I am perfectly willing to entertain better examples than those I offered, but I think most come pretty near to my definition, which to reiterate was urban, argrarian societies, presumably with higher populations, and dedicated warrior and bureaucrat classes, being conquered by nomadic, pastoral societies, why did this happen,
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I think this has been addressed adequately. Though I might add I wasn’t talking nutrition, when speaking about superior “toughness”. More that pastoral lifestyles a) as stated often produce skillsets that more similar to military skill sets than that of an agriculturalist - the obvious example being that of horse-nomads and b) a life of constant movement can produce a different set of rigor and endurance than that of a sedentary agriculturalist.
The obvious counter is that of highly-conditioned professional soldiers like the Roman army and the Greek mercenaries of the Hellenic Age. But professional armies, especially rigorously maintained ones, weren’t always the rule. Many pre-modern armies depended heavily on less professional part-time levies that might not have quite the endurance of pastoral combatants ( though obviously farmers aren’t necessarily lightweight pansies ).
Technology primarily, IMO. The rise of more efficient gunpowder armies combined with modern battlefield tactics ( including more professional armies ) to take advantage of that superior firepower evened, then reversed the playing field. Pastoral societies simply lacked the infrastructure to compete in the arms race. We can start seeing this as early as the battle of Bashkent in 1473 or more famously Chaldiran in 1514, when superior mixed technology armies of the Ottomans ( still with the majority of the armoy consisting of Tukish calvary deployed as mobile wings, but with massed “modern” firepower in the form of musketeers and early field artillery deployed in an anvil-like center ) defeated the traditional Turcoman horse-archers that had been the major military feature of the Middle East since mid-Abbasid times.
One thing to remember is that both statements could be true. The various hostile tribes north of China (variously dominated by the Xiongnu (Huns/Turks, yes, ancestors of the Turks of Turkey), the Mongols, the Manchus: all of them had a relationship with China. The nomads raided or traded for what they wanted, but were probably better fed than the Chinese. By far the most successful in conquest were the Mongols and Manchus. But the clear winners in keeping their conquest were the Xiongnu, who didn’t try to conquer China (and arguably faced a tougher opponent by striking the Han Empire at their height) and instead demanded tribute, which they got for a very long time.
Also note that nomadic societies would probably have been much healthier as far as disease goes. Not only were they likely to have built up tolerance to various diseases from far corners of the earth, they were less likely to serve as giant incubators (i.e., the mass of humanity in the cities). In wartime, those settled cityfolk were hauled out, mixed with rural farmers, and diseases went everywhere. In those settled populations, disease was probably a far bigger killer of troops in wartime than actual battle-wounds, even counting deaths from septicemia and gangrene as battle-related wounds and injuries.
Partly true and partly not. Nomad societies did not commonly try to take on the big states and conquer them outright: the examples of that certainly did happen while the big states were in decline and decadence and the nomads strong, organized, and energetic. More commonly, however the nomads instead aimed to raid a bit, see what the response was, and pull out if things got to hot. They weren’t out to conquer and rule the big empires, but rather to take a bit from their platter. And it might take many attempts for a strong leader to win the day and actually conquer an empire, anyway.
Tamerlane - thanks, not only for your most recent post, but earlier ones as well, sorry for nto specifically mentioned you (or anyone else I’ve missed) earlier, but I allways winder where the line between polite and pandering is drawn.
I agree that the question has been addressed adequately, though if anyone such as yourself more learned on specifics is will to continue to elaborate I am interested in continuing reading. I appreceate you contention that the pastoralists may have been metally “tougher” than the city-dwellers, this sidesteps the controvesal question as to whether teh city-dweelers or the herdsmen were the bigger physical specimens. I mean that in the best possible way, in that is doesn’t matter so much when looked at this way, a size of the fight in the dog not the dog in the fight kind of logic.
I was thinking, as mentioned, that Rome was the probable ending point (if in fact it even qualifies) for these type of social upheavals, but based on your last post (and smiling bandit’s fine post as well), it would seem these type of events occured into the 15th or 16th century. Would you (or anyone else) care to offer perhaps the last (most recent) example fitting these debatable criteria?
It’s a slightly complicated question. I guess the last large-scale conquest of settled societies by genuine pastoralists from “outside” was the Mongol eruption of the 12th/13th century.
But that wasn’t the end of pastoral power by a long shot. Pastoralists formed a powerful military elite until relatively late in Iranian history for example ( indeed right down to the 20th century they were a faction to contend with in Iran ). For example the Qajar dynasty of Persia ( 1779-1924 ) was the last to seize power in Iran based primarily on military backing of ( mostly ) Turcoman pastoralists. But there you had a society with parallel urban and pastoral spheres living under one roof, so to speak - there wasn’t a settled society for pastoralists to overthrow, because they were the established military component of a combined society ( and had been for over 800 years at that point ).
Another example are the Manchus. By the time of the Manchu conquest of Ming China ( in 1644 ), the Jurchen/Manchus themselves were mostly settled agriculturalists, living in fortified villages. Yet it wasn’t a particularly urban society, despite long contact with the Koreans and Chinese - trade mostly preceeded through Chinese trade towns in Liadong ( conquered in the 1620’s by the Manchus ) and it apparently contained, still, some limited nomadic elements. Further it peacefully absorbed the pastoral Khalka ( western ) Mongols of Mongolia proper, who supplied troops for the Manchu army. It wasn’t really a nomad state and one of their big breaks was the defection of a Chinese field army, so it probably shouldn’t count as a “barbarian” conquest in quite the same way the Mongol conquest was. But it does fall into a grey area.
The last great pastoral empire, that of the Dzungars in Central Asia ( terminated by the Manchus in 1758 ), did establish hegemony over more settled Tibet for a time. But it was in the context of an odd, sometimes collaborative political system wherein various Mongol factions had long dominated Tibetan politics since Genghis Khan’s last great descendant, Altan Khan ( who repeatedly defeated settled Chinese armies in the 16th century, but never actually bothered to conquer China, settling for tribute instead ), had converted to Gelupga ( Yellow Hat ) Buddhism and initiated the office of the Dalai Lama in 1569.
Similarly semi-sedentary peoples like the Cossacks and Crimean Tatars were formidable opponents right down to the 18th, arguably even the early 19th century ( for example it was a Crimean Tatar army that outmaneouvered and initially trapped Peter the Great on the Pruth in 1711, setting the stage for his envelopment by a late-arriving Ottoman army ).
But I guess the Mongols probably get the billing as the last pastoral group to actually subdue another, fully settled society ( multiple ones in this case ). They were also arguably the last distinct element of the “steppe conveyor belt” of Central Asia that periodically dumped fresh nomad conquerers in the Far East or West. Later groups like the Kazaks budded off of and derived legitimacy from the Chingisid political lineage.
Damnit, the Khalka were the Eastern Mongols. It was the Oirats who were the Western Mongols. The Dzungars were a subsection of the Oirats who came to dominate the greater Oirat confederacy ( roughly 1619-1758 ). Their contention with the Khalka Mongols and attempts to dominate them was one of the major factors that drove the Khalka into the Manchu sphere.