#war studies

While destructive, war is a generative force like no other. It is of fundamental significance for politics, society, and culture. War occupies historic junctures and switchpoints, the birth and demise of eras. There is little in social life not touched by war, as its presence in the spheres of gender, economy, and technology indicates.”

Why does the Anglo-American academy lack a discipline of “war studies”?

Explore the ISA Journals’ Annual Convention Collection on this year’s theme, “Power of Rules and Rule of Power.”

I tend to find a lot of this regarding Alexander's conquests especially with Egypt, but with other Asian regions too. (I also read a lot of this regarding the Roman takeover of Egypt, arguing the people were indifferent to the Ptolemies being overthrown). To the point were I see this becoming a trope of sorts? I'm not disputing that many were happy to see the Persians go, but I can't help but find the "people were indifferent to their rulers" approach de-politicizing and even reductive of the role the people played & their beliefs. I also wonder how much is propaganda to benefit the winners.

Winning the Hearts and Minds… e.g., avoiding insurgency after conquest

An interesting question, and observation, but I fear it may be projecting modern assumptions/ ideas (neither is quite the right word) backwards in time. First, I’ll list what some of the accidental assumptions are, then delve into them. But this is a good question in that it lets us discuss some quite fundamental differences between then and now.

First, it can be easy to forget (because it’s hard to imagine) how little information about the larger world the average person had, especially when living away from urban centers.

Second, the query perhaps over-assumes the political impact individuals could have in most areas. Obviously, this varied.

Third, the role of religion—and perceptions of who has the approval of the gods—shouldn’t be underestimated in who wins/loses and general acceptance of the outcome.

Fourth, what probably affected people most were immediate impacts from combat itself. This, again, would have varied, depending on how close one was to the conflict (or invading army). If caught in the middle of it, it could be absolutely catastrophic, from death to rape to destruction of homes/fields, to later starvation when armies requisitioned your winter stores, etc. (I find this detail is often overlooked in analyses.)

These are each relatively complex things that I can’t go into in detail, but we can take a closer look at each. That said…I tend to agree with those assessments referred to in the ask. For the average person not near the locus of combat/disruption, they probably experienced relatively little change in their day-to-day. Therefore, they may not have cared. But that is a very broad generalization that must be tweaked depending on various factors, not least “who” was the victor. For instance, Alexander changed prior (Persian) administrative structures relatively little. But the Ptolemies could be ruthless in taxes, especially outside Alexandria. Earlier, Persia had definitely been a lighter overlord than the neo-Assyrians or neo-Babylonians. There was a reason every time a new Assyrian king came to power, the provinces rebelled.

Let’s start with Point One: people, especially in rural areas, might not know much of what was going on in the “wider world.” If travel in antiquity was more prevalent than many modern people assume, travel was also a perk of wealth. And travelers tended to show up in/pass through urban areas where they could find lodging, or in seaside towns. That meant news was slower than a snail in the hinterlands. I’m quite sure there were places in Persia that didn’t even realize Alexander was there until months, perhaps even a year or more, after he’d moved on!

The ancient world was a rural world. Even at the height Rome’s power, only (maybe) 40% of the population lived in urban centers. Compare that to 83% of the modern US population living in urban centers, 84.5% in Britain, and—for contrast—65% of the Chinese population, and 74% of Russia. But 92% of the Japanese do.

In short, throughout most of antiquity, more people did NOT live in cities and may have seen only a handful of foreigners in their lives. They rarely moved more than 5-10 miles from where they were born.

This is important to understand, when it comes to reactions to a change in “overlord-ship.” They probably rarely/never even saw the “overlord.” It would have been locals who assessed and collected taxes, then took those taxes to be paid. Also, remember that quite late, many taxes were still paid “in kind.” E.g., in non-monetary forms.

So that may help set the stage for why historians say the average person probably didn’t notice a lot of change—or care. Unless there was a sharp shift in how high taxes ran.

That brings us to Point Two, about the impact of individuals on political structures. In MOST places, the average person had little-to-no say in politics. Even in some of the democratic poleis of ancient Greece, much of the voting was done by urbanites, not rural farmers. And there were many more rural farmers. This is the opposite of the US today, where one big complaint about the US Senate, with 2 senators per state—not based on population—is that it gives an outsized voice to swathes of very rural and unpopulated areas. But that system was created in an age when rural areas were much more populated. They are not about to give up their statistical advantage, so altering the Constitution to fix it after 200+ years of change is out of reach.

And that’s just in the democratic poleis of Greece, such as Athens. Outside of Magna Graecia, democracy was a unicorn. Even Rome was a republic. In Lydia, in Persia, in Egypt…yeah, no.

That said, a couple other areas do suggest greater “citizen” input, and these are peoples who famously resisted Alexander: the Scythian groups of the Steppes, the Sogdian and Baktrian populations, and especially the independent tribes/populations of the S. Indus River areas. Alexander cut a bloody swathe down the Indus because the people. Would. Not. Submit.

(This is an area of Alexander studies, btw, that I think needs much more research, but requires reading not just Alexander sources, but Indian ones as well, and weighing the historiography of each. There’s an unfortunate divide that’s largely a function of geography and language in the modern world. It’s not dissimilar to the issues with Mesopotamian sources on Alexander, but in that case, not many ANE/Mesopotamian sources have survived. India is much richer in evidence, I understand. A new book IS due out soon from Brill: How the Brahmins Won: from Alexander to the Guptas. Being Brill, it won’t be something flaky. But, also being Brill, it’s godawful expensive: $228.)

Anyway, resistance to conquest by Alexander or anybody else depends on the POLITICAL structures of the place conquered. So the Greeks resisted Macedon generally. They were used to making their own political decisions. In contrast, areas of Persian that weren’t accustomed to independent rule accepted a change in ruler more easily. But once you get further east (and north) that changes. Also, in Italy, it would have been difference. And certainly, Rome experienced LOTS of problems dealing with the Germans! And Celts/Gauls before them. Egypt also typically resisted because while it had a god-king, it also didn’t like foreign rule. They resisted Alexander less because they knew he’d go away again, and he got rid of the Persians. But in the end, they got the Ptolemies who weren’t any better (and arguably worse).

So Alexander had something of an advantage moving into areas that were largely not accustomed to a great deal of autonomy in rule (with some select exceptions).

This leads into Point Three, the role of religion in ancient warfare. For many ancient peoples, the ones ruling them had that role by “divine right.” This concept of a divinely chosen king is very, very old in Mesopotamia. The earliest Sumerian texts talk about kingship first descending on Eridu “from heaven.” If this sort of divinely selected kingship isn’t as extreme as Egyptian notions of pharoah as a living god, most areas Alexander marched through had such ideas. “As above, so below.” Ergo, victory in war indicated victory in heaven and divine favor. Alexander winning meant the gods were on his side. Who’s going to argue with the gods?

Yet it's also typically religion (or higher taxes/mistreatment) that drove resistance, resentment, or rebellion against a new king/conqueror. This is WHY Alexander was generally very careful in his respect for local gods and religious practices. Actions by the one conquering could reverse a perception that the gods were on the conqueror’s side. For example, the Persians might have been more inclined to accept Alexander if he hadn’t torched their ceremonial city with its fire temples, etc. He really had no idea what he was doing, and his message was half for Greece anyway. But he lacked a real grasp of Persian symbolism and so, put his foot in it. He’d been much better handling Egypt.

In any case, when looking for ideological reasons for resistance, that would come from religion more than political theory, at least in most places.

And finally, Point Four. What is most likely to generate resistance is when an invading army causes LOSS. This loss can be very literal: as in loss of life, loss of property, or destruction of farmland and with it, livelihood. Or it can be a bit more theoretical, as in loss of (prior) independence, loss of potential trade and trade markets, or threats to alliances that benefit the people.

Resentment owing to death and destruction of towns is fairly straightforward. This is why, when a people choose to resist, Alexander, the Romans, the Assyrians earlier, etc., may enact quite shocking (to moderns) executions of whole populations: certainly of menfolk down to children, but sometimes of everybody (the Romans were noted for that). They know that X people won’t ever forgive them, so they elect to eliminate the problem for at least a generation, or they just exterminate the people altogether and use the land to reward their own soldiers or allies. A lot of the land the Roman consul Marius passed out to his soldiers was just such war-booty.

But there are other, less obvious forms of loss that generate resentment and rebellion.

For instance, armies march on their stomachs, and until recently, invading armies typically ate off the land. This is why Memnon’s proposed strategy of burning crops to freeze-out Alexander when he first invaded would have worked. He had only about a month’s rations. Yet Memnon’s advice to burn the fields wasn’t taken precisely because it would have devastated the farmers in that region of Asia Minor: destroying their stores for the coming year (as well as taxes due). Local satraps would have had to pay to import food to replace the loss, or let their people starve.

They elected to ignore Memnon instead, and, well, the rest is literally history.

Ancient armies couldn’t bring supplies far for a variety of logistical reasons. If the army is simply passing through and they’re wealthy enough, the impact on the locals may not be that great: e.g., they don’t deplete the needed stores and pay for what they take. But if they aren’t rich enough (and even sometimes when they are), they just take it. If they wind up stationed in an area a while, the burden becomes too great on the local populations. The army is, well, an army. With weapons. Locals have a choice: resist and die now or give them food and die later from starvation. This is precisely why resistance wasn’t necessarily immediate; people hoped X army would leave before their storage hit critical lows when fighting back became the only option.

This is one reason you’ll read especially in Alexander’s early campaigns that he grants this or that town or place exemption from taxes. He doesn’t want to anger the locals who are providing him supplies. (Not always with pay.) He was also able to avoid resentment in many cases just because he never stayed put long. But when he did stay a while, as at Tyre, it created logistical difficulties.

This is the sort of detail our histories don’t dwell on much, so we’re not always sure how armies are getting supplies, or it’s tucked away into the corners of other descriptions. “The so-and-so people sent gifts and rations…” etc.

Similarly, when armies or conquerors interfered with established trade ties, this could also arouse resistance…as Alexander found in Sogdiana. The people there wanted an open (permeable) border in order to continue trading (and intermarrying with) steppe tribes to the north. Alexander started out trying to impose a closed border with hill forts to police it. THAT is one chief reason for the rise of insurgency up there. The region wasn’t resistant initially once Bessus was removed. They even cooperated in his capture. Spitamenes turned over Bessus and made peace. But within a few months, the whole area was in open rebellion due to Alexander’s policies regarding the border.

It took marrying Roxana—and figuring out why they were fighting him—before he could march out two years after he entered. Generally, the further he got from areas already familiar to him, the more he put his foot in it.

Media, War and Conflict Journal’s 10th Anniversary Conference

Media, War & Conflict Journal’s tenth anniversary conference will be held on 22-23 May 2018 at Accademia Europea Di Firenze, Florence, Italy. With the theme of ‘Spaces of War, War of Spaces’, the conference aims to analyse how media spaces (traditional, digital, cultural, aesthetic, embodied, mnemonic) are used to position wars in…