March 2024 Research Update

Amici! it is now April!

Indeed, it is April 1st, but you need not fear any sort of April Fools humor in this update. I have nothing against it, per se, but find most April Fools online content unfunny and tiresome. That said, I will note that, in what has become a tradition, r/Askhistorians is doing their usual thread by LEONIDAAAS ("THIS IS MY INDOOR VOICE") which is generally hilarious and Drachinifel's April Fools bit is also pretty funny.

In terms of research work in March, my main focus was on finishing my chapter on the military equipment of pre-Roman Spain for the book project and then starting the next chapter. I had initially planned to do the "Supply Costs" chapter (covering food and animal costs generally) next, in part because it should be a relatively lighter and easier chapter to write, but having worked through the pre-Roman Spanish equipment chapter, I found my head was more in that space and so moved the "Mobilizing Barbarians" (read: military mobilization among non-state peoples) chapter up and am now working on that, though I haven't necessarily gotten very far.

Compared to the other mobilization chapters, "Mobilizing Barbarians" is a bit different, because the topic and the evidence are quite different. For Carthage, the Hellenistic states and Rome, I can discuss specific institutions in a fair amount of detail, outlining the interactions of soldier pay, military settlers, mercenaries, alliances and so on. But for the 'barbarians,' I'm both 1) dealing with not one state but a huge number of tiny polities (some tribes/clans, some chiefdoms, a few proto-city-states), which in turn 2) provide far less evidence, because not one of these societies leaves a literary record in their own language.

Consequently, I have to effectively retreat into 'models' to discuss the political-military organization of these societies. The basic model I want to outline is one where you have small communities with local 'big men' whose power is informal but often backstopped by personal military retinues (the Romans often read these as clients, which is by no means wrong), with larger 'tribal' armies summoned by calling on these fellows as well as a broader concept of ethnic solidarity. The key distinction here is that military power, rather than being concentrated (monopolized) in a state (for a polity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force is the classic definition of a state) is instead split up between these various 'big men,' some of whom conveniently show up in our sources quite clearly.

That in turn means the structures of military power in these societies are not systematized, but rather ad hoc: individual Gauls or Spaniards maintain their own weapons and come to fight when the 'big men' whose informal networks of patronage and power call on them. Early Roman warfare worked essentially the same way, though by the 380s at the latest, Rome has shifted to a centralized, state-run mobilization system. The ad hoc nature explains how you can get charismatic leaders who can form jumbo-sized polities that can wield a lot of military power (Indibilis and Mandonius, Vercingetorix, and Viriathus all come immediately to mind), but whose polities collapse the moment they are removed (because the power was personal, not institutional).

Fortunately for me, there's a fair bit of both general anthropological literature on these non-state military structures generally (Azar Gat has a long section on them in War in Human Civilization on which I plan to lean) as well as sustained study in the Gallic and Celt-Iberian context. The tricky thing, of course, with any model is that a model is general: it is only going to describe any given society imperfectly. In this case, I will certainly have to note that the Iberians may, perhaps, fit the least into this; Saguntum, an Iberian town (whose capture triggers the Second Punic War) sure seems to be a city-state, rather than a non-state community, at least as its government is described in our sources (with a Senate and elected leaders).

The key argument takeaway being advanced here, though, are the limits of this kind of mobilization: this sort of personalistic, ad hoc but deeply traditional mobilization rooted in clan/tribe/ethnic identity can be very intensive: you can get a really big slice of a society's resources under arms this way. But it struggles to be very extensive: the personalistic bonds that keep the army together don't extend very far, so these tend to be small, fragmented polities. Establishing a larger polity would mean forming a state with formal institutions. Instead, we see occasionally these fragile, ephemeral proto-states organized around charismatic leaders. That's a process which can turn into a state if those charismatic leaders can solidify their hold, but of course none of ours do because they all end up fighting the Romans and losing.

Rome's presence is on the one hand, driving state formation patterns (tribes group up under charismatic leaders or central resisting towns (like Numantia) to try to stop the Romans), but on the other hand, the fact that the Romans keep winning means they are effectively strangling the proto-states in their cribs. It's outside the scope of my book, but of course once Rome stops expanding, the state-forming pressure it creates is going to produce larger and larger tribal confederations on the Rhine and the Danube, eventually resulting in real security problems for the Romans (since these larger polities are more dangerous).

In any case, that's where we are with chapter writing. I hope to have this chapter done ideally by the end of this month but in practice probably some time next month.

In addition to that, the campus visit mentioned last time happened; these are always a big disruption in my writing schedule but of course worth it if it results in a tenure-track job. The department seems really good (very collegial, well-organized) and the campus is also nice. They seemed excited to have me visit and I think I did what I needed to with the various elements of the visit (interviews, the job talk, the teaching demo), but of course they'll have at least 2 if not 3 other candidates visiting, so we'll see what happens. I may not get an answer from them for another few weeks.

Given the progress on the book project, if I were to receive a job offer, it will probably mean some disruptions to ACOUP updates over the summer and in the fall, because of course moving cross-country to start a new job would be a big disruption, but I don't want to slip book deadlines and something will have to give. I'll keep you all posted if that becomes necessary and will see if I can't give those of your supporting my research here some sort of better updates if that does happen (now that the book is under contract, I'm not sure I can drop chunks of it for you without having the publisher check off on it - something to ask).

Final note for the month, the Foreign Policy piece I mentioned last time, "The History Crisis is a National Security Crisis" did, in fact, come out on time and prompted a lot of very welcome discussion. In particular, Craig Bruce Smith and Jon Mikolashek (both of the Joint Advanced Warfighting School at National Defense University (a PME institution)) discussed the article on their podcast and raised some valid additional points (particularly about how history departments are, perhaps, not currently well-configured to capitalize on the security needs I outlined, which is true).

And that was March! On to April and hopefully getting this chapter on non-state mobilization done (and also teaching my classes and also writing my blog and also...). Oh, and I promise this month we will actually finish Legion-and-Phalanx on ACOUP!