Technology and War

From 2000 B.C. to the Present

Martin Van Creveld

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780029331538
• eBook ISBN: 9781439143971
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

In this impressive work, van Creveld considers man's use of technology over the past 4,000 years and its impact on military organization, weaponary, logistics, intelligence, communications, transportation, and command. This revised paperback edition has been updated to include an account of the range of technology in the recent Gulf War.

PART I
The Age of Tools,
from Earliest Times
to 1500 A.D.

Field Warfare

WHEN AND WHERE did technology begin? Our knowledge of any period before the invention of writing derives almost exclusively from archeological remains, and it is indeed precisely for this reason that such periods are known under the name of prehistory. To serve as the foundation of our knowledge about prehistory, tools and implements had to be made of materials sufficiently durable to survive for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. Since the most important material that can meet this requirement is stone, prehistory is commonly divided into the three Stone Ages—the paleolithic, the mesolithic, and the neolithic. Had there been, during these ages, any civilizations based mainly on tools made of materials other than stone—wood, say, or horn or bone—then in all probability we would have remained more or less ignorant of the fact.

Whatever the exact nature of the earliest tools, clearly they must have been made of natural materials, easily located in man’s immediate environment and requiring no more than a few comparatively simple operations to perform useful service. Almost certainly, the technology based upon these materials was initially unspecialized for either military or nonmilitary purposes, if indeed one may apply these terms to a period when organized warfare as we understand it may itself have been unknown. A stone hand-ax must have been equally useful for chopping food and for breaking an enemy’s head when occasion arose. Similarly a sharp flint blade could have served equally well for carving up a piece of meat and for settling a score with one’s neighbor. If the customs of stone-age peoples who have survived into the present world constitute any guide, then activities such as warfare, the pursuit of personal quarrels, hunting, and even certain kinds of ceremony and sport overlapped, with the result that the tools employed in one for the most part also served in each of the others.

The history of technology is, nevertheless, in part the development of growing specialization. Even in prehistoric times, there must have been the recognition that some tools were more suited for some purposes than for others. It is thought that, after spending a long time as a gatherer, man gradually added hunting to his activities, and it would not be unreasonable to suppose that the tools employed for this purpose—harpoons, javelins and spears of the kind still employed by primitive peoples—were sometimes directed against his fellowmen in a more or less organized manner. We need not consider whether it was warfare that gave rise to weapons or, as is sometimes asserted, weapons that were responsible for the emergence of warfare. The two probably evolved together, each one driving the other and in turn being driven by it. Limiting our attention to historical periods only, even the earliest civilizations such as are described in the Bible or in the Epic of Gilgamesh already possessed some tools that were specialized for war: weapons.

Around the year 2,500 B.C., the great Chinese, Indian, Sumerian, and Egyptian civilizations all possessed a great variety of tools, made of naturally-occurring materials, which provided the foundation of their material life. These tools for the most part were hand-held; however, pictures in Egyptian tombs also reveal important exceptions to this rule. The sledge, consisting of parallel wooden beams permanently joined at a fixed distance from each other so as to carry some heavy load, had already been invented. So had the wheel in its earliest form—namely that of rollers put between a load and the ground. Together, these inventions represented an enormous technological advance, not only because they themselves could support much heavier loads than could human backs and shoulders, but above all because they both demanded and made possible teamwork on a large scale. Organization, which very quickly grew to truly monstrous dimensions, was added to hardware and put to work in a purposeful way. As the construction of the Egyptian pyramids demonstrates, the amounts of energy that organization could make available were entirely unprecedented, indeed almost unlimited, compared to anything that went before.

Though it was surrounded by rituals and ideas about magic that would have appeared strange to our modern notions of rationality, surviving evidence in the form of weapons, drawings, and literary texts shows that organized warfare was already quite familiar to every one of the above four civilizations. Certainly there is no reason to think that military organization lagged behind its nonmilitary counterpart. Indeed, to judge by later periods in which armies often served as models for civilian institutions, the reverse may well have been the case. Though obviously not all the technologies available were suitable for military purposes, the conduct of war demanded many different tools, some of which were unique to it whereas others were also employed in other tasks. Apart from stone, the main materials in use were of vegetable or animal origin, such as wood and wickerwork for spear-shafts and shields, hides and sinews for slings, body-cover, and the like. However, it was during this period that metal in the form of copper and bronze was being introduced in the most advanced centers. Unlike stone, wood, and materials of animal origin, neither copper nor the other constituent of bronze, tin, could be found everywhere. This, plus the fact that working them into serviceable form required comparatively complex processes, caused copper and bronze to remain expensive for a long time. Initially only those implements which were considered most important for life were made of metal, weapons being among the earliest. Thus, they literally represented the cutting edge of contemporary material civilization.

By far the most important, and for a long period the only, source of energy employed in technology (apart from fire) was man himself. Muscle was applied to material in order to do work, which is why we can speak of the Age of Tools. The idea that technology might acquire its energy from sources other than man’s body almost certainly could not have occurred before the neolithic revolution of perhaps 10,000 years ago, the period in which animals were first domesticated. Even then, it would seem that millenia elapsed from the moment in which the first animal was made to keep watch or yield milk or carry a burden to the time it was harnessed to a piece of hardware. Again, the inherent limitations of archeological method prevent us from saying exactly when this took place. It is possible, however, that the first use of animal-powered technology only occurred during the first half of the third millenium B.C. when the oxcart, a clumsy wooden contraption with heavy solid wheels forming an integral part of the axis, was apparently invented in Sumer. Unlike the sledge and rollers, which in principle could be harnessed to teams of men numbering in the hundreds and even thousands, the energy that could be applied to oxcarts was strictly limited. On the other hand, the oxcart unlike men could be used to carry heavy burdens, including presumably military burdens, over comparatively long distances measured in dozens, possibly even hundreds, of kilometers. Still, by no stretch of the imagination could the oxcart be regarded as a weapon of war. For this it was far too slow, cumbersome, and vulnerable.

Some time around 1800 B.C., the next great step forward was taken and the light chariot was invented. Drawn first by asses and then by horses—access to which now became a military factor of great importance, as it was to remain for thousands of years to come—the chariot represented an immense technological advance over the oxcart. What with its spoked, hubbed wheels turning around a fixed axle, its lightness, maneuverability, and strength, it constituted a finely balanced instrument that gave its possessors a measure of mobility unattainable by any other means. A relatively complicated piece of hardware, the chariot was difficult to make, requiring specialized craftsmen whose services could only be had at a price. Consequently, chariots were expensive to own and maintain, and tended to be confined to certain segments of the population. Where ownership was private, the introduction of chariots gave rise to warrior aristocracies and, often enough, to something akin to a feudal class like the one described, anachronistically, by Homer. Where ownership was public, as in the New Egyptian Kingdom, it helped in the establishment and maintenance of a strong centralized government.

Endowing its possessors with very great mobility, especially tactical as opposed to strategic mobility, the appearance of the chariot in itself would have sufficed to revolutionize combat. In fact, however, it was not so much the chariot on its own as its combination with the bow which proved decisive. The simple wooden bow was a very old weapon which showed some important affinities with “civilian” devices used for kindling fire and for boring holes as well as with certain musical instruments. Its emergence as a specialized tool took place at some unknown time and place, and for millenia it was employed for hunting as well as for war. It so happened, however, that the rise of the chariot was soon followed by—if indeed it did not coincide with—the invention of the composite reflex bow, a very different weapon. Made of wood, sinew, and horn glued together, with each material carefully coordinated with all the others so as to yield the optimum combination of strength and flexibility, the composite bow represented as great an advance over its simple predecessor as did the breech-loading rifle over the muzzle-loading flintlock musket. Capable of firing arrows rapidly to an effective range of 200-300 yards, its power and effectiveness remained unsurpassed for several thousand years.

Regardless of whether it was the simple or the composite bow that was employed, the introduction of the chariot led to revolutionary tactical changes. Descriptions, verbal as well as pictorial, from ancient Sumer, Egypt, and Vedic India show that warfare previously had been conducted by men on foot. Their principal armament consisted of thrusting, stabbing, or slashing weapons, which for the most part demanded that the troops be packed into dense, comparatively unwieldy, blocks so as to provide mutual cover and maximize their staying power. Provided only that the terrain was open and flat, the introduction of the arrow-shooting chariot put such formations on the horns of a dilemma, compelling them to carry out two contradictory movements at once. If the infantry stayed together they would come under long-distance fire to which they had no counter, and for which, moreover, they represented an ideal target. If, on the other hand, they took the opposite course and dispersed, they would easily be overrun.

Given such a military advantage, the expansion of the chariot-riding peoples was explosive. From their point of origin in the steppes of southern central Asia, they set out in all directions. Wherever they arrived, they defeated the natives, who were driven into forest and mountain regions where the chariots could not reach. It took no more than a few centuries for Northern India, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Europe to be overrun and conquered. Thus, at this early stage in its development, technology already represented an important factor, since it was capable of determining what armed forces could do and the way in which they did things. Too, technological superiority could make a decisive contribution to victory even when the technology itself was not markedly sophisticated.

Towards the end of the second millenium B.C., the discovery of iron-smelting in what is today northeastern Anatolia gave the peoples who first mastered it a temporary military superiority. Contrasting sharply with deposits of tin, iron ore deposits are widely spread, so that access to them was relatively easy. On the other hand, extracting the metal demanded higher temperatures, hence a more sophisticated and expensive technology than did the extraction of either copper or bronze. In other respects, the appearance of iron represented an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary development. Though the new metal was useful because it was harder than the materials that it replaced and because it could be honed into a finer, longer-lasting edge, in itself it did not give rise to new kinds of weapons, let alone new sources of energy. Rather, daggers, swords, javelins, spears, and even chariots such as the ones mentioned in the Biblical Book of Judges now came to be made wholly or in part of the new material, as indeed were many implements in civilian life. Once again, the cost of iron was an important factor. If people bore the expense of using it, then the implements in question must have been considered critical to life.

Overlapping the period in which the use of metal was introduced, we find the beginning of the age of written records, or history proper. While the development of literacy was by no means linear—it even appears that there may have been places in which the art of writing was first developed, then lost, then rediscovered—by and large it led to more and more records being kept, and, in so far as some of these records have been preserved, to an enormous increase in our knowledge. As we progress in time, both military and nonmilitary technology on the whole tend to stand forth in greater and greater detail.

By 600 B.C., at the very latest, the most important weapons which in their endless combinations were destined to dominate warfare during the next two millenia had been invented and were in widespread use. Whatever the culture we look to—in Europe, the Middle East, Southeast or East Asia—we find ourselves confronted with a broadly similar array of weapons, a fact which indeed is not surprising since, after all, they were all based upon broadly similar raw materials and employed roughly the same sources of energy. Although some of the most highly developed peoples, such as the Persians, and some of the most primitive ones, such as the Britons, clung to the chariot until 300 B.C. and 50 A.D. respectively, on the whole it was on its way out. As a means of attaining battlefield mobility, it was replaced by cavalry in the form of horses and, in certain geographical areas, camels. Cavalry was more economical in manpower than chariots, since the same man could ride and fight at the same time. It was also more mobile, hence to some extent able to overcome the greatest drawback of chariots, namely their total inability to operate in anything but the most suitable terrain.

Throughout the Old World, the most advanced defensive devices carried by both horsemen and foot soldiers were now made wholly or partly of metal, even though leather, quilt, wood, and even wickerwork continued in widespread use as inexpensive substitutes. Out of these materials were made body armor, shields, helmets, greaves, etc., manufactured in an enormous variety of types and shapes and often decorated in outrageous forms in order to terrify the enemy. Battlefield offensive weapons were similarly limited. They consisted almost exclusively of the mace, ax, dagger, sword, spear, pike, lance, javelin, and dart, each of them again produced in an almost infinite variety of forms and reflecting not only different tactical requirements but also cultural traditions of every sort.

For long-range work all these cultures were limited to the sling and, increasingly, to the various kinds of bow, ranging from the simple through the composite to the crossbow. Around the time of Christ, the last-named device seems to have been familiar both in China and the Greco-Roman world, although in the latter it seems to have been lost and had to be reinvented in the Middle Ages. Some of the weapons could be used both by foot soldiers and by cavalry, whereas others were limited to foot soldiers only. All of them were already specialized for war and were clearly differentiated from nonmilitary implements, although obviously in many cases considerable areas of overlap existed.

Although the array of weapons available was thus relatively modest, the number and variety of different styles of warfare that they made possible was truly astonishing. As circumstances differed greatly from one place to another, a tendency towards regional and national specialization soon appeared. A single dominant military technology, such as has characterized the modern world since about 1500, did not emerge, though clearly some combinations were more effective than others. Around 500 B.C., Cretans, Greeks, Romans, Gauls, Nubians, Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Chinese, to mention but a few, each had their own favorite weapons and hence a distinct way of fighting battles. Almost two millenia later, the same still applied to peoples such as the Chinese, Mamluks, Byzantines, and West Europeans, some of whom showed further sharp regional differences. While this lack of uniformity was partly the outcome of difficult long-distance communications, clearly this was not the only factor involved. Even where daily communications did exist, as for example between Christians and Moslems in medieval Spain, the normal result was not the triumph of one style over another but the appearance of fresh and even more complex combinations. This was what happened, for example, when the Greeks began employing cavalry, light infantry, and archers to support their hoplites after about 400 B.C., and also when the Persian kings started incorporating Greek mercenaries with their distinctive armaments into their forces.

The Eurasian continent as a whole could be divided into three huge divisions—eastern, central, and western. During the age broadly known as antiquity, and indeed ever since, the most advanced sedentary peoples were located along the littoral of this mass where the combination of large rivers with a semi-arid climate both demanded and permitted the establishment of strongly governed “hydraulic” civilizations. Where there were rivers there was water transport. Where water transport existed, it was possible to engage in exchange and commerce on a massive scale, and also to build the first cities. China on the one hand, and the Mediterranean world on the other, took to foot warfare and the heavy metal-made arms and armor that it demanded, cavalry being regarded as an auxilliary arm though often an important, even decisive, one. In the center, however, where rivers were comparatively few, the spaces immense and terrain often open, a more nomadic style of life prevailed for centuries after it had turned into a marginal form of existence elsewhere. Such a lifestyle being incompatible with sophisticated, hence heavy, technology, the superiority of the horse-and-composite-bow combination was such that it has lasted until comparatively recent times. Although violent shifts in the borders between the three areas could and did take place in both directions, on the whole the division between them remained remarkably stable, itself an indication that no single military technology was capable of attaining absolute dominance. Thus, whenever the Romans had to operate in the open desert or in forests, they found that there were limits to their power, limits that went far to govern the extent of their empire. Conversely, attacks by nomads on densely populated, urban civilizations were for the most part confined to border raids.

To focus on the Mediterranean world, ancient field-warfare as described by Xenophon, Polybius, Julius Caesar, Josephus, or Ammianus Marcelinus, was a complex affair making use of many different arms and weapons. In both Greece and Rome the core of the army was formed by heavy infantry protected by metal body armor, helmets, and shields. The Greek phalangists’ principal offensive weapon was the spear or the pike, the sword playing no more than an auxilliary role. What made the Roman legionaries so effective, however, was their reliance on a combination of javelins and swords. This put the enemy in an almost impossible position, since it made it equally dangerous to close the ranks or open them. At the beginning of their development, both types of formations—the phalanx and the legion—appear to have fought largely on their own. Later they came to be supported by auxilliaries that either were drawn from the lower socio-economic classes or belonged to allied nationalities. Grouped into their own units, these auxilliaries were armed with a variety of long-distance weapons such as bows, slings, and sometimes darts. Both light and heavy cavalry were employed to achieve tactical mobility, the heavy cavalry often covered with scale armor and armed with swords and lances. Beginning in the fourth century B.C. field warfare also made limited use of mechanical engines.

Occasionally during this period in history, one side or another was able to introduce a new device to which the other side had no reply. On the whole, however, such advanced Mediterranean peoples as the Greeks, the Romans, and the Carthaginians attained very similar technological levels. The complexity of much ancient combat meant that victory was less a question of obtaining superiority in any single weapon than of coordinating the various technologies in such a way as to mask their respective weaknesses and bring out their respective strengths. This, in turn, required a properly articulated organization as well as commanders who understood their business. Over time, this worked in favor of the more varied, complex, flexible technologies which prevailed over simple, more homogeneous ones. One good example is provided by the Macedonian armies, with their combination of phalangists and peltasts and heavy and light cavalry beating their Greek opponents. Subsequently the Roman legions, with their joint use of shock and fire, were able to defeat the simpler shock-oriented Hellenistic forces.

The balance between infantry and cavalry in the Mediterranean began to change in the fourth century A.D., the battle of Adrianople (378) forming a clear turning point. By the time of Justinian and Belisarius, around the middle of the sixth century, the principal strength of the Byzantine army had come to consist of its horse archers employing their typical hit and run, “swarming” tactics. Two and a half centuries later, even peoples such as the Franks, who had previously fought exclusively on foot, had taken to horse and turned into cavalrymen, although of a different type. We do not know the exact stages by which cavalry managed to win its dominance over foot soldiers. Undoubtedly many different factors were involved, technology being but one of them. Modern authors, however much they may differ in detail, are united in their opinion that, sometime between 500 and 1000 A.D., the stirrup and the high saddle—both of them originating in the peoples of the steppes and neither of them representing military technology, properly speaking—spread to Europe. Add the horseshoe, the origin of which is simply unknown, and the ascent of cavalry over the ancient infantry becomes at least understandable.

As the term “the age of chivalry” suggests, the high Middle Ages in Europe—and, for that matter, in the Middle East—were dominated by the horse to an extent unprecedented before or since. The population was divided into two classes, those who foug...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• LIST OF ACRONYMS
• Introduction
• PART I: The Age of Tools from Earliest Timesto 1500 A D
• PART II: The Age of Machines 1500 1830
• PART III: The Age of Systems 1830 1945
• PART IV: The Age of Automation 1945 to the Present
• Conclusions The Logic of Technology and of War
• Index