Art De La Guerre

[PHGamer]

Early December, a warren (a wary? a warthog?) of war-gamers met at a little known book store in Hopewell NJ for three rounds of 15mm figures.
My first round has Republican Romans facing Achaemenid Persians
https://philonancients.blogspot.com/2025/01/an-early-outing-with-later-achaemenids.html

enjoy
_________________
Phil
Japanese telephones work pretty much like ours, except the person on the other end can't understand you.

[Mark G Fry]

As always Phil, another greatly entertaining battle report. I am looking forward to many more in 2025
Thank you
Mark
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'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis

[DarkBlack]

Thank you for the report. I always enjoy reading these.

Another shout for Our Fake History!
I've Gone Medieval, rather than The Ancients for my History Hit podcast.
Been giving most of my podcast listening time to History of Byzantium (following Historyof Rome), now that I've caught up on that History of the Germans is next.

[PHGamer]

The latest podcast that is consuming my drive time is "Fall of Civilizations." Each one covers the rise and fall of a culture group from very early history to about 1600's. There are about 2-3 hours long. Another is "The Ancients." Each about an hour, but there are over 500 of them.
I'm trying to justify a drive to California and back just to listen to a chunk of them.
_________________
Phil
Japanese telephones work pretty much like ours, except the person on the other end can't understand you.

[DarkBlack]

I hadn't heard of Fall of Civilizations before you mentioned it.
I'm definitely giving it a listen, thanks.

I'm found my way to the History Hit network through Gone Medieval. So I've heard of The Ancients, but not gotten to checking it out.

[Mark G Fry]

[DarkBlack]

The have done Khmer.

A more complete answer for any curious souls reading this later: They have 19 episodes, so far:
1 Roman Britain
2 Bronze Age Collapse
3 Mayan Collapse
4 Greenland Vikings
5 Khmer Empire
6 Easter Island
7 Songhai Empire
8 Sumerians
9 Aztecs
10 China's Han Dynasty
11 Byzantium
12 Inca
13 Assyrians
14 Vijayanagara
15 Nabataeans
16 Bagan
17 Carthage
18 Egypt
19 Mongols

[Mark G Fry]

Thanks DarkBlack - I'll have to see if I can work out how to listen to it on my 'steam-driven' laptop (not Windows 11 compatible & never will be)
Cheers
Mark
_________________
'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis

[Mark G Fry]

Hmmmm .... just listened to the Khmer episode. I'm in two minds about it to be frank.
Overall it is a good general description of the empire and its history.

However, there are some glaring factual inaccuracies which IMHO significantly weaken its authority and credibility.
Such as the fact that the Khmer did not invent the concept of zero or '0' in mathematics, for example. This was introduced to them in the 7th century CE from India and it was probably originally taken to India from Mesopotamia, where is was invented in the 4th century CBE.
There is also extensive reference to taxation in the form of money and the burden it placed on the ordinary Khmer. However, the Khmer had no currency and taxes were paid either in standard measures of rice & oil or in service to temples or on civil construction projects. Even gold, silver and precious stones were the sole preserve of the nobility and temples and were not used as currency as we understand it internally within the empire, and maybe only as a means of payment externally for trading. Or was used as devotional offerings.

I also think that the emphasis on financial inequality as part of the failure of the empire is naïve and imposes a modern perspective, preoccupation and set of thinking on a culture where service and religious devotion was an inherent way of life, and a constant, and something that we have very little real understanding of in todays world.

It also missed a major factor in South-east and South Asian society and warfare, which was the mass movement or transportation of defeated enemy populations. We see this in mainland India during the reign of Ashoka, where many 100's of thousands of families are forcibly migrated from defeated kingdoms and resettled in the heart of the empire, not as slaves but as an additional productive human resource. Likewise, when the Siamese take and burn Angkor finally, they deliberately forcibly migrate all the skilled Khmer crafts and trader people, and their families, back to the Siamese kingdom. Which was also something that the Khmer had previously done in their conquests in Laos, Champa and even as far north as Diet Viet and Pagan. Again, it is alien to our thinking today, but the real resource of an empire like that of Khmer or Pharaonic Egypt (where incidentally we also see the forced migration of conquered communities - as witnessed in the bible stories) was the size of its population and its ability to feed it, so that it could construct civil infrastructure and wage warfare. We, in the West, tend to be very focused on slavery, which is a very Roman and Hellenistic way of looking at things. That is not to say that there were not slaves in both Egypt and the Khmer empire, but not on the massive scale we see in the west, and not associated with armies or warfare.
Anyway ... that's enough of me and my favorite hobby-horse!

I'll listen to a couple more, where I have a similar level of knowledge and interest and see if they are better.
But thank you for drawing it to my attention.
Cheers
Mark
_________________
'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.' Xenophon, The Anabasis