Page 237 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

2014 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Inca Hand-to-Hand
Combat

Bartolome de las Casas (1474-1566), a sixteenth-
century theologian and historian in Mexico, eastern Mediterranean) areas. Cavalry and iron also
describes Inca warfare in the passage below: showed up in China and India.

. . . when they began to fight, at first they used
Classical Period
slings with which they were extremely skillful
(c. 1000 BCE–500 CE)
and could shoot an infinite number of stones...
In response civilizations of the classical period incorpo-
as they got closer to each other they fought with
rated these advances and took land warfare to great new
lances; finally, they resorted to hand to hand
scales.The major forms and patterns of land warfare were
fighting and used knobbed clubs and other
represented by conflicts between enormous empires and
weapons...
the seminomadic groups who opposed them. Combined
Source: de las Casas, B. (1941). De las antiguas gentes del Perú, (p.48). In J. Bram, arms, permanent military forces, large military architec-
An Analysis of Inca Militarism (p. 55). Seattle: University of Washington Press.
ture projects, and the codification of war became the
norm. The world’s first military state, Assyria, emerged
The first seafaring culture, the Minoans on Crete, between 900 and 612 BCE with an incredible assemblage
used trading fleets to dominate more warlike neigh- of all things warlike, including 100,000-man armies.Yet,
bors such as the Mycenaeans of Greece. However, land Assyria would fall to the largest cavalry-based empire the
warfare triumphed in the end with Mycenaeans adopt- world had yet seen, the Persians under leaders such as
ing seafaring pirate techniques and taking advantage of Cyrus the Great. The Persians launched huge land and
the volcanic eruption of Thera to invade the island of sea military expeditions to conquer the classical Greeks
Crete by 1450 BCE. Although seafaring would play sig- and India but were rebuffed and themselves conquered
nificant roles in the siege of Troy (in modern Turkey), by the combined arms of King Alexander of Macedon
as well as in Egyptian New Kingdom expansion under (d. 323 BCE) on a ten-year expedition.Alexander, in turn,
Ramses the Great, land warfare remained preeminent invaded India but got no farther than the Persians.
for state power. India developed huge classical armies, replete with war
The largest battle of the ancient period occurred at elephants, during the Mauryan (320–180 BCE) and
Kadesh (in modern Syria) about 1270 BCE. Hittites Gupta (320–550 CE) empires. Hindu warrior castes
clashed with Egyptians (led by Ramses the Great), who absorbed new warrior bands, and strategic thinkers such
moved and supplied by sea an army of spearmen and as Kautilya aided leaders such as Candragupta in their
chariots consisting of four divisions and twenty thousand use. Indian expeditions ventured to southwest and south-
men. The battle began with intelligence and misinfor- east Asia by land and sea. Buddhism emerged in South
mation that gained early Hittite success. Ramses rallied Asia and spread into Asia proper under Emperor Asoka,
his light chariots, outflanking the heavy Hittite horse who constructed the largest fortifications on the globe.
carts, and forced a retreat into Kadesh, but Ramses had Indian armies also grew as large as 500,000 men, eclips-
no siege equipment, and a draw and treaty were the ing even those in China, Persia, and Rome.
result. Borders were defined and dynastic marriage used Chinese warfare during the Warring States period
to cement the peace. (475–221 BCE) brought about the development of cross-
By 1000 CE civilizations with bronze technologies bows, early gunpowder rockets, and total war.This devel-
began to collapse under waves of migrating and warlike opment led to unusual treatises on war such as The Art
nomads who carried iron weapons, rode horses, and of War by Sun-tzu during the fifth century BCE. Alliance,
often came by sea. In the ancient Near East, the “sea defense, and peace were preferred to war. Unification
peoples” are the best example, overrunning Mycenaean, came under Qin Shi Huangdi (c. 259–210 BCE), who
Hittite, Egyptian, and Levant (countries bordering the began the Great Wall of China, which was completed by