Original link: https://headsalon.org/archives/9023.html
God’s New Pasture #7: Expansion and Conquest
Whig
December 24, 2018
Imagine that you are watching such an animation in front of a large screen with a resolution of hundreds of millions of pixels: the background is the entire surface of the earth, and there are some small dots scattered on it. Each dot represents a small group of dozens or hundreds of people. Different colors show their cultural differences, each second of the picture represents a year in reality, and the 72-hour animation will demonstrate the last 260,000 years of human history (which is equivalent to or slightly longer than the entire history of modern Homo sapiens).
The first 68 hours will be boring enough to drive you crazy, the picture is almost still, you have to get very close to see that most of the dots are shaking slightly, and you have to stare at specific dots for a long time to notice, occasionally Some dots disappear, some move a distance, others split into two, after peering back and forth between the different areas, you may find that some of them seem to be more active, the dots multiply faster, and as the new dots go Moving outside, gradually and slowly, forming some thin and intermittent lines and tree-like branches, with occasional crosses between lines of different colors, but generally they grow independently and die on their own, however, all these Insights are just an afterthought from patient and careful observation over a long period of time, to really get an intuitive sense of movement/growth, you have to crank up the playback speed to 32x or 64x.
It wasn’t until the 69th hour, when the temperature was warming up and the glaciers were receding, that the picture became a little more interesting. You found that the distribution of dots became denser and denser, and the large blanks in the past are now decorated with colorful colors. In many areas, the densely distributed dots stopped shaking, but began to collide with each other; then, at the 70th hour, an astonishing sight appeared, a patch of small red dots on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean had become so densely packed that it became A slowly expanding patch of color, and then, gradually, the bright red patch, like hot magma gushing from a crater, began to flow in all directions, south into the Nile Valley, east into the Iranian Plateau and Indus Valley, and north into the Antarctic. The lowland along the coast of Natolia and infiltrated inward along the valley, it even floated across the ocean, jumping forward to Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Iberia; after ten minutes, two different colors of scorching magma also began to flow in the Yellow River Valley and The Yangtze River Valley flows.
At the beginning of the 71st hour, the ancient civilization areas you learned from the textbooks have been covered by large pieces of magma, showing a pattern you are already familiar with. However, after half an hour, the scene changed again. Pontiac on the north shore of the Black Sea A cloud of blue lava in the Pontic steppe seemed to be suddenly heated and began to splash violently. The sluggish progress of the previous 70 and a half hours was abruptly awakened by a loud drum beat, suddenly noisy stand up.
The last 90 minutes can be roughly described like this: the world is like a huge frying pan, the main space is occupied by the thick thick sticky oil of single color in large chunks, because it is thick enough, the clumps together Although there is push and penetration, it will not blend and mix, and because the heating is extremely uneven, one of the pieces will boil and explode every few minutes, gushing and splashing into a large single-color block, submerging, disrupting or melting many surrounding clumps. , of course, the monochromaticity is temporary. As time goes by, various parts of the clump will form chromatic aberration, but the homology is still clearly discernible, and the spouting of some ancient clumps gradually pushed the remnants of the ancient clumps into the alpine jungle. There are several mosaic areas with extremely mixed cultures such as the Caucasus, Pyrenees, Himalayas, and Zamia, and most areas are occupied by large plates that are almost monochromatic.
For the vast majority of people who live in it, the biggest difference between the last few hours of the world and the previous history is that the surrounding area is full of people, any migration and expansion must pass through other people’s territory, and they will not easily agree, the world Has become so viscous that the main obstacle to human mobility is no longer ecology, but other human beings, the movement will continue, but in a more violent way, some groups invade the territory of other groups with the advantage of force and become cultural The most common form of barrier breaking, however, these activities, which are also covered by the term “conquest”, are actually quite different in nature and have very different social and cultural consequences.
Colonize
Settlement agriculture has greatly increased the population that can be supported per unit of land. It is estimated that for those groups that initially turned to agriculture, the population size can be increased by half for every 10% increase in the rate of dependence on crops. [1] This means that when an area is completed After the transition to farming, the population density can be increased by two orders of magnitude. This is only the effect of extensive agriculture in the early days. After that, when the agricultural technologies such as irrigation, heavy ploughing, fertilization, crop rotation, multiple cropping, and breeding are successively developed, the population density can be further improved. Another order of magnitude or two. [2]
And settlers are better able to build large organizations that turn population size into combat power because: 1) high population density means more people are available for mobilization within effective contact range (eg, within a day’s walking distance), 2) settlement 3) settlers are more likely to widen the power gap through wealth accumulation, which is an important condition for the formation of dominance-subordination structures, 4) in a settled society, Subordinates are less likely to escape from the dominant, so once the dominant structure is established, it will be stronger and more effective in organizing collective action.
Based on these advantages, when the population grows and invades the territory of hunter-gatherers, the latter is difficult to resist, and they either retreat to unsuitable areas, which will intensify the conflict with the original local hunter-gatherers , and as land reclamation deepens, there will be less and less room for retreat, either to emulate the invaders, shift to settled farming, and work like them to organize larger societies to increase their ability to resist invasion.
However, it is not easy to complete the transformation through imitation. Farming involves a lot of explicit and tacit knowledge, which cannot be learned through word of mouth or external observation. Farming production also requires some initial capital, oxen, plows, containers, camels and livestock. , threshing and grinding equipment, as well as the food reserves needed to survive the first production cycle and the low-yield period of initial cultivation, the more mature agriculture, the higher the knowledge and capital threshold, and therefore the more difficult to imitate.
However, these obstacles can be overcome to some extent by looting and capturing captives, and more difficult to overcome are the psychological and cultural obstacles; farming is a kind of delayed-return production, and when farmers work hard in the fields, their It takes several months to enjoy the fruits of labor, and there are also various uncertainties. Unlike hunting and gathering, the fruits can be enjoyed on the same day. For the first land reclamation, the return period of labor investment will be longer, which is far away and uncertain. The willingness to invest resources and sweat in the present is a unique psychological quality that human beings have not always had. In the long history of human beings, they have never experienced long-term production like agriculture. [3]
Then there’s the cultural barrier, the long-cycle nature of agricultural production, which requires producers to preserve grain reserves between harvests and carefully control the rate at which they are consumed so as not to starve before the next harvest, a deceptively simple task for hunter-gatherers But it is a big challenge. First, he is likely not able to count, let alone add, subtract, multiply and divide. In fact, most hunter-gatherers do not even have numbers greater than three in their language. [4] Second, in a place with strong food In a society that shares traditions, it is nearly impossible to preserve any food reserves, not even the seeds, breeding and dairy cows necessary to sustain production. [5]
Adding to these difficulties, there was not much time left for hunter-gatherers to complete the transition, as early farmers expanded from their Near Eastern origins, advancing at a rate of about 2-3 kilometers per year in the plains, and in the folds. It is 0.4 kilometers per year, [6] which means that from the time when hunters feel threatened and have the opportunity to get close contact and observe farming life, to when their territory is invaded, there are only one or two generations as long as three or four generations. people’s time.
Based on these factors, hunter-gatherers who were not driven or eliminated by agricultural invaders, but did adopt settled agriculture, often accomplished this transition in some kind of asymmetrical relationship with the invaders, such as hiring a replacement They work, establish interdependent exchanges, or entire groups submit to invaders or even become slaves. The expansion of African Bantu farmers into hunter-gatherer regions occurred relatively late (and would have continued to this day had it not been interrupted by European colonizers in the 19th century) ), thus providing us with some direct observation opportunities (see Chapter 3).
Such conquests were carried out on a small scale and spontaneously. When land was increasingly scarce in an agricultural community, an enterprising figure would come forward to recruit a group of pioneers, often young people with no hope of winning the land. Bring the necessary supplies to build a new base. The colonization group is mostly composed of men at first. After the improvement, they get wives from the source community, but they also get women from the colonization point. [7]
The initial expansion of agriculture was but one of many waves of colonization throughout history, and each subsequent round of major technological or organizational progress was accompanied by a new colonization movement that pushed the population density of the affected areas to a new level, five to six thousand. A few years ago, the secondary products revolution represented by the replacement of carnivorous livestock by dairy livestock, [8] the reclamation of European black soil belts by farmers who mastered heavy ploughing and deep ploughing technology in the Iron Age, [9] who mastered terrace irrigation technology. The promotion of intensive rice growers to mountain recreational areas or horticultural agricultural areas, the development of deltas by farmers who have the social organization foundation required for wetland dredging and landform transformation, [10] and the post-Columbus exchange corn and potato growers who The promotion of suitable farming areas, [11] and so on.
The later wave, the greater the density of the existing population entering the area, so either the progress is slower or the process is more violent; some colonies are supported by state power or directly organized by the state, such as the colonization of Ireland by the Plantagenet, [12] The settlement in the Hexi Corridor in the Han Dynasty, [13] the development of the southwest in the Ming Dynasty; [14] but more of them were spontaneous pioneers, who formed a close organization with the ties of family, fellow villagers, comrades-in-arms, host-guest relationship, etc. To gain a foothold by force, however, if they come from a society with a state, that state’s governing machinery tends to follow in their footsteps.
Rounds of expansion waves have had a profound impact on human society and culture. A successful exploration is like a mini-version of the discovery of a new continent, which will bring huge rewards to participants. As the founders of new communities, they not only have abundant resources The untapped resources also have the opportunity to leave many times more descendants than the dense hinterland inhabitants. Although not tens of millions of descendants like the few American colonists who first crossed the Bering Isthmus, they are also genetically The nouveau riche, the vast majority of human beings today, are descendants of a nouveau riche near or far.
Population expansion and replacement one after another is also one of the main ways of human evolution. After the war, many anthropologists believed that cultural expansion mainly occurred in the way of dissemination and imitation rather than population replacement, but more and more Genetic evidence suggests that most major expansions were accompanied by high rates of population replacement, particularly by males, so these expansions not only spread cultural elements but also the genetic traits carried by the colonists, and, as I will show, However, colonizing groups are not random subsets of their origin societies, so the above-mentioned dispersal process is also a selection process.
The pioneers usually came from mature communities that were densely populated enough, but not in the hinterland far from the colonization front, because the hinterland had become too viscous and impenetrable to traverse, which made the culture of the agricultural expansion frontier very different from the hinterland, For example, colonizing communities are more organized and cohesive because they are in an unfamiliar and dangerous world and need to stick together for safety, and they are less prone to infighting due to population pressure and resources because they can continue to colonize to deal with it Demographic pressure, unlike communities trapped in the hinterland, can only lead to increased competition. [15]
Among the first farmers to colonize Europe in the Neolithic era, a communal longhouse was prevalent, with several longhouses forming an easily defensible shape, [16] showing the cohesion of the community, perhaps not by coincidence,18-19 The Ibans, the rice growers who actively colonized Borneo in the 20th century, also organized communities with public longhouses. [17] The Hakka, the pioneers of Han farmers’ colonization in southern China, also had well-known large enclosures. [18]
Frontier cultures are also more aggressive, and the great rewards of successful pioneering not only directly motivate more pioneering adventures, but also increase the frequency of genes associated with adventurous and aggressive personality, compared to the dense hinterland, which has this Individuals with similar endowments are more likely to be punished by harsh fate, and thus, statistically, the cultural temperament and genetic makeup of a group associated with risk-taking will correlate with the length of time it has elapsed since the last wave of expansion.
There will also be differences in the social structure between the frontier and the hinterland. The clan organizations in the frontier areas are more developed, and the settlement of conflicts and disputes relies more on self-enforcement mechanisms such as private revenge, and less recourse to the judicial system and government authority. The hierarchical structure there It is not as solid as the hinterland, because there are more opportunities for individuals to develop through pioneering, but the role of racial or ethnic identity in the social hierarchy is more pronounced, and these characteristics are clear in the southern frontier of China and the northern frontier of England. Performance.
Looting and Sweeping
Colonization movements not only replaced the populations of their affected areas, but also disseminated the entire cultural set that they carried, including production patterns, languages, ways of life, and social organization, but not all conquests were like this, nomadic The effect of the conquest of the farming society is very different. They will not convert the farming areas into pastures (although it is said that the Mongol conquerors once had such an idea, but after all, it was not implemented, and the seriousness of the statement is very questionable).
This is not only a question of technical or productive efficiency, but also because it will deprive the conqueror of the greatest benefit of conquest – extracting wealth from an agrarian society, the latter’s output per unit of land and wealth accumulation potential, only Taking a small portion outweighs the potential benefits of using it as pasture, which is why agrarian societies continue to attract raiders, invaders, and even conquerors from the nomads.
The fact that nomadic invaders do not pursue their subsistence patterns does not mean that they do not change the societies they invade. On the contrary, the threat of nomads is the most important external force affecting the historical process and cultural orientation of adjacent farming societies, and this influence The nature of the interaction can vary widely depending on the specific interaction situation.
It may lead to a breakdown in the order of settled societies, which is not what the invaders want, because that would wipe out a great deal of wealth that could be drawn, especially those looters whose main method of drawing is large extortionate tributes, Because after the collapse of the order, the big money for extortion either disappeared, or strengthened their self-arming to survive, and may even join the ranks of looters.
However, a situation that no one wants to see can still arise, because if no looters/blackmailers have the ability to establish exclusive control over loot opportunities, then everyone will be inclined to fish out of the water recklessly, eventually (if the settlers lack of self-defense) turned catastrophic, a special form of tragedy of the commons, a blow to Mediterranean civilization by various so-called “Sea Peoples” at the end of the Bronze Age, [19 ] The Wuhu chaos in the late Western Jin Dynasty, the invasion of Eastern Europe by the nomadic Huns and Alans in the late Roman period, causing chaos in the Germanic world, and forcing the Germanic tribes to swept the Roman territory, [20] can all be classified into this category.
But some nomadic chiefs have managed to avoid the tragedy of the commons, and they have established enough authority among the tribes to more or less restrain their plundering, lest they unduly destroy financial resources or cause an overreaction in settled societies. Seek a more stable tribute, try to keep looting as a deterrent and negotiation tool, and sometimes act as a mercenary for a settled country, and the Huns in the pro-period, some Turkic tribes in the Tang Dynasty (such as the Shatuo tribe), and the sixth century Eastern Roman The Arab tribes on the frontier are a few notable examples. [twenty one]
However, this relationship is often fragile and unstable. In most periods, nomads are a destructive force for settled societies. Their impact and sweeping have brought two consequences. First, nomadic elements continue to penetrate into settled civilizations, including cultural Elemental and genetic components, and secondly (possibly more influential) is that the social structure of some settled civilizations is repeatedly broken, and the high hierarchical ladder that has formed a rich ladder is broken into many small ladders, sometimes this state of rupture persists for a long time, sometimes It was quickly reorganized into a new ladder (nomadic conquerors also often played the role of reorganizers), and more about the implications of this for social evolution will be discussed in more depth later.
Elite replacement
There is also a type of conquest that is neither accompanied by the replacement of the production model nor significantly changed the social structure of the conquered. The conqueror simply kicks the highest stratum of the target society from the hierarchy and replaces it himself, although it will inevitably introduce some new cultural and institutional components, but the social structure remains largely continuous. Anthropologists call this process elite transfer. Conquests that take place in this way are the less destructive of all kinds of conquests. A sort of.
The most classic case of elite-replacement conquest is the Norman conquest of England in 1066. About 7,000-10,000 warriors followed William across the channel, including two or three thousand knights. In the end, William’s more than 5,000 followers carved up England. 95% of the land, consisting of some 9,500 manors, the vast majority of the Anglo-Saxon nobles were stripped of their estates and ecclesiastical positions, a very radical replacement, while the manor structure that formed the basis of England’s economic system remained largely intact , just changed the owner. [twenty two]
However, as Peter Heather has pointed out, pure elite replacement like the Norman conquest may be the exception, and large-scale conquests are usually accompanied by a substantial replacement of the mass population, thus imposing greater strength on the social structure. shock.
The Norman conquest has many special features. First of all, there are similar feudal systems on both sides of the Channel, so there is no obstacle for the Norman warriors to take over the English manor, and the concentration of land ownership under the manor structure is very high, and the scale of the replaced elite is small. Second, the Norman Conquest was a typical feudal aristocratic war. Although William had done his best for the duchy by the standard of aristocratic warfare, compared with the centralized empire that relied on infantry, its army was small, so the population that needed to be resettled after the conquest. And thirdly, the conquest process was extremely quick, and Hastings was successful in one battle. If the war dragged on for many years, the invaders might recruit immigrants from the mainland to consolidate their strongholds, and the conquest would become more like traditional military colonization. , like the 9th-century Viking conquests in Danelaw.
Elite replacement often leaves an easily identifiable feature – the conquerors eventually adopt the local language, because unless they have a great cultural advantage in addition to the superiority of force, it is very difficult for a small elite to impose their language on the conquered social; [23] The official status of Norman French in England lasted nearly three centuries before giving way to English.
The Frankish conquest of Western Europe after the collapse of Rome showed a gradient distribution of two modes of military colonization and elite replacement: the farther away from the old Rhine front, the conquest was closer to elite replacement, and vice versa, the more like military colonization. Roughly bounded by the Loire River, this boundary also roughly corresponds to the division of the two dialect areas of French, Auyi (langue d’oïl) and Occitan (langue d’oc). [twenty four]
The difference between the two banks of the Loire also stems from the social changes of the conquerors themselves. The Frankish society in the early stage of the conquest was more like a chiefdom, but in the heyday of the Merovingian dynasty, the feudal system has matured, and the cause of war and conquest has become a warrior aristocracy. The monopoly, the royal power is also strong enough, conquest is no longer a scattered and spontaneous military colonization, but a power competition between the top and the top. In the south of the Loire, the conquerors are satisfied with the status of the upper lords, while retaining the majority of small landowners. land rights.
The Manchu conquest of China caused less social and cultural impact than the Norman conquest. The hierarchy did break and reorganize, but that was due to the collapse of the Ming Dynasty itself, not the result of the conquest. After the reorganization, apart from the pyramids Outside of a small section on the tip, even elite replacement is hard to say.
There are two reasons why elite replacement did not occur on a large scale in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. First, land property rights in recent ancient China were extremely scattered. About half of the farmers were self-cultivation farmers, 70% of the land was self-cultivation, and many non-self-cultivation land was also owned by tenants. In the permanent tenancy rights, most farmers only have a few acres of land, and they are often not contiguous. The average registered land plot in the real estate transaction records is only more than one mu. Obviously, in such a scattered situation, it is impossible for the conquerors to be like Normans. People took over the land as smoothly as the manor in England, and it was easy to take over, only hundreds of official estates, 30,000 to 40,000 hectares of land, in fact, the Manchu conquerors abandoned these official estates (given to the original tenants), and in the vicinity of the capital Outside Heguan, another group of “flags” was occupied for rewards. [25]
Another reason is the peculiarity of the Chinese social hierarchy, which is completely constructed around the bureaucratic system, where an individual’s status depends on his (or his father’s) position in the bureaucratic hierarchy, and the main way to ascend (after the Tang Dynasty) is the imperial examinations Since the Song Dynasty, the system has been extended down to villages and clans through the Jinshen class. The so-called Jinshen are officials who retire or suspend work at home due to illness or filial piety, and those who have obtained the imperial examinations but failed to serve as the leaders of their clans. , is also the leader of local affairs and the maintainer of local order. At the same time, because of its status completely derived from the relationship with the court (serving as an official or participating in the imperial examination), it has sufficient motivation to be loyal to the court.
This mechanism is the secret of the Ming and Qing dynasties being able to rule the huge population with a very small-scale government. It also allowed the Song and Ming dynasties to attract a group of loyal followers even after the regime had completely collapsed. The role of stabilizing the rule of the empire was also vividly displayed in the late Qing Dynasty. Those who organized group training, stabilized the local area, and fought against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were all Jinshen. It is the allegiance of Jinshen. [26]
Perhaps realizing the importance of the above mechanism, the Manchu Qing was very wise to restore the imperial examination system in time (before the death of the Ming Dynasty Confucian scholars), but this also limited the replacement of the original social elites by the conquerors.
In addition to the more recognizable patterns described above, more conquests were mixed with raiding, military colonization, and elite replacement, such as the large-scale invasion of imperial territory by Germanic ministries at the end of Rome. These invaders were not small armed groups, but A complete society with a family and a family, each with thousands of warriors and tens of thousands of people, sometimes under a powerful leader, more than 100,000 people can gather together, driving livestock along the way, and ox carts are loaded with all. belongings. [27]
At first they were more like refugees who fled their homes due to the Hun attack. In fact, the Goths who first crossed the Danube were also resettled by the Empire as refugees (and also deliberately used them as mercenaries), but in order to solve the problem of supply , they roamed and looted around the Balkans, and at the same time gradually discovered the weakness of the empire’s defenses, the ambitions of their leaders also expanded, from initially just wanting to gain a foothold, to exchanging force for generous rewards (or trophies), to Take its employer’s place and eventually create a new kingdom. [28]
In this process, the structure of these tribes is not intact. Escape and migration itself will severely impact the social structure. Security needs will greatly enhance the status and coercive power of armed leaders, and the wealth brought by looting and acting as mercenaries, And the transition from migration to military conquest will gradually change the social organization and bring it closer to military logic, some members who are too cumbersome may be left behind, strategic differences among leaders may cause group division, common strategic interests will lead to alliance, scale Groups that are too small are incorporated into the more powerful, and some tribes may even be created from scratch in such reorganizations.
So, by the time the Visigoths and Vandals traveled thousands of miles to Aquitaine, Spain, and North Africa, their societies were very different from when they first crossed the Rhine front, and their conquests became more like elite replacements, As a result, these conquests leave almost no trace on the distribution of languages today.
order extension
The Manchu examples have shown that conquerors can largely preserve the original demographic composition, social structure, and elite composition of the conquered society without compromising their own gains from conquest, and in other cases the conquerors even preferred to Retain the original supreme ruler and be content with indirect rule as a suzerain, because domination has a cost, and suzerainty brings many benefits to the conqueror: political compliance, cooperation in war, access to resources , to push the order to a larger scale…, the main price compared to direct rule is to give up the opportunity to reward followers with the country’s lands and positions, the conqueror’s choice will depend on which benefits he cares more about, and distance , transportation and communication conditions, abundance, strategic importance, additional cost of domination due to cultural differences, and urgency to win over supporters are all factors that affect the trade-off between gains and losses.
The Ottoman expansion in Europe was clearly divided into several phases of different nature. At the beginning of the conquest (the mid-14th century), the policy of armed colonization was implemented in Thrace (especially East Thrace, the European part of modern Turkey), and the local people Partly expelled and replaced by ethnic Turkic immigrants, this policy choice had two backgrounds: first, the region controlled dual traffic arteries linking Eurasia and into and out of the Black Sea, requiring the most loyal inhabitants for the firmest control, and second, the At that time, a large number of Turks poured into Anatolia under the pressure of the Mongols. They provided sufficient troops for the Ottomans, but they also urgently needed to be resettled so as not to cause trouble. [29]
The Ottoman conquest of Yugoslavia was more like the Roman conquest of Gaul, controlling important towns, establishing military bases, appointing magistrates, allocating some land to soldiers, but not replacing the natives on a large scale; and later conquests north of the Danube , prefers to control vassals rather than create new provinces, similar to the Roman policy in Thrace, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and early conquest Britain. [30]
The above shifts are both distance-related and due to changes within the empire: Turkic refugee flows have subsided, the sultan’s autocratic power has been strengthened, the status of the nobility has been weakened, and the Ottomans are transforming from a feudal aristocratic society to a centralized empire such as Bayezid Bayezid I appointed a group of his own slaves to replace the Turkic nobles as chief executives and even provincial governors. As a result, the need to reward supporters with new fiefs is obviously no longer urgent. [31]
Whatever the motives of the conquerors, large empires like Rome, Qin, Han, Persia, Ottoman established an order over vast territories that, in the weakest sense, provided a means of making long-distance trade and population movements more accessible A peaceful environment that is prone to occur, but as long as it exists long enough, it will have more social and cultural consequences, first of all, it creates a larger and richer social ladder, thus providing more climbing opportunities, and these opportunities are unevenly distributed, it is natural to prefer those closer to the center of power, and that often means cultural, ethnic origin and social relations closer to the core group that initiated the empire-building process in the first place For example, the nobles of the Roman city-state, Liu Bang’s family and fellow villagers, and the dignitaries of the Ottoman chiefdom.
For these groups, the empire seems to have suddenly opened a door of opportunity for them, spawning a wave of upward mobility; during the heyday of the British Empire, a large number of elite children who graduated from Oxford and Cambridge flocked to overseas colonies to serve as civil servants, officers, and missionaries , doctors and company employees, and also drove more children of different classes to go overseas to find opportunities, to explore the world, and to strive to achieve a career on the broad stage provided by the empire. [32]
These people will bring the whole set of cultural elements, languages, values, codes of conduct, customs, legal concepts, organizational models that they have acquired in their home country wherever they go, and importantly, these will be enthusiastically emulated by the local elite, because They have personally demonstrated to the local young people who are interested in climbing up, what they must look like if they want to achieve status and achievements. As a result, this social ladder to the top of the empire has become a powerful engine for cultural dissemination and assimilation. .
When this engine works effectively, it will at the same time lay a firmer foundation for the imperial order that was initially expanded by conquest, as most enterprising and capable men who have succeeded in their ascent have embraced the elements that constituted that order. The basic norms and values, and become the beneficiary of the order, and thus have sufficient incentives to maintain it.
Notes: (Please refer to ” References ” for the cited literature)
[1] Peter Bellwood (2013) First Migrants , pp.129-133.
[2] David Christian (2005) Maps of Time , ch.9.
[3] I discuss more about the requirement of delayed gratification in agricultural production in Part 5 of my blog series Food and Humans (HS:7952).
[4] Caleb Everett (2017) Numbers and the Making of Us .
[5] For barriers to the adoption of agriculture by food-sharing traditions, see Nancy Howell (2010) ch.8; I also discuss in Chapter 1 of this book and in Part 5 of my blog series Food and Humans (HS:7952) .
[6] Peter Bellwood (2004) First Farmers , Table 12.1.
[7] For the gender composition of colonists, see Peter Bellwood (2013) ch.1.
[8] Wikipeida: Secondary products revolution, David Christian (2005) ch.9.
[9] Peter Heather (2009) ch.1.
[10] For the development process of the paddy field system in the south of the Yangtze River, see the first chapter of the first chapter, the second chapter of the first chapter, and the third chapter of the second chapter; for the role of clan organizations in the development of Shatian in the Pearl River Delta, see David Faure (1988). 2007) Chapters 11, 16, 18, 20 of The Emperor and Ancestors.
[11] Zhao Gang (1996) “The Change of Ecological Environment in Chinese History”, Chapter 4; Robert Marks (1998) “Tiger, Rice, Silk, Mud”, Chapter 9.
[12] Brendan Smith (1999) Colonisation and Conquest in Medieval Ireland .
[13] Ge Jianxiong (1997) Chapter 5 of “History of Chinese Immigration, Volume 2”.
[14] Cao Shuji (1997) Chapter 7 of “History of Chinese Immigration, Volume 5”.
[15] Of course, there are no exceptions. When the order in the center of civilization collapses, many refugees become pioneers in fleeing regions, and their sources are more mixed, so the more stable the order in the hinterland, the more significant the effect mentioned here will be.
[16] Wikipeida: Neolithic long house; Jane McIntosh (2006) Chapter 4.
[17] Peter Bellwood (2013) ch.1.
[18] Wikipedia: Weilong House.
[19] Eric H. Cline (2014) The Collapse of Civilization, Preface, Chapter 4; the ethnic background of the Sea Peoples is still unclear, they may not be nomads, but they are also highly dispersed nomadic raiders, so Similar to the principle of nomadic invasion.
[20] Peter Heather (2007).
[21] Thomas J. Barfield in Dangerous Frontiers (1992) has a good analysis of the formation mechanisms and conditions of existence of such more stable relationships.
[22] Peter Heather (2009) ch.6; Wikipeida: Norman conquest of England.
[23] Ironically, the term elite transfer was originally used by linguists to refer to the phenomenon of changing the language of an entire group due to adoption by a small elite, but this is actually less likely to happen, such as French in Russia Popularity among the elite for a long time has not had any impact on the popular language, more analysis can be found in Nicholas Ostler (2005), especially chapters 1, 2, 7, 11, 12. Hopefully this clarification frees me from the historical baggage of the term.
[24] Peter Heather (2009) ch.6.
[25] Zhao Gang & Chen Zhongyi (2006) “History of China’s Land System” Chapters 1, 4, and 7.
[26] For the role of Jinshen in countering the rebellion in the late Qing Dynasty, see Philip A. Kuhn (1970) “Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China”.
[27] Peter Heather (2007) ch.5.
[28] Peter Heather (2007) ch.4.
[29] Peter F. Sugar (2014) Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804 , ch.1,3,6.
[30] For Roman vassal states retained in these areas, see Wikipeida: List of Roman client rulers, Roman client kingdoms in Britain.
[31] Norman Itzkowitz (1973) Ottoman Empire and Islamic Tradition , ch.1; Peter F. Sugar (2014) ch.1.
[32] Niall Ferguson (2004) Colossus , ch.6.
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