The Origins of War

January 5, 2010

Here is something that tells a little why there were wars in ancient times. It is a story that one of our great journalists, Tom Ricks, told to Fareed Zakaria. Ricks picked it up from the book Bugles and a Tiger, by John Masters, a 1956 memoir of a British officer with a Gurkha regiment in Waziristan in the 1930s. As Ricks tells it, At the end of a war, Afghans confronted Masters and angrily asked him,

"Where are our medals?"

He said,

"Well, you were the enemy."

They said,

"No, no. You gave medals to the Pashtuns on your side. We want our medals, too. You couldn't have had a good war without us."

In other words, they looked upon war as something more than a horror to be avoided if possible. War to them was a pleasurable challenge. It was something to take up when the opportunity presented itself. Among ancient tribal peoples coming into contact with one another there would be a quickness to war against each other rather than drawn out discussions to understand the other sides point of view and some kind of an agreement to avoid war.

As late as the beginning of the 20th century in Europe there were people in high places who believed that war was an exhilarating drama. And there were those who believed that it built character and made a society strong. Teddy Roosevelt was among them -- no matter the some wars in the 19th century, including the U.S. Civil War.

The First World War changed a lot of minds. So did the Second World War and the development of the atomic bomb.

Now to my original article

In ancient times, hunter-gatherers commonly called themselves "the people." This suggests that they considered outsiders not quite people. They had no science to draw from in classifying who was human and who was not, or what was human. Outsiders could be evil spirits, or at least intent on doing evil. The intentions of outsiders were suspect. The outsiders might raid, taking what little food they had stored or a woman or child. The ancient world was not yet well tied together by communications. Different societies did not know one another and had not worked out agreements. And where neighbors knew neighbors, disrespect was likely. "The people" were not inclined to respect the differences of others.

Hunter-gatherers were untroubled by grandiose questions about how things could or should be. They were concerned about how things were. They had gods that performed magic, and evil spirits were about. The gods had not filled the minds of different peoples with the same rules. A society could defend itself from violence only by a counter violence. Ancient tribal societies, especially nomadic societies, which frequently came upon other societies, were warrior societies. Men wanted to be good at warfare to be respected.

Men exercised their skills as warriors by raiding. Beyond raiding, battles among tribal people were fought. People have gone to war believing that sickness or disease among them was caused by a member or members of another society having cast an evil spell on them. Or tribal people went to war merely because two societies of strangers had come upon one another. We have knowledge of a tribe coming upon another tribe in 19th century Eastern Africa, the men of each side in ranks, posturing with their weapons and making threatening gestures, the women watching from the sidelines, cheering them on.

The nature of war changed when tribes on the move saw advantage in holding ground and exploiting those they came upon -- a change from raiding to conquest. With this, empire was born. A local ruler, if he survived conquest, might become a tool of the conqueror, collecting taxes and controlling the locals for the conquerors.

to "Primal Religion and Civilizations"

Book

Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine, by Peter Garnsey, 1997