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ABSTRACT
Building and elaborating on the dossier’s five articles on East Africa, the Maghreb and Islamic Spain, Western Europe, the Aztec Mesoamerica, and the native American Northeast (plus Japanese and Byzantine history), this introduction discusses quandaries about comparison in the intertwined disciplines of History and Anthropology and suggests some hypotheses as to the relation between premodern warfare and religions. Side-switching was demonized (and punished as a quasi-religious sin) in Western Christianity, not so as a rule in the other societies here compared. It was ‘treason’. Sexual violence and rape was inhibited by religious conceptions in the same society, and among the natives of the American Northeast. Non-human powers might help or intervene in warfare, but there is no general pattern. As for the presence or absence of holy war, there may be correlation with the type of polity concerned. Established empires may be averse to the emergence of charismatic figures and sacral practices, as one sees with China and Byzantium. Central imperial elites may also dislike miracles, especially in offensive warfare. Evidently, while religion might shape this or that aspect of warfare, it was not the sole provider of ‘conditions of possibility’.
Acknowledgements
This dossier of articles is the derivative product of a workshop, based on pre-circulated papers, held on 19–20 May 2017 at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Vienna (Austria). It brought together a dozen scholars on the theme of religion and warfare. Vienna University’s Karin Jirik provided efficient organization. Not all workshop papers have come into the dossier, for reasons of space and/or individual participant decisions. However, some of the discussion in May 2017 on cultures are either not represented in this dossier (Japan with Mikael Adolphson, Armenia with Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Byzantium with Iannis Stouraitis) or represented by several speakers at the workshop but by only one in this dossier (Africa with Richard Rathbone; China with James Benn and Georg Lehner; Europe with Hans-Henning Kortüm) have influenced the articles including this introduction. Finally, I thank these colleagues for data and input for the introduction, to which I cannot always give detailed credit, alas. Special mention must however go to Wolfgang Gabbert, who commented several versions of this text.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Note however that Baker’s (Citation1994) argument musters the concept in the course of a conceptualization of individual events understood as individual (Foucauld’s ‘eventality’), whereas we take it in a more structuralist direction. Furthermore, we focus on just one condition to explore it, whereas ‘no list of conditions of possibility can (…) be considered logically complete’ (Baker Citation1994, 195).
2 See Asad (Citation1986).
3 That Smith replaced religion with ‘ritual’ leaves him open to his own form of critique, genealogy. See Buc (Citation2001).
4 Strathern (Citation1988, 348) explains: In my own account,
negation is meant to set up a relation between sets of ideas that are, on the one hand, the social constructs of others and, on the other, social constructs as specifically deployed in an analysis not reducible to a homology with these constructs.
5 Definition suggested by James Benn at the 2017 Vienna workshop.
6 Mead Citation1968 writes, ‘(…) the intention to kill and the willingness to die’ (emphasis mine). However, all warriors did not die willingly. Richter (Citation1992, 38) underscores how in
contrast to European notions that to perish in combat was acceptable and even honourable, Iroquois beliefs as recorded in later eras made death in battle a frightful prospect, though one that must be faced bravely if necessary. The slain, like all who perished violently, were excluded from the villages of the dead, doomed to spend a roving eternity seeking vengeance. Both in capture and in the afterlife, a person taken in combat faced perpetual separation from his family and friends.
7 Peer Vries (Citation2019), in an extended review, intensifies Osterhammel’s point, pleading for grand narratives.
8 One possible exception: Albert of Aachen (Citation2007 vi.21, 430) reports that when Jerusalem was stormed on 15 July 1099, men and women allegedly broke through the gates, helping in the fight. This gender-bending may be owed to the apocalyptic atmosphere or simply to the capture of the Holy City being the climax of the expedition. Note however that while well-informed, Albert was not a participant in the First Crusade.
9 The first information from Richard Reid; the second insight from 2017 Workshop participant Richard Rathbone.
10 Wolfgang Gabbert comments that the definition of the relevant unit(s) has to be considered. In the Precolumbian case, primary loyalty was with the city state (altepetl). Thus, relations to other city-states or the integration into a larger entity, such as the Aztec empire, for example, were always tactical and pragmatic. Claims to loyalty (that is, the expectation of not being betrayed) may be related to the level of integration of the polity(ies) involved.
11 Not to mention the issue of rape perpetrated on men, for which see among a dense recent literature Miranda (Citation2007).
12 Despite scholarly controversies, it seems that Great Plain natives did not rape either. The record for the incidents that most argue for sexual violence, in Minnesota in the 1860s, is (1) tainted, and (2) if there was rape it came as retaliation in a situation of extreme stress (categorical statement in Slotkin Citation1975, 457; references in Calloway Citation1983, 189, 202; but see Namias Citation1993). Heard (Citation1973, 98–101) documents a telling asymmetry in testimonies: other women were raped, I was not.
13 Khadduri (Citation1955, 129–132), for the jurist majority consensus against the enslavement of Muslims. But others have underlined the lack of uniformity in opinions, e.g. Landau-Tasseron (Citation2006), following Abu El Fadl (Citation1999).
14 My thanks to Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Fordham), who reminded me of the dense presence of sexual metaphors in the West.
15 For Japan, I am grateful for guidance and advice to Mikael Adolphson and Tom Conlan. I take full responsibility for errors and idiocies.
16 Some information on rape (in general, the focus is not on warfare) among Japanese warrior elites in Tonomura (Citation1999).
17 ‘Il y a un lien, une continuité, entre les relations hostiles et la fourniture de prestations réciproques: les échanges sont des guerres pacifiquement résolues, les guerres sont l’issue de transactions malheureuses’. See the comments in Sahlins (Citation2017 [1972, 2003], 166, 281), and the critique in Clastres Citation1997).
18 The Franks were Chalcedonian Christians, the Ethiopians and Armenians Miaphysite Oriental Christians (who rejected the 451 Council of Chalcedon's definition of Christ’s nature). This divergence in Christology played no role in shaping warfare, as one might a priori expect.
19 As explained by James Benn at the 2017 Vienna Workshop.
20 Chronicle of Saint Martin, Dover, deciphered by Kingsford (Citation1980) 85.
21 In Sub-Saharan West Africa, ‘Divination always preceded warfare as a matter of course as did a variety of forms of rituals that sought the approval and support of ancestors. When possible, one chose terrains and dates for combat because of their propitiousness’, Richard Rathbone, email of 9 December 2018.
22 Buresi is therefore not contrasting two areas of the Islamic world that are vastly distant from one another, as Clifford Geertz’s famous Islam observed (Citation1968). See the critique by Varisco (Citation2005).