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Some points that are more or less pedantic nitpicking, but I think are worth calling out because they illustrate the kind of trouble that technological determin

Some points that are more or less pedantic nitpicking, but I think are worth calling out because they illustrate the kind of trouble that technological determinism can run into: > The longbow ended knights This is not the case. Sounds like something that comes from a pop account of crecy or agincourt? Gunpowder is closer to the mark, but funnily enough armor kept getting heavier longer than many realize. The full plate harnesses that people generally picture when they think of a “knight in shining armor” are really Renaissance/early modern, well after the Middle Ages. > Gunpowder ended archery Again, ehh… sure, guns eventually obsoleted archery, but it’s more important that gunpowder ended a social system based on local military elites and enabled a period of rapid state consolidation. > The Mongols too had a technology that completely altered warfare and gave them a huge advantage: the humble stirrup Even the article doesn’t really bear this out. The stirrup was far from new, and even before the stirrup both shock and skirmish cavalry got along fine without. Stirrups are cool, no doubt, but far from a secret to the mongols success. Kind of like saying the Polynesians were great sailors because of their boat designs. Like, it helps, but it also really helps to have a culture oriented around sailing. So again, this is really nitpicking, not arguing against your main point. But I think it’s worth pointing out how Jared Diamond-style stories can sound really sensible, but once you get into the details things often turn out to be much more complex and interesting.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago
> Stirrups are cool, no doubt, but far from a secret to the mongols success. You don't realize how huge an impact stirrups had to horseriding and by extension, civilization.
- genghizkhan 5y ago
  Their response was about how it wasn’t the secret to mongol success specifically. The mongols had the double recurved bow and the advantage of a fully nomadic pastoral society in which all adult males were trained to be warriors. That and Genghis Khan’s decimal system is what transformed them into a fearsome conquering machine.
- qwytw 5y ago
  True, but stirrups very introduced into Europe by the Avars hundreds of years before the Mongols.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > You don't realize how huge an impact stirrups had to horseriding and by extension, civilization. Yeah, but in all likelihood they weren't a mongol invention. The alans and avars probably had them five hundred years earlier, of perhaps the huns beofre them.
antisthenes 5y ago
> This is not the case. Sounds like something that comes from a pop account of crecy or agincourt? Gunpowder is closer to the mark, but funnily enough armor kept getting heavier longer than many realize. The full plate harnesses that people generally picture when they think of a “knight in shining armor” are really Renaissance/early modern, well after the Middle Ages. Really a combination of weapons (first crossbows - not because they were super effective against knight armor, but because it was cheaper to train crossbowmen, then gunpowder for the same reasons. Knights were reasonably effective well after primitive gunpowder weapons.) and gradual decline of feudalism and thus knights as a class, as Monarchs started transitioning to standing/professional armies. Also, as manufacturing improved, it became much cheaper to equip soldiers with standardized equipment rather than rely on tailored to the individual hand-made full-plate armor. As always, the truth is somewhere between economics and cultural/tech shift.
- cf141q5325 5y ago
  > but because it was cheaper to train crossbowmen And the difference was massive. It took years and years of dedicated training to become a good archer, something you start from childhood. The average peasant didnt have the time just do this on the side. As a result they were often handsomely paid. Crossbows on the other hand could be maned by anyone and were usable in a few days. It was such a threat to the existing social order that the catholic church tried to ban its use against Christians for a while.
  - baud147258 5y ago
    > It was such a threat to the existing social order that the catholic church tried to ban its use against Christians for a while. I'm pretty sure the same papal bull tried also to ban bows and it wasn't the first time a pope had tried to ban ranged weapons
- hoseja 5y ago
  I would like to highlight the, to me very surprising, observation that medieval crossbows truly aren't more effective than bows. Their impressive draw weights are mostly consumed by inefficiencies in arm weight/elasticity and bowstring weight.
hef19898 5y ago
Gun powder and social order is very interesting. At one point, under Nobunaga if memory serves, Japan had more, and better, muskets than any other country on earth. Until the social order was inforced by banning those, going into isolation and cementing Samurai rule. In Europe on the other hand gun powder let to nation stated (sort of) and ultimately (along with a ton of other factors, incl. a Chinese withdrawl from the high seas) a colonial rule across the globe.
- oneoff786 5y ago
  I don’t think they were banned. Just less noteworthy because there wasn’t much war once Japan was finally unified.
- qiskit 5y ago
  > going into isolation Japan didn't go into isolation. It's one of the many myths we invented to hide our horrible history. Japan kicked out europeans because they were enslaving japanese and taking them away. The easiest way to debunk the myth of japanese isolation is that japan didn't isolate itself from korea, china and rest of its neighbors. Only the slave trading europeans. It's funny how we portray japan kicking out barbaric european slavers as isolationism.
paganel 5y ago
> This is not the case. Sounds like something that comes from a pop account of crecy or agincourt? Not the OP and there is lots of post-factum rationalisation like "the Crusaders lost because they were sloppy, not because they were cavaliers", but there's also the famous example of the 1393 Battle of Nicopolis which the Ottomans won because they were way lighter compared to the Westerners. Their archers and sharpened stakes against the Crusaders' heavy cavalry can be compared to today's NLAWs against the Russians' tanks. It is true, by the mid 1400s and especially by the start of the 1500s artillery and gunpowder had won the game, that's mostly how Suleiman the Magnificent managed to reach the gates of Vienna. Also, there's much to be said about the Mongols' excellent administrative skills once they had conquered some land, I think that because of some Western-related bias that doesn't get underlined as much as should do in today's mainstream historiography. As the US (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and the Soviets/Russians (in Afghanistan and partially in Ukraine) have found out at their own expense is not enough to militarily conquer some land, you also have to administer it afterwards, preferably with the help of some of the local population. Because, among other things, of their religious tolerance the Mongols (or Tartars, as they were mostly known here in Eastern Europe) were really good at it, probably there are some good books written about this specific aspect of their rule but to be honest I didn't put my hands on any of them until now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis
- pasabagi 5y ago
  I guess technological-determinist arguments are generally easy to source, because there's usually abundant archaeological evidence of the kinds of equipment people use to fight wars. I'm generally pretty skeptical: there are just a ton of cases where an army strong in one category (say, heavy cavalry) have slaughtered enemies strong in other categories, and vice versa. It seems to me that technologies that dominated entire eras (heavy infantry for the romans, heavy cavalry for medieval europe, horse archers for the steppes, etc) follow naturally from the social models rather than military necessity. A feudal lord wouldn't have the ability to organize or provision a roman legion, for instance, or the raw culture of mobility and horsemanship for horse archers, etc.
  - 5y ago
InCityDreams 5y ago
Past participle of the verb of the day? 'Obsoleted'.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago

> Stirrups are cool, no doubt, but far from a secret to the mongols success. You don't realize how huge an impact stirrups had to horseriding and by extension, civilization.

genghizkhan 5y ago
Their response was about how it wasn’t the secret to mongol success specifically. The mongols had the double recurved bow and the advantage of a fully nomadic pastoral society in which all adult males were trained to be warriors. That and Genghis Khan’s decimal system is what transformed them into a fearsome conquering machine.
qwytw 5y ago
True, but stirrups very introduced into Europe by the Avars hundreds of years before the Mongols.
CRConrad 5y ago
> You don't realize how huge an impact stirrups had to horseriding and by extension, civilization. Yeah, but in all likelihood they weren't a mongol invention. The alans and avars probably had them five hundred years earlier, of perhaps the huns beofre them.

antisthenes 5y ago

> This is not the case. Sounds like something that comes from a pop account of crecy or agincourt? Gunpowder is closer to the mark, but funnily enough armor kept getting heavier longer than many realize. The full plate harnesses that people generally picture when they think of a “knight in shining armor” are really Renaissance/early modern, well after the Middle Ages. Really a combination of weapons (first crossbows - not because they were super effective against knight armor, but because it was cheaper to train crossbowmen, then gunpowder for the same reasons. Knights were reasonably effective well after primitive gunpowder weapons.) and gradual decline of feudalism and thus knights as a class, as Monarchs started transitioning to standing/professional armies. Also, as manufacturing improved, it became much cheaper to equip soldiers with standardized equipment rather than rely on tailored to the individual hand-made full-plate armor. As always, the truth is somewhere between economics and cultural/tech shift.

cf141q5325 5y ago
> but because it was cheaper to train crossbowmen And the difference was massive. It took years and years of dedicated training to become a good archer, something you start from childhood. The average peasant didnt have the time just do this on the side. As a result they were often handsomely paid. Crossbows on the other hand could be maned by anyone and were usable in a few days. It was such a threat to the existing social order that the catholic church tried to ban its use against Christians for a while.
- baud147258 5y ago
  > It was such a threat to the existing social order that the catholic church tried to ban its use against Christians for a while. I'm pretty sure the same papal bull tried also to ban bows and it wasn't the first time a pope had tried to ban ranged weapons
hoseja 5y ago
I would like to highlight the, to me very surprising, observation that medieval crossbows truly aren't more effective than bows. Their impressive draw weights are mostly consumed by inefficiencies in arm weight/elasticity and bowstring weight.

hef19898 5y ago

Gun powder and social order is very interesting. At one point, under Nobunaga if memory serves, Japan had more, and better, muskets than any other country on earth. Until the social order was inforced by banning those, going into isolation and cementing Samurai rule. In Europe on the other hand gun powder let to nation stated (sort of) and ultimately (along with a ton of other factors, incl. a Chinese withdrawl from the high seas) a colonial rule across the globe.

oneoff786 5y ago
I don’t think they were banned. Just less noteworthy because there wasn’t much war once Japan was finally unified.
qiskit 5y ago
> going into isolation Japan didn't go into isolation. It's one of the many myths we invented to hide our horrible history. Japan kicked out europeans because they were enslaving japanese and taking them away. The easiest way to debunk the myth of japanese isolation is that japan didn't isolate itself from korea, china and rest of its neighbors. Only the slave trading europeans. It's funny how we portray japan kicking out barbaric european slavers as isolationism.

paganel 5y ago

> This is not the case. Sounds like something that comes from a pop account of crecy or agincourt? Not the OP and there is lots of post-factum rationalisation like "the Crusaders lost because they were sloppy, not because they were cavaliers", but there's also the famous example of the 1393 Battle of Nicopolis which the Ottomans won because they were way lighter compared to the Westerners. Their archers and sharpened stakes against the Crusaders' heavy cavalry can be compared to today's NLAWs against the Russians' tanks. It is true, by the mid 1400s and especially by the start of the 1500s artillery and gunpowder had won the game, that's mostly how Suleiman the Magnificent managed to reach the gates of Vienna. Also, there's much to be said about the Mongols' excellent administrative skills once they had conquered some land, I think that because of some Western-related bias that doesn't get underlined as much as should do in today's mainstream historiography. As the US (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and the Soviets/Russians (in Afghanistan and partially in Ukraine) have found out at their own expense is not enough to militarily conquer some land, you also have to administer it afterwards, preferably with the help of some of the local population. Because, among other things, of their religious tolerance the Mongols (or Tartars, as they were mostly known here in Eastern Europe) were really good at it, probably there are some good books written about this specific aspect of their rule but to be honest I didn't put my hands on any of them until now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis

pasabagi 5y ago
I guess technological-determinist arguments are generally easy to source, because there's usually abundant archaeological evidence of the kinds of equipment people use to fight wars. I'm generally pretty skeptical: there are just a ton of cases where an army strong in one category (say, heavy cavalry) have slaughtered enemies strong in other categories, and vice versa. It seems to me that technologies that dominated entire eras (heavy infantry for the romans, heavy cavalry for medieval europe, horse archers for the steppes, etc) follow naturally from the social models rather than military necessity. A feudal lord wouldn't have the ability to organize or provision a roman legion, for instance, or the raw culture of mobility and horsemanship for horse archers, etc.
- 5y ago

InCityDreams 5y ago

Past participle of the verb of the day? 'Obsoleted'.