The Nomadic Military Advantage: why were nomads so difficult to fight?
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- čas přidán 2. 08. 2023
- SOURCES:
The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China 221 BC to 1757 AD, Barfield
Ancient China and its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History, Di Cosmo
The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe, Cunliffe
Masters of the Steppe: the Impact of the Scythians and Later Nomad Societies of Eurasia, Pankova et al
Nomadism, Evolution, and World-Systems: Pastoral Societies in Theories of Historical Development, Kradin
Structure of Power in Nomadic Empires of Inner Asia, Kradin
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Centra Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present, Beckwith
The situation somewhat reminds me of the Border Reivers. Though not true nomads, they were expert horsemen - bandits who lived on the Anglo-Scottish borders, they survived by transhumanance (moving between lowlands in winter and highlands in summer) with their cattle and raiding more settled communities (and other clans).
Having done some study into them, there is a _lot_ of comparison and overlap with the circumstances of Eurasian steppe peoples.
@@nevisysbryd7450 Are your ancestors bandits too?! I'm a Johnston, Noble and Hume descendent!
@@memofromessex Not as far as I know, although I do not know all of the fine details of my ancestry and it is more than possible as I do have ancestry from the border area (Wallace) and my more recent heritage is from the heavy Scots-Irish parts of the USA.
@@nevisysbryd7450 As you may well know many Border Reivers were deported (many killed) to James VI's plantations on Ireland to make the borderlands peaceable. So I wouldn't at all surprised at all!
I WAS GOING TO COMMENT THIS! It's super interesting how all border regions and nomad peopleare super hard to conquer. Mongols, Huns, Sythians, Reivers, Afganistan/Pakistan border people.
This is something that I have studied for a long time... long time ago. Here is what I remember.
1. Nomadic society's life by default involve hunting, herding, riding etc, all of this is literally just a coin flip away from actual warfare, those are basic prerequisite skills needed to survive in the steps, Where as sedentary people grow up to be farmers, the daily routine of a farmer don't have a lot in common with warfare
2. Nodmdic soceity's means of economic production is not tied to fixed land area so they can always be on the move if attacked where as sedentary people survive on farmland which cannot be moved when that is taken over to destoryed a lot of value are simply gone.
3. Material wise the sedentary people are far more wealthy in term of actual production and storage of good and nomadic people by comparisoin are a lot poorer, therefore the sedentary people have little economic incentive to go to war with nomadic people but nomadic people have a lot of incentive go raid sedentary people.
4. Life for sedentary people and nomadic people are very very different in term of security, life for sedentary people in general are much more predictble than nomadic people because they can store good and climates are usually predictable with rainfalls, harvest etc, but life on the plains are much more harsh, one bad winter can wipe out entire herd of animals, there is actually a correlation between natural disasters and invasion of nomands throughout history.
5. This is the most important factor of them all in my opinion: sedentary people in theory would have the abilitiy to gather up resources to wipe out the nomads, but then what?? They would not have the ability to settle the land so inevitably they would leave and create a power vacuum which in a few years/decads of time it would be filled by another groups of nomadic people, and the whole process would start all over again.
I highly recommend you to study the military campaign of Emperor Wu of Han, he literally did everything right to wipe out the Xiongnu, the military methods that he used was absoutley absolutely amazing, but in the end they still cannot occupy the land which eventually leave the rise of the Turks to the forefronts, which was in turn defeated by Tang dynasty a few hundred years later but that too left a vacuum eventually to be filled by someone else.
And of course, the modern age done away with all of that, warfare is less depended on life style/personal skills but more on industrial production, a horseman may need a whole life of training to be good, but you only need a few weeks of training for peasant on how to use a rifle. I think the way ISIS took over soo much land was the last similarity of nomadic vs sedentary warfare.
Massively agree on point 5, always found it bizzare that is usually glossed over in lieu of talking about something that only affects the tactical level.
The last great nomadic invaders that have successfully changed culture on a global level are rock bands:
Travelling fast, hitting hard, taking your women and gold, leaving everyone in their path dazed and confused but changed forever!
Aaaalright!
@@claudiaxanderAbsolutely based take
@@blackbaron9544 Cheers mate!
Also, the advantage is probably small if not non-existent because we only hear about the nomad invasions that succeed- not the ones that are suppressed by border troops.
Funny little tidbit of inaccuracy I noted: in some of the pictures of steppe horse archers used here, they are depicted using a European, 3-finger draw, instead of the correct "Asian thumb-draw", where the arrow sits on the right side of the bow. It's actually quite hard to knock an arrow in the European style whilst on the back of a galloping horse! the artist was clearly a European without too much knowledge of archery styles.
Great video, thanks.
Fascinating!! 😉
What you're referring to there is the Mediterranean draw and it can be done on horseback. There's a few examples on youtube of people doing it, but it only requires a small change in technique to accomplish.
I also would not ascribe it to any rigid geographical place as techniques vary by both place and time. The Romans for example used the thumb draw whilst the Sassanids used a local variation of the Mediterranean draw where the index finger stabilised the arrow.
@@docholiday7975 wdym by rigid
Wow😮 I never even knew about this or that European and Asian bow draw styles were different. I just assumed they were universal😂 Sorry, being from Nigeria, we rarely have time to learn about bows and stuff. Really cool stuff, friend.
@@docholiday7975the best parts of these videos is reading comments like yours and OPs. Always amazing what new things I learn from history buffs.
14:50 Yeah it's interesting how similar the solutions to the "nomad problem" the large polities that finally ended the nomadic threat employed were. Usually a combination of infantry armed mostly or completely with muskets to decisively out-shoot enemy horse archers and a large professional light cavalry force of their own to beat them at their own game. The Streltsy/Cossack and Janissary/Timariot combos.
Indeed, indeed. The development of easily employable and manufacturable firearms finally provided the definite advantage for professional armies in many cases. These first were developed in early modern period to a limited extent, but the 18th and 19th century really flipped the table. I should also probably state that cars, drones, planes provide another benefit for industrial civilisations - but they also do provide additional mobility for partisans, if used correctly.
Although, in some sense, still in difficult traversable terrain nomadic warbands still have the benefit, like in Afghanistan and Vietnam, or jungle areas.
@@tj-co9go Afghanistan wasn't a war, it was a special operation and Vietnam was taken care of with agent orange and napalm...no problemo, just like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no crime against humanity, no big deal...More than bombs, television and social media are the true modern game changers comparable to gunpowder, Man of War, composite bow, bronze and iron making!!!
@@tj-co9goi’m still baffled why didn’t developed countries like nuke them, it would been easy
The carriers nowdays trying to move in similar concept, but u have an industry ofc that cant be moved easily
" *muskets to decisively out-shoot enemy horse archers* "
Foot archers can outshoot horse archers too, mainly because they can hide behind cover, while the horse archers have to shoot from an open ground. They move, but they are a huge target by comparison, especially if we count the horse in. By the same token, cavalry can use pistols and carbines. While they can't reload on the move, they definitely do not have to, since they can get out of range quickly.
I honestly do not think that firearms give that much of an advantage to the infantry. For example, it's "accepted" in the West, that machineguns were responsible for the stalemate on the Western Front during WW1, yet the next big war, between Poland and Soviet Russia, was to a large extent fought with cavalry forces, with a heavy use of horse-drafted machineguns.
(What "actually" caused the stalemate was artillery. Infantry is needed to protect the canons, sure it helps if they have firearms, but it's a different story.)
Moreover, the Mongols were beat way before firearms became popular. First the Hungarians, then the Poles inflicted such heavy losses to the Mongol invaders, that the whole affair was totally unprofitable. That was mostly done by building more forts and making the Mongols work very hard for every resource they desperately needed.
Pure infantry army can hold a fort. If the population can hide in the woods, pure infantry army can protect them, and even ambush the steppe warriors whenever they try to get to those people.
It's the steppe itself which makes their style of war formidable. Just don't fight them int the steppe? That simple?
I don't know.
There are already many great comments here to develop the different aspects of the question. I'd like to add something I read a while back, sorry about the lack of source. It's to do with logistics and how the preparation of a transhumance, the moving the herd to get to greener pastures is very similar to the exercice of logistics in warfare. For many nomadic people of Eurasia, that journey, sometimes of several hundreds of miles, would have necessitated careful planning. The animals would need food and water, so the herd would have to move along paths that offered rivers or springs as well as things to eat. At the same time, the politics of the tribe would complicate the picture. In the ever shifting web of alliances, rivalries and outwards hostilities that define the politics of nomadic societies, the herd would still need to find a safe path to pastures that they can graze. And so, that journey would be an exercise in planning, negotiating, calculating supplies and organising people. To add to the difficulty of the endeavour, the weather could also throw a wrench in the works.
And that effort would have been taken twice a year.
And than there is the cold hard view, no less realistic or maybe more. These people had very few settlements a were ready to become mobile at any notice, they new all escape routes, they made traps for other cavalry, they lived on top of horses so they were perfect horsemen that breeded their horses for high endurance. The guerrilla warfare is always a great tactic against organized big armies. They made massive surprise attacks and disappeared for never to be caught. No match for armies! They couldn't have a peaceful period for themselves either because...other raiders, and that's the way it went, like outlaws, living their lives always looking over their shoulders, hence not much social development. An extreme life far from romantic or honorable!
Yeah. Also the nomad's experience in herding and hunting translate quite a bit into warfare. Humans group together as armies can recreate that herd-like behavior that opponents exploit.
The last great nomadic invaders that have successfully changed culture on a global level are rock bands:
Travelling fast, hitting hard, taking your women and gold, leaving everyone in their path dazed and confused but changed forever!
Aaaalright!
And dying young of depression...hell yeah!!! 🥺 Were you another disappointed chick?? 😁
@@buteos8632 Ozzy, Jagger, Richards, Iggy, Elton, and Plant and Paige! Alive!!! Little Richard started it all and died happy gay and black at 82 !
Your talking about shy moaning insecure people that took themselves too seriously (student rock).
I'm talking about berserkers!
“We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun to where hot springs flow
The hammer of the gods…
@@adamesd3699 OoohWaaaOoooooooooooWah!
Satanic gay rock with clown faces 'cause that's what they are. But at least they're not cRappers.
I like how all these beautiful pictures of the eurasian steppe show relatively diverse and complex terrain, but some parts, for example in eastern ukraine and along russo-chinese border (i think this is the single largest such area) are flat from horizon behind you to horizon in front of you. Not even "essentially flat", it's just a pan with micro-features at best
(I do prefer the hilly parts which dominate most of this giant part of world stuff personally too, i just think these mind-boggling areas are very educational when it comes to development of steppe warfare)
If you go to Iowa or Kansas it's flat. You can stand on your car and see nothing but a flat sea of corn or wheat.
@@recoil53 American moment on par with "we got one of them Eiffel Towers in Las Vegas too!"
@@zejivago3835 If you want. The African savannah looks pretty damn flat too, I've just never been there.
The vastness definitely gives a sense of freedom and with the right breed of horses they had it!
@@recoil53yeah definitely not a coincidence the Comanche, Apache etc. were so hard to deal with.
The strategy in the Eastern Europe steppe to retreat while burning anything of value down to deprive the enemy of supplies while straining their baggage trains seemed to have been effective until the 1940s
It is also fascinating how many Native Americans were able to create basically nomadic societies once the horse was reintroduced to North America. I know that is an over simplification of the history.
I’ll be doing a few videos on Native American societies like that, especially the Comanche
@@TheFallofRome that sounds fantastic! I’m a fifth generation Nebraskan so I know the tribes of the Great Plains is a tough history to navigate and increasingly difficult to come to terms with how monstrous my ancestors were when settlers came here. But it is our history and we can’t forget
Godspeed
I completely agree with the reference to Native Americans. Pre-1492 there were an abundance of almost completely pre-agrarian societies. Granting those were wiped out by disease, still the introduction of the horse by the Spanish led to a complete societal shift to the warrior horse culture. The comments on the nomads destroying everything to prevent the opposing force from foraging also have a sad Native American parallel in Kit Carson advocating a policy of wiping out the buffalo so as to prevent the Natives from having adequate hunting opportunities. Still fascinating how controlling geography is in all of this. Despite “good king” Wenceslas, the Huns and Mongols never got much further west than the high plateau of Germany and avoided the hot south of China and India. Likewise the Native Americans horse cultures were plains and desert too. Super fun video.
I was so amazed to learn about Genghis Khan's war against Kwaresm in particular. Everything I've heard before that made me think of nomads, Mongols in this case, as barbarians, who just overwhelm their adversary by brute force. But learning how it was in reality has shown me just how cunning, and precise was Ghenghis with his strategy and how flexible were his commanders, who were able to gain a tactical edge against their enemy due to how well organised their forces were. Truly a terrifying enemy.
Subutai is considered one of the great generals of history.
Mongols pretty seamlessly integrated Chinese siege methods into their methogs.
Barbarians was someone who didn't speak greek, and those were all in fact barbarians! If you meant they were ruthless mercenaries, those were that as well!!!!
Im sure the Jin/Jurchen are better nomads than the mongols. They defeated the mongols multiple times and managed to destroy them politically and literally define east Asian border up to this day.
@@yulusleonard985not really. It was more like a circle. Mongols beat them, then got beat back and repeat.
@@drejade7119 Lol no, First they beat mongols and fail to kill everyone, because they underestimate them (they are focusing with Khitan at this moment). A century latter you know who rise to power among the mongols and defeated them but fail to kill everyone. And since mongols still use nomad culture unlike the Jurchen who use Chinese culture by this point the mongols destroy them self. The Jurcen then proceed to assimilate/destroy mongols as political entity. Even today they split into 3. The Inner mongol, the Outer mongol and Buryat mongol while systematically destroy the desert mongol (present day Xinjiang) and upper mongol (Tibet). And because they are three separate nations and two of them are superpower the chance to revive greater Mongolia is 0%.
The mongols only receive their height at 12th century. The Jurchen are the one who destroy the Song at its peak and when they return at 15th century, they utterly destroy mongols (including genocide of desert mongols) until we got modern day Chinese border. The Mongols beat the Jurchen once, but the Jurchen destroy them forever.
Fascinating video! As an avid world builder it's kind of an obsession to understand how to make authentic representations of these sorts of cultures, it really blew my mind that yeah step nomads have things like wagons and carts to carry goods and possessions with them while migrating, they didn't all just carry their stuff in a horse.
I wonder, during the several centuries that great plains American tribes acquired horses and began to develop their own steppe nomad culture, what sort of parallels and contrasts could be found between the Comanche, Sioux, etc and the Eurasia nomads of old
Glad you enjoyed it! I have some videos on that subject coming but if you’re looking for a book, The Comanche Empire is what you’re looking for
@@TheFallofRome awesome, thanks for the recommendation!
And don't forget the pioneers in their wagons convoys and how they circled around for defense, have no doubt these steppe nomads did it as well!
American Indians used dogs with “sleds” attached to them before they got horses. Horses didn’t come to the American southwest until the mid 1600s so they didn’t change a whole lot after getting horses.
The human migration to America happened through land bridge through Alaska, which means that people of Americas and East Asian/Steppe people have same Ancestory and thus similar culture/way of life.
I love watching vids on this period and place of history for two reasons. The first is that it serves as a fantastic case study for both the basics and the finer points of attritional warfare, force multiplication, and other subjects.
The second, and undoubtedly more important one, is that "Darius" is my cat's name, and he comes running towards the computer every time it comes up lol.
Me, Me, Me Generation. :)
Nomadic peoples had an appreciation of the logistics of force projection built into their lifestyle. Everything was organized around movement. Life on the march requires a considerable amount of camp discipline and initiative from everyone. Life on horseback gave them unprecedented range and speed to attack by surprise and retreat.
Couple that with what the horse archer delivered in a fight: accurate, high volume mobile firepower and you have a formidable foe who isn't even trying hard, yet. The composite bow was itself a dominant piece of technology until, and well into, the age of firearms.
Add in a charismatic leader with a vision, or a grudge, and there is a recipe for a thousand year recurring nightmare.
The US military today consciously emulates Rome and the Mongols, combining speed , reach and firepower with lavish and deeply supported logistics.
Facts: Full of lgbt and rapes must be formidable!!! To the last ukranian they said (I think that was the brit, same thing), send them the fragmentary shells, because it's not a crime! 1000 soldiers in Niger??? What were they doing there??
Opinion: I'd say it emulates a private company that doesn't care about it's employees and makes poison products that kill people and the environment!
Was looking for this comment! War is 95% logistics and only the rest is battles and tactics. It must have been bloody hard to mobilize farmers who never left their hometown for life and make them navigate, march, find food and water, keep warm or cool, make camps, avoid danger, and keep themselves clean and healthy. To nomads those were just their way of life.
U. S military and intelligence is direct copy from Ottoman Empire. But you are right, Turkish Empire used both nomadic tactics and Rome tactics
Long story short the more comfortable you are with settled life the more your weak in combat and this wasn’t changed until very recent technological advances of the last 300 years that relied more on technology.
Looking forward to this series.
Me too! I’m hoping most of the subscribers enjoy the series. Hopefully it gets a decent amount of views 😬
@TheFallofRome I am also looking forward to the series. I hope more people watch so I can get more episodes.😢
"The great closing of the steppe" sounds like it could be a very interesting way to end and summarise this series (eventually).
I've always been interested in why exactly it is that the various nomadic societies declined so much earlier than the blossoming of the full fruits of the industrial revolution.
Excellent. Very excellent. Thank You. "A dead bird, a dead frog and three arrows". What the Scythians left on a trail for Darius to find, according to Herodotus. Darius barely made it out alive.
Correction. "A bird, a mouse, a frog and five arrows". I had to look it up. Sorry, but it's been thirty years since I've read Herodotus.
Subedei and Dzhebe did not need any supply lines when they raided Eastern Europe. They just took 5-7 horses per soldier with them. Those horses supply them with milk, blood, meat, leather and etc. so in that sense you are right 👌
“Conan, what is best in life?”
“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women”
Yep...no love for Conan the cimmerian!
Love the hint to a start of a series on this subject!
Fantastic video man, I'm really excited for the scythian content!
Another great video! Thanks!!👍👍
Thank you for the very concise explanations for thia question that eluded me for long...
Much awaited, much appreciated excellent insights as always.
You’re welcome!
Great to see all the new subs glad you’re getting the attention you deserve. Keep up the great videos!
What a fascinating topic! Thanks for another great video.
Glad you enjoyed it!
This is a great video. integrated a lot of good academic research and papers. one issue that is generally not well explored (maybe in academic circle but not in popular history) is that most large nomadic empires/states have some supplementary farming economy. a pure herding economy is very fragile and more prone to disaster than sedentary farming. This further complicates the relationship.
Thanks I’m glad you enjoyed it! We’ll be talking about those farming communities in later videos
Yes, they were farming and they were not really nomadic. This is only what the western historians saw, they saw people without houses and farmland, they must be nomadic. Before that they saw them form the distance, they must be centaurs. We shouldn't teach the concept existed thousand years ago as fact.
500 years ago the hungarian historian who wrote the history of the hungarian royal family started with a comment saying the hungarians are not descendant of demons, they were born from father and mother like everyone else and he did that because thousand years ago the european propaganda painted the hungarians as descendant of demons.
It's pretty sad we barelly developed in the last 500 years.
I love you and your videos. PLEASE MORE VIDEOS. And please more on nomads. thank you and have a great day
Excellent Episode 👍
Thank you for the great content
You’re very welcome!
Hard to defeat someone who is constantly running away from you. Thats it, even if you beat them, if you don't kill or capture all of them, they will regroup somewhere, and have a go at you later, they don't have temporary homes or places to stay, and can't relocate them as they won't mind. Unless you take them into hostile region, like mountains in heartland of your territory.
They do had temporary place to to stay and they also had winter and summer settlements. It was just far away for a nation without horses.
Sick, I cannot wait for this series to keep going
More coming soon!
You Rock Mike. Thanks.
You’re very welcome!
The clash between settled peoples and nomadic peoples really is one of the most fascinating features of Human History. Great work on this one. Cheers.
Love me some steppe history, please cover more the content is great!
I have plenty coming!
Awesome content as always
Thank you
Thanks for using my map at 1:00!
Hey welcome back. Feel like it has been a while since you released a video
Very insightful.
Surely the superior weapon system of the horse archer Vs pre-gunpowder settled societies' armies has to be a big factor in why nomadic armies were dominant. The skilled horsemanship and archery of the nomads, along with the power of their composite bows were pretty dominant until the use of firearms and artillery? Dan Carlin explains their effectiveness in his series of podcasts pretty well
Not to take away from your other good points though about nomadic societies
I wouldn't oversell it. There's a good post by Brett Devereaux about it, but because of the drop off in energy from archery at range and the higher resulting angle of impact effective fire needs to be at somewhat close range in order to overcome the armour their enemies may be wearing. Such a close distance puts them at particular risk to counterfire, a not entirely agreeable trade given the lack of protection their horses had and how panicky such an animal could be. Against enemies able to maintain cohesion and offer effective counterfire, horse archers could be at a credible disadvantage.
Gunpowder does not magically make horse archery armies obsolete. It took another 700 years to make guns technologically advanced enough
The Mongols use gunpowder weapon quite effective. Also most of early gunpowder weapons are archery based like the fire lance and hwacha.
Most people forgot that their society are easy turn into civil war just because how they organize them self.
China already invented gunpowder by the time the mongols invaded and found them absolutely useless against the fast moving horse archers, even during the Ming dynasty they were still losing to nomad armies. It wasn't just gunpowder, they also had to adopt large cavalry armies and recruit other nomad mercenaries.
Great video!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
fascinating topic.
short and qualitative video, i like it
Very much enjoy the channel
Thank you!
Will you be talking about the Cossacks at any point during your coming videos on the steppe? I just find them interesting, settled Slavic people adapting the steppe lifestyle and material culture as a response to the Tatars
You might wanna check a previous series there are a few videos about them.
@@buteos8632Which videos?
Steppe lifestyle and nomadic lifestyle are different things though.
Cossacks' advantage was in firearms predominantly, which were adapted very quickly and early in history.
Prior to it Slavs of Rus also didn't use horse archery approach as main respond to nomadic tactics, though there've been such misconceptions partly. However horsemen carried bows too, it would be a problem to not own one in steppe just in case. Employing nomads as light troops had been an unstoppable tradition and common practice, always available in fact.
While Ruthenian cavalrymen mostly preferred eventual close fight and successful charge over Tatars, both initially and ever after, neighboring Muscovites mastered massive mounted archers style likewise Ottoman and Persian sipahi due to administrative ability of raising people's masses and absence of historical tradition/need in heavy mounted strike tactics.
Would the Nomadic advantage explain the all conquering armies of the early Islam, as the Arabian peoples had just turned nomadic a century earlier with the collapse of the Yemen dams system, and the climate had just changed after centuries of the Roman Warm Period?
Oooh that’s an interesting question, and one I unfortunately don’t have much of an answer to because Arabs are sort outside my areas of focus. From what I know of Arabic history I would say “maybe but probably not” because much of the initial Arabic success occurred because the Roman and Persian states had their sets of internal problems at that time, but I think it’s worth looking into!
@@TheFallofRome thanks. The Nomadic advantage seems also to explain why the Romans were able to conquer the non-nomadic Celtic populations of Iberia, Gaul, Greece, Egypt and the Levant but it took Charlemagne and the Germanic tribes’ switch from nomadism to agriculture for proper Germany to be annexed to a Western Empire
@@omnologos Seems likely to be so, always, as we learn things were/are/will be complicated, it+s a combination of many factors that favored whom had less to loose in a short moment in History. Climate, social unrest, the Huns, the Mongols, the Ottomans, etc...a mercenary riddled region of volatile leadership with bands of remnants of former empires. The steppes were always the last frontier for empires.
I wouldn't classify the Arabs as nomadic in that way. Especially not the Muslims that come from Hejaz.
But they did have the advantage of quick horses that covered vast ground relatively quickly. That they used to their advantage when raiding. Similar to nomads.
I do think though, separately, that this nomadic advantage was a factor in why the Mamluks and Delhi Sultanates held off the Mongols. Because they were Turkic armies well versed with horse archery and nomadic culture even if they'd settled down in different lands.
Yes Nomadic way of living in Harsh desert conditions was a big advantage. But replace horses with Camels as their are no vast open plains of grass in a desert. Arabs knew all the desert routes and how to attack Rome and Persia in undefended / unexpected places and overcome them by superior mobility. Plus arabs knew how to live off camels and sheep/goats etc so logistics issue was also solved.
How can i access the full pdf of the "The perilious frontier"
9:53 I would argue that any states didn't have exact boundaries until very recently. In antiquity, the boundaries were a spectrum if there was no large geographical feature, such as Rhine present, and further into the Middle ages, boundaries were a spectrum of were does a King actually hold power, how much, and on the outer edge the allegiance is only token. Of course regions such as Dalmatia, Illyria, and parts of Italy would fluctuate between Rome and HRE a lot.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty positive that any states in that time used to exert a zone of control with different levels of autonomy, not direct boundaries(even if such used to exist on paper sometimes)
I was wondering why those Horse Archer symbols looked familar, shout out to Total War 😁 3:00
amazing video as always. just one small criticism: the map you showed was quite hard to parce for me due to the low contrast between the greenish-blue for the oceans and the green for landmasses. had to pause and stare at it for a moment to actually recognize what I was looking at.
Thanks for what you do!
yt not lettin me subscr… great video
Btw will you solely focus on step or will it be leading topic, but with other topic presents?a
I have other content, but the steppe and the Scythians will be a focus until January
I got one for my hat when playing airsoft and I gotta say it’s a game changer. If you’re using cover properly then most of the time when you’re hit it’ll be on your head/face. The hits are still obvious, but way less painful and won’t leave welts.
I hope this series will include a video about the history of the Sarmatian tribes.
Eventually yes
A good question would be this... Nomadic archers were good but settled societies needed two things at minimum to defeat them: A permanent local force or guard units that could rapidly respond to any raids and would need at least good armor and well trained in archery. The Eastern Roman Empire kinda had something similar with this with the Theme system where each province was pretty much its own "fortress" and formed a strong defense-in-depth.
Because they were so In-Tents!
A fascinating and enjoyable video. Thanks! (by the way, in case it's helpful, "shi" in pinyin is pronounced more like "sure" in English, and "he" is pronounced more like "huh").
The thumbnail from Mount & Blade?
Wow, this was again vastly educational. I particularly love how you go into the big picture stuff, like the "shadow empire" idea. It goes to show how our world is connected and interwoven. Whether it's Rome and the barbarians or settled and nomadic empires. They interact in space and in time. One missing link for me is to understand how and why nomads become mercenaries. What appeals to them? Is it the promise of riches? Do the nomadic empires fall prey to their own "incentive structures"?
They become mercenaries when they need land for their tribe from a sedimentary power. Usually when one tribe is evicted from its lands by a rival tribe, it roams in search for new lands. And when a sedimentary power offers them land in exchange for their manpower, they readily accept.
Any recommendation for books on the Dzunghar Khanate? Preferably military history, if any.
China Marches West
@@TheFallofRome thank you
@@iondu655 you’re welcome! Happy reading!
Even now in Nigeria, there exists clashes between many of our settled and farming villages and the nomadic Fulani cattle herders. At least now I understand that the clashes. Between nomads and settled society is common across the world.
That video is very very useful for my video game development...
Glad you find it helpful!
@@TheFallofRome
I thank you for your video.
I am Türk from western Balkan born in sweden. When we made 2 days car trips when I was a kid my father used to drive down in a straight with speed and even got fed buy mom while driving and even had coffe while driving. No cup holder or cups just a small plastic cup that you had to hold in your hand while driving a manual..
I as kid liked being mobile so when we arrived the next day I used to ask when will we return!
When I say in straight some short sleeps were included but my father came home from work, loaded tha car and we drove off.
Taking about the location of Scythia (which intersects modern Ukraine) and in the same breath talking about lines on maps ... Mike, are you are a fellow watching of William Spaniel's channel ?
A conspicuous data point is the Indoeuropeans. That did their unprecedented world changing expansion before horse back riding and maybe even before the chariot. From the same base area as later horse archer based cultures.
I have no explanation. But it really has to be addressed in this context.
i wanna add something on hunting. Nomadic hunt had another aspect making it useful for warfare: it was often group hunting on horseback. It wasn't just a single guy with a bow who just suddenly craved for some pork.
Why is it important? Because horseback group hunting involves both the strategic training (gotta organize big mass of hunters into groups, gotta move and feed them before and after the hunt), discipline training (you need to follow orders and do exactly what's asked of you), the formation training (you need to know your position and maneuver) and the skill training with bow and horse riding. It's not exclusive for nomadic societies, in Western Europe one of aristocratic pastimes was mounted group hunting (which also contributed to combat training of knights). But nomads employed it en masse.
Chariots preceded cavalry in the Middle/Near East. The heydey of the former might be 1300 BCE, while cavalry did not appear until 900 BCE. The horses just were not large enough to be ridden. Remember that they were domesticated (on the steppe) for food, and at that time were quite small. The dates are earlier in the steppe, but I'm skeptical of evidence of horse riding in 3500 BCE.
I expect you will touch on this at some point later but along with less division of labor (or less strict division of labor) was less rigid class boundaries in nomadic societies. In many or most settled states it was definitely not in the elites interest to have large numbers of peasants skilled in the use of weapons and military organization.
This commentary is very similar to Deleuze and Guattari's "The War Machine", which adds a philosophical bent to the actions of nomadic peoples by putting these actions into a context of territorialisation and deterritorialisation, as well as the nomadic machinery to ward off the state
Geography largely determines the economies and cultures of the people living on it.
River Valleys, The Steppe and Mountains each have their own impact on the cultures that develop.
Farming is a cooperative development but requires a lot of time and hard work devoted to it. It can however be the basis of a very rich culture.
People who live on The Steppes and in the Mountains do not live on terrain that is conducive to farming. They tend to be poor animal herders. One of the things about being poor - is that there is a temptation to rob your neighbors. This breeds a warrior culture in that the men emphasize the importance of being able to rob their neighbors and keep themselves from being robbed.
The nomadic culture I'm most familiar with is the American Plains Indians.
They lived in villages belonging to a tribe - that were strung out in an east west line as the tribe, as a whole, moved as villages north and south with the seasons and the animals.
These villages were largely family units led by the older males in a family group. Young people could not find romance within the village as they were related to everyone. So - the men would seek mates in Tribal Gatherings and by stealing them from other tribes. Raiding other tribes was a constant on going thing.
You can't be a warrior if you don't have someone to fight - so now and again the young men would get together a War Party - and go looking for trouble raiding another tribe. Here - they were opportunists.
They'd come across a situation and make a judgment call.
_"Can we take them?"_
If the answer was - no - or - yes but we'll take casualties - they'd go else where looking for a better opportunity.
If the Answer was - YES - they hit them.
They'd kill all the men, rape all the women, steal the animals, steal women and children they wanted to keep - and kill the rest.
The children would be brought into their tribe. The tales of being Adopted Into an Indian Tribe - are true. The Indians had horrendous youth death rates and were constantly looking for ways to increase their numbers.
The women they stole - would have their wombs put to work for the tribe that had abducted them.
Because of the nature of this raiding - these people *_HATED_* each other. They all had fathers and brothers who had been killed, mothers and sisters who had been raped and killed or kidnapped. I cannot emphasize how much these people hated each other.
The Lakota and Cheyenne ganged up on the Crow and drove them out of their migratory lands. So - the Crow just flat out hated these people - and went to work for the Army. An Army officer trying to make peace on the plains had asked some Lakota Chiefs to come to his base to talk. As these Chiefs entered the base - the Army's Crow Scouts - saw them - and killed them all.
When the Whites showed up - the Indians didn't treat them any differently than they had each other. The difference there - is that the Whites would call the Army. The American Indian Wars saw twice as many Whites die as Indians. The solution - was to put these nomadic peoples on reservations where the government would feed them and they wouldn't be out and about killing people.
The thing is - these Indians didn't stand a chance. At the Little Big Horn - Custer had about 435 guys. There were maybe 6,000 Indian men women and children - with between 1,000 and 2500 men of military age. At the Battle of Gettysburg there were over 70,000 people - *_ON EACH SIDE_* .
Though there were a few attempts to do so - the Indians were never able to over come their inter tribal hatreds and unite. Even if they had - they had all of Europe (which was full) feeding people into the New World and bringing their diseases with them.
And here we come to the question of Why did the Mongols and Arabs - after hundreds of years of killing each other - unite. In the case of the Mongols - it was the Khans that politically united the different tribes. In the case of the Arabs it was Mohammad and Islam that united them. Another factor here - was good weather - which had caused a strong increase in their populations over a few generations.
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Nomads were not mad (No-Mad). that helped them have a steady mind. And they were always "IN STEP". that is why they lived on the STEPPE
Using this for Mount and Blade warband strategy
The idea that they could mobilize a higher percentage of their population who just happened to have sick riding and archery skills had occurred to me. After centuries of warfare or just a few major defeats they might be pretty depleted.
I also think that superior nutrition (and the mobility of that nutrition) was a major advantage. Herders have been showing up and whooping sedentary societies since Mesopotamia. For instance, the Egyptian diet was almost entirely grains and they were in terrible health. Hunters also have bigger brains.
Superior nutrition but greater uncertainty. Herders live tough fickle lives that depend on their herds. Any mishap and they likely have little buffer from famine unlike farmers who have stored grain. There's a reason you can count powerful herder societies with one or two hands. Meanwhile, you can rattle off the number of great sedentary societies to no end.
They could mobilize a high percentage of their population as you said, the kids could ride horses before they could walk, well they rode sheeps first but you get it. Both the men and the women were able to ride horses and shoot with an arrow, both the men and women wore pants, and all of the men reportedly(!!!) were warrior.
But you are wrong when you say they might be depleted. They thing with the horse archer culture it is similar to each other mostly because they could just ride their horses to an other area and live there influencing each other, they all had a honor based culture and when one tribe was defeated they were not killed or destroyed they were just asked to accept inferior position what they did what means the winner army grew in numbers with the loser army. So no they were not depleted. When Atilla the Hun prepared to attack Rome he attacked the steppe people first and when he finished he had a unified Empire against Rome.
@@eds1057 There was no uncertanity for three reason. First they had the ability to ride to a better land, second they were farming, yes they did and third they had ten times as much horse as they had humans and the meat from one horse is good for a long time.
@@Zodroo_Tint
Bollocks.
Ride to better land? Land is a limited resource. A nomadic tribe is likely staying in the lands it grazes on because it is the best it can find. If they are forced off by another group, then they'd have to spend time and resource trying to finding land that is just as good as the one they just lost. While they might be able to find such land, it is an uncertain situation they are forced under as they might not find as great a land and as such suffer a quality of life decrease. In addition that's not mentioning the years that group must now devote to learning the intricate details and resource locations within that land, all time costs. In addition the now displaced nomad group might come into conflict to acquire such land as good land is likely already to be inhabited. And while grazing land is vast, it is not infinite. There comes a point that the maximum number of nomad tribes occupy some land for subsistence. There will be a lack of land at some point.
Farming and nomads? Farming makes up a tiny portion of a nomadic group's resource production. It of course varies through space and time and by group, but in general, nomadic tribes depend largely on their herds of animals for most of their resources. Farming might make up a tiny portion to provide hard to acquire resources or to provide alternatives, but to say that it can be relied upon to rough out years of low resource production is ridiculous. It might provide a very small buffer, but I'd say it'd only handle the smallest of shocks.
Reliance on horses? Sure, that's their bread and butter. But what if disease breaks out and kills half the herd? Or a poor grazing year causes a small famine and kills of some of the herd? While horses might be a hardy resource, whether you are a nomad or a farmer, there WILL be years where a major resource you rely on will fail. HOWEVER, crops provide a much greater buffer than horses due to their storage capacity. Grain is just relatively easy to grow large amounts of and STORE. A nomad can dry meat, can churn horse milk into butter, but the energy input and resource output compared to farming are poor. A farmer society simply outproduces a nomadic by absolutely large scales of production and is able to store it for much longer. There is a reason why most humans opted to grow crops! You might get boring grain, but it's reliable and has MUCH greater capacity over LONG periods of time compared to meat.
Are nomadic societies hardy? Yes, they are tough as nails. But their way of living, compared to settled societies, is suboptimal. Through most of written history, nomadic tribes might have harassed settled farmer societies, but they have been mostly pests, an annoying fly to swat at and pay off to leave you alone. They live hard lives with deep uncertainty and as such face great violence to keep what they have. There is a reason they raid so often! They are resource poor. They lack many amenities of settled societies. They are simply inferior in terms of stability and prosperity. And I will even say, militarily.
Do nomads have bigger brains? This is new information to me
Hearders vs. wall builders explains this topic perfectly
1:46 Oh yeah! Oirat showing Ming their place!
Weird but slightly related question:
Does the Comanche Empire count as a Nomadic Empire?
There is one group of historians who would argue yes. “The Comanche Empire” is the book if suggest, or you can wait until I get those videos up. I’m about halfway through those scripts
Surely they'd some characteristics, luckily their "empire" was strangled in the cradle by modern firearms (and the will to use them)
I'm trying to square the years here: The chinese example is 2000 years after the persian example, right?
Approximately yeah
Could the Plain Indians pre reservation be considered a nomadic steppe group albeit in North America
Yes there is an argument that leans in that direction-The Comanche Empire is the book you want to read
As a Turk from Turkiye with relatively solid historic knowledge on the issue, I can try to summarize this phenomenon.
A) No city and capital based civilization. Thus you can't be conquered.
B) All time total war society. Women and even children fights. How they find the time to do this? Because they lack other professions more developed classical era societies had.
C) Culture and language preserved through geography. When a land even as remote as Britain was being settled by different nations/cultures time after time, the steppes was foreign to others. Thus national identity especially through language and customs made tribes close to each other, creating a form of cohesion and kin hood.
D) Tribes were ruled by chiefs, and chiefs were ruled by khans. And khans even united under a single khan in times of distress. People like Attila and Chengiz were good examples. You can't have similar social governence in most other places in the world.
E) Finally horsemanship and archery, and warfare based solely on those. Never facing melee willingly, thus losing less. Not a big coincidence that many historic tacticians such as Sun Tzu was from China. They were facing continious assaults from the steppes all the time. And remember, in a battle what you seek is a lost enemy that lowered the weapons. If you can tire your enemy through constant mobile harassing, and finally it loses its rations and ammunition. So tired that it can't fight anymore. That is the best strategy. And you need the resources, talent, training, horses and bows to realize that aim. When they had those, they were invincible as the enemy couldn't defeat them. And give enough time, any battle would be won. If you compare it to European warfare, you don't need all the expensive armor to defend your soldiers on the battlefield. Thus you don't need mining operations, blacksmiths, a network of supply for armors. Instead all you need is horses. And while you can't make alternative uses of armor besides warfare, horses feed you besides you taking them to war. And they need pastures, thus you walk with them with your caravan of tents, from drought to the green pastures. A very limited type of living and culture. But sure it have military benefits up until the modern era where machine's killing power surpassed bows with a major blow.
For all the statements I made there are very nasty disadvantages. I am not trying to tell they did the good, right or the better thing. But all in all it is history. I am not here to judge anybody.
Yeah for all their hardiness their societies were extremely violent and unstable. Most of the time they're infighting between each other for grazing land. They often raid sedentary societies because they lack much of their own resources. It's a harsh life.
Great points! Jut one nitpick - Sun Tzu worked for a kingdom in southern China, which fought other kingdoms in that area. In other words, he never fought nomads, although he might have heard about them and analysed them.
Always interested in nomads 😎
i heard that 'mongolian neck signing' in the background???
Throat singing isn't mongolian, it's a nomadic tradition practiced by many Turkic tribes way before Mongols were even around
Mongolians had an organised state that still follows nomadic traditions, so they developed the thing most, that's it.
@@subutaynoyan5372 ohh.. ok. i didn't know that. thank you very much
I heard recently that the Israelites were a raider nation and that Yahweh was originally a warrior God; which explains some of His more violent moments in some of the more early stories.
Yes they were known for destroying all settlements to the ground and take slaves or kill everyone else, quite ruthless!!
Firepower and Maneuverability are the advantages.
The great khan returns!!
Horses in short answer, and also one of the big reason is that their life style, make Nomads had to capture because they don’t have a city, you cannot find them, and they can always run when you find them.
imho the idea that pastoral-nomadism makes better warriors has more to do with passive benefits of seasoned prior experience riding a horse and shooting a bow (or at least using a lance or lasso, etc) that's just inherent to the lifestyle and social model.
Hunting and herding skills require at least one if not both of those skills from an early age, so without being more warlike or anything they'd just have an edge on some drafted peasant.
The mamluke/ghulam phenomenon of slave-soldiery illustrates this the best. The boys and young men bought to enter that role and receive further training were pretty much exclusively drawn from steppe nomad societies, so they could be expected to already have horsemanship and archery under their belts. So the time they might have spent teaching any other slave or peasant how to ride a horse and shoot a bow could be spent on other skills, etc.
couldt help but laugh a little bit so many of these aspects. Im from Denmark and we can find many of these aspects in the early days in our kingdom, from the 12th century and backwards to atleast 8th century, based on the factual data we have so far. Guess you can say that Germanic people kept alot of steppe elements, here in denmark we just replaced the horse with boats.
I guess the forests and lack of open plains of grass in Northern Europe didnt allow traditional horse based nomadic way of life. Hence the switch to boats
Funny thing history from that time, conquest been from mostly from North to South and East to West
South usually have more rainful and warmer, thus easier life and softer people. Also East usually have been a lot more wealthy and advanced than the West.
Western expansion was from West to East during last 500 years. E.g Russian expansion all the way to the Pacific.
Human migration was from South to North i.e. Africa to North. For most of history North was uninhabitable. It was after recent Ice age i.e. 12000 years ago that North became inhabitable and then expansion from North to South took place due to harsh living conditions in North / Eurasia.
They where the ones who happily left themselves behind during civilization day.
As long as they had grass forage and plants for their animals to eat, they had mobility above people who are living subsistence agrarian farmers
As soon as people who are settled were able to project power, and his cases pointed out firearms and mechanized machinery, the mobility, the horse became obsolete
Will just have to mention World War I and the advent of artillery aircraft, even with rudimentary moms and machine guns made a horse cavalry obsolete as a primary shock force
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I think that nomads just suffer from being villified by the "civilized" settled peoples because we dont have many written records from the nomads perspective. Settled empires were actually able to beat the nomads several times over. Nomads certainly had better logistics and a defensive advantage .While nomadic steppe life offers advantages, one should also not forget to think about the downsides and our own biases.
If you are familiar with this channel than you know that these historical biases get addressed rather frequently on a variety of topics. What specific bias or villification in this video do you want to highlight?
@@arddermout6946 Nothing against the video, i was just trying to add instead of criticising. The main thing is that we get all almost all accounts of the nomad people from written sources of those sedentary civilizations which would come into conflict with the nomads. Nomads have a certain "notoriety" similar to the vikings (a lot of the sources come from christian monks who were targets of their raids) .
@@bernardbabic1081 You'd probably want to have a read of the series by Brett Devereaux on his blog about steppe peoples. One of things he brings up, is as you mention, that the various peoples from the steppes lack surviving and self written records of themselves leaving us to rely on what are often less than charitable accounts by their neighbours and how this influences even their modern perception (which ties into the series overall topic about GoT dothraki and Martin's claims of historicism).
Nomads usually have terrible inheritance law that will eventually lead to civil war. Mongols for example, their demise are mostly self inflicted.
Also most of nomads are not really nomads since they do have their own cities and capital. Their upper class are not doing chores like farming and animal husbandry but tribute collecting and war.
the come and raid, burn , loot, torture, kill, rape and you expect civilized people not to vilified them?
The lack of need for a supply train is an advantage I’m guessing before I watch this
I think livestock raiding and tribal feuds about pasture/land prepared the nomadic herders for more organised warfare.
Because they got the fast with only the grass
I would ... maybe not argue, but make the case for that there existed a brief resurgence in the steppe military advantage in central Asia during the first half of the 19th, with both the Qing, and Russia having problems with their supposedly 'tamed' subject populations. You see this with the middle horde in the Kazakhs even into the eighteen forties, and with Madali Khan forcing the Qing to grant him extraterritoriality rights in Xinjiang to the Khoqandi the decade prior to that. The response to this was of course to build fortresses and apply greater administrative effort up to and including forced colonization and resettlement.
I honestly think the decline of the steppe military advantage declined as a result of their politically fractured nature versus the increasing centralization and communications advantage of settled states, but that they enjoyed a local / regional advantage in to the mid nineteenth century despite these instances often being referred to as 'revolts' or rebellions by Chinese and Russian period writers.
The noblest of these nations that were not interested in science are the Chinese and the Turks. The Chinese are the largest of the peoples by number, the most imposing by kingdom, and the most considerable by territory. The domains they occupy are in the eastern parts of the inhabited world, between the equinoctial line to the extreme of the seven climates to the north. His share in knowledge (ma'rifa) is to surpass all nations in mastery of handicrafts and perfection of graphic arts. They are the most suffered of men in the prolonged effort, which the improvement of the works [supposes], as well as in enduring the harshness of the penalties in the perfection of the arts (sana'i").
As for the Turks, [they] also form a great nation with numerous troops and an imposing kingdom. The domains they inhabit are found between the eastern regions of Juräsän, [on the side] of the Islamic empire, the western regions of China, northern India, and the extreme north of the inhabited world. Their virtue is that they stand out and achieve supremacy in doing war, as well as in the elaboration of weapons; for they are the most skilful of men in horsemanship and [warfare] tactics, and the keenest of eyes for spearing, striking with the sword, and shooting arrows.
Ahmad, A.S. ibn and Salgado, M.F. (1999) Libro de las categorías de las naciones: Vislumbres desde el islam clásico sobre la filosofía y la ciencia. Tres cantos: Akal., p.43
I'm always intrigued by the affinity some castellians have with islam!
Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond call me what you will.
Anywhere I roam
Where I lay my head is home
Though a settled society may appear fixed to a specific location, in a pinch a secondary place to retreat and evacuate to has already been selected and the tribe/village/settlers know where to go in the event of being overrun by invaders.
While that might seem prudent and the wise thing to do, it inadvertently guts an army's defensive intensity.
If an army is forced into a pitched defensive position, if that army has a ready and trusted optional place to go to, that army has already forfeit any hope of victory.
Sun Tzu said victory can be had in an army's death ground. There is nowhere else to go. This ground is the only place to stand. If the opposing army can be convinced that it does not have to be on that land likely to die, but has someplace else to go and more likely live. One army has a choice of victory or death. The other army can take a defensive retreat and bug out to ideally fight another day.
As if tomorrow or victory is guaranteed to anyone.
A true nomadic army has no particular place to be, that depends on the moment and situation at hand. Home is where they rest their head.
So laying seige to a town/village/city/fortress/castle is as normal as breathing. Doing something difficult in pursuit of that which is larger than oneself, is more satisfying than doing nothing and getting fat.
Logistics.
Around the time of their decline sedentary armies figured out how to do military logistics to a higher degree.
If you look at campaigns by militaries in the medieval period they have logistics but it only supplied like 5% of what the army needed. So they needed to forage for 95%.
So when you invade the nomads the issue is there isn't any towns or cities to raid and forage for food. No grain stores to take.
So invading the steppe was basically impossible.
So the first advantage is the nomads couldn't be invaded and defeated at home.
So the nomads get to always choose the time for war and could wait for times where they are powerful and their enemy weak.
The nomads had the opposite logistical situation. Their entire life was on the move. They could forage and survive easily on the steppe so when they invaded a sedentary society they could easily find food. In fact they likely felt like they could find it easier because towns and cities had stores just waiting to be raided.
This mean nomads could invade sedentary civilizations in a lightning manner. Basically ancient blitzkrieg.
By the time the sedentary can react they have already lost.
Usually see nomadic ppl transforming into sedentary ones. Are there good examples of settled ppl who turned 😮nomadic and did well? 😮
Romanis
Worth noting that the final thing which killed the nomads weren't actually a simple military defeat, but their lands being settled by the Russians and the Chinese bringing them into the fold via a nomadic group being the conquerors on the form of the Qing