Is it plausible for a society to be so adept at war, they forget how to farm?

[Ban]

As others have said the best option is to make these people not human. It would be difficult for readers to accept that an entire human society could be short-sighted enough to kill off all the people who know how to farm. Human raiders would either enslave or vassalize farmers. An orc or goblin or other ficitonal being on the other hand could be capable of this.

The other option is to have the raiders be part of some sort of cult. There are many real-world examples of cult members doing very strange and self-harmful things. Perhaps the raiders believed that their deity/deities would come down to earth and give them free lasagna for the rest of their lives if they killed off all the farmers.

 

[Devor]

If the conquered people would rather die than be enslaved, then maybe you could have the story ending you want.

I came back to post something along these lines.

There are places where empires rise and fall very quickly - wide open plains. The huns and mongols and others conquered along a stretch. There's another in Africa, a strip of plains right around the middle of the big north part of the continent.

If you're building your empire from one side of the continent to the other, you're setting up logistics over these conquered territories, and stretching your army far from home. Imagine you're far from home, short on supplies, maybe you just lost a big fight, and as you're going back to these conquered cities for support, they've organized a revolt and closed their gates against you.

You have an army. You've just lost your supply lines. A siege takes time. You've already ransacked the countryside the first time you conquered them. You're not in good shape, here.

 

[FifthView]

But there is an anthropological thing going on here that you are missing.

Before humans farmed, they hunted and gathered. Hunting/gathering is a time intensive process (not that farming isn't but it is much easier for farmers to produce a significant surplus etc than hunter gatherers). That left not much time for art, science, etc including the art of war.

So if you were living by hunting and gathering you would not have the time on hand to master the art of war.

Thus the pre-agricultural human model would not make a good one for this ultra war making society.

The idea that hunter-gatherer societies had little free time might be a myth, although I'm certainly no anthropologist, and from this article, there is some disagreement between those who are: Hunter-gatherers have more leisure time.

In any case, in designing a fantasy society, there could be division of labor, with active hunters and gatherers supporting war parties–and in the OP's description of this fictional environment, the raiding and conquering warriors are being used as a type of hunting and gathering force! It's just that they are gathering from conquered peoples.

And, hunter-gatherer societies actually participated in warring with other hunter-gatherer societies, in our world.

I could almost imagine a young expansionist society (in a fantasy world), starting isolated as a hunter-gatherer society and then discovering the abundance of resources when discovering other societies, and expanding too fast, depleting resources and/or the environment, and then collapsing fast. Perhaps the lure of wealth that just sits in towns and cities could draw its own people away from the habits of hunting and gathering natural resources, over time.

The OP didn't specify the size of that society, and I'm not sure how ultra--or, sophisticated--the war making he intended.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Since people have mentioned Sparta it will serve as a useful example of what could happen. Sparta had a two tier population - Spartans and slaves. Spartans fought, slaves worked the fields etc. And what happened to them was that they had a vastly larger slave population than Spartan. Though they were the pre-eminent warriors of their day, they accrued losses with all their battles, and because Spartans could only come from other Spartans - ie blood - that ratio between slaves and Spartans grew ever worse for them.

Their long slow collapse began after their greatest victory - Athens when they had lost so many people that they could not recover from it. After that they could not control their slave population. There were Helot uprisings, their armies became divided in roles between war and controlling their slaves, and ultimately they became vulnerable to a rivals and started losing battles.

In terms of the OP though, they did not forget how to farm. They simply lost control of those who did the farming for them. And they weren't completely destroyed by it. But they slowly lost power over the following centuries.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Roughdragon]

As above, my first question would be why don't they get some of the conquered people who were previously farming (or whose ancestors were) and make them farm?

I did forget to mention this, but the society-- let's call them Vangardians-- are obsessively xenophobic. The denizens of their island include high fantasy societies such as orcs and elves, and the Vangardians believe that using the perceived lesser races for anything in their society-- even slavery-- is an insult to their honor and culture, and would taint their civilization.

In terms of farming in general, the idea never even occurred to them, even when they saw the gardens and farms of the elves and orcs.

 

[Roughdragon]

The idea that hunter-gatherer societies had little free time might be a myth, although I'm certainly no anthropologist, and from this article, there is some disagreement between those who are: Hunter-gatherers have more leisure time.

In any case, in designing a fantasy society, there could be division of labor, with active hunters and gatherers supporting war parties—and in the OP's description of this fictional environment, the raiding and conquering warriors are being used as a type of hunting and gathering force! It's just that they are gathering from conquered peoples.

And, hunter-gatherer societies actually participated in warring with other hunter-gatherer societies, in our world.

I could almost imagine a young expansionist society (in a fantasy world), starting isolated as a hunter-gatherer society and then discovering the abundance of resources when discovering other societies, and expanding too fast, depleting resources and/or the environment, and then collapsing fast. Perhaps the lure of wealth that just sits in towns and cities could draw its own people away from the habits of hunting and gathering natural resources, over time.

The OP didn't specify the size of that society, and I'm not sure how ultra--or, sophisticated--the war making he intended.

The island the Vangardians had completely taken over is about the size of Rhode Island. Also, their style of war is inspired by Hoplite strategies. Basically, they got into a large formation and steamrolled their way through the less advanced societies on their island.

 

[Roughdragon]

I could see there being a "legend" of such a culture, a cautionary tale. A great warrior culture collapses, the real reason lost to time, and the story develops. But in reality? Not so much. Yup, I can see the farmer's kid who wants to join the army rolling their eyes at this story to keep them on the farm, LOL.

Magical-wierdness... they were bred into uber roid-rage barely human warriors who wiped out everything that moved until they split into their own units to kill each other fighting over increasingly scarce resources. Heh heh.

That is what I'm trying to do with this society. Essentially, when I get around to writing a story, one of the characters will be a descendant of one of these warriors, and would be driven to discover the history of his people.

 

[Russ]

IF you try to make this war effectively makes this society forget how to farm etc story plausible, I think you have a significant TSTL problem to conquer.

Would enjoy reading it when you finish it though.

 

[ShadeZ]

Even if they forgot how to farm they would likely still hunt and forage if food ran low or something like that .