Broadening
Broadening is a term coined by the Austrian medievalist Herwig Wolfram for a conscious or unconscious acculturation process , through which the military emphasis of the peoples on the edge of the Eurasian steppe belt increasingly shifted to the riding troops. This process of adapting weapon technology and military tactics to those of the equestrian nomads to be fought off was first carried out by building up armies of high civilizations in the Empire of China , Korea , the Parthians , the Sassanids and the Roman Empire , without causing any radical social and cultural transformations. During the Great Migration , the East Germanic tribes such as the Goths (especially the Greutungen ), Vandals and Gepids , which were under the pressure of their eastern neighbors, were greatly changed in their cultural identity through the process of broadening; they developed from arable farmers to temporarily nomadic peoples.
The emergence of equestrian cultures on the prairies of North America, the steppes of Patagonia and the savannas of West Africa was associated with similarly profound socio-cultural changes and shifts in power.
Economic basics
The Sassanid horsemen come into the light of history under their ruler Shapur I when they inflicted a devastating defeat on the army of the Roman emperor Valerian in the battle of Edessa in 260 . In the battles against Shapur II , the armored cavalry was the decisive weapon on the Roman side; however, it still proved to be inferior to the Sassanid.
The social historian Michael Mitterauer sees the causes of the expansion on the edge of the Eurasian steppe belt in the clash of the steppe nomads with the arable farming cultures, who had to adapt their weapons technology and military organization to that of the nomads . They had to set up cavalry troops and equip the riders with metal helmets , scale armor (later chain mail ), thrusting lance , rider's sword , bow and arrow and finally with the stirrup (in 5th century Korea , attested by the Avars since the 6th century ) or take over these equipment elements from the nomads. Horse armor covers are archaeologically proven in Syria in the early 3rd century .
The armored cavalry troops ( cataphracts ) of the advanced civilizations were mainly equipped centrally or at least partially by the rulers; in addition, there were still foot troops there. The riders of the Scythians , Sarmatians , Alans and Huns , however, procured their equipment individually. This also applied to their East Germanic neighbors such as Goths, Vandals and Gepids.
There is evidence to suggest that Germanic tribes acquired nomadic skills and behaviors on their decades-long marches, especially when they moved with nomads like Alans and Huns. For the Goths the use of armored riders and horses for the 6th century z. B. evidenced in the battle of Busta Gallorum .
Helmut Castritius describes an economic implication of the process of broadening: It is a process of transformation through which “farmers and / or cattle breeders become seminomads and these become pure, unproductive parasites who, when the subject peasant substrate is no longer available or to produced little, is dependent on robbery and looting or on support in the form of subsidies for services rendered [...] ". At the same time, one of the reasons for the emergence of followers as possible forerunners of the feudal system is named.
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The process of expansion also reached the Franconian Empire with a delay, but here it led to a long-lasting split in society into warriors and vassals within the framework of "natural economy-based rulership structures" that prepared feudalism . The establishment of an army of heavily armed armored riders who had to procure their very expensive equipment and the often scarce feed themselves, store them and train the war trade permanently, went hand in hand with an agrarian reform, the increased cultivation of forage crops , specialized metal processing and the spread of feudalism . Last but not least, the ancient money economy also temporarily lost its importance.
The fact that the steppe nomads did not develop a feudal system as a result of the changed fighting style can be traced back to the fact that they adhered to the binding nature of the patrilineal lineages and the high mobility prevented a bond with the soil.
In contrast to these transformation theories, Raimund Schulz emphasizes the lasting link between war technology and its original natural environment, i.e. the cavalry armies with the Eurasian steppes. The relatively uniform warfare technique of the ancient Mediterranean, which relied on the heavily armed infantry, reached its limits the further it moved from its areas of origin. It therefore had to adopt the enemy's forms of war, although they were not very successful. Conversely, it was not possible for the equestrian peoples to successfully and permanently apply the war techniques that had proven their worth in their eastern homeland in the Mediterranean core countries. The Sassanids under Shapur II even had to adopt the techniques of siege warfare from the Romans in order to conquer some border fortresses. Only the European monarchies succeeded in maintaining complex military apparatuses with differentiated branches of arms on a permanent basis.
In China, where as early as the 6th century BC When the cavalry, but especially the infantry, replaced the chariot, the development of weapons technology in the fight against the steppe nomads took a different course. Similar to the hoplites in Greece, the peasants formed the heavily armed mounted core of the army, which secured their relative freedom in the long term and "opened the first gates to a pre-democratic development (' isonomy ')". Nevertheless, the Mongols were superior to the heavily armed and numerically superior Chinese army of the Jin Dynasty (1125-1234) due to their rapid mobility. They were able to feed on mare's milk and cheese on their trains and did not have to carry a train of slow pack animals on the steppe to transport their provisions. Unlike central and southern Chinese, Siberian and Mongolian peoples with their genetically determined lactose intolerance have no problems digesting milk sugar.
Development of other equestrian cultures
North America
The use of feral horses introduced by the Spaniards by the Prairie Indians began around 1700. It led to the emergence of an equestrian culture, which, however, disappeared again in the second half of the 19th century. The semi-nomadic tribes that were not entirely dependent on hunting, but cultivated and fished crops on the rivers, became warlike bison hunters in the course of only two to three generations . Mounted bison hunt revolutionized the way of life of these peoples, who previously only knew the dog as a pack animal: the horse allowed them to quickly cross the deserted, arid prairies and to move their settlements quickly, which led to increased food competition and armed conflicts over the seasonally changing bison hunting grounds Led herds of horses. The displacement of many tribes to the west by Iroquois and white settlers also contributed to this.
Above all, the Komantschen formed a highly mobile group from 1760, which controlled access to the pastures of about seven million bison from northern Texas. However, the armor feature is missing here; the horses were also ridden without a saddle or bridle. In 1874 the military had all of their horses shot.
Some tribes such as the Mandan and Blackfoot specialized in horse keeping and trading, others such as the Assiniboine specialized in horse theft . The keeping of horses, which also contributed to saving meat compared to the use of dogs as pack animals, spread rapidly in southern Canada. As early as 1754, Anthony Henday reported on the use of the horse as a pack, but not yet as a riding animal by the Assiniboine in Saskatchewan .
South America
The equestrian cultures of South America, such as the Mapuche , developed through the robbery of horses introduced by the Spaniards.
Africa
The horse has been used in the West African savannas since the 11th century. Since the 13th century, larger horses suitable for warfare have come to the region from the Maghreb, especially Bornu . Since the 16th century they played a central role in the warfare of the Hausa states. The aristocracy, with the help of horses, collected tributes more effectively from the rural population; she needed slaves to keep horses and owning horses made slave hunting easier , so that the introduction of riding troops went hand in hand with an increased importance of the slave trade and the keeping of slaves .
literature
- Marit Kretschmar: Horse and rider in the Orient. Investigations into the equestrian culture of the Middle East in the Seljuk period. Hildesheim 1980.
- Herwig Wolfram : The Goths: From the beginning to the middle of the sixth century. Draft of a historical ethnography. 5th edition. Beck, Munich 2009.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Detailed interpretation of the optical disks in Markus Mode: Heroic fights and dying heroes. The Orlat battle plaque and the roots of Sogdian art. In: www.transoxiana.org, 2003.
- ↑ Michael Mitterauer: Why Europe? Medieval foundations of a special route. Munich 2004, p. 113 ff.
- ↑ Thomas Brüggemann: Nomads on the soil of the late Roman and Byzantine empires from the 3rd to the early 14th century (focus on the western Pontic area). In: Yearbook of historical research in the Federal Republic of Germany. Reporting year 2004. Ed .: Working group of non-university historical research institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany, Munich 2005, pp. 33–40.
- ↑ Helmut Castritius: The Vandals. Stages of a search for clues. Stuttgart 2007, p. 26.
- ↑ Mitterauer 2004, p. 120.
- ↑ Mitterauer 2004, p. 114.
- ^ Raimund Schulz: Generals, warriors and strategists: War in antiquity from Achill to Attila. Stuttgart 2012.
- ^ Roman Herzog: States of the early days. Munich 1998. p. 209.
- ↑ Choongwon Jeong et al .: Bronze Age population dynamics and the rise of dairy pastoralism on the eastern Eurasian steppe. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), November 2018, 115 (48) E11248-E11255.
- ↑ Aram Mattioli: Lost Worlds: A History of the Indians of North America. Stuttgart 2017, p. 222 ff.
- ^ Adam Jones: Afrika bis 1850. (= New Fischer World History Volume. 19). Cape. IIC4.