Major Themes, WARFARE

WARFARE
 

During 600–1450, military  technology  throughout Eurasia  retained  the principal  characteristics of earlier times. Iron and steel weapons  had long since replaced those made of bronze. In large empires such as those of China  and the Byzantine, Persian, and Islamic Empires, large-scale industrial production  of weapons  became  commonplace. Japan,  Damascus  in present-day Syria, and  Toledo  in Spain were famous centers for the production of swords.  Refinements and improvements were continuously  made to older inventions, such as poison  gas and smoke bombs.  The crossbow  was first manufactured in China in the fourth  century b.c.e.  and possibly in Greece about  the same time and then  disappeared in Europe.  It reappeared in western  Europe  in the 10th  century  (some scholars suggest, reintroduced through Central  Asia by the Khazar  people),  and was reputedly  used by the forces of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings.  Its effects were so lethal that  its use was condemned at the Second Lateran  Council  of the Catholic  Church  in 1139  for use against  Christians. Its use was, however,  accepted  by the Catholic  Church  against  the infidels (Muslims).  It was one of the main weapons  used by Hernán Cortés to subjugate  Mexico in 1521.
 

China  revitalized  the ancient  means of defense of wall building  in the early 15th  century.  The Romans  had built Hadrian’s Wall in Britain in the second century c.e.,  and the Chinese had built a longer Great  Wall during  the Qin (Ch’in) dynasty  and Han  dynasty  before the Common  Era. The Great  Wall had fallen into disuse between  the 10th  and 14th  centuries  because nomads  controlled northern, and later all of China.  Even though  the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) had ousted the Mongols, they remained  a threat, hence the rebuilding  and reinforcing  of the Great  Wall along China’s northern frontiers.  The survival of large sections of the Ming Great Wall is a testimony  to the technical excellence and engineering skills applied in its construction.
 

Several significant inventions  and advances in military technology  and weaponry made warfare more  destructive.  One  formidable weapon  was called “Greek  fire,” a petroleum-based incendiary substance  that  combined  sulfur and saltpeter  and could be shot from tubes and could not be extinguished by water.  It was invented  in India in the 600s,  refined and used in China  as a continuous flame-thrower on land in the 10th century,  and used by the Byzantine Empire in naval warfare  that allowed  it to maintain naval supremacy.  Gunpowder was invented  in China.  It was given military application in the 10th  century  in response  to attacks  by its formidable nomadic  neighbors,  most notably the Mongols. In the 11th through 13th centuries, the Chinese invented rockets, and a proto- gun called a “fire-lance,” which worked  as a flame-thrower. From these evolved guns and cannons made from cast iron, which became ever bigger and more sophisticated.
 

A Chinese manual  dating to 1412 described a cannon  that weighed 60 pounds  called the “long- range awe-inspiring cannon.” By the mid-15th century,  a “great  general gun”  had been made with a barrel  six feet long that  weighed 330 pounds  and could be placed on a wheeled carriage.  It fired an eight-pound “grandfather shell” that traveled 800 paces. Unfortunately for China, the advantage gained by its inventions were short-lived because skilled prisoners of the Mongols quickly replicated the new weapons.  In short  order,  gunpowder, cannons,  and guns became available  throughout the Middle  East and  Europe,  revolutionizing warfare  and  castle building.  Soon so-called  gunpowder empires emerged,  including  the Ottoman Empire.  Wars among  Chinese and between  Chinese and their neighbors  involved hundreds of thousands of men on both  sides and inflicted huge casualties that  made  contemporary European campaigns  fought  seasonally  by a few thousand combatants seem puny  by comparison. Although  the European knights  wore  formidable chainmail  armor  in battle,  it proved too cumbersome against  the light armor  worn by Mongol  horsemen.
 

Armies  of great  empires  consisted  mainly  of infantry  soldiers,  supported by cavalry,  and  in India,  by elephant  corps.  Soldiers were either  conscripts, professional  long-term  recruits,  or came from  hereditary military  families.  In India  kshatriya  clans called Rajputs  (which  means  “sons  of kings”)  proudly  bore  arms  as elite soldiers  fighting among  themselves and  unsuccessfully  against Muslim raiders and invaders from Afghanistan. In Japan,  hereditary elite fighting men called samurai or bushi enjoyed a position  in society similar to that  of knights  in medieval Europe.  They lived by their own severe code of conduct  and were distinguished from commoners by their right to bear arms. As Japan  was an island nation, only the Mongols  threatened invasions  in late 12th  century; thus it never needed to develop large infantry  armies.
 

Western Asian and African Warfare. Among nomadic and seminomadic tribal peoples that included Mongols, Afghans, and Turks,  every able-bodied adult male was a soldier, and society was highly militarized.  Their mobility and elusiveness made nomads  especially difficult for sedentary  peoples to defend  against.  Thus  nomads  could  conquer  and  control  large numbers  of sedentary  peoples.  The Mongols  under Genghis Khan and his descendants conquered the largest land empire in history, their realm at its maximum stretched  from Korea on the eastern  rim of Asia, across China,  Afghanistan, Persia, Central  Asia, Russia, and eastern  Europe  to Hungary. Mongols  discovered  no new weapons or technology. Their  phenomenal success was because  of leadership, planning,  intelligence  gathering, strategy,  speed,  and  above  all ruthlessness. Mongols  struck  like lightning  and  were willing to exterminate all inhabitants in any area  that  had  opposed  them.  

Their  military  campaigns  inflicted unprecedented destruction throughout Eurasia.  On the other hand,  victorious  nomadic  rulers, Mongols included,  quickly lost their martial  spirit,  corrupted by the soft lifestyle they enjoyed as rulers. Thus they were soon overthrown by their subject peoples or by other  hardier  nomadic  tribes.  Then they were either assimilated  into the majority  population or reverted to nomadism in the steppes.
 

Arabs,  inspired  by religious  fervor,  conquered a huge empire  in the seventh–eighth centuries. Even some Arab women went to war during the initial campaigns  of conquest. The swift expansion of Islam, the limited human  resources  among  the Arabs, and the luxurious lifestyle adopted by the conquerors made finding new sources of soldiers an urgent necessity by the ninth century.  The remedy came in the form of the Mamluk (the word  means “slave”  in Arabic) system, whereby  young boys from non-Muslim tribes in the Eurasian  steppes, many Turkish, were purchased and brought to Muslim  lands. They were given a rigorous  military  training  and Islamic education, converted  to Islam, and  then  freed.  Faithful  to their  masters  and  comrades,  Mamluks became  elite soldiers  to Muslim  rulers;  later  they became  the rulers.  Mamluks were a one-generation aristocracy because their  sons,  who  were  born  free and  Muslim,  could  not  become  Mamluks. In other  words,  new batches  of boys were continuously bought  from the Eurasian  steppes to be trained  to be the next generation Mamluks. The institution survived for 1,000  years, mainly in Egypt and Syria.
 

Similarly, in northern India former Turkic slaves to Muslim rulers turned  the tables on their masters and established  slave dynasties. Likewise, the Ottoman Empire instituted a Janissary Corps (from Turkish  words meaning “new soldiers”)  with boys taken from Christian lands that it conquered. The boys were given military  training, converted  to Islam, and  became elite loyal soldiers  to the rulers; they played a key role in the expansion of the Ottoman Empire.  Sundiata,  the first king of Mali  in West Africa, maintained a standing  army clad in padded  cloth suits of armor  or chain mail as well as cavalry with horses and camels. In Africa, some tribes or ethnic groups, such as the Tauregs and Zulus, dominated their weaker neighbors  because of their military prowess.
 

Maritime Warfare. Most  major  empires during  this era relied primarily  on land power,  but  sea power  also played a role. The Vikings were expert  seafarers  who traded  and raided  throughout the coastal  waters  and several inland  waterways  of Europe,  traveling  in their long boats.  One group  of Vikings first raided  the English coast and later invaded  England  from their new stronghold in Normandy,  France. Another  crossed the Baltic Sea to Russia and then sailed southward along the rivers to the Black Sea to Constantinople and  to the Mediterranean to conquer  ports  in Sicily and  other areas. Muslims also developed formidable naval forces and merchant fleets, but all of India’s Muslim invaders came overland across the mountains from the northwest; China’s enemies also came overland during this period.
 

However,  as the Mongols  pressed southward across the Yangzi (Yangtze) River and encountered Chinese resistance along the coastal waterways, they, too, ordered  their Chinese prisoners  to construct a fleet. The last Song (Sung) emperor  drowned at sea after  suffering final defeat  at the hands  of the Mongol  navy. In 1274 and 1281,  Mongol  ruler Kubilai Khan launched  two invasions of Japan with a huge armada of Korean and Chinese built ships that carried 140,000 soldiers during the second expedition. The ships were no match against typhoons, and both invasions failed. Between 1405 and 1433, Chinese naval power  dominated the Asian waters,  as six huge armadas fought  pirates,  intervened  in local civil wars, and conducted trade and diplomacy from Java to India, Sri Lanka, to the east coast of Africa. The magnetic compass, discovered centuries earlier, had been used by Chinese sailors in navigation since the ninth century and was passed on to sailors of other lands. China’s government abandoned its interest in naval affairs after the last great voyage of Admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho) in 1433.
 

The Americas. Isolated  from Europe  and Asia, the civilizations  in the Americas did not develop iron and steel technology, nor did they possess the horse.  Across Mesoamerica there was intensified
warfare,  militarization, and  the  glorification  of the  warrior class during  this era.  Warfare  became endemic;  hence this  period  is called a “Times  of Trouble.” In both  Mesoamerica and  among  the Mayan city-states, the principal goal of warfare was the creation of subordinate tributary states among the defeated to obtain  tribute,  although the Maya sometimes occupied the lands of the defeated city- states.  Thus the defeated  states were often left intact  to collect the required  tribute.  Another  goal of warfare was to take captives for prestige and to provide labor for the victor. Artwork depicted warfare and glorified the warrior.
 

As a result, warfare was often endemic in the regions and contributed to the depletion of resources and, combined  with ecological degradation and burgeoning population, led to the decline and fall of Classic Maya  in the ninth  century.  Scholarly debate  prevails concerning  the nature  of warfare  in the Andes region. While one school of thought contends that warfare  was more ritualized and ceremonial than  destructive,  another argues that  the wars waged in this region was extremely  destructive,  with the winner achieving domination and rule over the vanquished. Throughout the world, most successful states relied on formidable military forces to conquer  and defend their empires. They also devoted considerable resources and effort to developing successful strategies,  tactics, and advanced  weaponry to maintain their rule and defeat their competitors and enemies.