When Did the ME Go Wrong?

[The Brain]

Is this discussion: train wreck? Circle-speak marathon?

[Malthus]

Put it this way: When the Mongols invaded China, did they take the secrets of Chinese civilization back to Mongolia, make all of the Mongols living there cease using Yurts and erect towns and cities on the Chinese plan, and transform their own people into farmers?

But that is because of climate and geography.  Of course you are not going to grow rice on the Mongel Steppe.  That says nothing about the ability of nomads to absorb culture.

We disagree on this. It has everything to do with the ability of nomads to absorb culture.

Maybe you aren't seeing my point because it is too obviously true or something.

I am not saying that nomads are racially or genetically incapable of absorbing culture, but that the lifestyle they lead precludes it .

At the same time it is exactly this lifestyle - the hardihood of a life in the saddle, the ultra-high mobility of leading a string of horses, the fact that every man knows the use of the "Turkish" bow - which makes such people militarily powerful.

Thus the dilemma: the nomads are capable of beating civilizations, but once they have, what then? They cannot absorb the secrets of these civilizations themselves - their lifestyle does not permit of that; if they set themselves up as aristiocrats, they run the risk of rotting the very basis of their military power - they get absorbed by civilization.

One tecnnique to solve this dilemma was military slavery - in essence, to *buy* steppe nomads to fight for them (as in the Mamluks). The Turks used internal military slavery - the Janessaries.

Both Mamlucks and Jannesaries tended over time to sieze power for themselves - and both as institutions were intensely conservative.

[crazy canuck]

Malthus, you have done what every good advocate does.  You have characterized the debate in a way you cannot fail.  You are down to making an argument that nomads can only remain nomads because once they become something else they are no longer nomads.

Can't disagree with that.  But I dont see where that gets us.

[Malthus]

Malthus, you have done what every good advocate does.  You have characterized the debate in a way you cannot fail.  You are down to making an argument that nomads can only remain nomads because once they become something else they are no longer nomads.

Can't disagree with that.  But I dont see where that gets us.

Is that all you are getting out of what I'm writing? 

It's hardly a fair characterization.

[Valmy]

Both Mamlucks and Jannesaries tended over time to sieze power for themselves

The Jannesaries were not really like a nomad corps though. They were infantry and their conservatism and style was more in the mold of the Streltsy in Russia or the Praetorian Guard in Rome than comparable to the Mamelucks.

[Caliga]

Both Mamlucks and Jannesaries tended over time to sieze power for themselves

The Jannesaries were not really like a nomad corps though. They were infantry and their conservatism and style was more in the mold of the Streltsy in Russia or the Praetorian Guard in Rome than comparable to the Mamelucks.

I think a very good analogy for the Janissaries is the Varangian Guard in the Byzantine Court (though it's slightly better for the Mamluks than for the Janissaries).

[Malthus]

Both Mamlucks and Jannesaries tended over time to sieze power for themselves

The Jannesaries were not really like a nomad corps though. They were infantry and their conservatism and style was more in the mold of the Streltsy in Russia or the Praetorian Guard in Rome than comparable to the Mamelucks.

I know, they were recruited from Christian boys. They were not themselves nomads; they were recruited by a government descended from nomads.

[garbon]

5. The difference is that the non-steppe variety - Visigoths and Vandals - were capable of absorbing Roman civ..

Isn't that just an issue of terminology?   You state that the Mongols stem from nomadic areas and never really absorbed the civs they invaded, as after all, they didn't bring that civilization back to their homeland.  Similarly, the Visigoths stemmed from an area that would be rather nomadic for a bit...and yet you do say that they were able to asborb Roman civ.

[garbon]

Oh and the confusion of terms bit is that we don't tend to link the Visigoths to the people living in the region after they left (even though there must have been demographic overlap) whereas one, especially you Malthus, would link the Mughals and Manchu directly to the nomads left behind on the steppe.

[Jacob]

Well now wait a second.  Poland, and Eastern Europe in general, were closer to and associated with Easterners all the time.   They also were close by and associated with Westerners.  So my question woud be if bringing forth all this Eastern knowledge through Islam, Mongols and so forth was so instrumental wouldn't it have had a larger impact in places that associated with those cultures on a regular basis than those that interacted less?  Why didn't the renaissance start in Spain or Poland if it was all about Westerners being influenced by the East?

I am always a bit leery of the whole idea of the East facilitating the rise of the West.  it just makes no sense culturally or geographically.  Great ideas were taking off from Western Europe...not from Greece, Spain, Poland, and Russia which is where one would expect it to originate from if Eastern ideas were really as central as they were often presented.

That is not to say that Asian ideas did not have an influence (or that the Italians were not involved in the Eastern Mediterranean because they were) but the whole 'The Renaissance would never have happened with <insert pet Eastern culture here>' thing is a bit overstated IMO.

You are exaggerating what I'm saying to refute it.

If the preconditions for the rise of modernity is A + B + C + D and someone says that D (in this case, certain technological advances) only got to Europe through Mongol facilitated spread of ideas and cultures (which is what I'm saying) it does not mean that D is the only important factor (which is what you say you have a problem with).  A and B and C are equally important, and where absent modernity would not develop.  However, without D it won't either.  Perhaps D will eventually reach Western Europe or perhaps it'll be developed independently, however as it happened it got there as a result of the Mongol policy if cultural, philosophical, merchantile and technological exchange throughout their territory.

As for why Russia and Poland didn't make the leap even though they were closer to the source of D, I don't know.  Perhaps it was because they were missing B and C (whatever exactly those were) which were present further West.  This in no way invalidates the suggestion that D was critical to the rise of the modern world and that Europe got those through the Mongols.

[The Minsky Moment]

Put it this way: When the Mongols invaded China, did they take the secrets of Chinese civilization back to Mongolia, make all of the Mongols living there cease using Yurts and erect towns and cities on the Chinese plan, and transform their own people into farmers?

The answer is that they did not - rather, the Mongol invaders set themselves up basically as Chinese aristocrats. The steppe remained more or less exactly as it had been before the invasion. It would remain that way for hundreds of years.

In contrast, the various Germanic barbarians surrounding the Roman empire tended to themselves over time absorb the traits of civilization - create their own cities, often on the sites of Roman cities but not always, even though their ancestors had been directly instrumental in destroying the same (see: Alfred the Great the Saxon - Saxons had ruined Roman Britian).

So steppe nomads could acculturate, just like trans-Rhenan tribes and Viking seafaring raiders.  In all cases, they conquered, they acculturated and stayed put.

Other random points:
+ the post-Roman barbarians didn't create their own cities.  Urban life in Europe vanished for about 800 years, except for those cities in the Med that they inherited from Rome.
+ I am no huge fan of the Saxon but they didn't ruin Roman Britain.  The Romans managed that on their own.  You can't take Duggan's fiction as history. 

[Sheilbh]

In contrast, the various Germanic barbarians surrounding the Roman empire tended to themselves over time absorb the traits of civilization - create their own cities, often on the sites of Roman cities but not always, even though their ancestors had been directly instrumental in destroying the same (see: Alfred the Great the Saxon - Saxons had ruined Roman Britian).

That is a LIE!

[PDH]

Why do you say the Huns remained nomadic?  Didnt large numbers settle in the Hungarian plateau?

You're thinking of the Gyppos.

[Queequeg]

The history of the Roman Empire is actually quite damaging to your case.  The Roman Empire lasted over 400 years before steppe nomads came into the picture (note -- he Goths, Vandals, Franks, etc. were not steppe nomads).  The early empire had the the technical know-how and the resources needed to create an industrial civilization.  It even had an extraordinary talent for applied engineering, and a very practical outlook on filling material needs.  Yet long before the Huns are even a glimmer in the imagination and even long before the settled barbarians pose even the suggestion of a risk to the security of the core provinces, it is clear that was never in the cards.  If the Huns never show up and the Goths stay calm on the other side of the Danube for perpetuity, it's not like there is any sign that Mediterranean civilization is going to advance steadily into modernity.  Au contraire - it looks like it is going the other way.

Even after Rome is gone, there is a second rise of Mediterranean civilization - the Italian communes and city-states which start their rise in the 12 century.  No steppe nomad threat there.  Also no transition to modernity.  Then comes the rise of the Atlantic civilization of Spain.  Again that would not be the source of the transition to the industrial world.  Again, steppe nomadism is a non-factor.

How about 300 years of constant warfare with the Parthians and continued problems with the Sarmatians?  This works almost exactly; the Romans didn't have a clue how to deal with horse-archers until they adopted some eastern styles of warfare (Syrian archers) and eventually the whole Persian shebang (grivpanvar=clibanarii, cataphracts).

It's worth remembering that the real death of "Classical Civilization" was the continued Sassanid-Byzantine wars combined with the plague and the continued militarization of the steppe lifestyle.  They fought each other into oblivion. 

[Queequeg]

Sorry to play Brutus here Malthus, but you seem to be overplaying your hand.  There were nomads who gave up their ways to live a settled lifestyle by choice rather than by necessity or by assimilation.  The nomadic Parni and Dahae in modern day Turkmenistan were famously adequate agriculturalists and superior  architectsbefore they moved into Parthia and became the Parthians.  As you would expect, there is something of a scale of civilization, with pure central Mongol nomadism on one hand, mixed pastoralism in the middle and settling down/becoming landed aristocracy on the other. 

In general though I agree, obviously.  I think one of the best examples of Malthus' case is the difference between the Parthians and the Sassanids; the Parthians were, in general, great warriors and had their own unique culture that contributed to the Persian tradition, but they ruled like the head of a conspiracy; if one tribe got too strong (say the Suren, who famously fucked up the Romans a lot) they'd kill everyone in it, or if one settled people started getting uppity they'd send in some of their more nomadic kin from the ancestral lands of the Parni.  On the other hand the Sassanids self consciously thought of themselves as a united Iranian monarchy and helped reconquer lands from the Nomads, Romans and really everyone else, and ushered in a new Golden Age.