Why did White People Invent Racism, Genocide and Evil?.. Stupid Question.. They Didn't..
The West Was Just Insanely Good at What Clausewitz Called "The Continuation of Policy By Other Means"
Let's think about the evolution of military theory, organization and practice Europe experienced from around the Age of Discovery /.Age of Exploration through current times. How did these constantly shifting societies adapt, thrive or fail to incorporate early firearms into their existing thinking and practice of waging war? Why was Europe the experimental proving ground where technological advancements in all manner of military equipment, as well as new ideas of mobilization, organization and maintenance of armed forces perfected? Was any of this supposed Western military dominance preordained? Was Britain destined to become the most important country in the world if we did a straight line projection from say (picking this at random)... 1522? I want explore this web or civilizational advancement and parse out a better narrative than “White people are racist imperialist capitalist colonizers, that invented racism, suffering, conquest, genocide, bad tummy aches, cassette players that ate your favorite tape…” etc.. and all white people eat babies, don’t have souls, and smell like boiled hot dogs”
(This is a bit of a return for me… My AP history class spent the entire year on Europe from the Renaissance through the War of Spanish Succession). Typos and mistakes are allowed during smoke breaks.. I’m aware this is more like a smoke semester… I’ll figure out some new way of presenting it later… get off my back jack…
Firearms up until the early 1600s… in the form of a matchlock arquebusier… very finicky.. very weather dependent as the way you lit the gunpowder in the pan was having a lit piece of rope attached to the long gun itself… They weren't decisive.. had to be accounted for in an army's composition. The dominant army formation and arrangement at the time was called the Spanish square or Tercios…
You have to remember that there were very few professional soldiers in any army's composition… Most were peasants given basic weapons and equipment if that rank and file had almost no training in unit maneuver… either marching or in battle..
The only way that you can make them effective given these constraints.. is to pack them together with people they know… aim them at a single target or direction… Get the flared up on bloodlust.. patriotism.. motivate them somehow.. And let them march on the enemy as a group.. engaging in hand to hand combat.. most battles were decided by the side that could hold itself together the longest… If an army had just enough discipline.. just enough cohesion.. to hold it together until the other side broke… they would win almost every time… because once a line breaks it becomes mayhem and it is one-sided violence… Once a force broke.. what's that fear permeated an entire group of men… They couldn't defend themselves anymore… They would be hacked to pieces by both infantry and cavalry attacking them as they ran away… and they'd be trampled by soldiers in their own army trying to run away faster than they could…
This is an open field.. Just a blotch of death and dismemberment and mutilation… there's a river or a forest or any sort of geographical constraint on the battlefield… those fleeing soldiers would be pushed up against it.. and slaughtered even faster…
Calvary was always much more experienced because it was composed of noblemen who had some means to procure armor or weapons, a horse, a squire.. and this shit isn't cheap.. It took a lot of money to equip yourself properly as a knight… So somewhat experienced cavalry… Calvary would need to be trained in group maneuver and tactics.. which hopefully they did periodically a couple of times a year when there were festivals or tournaments…
There was a way to get experienced battle hardened infantry… but it would cost you a lot.. mercenary companies… Swiss pikemen at this time were the most sought after.. but other areas were famed for their specific type of kit and history… from the late 1400s to almost 1700s… mercenary units were heavily used by all armies…
Big drawback about mercenary units as you would expect.. That's loyalty is only as deep as your ability to pay… and even that they're not going on suicide missions for you.. not going to be doing very risky attacks… They would often abandon clients because they were asked to do something that was statistically going to lead to a large portion of them being slaughtered.. They were also notorious for switching sides very close to battles… commanders would notice their flag or standard and said they were a clandestine messenger.. a note and he promised to pay them double if they defect and join his side… They also.. almost a part of their contract.. demanded to keep a percentage of the spoils from any sack of a city.. defeat of an army.. anything that resulted in something of value being stolen or acquired.. They would demand to get a large piece.
The Italian wars of the 1400s were really weird. This practice was professionalized.. for the first time in a thousand years.. Italian city states started to become wealthy due to trading.. from the silk road… from Nordic trade caravans through what it's now, Belarus and Ukraine… and pretty soon Indian and Chinese spices and luxury goods… from European navigation and sailing technologies that exploded with the age of exploration and discovery
Spanish square.. think of it as a phalanx type unit… could really only maneuver forward… was very good defensively against cavalry.. especially heavy cavalry.,
So throughout human history.. there's been a competition between offense and defense… cavalry and infantry… a brand new revolutionary tactic.. for the previous revolutionary tactic that was well past its prime. At this time heavy cavalry against unorganized or loosely formed infantry.. would absolutely annihilate these foot soldiers.. Naturally, infantry started packing themselves into dense formations and equipping themselves with pikes… long spears either straight or with a head that was designed to catch and clip heavy horse lances. If a heavy cavalry shock formation attempted a head on assault against a Spanish square… They would be annihilated.. and all that money and experience.. kids of your nobleman.. think of the scene of braveheart when the Scottish wait till the last second and then in unison pull up hidden stinks. Huge 10 ft sharpened wood poles.. and the horses are impaled.. are impaled or stabbed or shot or fall off in our trampled… It turns into a shit show.. So the only way for Calvary to do anything against the Spanish square was to use pistols.. for about 100 years.. white cavalry would in circular fashion charge the square shoot one or two pistol shots… if possible, get a straggler with their lance or sword… run back to their lines. Reload, rinse and repeat.
Most victories or defeats at this time took place off the battlefield… logistics was extraordinarily difficult… technology wasn't there to supply and army in the field for any significant period of time at all… therefore, armies had to live off the land… this meant murdering raping and stealing everything they could get their hands on… sometimes even in their own country or area… pissing off a whole lot of people who survived… people who would be extremely willing to share intelligence with your enemies. You ended up making enemies yourself… You sack the city of a neutral party… and perhaps That caused a wave that rippled through an alliance system…
So keeping an army intact in the field for any length of time, especially through winter, especially through the wet and cold autumn rains and spring thaws… If it wasn't dry and summer.. it was almost impossible to maneuver…
This is the formation tactics compositions… that the Protestants and Catholics (It would take too long to delineate the various phases and compositions of the opposing sides, so I'm keeping it simple as Ps and Cs) waged 30 years war with.. over 30-year. Central Europe was devastated in a way that hadn't been experienced since the Black death 200 years earlier… millions of civilians died from either famine or were murdered by various armies or forces… many families at this time couldn't support their entire families.. So They would send their children off alone to do whatever they possibly could to survive… These groups would either be killed off individually or perhaps they would find a family or they could get some work or they would be fuel for mercenary companies… . Germany at this time. Holy Roman Empire. It was called. This *empire" was a loose confederation of around 1000 independent city-states, principalities, duchies, or other lands.. run by countless tinpot rulers.. It was run by an elected position titled holy Roman emperor… Who was elected by a portion of the territories within the geographical boundaries of what we would now consider Germany Czechoslovakia Austria parts of France and the low countries. Although named emperor.. This position held no real power.. the true power resided in the territories and states that elected this figurehead… shortly when we get to discussing Prussia.. the first two formidable influential leaders of note held the title of Elector before any other designation…
So you have a massive land encompassing thousands of individual jurisdictions .. and these two forces just crisscrossing countless times… each taking a city and pillaging what they either didn't steal the first time or the second time of the third time… or what the townspeople had managed to collect since the last time they were pillaged… societies fell apart… families of well-established and renowned principalities or holdings would die of plague… bankrupt and destitute after they're main city was sacked.. or their entire crop would be pillaged from foraging armies…
This created an enormous amount of turmoil… but enormous amount of opportunity… for enterprising, as of yet untouched or unsoiled actors…
Enter Gustavus Adolphus… King of Sweden.. fresh off decades of military, conquest and victories in Poland, The Baltics and other Nordic countries… Adolphus had built Sweden into a great power.. due to three very important factors. One, he reorganized his entire governmental bureaucracy to be as efficient and transparent as possible to fund a professional army that was not reliant on taking labor away from productive agriculture during campaign season… he made the taxation of land less complicated… less prone to smoke and mirrors tactics by nobleman… and fair across the board… for the soul reason of funding, a professional standing army. and two, Just mentioned, a true professional standing army… that was trained… maintained a level of discipline under and maneuver and could develop a level of experience that was almost unheard of at the time regarding other armies in Europe… he also created and developed a logistical process so that his army would be provisioned to a certain extent away from its home territory.. without having to resort to sacking cities and pillaging helpless farmers as the sole means of supply his soldiers.
And three.. (the fun stuff) he revolutionized the structure and composition of his army… completely changed the way that it functioned in battle and march. First off, got rid of the Spanish square formation… and replaced it with linear formations of infantry, pikeman, and artillery… matchlock long guns concentrated in the center with units of pike on either side to protect against cavalry… So instead of sporadic matchlock gunman throughout a square firing whenever they wanted or could… You had a trained, disciplined complement of experienced matchlock long gunmen.. Who would fire on mass in unison… which could rip apart the opposing forces order of battle.. or line of soldiers… crush a light Cavalry pistol attack… and a pikeman is ready to repel or face an infantry assault or heavy cavalry charge.
Artillery… This was a significant change… Adolphus created The idea of a combined arms force… up until that point artillery was its own wing of insanely heavy and extraordinarily unstandardized custom built paperweights… that fired unique caliber objects… . Were extraordinarily slow… and could not be effectively moved on a battlefield in any meaningful way..
Adolphus standardized the calibers of guns to three, the smallest of which was assigned and equipped by the infantry line formations… for their own use in any way they saw fit.. This allowed that newly created infantry formation to concentrate firepower of experience, discipline long gunmen and match that with artillery that was powerful enough to make an impact and tear through an opposing line… but maneuverable enough to be moved by a horse or two and a couple of artillerymen.
These changes gave the Swedish army not only greater firepower but both more distributed firepower… and much greater ability to concentrate firepower. The most effective means of breaking your enemies morale is to concentrate fire and create a shock. So intense and catastrophic that it overwhelms group cohesion and imbues your enemy's soldiers and formations with a terrible fear… a fear that spreads like lightning through every formation.. crippling unit cohesion and eliminating the possibility of any opposing units being able to function effectively in combat.
War and battle is about destroying your enemies desire to fight back… ability to resist the pressure you have brought to bear against it… military theorists from Sun Tzu to Alexander to Belsarias to Clausewitz to Guderian.. would further refine the idea of an armies "schwerpunkt" or center of gravity… and that as a general of the opposing army.. Is your job to create a set of conditions that causes an imbalance in your enemies formations… This could be causing them to trip… or make them second guess their maneuvering choices… think of it as a form of dizziness.. your enemy feels…a hesitancy.. to trust their decisions, even just a little bit less… any form of imbalance can then be amplified.. by concentrating your army's power and capabilities on this center of gravity… What we would now call the point of main effort.. there aren't many examples of renowned and influential generals whose sole method of attack was the direct approach of assaulting the enemy head-on in direct kinetic action… No surprises, no subterfuge… No manipulation or misdirection.. Just head Head on no surprise frontal attack… a general has to have that tactic in his toolkit. . But you don't become a Hannibal.. an Attila… a Subutai by making predictable vanilla direct assaults on well defended enemy positions. The truly great generals throughout history… thought deeply about creating these opportunities to imbalance their opponent… to create these situations.. battlefield realities.. that their enemies center of gravity becomes slightly misaligned.. and thus more vulnerable.. weaker… more easily tipped over with less effort… Napoleon's most brilliant victories resulted in his forces concentrating and arriving at a point in the battle that his enemies did not, could not, would not have expected. Hannibal's victory at Cannae, resulted in a simple ruse… he allowed the Roman center to advance and appear to be gaining ground against his center… Hannibal wanted this… he wanted his center to pull back while keeping his Right and left flank composed of his veteran heavy Spanish infantry anchored and unmovable… as his center continued to fall back and the Romans continued to advance into this pocket.. Hannibal's cavalry easily took care of their Roman counterparts and sprung the trap by attacking the Roman forces from the rear while the anchors of Hannibal's line.. his African heavy infantry, advanced right and left directly into the flanks of the Roman forces… while his elastic, apparently weak center stopped retreating… This is how you not only fight.. but obliterate… both physically and psychologically.. a numerically superior force… on their home turf… 50,000 soldiers in Hannibal's Army… crushing an almost 90,000 strong Roman army… and more inconceivably… physically created almost 50,000 roman dead in the span of an afternoon…
So this army was built like it was designed by someone intentionally… and not a haphazard accumulation of bodies thrown at the other side… The Swedish army was well practiced in maneuver both on and off the battlefield… So could March incredibly effectively and incredibly quickly due to discipline and efficiency that was unheard of in other armies at that time… going from March formation to order battle.. This is not an easy thing to do for a massive hundreds of thousands of men… but with practice and leadership and discipline and training.. going from March to battle formations was an order of magnitude faster.
One more chance… he brought shock power back to Calvary… he designed and trained discovery units to utilize pistols but also Lance's on any enemy formation that had broken or appeared to be cracking… Adolphus wanted his calvary to either be the cause of a square collapsing and disintegrating or the next thing that hits it after it falls apart… in order to maximize the damage and destruction to the enemy forces… he didn't want to give the opposing army any opportunity to reconstitute itself with a second line… didn't matter. That was very rare at the time. But he wanted the idea to be so preposterous that it would never be recommended or even thought of..
Adolphus has success against the Catholic forces.. but because he led by example and led from the front… usually as an auxiliary calvary shock unit like Alexander the great and his famed companions before him… Adolphus died during the Battle of Lutzen (1632).. he was leading from the front.. got caught behind enemy lines due to a lack of visibility from thick fog of artillery and matchlock smoke covering every inch of the battlefield… shot from his horse.. he took another couple of shots before dying… his army didn't know he was dead until they saw his riderless horse running in between the lines..
Catch you at the next smoke break