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Introduction
Researching an earlier book about White Russian officers who fought against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War, 1917ā1921,1 found in thousands of letters and published writings almost no evidence of any formalized political thought, no idea of what these officers would do with political power if ever they won it. One word did, however, appear again and againāchestā. Honour. The Whitesā resistance to Bolshevism, I gradually realized, was much less about any specific material goal than about a desire to restore outraged honour.2 That discovery impelled me to find out whether the Whites were unique. They were not. Honour and war are inseparable.
This book explores, through seven case studies, how honour has affected the causes, conduct, and ending of wars in the Western world over the last three thousand years. Each chapter looks at nine aspects of the relationship between honour and war in the era in question, namely: honour and virtue; honour as a cause of war; honour as a motivation for fighting; honours and rewards; honour and death; honour and the conduct of war; honour and the enemy; honour and the ending of war; and honour and women.
The case studies are all of Western societies. This is not because the experiences described in this book are unique to the West. Ancient China, for instance, had a code of chivalry. There are stories of Chinese commanders refusing to attack an enemy when he was disadvantaged crossing a river, and of charioteers helping enemy soldiers extricate stuck chariots to make their escape, on the grounds that it was dishonourable to attack an enemy who was helpless. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Russian warfare was influenced by a unique honour system known as mestnichestvo, and Russian nobles often refused to fight if subordinated to commanders of less prestigious ancestry. Honour also played an enormous role in the behaviour of Japanese soldiers during the Second World War, as seen in their attitude towards surrender, their treatment of enemy prisoners, and the tactics of the kamikaze. There is insufficient space in one book to do justice to so many cultures and eras. Instead, this book will trace one cultural strand from the beginning of the Western tradition to today.
Defining honour
The relationship between war and honour is full of tensions and contradictions which make it difficult to generalize. To understand why, it is necessary at this point to digress into an examination of what āhonourā is.3
Every human society wishes to prosper, and so rewards or āhonoursā those who succeed, in order to encourage others to do likewise.4 Societies also honour the display of those virtues which they consider conducive to success. At a third remove, individuals desire the marks of honour as ends in themselves, divorced from their original social function. This disconnect between the social and personal purposes of honour lies at the heart of many of the tensions within honour systems.
Definitions of honour normally split it into two types: external and internal. One behaves honourably either in order to win the praise of others or to live up to oneās own standards of correct behaviour. In the first case, honour is similar to words such as reputation, prestige, face, and name. In the second case, it is closer to conscience or integrity.5 Ideally, the two sorts of honour create the same demands, and individual morality coincides with what society desires and rewards. Often, however, the actions or virtues which win public repute oppose the demands of conscience. That said, oneās conscience is in part a product of external influences, and in return, social norms are influenced by individual ideals. Honour, therefore, never quite corresponds to either external honour alone or internal honour alone. The two necessarily co-exist, and are in constant dialogue with one another.6
External honour is marked by rewards which set those who win them apart from others. Honour in this sense becomes synonymous with precedence.7 Concern for precedence often results in belligerence. One loses precedence to anyone who insults one, so there is pressure to respond forcefully; this deters insulting behaviour, and thus acts as a form of para-legal protection of peoplesā rights. For this reason, one definition of honour is as āthe right to respectā,8 and honour systems often flourish where official legal protection of rights is poor. All too often this results in people associating honour with violent defence of their reputation rather than with practising virtue.
In war, these contradictory ideas of honour have a complex impact. To win a battle, it helps to possess certain specific virtuesācourage, strength, loyalty to oneās comrades, a sense of duty, patriotism, and so on. As a result, the possession of those virtues is considered honourable, and they are inculcated into fighters, so that they become internally enforceable. Once a man has internalized them, though, he will often obey the dictates of the code of honour even when this is in neither his nor his societyās interests. He will fight in such a way as to preserve his personal sense of honour rather than to win. At the same time, his society will continue to value and honour those who do win, and in consequence, other men may ignore the code of honour and behave in a dishonourable way as a shortcut to victory. Honour will thus simultaneously encourage fighters both to maintain and to discard the rules of honourable conduct.
Honour and virtue
Each of the seven case studies which follow looks first at the virtues associated with honour in the period in question. The four virtues of prowess, courage, loyalty, and truthfulness form the unchanging core of military honour, although, as later chapters will show, other virtues have also been prized to varying degrees in different erasāobedience, discipline, observance of religious ritual, respect for women, duty, service, mercy, generosity, and prudence, among others. Of all these, the prime virtue is prowess, a combination of physical strength and skill with a weapon. To be of use, though, prowess must be coupled with courage and with loyalty. Soldiers rely on each othersā protection, and military cultures stress the virtue of loyalty to oneās colleagues, and, at a higher level, to oneās friends and allies. As for truthfulness, soldiers need to be able to trust one another if they are to operate effectively. In fact, enemies also need to be able to trust one another, at least on certain matters such as the fulfilment of the terms of peace treaties.9
Many societies create formal codes of behaviour which prescribe how to display the approved virtues. Unfortunately, in yet another complication, this means that honour can derive from rigid obedience of the code even when it is unhelpful or even clearly wrong. Established ācodes of honourā suffer from another defect, which is that they are products of past experience and social structures, as well as of past war-fighting techniques. As a result, they are often obsolete at the start of new wars. People will follow them still because they have been trained to do so, but the consequences may be at odds with practicality.
Honour and the causes of war
The numerous theories explaining mankindās propensity to wage war draw attention to two main types of motives: emotional and psychological onesāsuch as some innate inclination to violence; and material onesāthe desire for safety and for profit.10
The pursuit of honour fits into both categories. The desire for honour is at one level an urge inherent in human nature, and at another something worth pursuing for the advantages that it brings. This is why questions of honour are so commonly present at the start of wars. It is, in fact, striking how regularly the rhetoric for war includes calls to protect both national security and national honour.11
Honour may be seen as a mechanism for validating self-worth. Questions of honour strike at oneās very identity, and this is why they are so important. If honour is lost, identity is annihilated.12 To restore oneās sense of self, it can be worth risking death in a test of arms. Personal and national honour also serve a practical purpose. If one acquires a reputation for weakness and cowardice, future attacks on oneās person become more likely. Honour and security are, therefore, linked.
Honour in the sense of precedence is another driver of conflict.13 As people, institutions, and nations compete to excel and to gain precedence over one another, some will use all means, including force, to achieve their objectives. Those whom they subdue will in turn resent their loss of status and use whatever means they can to regain it. Sensitivity to insult is also dependent on security. Those who feel insecure are more likely to respond violently to attempts to denigrate them.14
The search for precedence encourages people to take risks in order to stand out from the crowd and acquire glory. In societies which feel insecure and in which war is a fairly normal phenome...
