War and agriculture: historical relationship

Your first and second answers are the same. If a contry needed more land than it might invade to get it and if it had plenty of land but wanted more, than is must have the perception that it needed more. This is the same.

The need to make war is probably related to agriculture because of the ability for specialization of labor. Without the need to hunt, people could build upon specific skills and allow the realitivly easy, but time consuming, labor of farming to be dolled out to the masses. This allows for organized leaders and greater divides in equality of life. The friction between what some have and what some don't have causes the need to conquest, be it to shift the populace towards one goal or to pacify them.

The Neolithic period is the start of real farming and a greater number of fortified settlments starting at that point woudl suggest what I am saying. It could also mean that the change in the probability of war with respect to the population has a positive slope, as slope of the change in population with respect to the use of farming (i.e. stability of food supply).

I was thinking more at the micro-level. You are already beginning at a point where "societies" are organized into separate agriculture and military sectors. I am wondering whether some people always confronted others with violence to enslave them and/or get access to their agricultural products or if all soldiers began as farmers. I guess the simplest way to put it would be to ask whether soldiers originated from farmers or whether soldier was an occupation designed for acquiring food without having to do the work of producing it.


I actually researched this when writing my book because I wanted to know if the "peacful" societies really existed before the neolithic period, which just happens to be when farming starts. I don't have my referneces near me right now but I found that there were many societies with fortifications and weapons were found, at digs, which were designed (aparently) for killing humans, which came from the early neolithic period. I seriously doubt that lazy people just grouped and raided. The population of the world at the time was not such that this would be allowable (less than 10million). In later periods raiding was possible, but remember that Vikings and Mongals farmed too.

In the end these sorts of behaviours are attributable to a diverse range of factors and cannot be disolved into a simple action/reaction behaviour. The Romans wanted access to resources (which they often farmed), trade, levy to defend against others, and slaves. The Vikings wanted riches, sometimes slaves (not many), and internal political leverage (good raid = strong leader).

My book features raids of two types: Ritualistic raids where no one is really hurt and the purpose is the exchange of women for the genepool (as seen in many paleo-indian cultures) and raiding for food and supplies when in dire need.


That's another good question: what came first, the practice of making something useful that could be traded for surplus food and other raw materials or the practice of war to take and enslave?


Actually, I would suggest that they both occured simultaneously. Both really require farming. A raid on a mesolithic community would give you a small amount of food (very small) and mostly perishable. Any slaves you took would need to be feed. Slavery and raiding of pre-agriculturaly peoples was probably not unheard of but not really in anyone's best interest.

Thanks, I googled it. The source I read said that people not situated in agricultural communities used war and trade to get access to the surpluses of the farmers. It's interesting that there was no mention of nomadic farming, since I would guess that farmers would have needed to constantly seek new land as their current farming plots became barren. I assume they didn't have knowledge of fertilization yet, though I suppose that must have developed in that time.

I guess your point is that farming increased population-capacity and increased population resulted in a need for new land, which caused war. So there weren't just bands of lazy people that formed to conquer farmers and take their harvests and/or enslave them so that they wouldn't have to farm for themselves?

there was redoubtably conflict between farmers and nomadic hunter gatherers who had no concept of ownership.

The Old Testament indicates that, in that part of the world at least, children were considered property and could be sold. One didn't hire a servant, they bought them.

Without knowing much specific war history, it seems to be common knowledge that war was often used for imperialist economic purposes in the past. Presumably, the winning army would either kill any surviving opponents and take their land and property or enslave them. My question is whether imperialistic war was usually carried out as a primary strategy for acquiring agricultural resources, including land and/or slaves - or did such war tactics evolve out of situations of need where the aggressor was already agriculturally successful but wanted to expand their territory? Is it possible that certain cultures of dominating farmers violently in order to avoid having to do farming work has always been a strategy of soldiers to get food instead of having to engage in the hard tedious labor of agriculture?

It would be interesting to document instances where mass enslavement (i.e. by warfare) took place. Did this actually take place in Sumer? Or is this conjecture? There is the biblical account of the mass enslavement of Hebrew peoples in Babylon (circa 500 B.C.E. ?)
and the Romans made a big business of it. A slave was the greatest labor saving device of that time.

All I am saying is that there were two different mindsets that were in conflict until each learned to live with the other and respect different customs.

I don't believe that people in any time or place spawned children with the intent of selling them, but birth control was not an option.

But people do hope that their children will be prosperous so they will help them in old age. Some people begin training their children as young as possible to be prosperous. Many people have an ethic of wealth-sharing among family-members, and some even go so far as to order their children into certain jobs so that they can remit their earnings to sibblings and parents. There are numerous ways to exploit your children for labor and prosperity, and what's more, many people don't see anything wrong with it - they see it as just good child-rearing to make them productive and contributive to a common welfare (whether that welfare is for the family, other social-network, or state).

'Common Knowledge'? Seems like another term for popular opinion. I'm not really interested in opinions, "Just the facts, M'am".

There are far too many assumptions here. Once early societies had food surpluses, it enabled all sorts of specialization, priests, soldiers, potters, tool and weapon makers, etc. To say that someone became a soldier to avoid manual labor is far too simplistic. Having a military with too much time on its hands was dangerous to those in power.
Using terms such as 'imperialistic' hardly seem to fit here. The expansion of early civilizations was accompanied by rape and pillage which was the soldier's reward. Ruler's profited from control of trade routes. The life of the farmer likely didn't change much.

Comparing late Neolithic/early Bronze age civilizations to Roman practices doesn't make sense. There is a gap of about 5000 years.

If the only family asset was the farm - why would they not (have as many children as possible to ensure success of the farm and) teach the children to prosper in their lifetimes by continuing to work the farm? Isn't that a basic survival instinct?

Yes, but for nomadic hunter/gatherers, traders, or others who didn't farm, it may have made sense to have children to sell them into slavery, maybe even with the belief that farming was such a great lifestyle that even as slaves, their children would ultimately benefit from the prosperity of the farm they were sold into. Probably parents sought to sell their children into better farms, the same way as a father might hope to find a kind husband for his daughter instead of a cruel one (women were treated as property until relatively recently btw).