Naldiin
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Book Project Snippet II (11/8/2022
🕑 Added 2022-11-09 02:13:01 +0000 UTCAs promised, here is this week's snippet of the book project.
This snippet actually follows quite closely on the first and is part of what we call a 'literature review.' A literature review is the part of an academic work which seeks to situation the present work with respect to previous scholarship: who are you building on, contracting, adjacent to, etc. The literature review both ideally demonstrates your mastery of the topic, that you have read and understood the arguments and research that have gone before well enough to now participate, and also to catch the reader up to speed on any ongoing debates.
In my case, I've opted (I did this in the diss. too, it worked so I'm keeping it) to structure the literature review as two 'answers' to the question of why Rome was so successful, which provides me an opportunity to both set up those answers (showing I grasp the scholarship) and then knock them down to create space for my new, different answer.
The two previous 'answers' I identified were, broadly, the Roman-aggression-argument (Rome won because it was more aggressive, ruthless and just plain mean) and the Roman manpower argument (Rome won because it had larger reserves of cheap, expendable manpower). This snippet is thus me setting up the 'Roman aggression' argument and then taking a trip through warfare theory to show why Roman bellicosity is both unlikely to be the right answer (because you'd expect convergence in a system of interstate anarchy) and then that in fact this is the case (because all Mediterranean powers were very bellicose). IN practice that means lining up a bunch of older ancient historians and then clubbing their books to death with a mix of Azar Gat (on warfare theory generally) and Arthur Eckstein (on Mediterranean interstate anarchy in particular).
This is the sort of section which could run forever, but ought to be kept short - the goal is to get the job done and get out, since this isn't the focus of my argument but merely a roadblock which must be removed on the way there.
Comments
Aaron
I feel like I got cut off in the middle of a good read. Pre-orders are standing by.
Naldiin
Bellicose in this context doesn't mean 'organized for war more efficiently' but literally 'liked war more and did more of it.' The argument that is being made, to borrow a line I quote in the snippet, is that Rome had an "unusually pronounced willingness to use violence against alien peoples." To put it one way, the difference then is that the Roman bellicosity argument suggests that Rome wins because it was a wolf in a land of sheep - the only polity playing the empire game 'to win.' By contrast, I argue Rome was the fiercest wolf in a world of wolves: *everyone* was playing the empire game 'to win,' trying to push their mobilization systems to maximum efficiency, Rome was merely the best at it.
Adam
Maybe this is something of a semantic issue, but what exactly is the difference between the arguments of "Rome was militarily successful because it was more warlike than its neighbors" And "Rome was militarily successful because it was more efficiently organized to mobilize its resources for its wars than its neighbors"? In either case, the pressures of interstate anarchy in the broader Mediterranean and the security dilemma it produced incentivizes states to become aggressive, efficient conquerors, if only to acquire the land, population, and wealth they need to ward off other states doing the same thing. But becoming an aggressive, efficient conqueror isn't some vague thing that just sort of happens. That state needs to have mechanisms to arm and organize its manpower to form armies, it needs to have social structures to lead and supply them, it might even want to train and organize them in some particular fashion. It needs to do that better than the potential rivals so it can win its wars and acquire that territory, manpower, and consequent wealth. At least to the total amateur here, "X society was more warlike and bellicose" just seems to be a shorthand and somewhat vague formation of "X society has created organizational structures that are better than others for directing that society's energies towards martial pursuits". Am I missing something?
