Premodern attitudes towards war

[Aldarion]

In modern fantasy, there is a tendency to see war as something inherently terrible and dehumanizing. This however is a very modern attitude, which only came about as a consequence of two world wars. Indeed, the greatest example of modern fantasy - Tolkien's Lord of the Rings - also happens to be one of the greatest examples of World War I literature. Dead Marshes are basically dead ringer for battlefields of the Western Front, and effect that Nazgul cause on the soldiers of the West is very reminiscent of the "shell shock". George Martin's writing is shaped heavily by his attitudes towards the Vietnam War and War on Terror.

Historical attitudes towards war however varied heavily by culture. Ancient Romans - especially during the Republican period - saw war as a way for their young men to prove themselves. Ancient Greeks had very similar attitude. Similarly, Celts and Anglo-Saxons glorified deeds of war - Cattle Raid of Cooley being a good example perhaps, and of course glory in war is a common theme in Anglo-Saxon literature. Meanwhile both the Catholic Medieval Europe and the Byzantine Empire saw a major internal conflict of attitudes. On one hand Christianity disliked needless violence; yet on the other, perseverance in the face of adversity was respected.

This I think is something that should be respected in writing - that different cultures will have different attitudes towards war, and many other things, which will not necessarily reflect modern-day norms.

 

[pmmg]

Cant much argue with that.

Though.....I think in the two world wars, there was still an attitude of war brings glory. And WWII still gets cast as a necessary and honorable effort to destroy a modern day dark lord. It seemed more to be Viet-Nam which caused the US/West to come to a different way of looking at it. For which, there are obviously a lot of reasons, Guns, Atom Bombs, video news coverage, and embedded reporters, and a lack of a sense of a noble purpose to it. It may be just a US perspective, but Europe is western culture too.

 

[Aldarion]

Cant much argue with that.

Though.....I think in the two world wars, there was still an attitude of war brings glory. And WWII still gets cast as a necessary and honorable effort to destroy a modern day dark lord. It seemed more to be Viet-Nam which caused the US/West to come to a different way of looking at it. For which, there are obviously a lot of reasons, Guns, Atom Bombs, video news coverage, and embedded reporters, and a lack of a sense of a noble purpose to it. It may be just a US perspective, but Europe is western culture too.

World War II gets cast as a necessary and honorable effort, but I don't think anybody talking about it is considering war itself as being honorable. Sense I get is more "did what had to be done" rather than "seeking glory".

First World War seems to have been a decisive shift in that department IMO. Vietnam merely created perspective of wars as pointless, but World War I made wars into something all-around terrible.

 

[pmmg]

I dont know...WWII still had an aspect of my skill against yours. There is a type of honor in that.

The idea of dog fighting in airplanes with bullets brought some glory, the ship battles still seem majestic, the tank battles with their great generals... Maybe not for the rifle to rifle ground fighting....

Its kind of fire and forget missiles that took away honorable/respect for ones foe aspect of air and ship combat. I think that was still present in WWII.

Just a slow sliding away as technology improves, and killing faceless strangers becomes more the norm.

 

[Aldarion]

I dont know...WWII still had an aspect of my skill against yours. There is a type of honor in that.

The idea of dog fighting in airplanes with bullets brought some glory, the ship battles still seem majestic, the tank battles with their great generals... Maybe not for the rifle to rifle ground fighting....

Its kind of fire and forget missiles that took away honorable/respect for ones foe aspect of air and ship combat. I think that was still present in WWII.

Just a slow sliding away as technology improves, and killing faceless strangers becomes more the norm.

That is an individual level... even today, we respect aces and such. But we no longer really go to war for the sake of honor, for example - in fact, something like war in Illiad, going to war over broken guest right and kidnapping, is basically unthinkable to the modern people to the point that writers of Troy (2004) had to make up a different excuse for war.

 

[pmmg]

Well... I do respect the aces of that war, and even the war before.

But...Its hard to get the same excitement for a stealth pilot taking down Iraqi jets from 100 miles away. I mean...was it really you who took them down? That's kind of more like, I fired some missiles and the rest was sheep to the slaughter.

You know, a lot has changed. Those wars were the product of the evolution of a lot of things. I think the drift was probably always happening it just took the 20th century to bring it into our living rooms.

But...there is no doubt, the view of war as a great quest, a great proving ground, a noble and glorious effort, has gained a lot more scrutiny. Writers writing today, do seem to want to try and capture that, some even trying to send a message about it. Those things would not match the attitudes of people in earlier time periods. War then was a pathway to glory and honor, and even salvation, or a free ticket to Valhalla. Now, its more seen as a bloody and regrettable mess (less you sell weapons for a living...then its good for business ).

 

[Finchbearer]

I think the closest to this is seen in families that have a long military history, like the British Royal family seen today. It’s like a rite of passage still, although it’s has changed much.

I’m writing a warrior culture that is buttressed up against a burgeoning feudal system with lots of agriculture, mining and other enterprises that are making the nobles ever richer - which means there is a slow post-tribal transition to commerce instead. Capitalism has a lot to answer for.

 

[Queshire]

I'm reminded of Starship Troopers. The book I mean, not the movie.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I think it depends a little bit on how involved countries were in both World Wars. In many parts of Europe the first World War is still referred to as the Great War, and you'll find memorials scattered through the country and the armistice is still a public holiday. Yes, there were still individual heroics in WWI, however, the scale is unimaginable, even today. Just for reference, compare it to the current war in Ukraine. Europe is trying to send them 1 million artillery shells in a year. Try to guess for a moment how many shells were fired in WW1. A hint, in the battle of the Somme they got through that in a day....

Estimates for the nr of shells in WW1 lie between 900 million and 1.2 billion. Or about 200-300 times what is now fired in Ukraine. With people charging into machine gun fire and stuck in muddy trenches, there was little seeking glory left.

If anything, we're slowly forgetting the horror of both world wars and moving back to glorifying it. War movies are about individual heroics and honorable fights most of the time. That's what we're brought up on. I think more people should visit the WW1 cemetaries in Belgium / France or the D-day ones, just to get an idea of the senselessness of modern wars and the scale of them.

The Vietnam war is actually an interesting one. In the West, we're brought up on movies which usually portray the Americans as the good guys. I've visited Vietnam, and their perspective is very different. It's an eye-opener for sure.

 

[Miles Lacey]

In 1914 New Zealand had about 1.1 million people. In World War One about 16,000 soldiers were killed. In 1939 there were 1.3 million people in this country and about 12,000 soldiers were killed. Let that sink in.

War ceased to be glorious when there was barely a family in this country who did not lose a family member in the conflicts and who did not have family members who had been scarred physically and/or mentally by it.

War ceased to be glorious when they learned their sons, fathers, brothers, uncles and nephews were mown down by machine guns or blown to hell just to capture a few hundred yards of mud and shit.

War ceased to be glorious when they learned their loved ones were more likely to have died shitting themselves to death from dysentery or dying from diseases like cholera, typhus or influenza than from the ordinance fired by the enemy.

And war ceased to be glorious when they saw men return home with wounds that made family members scream in horror. It's one thing to come home with a missing arm or leg. It's quite another thing to come home with half your face missing. Most of them got packed off to veterans hospitals where they were largely forgotten. Who wants to see men with half their face missing marching through town on ANZAC Day (the NZ and Australian equivalent of Armistice Day in Europe or Memorial Day in the USA) or sitting at the dining room table?

In pre-industrial times most battles were fought only over relatively small areas by armies that seldom numbered more than 50,000 soldiers. Battles were usually over within a day or two. Few people were literate so most people couldn't write home to describe the horrors of what they had seen or write of their experiences when they returned. With compulsory education came near universal literacy. With universal literacy came the ability of those who had experienced the horrors of war first hand to write about it and inform others.

War ceased to be glorious long before Vietnam. It ceased to be glorious in the trenches of the Western Front and the Gallipoli peninsula during the Fist World War when people discovered how a few machine gun posts could wipe out the entire young male population of a small town in less time than it would take for you to order a pizza and get it delivered to your front door.

 

[Finchbearer]

Without being overly political about it, British attitudes to the world wars were more along the lines of ‘Victory’ or ‘V for victory’ rather than glorious, which was more of a political campaign. On a lot of cenotaphs in the UK, there is commonly the inscription ‘The Glorious Dead’ - its origins are from a poem, but it’s not glorifying war itself, more the servicemen and women who made the ultimate sacrifice.

 

[Ban]

Cant much argue with that.

Though.....I think in the two world wars, there was still an attitude of war brings glory. And WWII still gets cast as a necessary and honorable effort to destroy a modern day dark lord. It seemed more to be Viet-Nam which caused the US/West to come to a different way of looking at it. For which, there are obviously a lot of reasons, Guns, Atom Bombs, video news coverage, and embedded reporters, and a lack of a sense of a noble purpose to it. It may be just a US perspective, but Europe is western culture too.

The attitude in Europe was definitely caused by the world wars and successive post-colonial wars and not Vietnam, considering we didn't fight in that war. It's rather arrogant to assume that our cultures were affected more by a conflict we had little to do with, than say, the Indonesian war for independence, the Angolan war for independence or the Algerian war. And that's just speaking for Western Europe. The Soviet-occupied half has had its own assortment of trauma, and many of those countries now classify within the ever-nebulous "West" so should not be discarded.

 

[Miles Lacey]

Without being overly political about it, British attitudes to the world wars were more along the lines of ‘Victory’ or ‘V for victory’ rather than glorious, which was more of a political campaign. On a lot of cenotaphs in the UK, there is commonly the inscription ‘The Glorious Dead’ - its origins are from a poem, but it’s not glorifying war itself, more the servicemen and women who made the ultimate sacrifice.

In New Zealand the war dead are remembered through these words that are recited during ANZAC Day ceremonies. In Wellington they're traditionally recited by the Turkish ambassador:

Those heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country to of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

Atatürk, 1934

 

[Finchbearer]

Okay, so the source of ‘The Glorious Dead’ is found within the poem The Fourth of August by Robert Laurence Binyon, the first three stanzas are;

Now in thy splendour go before us.
Spirit of England, ardent-eyed,
Enkindle this dear earth that bore us
In the hour of peril purified.

The cares we hugged drop out of vision,
Our hearts with deeper thought dilate,
We step from days of sour division
Into the grandeur of our fate.

For us the glorious dead have striven,
They battled that we might be free.
We to their living cause are given;
We arm for men that are to be.

The cenotaph was commissioned by Prime Minister Lloyd George, and designed by Edwin Lutyens.

It is also seen on other cenotaphs.

 

[skip.knox]

The initial point is solid. Attitudes toward war (and toward soldiers) shifted and is today much different from what it once was. And that varied by culture. It's not like "the past" all had the same attitudes. I'd like to add a couple of other points to the mix.

First, there's a deep divide over the extent to which a society views war as something that can be avoided. This is tied to the OP's point about how some saw war as an ennobling activity. In many times and places, war was simply part of the human experience, and that war represented a failure to keep the peace. The notion was laughable. One might as well try to find ways to stop the rain. Leaving aside whether war was good or bad, it was absolutely inevitable.

Second, our modern ideas about warfare are conditioned by the two great world wars of last century, but also by the increasingly efficient machinery of war since then, and of course the cloud of nuclear war that hangs over all. That's not how pre-moderns thought about war.

For many in the MIddle Ages and before, wars could be fought at a very local level. And they could be of short duration, measured in days or weeks. This tribe fought that tribe, in battles with either side numbering in the scores or hundreds. Some wars were not much more than cattle raids. When that is your understanding and experience of war, then war is not some generation-destroying catastrophe, and it's easier to consider the heroism, the plunder, and the excitement.

My Roman history teacher liked to portray the difference between Greeks and Romans. He was exaggerating, but his point was illustrative and interesting. The Greeks, he said, loved war. It was something to do in the summer. You got glory and profit and some good stories to tell back home. Casualties were usually light. You looked forward to next season. The Romans, otoh, hated war. The Roman soldier would much rather be home with his family, enjoying his villa and drinking good wine. So when war came, the Romans were out to crush you. They got really good at it. This is why the Romans had such a difficult time with the Greeks. They kept winning the wars, yet the Greeks kept rebelling. Rome had to resort to eliminating entire cities before the Greeks finally got the point.

Winthrop Linsday Adams. He always told good stories and there is a great fund of good stories in the ancient world. Anyway, it was my first introduction to the notion that not everyone views or viewed war in the same way, or even had the same understanding of what the word means.

I don't know how I would work such notions into a story, though. It goes against popular understanding in a significant way. Maybe a non-fantasy novel that made it a central point. Or else, just write a good history book!

 

[pmmg]

I don't know how I would work such notions into a story, though. It goes against popular understanding in a significant way. Maybe a non-fantasy novel that made it a central point. Or else, just write a good history book!

Yes, I could add, attitudes about war, is it nobel, it is good, can we avoid it....They just dont play into my story. The war is here, regardless of what you thought of it. Fight, or die is pretty much the choices for those in it. Most choose to fight. It never really matters what their values were about it.

 

[pmmg]

It's rather arrogant to assume that our cultures were affected more by a conflict we had little to do with,

You did see the part where I said 'that might just be a US perspective'? That was the part were I was not making such an assumption.

From an American perspective, I do think it was more Viet Nam that shaped us (Which did in fact start off as an issue for the French). WWI and II, America is still quite proud of having been in. Even the Korean war... If those had been our last military actions, I think we would still hold the notion that war is honorable, and not one of, its a bloody mess. For us, it was the wars after that did that.

 

[Ban]

You did see the part where I said 'that might just be a US perspective'? That was the part were I was not making such an assumption.

I could flip that around and say. 'Why would Europe think their attitudes after the two world wars were the same as the attitudes of the rest of the world?' Is it not the same arrogance to say, WWI and II affected us so much that all notions of honor changed for everyone else? The rest of the world may not have turned with you.

From an American perspective, I do think it was more Viet Nam that shaped us (Which did in fact start off as an issue for the French). WWI and II, America is still quite proud of having been in. Even the Korean war... If those had been our last military actions, I think we would still hold the notion that war is honorable, and not one of, its a bloody mess. For us, it was the wars after that did that.

What you wrote was "It seemed more to be Viet-Nam which caused the US/West to come to a different way of looking at it."

I'm not claiming that the world's, nor the West's perspective on war changed due to the mentioned wars. If we're to critique comments, than you should reread mine. In it, I specifically talk about Europe (specifying Western Europe therein), not the West, nor the world. There is no arrogance in saying that the Indonesian war for independence changed the Netherlands, nor the Algeria war France, but there is arrogance in suggesting that the Vietnam war was the Pan-Western turning point. So no, the comment can't be flipped around.

 

[Aldarion]

Some wars were not much more than cattle raids.

One of Irish epics is literally called "Cattle Raid"!

My Roman history teacher liked to portray the difference between Greeks and Romans. He was exaggerating, but his point was illustrative and interesting. The Greeks, he said, loved war. It was something to do in the summer. You got glory and profit and some good stories to tell back home. Casualties were usually light. You looked forward to next season. The Romans, otoh, hated war. The Roman soldier would much rather be home with his family, enjoying his villa and drinking good wine. So when war came, the Romans were out to crush you. They got really good at it. This is why the Romans had such a difficult time with the Greeks. They kept winning the wars, yet the Greeks kept rebelling. Rome had to resort to eliminating entire cities before the Greeks finally got the point.

I am not certain that was the case, however. Roman commanders at least did consider glory in war, and success in war was an essential prerequisite to most magistrate positions. Then you also have virtus, which is an essential part of Roman culture. It was intrinsically linked to warfare, and to public office; thus, as I said, success in war was necessary for political success.

Of course, your teacher may well have a point when it comes to common soldier. Greek hoplites and Roman adsidui were both farmer-soldiers, but Greek warfare was between cities. Distances were short, so you could have breakfast, fight a war and be home for lunch (exaggerating a bit here). Roman wars, once you look beyond the Kingdom era, were far longer-distance affairs. This was bound to be far more disruptive to farmer-soldiers' farming duties (and would indeed lead to gradual professionalization of the army).

I don't know how I would work such notions into a story, though. It goes against popular understanding in a significant way. Maybe a non-fantasy novel that made it a central point. Or else, just write a good history book!

Tolkien does it rather well in Lord of the Rings, though. Just look at how Theoden and Rohirrim in general consider warfare... or Legolas and Gimli having their little orc-killing competition. Such notions will affect how people think and behave first and foremost, so I don't think there is need to write a philosophical tractate or a speech about it... just show it in people's attitudes.

 

[pmmg]

Well...I wish I had revised and unextended my remarks to exclude the part your responded to... But...

I did say that I thought it might be just a US perspective, that it 'seemed' to me that Viet Nam was more shaping, and I think it was for the US (to the regard of not idealizing war). Extending that to the west, was likely US bias. I thought the comment carried enough of a questioning tone, and speculation that it was maybe just my home country perspective to avoid accusations of arrogance. Guess not...

Still, I think it is true that Veit Nam did more than WWI and WWII to assuage the US population 'maybe not our leaders', from thinking war a glorious endeavor.

But you know....stupidity combined with arrogance and a huge ego will get you a long way... So I must be going places.