Thursday 7 December 2017

War as a Globalising Force

Google "war and globalisation" and you get billions of hits on the subject of whether globalisation causes war. You don't get many the other way around: the operationalising of globalisation through war. There is surely a book waiting to be written on this topic if it isn't out there already (and I would be surprised if it isn't).

By coincidence I am currently re-reading John Dower's Embracing Defeat at bed time and listening to Part II of Dan Carlin's "Kings of Kings" on my commutes, and both of them touch on this topic in fascinating ways. From Embracing Defeat (on the relationship between the Japanese Imperial House and the American occupying forces): 

"The imperial household...quickly [revealed] a genius for grasping the American's love of aristocratic pomp and pageantry. Invitations were regularly extended to high occupation officials to the court's genteel pastimes. Geisha parties became bonding places for the middling elites, but the upper-class activities to which high-ranking members of the occupation forces were invited were refined to a fault: firefly catching, cherry-blossom viewing on the palace grounds, bamboo-sprout hunts, traditional sword-fighting exhibitions at the palace, even an occasional wild boar hunt [...] While the media in the United States were chuckling and enthusing over the 'Americanization' of Japan, the Japanese were quietly and skillfully Japanizing the Americans."

The occupation, as Dower portrays it, may have been all manner of different things, but among them it was a globalising movement of quite unique power: over the course of the seven-year occupation more was done to Americanize Japanese culture than could have been done by a century of trade alone, and at the same time American elites became acculturated to Japan in a way they may never have really done otherwise. (Is it too much of a stretch to imagine that the lionization of Japanese business practices in the 60s-80s and the current obsession with Japanese pop culture around the world may have derived some of their potency from the fact that the most important global elite of all - American military and political leaders - were seduced so effectively by the emperor and his cronies in the late 1940s?)

Dan Carlin's description of the military campaigns of the Persian Empire are much more colourful, exotic and direct, and had me delving into Herodotus's Histories today over my lunch break. The Achaemenids ruled a territory so vast that they were able to conscript troops from lands ranging from sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan. Herodotus describes Persian armies of the era as comprising detachments of Sudanese warriors with their entire bodies painted half-white and half-red, "Black Ethiopians" from India who are thought by modern historians to have been Dravidians from the South of the sub-continent, tribesmen from the islands of the Red Sea, Colchians (from modern day Georgia) with wooden helmets, Chorasmians from the shores of the Aral Sea, and so on and so on almost endlessly - a veritable who's who of Eurasian geography. These peoples may have been loosely connected previously by trading networks spanning the continents, but what possibly could have been as expedient as war in bringing together representatives of all these disparate races, cultures and societies?

Think of the fantasy world equivalents. What different scattered exotic peoples might orcish empires bring together in unison? What might drow military campaigns do to shake up the cultural makeup of the Underdark? What random bands of mercenaries, deserters and routed wanderers from vastly distant places across the globe might be passing through the campaign map in the aftermath of a war? And how might a meeting with such people spark the imaginations of the PCs to get out there and do some travelling? 

10 comments:

  1. Occupation of Japan and Germany was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the post title, but there were similar effects on/from the Americans in the Great War too.

    I believe there is plenty of literature about soldiers come home from war to draw from as well.

    As for the fantasy aspect, it seems like this could be a good reason for random NPCs speaking exotic languages, or having cultural elements from other races present in larger towns.

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    1. Definitely - that was what I was trying to get at. Why are these tribesmen painted half-white and half-red hanging around in the Shire all of a sudden?

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  2. I have always thought of the goblinoid races as being similar to Persia's tribes - goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, ogres etc. You could play it up by really emphasising different tribes and their equipment within the races too - the red axe white face tribe, the yellow spears, the savage clubs etc. That section of Herodotus reads like an eye witness account that he has picked up.
    Carlin's podcasts are an excellent thing to listen to when travelling, they made my bone crunching bus rides in Vietnam almost pleasant. Persia was quite capable of indoctrinating/Orientalizing Greeks too, that theme crops up again and again in Greek histories even down to Alexander the Great's time.

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    1. Yes, that is a really interesting point.

      I have only recently discovered Hardcore Histories but I am loving them so far. I must have burned through about 6 or 7 already.

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  3. I have Embracing Defeat somewhere, must read!

    On the opposite of Globalisation, civilisational collapse - if you've not yet read Ward-Perkins on the Fall of Rome, it's a huge eye opener, especially the economic analysis - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fall-Rome-End-Civilization/dp/0192807285 - the sudden collapse in Britain with the Anglo-Saxon invasions, compared to the slow-motion disaster in the Mediterranean culminating in the Arab conquests and final end of North African Roman civilisation with its wheat exports, industrial pottery manufacture, et al.

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  4. “You don't get many the other way around: the operationalising of globalisation through war.”

    There’s a lot written about this out there, though it might be a tad too scholarly for general consumption. Findlay and O’Rourke’s Power and Plenty is a favorite, telling the last thousand years of history through the angle of changes in economics and military organisation. A classic, and shorter statement of the link between the expansion of free trade and political hegemony is an article entitled “The imperialism of free trade”. A more anthropological take on the general question is to be found in Europe and the People Without History.... the fantasy world-building implications of all three sources are stupendous...

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    1. Those look like interesting but I think they are about something different to what I'm identifying. I'm talking particularly about how war has facilitated cultural and sociological interactions and exchange across vast distances. Like the way Japan and the US have entered into a decades-long cultural exchange because of the war and occupation. Not so much how war is linked to trade, although that of course is an interesting thing in its own right!

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  5. I think that Trade is more of a Globalizing force than War. In antiquity, communication between East and West was more widespread, than people today are generally aware. For instance, ancient statues of the Buddha unearthed in India corresponded to the positional symbolism of statues in Ancient Greece to indicate "an enlightened man". One of the emaciated Buddhas. Traders in 12th century Russian hinterland were selling Indian chainmail as cloth to armorers, probably getting there by way of Persia. So, medieval vassals were probably better aware of the world than we give them credit. As far as war, to me it seems more of a Journey for the individuals who goes off to war and comes back. Consider a Roman Legionnaire from somewhere in Roman Anatolia going off to serve in Brittania or Germania. How much of a cultural experience would that be in an ancient of isolated farm villages?

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    1. That example of the Legionnaire from Anatolia ending up on Hadrian's Wall is the kind of thing I am talking about. Military affairs as the engine for cultural transplants and exchange.

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    2. I think that the information revolution is shrinking the world. Compare the experience of our Anatolian legionnaire at the Hadrian's Wall to those of an American GI Peacekeeping in Kosovo. Kosovo is a colorful and alien enough region to Westerners to be just as alien, and yet, our GI is isolated from it (and from any trouble), by living in an isolated camp in the middle of nowhere (just like a classic Roman Legion Encampment). Safely away from trouble, our GI goes on line and hooks up with some Ukrainian chick working as a modern day belly dancer in a city flush with UN, NGO, journalists and their flunkies, including our peacekeeper, all flush with greenbacks. The girl picks up enough English on the Internet and they start an on-line relationship talking about the Braveheart and Titanic, and they consummate their relationship after meeting in some safe space, a club or a hard rock café knock off in some major hotel where Westerners hang out. In the end he brings home an exotic bride with a bun in the oven. Is it cultural exchange or did they merely share in the mainstream internet culture?

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