"'The Horde people maintain an economy somewhere between that of ancient Mongol cattlekeepers and Amerind bison-chasers...'" (p. 28)
No longer able to domesticate iziru or bambalo, because the glaciated land can no longer support so many grazers, the Hordes nevertheless continue to:
control herd migrations;
cull the herds;
protect them from predators -
- which is like minimal domestication.
Poul Anderson's hard sf is grounded in history as well as in physics. Readers might research Mongol cattlekeepers or Native American bison hunters. Although I said here that the t'Kelans are not just sfnal versions of Wild West Indians, in this passage Anderson does compare them to Amerindians but also to Mongols.
See also SM Stirling's dramatic scenes with bison:
Bison
Ecology
19 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And, of course the need for discipline and close cooperation in their way of life would make it fairly easy for the Mongols to become conquerors once a strong chief like Genghis Khan united the Mongol clans and tribes. Which is exactly what Genghis, his sons, and his grandson did!
HOLDING their empire together, making it last more than a few generations, was somewhat more difficult for the Mongols.
Sean
The Romans were incremental empire-builders; they transformed what they took, generation after generation. As late as the 19th century, Greek-speaking Christians in the Ottoman Empire gave their ethnicity as "Rhōmaîoi" -- Romans. The Mongols did not even aspire to make everyone in their domains think of themselves as Mongols.
And there are still ROMAN Catholics.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: that makes sense, the Romans ROMANIZED their conquests, turning the peoples they ruled into Romans, so much so that they thought of themselves as Romans. And that was true even of the Greek speaking parts of the Empire.
But could the Mongols have "Mongolized" their domains? Probably not, because their conquests were too quick to be "incremental."
Paul: And the Roman Catholics might become the JERUSALEM Catholics if the Papacy relocates to Jerusalem. Which is what you speculated happened in the Technic timeline.
Sean
"And the Roman Catholics might become the JERUSALEM Catholics if the Papacy relocates to Jerusalem. Which is what you speculated happened in the Technic timeline."
Well, something IS supposed to happen between now and the time of "The Saturn Game".
It would be interesting to see how that could be done in OTL- as Jerusalem real estate is rather in demand (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_Quo_(Jerusalem_and_Bethlehem)), that might be rather difficult to do.
-kh
Kaor, Keith!
A good point, as regards how the turf in Jerusalem is already rather thoroughly divvied up!
Sean
I've speculated to myself that the Crusades might have done better if Jerusalem hadn't become a Kingdom, and instead Bohemond of Antioch had made himself "King of Syria", with a role as 'proctor of the Patrarch of Jerusalem".
It would have made perfect sense to an 11th-century European worldview; only Christ is really "King of Jerusalem", after all. If Godfrey had bought it in the confused bloodbath of the sack of Jerusalem, that might have happened -- the Crusader lords were a jealous lot.
Bohemond was the smartest of them, IMHO, and Syria had a better resource base than the Jerusalem area.
@ Sean: Indeed. I remember a passage in "There Will Be Time":
"...in Jerusalem nothing human remained except bones and shaped stones."
@ S.M. Stirling: I suspect that the Crusades might have done better if they hadn't happened at all!
-kh
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Keith!
Mr. Stirling: Now that was an interesting speculation, how history might have changed if Bohemond had managed to become "King of Syria," rather than merely Prince of Antioch. With Jerusalem merely being "protected" by him.
Keith: I assume you had the "War of Judgement" in mind, which is what was mentioned in THERE WILL BE TIME.
I disagree at least in part with your comment about the Crusades. IF Mohammed had not lived or never founded Islam, there would have been no jihads carried out at his bidding to eventually provoke the Crusades.
Harry Turtledove, in his Basil Argyros stories (mostly collected in AGENT OF BYZANTIUM), hypothesized a world in which Mohammed never founded Islam because he became a Christian instead! While I disagree with some of the "consequences" Turtledove speculated about in this alternate timeline, it's plain the world was better off without Islam.
And that title, AGENT OF BYZANTIUM, was probably deliberately modeled on Anderson's AGENT OF THE TERRAN EMPIRE!
Sean
@ Sean:
The Crusaders massacred large numbers of innocents, especially Jews, though also other Christians during the sack of Constantinople (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Constantinople_(1204)).
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(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_the_Crusades):
"In the First Crusade, flourishing communities on the Rhine and the Danube were attacked by Crusaders, yet many were spared due to the efforts of the Papacy (see German Crusade, 1096). In the Second Crusade (1147) the Jews in France suffered especially. Philip Augustus treated them with exceptional severity during the Third Crusade (1188). The Jews were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds' Crusades of 1251 and 1320.
The attacks were opposed by the local bishops and widely condemned at the time as a violation of the crusades' aim, which was not directed against the Jews.[1] However, the perpetrators mostly escaped legal punishment. Also, the social position of the Jews in western Europe distinctly worsened, and legal restrictions increased during and after the crusades. They prepared the way for anti-Jewish legislation of Pope Innocent III. The crusades resulted in centuries of strong feelings of ill will on both sides and hence constitute a turning point in the relationship between Jews and Christians."
Can you justify that?
-kh
Also: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades):
“Legacy
The Kingdom of Jerusalem was the first experiment in European colonialism, setting up a "Europe Overseas" or Outremer. The raising, transportation, and supply of large armies led to flourishing trade between Europe and Outremer. The Italian city states of Genoa and Venice flourished, planting profitable trading colonies in the Eastern Mediterranean.[144][145] The Italian colonial networks survived through the middle Byzantine and Ottoman eras, the communities were often assimilated, with their inhabitants known as Levantines or Franco-Levantines.[B][147]
The Crusades consolidated the papal leadership of the Latin Church, reinforcing the link between Western Christendom, feudalism, and militarism and increased the tolerance of the clergy for violence.[83] The growth of the system of indulgences became a catalyst for the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th century.[148] The Crusades also had a role in the formation and institutionalisation of the military and the Dominican orders as well as of the Medieval Inquisition.[149].
The behaviour of the Crusaders in the eastern Mediterranean area appalled the Greeks and Muslims, creating a lasting barrier between the Latin world and both the Islamic and Orthodox religions. It became an obstacle to the reunification of the Christian church and fostered a perception of Westerners as defeated aggressors.[83] However, many historians argue that the interaction between the western Christian and Islamic cultures played a significant, ultimately positive, part in the development of European civilisation and the Renaissance.[150] Relations between Europeans and the Islamic world stretched across the entire length of the Mediterranean Sea, leading to an improved perception of Islamic culture in the West, but also make it difficult for historians to identify the specific source of cultural cross-fertilisation.[151] The art and architecture of Outremer show clear evidence of influence, but it is difficult to track illumination of manuscripts and castle design back to their sources. Textual sources are simpler, and translations made in Antioch are notable but considered secondary in importance to the works emanating from Muslim Spain and from the hybrid culture of Sicily.[151] Muslim libraries contained classical Greek and Roman texts that allowed Europe to rediscover pre-Christian philosophy, science and medicine.[152]
Historical parallelism and the tradition of drawing inspiration from the Middle Ages have become keystones of Islamic ideology. Secular Arab nationalism highlights the role of Western imperialism. Gamal Abdel Nasser (President of Egypt from 1954 to 1970 and President of the United Arab Republic from 1958 to 1970) likened himself to Saladin and imperialism to the Crusades. In his History of the Crusades (1963) Sa'id Ashur emphasised the similarity between the modern and medieval situation facing Muslims and the need to study the Crusades in depth. Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) declared there was an international Crusader conspiracy. The ideas of Jihad and of a long struggle have developed some currency.[153]”
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Cheers,
-kh
Finally:
"IF Mohammed had not lived or never founded Islam, there would have been no jihads carried out at his bidding to eventually provoke the Crusades."
Going hundreds or thousands of miles to attack an enemy, looting, pillaging, and massacring thousands of innocent people on the way there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Constantinople_(1204)) doesn't sound very Christ-like to me:
"But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them."
— Jesus Christ, English Standard Version (Luke 6:27-31)
Also by that argument: if Jesus had never lived or founded Christianity, there would have been no crusades (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades), pogroms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Christianity), inquisitions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition), witch hunts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hunt), persecutions of heretics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heresy_in_Christianity), etc. carried out in Jesus’s name by those in authority (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dum_Diversas).
I remember a PA story where Jews died out, there was no Christianity, and technology was lower.
-kh
Kaor, Keith!
And I was unclear, it seems. I ABSOUTELY reject the atrocities of the Crusaders. Both at the Sack of Jerusalem and later, the Sack of Constantinople in 1204. I repeat, assuming there was no Islam, there would have been no Crusades. You are ignoring the PRECEDENT AND EXAMPLE set by Mohammed and his successors thru the jihads they urged on and initiated. Do I really need to quote the Koran and the Hadiths to prove that? And fanatical Muslims could and did travel hundreds of miles to wage war on all non-Muslims. And that included massacres of Jews as bloody as any perpetrated by bad Christians. The difference being NOTHING in the NT authorizes Christians to behave like that while the Koran does precisely that.
Oh, yes, the Muslims of the Ottoman Sultan Mohammed II plundered, looted, and killed thousands when they captured Constantinople in 1453. And I reject the false parallelism drawn by so many comparing wicked Crusaders with latter day "imperialism" of the 19th/20th centuries.
I repeat: no jihads = no crusades. And the Anderson story you had in mind was "The House of Sorrows," speculating about what might have happened if the Jews had disappeared during the Babylonian Exile. Answer: a far poorer, more backward, and stagnant world with no true science. See IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS? and "Delenda Est" for Anderson's argument that it needed Judaism and Christianity for part of the world to break out of that cycle.
Sean
Sean : No Crusades = No atrocities done by Crusaders.
More from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_and_the_Crusades):
First Crusade
Defending in the Holy Land
The Jews almost single-handedly defended Haifa against the crusaders[citation needed], holding out in the besieged town for a whole month (June–July 1099) in fierce battles.
Jews fought side-by-side with Muslim soldiers to defend Jerusalem against the Crusaders.[4]
As an Andersonian analogy:
We Jews were Denitza, the Caliphate was the Terran Empire, and the Crusaders were the Merseians.
-kh
More:
By and large,Jews faired better under Muslim rule than under Christian rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_Jewish_culture_in_Spain)
I found this latter section (I'm doing a bit of order changing here) p PARTICULARLY interesting:
Birth of the Golden Age
Prior to 581, the Jews experienced a Golden Age under the Arian Visigoth occupiers of Spain.[citation needed] The Visigoths were mainly indifferent towards Jews and allowed them to grow and prosper. After the Visigoths joined the Catholic Church, they placed ever greater economic burdens on the Jewish population, and later persecuted them severely. It is possible that Jews welcomed the Muslim Arab and mainly Berber conquerors in the 8th century. )
The nature of the Golden Age
Having invaded southern Spain, and coming to rule in a matter of seven years, Islamic rulers were confronted with many questions relating to the implementation of Islamic rule of a non-Islamic society. The coexistence of Muslims, Jews, and Christians during this time is revered by many writers. Al-Andalus was a key center of Jewish life during the early Middle Ages, producing important scholars and one of the most stable and wealthy Jewish communities and a relatively educated society for the Muslim occupiers and their Jewish collaborators, as well as some Christians who openly collaborated with the Muslims and Jews. As Sefarad, al-Andalus was the "capital" of world Judaism.
María Rosa Menocal, a specialist in Iberian literature at Yale University, claims that "tolerance was an inherent aspect of Andalusian society".[1] Menocal's 2003 book, The Ornament of the World, argues that the Jewish dhimmis living under the Caliphate, while allowed fewer rights than Muslims, were still better off than in the Christian parts of Europe. Jews from other parts of Europe made their way to al-Andalus, where in parallel to Christian sects regarded as heretical by Catholic Europe, they were not just tolerated, but where opportunities to practise faith and trades were open without restriction save for the prohibitions on proselytisation and, sometimes, on synagogue construction.
Bernard Lewis takes issue with this view, calling it ahistorical and exaggerated. He argues that Islam traditionally did not offer equality nor even pretend that it did, arguing that it would have been both a "theological as well as a logical absurdity."[2] However, also Lewis states:
Generally, the Jewish people were allowed to practice their religion and live according to the laws and scriptures of their community. Furthermore, the restrictions to which they were subject were social and symbolic rather than tangible and practical in character. That is to say, these regulations served to define the relationship between the two communities, and not to oppress the Jewish population.[2]
Jews were allowed certain freedoms but, like their Christian counterparts, were prohibited from having administrative authority over Muslims except in a few cases.
Mark Cohen, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, in his Under Crescent and Cross, calls the idealized interfaith utopia a "myth" that was first promulgated by Jewish historians such as Heinrich Graetz in the 19th century as a rebuke to Christian countries for their treatment of Jews.[3] This myth was met with the "counter-myth" of the "neo-lachrymose conception of Jewish-Arab history" by Bat Yeor and others,[3] which also "cannot be maintained in the light of historical reality".[4]
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-kh
Kaor, Keith!
What exactly is your POINT? I'm not denying atrocities were perpetrated by Christians. And I condemn them. Therefore, your comments about those crimes are irrelevant to what I said.
Ibn Waraq, in his book WHY I AM NOT A MUSLIM, discussed this issue of the so called toleration of Jews by Muslim, and rejected it. He cited a long list, with sources, of persecutions and massacres of Jews by Muslims. And I hardly need to mention the bigotry and hatred shown by Muslims to both Jews and Christians now, in many countries. My view is that of Bernard Lewis, grudging, contemptuous of Jews by Muslims, interspersed with persecution.
Many of your comments here are not relevant or applicable to what I have actually said.
No Islam = no jihads = no crusades. And thus no atrocities by the crusaders. And no atrocities by Muslims, of course.
Sean
And finally:
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Muslim_rule)
"Jewish communities have existed across the Middle East and North Africa since Antiquity. By the time of the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, these ancient communities had been ruled by various empires and included the Babylonian, Persian, Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Yemenite Jews.
Jews under Islamic rule were given the status of dhimmi, along with certain other pre-Islamic religious groups.[1] Though second-class citizens, these non-Muslim groups were nevertheless accorded certain rights and protections as "people of the book". During waves of persecution in Medieval Europe, many Jews found refuge in Muslim lands.[2] For instance, Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula were invited to settle in various parts of the Ottoman Empire, where they would often form a prosperous model minority of merchants acting as intermediaries for their Muslim rulers."
................................................................................
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ottoman_Empire)
"By the time the Ottoman Empire rose to power in the 14th and 15th centuries, there had been Jewish communities established throughout the region. The Ottoman Empire lasted from the early 14th century until the beginning of World War I and covered Southeastern Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East. The experience of Jews in the Ottoman Empire is particularly significant because the region "provided a principle place of refuge for Jews driven out of western Europe by massacres and persecution".
BOTTOM LINE:
Jews didn't leave Muslim countries to go to Christian ones, we left (typically forced out) Christian countries to go to Muslim ones, because Muslim countries treated us better than Christian (particularly Catholic) ones did.
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A "Crusades Promoter" or "Crusades Justifier" or "Crusades Excuser" is not someone I want to communicate or deal with. They are only slightly less reprehensible to me than a "Holocaust Denier". I also do not wish to communicate or deal with an Islamophobe:
"a person with a dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force."
..................................................................................
I am now finished with the P A A B.
It is what it is (a careful, thoughtful, and positive textual analysis of P A's works), and not what I hoped it would be (a launching pad to discuss the ideas of P A- where they are right, where they are wrong, and where they lead). That is on ME...If anyone wishes to discuss those and other relevant (hard SF) ideas, feel free to reach out to me at kdhalperin@sbcglobal.net.
Sincerely,
Keith Halperin
Kaor, Keith!
I continue to disagree with you about how "well" Jews were allegedly treated by Muslims. This "tolerance" was always precarious and depended largely on the chance personality of this or that caliph, sultan, or grand vizier, etc. I have read Ibn Waraq's long list in WHY I AM NOT A MUSLIM of how often Jews have been persecuted. I would also bring to your attention Bat Ye'or's books THE JEWS OF ISLAM and THE DECLINE OF EASTERN CHRISTIANITY UNDER ISLAM. I have not read the former, but the latter mercilessly narrates, WITH SOURCES, how often and how cruel Muslims have been to Christians.
I also deny being a "crusade enabler" or "crusade justifier." You have IGNORED how I condemned the First and Fourth Crusades in particular. Another crusade I would condemn being the Albigensian Crusade, because of the atrocities ordered or permitted by its appalling leader, Simon de Montfort.
There are some crusades I do approve of. Such as the crusade where Don John of Austria defeated the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Another being when the Austrians and Poles defeated and drove back the Turks at the Siege of Vienna in 1683. A Europe overrun or conquered by Islam would have destroyed Western civilization. And, on balance, Western civilization is far better than that of Islam.
I also deny and reject the applicability to me of so empty and Politically Correct a term as "Islamophobe." I deny that dislike of Islam is the same as hating, despising, scorning, etc., Muslims as PERSONS. That CONTEMPTIBLE word is designed to shut down or silence any meaningful, candid, hard hitting, or nuanced discussion of Islam.
I merely DISAGREE with the more strictly theological beliefs of Islam, such as Mohammed allegedly being a prophet, his denial of the Trinity and Incarnation of Christ, etc. I strongly DISLIKE other aspects of Islam: such as its belief in the desirability of merging state and mosque into a theocracy (ideally, headed by a caliph), the inferior status Sharia law imposes on all non Muslims, its belief in the rightness of using war to conquer the world for Islam, the cultural stagnation and anti intellectualism of Islam, etc. And I deny that "dislike," when defined like that, somehow means I or others are "Islamophobes."
I am also puzzled by your attitude to the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog. NO one has tried to prevent you from discussing any ideas you wished. I have sometimes been puzzled by your comments, when they did not seem applicable to whichever of the works of Anderson was being discussed. MY method, which also seems to be that of Paul, is to comment on an Anderson text and discussed the ideas to be inferred from that text. Perhaps this text and story approach, with commentaries, is not to your taste. But I have discussed IDEAS as well. E.g., see my "Was The Domination Inspired by Merseia?" article.
If you don't agree with something said by characters created by Anderson, please say so. I got the impression you sometimes disagreed with what those characters did or said. Then I or others would probably agree or disagree with you.
Sean
Kaor, Keith!
You have sometimes quoted Wikipedia, a source I don't always consider reliable. I can quote too, such as this bit from page 8 of the May 20, 2019 issue of NATIONAL REVIEW: "More than 300 Christians have been killed in Nigeria in February and March of this year, according to the Barnabas Fund, a non-denominational church-aid organization. It reports that nearly 6,000 Nigerian Christians have been killed in the past two years. Christian farmers of the Middle Belt, a region between the Muslim north and Christian south, have long been subject to attacks by Fulani Muslim herdsmen. Nigerian Christians in the north face social discrimination as well as threats of violence. President Muhammadu Buhari has issued vague promises of "permanent peace." He may be sincere, but the terrain is difficult: Some of the most vulnerable areas are sparsely populated and hard to police. While Nigerian Christians do have advocates (though never enough) among their Western co-religionists, those whose voices in the matter carry farthest are Muslim. Some do speak up. They could speak louder."
And there are so MANY other pars of the world where Christians are persecuted by Muslims! Such as recent atrocities in Sri Lanka against both Muslims and Christians, and by Buddhists against Christians and Muslims.
Sean
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