4 ms·

>> settlement Settled cultivators basically made huge swaths of Eurasian land uninhabitable to nomadic pastoralists because your grazing lands were settled (of

by corsac 3y ago

>> settlement Settled cultivators basically made huge swaths of Eurasian land uninhabitable to nomadic pastoralists because your grazing lands were settled (often completely unsustainably) until they ceased to exist. "Not unlike [insert pathogen or reviled insect here]" (in quotes b/c I can't seriously compare humans to such things without revulsion; just an instructive parallel). The "Great" Wall of China, interestingly, walls in vast areas of steppe and former Xiongnu grazing land. Eurasian nomad wealth was overwhelmingly the "spoils" of trade, not raiding – and countless nomad-settled conflicts were cases of settled polities cutting off their noses to spite their faces by closing off trade with nomadic neighbors. Eventually, Eurasian trade patterns shifted from overland (the "silk road") to maritime routes, and the interior of the continent fell into a terminal recession. Until then (e.g. the Jungars) nomads continued to play an outsized role. Some of the smarter nomad communities are still nomads. And 99% of developed/developing world population (including those with nomad ancestors) resemble pre-modern sedentary populations just as little as they do pre-modern nomad populations in their modes of life.

lmm 3y ago
> Settled cultivators basically made huge swaths of Eurasian land uninhabitable to nomadic pastoralists because your grazing lands were settled (often completely unsustainably) until they ceased to exist. Sure - it was a Hobbesian war of all against all, until the settled cultivators made a better world. > countless nomad-settled conflicts were cases of settled polities cutting off their noses to spite their faces by closing off trade with nomadic neighbors. If the nomads make war on you unless you "trade" with them then that's blackmail, not voluntary trade.
- corsac 3y ago
  And if A and B voluntarily engage in mutually beneficial trade, and C who rules over B (and holds trade and aliens both in contempt for ideological reasons) obstructs B and A from trading in order to weaken A, what is that?
  - lmm 3y ago
    Well, is C's rulership over B legitimate or not? We generally recognise that legitimate governments have the authority to block their subjects from trading, even today (e.g. try buying something from Cuba).
    - corsac 3y ago
      Were anything like modern notions of political legitimacy and just war current across Silk Road era Eurasia, or not? And didn't you just say it was a Hobbesian war of all against all anyway? More to the point, supposing C has a robust pattern of responding to a trade overtures from nomadic A by violence towards A's representatives, and of justifying the response using an intransigently chauvinist characterization of A (the ahistorical "good peasants vs. bad nomads" construct alive and well in certain comments in this thread) – without imposing anachronistic comparisons or standards, is there a better way to understand A's retaliation than essentializing them as "parasites"?
      - lmm 3y ago
        > Were anything like modern notions of political legitimacy and just war current across Silk Road era Eurasia, or not? Was the content of what's considered politically legitimate or just war similar to what it is today? No. Did they have notions of legitimate-or-not based on the standards of the time (and that evolved dramatically as times changed)? Yes, absolutely. > And didn't you just say it was a Hobbesian war of all against all anyway? In the early days yes. If A and C are both imposing their will on B and each other by violence and neither has established more legitimatcy than that, there's not much more to say in moral judgement; all's fair in love and war, and to the victor go the spoils. Like, I'm fully on board with saying that the first kings and tax collectors were of a piece with, and no better than, the bandits of that era. But that doesn't mean they were worse either (on the whole; no doubt you can find examples of spectacularly nasty agrarian rulers, but there were spectacularly nasty nomadic pastoralists too), and the difference is that eventually the kings and tax collectors did evolve into systems of governance with accountability that could support labour saving technologies and medical care and all the other things we enjoy. > More to the point, supposing C has a robust pattern of responding to a trade overtures from nomadic A by violence towards A's representatives, and of justifying the response using an intransigently chauvinist characterization of A (the ahistorical "good peasants vs. bad nomads" construct alive and well in certain comments in this thread) – without imposing anachronistic comparisons or non-relevant standards, is there a better way to understand A's retaliation than essentializing them as "parasites"? Hmmm... I'm gonna go with no. "Retaliation" is a huge stretch: if your trade and your trade representatives are consistently unwelcome in someone else's territory, that entitles you to stop going there, not to kill and plunder. If whose territory it is is disputed, by all means fight it out, but that doesn't make you some noble free trade advocate.

by corsac 3y ago

lmm 3y ago

> Settled cultivators basically made huge swaths of Eurasian land uninhabitable to nomadic pastoralists because your grazing lands were settled (often completely unsustainably) until they ceased to exist. Sure - it was a Hobbesian war of all against all, until the settled cultivators made a better world. > countless nomad-settled conflicts were cases of settled polities cutting off their noses to spite their faces by closing off trade with nomadic neighbors. If the nomads make war on you unless you "trade" with them then that's blackmail, not voluntary trade.

corsac 3y ago
And if A and B voluntarily engage in mutually beneficial trade, and C who rules over B (and holds trade and aliens both in contempt for ideological reasons) obstructs B and A from trading in order to weaken A, what is that?
- lmm 3y ago
  Well, is C's rulership over B legitimate or not? We generally recognise that legitimate governments have the authority to block their subjects from trading, even today (e.g. try buying something from Cuba).
  - corsac 3y ago
    Were anything like modern notions of political legitimacy and just war current across Silk Road era Eurasia, or not? And didn't you just say it was a Hobbesian war of all against all anyway? More to the point, supposing C has a robust pattern of responding to a trade overtures from nomadic A by violence towards A's representatives, and of justifying the response using an intransigently chauvinist characterization of A (the ahistorical "good peasants vs. bad nomads" construct alive and well in certain comments in this thread) – without imposing anachronistic comparisons or standards, is there a better way to understand A's retaliation than essentializing them as "parasites"?
    - lmm 3y ago
      > Were anything like modern notions of political legitimacy and just war current across Silk Road era Eurasia, or not? Was the content of what's considered politically legitimate or just war similar to what it is today? No. Did they have notions of legitimate-or-not based on the standards of the time (and that evolved dramatically as times changed)? Yes, absolutely. > And didn't you just say it was a Hobbesian war of all against all anyway? In the early days yes. If A and C are both imposing their will on B and each other by violence and neither has established more legitimatcy than that, there's not much more to say in moral judgement; all's fair in love and war, and to the victor go the spoils. Like, I'm fully on board with saying that the first kings and tax collectors were of a piece with, and no better than, the bandits of that era. But that doesn't mean they were worse either (on the whole; no doubt you can find examples of spectacularly nasty agrarian rulers, but there were spectacularly nasty nomadic pastoralists too), and the difference is that eventually the kings and tax collectors did evolve into systems of governance with accountability that could support labour saving technologies and medical care and all the other things we enjoy. > More to the point, supposing C has a robust pattern of responding to a trade overtures from nomadic A by violence towards A's representatives, and of justifying the response using an intransigently chauvinist characterization of A (the ahistorical "good peasants vs. bad nomads" construct alive and well in certain comments in this thread) – without imposing anachronistic comparisons or non-relevant standards, is there a better way to understand A's retaliation than essentializing them as "parasites"? Hmmm... I'm gonna go with no. "Retaliation" is a huge stretch: if your trade and your trade representatives are consistently unwelcome in someone else's territory, that entitles you to stop going there, not to kill and plunder. If whose territory it is is disputed, by all means fight it out, but that doesn't make you some noble free trade advocate.