History of Warfare: A link between tech and mil models?

[roquijad]

Hi everybody.
I just finished reading a great book "A History of Warfare" by english military historian, John Keegan. I found the book so great that I made a summary of it and posted it at the clash web page (look at the "news"). Keegan analysis shows how culture plays a role in military tech development and in war practices. I'm sure this summary can help the tech and military models and also encourage deeper relationships between them and the social model (culture).

Read the summary! http://clash.apolyton.net/

Rodrigo

[Henrique Duarte]

Hi Rodrigo

First I would like to say that I really liked your appreciation of the book.
I´ve also read it something like a year ago, a translation also :-).
At the time I was a bit turned off by some of Keegans ideas, well mostly is appreciation of the reasons that lead to greco-roman warfare style, still IMO his "large scale" appreciation of the history of warfare is quite enlightning.
I specially agree with the tremendous importance of nomadic/sendentary culture clashes in the history of warfare and, as you so well said, clash will be worse off if it doesn´t simulate strong nomadic civs.

Still I would like to hear your opinions on the point made by Keegan on the advent of close-combat warstyle in greece (something that makes you remind of Shaka the Zulu rise in southern Africa). Perhaps something does trigger that bloody warfare style, yet the phalanx and legionary ways of fighting are IMO more a socio-political subproduct (result of a large middle-class group ready to raise arms and some other reasons) - notice that celts and germans where pretty bloody themselves?

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

Thanks for the excellent summary. I also read the book about a year ago, and found a lot of potentially useful things for the project in it. I just have one comment that I want to make on the "Western style of war". I fully accept the premise that there is a cultural basis to how people fight, and what the limits of "enlightened warfare" are. But I think that total warfare is basically inevitable, because of a very simple dynamic, and that if the Western nations hadn't done at somebody else would have.

I believe that the "level" of warfare in a particular place and time is always subject to escalation. All it requires is a culture or group that thinks that their winning is more important than the prevailing set of norms governing warfare. Such a group will "raise the bar" for how far they are willing to go to achieve their aims. If the other side doesn't match them, they will lose. So in either case the victor of the struggle will have practiced the heightened level of warfare. If this sort of heightened warfare goes on for a very limited time, it is very possible that the people will be revolted by it, and have a strong desire to set the clock back to the previous form. However, if it goes on long enough, I think it would be, "locked in" to the culture and would be the new acceptable standard for warfare.

So why doesn't total warfare always appear? And fairly quickly? There is IMO a counterbalancing tendency that if the cultures in a particular area tend to completely fight each other to exhaustion, someone from outside the area can come in and beat the remainder easily. So the inevitable rise of total warfare will only come when the ones practicing it to have a technological or material superiority sufficiently large over everyone else that this isn't possible.

I just made this up on the spot, and I bet it shows I'm really into complex evolving systems, and very complicated behavior that comes out of them, I bet you can tell...

[Lord God Jinnai]

There are other factors that prevent the bar from being raised. Religion is a major factor as in Europe the strength of the Christian Church is considered one reason the middle ages had as "few" battles as the did and those battles they did have were generally not as savage as they could have been.

Basically it is the cultural, religious and ethical norms that keep it in play because if someone goes out of those norms they are usally shunned by their neighbors and may infact find there would-be captors with new allies.

[Henrique Duarte]

Just one other comment on "western style" warfare.

Picking Marks "escalation" argument, I believe that escalation is inevitable as long as there are enough cultures interacting with each other. I have at least two arguments for this, they don´t give a autosuficient explanation but are, IMO, very strong arguments.

1)European geography - the very obvious relation between socio-political diversity in europe and its geographic characteristics - it has a very irregular coastline (no comparison with other continents) and varied mountain ranges that promote strong autonomous feelings among the locals - by the way greece is just a small scale europe, diabolic geography breed inumerous squabling city states that where very difficult to unite under a single political power dispite having several cultural affinities (language and religion)
This opposes the more stable tendency of rule in Asia, where large empires where favored because of fewer geographic obstacles.

2) Rise and fall of empires - when empires grow there is a tendency to grow so much that they no longer fell the competitive edge driving them to constant tech/military inovation, there just aren´t casus beli strong enough to drive them to war with others, enventually their "barbaric neighbours" catch up in tech or get that little chance and stomp right over them (the most stunning case is the one of China in mid XIV-XV centuries, in the XIV they actually sent 100s of ships in scientific explorations !!!, when political priorities changed (court squabling) not even science drived them out of their frontiers, in fact they downright stoped contact with the rest of the world!)

Note that empires are also subject to geographic limitations, one might argue that no matter how much the romans tried to conquer parthia they just couldn´t handle the governation of too big an empire.

Bottom line - I believe that cultural diversity and interaction is the probably the primary factor controling tech development.
Some ways to try and simulate this (at least the military issue)
Military acquire a mil tech, by fighting regularly, (and getting kicked in the but now and then :-)) they see their skill in that tech rising much faster than just by investing resources in that tech.
Another way is through simple combat, whenever you meet in battle with an enemy with better tech there is a chance that you acquire a mil tech (preferably the one most accesible to your culture), the chance is bigger when you win :-). This way the inevitable confrontation of neighbours will tend (read again TEND) to "equalise" their military techs (as historically happened in several cases ex: romans and germans or american natives and europeans)

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

I don't disagree with what you say, my argument is more applicable when different cultures (frequently with different religions) collide.

Henrique:

I agree with most of what you say, except at the very end. You say that my side's military technology is more likely to change when we fight with someone who has a new technology, and win. I think it is exactly the opposite, that we are more likely to embrace a new technology when we lose. Military establishments throughout history have been extremely conservative in terms of adoption of new technology. It is IMO only when they are beaten decisively, and up against a wall that they are willing to try new things.

[Henrique Duarte]

Mark

You are right, loss does promote change in military establishment. So it would be better to give loss a higher chance of acquiring new tactics. But I give emphasis to loss promoting change in things like doutrine, organization and battle tactics, because if you beat an enemy with a wonderfull new war device you will go and get it, specially if you win :-). You might not use it in the best way (remembering allied use of armor in the beggining of WW2) but you will surely use it.
Perhaps we should distinguish between new equipment and new "doutrine/tactical" knowledge. We should also take care if the use of new equipment, by itself, implies use of new doutrines (what to do then? maybe allow you to have the knowledge of muskets, like japan, and still not being able to use them in the army if it refuses to incorporate the adequate doutrinal changes?)

[Henrique Duarte]

Forgot to add a last argument

The reason behind the doutrine/equipment relation is in the case of things like acquiring a better sword (roman gladius-Iberic short sword) when you are already familiar with swordfighting, this kind of "familiar new techs" should be much easierly incorporated than more "exotic ones", even if you maintain that defeat is the strongest motivation (I confess I have given it a second thought - but still how will I get my hands on that wonderfull portuguese musket if I keep getting kicked in the but?)

[Lord God Jinnai]

Escalation:

I think u might be right marrk. I just remebered back to a discovery Channel special i watches a few years ago in which they studied how war has evolved.

Anyway the girst wars were lown-violence, instead they had 2 groups meat in a place then they basically taunted the other side for a while until finally there was the physical part of the battle which lastred usually until first blood (never death). After that it was over. It wasn't until some of the nomadic tribes in the mountainous regions came down and attacked by killing everyone that warfare changed to anything like it is today and bvcause the others didn't want to die, they adopted this new form of warfare.

Also u can even see modern day examples of this. FE Vietnam gurrila warfare has been adopted and used to some ectent by many smaller countries around the world.

Spreading of Military Techs:
U wouldn't ness have to be in the war to see the outcome of it and understand that a new doctrine or device is extremely useful.

Also there are plenty of examples of loosing civs u adopted their victors methods. The egyptians adopted the use of chariots from the Hittites after they were slaughtered. They also used iron weapons once they had good supplies of iron.

The question is, which one should be more influental in determining if a civ adopts the new ideas. Generally if they loose it is the case, or if they are loosing. Also new docrine/tactics might be developed for differnt situations FE the US Civil WAr still used Napoleonic Tactics in an era where gunfire was much more accurate and the amount of people killed forced them to learn new tactics.

Another situation is in WWII when the US lost all of its battleships, yet still had plenty of carriers of in the Pacific. Since the old doctrine relied on the battleships, a new doctrine had to be created.

[roquijad]

What's really funny about all this is everbody seems to have read the book!
Anyway, I think my summary has at least started a thread about the importance of culture in military practices and development. As far as I can see, we seem to
agree about culture playing a part in military development, so hopefully the social model could "feed" the tech development model in some way. Unfortunately Manu seems to have been gone with the 20th century!

Also, we also seem to agree in the importance of better modeling for nomadic civs. Probably the most difficult task is modeling the economy of nomadic tribes since the notion of province kind of disappears for the mobility factor. The govt model I'm preparing is focused in settled civs specially when talking about empires and their administration (provinces again), so prob I'll have to make some changes to include nomad civs. Maybe for a start we need a brilliant idea for "nomad province" that needs to be similiar enough to a normal one so the econ and govt model won't need too many changes. Any clever guy around there?

[Richard Bruns]

There should be few problems with nomad provinces. From what I have seen of the economic model, it is quite flexible. A nomad province is simply a province without improvements. Other differences would be:

Nomad provinces can support people fairly well (depending on terrain) but only a few people can be supported. Nomadic lifestyles require much more land than farming ones.

Nomad provinces suffer less from natural disasters. Nomads move and adapt better than settled people.

Culture differences, easily modeled with the standard social model.

Unless there is something I don't know about, nomad provinces can fit just fine into the current model. At our level of abstraction, it can be modeled by seting a population limit equivalent to the amount of wildlife present, and changing the culture. The province can supply armies, research, and a few trade goods and taxes, but no large scale materials production.

Basically, nomad provinces should be a good choice in ancient times when population is low, but as your civ grows and advances more you have to settle down and farm more. We should be able to make nomad and settled procinces coexist within the civ. The Mongols and Scythians did this, with some developed areas and some nomadic citizens.

[Mark_Everson]

Richard:

I'd been planning on handling nomads just as a special type of military unit. But handling them in provinces might work too. It would certainly make handling trade with nomads easier... I'll need to think about specifics, but its a great idea.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Plus, although few, the first cities were acutally based around trade routes before the invention of agriculture.

[Richard Bruns]

I, too, have read Keegan's works and learned a lot from them. While the military aspects of the technology system are not yet very detailed, culture does play a large part in the tech model. Especially in ancient times, much of the research is handled automatically to represent the work of your people and technology diffusion from other civilizations. Societal factors are important in determining where the research goes. So a nomadic people would naturally learn Mobile Tectics while a settled civ would develop Infantry Tactics first.

There might be a problem with being historically accurate about the style of warfare. Most players will expect their armies to practice total war and kill all enemies they encounter. A historically accurate limited war will annoy some people. This is another case where it would probably be good to give players an option during game setup.

Thanks for your work on this, Rodrigo.

[Henrique Duarte]

Just like to comment the effects of natural disasters on nomadic populations.

Natural disasters have three main effects -
1) direct population death
2) infrastructure destruction
3) indirect population death
effect one relates to death caused directly by the disastery - that unfortunate fellow was standing on the fault line :-(... this death toll is not as big as we usually think , with some exceptions (particularly tremendous disasters) its in the <1% .
effect two is rather simple the more you built the more can endup destroyed.
effect three is usually related to famine resulting from the infrastructures dependency of the pop (if farming structures are destroyed, crops lost etc)

Nomadic civs rarely suffer much with natural disasters because they do not rely on infrastructures :-), only when a disaster as a direct effect on things like pasture land that they are affected - and then they simply gather their stuff and move as farway as they need to.