/kc/ - Krautchan

Luck and acceptance. They started out in a situation where there were many people unhappy with the state of things for various reasons and the Ottomans were quite willing to make use of them even if the people that were unhappy were Christians. Even later on much of their manpower came from Christians and subjugated people in general.

 >>/39794/
We have a resident Turkeybernd around here. Maybe we can ask him about it

 >>/40123/
I was reading about the battle of lepanto yesterday and what partly caused it was the siege of famagusta. 

"about 6,000 garrison troops stood against some 100,000 Turks with 1,500 cannons, backed by about 150 ships enforcing a naval blockade to stave off reinforcements and resupply efforts. "

"In 1570–1571, Famagusta was the last stronghold in Venetian Cyprus to hold out against the Turks under Mustafa Pasha. It resisted a siege of thirteen months and a terrible bombardment, until at last the garrison surrendered. The Ottoman forces had lost 50,000 men, including Mustafa Pasha's son"

So the ottomans lost over 50,000 men, against an enemy of 6000 men. 

It seems to me they just had endless numbers of men to just throw at the enemy. Not necessarily competence. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famagusta#Ottoman_Famagusta

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Antonio_Bragadin

They were so successful because of the religion.You can conquer everywhere with mans without fear.Quantity+being ready to die made the Ottomans successful.
You can clearly see that Ottomans failed when new battle tacticts and war technologys developed.That was because of the religion too.They mostly thought about after-life so because of that they weren't into the latest techs.
So you can say they risen and fallen because of religion

 >>/40134/
> ready to die
Also ready to kill. Religious fanaticism helps dehumanize the opponents. From a warrior who is good at posturing just one thing better, a warrior who can kill (actually fight, instead of pretending).

 >>/40134/
I don't really believe that it's not like they were the only Muslims or that Christians could not be that way either plus the Ottomans still relied heavily on Christians, not just the Janissaries that were converted but also those that kept the religion such as in the Balkans.

They did try to modernise and brought in some French Reformers to do it who did have a bit of success. The problem with that is that it's institutional, it's the same reason why China could not modernise. It's not that hard to make a musket, it's not that hard to make a cannon and it's not that hard to teach basic drill in both. What the Ottomans and Chinese lacked were dedicated institution of professionals whose jobs it was to research and develop new tactics and equipment and then institutions that would pass this on to the army and hold the army up to a standard where it can use them. Sure, they had individuals that would dabble in it and they of course had training schools but there just wasn't the drive or professionalism that the west had, the French would come in, teach them some things, set up some factories and then it would all fade away in a few years.

 >>/40134/
Are you thinking about the 72 virgins or more in general?

 >>/40141/
Usually expansion for a state is like a snowball rolling down a hill. It gets bigger until it crashes. 

Russia almost wiped out the ottomans but then britain and france came and helped during the crimean war.

 >>/40141/
Significant portion of janisarries were born into muslim already. After 1500's pretty much anyone could join the ranks of jannisarries.

> The problem with that is that it's institutional
That's correct it's not like I would deny it. When a mediocre  ruler who too much power he would meddle with affairs too much thus institutions free from rulers overwhelming influence cannot develop.

 >>/40143/
People in here believe they have whatever they want in heaven so 72 virgin thing is more dedicated orthodox islam cihad thing. I'm sure most people didn't even heard 72 virgin thing in these lands.

> Russia almost wiped out the ottomans
Well we almost wiped them out in Prut as well. Not to mention we dont get to wiped out like that, after sevres istanbul was held by allies of ww1 yet we still fought and repelled the combined powers of allies and their puppets.

As always with these questions it's too wide to answer accurately. The topic of "ottoman success" spreads through bout half a millennia it was a successful enterprise until it really started it's agony in the 19th century just by telling the tale what happened can and do fill volumes, without even mentioning the how and why.
So if we wanna discuss this we should take the whole topic apart into smaller groups. Maybe the most practical would be period based.
Liek, what led to the rise of the Ottomans? What shaped the circumstances they could exploit to gain prominence?

 >>/40145/
Russia would have taken istanbul if it werent for france and great britain. 

What made me understood world history is seeing it from a cyclical point of view. In school we learn linear thinking, progress. When reality is cyclical, its a force of nature. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War

 >>/40147/
> In school we learn linear thinking, progress
Speak of yourself.
Also it's a spiral. And events "repeat" only approximately the same. There are patterns which allows certain variation. Which also means we can find a variety of analogies. Also we have incomplete and inaccurate information of the past so what we might think as a parallel, in reality it could happen entirely differently. Most of the genius recognitions of patterns will only fit by using oversimplifications and generalizations.

 >>/40147/
And we have taken the istanbul despite other great powers of the era. Oh well sucks to be Alexander II.

 >>/40150/
Great britain wanted to destroy the black sea fleet, that was the goal of the war.

 >>/40147/
> In school we learn linear thinking, progress.

It may also depend on the school. Not all of them are the same

 >>/40134/
> They were so successful because of the religion.

I may be wrong, but I heard that's why most Muslim empires and armies won most of the time. Just by sheer enormous numbers. The last Crusade is a good example

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 >>/40155/
Also just made this over an old post Turkeybernd made in 2 versions. r8

 >>/40156/
I don't get it.

 >>/40143/
Could be seen that way, could be seen the opposite as well, you expand or you die. Just look at history leading up until the first world war, it was nations conquering other nations to create huge Empires or even just create slightly larger nations. Even now most modern Nations are the result of conquest and expansion in some way. Sweden itself is the result of tribes subjecting nearby tribes, it just happened long ago and they were able to hold that form until the current day. Of course empires will overextend like Sweden did or come into conflict with Empires more powerful than themselves like the Ottomans did but that is always going to happen, you can't be top dog forever.

 >>/40163/
> expand or you die
I want that on a t-shirt

 >>/40163/
I think centralization of power is due to technology. In ancient rome they could be so centralized and big due to the fact they systematized everything from efficiency. Every legion behaved the same, they had the same tools, the same boots, the same equipment, the same measurement when they built their forts. 

Let me quote Jacques Ellul

"The Ellulian concept of technique is briefly defined within the "Notes to Reader" section of The Technological Society (1964). It is "the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity."[27] He states here as well that the term technique is not solely machines, technology, or a procedure used to attain an end."

"Ellul set forth seven characteristics of modern technology that make efficiency a necessity: rationality, artificiality, automatism of technical choice, self-augmentation, monism, universalism, and autonomy.[29] The rationality of technique enforces logical and mechanical organization through division of labor, the setting of production standards, etc. And it creates an artificial system which "eliminates or subordinates the natural world." 

With global trade, global communications there is just a natural thing to have a global goverment. But alas I got off topic.

 >>/40165/
Rome wasn't that centralised though and what centralisation it had came through force and politics not technology. Senators would turn their provinces into their own private kingdom pretty much which led to frequent civil war.

 >>/40170/
Never mind him.
Instead ask questions from Turkeybernd, so there's something he can reply to.

 >>/40150/
What was the political landscape during the time of Osman, and that other guy Orhan(?)?

 >>/40161/
> I don't get it.

Exactly

I made it over this thread we had here from a few months ago, specifically these posts  >>/32811/  >>/32828/

 >>/40163/
 >>/40164/
> ‘Expand or die’. The historical foundations of the economic growth paradigm

https://www.degrowth.info/en/catalogue-entry/expand-or-die-the-historical-foundations-of-the-economic-growth-paradigm/

> ‘Economic growth’ is widely regarded as a key goal of economic policy, not only across the political spectrum but also in all countries. How did the pursuit of growth become the essential goal of policy-making and a key priority taken for granted among social scientists, politicians, and the general public?

Intradesting

 >>/40178/
Fun thing that much of that economical growth is not perceivable in any way, only on charts and numbers written on whatever statistics and presentations. And the hills of trash piling up signalling the result of consuming for economic growth.

 >>/40170/
When we think of technology most see it as a machine or a tool. Jacques Ellul saw it as technique, a force of nature, a view of the world always striving for efficiency. The machines itself are irrelevant to the worldview. So for examples, there are some demonstration somewhere, and someone light up a car. There will be an outcry over the burned car but no reaction that the police broke somehands arm or of the protest itself. We have replaced god, nature and holy things and instead we are worshiping technology. 

And I see Rome the same way, everything they did was for technique, they wanted to subjugate nature, always strove towards more efficiency. Everything was standardized. The boats was standardized, the weapons, the training, the streets, the buildings. 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCymxvXK-SxtFmMekTLLg9Rw/videos

I can recommend that channel and especially his series the end of technique.

 >>/40178/
That's the linear "progressive" thinking isn't it? Why can't we use milk glass bottles and re use it, instead of using plastic crap? It's the faustian bargain, to what price comes technology?

The question remains the same for Turkbernd. What was the political landscape like in the time of Osman and Orhan?

 >>/40201/
> What was the political landscape like in the time of Osman and Orhan?

I guess we'll never know

 >>/40211/
We will. He's gonna check back I believe.

 >>/40221/
Really? Well ok then

-There was a power vacuum in a region with a pretty high population large part of which was trained in constant warfare for generations.
-Thanks to islam they had less problems with stabilising the eastern frontiers and push to balkans.
-They managed to create a non-feudal state aparatus inspired by byzantine (timariot system) and smash the turkish noble families which allowed to concentrate insane amount of power and wealth in the hands of the Sultans without anyone in the state to challenge it. 
-They were a lot like todays woke corporations who understand that diverse population is a divided corporation and used it to own advantage, Romans did the ottomans were more efficient. https://journals.openedition.org/ejts/4396
- When you look at their elites they were very cosmopolitan, by design, they extensively used christians and converts in high state positions (like the notorious fanariot greeks who ruled Wallachia for them).

In short for a period they were highly militarised and highly efficient state thanks to decades of warfare and remnants of roman beaurocracy and ruling techniques.

 >>/40243/
So they used divide and conquer and a very centralized state?

 >>/40244/
They corrected the errors of the Byzantines: under Komnenoi byzzies turned state aparatus into family mafia undermining the reasonably meritocratic state in return of short-term increase of power - the long term result was corruption and lessened efficiency, as well as a rise of a pretty big extended family of oligarchs with claims to the trone. One of the reasons why Byzantium was so powerfull at its peak was the very efficient tax system and beaurocracy which allowed that divide and rule and famous byzantine diplomacy.

Ottomans were smarter and while remaining dynastic state they nonetheless managed to undermine lower family and relatives from getting too much power. If you think of it Janissary system (and state schools for administration they attended) it is evolution of the idea behind Varangian guard - you take "foreigners" into your court so they depend on the ruler only as they don't have any other powerbase. 
This of course degenerated with time as it became possible for the children of Janissaries to get high positions in the court which removed the main advantage of the system. But for a time it allowed for every efficient centralised system of governance.

 >>/40246/
Seems like a very efficient system for amassing huge armies rapidly. 

I wonder what the typical diet was in the ottoman empire.

 >>/40243/
> non-feudal
The timariot system is a version of feudalism. The important characteristic of feudalism is that the basis of both the economy and the military is the land holdings. Sure a "true" feudalism has the chain of vassals, or that the estates are inheritable, but these are just secondary characteristics, a flavor, so to speak. But maybe it just depends how strict we are with the definitions
But I do agree as a whole the Ottomans statecraft was less feudal than Europe's most characteristic feudal states.
But how much was the result of Byzantine heritage? Ottomans had other sources of influence, I read for example their accounting practices came from the Il-khanate. I can also imagine Arabic and Persian effects, tho the whole Middle East was an amalgamation of various heritages including Greek and Roman in the first place.
> There was a power vacuum in a region
I would interested in the question: who else if not the Ottomans? Sure were competing players on the field. And why the Ottomans were the one who won the lotería. What was in them that were more than the others.

 >>/40248/
> huge armies
Most of their armies consisted of poorly equipped and trained footmen and cavalry (although the akinjis were very effective in classic light cavalry roles). Sipahis were meh. The chief achievements were the Janissary and the artillery corps.

 >>/40251/
I disagree. Inheritability is the main, not secondary characteristic. This is what was the basic building block of Western european states, Feudalism requires way more micromanaging but allowed things like Angevin empire to appear. Roman or Ottoman empire couldnt be inherited, one because it was in theory an property of its citizens, other because it was a construct with the sole mediator being Osman dynasty.

> Most of their armies consisted of poorly equipped and trained footmen and cavalry (although the akinjis were very effective in classic light cavalry roles

Well, their main function was to pillage and destroy first, not to conquer, at least in first phases

 >>/40252/
*couldnt be inherited by outsider

 >>/40251/
Forgot to add that there were other possible post-byzantine forces that could fill up the void, like Serbian Empire of Uros IV Dushan. But he died and his state fragmented, maybe if he managed to crown himself in Constantinople it all would be different.

 >>/40252/
The birth of feudalism was falling back to self-sufficiency (from the Roman era imperial economy, as the circulation of commodities slowly dwindled), relying on local production of the goods making possible to keep local men in arms and raising local levies seasonally. Basically a decentralization of the weight of the state defense.
While the Mediterranean was less effected with this (some circulation of goods still remained) an army fitting for an empire in size couldn't be supported by the economical means of the era just by doing the same, relying on local administrators to make local peasantry keeping up local men in arms.
In classic feudalism the land was given to the lord to make him (and his retinue) able to live and serve as a soldier. The timar was given to the holder to make him (and his retinue) able to live and serve as a soldier. Why? Because the central government wasn't able to produce enough wealth to live off.

Although I have to change my standpoint of marginalizing the characteristics. Now I believe there are a couple of those, let's say equally important, but these can be left out and still be a feudal system.
Why the change? I remembered something.
There were local variations of feudalism, the classical Frankish is just a model which was copied more ore less. For example on the Hungary from the 13th century they preferred the system of familiarity where they didn't hand a fief to the vassal, but for his swear of fealty (and service - be it military or administrative) he got paid in either money or in kind. Furthermore the familiar could terminate this "contract" as he saw fit.

> Feudalism requires way more micromanaging
What do you mean by this?

Okay. In the interim I flipped open The Cambridge History of Turkey, Volume 1 (published in 2009) and it says:
The origins of the timar system are still being disputed. Some scholars argue that it derives from the Seljuk ikta, others from the Byzantine pronoia. Whichever might prove true, the first timars were apparently hereditary, as were the appanages and estates (mülk, vakıf ) assigned to family members, allies and military commanders. 17 The principle and practice of heritability were not alien either to ikta of the Mongolian period, or to pronoia of the Palaeologan era.
(page 195-196)

 >>/40255/
 >>/40256/
As far as i know in feudalism the contract wasnt invalidated with the death of the holder.
Hereditary nature of timar or pronoia fiefs was a practice especially in later periods, but land never became de facto property of the holder unlike in feudalism. And this is what later allowed ottomans to abandon the system pretty seamlessly, land just returned under imperial domain.

Timar and pronoia were more of a degradation of the state salary systems in highly centralised, autocratic state, while feudalism was by nature more "free market", way more decentralised.

> What do you mean by this
Under feudalism things like a king being at the same time equal (as a king of neighbouring country) and a vassal of the king (through inheritance) was possible.

 >>/40257/
> degradation of the state salary systems in highly centralised, autocratic state
That's the origin of feudalism, Rome's degeneration led to that. In the west it happened earlier, especially in the northern provinces, in the eastern half of the empire this went slower and wasn't entirely complete (thanks to trade, and the fact that those parts weren't piss poor shitholes like Europe was, so money circulation added some padding) but happened nevertheless.

This inheritance thing of kings is also the depends category. In Merovingian Frank state they only accepted Merovingian kings. In Hungary up to 1301 only Árpáds could be kings.

How about other feudalisms around the globe? The daimyo system in Japan. Or in China? Although it leads away from the topic at hand, and not really important.

 >>/40254/
Why did the serbs ally with the ottomans?

And feudalism doesnt sound that bad

 >>/40258/
> How about other feudalisms around the globe?
Portuguese colonial captaincy system, trusting far-off regions to all-powerful hereditary administrators, and sesmaria system of trusting land ownership to favored individuals (in constrast to the 19th-century system of all land being bought from the state). Other elements of feudalism elsewhere in the New World, too.

 >>/40251/
The timariot system was largely marginalised though. They also had feudal vassals in the Balkans but again they were on the fringes. The bulk of the power and authority came from the Sultan and his own forces.

 >>/40258/
China didn't really practice feudalism. It was a bureaucratic society, you got an education then got some role which may end up leading to being a governor of some city or province. It's why there were not castles in China, pretty much every city, town and even village had a wall but there were no castles.

 >>/40267/
> The timariot system was largely marginalised
What do you mean?
> feudal vassals
They were more of a tributaries I think. Whole countries surrendered to keep varying level of independence, and wasn't treated as newly conquered lands which were inserted into the timariot system. Here I might be wrong I'm thinking of Transylvania for example, which paid a yearly tribute and had to conform to certain decisions in foreign politics, but the Sultan has no say in the inner goings of the state. However Transylvania enjoyed rare freedom, I'm not sure how other areas fared.
> China didn't really practice feudalism
Yes, they did.
> it was a bureaucratic society
Just because there's a developed state machinery it doesn't make a place less feudal. Feudalism isn't restricted to Dark Ages' Francia.

 >>/40263/
How the land was handled? Did they gave it further down to tenants who owed with services? How the military was organized? Was there a levy or they just relied paid mercenaries, or was something else?

 >>/40275/
> What do you mean?
He probably means right to collect taxes started to rented or outright sold to certain strongman or rich people, as you can guess the guy who b buys ght to collect taxes tend to squezee the peasants dry. Tax farming has become most empires undoing. 

 >>/40256/
It is very similar to ikta. 

 >>/40255/
 >>/40257/
Feudalism basically means land based economic system, ikta and tımar are still feudalistic. 

 >>/40246/
> d) it is evolution of the idea behind Varangian guard
It has nothing to do with varangian guard, janisarries were mostly to do with internal threats like preventing other failies take over hence personal slave army, varangians were mostly oblivious to state intrigue, they swore pretty much whoever coup d'etad the emperor.

Janisarry system is mostly similar to ghulam (gulaman-ı saray) system or other similar eastern practices. For example abbasids mostly relied on Turks (but Turks just took over the egypt that's anohter story) to keep other families in check, Turkish states like seljuks hired persians for this. 

 >>/40243/
> - When you look at their elites they were very cosmopolitan
Most nobility in middle ages were very cosmopolitan, it was probably easy to find moldovan nobility with Turkic ancestry etc.

Hence why the "nations" of middle ages are hard to understand for any common person of today, the identities were mostly very local but nobilities intermingled with each other. When they stop intermingle with each other for good amount of time, they also affected the identity in my opinion, like in hundred years war, where valois and plagenet(?) become sworn enemies, this become probably crucial part of french and english identity.

> - When you look at their elites they were very cosmopolitan

 >>/40279/
>it was probably easy to find moldovan nobility with Turkic ancestry
LIES!!!! THEY WERE ALL PURE BLOODED DACO-ROMANS!!!!
t. le bogdan face
> tax farming
That was widely used all over in Medieval Europe, so not really a counter-argument the feudal nature of the Ottoman Empire.
> Feudalism basically means land based economic system
And social. Land ownership decided the place of individual in the society.
And also military. It decided the organization of the military.
And these intertwined, the society was led by armed ruling class, the more land one had the larger retinue he could afford, and higher he was in the military ranks.
> the identities were mostly very local
And tied to religious denominations.

 >>/40280/
>  not counter-argument the feudal nature of the Ottoman Empire.
never said it was, just saying it is always bad in the long run.

> And tied to religious denominations.
quite of often yes

 >>/40281/
> never said it was,
I got the impression he used as such, I was referring to that.

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This topic seems really open ended and immersive. We could even write a short book about it with all of the content here.

 >>/40289/
Its all so gay and joyful we should bring condoms

 >>/40279/
What is ikta

Who did the tax collection in ottoman empire? Jews? Nobles?

Miles mathis has written about how jews/cryptojews pretty much infiltrated european royalty but im not gonna go there so just ignore this stuff.

 >>/40290/
that sounds pretty homo tbh

 >>/40278/
> How the land was handled?
With slaves. Small farmers (besides slaves themselves producing on their own), though economically relevant, occupied fringes and gaps.
> How the military was organized? 
A militia system and a tiny professional army.

 >>/40275/
> What do you mean?
Partly this  >>/40279/ but also it became more of an auxiliary force, the Ottomans would rely on primarily the central army for their campaigns combined with whatever local forces they could muster in the area.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to, the Balkans kept their local system and in many cases the religion too.

China was not feudal. They did not have a system whereby a hierarchy was formed based on people owning baronies and counties that they would inherit in return for service to those above. They had rich people and aristocrats but those aristocrats operated like they do in today's society, they may inherit a private estate and the wealth that goes with it but they didn't inherit positions of administration per-say. Again, as with the rich today, being that they live in an area and are from rich powerful families they will probably end up with the administration of their local city or whatever but this is not guaranteed or inherited and they still go through the bureaucratic system to get it they just grease a few palms and pull a few strings while doing it, it's probably actually closer to Rome. I don't know that this was more advanced even, because by the nature of it it was extremely corrupt.

 >>/40296/
He is quite homo tbh

 >>/40297/
> Small farmers
Were those guys free (landowners) or more liek serfs (which we could call half-free).
> militia system
Tell me about that.

 >>/40301/
> but also it became more of an auxiliary force
I'm not sure when this happened, but I'm positive they were fine for a couple hundreds of years.
Sipahis were their only heavier cavalry they could field against European heavy cavalry. And those guys were the landholders. As warfare changed and evolved that component became less and less useful.
> China was not feudal
It was, great long times. I'll return to this later.
You are trying to generalize thousands of years of history btw in case of them.
And again the definition of "feudalism" isn't just "the pattern early medieval Francia set up". And I have to point back again the the Hungarian "familiarity" system I wrote about here:  >>/40255/ Moreover Hungary remained feudal up until the second half of the 19th century, despite absolutism, bureaucracy with civil servants and whatever.

 >>/40303/
They had palace Sipahi units as well.

I'll wait then. But I generalise because the way the country was run did not actually change all that much. I think maybe your idea of feudalism is something completely different as well that could almost be attributed to anything even the current times we live in.

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 >>/40291/
İkta is when right to collect taxes was given to bureucrats and they had to recruit certain amount of soldiers with standart equipment.

Tımar is when right to collect taxes to some military officer, again they had to recruit certain amount of soliders with standart equipment. Tımar was mostly implemented where Türks lived i.e balkans and anatolia.

In late ottoman era there was mültezim system where right to collect taxes rented and many times sold to local strongman who squezeed peasants dry, not to mention lack of proper recruits.

The owner of mültezim were usually dumb fucks who is rich and getting only richer. Not to mention rent based economies usually gets more stagnant.

> jews
usually not and there was no infiltration. when you banish people there to there mostly due to church influence (muslims don't have seperated religious organization, they are mostly temporal) they of course stick to each other and many times this create mutual distrust. the only secret jews I can mention are sabetay sevi and his cult.

> nobles
Sometimes yes, but in ottoman era our nobility was inconsistent due to constant balance shifts and overly centralization, that's why it was hard to implement reforms as there was barely anyone who understands importance of it and had power to implement it, other than sultans themselves. Ironically despite ottomans overly centralize, they still lacked authority in many areas of the empire mostly due to they having significant physcological problems, lack of up to date education and got the throne despite having no merit to talk about especially after seniority succesion system implemented.

 >>/40306/
Turks come from mongolia no/yes?

 >>/40313/
They have an Eastern Steepe people origin so yes

 >>/40316/
They dont look that mongolian to me and they are rather hairy wouldn't you say

 >>/40320/
> They dont look that mongolian to me and they are rather hairy wouldn't you say

Modern Turks are mostly descendants of Greek/Armenian/Kurdish population of Anatolia, and Mongolian influences are minimal. Typical situation for nomadic conquests of civilized places with large existing population.

 >>/40327/
Pic scrubbed, you can poast it again.

 >>/40303/
> Were those guys free (landowners) or more liek serfs (which we could call half-free).
There were small landowners, even owning small numbers of slaves, but a common arrangement was freemen being allowed to work on the great landowners' land for themselves in exchange for services such as small agricultural tasks but even also working as henchmen when needed. In addition slaves could work small plots of land for themselves.
> Tell me about that.
Captains were expected to be able to mobilize their subjects for territorial defense. Free men were expected to acquire and maintain their own weapons, according to social position, with landowners and captains needing to own small arsenals. It was an extension of the Portuguese system of Ordinances, with companies rooted at the local level. The most powerful locals commanded the companies and posts were decided by elections in the towns, who were even responsible for the cost of military training. 
Though training was expected to take place regularly they weren't a standing army and were unpaid. Besides the Ordinances there were also Militias organized in a similar fashion. Together they were an auxiliary territorial force to the proper standing army. The professional force was not local but national, maintained by the Governors-General who were appointed by the Crown to oversee the captaincies once in a few decades it was shown that all but a couple of captains failed at administration.

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 >>/40304/
I edited out a chapter from A Companion to Chinese History, the topic of which exactly what we are talking about. The title: Was Medieval China Medieval. Here, both the chapter (for easier access) and the book itself.
The author of the chapter - Charles Holcombe - shows that by the half of the Tang era such changes went through in the empire's economy, society, administration etc. that it hardly can call it feudalism, and even before that it is questionable because the situation wasn't the entirely the same as the classical European example of feudalism. He cites some precursors of his idea but it seems from his work that it is kinda novel (the book was published in 2017).
Now maybe it's counterproductive from my part to present this work, but it really shows that the "norm" - if we can call that - is to consider medieval China a feudal state. And even he doesn't go as far to outright claim that it wasn't, and he also doesn't really give a name for the phenomenon.
I like - for example - how he points out the Eurocentrism in creating models and trying to fit that onto everything on the globe, despite I really think feudalism isn't a wrong term to use for at least parts of China's history.
> maybe your idea of feudalism is something completely different
How many definition of feudalism can be?
> could almost be attributed to anything even the current times we live in.
This is a definite no. More later probably. I have to add however there might be things which could be described as feudalistic. For example the communist regime on the Hungary (and fair chance in any other Eastern Block countries) treated the positions of the bureaucracy, the offices of the state machinery (part of which were state owned companies) as their feudal domains since they handed these positions over to their trusted men, who also handed lower positions their cadres, creating a chains of vassals who owed with unconditional servitude towards their lords, and were unquestionable rulers over their subjects. And below the whole thing were the workers toiling for life as serfs (who also owed with robot - free work, they just called it communist Saturday).
If any of you guys could produce feudalistic examples from our day and age that would be fun I think.

 >>/40333/
Feudal system looks great to me

 >>/40333/

> Now maybe it's counterproductive from my part to present this work, 

Yes, it really was.

'Yet, in China, many of these features either did not last very long, or must otherwise be qualified. Moreover, such essential characteristics of European feudalism as vassalage and the fief seem to have been almost entirely absent in China.

Horse‐riding armored warriors dominated north China (but not the south) from the fourth century through the sixth, and then disappeared as a class. Chinese imperial unity was restored in 589, permanently ending the period of political fragmentation. The Age of Division through mid‐Tang might have been, as Naitō Torajirō claimed, an unusually “aristocratic” period in imperial Chinese history. Yet, Dennis Grafflin (1981, 66) argues vigorously “that the aristocracy described by Naitō did not exist,” and even Naitō himself noted  the  absence  of  feudalism  (meaning  fiefs  and  enfeoffment)  (Mou  2011,  42).  Although Japanese scholars since Naitō have generated an entire subfield of research into the supposed “aristocratic society” of the era, the Chinese Great Families of this period continued  to  derive  their  status  primarily  from  office‐holding  in  the  central  imperial  government (which was, furthermore, not itself normally directly hereditary), and locally important  families  remained  merely  large  private  landowners  rather  than  medieval  European‐style lords of semi‐autonomous domains (Kawachi 1970, 482–83). Beginning during  the  Tang  dynasty  the  incipient  examination  system  profoundly  changed  the  nature  of  the  late  imperial  Chinese  elite  and  produced  a  society  very  different  from  medieval Europe.'

> but it really shows that the "norm" - if we can call that - is to consider medieval China a feudal state.

That seems to be more based in Ideology and trying to find comparisons to Europe. 

'During the twentieth century, the Marxist variant of the standard European periodi-zation scheme, which identified a purportedly universal sequence of economically defined modes of production proceeding from an (ancient) slave society to (medieval) feudalism and  then  to  (modern)  capitalism,  became  common  in  East  Asia.  (The  sequence  has  sometimes also been complicated by introducing Karl Marx’s vaguely conceived “Asiatic mode of production.”) Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, a Marxist framework has been more or less obligatory in mainland China—at least to the extent of automatically labeling much of premodern Chinese history “feu-dal.” Marxist approaches also tended to dominate post–World War II Japanese academic fashion. Because it was assumed that modern capitalism could not be arrived at without passing through medieval feudalism first, a truly astonishing amount of ink was spilt in East  Asia  trying  to  identify  when  the  transition  from  slave  society  to  feudalism  might  have  occurred  in  China'

 >>/40331/
Thanks.
> freemen being allowed to work on the great landowners' land for themselves in exchange for services such as small agricultural tasks but even also working as henchmen when needed
This really sounds like tenants who owed feudal levy. They tend to redeem the military levy with payment, and lower into serfdom.

 >>/40335/
Holcombe gives various explanations why medieval China is considered medieval/feudal he kinda uses this interchangeably, we should remain at feudal so widely, the Marxist historiography and we aren't talking about the "muh cultural marxism" pol-tier meme, but actual Marxism of the tankies of th PRC is just one of them. Really he doesn't do much else, basically strawmanning with this, and marginalizing all the reasons why they actually do it.
He follows the typical pattern of researchers, he reaches a couple generations back to an idea, then he gets the data, reshuffles the emphasis' in order to present that old idea in a new light. The end result of the compulsory publication, they have to justify why it's worth to spend money on them and their research.
He doesn't have a term for this new miraculous system the Tangs established, he just shifts the emphasis onto trade and not aristocratic land ownership. But did China had market economy? He can't step forward and saying she had, because she hadn't.
See there are several economical systems, one of them feudalism as Turkeybernd pointed it out ofc it still stands that it was also societal, political, military system. For example palace ecnomoy, where the the production was done by specialized communities who sent the goods to the palace and that redistributed those goods between the communities. Or there's market economy, where the basis of the economy is the exchange of goods via markets (from the places of production the goods are brought to markets where they get redistributed and taken to the place use/consumption). And there's feudalism, where the goods are produced and used locally. Or - according to the Marxist idea - there were the classic slavery (they citing the antiquity, for example the Roman Empire, or the Greek poleis) where the production was done by slaves and everyone else was lived off their work ofc this Marxist idea here comes nonsense, all through antiquity basically everywhere the free commoners did their fair share in the economy.
But in medieval Europe - where undeniably feudalism was the economical system - slavery was a thing, and trade (both domestic and foreign) in most of its history was a common practice. With little mental gymnastics and shifting emphasis, we could say that starting from renaissance, Medieval Europe wasn't that much medieval.

 >>/40345/
Holcombe ends his train of thoughts with the Tangs.
However China's history really going in cycles. The consequent dynasties all doing miracles of setting up the imperial state, first defeating enemies, unifying the country, introducing reforms, restoring land ownership, correcting taxes, stabilizing currency, etc etc. But then all goes to shit, the system starts to crumble, power slips to local lords, land gets accumulated in a couple of hands, free peasants lose their independence and sink into serfdom, trade withers, money gets devalueated, rebellions start, states secede - everything returns back where it was before and then the cycle starts again as a new dynasty rises.
So does that really matter that the Tangs were able to do something that one might could call "not exactly a classic feudalism"? No, not really. As we saw even the European feudalism wasn't a model feudalism in most of it's existence.

Religious fanatism. Almost everyone in the army were ready to die, and ready to kill. For their country, for their religion that they believe in. But that can only get you so far. It just so appears that inferior technology and corruption cannot be helped with fanatism.

 >>/40320/
 >>/40327/
Stop being dumb.

 >>/40345/
> , we could say that starting from renaissance, Medieval Europe wasn't that much medieval.
Aren't many historians consider rennessaince era something no medieval? I thought this was common label.

 >>/40345/
I think you are focusing on the economic side at the detriment of the many other factors. I would find using the economy to determine this would be more of an issue anyway. After all, most societies have sat in an area somewhere between a market economy and local economy, it was a spectrum. Even at the height of the middle ages, there were still markets and many goods were traded through them that had come from far flung places, just being that peasants were largely self sufficient they themselves did not need to involved themselves so much with that other than to sell produce to pay tax, this isn't even unique to the middle ages, there are small villages and communities living like that in places of the word now.

> With little mental gymnastics and shifting emphasis, we could say that starting from renaissance, Medieval Europe wasn't that much medieval.

The renaissance is not medieval but still. Even If you apply that to the middle ages and are only looking at the economy then yes, I don't think the economy is the defining part of feudalism or even that important to it though.

 >>/40349/
> I don't think the economy is the defining part of feudalism or even that important to it
Well, maybe your idea of feudalism is something completely different as well that could almost be attributed to anything even the current times we live in.

 >>/40348/
 >>/40349/
> Aren't many historians consider rennessaince era something no medieval?
> The renaissance is not medieval but still.
That's a periodization problem, how to divide up history to smaller, digestible segments. I used "medieval" in the sense how Holcombe used it as a quasi synonym of feudal.
So periodization. Where to draw the line? Few possible suspect exist one of them is renaissance which is kinda a soft line since one exact date cannot be pinned on it, make it into an intermediate "era". Others include the age of exploration (here it's pinned to the blunder with America, 1492) or the reformation (1517).
The first thing that led to modernity was born in the "Dark Ages", the scholasticism, which led to the universities, which led to scientific thought. The second event seems a random accident, the plague that culled England's population freeing up cultivated lands in the mid 15th century. The third a feudal war, again in England, that exterminated the nobility there in the second half of the 15th century, and allowed the emergence of a new aristocracy with the spirit of enterprise which made them not to hand out the empty lands to tenants in feudal fashion, but use it to amass capital. They exploited the fourth event, the result of the great explorations, the flow of riches into Europe, sucking it up to England exchanging the products of their enclosures for the gold of the Spaniards and amassing the said capital. This allowed them to make couple of times of subsistence, which allowed some people not taking part in production, or serving in the army, or doing administrative work, letting them to neet all day with their thumbs in their asses, making up shit like machines for spinning and weaving or exploiting the power of steam. Which led to the industrial revolution. This rise of England also made the powers on the continent to scramble behind it, trying to reach them and tear their power down, which led to France accidentally founding the US. Meanwhile the feudal frames proved to be a hindering factor in the process and it needed to be discarded. So changes were introduced in the society too. Abolishment of serfdom, or hereditary land ownership.
How much role renaissance had in this? Considering it's a retrograde counter-culture reaching back to antiquity. Maybe humanism?
Or how much role the reformation had? Considering it's a retrograde counter-culture reaching back to the Bible and with that to antiquity, just not in a Catholic flavor how renaissance did? Maybe planting civic thought in the wider population, self-governance?

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Anyway. Holcombe also cites another work which lists two Muslim states, the Umayyad and Abbasid, which used a system analogues with Europe's feudalism, based on the aforementioned iqta. So we're back where we started, the timar system with its predecessor is a type of feudalism.
Up until this point we successfully avoided sketching up the characteristics of feudalism, so gentlemen, please present your lists, what makes feudalism feudalism.

 >>/40358/
Themes associated with the word are:
#1 A hierarchy bound together by trust and obligations, much like a military chain of command, on which higher ranks grant chunks of power to lower ones in exchange for certain duties
#2 The power that is distributed consists of the means of production, parts of the economy
#3 The means are land
#4 Value is obtained through rent
#5 The duties provided are often labor and/or military service
#6 What gets distributed is hereditary
#7 This happens in an agrarian society and a surname-centric society.

The communist example  >>/40333/ definitively has #1. However unlike in medieval feudalism there is a strong central bureaucracy and power consists of positions within it. 
Absolutism is a curious transitional phase out of it. At the level of workers and landowners change from the medieval age is moderate, after the last medieval crisis serfdom diminished in Western Europe, but by the French Revolution there was still talk of removing feudalism and the relationship was based on rent and certain obligations. But the dynamic between the monarch and his immediate vassals changes. There is a central bureaucracy and those vassals are now in the capital. They don't receive land, but positions. It's still based on trust, so #1 applies. They may or may not be hereditary. 
In addition the economy has a greater commercial component. Mercantilism might have feudalistic elements as trusted individuals receive power in the form of parts of the economy i.e. monopolies, favored treatment, etc.

 >>/40360/
They usually add something liek: "military ruling class", or how Holcombe wrote: "armored horse‐riding warrior elites".
The role of a dux was military leader in Roman times, the rex emerged beside and over, again as a military leader, so the second part of the first is more than "much like", could be a whole new point on its own right.
Furthering the communist example, the leading class is the party elite, who always talked about themselves as "the vanguard of the revolution", basically as a fighting unit. Their rhetoric went even further in this combative manner, talking about "peace fight" and "defending the peace" and stuff like that.
> Absolutism
> France
I think Louis XIV did a lot of effort to dissolve the feudalism in France, his efforts were lacking somewhat tho.

 >>/40358/
There are other similar systems of the time too. The Eastern Roman Empire used to be split into theatres(as in districts not actual theatres) and each theatre was meant to have an army of soldiers who would be given land in exchange for military service(but this system fell into corruption with the theatre commanders buying up the land from these soldiers and hiring mercenaries instead and things like that) Officers would turn these theatres into there own fiefdom and even rebel often enough as well.

The Janissary system itself is sort of similar again to what the Eastern Romans had. They had these theatre armies of course but they also had permanent standing armies of professionals in Constantinople(not just the Varangian but actual Greek units), kind of like the Kapikulu corps.

 >>/40362/
Well, there's just so many ways of handling things. Makes me wonder about the origins of the iqta system, I doubt from Arabia. Plus, how the consequent dynasties of Persia went through their crises, how the empire held together. It's kinda sad that for such a major player knowing stuff about them is extremely uncommon. They are falling out from what we could call as general knowledge - at least in these parts of the world.

 >>/40361/
 >>/40361/
> They usually add something liek: "military ruling class", or how Holcombe wrote: "armored horse‐riding warrior elites".
More or less true. A warrior caste keeping check majority of peasant group is very typical characteristic of feudalism. The warrior caste is actually is more about keeping those peasants in check hence whole economy is stagnant, land based so it's more stability based rather than profit.

Interestingly if you dig about ancient sparta you'll notice spartans who derive from dorians kept mycenian descend helot slaves in check. These slaves were state property rather than personal or private property. Spartan military training and slaves having right to having family with each other confirm this. Their system almost completely rely on keeping the peasants/slaves in check.  Since many spartans did not know how to fight on horseback nor had military tradition about it I think they compensate this with more martial training and forbidding many other jobs for spartans. 

Just like feudal powers they also fallen into dissarray, mainly because economically most of the land was not belonged to common citizens and low population of spartans so they started to rely on freemen.

Though militarily they were overestiated even other nations in their region achived much better military sucess like macedonians even after alexander the great. 

 >>/40353/
> scholasticism
Wasnt that quite opposite of rennesaince values? Scientific thought is not created in scholastic era. Only good I can say about scholasticism that thomas aquintas reintroduced aristo to the west. Plato's ideals quite oppose scientific method as quite underestimate human logic considers human observation quite 'fallible'

> The first thing that led to modernity was born in the "Dark Ages
well rainbows occur after heavy rain afterall, cant argue against that.

> The first thing that led to modernity was born in the "Dark Ages
You forgot to mention crusades where nobles and adventurer started to borrow money from merchants and this mobilised the economy and many nobles perished so more social mobility as well.

 >>/40366/
> scholasticism
> Wasnt that quite opposite of rennesaince values?
> Scientific thought is not created in scholastic era.
Scholasticism gave birth to universities, which led to scientific thought.
Yes, renaissance went opposite. Went backwards actually, it was a regression compared where they were at (when renaissance arrived unis were already a thing and going). It's customary to blame the "Dark Ages" for the lack of scientific progression, but the truth is the antiquity was already stagnant, and couldn't step forward (they did basically nothing new just made compilations of older thinkers).
I might reply to other stuff tomorrow, this caught my eye first.

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 >>/40367/
> Scholasticism gave birth to universities, which led to scientific thought.
The education was very theologian it is not science at all.

>  It's customary to blame the "Dark Ages" for the lack of scientific progression
there is a reason for that you know. the blame does not come out of thin air.

>  but the truth is the antiquity was already stagnant
it took 1000 year to recover from wounds of fall of roman empire and religious bigotry. you know it was not regression, considering the fact many of antique thinkers were forgotten in the west. they just refound it, not focused on them in spite of church, I have to emphasize the word forgotten. Antiquity was everything but stagnant.

 >>/40366/
> The warrior caste is actually is more about keeping those peasants in check hence whole economy is stagnant, land based so it's more stability based rather than profit.

Actually the opposite could easily be argued for. The feudal era was the most unstable and the peasant were the most unruly. The HRE is a good example of this, frequently a knight or a Bishop would try to raise taxes or levy soldiers and frequently the peasants and burghers would rise up against this. Everybody was fighting for there own interests back then and it was incredibly decentralised. The advancing of society also saw the advancing of control.

 >>/40369/
I see what you are seeing I am Also aware of masa peasants rebellions of bre but still it was stagnant and aspired to be stable. Even today rent based economies are stagnant but thats another subject of course.

 >>/40378/
> seeing
Saying*

 >>/40366/
Back then the services the state provided were less varied then nowadays. No healthcare, education, or public services. They usually offered a justice system and protection (maintaining an army). Since those who did the protection were those who owned the land the commoners tilled, they did the administration (collected taxes), and served justice, it was inevitable that the military become the ruling strata of society.
Now we could say for the same reason it was basically a protection racket - sure, why not - but their origins can be traced back to the role of protecting the Roman border (see dux and rex). So theoretically they were against foreign enemy.
Besides there was a contract between serfs and the lords - unlike the helots and spartans - and commoners only reached for violence when the nobles overstepped the boundaries arbitrarily. And ofc this is more nuanced question small landholders, belonging to the military "elite" were often found themselves on the side of the rebelling peasants since higher ups in the chain of vassals tried to force them down into servitude - again stepping over their boundaries.

 >>/40369/
> peasant were the most unruly
I dont see that as a bad thing. Fuck the system. 

Anarchy4life

 >>/40369/
> Everybody was fighting for there own interests back then and it was incredibly decentralised. The advancing of society also saw the advancing of control.

So technology made us all into slaves..

 >>/40387/
> So technology made us all into slaves.

That's the jist of it tbh

 >>/40391/
I am reading propaganda by jacques ellul at the moment, and it seems to me propaganda is technology. To accept the new technology propaganda is necessary. So we are all boiled in this propaganda pot without even being aware of it. 

Propaganda is vertical so it seeps from person to person instead of top down. Everyone has the latest iphone because everyone else has it. It is not because the system is telling everyone to buy the latest smartphone, but because everyone else has it, its compulsary to fit in the beehive. Good book btw I recommend it.

 >>/40387/
> just take the monke pill ;)

@@40404ΨΨ
">" Neo Tri Beam Ha 24:42
> cyborg 002_

 >>/40368/
> there is a reason for that you know. the blame does not come out of thin air.

Actually the term Dark ages has largely fallen out of use among academics as it is misleading. There never was a Dark Age, it was a continuous evolution. Part of the reason they used to call it that was because of the lack of literature from the era but even then you must remember that antiquity spans a huge time frame and actually very little came out of it if you look at it in say fifty year segments. Just look at Alexander the great and the Julio-Claudian line through to Vespasian, two huge moments in history, yet we have very little from the time written about it, we really just have a few accounts from historians years later.

We do have a few famous works sure, things like Plato and that but they also never fell out of circulation, we never rediscovered it monks were still translating it, they never stopped.

Rome herself actually invented little as well. Most of what she had she stole.

 >>/40409/
>  Dark ages has largely fallen out of use among academics
have to say (who?) in here.

> . There never was a Dark Age,
there was, be it mathematics, engineering, free thinking, religious tolerance, geography I think pretty much everything regress, it's borderline madness to call it evolution. not to mention history is not linear, there can be golden ages and dark ages it's not a straight line like for example marx suggests. 

> Part of the reason they used to call it that was because of the lack of literature from the era
this pretty much disregard every other regression.

> antiquity spans a huge time frame
why would you take entire antiquity? you take greco-roman heritage in the account and compare to them and when you compare you can see the dark ages.

> , yet we have very little from the time written about it
You know in antiquity many things were written it's just we barely know them and we know many of them thanks to other scripts refere them, they might be lost, they might be burn down by certain desert cult, smashing down the statues. 
Not to mention high literacy rate and free thinking is completely disregarded amongst other things. I'm not even going to point out why the high literacy rate if noone writes a thing, good luck claiming they learned how to read for graffitis.

> they also never fell out of circulation
aristo socrates and pre-socrates thinkers pretty much disregared or forgotten. even aristo reintroduced in 1000's and this would have never happened if not for christianity and fall or WRE.

> Most of what she had she stole.
I cringe I'm not gonna lie because this claim is simply absurd. Most inventions are already based on other inventions, claiming this is, I think clear way to say "I don't know how inventions work." 

I don't want to turn it into personal, but what say say is very absurd and plainly wrong.

 >>/40368/
> The education was very theologian it is not science at all.
I do not know what you do not understand, I thought I wrote it clear.
I was writing about a process that started in the Early Medieval, went on through many hundreds of years and led to the modernity: scholasticism -> universities -> science. I never wrote anywhere they did science in 600 AD. They did come up with critical thinking tho. They preserved and chiseled rhetoric, logic, and mathematics among others. It's not liek all those monks were sitting around at the playground, stirring their own piss in the sand, eating cat poo, until the Crusaders came home and dropped a papyrus just looted in the Levant onto one of their head and they came up with gravity.
All those antique works they "rediscovered" in renaissance was available to Byzantine and Muslim thinkers, nothing they could build out of it. Science of modern age grew out not from the stuff they imported from the Middle East, not from renaissance, but from the universities. And universities were built on the monastic schools along scholasticism, who already used philosophical works of the antiquity without wanting to resurrect the past or turn back time (like how renaissance did).
> there is a reason for that you know. the blame does not come out of thin air.
All the situation of those time originates from the antiquity. Everything went sideways back then, not during the Middle Ages. By the time of Jesus they were impotent. What they could produce AD? A Seneca, a Marcus Aurelius (both of whom basically just said: everything is shit we should suffer in silence), and a Galen.
> it took 1000 year to recover
And who did that recovering? Hardworking Catholic monks and theologians, starting in the Dark Ages. Not to mention all those renaissance dudes were religious as fugg. Thomas Moore is a Catholic saint for Christ's sake... Who founded all those universities? The Catholic Church. Besides the Catholic Church dumped a lot of money to finance renaissance artists.

 >>/40410/
You really should look up Eriugena for example.
And Aquinas.
> aristo reintroduced in 1000's 
See even you say his work was present before the Renaissance.

 >>/40404/
Most bernds are probably already monks bro

 >>/40409/
> Most of what she had she stole.
Romans. The niggers of antiquity.

 >>/40410/
> have to say (who?) in here.

Everybody, I can't even think of an individual.

> be it mathematics, engineering, free thinking, religious tolerance, geography I think pretty much everything regress,

Maths was still studied in this era although much of what they studied from was Arabic(not Roman). Engineering is a funny old thing, there was not so much history of it in Europe to begin with, they didn't have thou thousands upon thousands of years of Stone structures that the Middle east and such did. However, The Italian states were actually still making large stone structures and the North did a bit it just had not developed so much but that development largely came internally. There was no Free thinking in Rome, Religion was only tolerated so long as it didn't interfere with the empire in anyway(also keep in mind that Ancient religion is fundamentally different to modern religion in that modern religions often state quite clearly that they are the one faith and nobody is to follow another). Even Geography, much of it is tied to location and trade, it's the reason that Arabs had such a good grasp of it.

> not to mention history is not linear, there can be golden ages and dark ages it's not a straight line like for example marx suggests

Technology and idea wise it kind of is at least in general it is.

> this pretty much disregard every other regression.

Not really, as I said, it's not like antiquity had an abundance of it and they were still copying and using ancient literature.

> why would you take entire antiquity? you take greco-roman heritage in the account and compare to them and when you compare you can see the dark ages.

Because they are all built on top of each other. Even Greco-Roman culture spans thousands of years.

> You know in antiquity many things were written it's just we barely know them and we know many of them thanks to other scripts refere them, they might be lost, they might be burn down by certain desert cult, smashing down the statues.

It's not just antiquity that has this issue, that certain desert cult does have crimes to answer for but also it's a large part of why much of it still exists, as I said, the monks never stopped copying and learning about it.


> Not to mention high literacy rate and free thinking is completely disregarded amongst other things. 

If that was so important why are they writing so little?

> I'm not even going to point out why the high literacy rate if noone writes a thing, good luck claiming they learned how to read for graffitis.

That could easily be applied to antiquity as well, in both cases folk had different aims for reading and most were not writers.

> aristo socrates and pre-socrates thinkers pretty much disregared or forgotten. even aristo reintroduced in 1000's and this would have never happened if not for christianity and fall or WRE.

Amongst the mainstream maybe but it had not disappeared, there were still scholars reading it.

> I cringe I'm not gonna lie because this claim is simply absurd. Most inventions are already based on other inventions, claiming this is, I think clear way to say "I don't know how inventions work." 

Okay what did Rome invent? And how was it based on Roman inventiveness? Yes inventions are built on inventions(and yet at the same time you mention that you also say 'why would you take entire antiquity?') but most of Roman inventions were not made that way, they saw a helmet the Gauls were wearing, a structure the Greeks had or a sword the Spanish had and just took it.

 >>/40416/
>  >have to say (who?) in here.
> Everybody, I can't even think of an individual.
That might depend on the where. On the Hungary the term "Dark Ages" were never used in this exact form as a name, it was always "Middle Ages" or "Early Middle Ages" which sometimes got an epithet "dark Middle Ages" or "dark Early Middle Ages". I think the second version of this is lot rarer to avoid stacking the adjectives, and the whole formula is just a rhetoric device and not a serious judgement.
Other countries, due to the lack of language expertise from my part, I can't say but I can imagine various uses just on this basis.
In Anglo historical use maybe The New Cambridge Medieval History is a good example since it was composed with the intention to show the change that occurred in scientific view from the publication of The Cambridge Medieval History a century ago. The first two volumes of the New dabbles in the era and throughout almost 2000 pages the term "Dark Ages" used about half a dozen times, mostly framed by apostrophes, while the whole volumes teeming with "early Middle Ages".
However I can't easily make a comparison with the Old since the pdf format is different, while the New textual, allows search, the Old is made of scans and can't search words in it.

 >>/40416/
 >>/40436/
ugh I have written a big fucking load of parapraphs now it's all gone due to my internet nigging out, I'll restart again albeit will wirte shorter, just don't assume I left.

 >>/40444/
Yeah, sometimes I refresh or close the page accidentally (I always have a bunch of tabs open, doing several things at once), so most of the time I write the post with gedit in a simple textfile (and usually store them in related folders thematically in my kc folder).
It really sucks losing stuff, it's work no matter how I view it.

In the meantime.
The second chapter of the first volume of the New Cambridge History talks about "The Barbarian Invasion" and coincidentally a paragraph there adds to my point of "depends where" above. It says in the past how they viewed the barbarian invasion (which was largely blamed for the fall of Rome) in western Europe had two versions. Germans and English due to their Germanic roots saw that in positive light, while fellow Romance speaking historians found a catastrophe in the event. The names they used of the that era also sums up this well: Völkerwanderungen vs. les invasions barbares.
So beside what I personally noticed, there could be other angles to approach the question, from country by country differences can exist.
I was thinking about the old Marxist approach of the communism to this. They saw Rome as a classic slaver society, then feudalism brought a step forward for the proletarians to gain their freedom - no doubt due to their heroic class struggles -, since serfdom was one level above slavery. So Early Medieval must have been more positive than Antiquity when the total exploitation of the proletariat was done. Actually I remember the Athenian people's fight to power, similarly the struggle between the plebs and the patricians in the Roman republic, both presented as a victory for the oppressed masses.

I copypaste a few lines here from the chapter I mentioned because it's hilarious:
In particular, the Germanic barbarians, who include most of the migrating groups, and are still often seen as unified by some kind of proto-German ethos or nationality, migrate along tortuously winding routes, represented in historical atlases as a spaghetti-like confusion of coloured arrows, to their eventual goals, almost as if these were predestined.

 >>/40444/
Maybe write in a rtf file or a Libre writer file beforehand. Just in case

 >>/40445/
AutismPilled

 >>/40416/
Alright after several problems, I can connect nicely.

> Everybody, I can't even think of an individual.
(who?) still stands here.

> Maths was still studied in this era although much of what they studied from was Arabic
correct and arabs embraced the knowledge of ancient greek. 

> Engineering is a funny old thing, there was not so much history of it in Europe to begin with
roman and greek engineering was successfull.

>  Even Geography, much of it is tied to location and trade
yeah it's one of the keys in here because in roman era medditerranean was fully known but after that it's forgotten to some extend again this one is so blatant it's very hard to ignore. thanks to venice mediterranean maps fleshed out again and so on.

>  Religion was only tolerated so long as it didn't interfere with the empire
If you're not cult of zealots why wouldnt it? Old religions were already integrated parts of old traditions, pagans did not kill each other in the name of their super righteous cult. This is mostly christian invention.

> There was no Free thinking in Rome
there was, if you give example how certain thinker is opressed it is still the case todays europe if you end up in wrong side of politics.

> Technology and idea wise it kind of is at least in general it is.
It is not, see how britain forgot how to make buildings from stone. So no it's not linear, it can be linear if state consistency is protected.

> Because they are all built on top of each other
Not an excuse at all, before dark ages greco roman had their things going despite their own problems, it was nowhere near bad dark ages, they were progressing, ever innovative and creative.

>  monks never stopped copying and learning about it.
I can burn a library, save a few books declare myself a hero.

> If that was so important why are they writing so little?
except they did not?

> , there were still scholars reading it.
Who was reading pre socrates thinkers in dark ages like around between 500-900's ?

> Okay what did Rome invent? And how was it based on Roman inventiveness?
You know I can post a list what romans invent and innovated but I dont want to turn this into a link war at all.

> mention that you also say 'why would you take entire antiquity?'
because we are talking about western antiquity as dark ages did not happen in the east,  I mean it is happened later but I digress. 

One does not need to be genius to to see greco-romans surpassed others when it comes to innovation, chasing the knowledge, creating free thinkers so yes they are quite different from ancient babylon and I'll not classify them as the same just because both have the same title, the antique.

 >>/40462/
> I can post a list what romans invent and innovated but I dont want to turn this into a link war at all.
Post it, I'm interested.

 >>/40462/
> (who?) still stands here.

Everyone.

> roman and greek engineering was successfull.

I meant Northern Europe, of course the Greco-Romans did but they would, they lived much closer to the rest of the stone masoning world, the north never had much of a history of it to begin with other than very rudimentary structures.


> If you're not cult of zealots why wouldnt it? Old religions were already integrated parts of old traditions, pagans did not kill each other in the name of their super righteous cult. This is mostly christian invention.

They also had some issues with Jews when they made them recognise the Roman emperor as a god and killed them when they did not, not really religious freedom.

> there was, if you give example how certain thinker is opressed it is still the case todays europe if you end up in wrong side of politics.

Well the above point was hardly freedom of speech either.

> It is not, see how britain forgot how to make buildings from stone. So no it's not linear, it can be linear if state consistency is protected.

Britain both never knew and never forgot, they had historically only made simple stone structures, the Romans came and they put some stone structures up but it was not a British skill or even having the bulk of it passed on to them, however they still actually did build stone structures after the Romans left they were just rare and usually things like churches.

> Not an excuse at all, before dark ages greco roman had their things going despite their own problems, it was nowhere near bad dark ages, they were progressing, ever innovative and creative.

'I cringe I'm not gonna lie because this claim is simply absurd. Most inventions are already based on other inventions, claiming this is, I think clear way to say "I don't know how inventions work."' 

> I can burn a library, save a few books declare myself a hero.

Well it's not like Roman itself never did anything like that(just look at Carthage) or that it was something that was stuck in the dark ages(just look at the Catholic Church and their destruction of Mayan literature)

> except they did not?

They did, as I said, there are very few contemporary sources for Alexander the Great and Early Roman Imperial history.

> because we are talking about western antiquity as dark ages did not happen in the east, I mean it is happened later but I digress. 

You miss the point. Rome and even Greece had a huge wealth of learning and progress to draw from over a vast amount of time. Ad and the qoute I posted just before said 'Most inventions are already based on other inventions' The north did not have that to the same degree.

 >>/40477/
> Rome and even Greece had a huge wealth of learning 
It's a distortion of history in my view that we see only the written history as something real. When books became popular people were afraid humans would become dumbed down since you dont need to remember things as with oral stories. It's a problem with technology as I see it. We value books, tangible things, "technology" today whilst ignoring everything else. 

When I was little I had a vivid imagination, daydreaming about everything. Kids today dont need to imagine anything, they can just watch some program, or google things or play a videogame. Baudrillard I think is excellent in his analysis in todays society and that we live in a simulation and a hyperreality.

Good video of roderick and baudrillard

https://youtube.com/watch?v=x73MNvENQr8

 >>/40480/
Well oral histories tend to get destroyed or diluted/distorted so in a sense they are less real, as you say it is heavily imagination based and imagination is often not based in reality. I think imagination is important but it needs to be imagination based around solid facts and information but the more you know the less you can fantasise about in your head I guess.

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 >>/40477/
> Everyone.
Still not an answer.

> I meant Northern Europe, of course the Greco-Romans did but they would, they lived much closer to the rest of the stone masoning world, the north never had much of a history of it to begin with other than very rudimentary structures.
Roman heritage has gone there and regressed when rome disappeared and it regressed even more so in the south with the emerging of the christianity.

> They also had some issues with Jews when they made them recognise the Roman emperor as a god and killed them when they did not, not really religious freedom.
It was not really literal religion thing, when you say god it's quite different from what we understand from god, if you openly show disdain to state traditions and adopt a zealous behaviour you should expect to crucified.

> Well the above point was hardly freedom of speech either.
Well it is, there are lots of different thinkers who had not to interpret ancient knowledge according to state religion, there were even godless people.

> Britain both never knew and never forgot, they had historically only made simple stone structures, the Romans came and they put some stone structures up but it was not a British skill or even having the bulk of it passed on to them, however they still actually did build stone structures after the Romans left they were just rare and usually things like churches.
They knew it's just it was mostly tied with roman state structure and disappeared when rome have gone.

> Well it's not like Roman itself never did anything like that(just look at Carthage) 
We're not arguing about who is angel or devil we're arguing about regressing, tearing apart everything yet claim they are angel because they saved a few scripts and intepreted them (and forcing to do so) according to their primitive religion. 

Yes carthage was ruined but neither of us claim it was just part of "linear progress"

> They did, as I said, there are very few contemporary sources for Alexander the Great and Early Roman Imperial history
Alexander the great was macedon, it wasnt known for ancient scripture exactly, even the greeks saw them half barbarians. 

>  Early Roman Imperial history.
Mass destruction by ISIS tier cult does not help. 

> The north did not have that to the same degree.
Agreed but again roman heritage went north.

> You miss the point. Rome and even Greece had a huge wealth of learning and progress to draw from over a vast amount of time.
And that wealth has been severely regressed thanks to christianity and their zealot way of thinking.

 >>/40491/
> Still not an answer.

Yes it is.

> It was not really literal religion thing, when you say god it's quite different from what we understand from god, if you openly show disdain to state traditions and adopt a zealous behaviour you should expect to crucified.

It is a literal religion thing.

> Well it is, there are lots of different thinkers who had not to interpret ancient knowledge according to state religion, there were even godless people.

It's not, even by your own idea of it it's not. Even if it was state tradition, not being allowed to criticise or abstain from state tradition is not freedom of speech now is it?

> They knew it's just it was mostly tied with roman state structure and disappeared when rome have gone.

That is the point, it was a Roman thing that the Romans were doing and that was tied to them and their own structures and ways, it was not a Briton innovation or a Saxon one and clearly it was not something that was passed on to them.

> We're not arguing about who is angel or devil we're arguing about regressing,

They didn't regress. I think part of the issue here is the assumption that Germanic tribes(who ended up controlling pretty much all of western Europe) were in fact Romans and had all the traditions, institutions and technologies of Romans. They simply did not. They never regressed as they were never Roman to begin with. From the perspective of these Germanic tribes they were in fact progressing.

> Alexander the great was macedon, it wasnt known for ancient scripture exactly, even the greeks saw them half barbarians. 

It's not like the Campaigns of Alexander the Great were entirely outside of the Greek world. He did own all of Greece and much of his army was Greek and what he did was really quite extraordinary. It's something that people would generally write quite a lot about.

> Mass destruction by ISIS tier cult does not help

Or hinder that much in this case, it just was not there.

> Agreed but again roman heritage went north.

The Romans went north, how much of their heritage was given to the common locals is something else and the people that ended up with those areas in the end were not even the common locals that had been under Roman rule anyway. They were Germans.

> And that wealth has been severely regressed thanks to christianity and their zealot way of thinking.

Well the Eastern Roman empire kept doing fine at that period and it was Christian. Even Italy was still building beautiful stone structures right after the fall of the Empire but they were under a new administration that was again, German.

 >>/40480/
> It's a distortion of history in my view that we see only the written history as something real. 
This, I'm an Archaeologist in America and I'm often impressed with the oral history keeping practiced by Native-Americans.

 >>/40502/
I find it hard to express my thoughts in this matter because its so abstract and far fetched to most people. For me it all boils down to technology, its a dealing with the devil. We get all this cool and helpful technology and in return we become less and less human. Books are just a part of that. I would rather listen to a poet talking vividly about othello than reading it. Or watching Roderick* talking about socrates (irl) instead of reading socrates. 

In my work they want everyone to meet digital instead of in the flesh. I think this plandemic is just a way to make us less human. Less alive. 

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ_hUxuumk0&list=PL6676C3E8A487FEE6

 >>/40502/
> I'm an Archaeologist in America and I'm often impressed with the oral history keeping practiced by Native-Americans.

Intradesting.

Tell us more about what you do bernd

 >>/40536/
He probably steals statues from Inca temples while running from boulders, foils Nazi masterplans, shoots Arabs with swords. And shuts down malfunctioning dinosaur theme park.

 >>/40536/
Ask him about the kennewick man

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 >>/40552/
I think I know who you are talking about. You are clearly referring to Nathan Drake from the Uncharted videogames series It's so obvious

 >>/40577/
Ah, that's a console game.

 >>/40126/
Problem with a lot of those articles is that they are using numbers from mostly European sources, who loved to exaggerate the numbers to make themselves look like some badass underdogs. While the Ottomans probably did have some numerical advantage over their foes, it wasn't nearly as lopsided as Wikipedia articles make it seem.

 >>/40592/
Depends on the source, many European sources exaggerate the numbers on their side even when they lose or meet catastrophe(such as some of the Spanish expeditions against Algeria and Tunis or the supposed army of Barbarossa that was meant to number 100,000). It's not like Ottoman sources are not want to portray themselves as the underdog as well either.

 >>/40592/
 >>/40593/
I might have written about the Law of Growing Numbers in the battles/about killing thread.
I observed this Law in working in my teenage years when I frequented football matches. After the event, the numbers fan judged the crowd and the official number of the attendance based on the tickets sold (plus season tickets) were two different thing. Fans always estimated the number of people present in the stadium higher than the officials said it was.
It's same with those who participate in battles (or in any other happening involving a crowd of people, such as party gatherings, demonstrations, whatever - police have a way of estimating, number of possible people per square meter, multiplied by the area of the demonstration expressed in square meters - this number is always lower than what demonstrators and politicians say).
The Law says both/all sides are presented higher than it actually is. If we won, the number of the enemy is estimated higher because we are so badasses we can defeat throngs of enemies. If we lost then the number of the enemy is estimated higher because only numerical superiority can defeat us (beside treachery). But our own number becomes also higher, because our cause is just, we are the good guys, ofc lot of people support us, we are everyone basically if you look at it objectively, no? We are strong, we are numerous.
I don't think anyone ever played down own numbers, it's just easier to overestimate the other side.
As far as I know historians do not take the numbers in the sources at face value. Just with everything else they examine it critically first, then say if it's possible or not.

 >>/40592/
Which begs the question: Did the romans who lost against hannibal exaggerated aswell? Perhapaps much of history is false if we take that route.

 >>/40596/
Those numbers are judged realistic basically by all historians.
What I doubt (historians do not care about some noone on an anonymous imageboard, I have to add) is later reports. I especially doubt the battle of Catalaunum/Chalons, not just the numbers, but if it happened at all. Even if it has a kernel of truth and there actually was something, I think how it happened and the story behind it was very different.

 >>/40594/
There's one exception - when reporting one's own casualties the number is diminished.

 >>/40600/
Probably with some caveats. Like whom or when. Unit commanders very well may send false reports to HQ to save their own skin (no matter the outcome of the battle). Can't bath in glory if have to admit faults, and the promotion is just too precious. This can catch up with them later however, I imagine. Depending on place and time.
Medieval chronicles however may paint the picture more dark, implications of disaster or outright claiming it - well when it's about own casualties, in case of victory it's much more desirable the total destruction, or at least the decisive defeat of the enemy, while own casualties will be lighter.
But this might deserve more than my impressions how it was done and actually look into examples.

 >>/39794/

After the crusaders sacked constantinople the eastern roman empire was effectively killed. The Rum Turks would fill that power vacuum happily. The city itself is an excellent strategic asset... their kings also closely watched the europeans and iranians and copied various things from them.

 >>/40155/

The muslims had a large advantage for 900 years... they ruled over much of the old worlds trade wealth. They also had large populations due to the muslims inheriting the wealthy ancient east. Europeans eventually countered this by colonizing the new world, circumnavigating the islamic world, the industrial revolution.

 >>/40611/
 >>/40613/
Huh, a Britball. You're just Polan innit. "just"

 >>/40613/
 >>/40613/
> . They also had large populations
Anatolia was depopulated, Iran depopulated after tamerlane, north africa was never that populated to begin with same case with most of arabia save for syria and iraq regions. 

Only notable populated areas were iran, and fertile crescent area.

 >>/40611/
ERE being have to call crusaders to save her ass was already an effective mark of her dying nature. Before 4th crusade it was getting roflstomped left and right even with Komnenos dynasty trying to restore. 

4th crusade was not reason why ERE fall it was in fact result of the fall. ERE never able to reqonquered chuknks of land conquered by Seljuks but they were able to retake Constantinople, so the claiming it was reason to downfall is vastly overestimating also quite eurocentric.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PWg0tae_QT0

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 >>/40620/
No proper Bernd would watch that.

they monke

Another thing to consider is the nature of the size of armies that could be fielded in the first place and how they fielded them. 100,000 strong armies are not actually a modern phenomena or unique to the Ottomans, even the ancient Chinese would have multiple warring sates each with armies of 100,000 or more in the field. Europe had the feudal system which made much of it's military strength subject to codes and terms of service that often were not actually that long(sometimes vassals in the HRE would only be expected to fight for a month or even a fortnight a year, good luck fighting a campaign in that time, although they could be held for longer but they would have to be paid for it) and the rest was made up of predominately professional or at least semi-professional 'mercenaries'. So all in all the army was decentralised and expensive.

So when looking at the hundred years war, when France massed a force as large as it could to defeat England it was still only 20,000-30,000 strong for a population of 15-20 million or so and on top of that they were hiring mercenaries from Genoa. European armies were often smaller but more professional and better equipped and I think that goes some way to explain why they often failed when launching large expeditions or far flung expeditions. They didn't have the expertise so diesese or malaria would often cripple the army if it tried to leave Europe(as happened to various Spanish and French invasions of North Africa) or even if they managed to reach the foe in a relatively good condition the chain of command was muddled and confused so you end up with the French taking of by themselves to charge head long up the hill against the Ottomans into their trap, ignoring everybody else.

 >>/40634/
Ottoman usually couldnt fied 100.000 men thats exaggeration. Anatolia was depopulated and logisticsl nightmare. I never understood how people believe low populated nomads suddenly found breeding hack and fields 100.000 once every battle.

It gets funnier when fighting habsburgs and hungarian we field 60.000-80.000 men but to conquer bumfuck nowhere in balkan we field 120.000 men. Yeah totally believe able.

 >>/40134/

Islam is a double edged sword, the low trust authoritarian nature of the religion is useful for creating fanatical warriors but it also has a retarding effect on culture.

 >>/40639/
Well they were not really nomadic by this point now where they? Nor was Anatolia completely void of inhabitants before they arrived. I don't think it was that depopulated later on either.

Although, nomads actually do field large armies in proportion to their populations anyway, because a nomadic army is basically just a tribe on the move.

 >>/40634/
How did china get so big? I never got that. Rice? Sure, but it seems they have always had a big population

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 >>/40642/
> nomadic
You mean steppe people?
> nomadic army is basically just a tribe on the move.
Wrong.

 >>/40644/
Maybe this deserves a new thread on its own

 >>/40644/
The fertile lands around the yellow river and the other rivers in that area could support large populations and those large populations gradually subjugated the others. Most of China is actually pretty barren so the Chinese empires just expanded into these areas as well. They could never really get that far northwards though. After a while they managed to subjugate the south which is also a fairly populous region.

 >>/40647/
Sure but it's applicable to nomads in General.

...It's not wrong that is what they are.

 >>/40659/
It's really wrong tho.
I'll return to this in length but just read up on the Mongol conquest of the Rus'. Or the Hungarian campaigns to Western Europe and Byzantium (I think you can find an uninformative Wiki article searching "Hungarian invasions", but it will more than nothing).
But let me ask you: how do you imagine can make war with your mom, wife, kids, and parents/grandparents on your back with all your earthy posessions under your armpit? You can't.
Also let me remind you steppe people served as mercenaries in all the wars of the people living just over their borderlands (Chinese, Iranians, Byzantines, HRE just for a couple of examples) since the age of Scythians. These were organized units of soldiers, and not a tribe of civilians fighting out of necessity.
Yes, I also did read such an opinion what you wrote expressed by an (Anglo) historian, it's the most idiotic thing since one of them a prof at an illustrious uni was able to say that the Huns did not know the wheel...

 >>/40660/
Mongol campaigns are actually a good example of what I am talking about. Of course they don't fight with their mum on their back but I would assume you are aware of baggage trains and such. Not every person that is attached to an army is present on the battlefield, even European armies often brought their families or other followers with them. A mongol army was a tribe on the move, the family went with the army taking their goats and everything else they had and then setting up their Ger at the end of the days march and letting their horses and such graze. Which was part of the reason Mongol armies actually were strategically slower that many other armies, but once they were near the enemy the actual fighting components of the army would break of and do the actual fighting.

> Also let me remind you steppe people served as mercenaries in all the wars of the people living just over their borderlands (Chinese, Iranians, Byzantines, HRE just for a couple of examples) since the age of Scythians. These were organized units of soldiers, and not a tribe of civilians fighting out of necessity.

Well mercenary units are different and may not always follow the same pattern. Although their were nomadic groups that did bring their entire families along with them to serve other nations.

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 >>/40660/
> with all your earthy posessions under your armpit
it was yurt

 >>/40644/
Chinese love sex only slightly more than Germans do, except they don't bother using birth control most of the time.

 >>/40659/
South of china is not really chinese?

 >>/40665/
It still is but it's just a bit different. Chinese culture originated in the area that Beijing is now, in the north(Beijing means northern Capital). That's where the ancient Chinese dynasties and ancient Chinese history in general originated. Much of southern China used to be occupied by Viets until the Han dynasty invaded, even then there was still a bit of a divide and most often the capital was still somewhere in the north(even Nanjing is still not really in the south even though Nanjing means southern Capital). Even to this day the south speak Cantonese whereas the north speak mandarin. The south was histrionically poorer as well(the Beiyang army actually had to lower the height requirement for southern soldiers due to them being smaller on average) but maybe that is not true now as much of the wealth and business of China is now located in southern cities.

 >>/40666/
Isnt the north colder and less fertile than southern china?

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 >>/40671/
It's a lot flatter, though. And the Yellow River basin is very fertile.

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 >>/40661/
> even European armies
> camp followers
And this is the source of your confusion (and some Anglo historians'). The warfare of the steppes isn't what was in Europe, that get some thugs, have a couple miles stroll and beat up your neighbour's peasants.
I'm not sure when I'll reply next, tomorrow is national holiday and free, but will spend some quality time with family, so not sure how much time I have to it, and this is also pretty long topic.
But here's a primary source which might need to be introduced. Search "Turks" a couple of times. That's how Leo (and/or his neger who supposedly wrote the book) called Hungarians. First you get sporadic hits, then the book spends a section on us through several paragraphs.

 >>/40680/
> The warfare of the steppes isn't what was in Europe, that get some thugs, have a couple miles stroll and beat up your neighbour's peasants.

If anything wouldn't that only go against your own argument? You don't need huge numbers of camp followers to 'get some thugs, have a couple miles stroll and beat up your neighbours peasants'. Also highly ironic that you even say such a things as that is far more applicable to nomadic warfare, that is the whole objective behind most of their campaigns, they head out, loot the country side, butcher the people and then demand tribute before heading home again.

 >>/40685/
> If anything wouldn't that only go against your own argument? 
Nope. European campaigns are literally what I wrote. Check 100 years of war for example (or any other wars). Their chief modus operandi was this.
> highly ironic
Not one bit.
> far more applicable to nomadic warfare
> loot the country side
You mean the poor ass peasants of medieval Europe? Their own lords did the same with them.
When steppe people moved their troops to foreigners lands they did that to follow the principle Sun Tzu also put to paper (and you can find it in his book): you don't feed your own army (which makes you poorer), take the food from the enemy.
And from my own quote:
> thugs
I wanted to incorporate this into the post(s) where I reply in earnest but.
The armies of steppe people rarely were ad hoc scraped thugs, like the medieval levy was. Learning horse archery in itself an art of a lifetime. I know a dude who does this for two decades now, I mean learning, he still not arrived to a point where he could call himself a horse archer. Talents like Kassai are rare, and even Kassai is a hack compared to what they were like. And then comes what matter the most - since they grew up on horseback with a bow in hands - they also had to learn how to fight in formations, stealing horses from the neighbour isn't comparable experience. They recruited the more talented and gave them training, they held mock battles regularly, and went fighting real ones according to the politics of the gens, tribe, tribal alliance or the khagan/khan/shan-yu himself. The warrior "class" served as followers of the heads of the social structure, bodyguards but also border guards. The states (they were real states with bureaucracy) of the steppe people kept a wide depopulated ring around their lands where they kept no settlements, but patrols who also used those lands as pastures (this is why their land toiling neighbours often did not know about their villages and towns).
Sima Qian gives a nice example of the training when he tells us that Mao-tun/Modu recruited ten thousand (= a tumen/tömény) men and trained them to follow all of his commands as they were one, to shoot their arrows where he shoots without a question. The story also tells more, many implications there, two for example: the discipline and obedience they demanded from the soldiers, and a hint how they directed fire with special arrowheads made to whistle during flight (it is confirmed from elsewhere). They trained them for maneuvers, and triggered their execution with signals. You cannot do this with part-time/ad hoc soldiers During the Wars of Roses after the old generation of Duke Richard the 3rd - who fought in the 100 years war - died out, they did not know how to conduct warfare properly, they were blundering greenhorns. Look it up..
Part of the so called Hungarian invasions one campaign rises above the others. They crossed the Alps, crossed the Po, crossed the Alps, crossed the Rhone, crossed the Pyrenees, beat the Moors, crossed the Pyrenees, crossed the Rhone, crossed the Rhine, and returned home along the Danube. They bargained diplomatic deals, fought some battles, many skirmishes, plundered towns and villages. The did this with 15 thousand men, and 50-100 thousands of horses. It was an organized campaign which makes Hannibal a clueless beginner. I leave you the homework to look it up, feel free to loan books from libraries and such, it can be done via the internet from far away institutions too.

 >>/40685/
> camp followers
The armies of the steppe people did not have camp followers. They would have slow the going down (just how their families would have if they were with them on campaigns). The "train" was the spare horses who served as fresh saddle horses, arrow haulers (they brought massive amount of arrows, there's data how much the Parthians used at Carrhae, another homework for you to find it), loot haulers, and occasionally if need be, walking foodsource. During battles they left behind comparatively few men who could herd the whole thing. A stationary camp with families would have been extremely vulnerable even to a small amount of enemy horsemen (enemy steppe people) and would have distracted larger amount of warriors to guard them, probably in vain.

 >>/40686/
> Nope. 
Yes, it would, you don't need camp followers to fight some peasants a few miles away.

> European campaigns are literally what I wrote. Check 100 years of war for example (or any other wars). Their chief modus operandi was this.

You are aware that you can't stroll to France from England and that it's also more than just a couple of miles away right?

> You mean the poor ass peasants of medieval Europe? Their own lords did the same with them.

I'm not even going to humour this.

> When steppe people moved their troops to foreigners lands they did that to follow the principle Sun Tzu also put to paper (and you can find it in his book): you don't feed your own army (which makes you poorer), take the food from the enemy.

Maybe the fact has escaped you but for the principal to make sense you have to actually be fighting a war, these nomads were not peacefully passing through some other land to graze their horses. They were invading places for pillage and tribute in the first place.

> The armies of steppe people rarely were ad hoc scraped thugs, like the medieval levy was.

Medieval levies were on the same level as your average nomad tribesman, most tribesman just raise livestock and hunt, practising when they can, most peasant levies just farm and practice when they can as well, the difference being that most levies had a minor role or never fought to begin with, they were primarily there to defend but as I said, nomadic armies were tribes on the move, so more of the average folk participated. Both peoples however have professionals, you mentioned the hundred years war before, you are aware that basically the entire army on both sides in most battles was not made up of levies but professionals right? Look at any of the famous battles and who do you actually see participating for the most part? Knights, Men at arms, Longbowman and mercenaries. Sure the French had levies but they didn't actually contribute all that much(well urban levy did in sieges). It takes a while to learn to shoot from horseback sure but then it takes a while to shoot a proper longbow as well and knights also trained from a very young age. Yes these tribesman had a good understanding of formations and movements due to the fact they often held large scale hunts and other exercises that honed this and again these only goes to support my point about nomadic armies being whole tribes, it was just a matter of what the particular tribe was doing at the time, whether it was migrating across the steppes holding a few groups hunts and other exercises or weather it was on a campaign.

 >>/40687/

> The armies of the steppe people did not have camp followers. 

Yes they did, as a I keep saying, there armies were whole tribes and everything that entails.

> They would have slow the going down (just how their families would have if they were with them on campaigns).

And it did, as I said.

> The "train" was the spare horses who served as fresh saddle horses, arrow haulers (they brought massive amount of arrows, there's data how much the Parthians used at Carrhae, another homework for you to find it), loot haulers, and occasionally if need be, walking foodsource. During battles they left behind comparatively few men who could herd the whole thing. 

Well they had all of that as that was all part of the tribe that was coming with them.

> A stationary camp with families would have been extremely vulnerable even to a small amount of enemy horsemen (enemy steppe people) and would have distracted larger amount of warriors to guard them, probably in vain.

All logistics and supply trains are vulnerable but usually they stay well behind in the case of an actual battle and being a nomadic army of horseman it really isn't the most taxing or difficult thing to protect. They aren't in a shortage or horseman to act as scouts and locate enemy movements and they are also quite able to react to any movements they do come across.

 >>/40686/
 >>/40680/
Fuck you are good at this.

 >>/40640/
Same case for every zealot religion. Ironically every religion had its golden age when it was not taken literally. From islamic golden age to rennessaince. I never understood the appeal of going back to roots (which is literally salafism, salaf means predecessor) since people who takes religion literally already exist.. in africa and other shitholes. 

If you have beef with modern culture (which I do) creating or recreating another cleric class is not way to go. When these people have moral authority to declare you "heretic" usually they will be immoral themselves and instill fear to honest folk. 

I can say this to "social sciences" club and SJWs in general. I can rant more but feeling lazy at this point.

 >>/40686/
They grew up with riding horses, its different. Industrial society as a whole is completely different from what people where 200 years ago. The old guard in napoleons army would have chewed and spit out any "elite" military today. 

Not just physiology, but in worldview, in how they saw the world, what mattered. Today everything is about money and utalitarianism, it wasnt that cut and dry back then.

 >>/40696/
> Today everything is about money and utalitarianism
You really think 200 years ago it was any different, especially napoleon's army?

 >>/40695/
Islamic Golden Age was literally just the leftovers of the scientific thought of the empires and kingdoms that Islam conquered. Once all the great thinkers and institutions of those years died, the age ended because it could not produce great thinkers of its own.

The thing about Islam is that it is a religion that demands absolute conviction. You cannot half-ass it like Christianity because it doesn't leave much room for alternate interpretation. Even the verses extolling the virtues of knowledge are offset by the "nothing can go against the word of God" ones.

I tried to see what other problems lead to Islamic countries inevitably being somewhat backwards than their contemporaries but they are all negligible or stem from Islam in the first place. Ultimately, I think there are fundamental flaws in their philosophy that cannot be surmounted.

>  >>/40695/ 
Islamic Golden Age was literally just the leftovers of the scientific thought of the empires and kingdoms that Islam conquered
Can be said about any empire, regardless what you say is wrong. 

>  Once all the great thinkers and institutions of those years died, the age ended because it could not produce great thinkers of its own.
It died because of Turco-mongols and reqonquista.

> The thing about Islam is that it is a religion that demands absolute conviction
Correct, same case about christianity and judaism if you read their holy book. That is the reason why religious people cant into free think and science because at best they have to intepret old knowledge according to their beliefs, see neo platonism in dark ages. Even today there are islamic scholars doing that, needless to say such behaviour never improves only hinders the science and free thinking, since when you criticise their intepretation you also criticise religion.. I assume you acknowledge where this is going. 
Only people who dont take their religion unliterally really created milestones. 

If you think great islamic thinkers were more islamic than they were thinkerers you are dead wrong. Entire Mutalize thought revolved around rationalism how islamic law cannot handle vast empire anymore. So in a sense Islam was not naturally secularized in long process rather there was entire alternative form of Islam which dead nowadays. It's not hard to assume none of the people are convicted believers, either identify as muslims for safety or they were part of "not true islam" gang.

>  You cannot half-ass it like Christianity
Hundred years of dark ages happened, if you lived around tht time you wouldnt able to say it. Yet zealots who perished the antique greco-roman heritage lost influence and newly mobilised secular classes gained power and so christianity changed.  Hypathia and so many others got purged and killed for this reason, for feeble minded take their slave cult too seriously.

> I tried to see what other problems lead to Islamic countries inevitably being somewhat backwards than their contemporaries
Pick another religion take it literally, you will get the same result I promise you. And there is nothing inevitable, history showed exceptional people can completely change history. Even solely this will disprove your theory about why particular group will always go shit.

 >>/40353/
> which led to the universities, which led to scientific thought.
Scientific thought was already established in antiquity by ancient greeks as they are the first one in the world how world come to existence and such with non religious explanation. That's how natural sciences occurred and medieval universities until rennessaince was mostly about theology which does not uses scientific methods at all.

So supposed universities leading scientific thought is simply wrong. Such theological "universities" also existed in islamic era not to mention there were secularized "madrasas" with all about science and philosophy and religion was kept at minimum. House of wisdom is older than oldest universit in europe and mind you those universities and modern ones one thing in common, it's the name itself.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9vnFZ53uMbU

Pretty funny

I give this a bump, it seems it slipped to the second page, but maybe peeps wanna discuss this further.
Not sure when I get to the warfare of steppe people. I'm sorry for that.

Do regular Turks get educated on this subject matter whilst they are in school? Or do they focus mostly on modern Turk history?

 >>/40862/
I cant say a thing about irregular Türks but we do learn about ottoman history, our republic is not conjured out of thin air afterall.

 >>/40864/
are you a moslem

 >>/40862/
That would be default no? I'd assume Irish are taught about their history prior to Irish Republic. Just as we learn about all kinds of stuff from before Trianon.

lol
i wonder from when does school pick up dutch history in the netherlands

 >>/40869/
Karel de Grote was Dutch after all.

 >>/40870/
I mean Karel de Groot.

 >>/40864/
> but we do learn about ottoman history, our republic is not conjured out of thin air afterall.

That's good to hear. I thought you would only be learning about the Ataturk era and how cool Erdogan is

 >>/40864/
To be fair here, turkey and the ottoman empire is extremely different for alot of reasons. There is not alot of similarities

 >>/40878/
Both are full of T*rks.

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 >>/40880/
Cease your butthurt passive aggresive cuck.

 >>/40875/
I dont get why would you think that, not learning about the past would raise serious questions. As for erdoğan he cant be taught in history class because it's not really history yet. 

 >>/40878/
Similarity is not neccesary at all, it's just you need to know about your nations history and history of the lands you occuppied now, history of other Türks all taught here altough with mediocre quality. If we didnt swarm entire country with "universities" and had only a  few but quality highschools that are dedicated to raise students to attend universities it would be better. 

Many Turks are /pol/ tier when it comes to history for a reason, half assed knowledge about subjects and collective confidence about being fully enlightened due to constant echo chambers.

 >>/40883/
> half assed knowledge about subjects and collective confidence about being fully enlightened due to constant echo chambers.

Thats the world for 99,99999% of people

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 >>/40880/
Ottoman Empire was less full of Turks than Turkey.

 >>/40889/
Every 60 Seconds In Africa, A Minute Passes

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 >>/40883/
> I dont get why would you think that, 
Because I don't live there bernd! I wouldn't really know what happens there since I'm an outsider. Nice rare spede btw fam Also, if you made that Spede, you missed a little bit of color on the left side of the head

 >>/40880/
> Both are full of T*rks.
I liek Turkeys budy. They're good at the Serious Discussions™, and they also really good to eat

 >>/40895/
You would think would you. But that's just immeasurable Eurocentrism.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cznburakfanclub/top/?t=all

look at this mad lad from turkey. maybe even from same town as turk bernd?

 >>/40956/
I know his hometown actually, quite far from my place, his city bordering syria actually.

 >>/40960/
what do you think is the purpose for the syrian conflict? greater israel? cant be that many syrians living in syria now right?

 >>/40962/
Israel has demographics problem. Palestinians would outbirth them if not for the orthodox Jews, who breed like rabbits. Not sure about the policies of Israel, but they are aware of this threat, and they are struggle with this since the foundation of the Jewish state. For their luck they got Jewish immigrants from the ex-commie states after 1990, but it is unlikely they'll get more from anywhere in the future, so they have to face the problem locally.
Getting more lands would mean getting more goyim which would tip the current balance of ethnicities. Besides more Muslims (since they would gain more Muslims) means security threat, they would gain more such people whom they want to keep out, more fundamentalists and Jihadists.
While there is the dream of Greater Israel, the reality is that it's a pipe dream.

 >>/40962/
It was for american imperialism, while assad family is not the greatest thing in the world, its hardly justifiable to stir shit up in their land. 

Before AKP we had several "offers" to intervene in syria, some offers were from muslim brotherhood and some were from Türkmens themselves, needless to say we didn't intervene, too much balkanization and destablized borders would eventually affect us, but current party needs to divert the attention to foreign politics and make neo ottomanist fools happy. That's why erdo insisting so much in syrian conflict. 

You can also listen what the hungarian say, israel by nature is extremely revisionist state, their "promised lands" includes some parts of southern Turkey, so I would beware, but right now it's just a far future thing.

 >>/41005/
> Israel has demographics problem. Palestinians would outbirth them if not for the orthodox Jews, who breed like rabbits.

Considering that Arab demographic pool is unlimited (because not only local Palestinians matter, but neighbors), Israel would lose demographic race even if they'll be on par with Arabs, just because Middle East is filled with Arabs anyway.

So, only solution for them are deportations, so they slowly trying to drive Palestinians away. And this works, at least for now.

But compared to other countries, Israel has pretty healthy demographics even without orthodoxes (i.e. non-declining).