somewhat simplistically as a highly organized and disciplined large-scale guerilla warfare based on the tremendous speed and discipline advantage his forces enjoyed against his enemies -- provided, of course, that his men were operating on terrain that favored them, the open steppes and deserts of Eurasia."
"Guerrilla Warfare..."
I don't think that term means what you think it means. Either that or Hitler's blitzkrieg made him the guerrilla warfare dude of the 20th century.
Before you try to "teach," it's best to know what you're talking about.
The summary sounds like the worst kind of pseudo-scientific nonsense. Both civilized and uncivilized societies have had high warfare intensity. The ruggedness of terrain doesn't seem to explain much in the real world. Switzerland, the Caucasus and PNG all have rugged terrain. Where are the commonalites?
ReplyDeleteThe quantitative model cited in the summary sounds like the kind of thing economists do. It telegraphs dishonesty.
"Why is there so much variation in the ability of different human populations to construct viable states?"
High-IQ groups mostly come from two types of backgrounds - high latitude farmers and merchants.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, "mass shock" of the finest Teutonic, Polish and Hungarian heavy calvary and men-at-arms could not overcome the numerically inferior nimble Mongol archers on their small ponies centuries later, leading to the complete annihilation of the finest flower of Central European chivalry in a series of battles.
Triumphalist Ancient Mongol mythmaking.
Conquest, not warfare per se, is the key institutional development.
ReplyDelete"...and speaking of jackie brown, robert forster appeared in breaking bad this week."
ReplyDeleteRobert Forster is a member of the Triple Nine Society, which only admits peope with IQs in the top 0.1% of the population. This produces a cutoff of about 150. I wonder what he thinks of Tarantino's IQ.
"Delbrück demonstrated through simple calculations of logistics that the size of the Achaemenid forces could not even be a fraction of what Ancient Greeks claimed. I agree with his assessment that the two sides were likely fairly well matched in number..."
I find that hard to believe. Greece had 3 to 4 million people at that point. The Persian Empire had 15 to 20 million. From what I've read, Alexander brought about 40k troops to Asia. The Spartans stayed home. Alexander wasn't a despot, not at home anyway, so he couldn't conscript large numbers of men. You'd think that the Achaemenids wouldn't have had that problem. And they had a larger demographic base.
"After all, "mass shock" of the finest Teutonic, Polish and Hungarian heavy calvary and men-at-arms could not overcome the numerically inferior nimble Mongol archers..."
Poland and Hungary were relatively small. Russia was definitely hurt by feudal fractiousness. When the Mongols came, Russia was divided into more than a dozen principalities. They failed to mount a united defense. The Mongols conquered them in chunks. The Mongol ruling dynasty was only in its 3rd generation then (Genghis's grandsons), so their fighting force hadn't yet been divided too many times. The Russian ruling dynasty (the Riurikovichi) had already gone through about a dozen generations. This sort of calculus is irrelevant to real states like classical Athens or the Roman and Byzantine Empires, but it's very important for feudal or warlordish "states". A real state is not the property of any individual. It cannot be divided among a ruler's sons.
For a few generations after Genghis the Mongols were in a position similar to that of the Franks under Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious. Temporary unity. This is normally followed by dynastic fractiousness, unless of course a real state gradually comes into being.
The Greek-Persian wars could have easily gone the other way. The battle of Salamis was the decisive battle, the main factor for the Persian loss was that the sheer size of their fleet worked against them, and the foresight of Themistocles to lure them into that small bay.
ReplyDeleteIf Themistocles was not commander that day, Greece could have been conquered, many people want to analyse every outcome of a war with deep insights and complex sociological concepts. Sometimes its just simple luck and the right guy around at the right time. Genghis Khan was similarly an exceptional individual, if he was not born I don't think there would have been a Mongol empire.
Low-level guerilla war is pretty much the standard procedure for tribal societies that are not highly organized. The death rate in New Guinea and African tribal warfare is actually quite high, it's just spread out over months and years.
ReplyDeleteWhat states are really, really good at is organized violence. That's why once they get going they crush tribal societies. Their basic advantage is economies of scale and division of labor; tribes can grow to a membership of few hundred or into the low thousands, while states can grow into the millions.
dammit. I came up with this fifteen years ago, if not longer back. Makes far more sense in explaining IQ differences between various population groups than does the whole "cold weather" hypothesis.
ReplyDeleteThe video pretty much tells the story: the model's many parameters were tweaked until it reasonably resembled a real thing. Oh well, the authors are not the first and certainly won't be last doing this.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDeleteThere's some confusion here between mobile and guerrilla warfare. The Mongols were masters of mobile warfare, having perfected it under the tutelage of Genghis Khan. Guerrilla warfare relies on local support for manpower and supplies. It's not particularly mobile, because it's rooted in the area from which it draws sustenance.
Immobile guerrillas die quickly.
There seems to be some confusion here between Genghis Khan's achievement and those of his sons and grandsons. For much of Genghis Khan's life, he was a fugitive with few followers (but much sympathy and support among disparate tribes in Mongolia as his father was a highly respected chieftain who was unjustly murdered against tribal honor codes).
Until Genghis Khan united all the Mongol ethnic tribes, he almost always fought against heavy odds, was frequently defeated in pitched battles and thus generally relied on lightning raids, deception, surprise, ambuscade and so forth. Guerillas may or may not be mobile (though successful ones are), but they are invariably overmatched in numbers, which is why they don't risk open battles.
The "Blitzkrieg" style of Mongol warfare was not fully evident until the conquest of Khwarism by which time the Mongols had become a highly organized nation battling more sedentary enemies. Mongol lightning wars which made them world famous came much later under the leadership of men like Subotai and Jebe.
JN
Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete"Guerrilla Warfare..."
I don't think that term means what you think it means. Either that or Hitler's blitzkrieg made him the guerrilla warfare dude of the 20th century.
Before you try to "teach," it's best to know what you're talking about.
See my reply to another poster above. Genghis Khan's favorite tactic was to feign panic and retreat, followed by an ambuscade when his pursuer became disorganized and strung out over a long distance.
I don't think Hitler was fond of this techniques. Rather he was an unknowing pupil of Tukhachevki (he of the "Deep Battle" fame among historians of military operational theory).
A number of Hitler's generals proposed this strategy after Stalingrad, of a series of large-scale feigned retreats followed by counterattack/ambushes. Hitler decided otherwise and frittered away his last remaining operational reserves in a series of Deep Battle offensives (including Zitadelle).
Not very Genghis Khan-like at all. But perhaps that's why Hitler didn't die as one of the greatest conquerors in history. In any case, one has to understand the specifics of history and stop assigning terms of "Mongol Blitzkrieg," which are highly anachronistic and inaccurate. They are invariable seen through the prisms of the later centuries.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteTriumphalist Ancient Mongol mythmaking.
On the contrary, the Battle of Liegnitz was celebrated in Central Europe as a great Teutonic-Polish victory, despite the fact that, in reality, it was a tremendous defeat (and for the Mongols it wasn't even the main effort as the latter culminated in the much more dramatic victory at Mohi two days later). Leignitz was taught as such in Germany until the advent of more accurate history in later years.
In fact, F. W. von Mellenthin (of the book "Panzer Battles" fame) writes of his ancestor having been ennobled for his effort in the "victory" of the Battle of Leignitz.
For much of Europeans history, Mongols were reputed to number in the millions and overwhelmed Europeans knights with their vast hordes. In reality, like many other steppe peoples, they were few in number and magnified their force with mobility, firepower (mounted archery) and trickery.
JN
Glossy said...
ReplyDeleteI find that hard to believe. Greece had 3 to 4 million people at that point. The Persian Empire had 15 to 20 million. From what I've read, Alexander brought about 40k troops to Asia. The Spartans stayed home. Alexander wasn't a despot, not at home anyway, so he couldn't conscript large numbers of men. You'd think that the Achaemenids wouldn't have had that problem. And they had a larger demographic base.
You are mistakenly looking at different ancient polities through the prism of 19th Century nationalist European political structure and mobilization capacity.
For now, I will forego discussions about Ancient Greek polities (although that is a very important factor as well). I will simply say that Achaemenid Empire was not a nation-state in the 19th Century European model, but a large ancient empire conquered in chunks by a small group of armed (and mounted) men from a small tribal-national group.
Achaemenids conquered this empire with the skill and courage of their men, not through numbers and, much as the British Raj did later, maintained it with a very small standing force. For a variety of reasons, their internal mobilization capacity considerably lower than their empire's reputed population size would indicate.
Furthermore, you have to remember that, in absence of water transport, ancient armies were fed on the spot and marched loosely compared to highly trained and disciplined modern forces. There was no logistics to speak of in the modern sense. It was simply impossible to move hundreds of thousands of men over long distances, let alone feed them. Careful analyses based on actual consumption rates of men and horses (and draught animals) show that, in absence of an advanced logistics system or an extensive water-borne transport, no more than 40,000-50,000 men could be fed and WATERED over any semblance of distance (and typtically far fewer especially if the force is mostly mounted).
I suggest you read Delbrück's first volume of "History of the Art of War Within the Framework of Political History."
Poland and Hungary were relatively small. Russia was definitely hurt by feudal fractiousness. When the Mongols came, Russia was divided into more than a dozen principalities.
Combined Teutonic-Polish-Hungarian forces were likely larger than the Mongol "recce" frontier force that engaged them. After all, the former had the advantage of fighting on the home turf. To be sure, the Mongols enjoyed many advantages such as mobility, discipline (brought on by Yassa), experience, morale, cohesion and superior generalship, but number and size of their forces were not.
JN
One of the advantages enjoyed by the Mongols (and by all steppe peoples) was that their entire male population was trained to fight on horseback. In settled, farming societies only the aristocracy had that kind of training.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read Mr. Delbrück's work and can't judge his arguments. I thought the Achaemenids built a road network though, that they were kind of a pioneering state on that front. That would have made it easier to provision troops. We know that the Roman army peaked at about half a million, though they were stationed all over the Empire. I don't know how many men the Romans were able to field and feed in one place.
On the contrary
ReplyDeleteNot in the least.
Combined Teutonic-Polish-Hungarian forces were likely larger than the Mongol "recce" frontier force that engaged them.
The Teutonic contingent was an ex post facto misattribution to the defenders' order of battle. The remainder were like numerically comparable to the Mongol presence.
"Greece was far smaller than the Persian Empire but far stronger."
ReplyDeleteIn all the discussion about this it might be worth wondering about the impact of apparently widespread bronze armour in Greece at the time. And apparently the lack of such armour elsewhere (or does anyone know different about that?)
Maybe Greece had some exceptionally productive mines at the time, perhaps due to shipbuilding? Or luck?
"Their armor, also called panoply, was made of full bronze, weighing nearly 32 kilograms (70 lb).
...other contemporary infantry (e.g., Persian) tended to wear relatively light armour, use wicker shields, and were armed with shorter spears..."
Maybe we're just talking heavy metal.
I suggest you read Delbrück's first volume of "History of the Art of War Within the Framework of Political History."
ReplyDeleteDelbrück died in 1929. Wiki says of him:
"Delbrück's conclusions regarding ancient warfare were questionable. in that he tried to show that the figures for armies in antiquity were inflated in the original sources..."
Presumably that criticism reflects the modern consensus, and not just some Wikipedian's prejudice.
Cennbeorc
ReplyDeleteDOQ:Van Nostrand, if you don’t want to be regarded as a “wily” Hindu, you should probably stop trying to pull one over your ignorant memsahib hosts.
DVN: If you have to make a snide comment,it would help if you get the terminology right. Memsahib refers to ladies of high stature.At one point during the Raj they did refer to white women but not exclusively.And furthermore most of the readers here are men
So already you are down 2 with regard to factual accuracy
Furthermore you have addressed zero of my retorts regarding the biases of BBC
DOQ: The Indian annexation of Hyderabad was just one in a string of opportunistic territorial acquisitions by the Republic of India, post independence, including Junagadh, Kashmir, Goa, and Sikkim by using the military they inherited from the British.
DVN:"in a string of opportunistic territorial acquisitions by the Republic of India"
Thus claimed the apologist for Chinese hyper expansionism
DOQ: None of these places are particularly interesting or of any strategic importance to anyone that matters so they've been mostly forgotten in the overall historical narrative with the exception of Kashmir due to its Islamic terrorism.
DVN: Furthermore ,how can you make the fantastic argument that Kashmir with its borders with China and Pakistan,Sikkim with its border with China and Junagadh with its proximity to Pakistan werent strategic and important?
Even by Chinese propaganda standards your argument is pretty lame.
As for Goa, it has historically been one of the more important ports coveted by the Bahmanis,Vijayanagar Empire,Moghuls,British and Portuguese(who got it in the end).
It is also quite absurd for Indian motorists driving from northern to southern India to pass through a Western relic of an empire which is officially foreign territory. Such nonsense had to stop.
Hey just because you didnt have the stones to take back Macau and didnt take HK from the imperialists dont get all catty when some other country offers them a well deserved humiliation.
DOQ:The Nizam of Hyderabad did prefer independence to joining Pakistan because he was arrogant enough and stupid enough to believe it could be achieved. There was no possibility of Pakistani aid because Hyderabad was surrounded on all sides by India.
DVN: Nizam was open to anything that would keep him in power.Also it is completely silly to assume Pakistan couldnt help Hyderabad because it was surrounded by India.Indian Muslims were still smarting from the partition violence and quite a few were more than willing to help Hyderabad to give India a bloody nose with Pakistans help. THis is well documented.
DOQ: All of the excuses as to why India invaded Hyderabad are post-facto rationalizations for Patel’s and to a lesser extent Nehru’s irredentism. They wanted the land, and they were going to get it.
DVN: Hyderabad,Junagadh,Goa,Kashmir and to a lesser extant Sikkim were all parts of India mentioned by different names more than 2 millenia ago in a supra national state called Bharatavarsha. We had just been vivisected and were not about to hand over such strategic lands in the awaiting hands of either Pakistan or China
DOQ:Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If Muslims demand the right to be ruled by Muslims, Hindus should have the same. And considering all the damage the Muslim invasions have done to India, it’s understandable that the natives would want a little payback when the opportunities arose. That said, you don’t need to piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
DVN: I really dont need any lectures on morality regarding territorial expansionism from a Chinese apologist for the invasion of Tibet.
India has a much stronger claim to aforementioned lands and heck a good chunk of Tibet than does China.
I would like to remind you again that post independence India was vivisected while China expanded. So again we don't need moral lectures from those who took over countries and regions the size of small continents and butchered 10s of millions of their own in the process.
Glossy said...
ReplyDeleteOne of the advantages enjoyed by the Mongols (and by all steppe peoples) was that their entire male population was trained to fight on horseback. In settled, farming societies only the aristocracy had that kind of training.
Nomadic and semi-nomadic societies almost always have much higher mobilization rates than sedentary empires ruling over agrarian peasants. However, such tribes and clans are usually very low in population size because the nomadic lifestyle does not support high population density. Only intensive agriculture can support high density human existence by generating surplus food.
I haven't read Mr. Delbrück's work and can't judge his arguments. I thought the Achaemenids built a road network though, that they were kind of a pioneering state on that front. That would have made it easier to provision troops.
Ancient road networks of this sort were used for communications (i.e. messengers) and troop movement, not logistics. If you knew anything about draught animals, you would realize that within days the feeding requirements of draught animals would eat up what they transported.
Troops of this time period could conceivably carry a few days worth of provisions. After that, they had to be fed and, more importantly, watered locally, which is why ancient battles took place at the same places and along the same marching routes time and time again. There were only a handful of routes that could even sustain 10,000-20,000 men, let alone 40,000-50,000.
Don't forget that when Alexander the Great over-recruited local mercenaries, they died in droves through Gedrosia due to the lack of local provisions and water.
We know that the Roman army peaked at about half a million, though they were stationed all over the Empire. I don't know how many men the Romans were able to field and feed in one place.
Actual Roman and Latin troops were considerably fewer in number, as they specialized as heavy infantry. Half or more of "Roman" troops were typically auxiliaries or federates (various forms of allies), many local or otherwise recruited elsewhere and settled somewhere else.
They were dispersed throughout an enormous expanse of territories and many units only existed on paper (or papyrus or whatever), mainly as subsidy for local gentry. Actual number of troops that could be mobilized throughout the empire was likely a small fraction of that half a million number.
Romans were perhaps the greatest road builders and ship transporters of the ancient times with the finest engineering capability and even they could rare move more than four legions at a time (two Roman, two allied), usually called a "consular" army of roughly 20,000 to 30,000 men.
Things were easier with ship transport and especially easier when going over rich, agricultural lands (which is why Africa, Egypt, the Levant and Mesopotamia were such tempting targets for invaders as they could be fed comfortably from abundant local resources). Othewise, in rough terrain with low agricultural yield, only a few invaders could be supported for any length of time.
JN
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteThe Teutonic contingent was an ex post facto misattribution to the defenders' order of battle. The remainder were like numerically comparable to the Mongol presence.
The presence of Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Leignitz is disputed, but there were large contingents of German knights and men-at-arms as well as troops from other militant orders.
Troops numbers cannot be ascertained with certainty and it is not a bad guess to assume, unless evidenced to the contrary, that two siders were typically evenly matched (except in exceptional cases, there wouldn't be battles if great disparity in numbers existed).
In this case, however, there is considerable evidence that Mongol forces were smaller. By how much we would never know.
JN
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteIn all the discussion about this it might be worth wondering about the impact of apparently widespread bronze armour in Greece at the time. And apparently the lack of such armour elsewhere (or does anyone know different about that?)
Maybe Greece had some exceptionally productive mines at the time, perhaps due to shipbuilding? Or luck?
Undoubtedly the availability of metal mattered and mattered a great deal. However, the contrasting styles of warfare between Ancient Greeks and Achaemenids were largely due to the differing terrain and political structure of their homelands.
I would like to note, however, that bronze armour was NOT "widespread." Metal armour was exceedingly expensive and even among Greeks was not worn by the vast majority of troops.
JN
Sometimes I see a movie that depicts ancient battles in a fashion that would indicate armies in the 100s of thousands. Amusing stuff. Just a few weeks ago I was at centurylink field at a Sounders game with almost 70k fans, easily 50 percent more people than a full consular army.
ReplyDeletePeople, today, just don't comprehend what effective communication and transportation do to facilitate things.
Delbrück died in 1929. Wiki says of him:
ReplyDelete"Delbrück's conclusions regarding ancient warfare were questionable. in that he tried to show that the figures for armies in antiquity were inflated in the original sources..."
Presumably that criticism reflects the modern consensus, and not just some Wikipedian's prejudice.
Cennbeorc
This does NOT reflect the modern consensus, so long as the modern consensus implies something greater than Anglophone classicists who, in turn, were highly influenced by neo-classicists and Romanticists.
One can do the same calculations Delbrück did and come away with similar conclusions. He was merely one of the first to use scientific measurements and experiments to demonstrate the impossibility of literary, narrative ancient claims.
Unfortunately, the study of the ancients in the Anglosphere is dominated by classicists who tend to be overly respectful to textual, that is to say, narrative, sources.
If American classicists were as skeptical of Greek and Roman claims as American historians of China are about ancient Chinese textual sources, we would all have much more accurate grasp of the number involved.
As much as I enjoy Professor Victor Davis Hanson's editorials, his forte is clearly literary, not scientific.
JN
One thing I should also note about the Mongols was that, by all accounts, they maintained an excellent spying network often via foreign merchants they took into service.
ReplyDeleteMongols rarely, if ever, blundered into area in whose local circumstances they were ignorant.
Like Romans, the Mongols were also quite adpative of outside knowledge, personnel and technologies they encountered.
At the Battle of Mohi, for example, they suffered considerably at the hands of Hungarian crossbowmen guarding Sajo river, so they used siege engine builders they recruited from conquered, sedentary civilizations to clear the riverbanks of the crossbowmen at a distance, then proceeded to make a crossing.
JN
The issue of the size of ancient armies reminded me of the controversy about the population of the city of Rome during the imperial period. Most modern textbooks and reference works give 1 to 1.5 million. McEvedy and Jones in their 1978 Atlas of World Population History said this was ridiculous and argued, if I remember correctly, for 100k to 150k. I don't know who's right.
ReplyDeleteBack to armies: In 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia with 450k troops. Obviously, this was before the spread of railroads. Did Russia have a better road network in 1812 than the Roman Empire in 200 AD? I doubt it, though this would be interesting to study in detail. European Russia's population desnity in 1812 was probably comparable to that of the Roman and Achaemenid Emires in their heydays. Western Europe though had a much higher population density in 1812 than in 200 AD. I don't know to what extent Napoleon relied on supplies from the West for the provisioning of his troops.
Obviously, Napoleon's efforts to feed his troops in Russia eventually failed. But this failure only occurred on his way back. For several months the French appeared to be doing fine. And there were almost half a million of them. Were the supply conditions really that different from ancient ones?
War in Human Civilization covers the same subject. I'm one-third of the way through. It's primary strength, so far, is that it offers a comprehensive, up-to-date historical survey of everything we know about warfare in hunter-gatherer, primitive horicultural, and pre-state (tribal) agricultural and pastoral societies. The book does suffer from the old journalistic formula however: tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.
ReplyDelete"Greece was far smaller than the Persian Empire but far stronger. Western way of war is decisive mass shock battle not guerilla war."
ReplyDeleteSince then, Greeks are pretty much slaves to Roman or Turk for 2000 years. Yes, Greek history was really history of serial defeats in most wars.
Even with Persian, Greece was invaded twices like USA did to middle east.
Greek problem is lack of compromise or cooperation among themself, compared to turks.
Certainly Greeks are very good at deusion by labeling defeat as victory.
Just look at personality of most Greek, compared to Turk. You know why.
Turchin is definitely worth following. Admittedly, I'm into old-school cybernetics and stuff, but Turchin's got a legitimate new thing going.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I had this Turchin paper printed out and on my desk this morning. A young statistician here was curious about it and it led to a really cool conversation :)
By the way, anyone here ever read Grousset? Yeah, kinda rhymes.
Glossy said...
ReplyDeleteBack to armies: In 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia with 450k troops. Obviously, this was before the spread of railroads.Levee en masse did not exist in most ancient societies because political, ideological, social, cultural and economic developments required for such mass conscription did not exist in the ancient world (except in very narrow cases, such as dire emergencies and even then limited to the emergency areas as such) and, in fact, did not exist until the advent of the modern nation-state and its attendant ideology of nationalism.
Achaemenids, like other tribal peoples later on (with very few exceptions like the Manchus), did not "scale up" the size of their armies as their empire grew. Their riches multiplied as their tributary territories grew, but they could not simply enlarge their armies from conquered populations for a variety of obvious factors. It's a childish fantasy to think that a Darius or a Xerxes commanded "conscripts" from Nubia to India like some Louis XIV-like absolute monarchs (though, no doubt, certain novelties and curiosities as well as widely available mercenaries such as Scythian horsemen were recruited).
Usually, their core of their army consisted of the aristocracy of their national homeland (mounted archers/javelineers and their attendants doubling as light skirmishers) augmented by local mercenaries recruited where they campaigned.
Did Russia have a better road network in 1812 than the Roman Empire in 200 AD? I doubt it, though this would be interesting to study in detail.European Russia of 1812 certainly had a much better transportation and communication network than ancient Greece of the Greco-Persian war period. So were things like food preservation, hygene, medical care, etc. Furthermore, a whole conceptual scientific paradigm existed of feeding and housing troops that did not exist in the ancient times. On the whole, human being lived in a much more organized manner. Cadastral surveys required for this sort of mass mobilization did not exist among most tribal cultures even as they ruled over vast territories (of course, it was a different story with the likes of Romans and the Chinese and later Normans).
European Russia's population desnity in 1812 was probably comparable to that of the Roman and Achaemenid Emires in their heydays.
That depends entirely on what specific areas of European Russia vis a vis Ancient Rome/Achaemenid Empire. Furthermore, agricultural productivity rates, particularly the availability of surplus foodstuffs, were vastly different in the ancient times compared to the modern period. Except in a very handful of areas (Africa, Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia, for example), large-scale surplus foodstuffs required for quartering a large body of soldiers did not exist in the Ancient Mediterranean world.
I don't know to what extent Napoleon relied on supplies from the West for the provisioning of his troops.
Napoleon was rather famed for having his troops live off the land contrary to the logistic doctrine of the previous generation whose military theory he shattered. That worked well enough in the rich West, but when the Russians engaged in scorched earth, it turned out rather badly indeed.
Obviously, Napoleon's efforts to feed his troops in Russia eventually failed. But this failure only occurred on his way back. For several months the French appeared to be doing fine. And there were almost half a million of them.
You got the causation backward. The retreat did not cause the famine of the army. The famine of Grande Armee forced the retreat.
Were the supply conditions really that different from ancient ones?
Yes. It wasn't simply technological difference. There were enormous conceptual differences that enabled mass conscription and mass supply even in the post-Westphalian world.
JN
Kibernetika said...
ReplyDeleteBy the way, anyone here ever read Grousset? Yeah, kinda rhymes.
"The Empire of the Steppes"? Of course! It is an essential reading for anyone interested in the much neglected study of the history of the Eurasian steppes, that vast conduit through which so many historical continental pressures exerted themselves upon the settled peoples of the rimlands.
JN
Some random points...
ReplyDeleteRegarding Persia, wasn't one reason for the success of the Achaemenids (I guess it was) and the creation of their empire that they were probably the first 'settled' society to adopt large-scale mounted cavalry, probably from their Central Asian adversaries, as opposed to chariots? (Was this the first Darius?)
Regarding Napoleon's invasion of Russia, there is apparently solid evidence that his army was suffering from a Typhus epidemic before it even reached Russia. That famous graph of the size of his army versus time might basically be Typhus ("During Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in 1812, more French soldiers died of typhus than were killed by the Russians.") Napoleon's may have had better insight into feeding and caring for troops than the ancient Greeks, but it wasn't good enough. It sounds like his medical stuff was at a loss about the situation.
The graph of the size of Napoleon's army over time during the 1812 invasion of Russia is one of the most famous graphs of all time. Wikipedia has a version:
ReplyDelete"Charles Minard's 1869 chart showing the number of men in Napoleon’s 1812 Russian campaign army, their movements, as well as the temperature they encountered on the return path"
The army seems to shrink at an almost constant rate. You can hardly detect the battles. It might well be the graph of a Typhus epidemic.
Gives a real appreciation for how few made it back.