Overestimated historical states

Well you are again using primary sources on their own. Why are the sources to be trusted on their own to begin with? @John7755 يوحنا mentioned Sassanids and Abbassids, but I'd mention also the Byzantines, where did all those men go after late Antiquity? Are we to actually believe that peninsular Greece alone had the ability to provide for about as many or even more men than the Byzantine empire between the 7th and 12th century? Because that's consequence of the assumptions you make.

As other people have pointed out, there's no reason to suppose that all states throughout history could only mobilise the same proportion of their citizenry. And as for the Byzantines specifically, 7th-century Byzantium had gone through a lot of wars (against the Sassanids, Arab invasion, Slavic invasion, Lombard invasion...), which presumably would have depleted their manpower reserves quite a bit.

The Italian army in 1866 was even smaller than this supposed 250k figure, when Italy had 3-4 times the population of Roman Italy at that time. Mobilizing 5% of your population(meaning a lot of your working age male population), amassing 40% of them for one engagements is an extremely arduous task for any nation.

The Italian army in 1866 was a professional army, not a militia. And the Roman Republic was, like all pre-modern states, very rural by modern standards. Farming is one of those jobs which is very labour-intensive at certain times of the year (specifically sowing and harvesting, when you want to get everybody available to work), and much less so at other times. Yes you still need to weed the crops and so on, but you can generally afford to send a member of your family off to kill Gauls for a few weeks without much of an impact. Conversely, when you're working in a factory, production tends to be much more constant throughout the year, so having a significant portion of your workforce go off to join the army is going to affect business in a way that wouldn't happen on a farm.

The Romans spent plenty on public works, specifically in the imperial era they also had subsidies of various kinds, internal and external. Even the professional Roman army of the late principate didn't compromise all of the state expenditure(it amounted to about 60-65%) and left a lot of room for other stuff.

Public works were mostly one-offs funded with the spoils of successful campaigns, not regular expenditures. And third-century BC Republican Rome generally had fewer subsidies than Imperial Rome.

Achaemenid statistics do not work either. If we assume 49 million population at their height, an army of 2 million would comprise 4% of the total empire. Is anyone of the opinion that a massive polyglot empire, ruled by a minority of Elamo-Persians who experience frequent satrap revolts, is able to conscript 4% of their entire population? If I am not mistaken either, this would be that 2% of the world (which I do not buy that the empire possessed this much percentage of the world population) population was levied to invade Greece alone!

I don't think anybody's been suggesting that the Achaemenids sent two million men to Greece; estimates I've seen tend to be around 150-300k.

Assyria, an empire with greater militarist focus and similar population was only able to levy 90k warriors in a population of some 11 million at least, comprising an estimated .008% of the populace. If your view is that the Elamites-Persians were that superior in conscriptions than the greatest military power of the ancient near east, then there is nothing more to say.

Well, if we look at territories conquered -- not a perfect measure of military prowess, but not a bad one, either -- the Persians seem to come out far above the Assyrians. So I'm not sure that the Assyrians really can be described as the greatest military power.

Even in China, most battles in the 7th century under the Tang have less than 80k soldiers combatting. At Suiyang, the combat over this location lasted a year and the Yan forces sent 100k over an entire year to take the location! In the wars in Korea, the Tang armies are less than 40k always and the Koreans vary and are always below 50k. At Talas, the Anxi protectorate arrived with no more than 25k warriors. Is the opinion of the opposing posters, that Greek city states could levy greater numbers of soldiers than the Tang Dynasty!?

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here? The Tang undoubtedly had far greater resources than ancient Greece, but they obviously didn't mobilise all of those resources for single battles, so there's nothing strange about the idea that a Greek army in a particular battle or campaign should have been larger than a Tang army in a particular battle or campaign.
 
@Fabius Maximus

To be very short and brief, the Assyrians cleared out most of the powerful states in the region and thus left an open field for the Elamo-Persian conquest. They had only two major foes, Lydia and Media. Everyone else had been long subjugated by the Assyrians. The Achaemenid armies consistently in the east were outdone by the Scythian nomads, kept worse records of their military, had less military post positions, went in campaign less and so forth.

Assyria should be lauded too, as the first and one of the only sedentary states to have adopted heavy cavalry and horse archers. Assyria in fact, relied upon these. So no, the Elamo-Persians did not conquer more and were far, far less long lasting than the Assyro-Babylonian dual-monarchy, which lasted in its post-Bronze age phase for 420 years approximately. The Achaemenids cannot compare to this fully, even despite them attempting to appropriate essentially all Assyrian systems such as the satrap conception or communication system.
 
I would say that one example, while generally viewed with more realism here, is Japan.

Firstly, the rise of the Empire insofar as we know - and subsequently its remarkable modernization - were all the results of a series of uncertain circumstances, which while bolstered in Japan by the innate culture of the region were still in part dictated by chance and risk.

Secondly, the Empire during its reign in the earlier half of the 1900s is played up by a very substantial degree. Yes, Japan was not only a great power but an innovating one, and with both substantial population/resource wells and a cultural ethos very well suited to the mindset of modern warfare (i.e. processing heavy losses and prolonged conflict). At the same time, the state remained an effective glass cannon in terms of military, due in part to both their relative diplomatic isolation (lacking nearby friendly powers to assist them in times of conflict) and to simple poor geographic positioning with regard to short, decisive conflicts - the sort that were desires among the military ethos of the Empire. For sure, China was routinely massacred and Russia a paper tiger in the East, but any ambitions in either would lead to long, bogging conflicts; in similar vein nearly all other resourceful territory nearby was already held by colonial powers, the taking on of any of which would pose a protracted undertaking as well.

A lot of this could be solved by simply expanding in a slower fashion while consolidating existing gains (e.g. focusing on enlargening/integrating Manchuoko as a settler colony and increasing grip over Korea, leaving China alone and perhaps going for military gains in the Russian Far East mid-WWII), but to do so would still leave Japan at the mercy of the West allowing it to continue receiving oil.

If any other users here have some information as to the contrary I would be glad to learn on it, but as far as I can see Japan's remarkably vast ascendancy would be virtually impossible to stretch to its intended endpoint within the bounds of realism.
 
As other people have pointed out, there's no reason to suppose that all states throughout history could only mobilise the same proportion of their citizenry. And as for the Byzantines specifically, 7th-century Byzantium had gone through a lot of wars (against the Sassanids, Arab invasion, Slavic invasion, Lombard invasion...), which presumably would have depleted their manpower reserves quite a bit.
Nobody is saying "all states have the same capability of mobilization", literally no one, the problem is that Rome and various other ancient states would FAR exceed even states that by all measures either more centralized, more populated etc.

The Italian army in 1866 was a professional army, not a militia. And the Roman Republic was, like all pre-modern states, very rural by modern standards.
Italy was also majority rural in 1866(60% of the workforce in 1861).

Farming is one of those jobs which is very labour-intensive at certain times of the year (specifically sowing and harvesting, when you want to get everybody available to work), and much less so at other times. Yes you still need to weed the crops and so on, but you can generally afford to send a member of your family off to kill Gauls for a few weeks without much of an impact. Conversely, when you're working in a factory, production tends to be much more constant throughout the year, so having a significant portion of your workforce go off to join the army is going to affect business in a way that wouldn't happen on a farm.
This argument is so broad, it's pointless. It would apply to many agricultural societies, and yet supposedly Rome still managed to exceed mobilization rates for generations by huge margins.

Public works were mostly one-offs funded with the spoils of successful campaigns, not regular expenditures. And third-century BC Republican Rome generally had fewer subsidies than Imperial Rome.
The sources provided prior show 70% of state expenditure in the first half of the 2nd century BCE and 60-65% in the 2nd century CE, and the first figure is starting from the premise that the army numbers are right to begin with and working its way backwards, so it suffers from the same problems.

I don't think anybody's been suggesting that the Achaemenids sent two million men to Greece; estimates I've seen tend to be around 150-300k.
People could apply the same logic to you, why do you doubt the sources? Why don't you think the Achaemenids sent 1-2 million men when sources say so? I mean it's just 4-10% of their population and we established that not all states have the same mobilization capacity.
 
Last edited:
I have seen soms threads about a certain state. The state is to my idea overestimated in capabilities but people tend to forget that.

What are to you states pre-1900 that are being overestimated in what they could achieve?

Edit: could the USA conquer Canada in 1812? Or could the USA conquer and rule all of Mexico
Confederacy (CSA)
 
Nobody is saying "all states have the same capability of mobilization", literally no one, the problem is that Rome and various other ancient states would FAR exceed even states that by all measures either more centralized, more populated etc.

And people have given various reasons as to why this would plausibly be the case.

Italy was also majority rural in 1866(60% of the workforce in 1861).

Ancient Rome was around 90-95% rural. And percentage of farmers is only one of the variables -- there are also factors such as the nature of the army (professionals vs. levies raised for a specific campaign and then disbanded), the more resource-intensive nature of modern warfare (meaning you need more people working in the munitions factories, who consequently won't be available for active service), etc.

The sources provided prior show 70% of state expenditure in the first half of the 2nd century BCE and 60-65% in the 2nd century CE, and the first figure is starting from the premise that the army numbers are right to begin with and working its way backwards, so it suffers from the same problems.

It's perfectly plausible that this should be the case, because aside from warfare, ancient states didn't really do much. There were no social services as we'd understand the term (the closest was probably the grain dole in Rome, but that came later, and anyway only applied to one city rather than the whole empire), no universal education, no state health services... Even the infrastructure projects were usually for military purposes. So we should really expect the vast majority of state expenditure to be on military matters.

People could apply the same logic to you, why do you doubt the sources? Why don't you think the Achaemenids sent 1-2 million men when sources say so? I mean it's just 4-10% of their population and we established that not all states have the same mobilization capacity.

Because I don't think that ancient logistical systems would have been able to support a million-strong army, and because in many cases there literally wouldn't be room on the battlefields for all the men who were supposedly present.
 
And people have given various reasons as to why this would plausibly be the case.
Nobody did, so far the arguments have been comparing Rome to 18th and 19th century states(which apparently makes sense as a counterargument to me comparing Rome to Italy I guess? Not really), trying to indirect strenghten Polybius credibility by looking at the Messapian demographics(which could be easily countered by just looking at how Polybius gets things like battlefield casualties so comically high despite his best efforts or just by looking at how historians ultimately drop or alter any number he gives that simply does not work in any particular model they are trying to build, which is not bad but goes to show) or by looking at finances(which as far as I can see are made by making many assumptions, like the size of the army and trying to find revenue sources that would fit and estimating how high they should have been IF the army was that big, it's number crunching with the purposes of at least having some model instead of none, it's not bad but it can't be used to the preliminary assumptions themself, it's a vicious cycle)

Ancient Rome was around 90-95% rural. And percentage of farmers is only one of the variables -- there are also factors such as the nature of the army (professionals vs. levies raised for a specific campaign and then disbanded), the more resource-intensive nature of modern warfare (meaning you need more people working in the munitions factories, who consequently won't be available for active service), etc.
But Rome or ancient states are not the only ones using levies and if using levies and moving them around was that easy, people would have done it and we wouldn't be seeing the difference. It's clearly not about just about levies vs professional.

It's perfectly plausible that this should be the case, because aside from warfare, ancient states didn't really do much.
Like I already pointed out, even a scholar that starts from the assumption that Roman army were as big as primary sources state don't think the Romans spent all their revenue on the army.

Because I don't think that ancient logistical systems would have been able to support a million-strong army, and because in many cases there literally wouldn't be room on the battlefields for all the men who were supposedly present.
Well I don't think the ancient logistical system was able to support 100k-300k army+navy over such distances either with the same arguments and ultimately that's the problem, we need more data to say more about the specifics and at this point we can't yet trust primary sources uncritically even if we don't have any alternatives.
 
I have seen soms threads about a certain state. The state is to my idea overestimated in capabilities but people tend to forget that.

What are to you states pre-1900 that are being overestimated in what they could achieve?

Edit: could the USA conquer Canada in 1812? Or could the USA conquer and rule all of Mexico
In this forum the Kingdom of Hannover is quite often seen as alternate candidate to unify Germany instead of Prussia.
 
But Rome or ancient states are not the only ones using levies and if using levies and moving them around was that easy, people would have done it and we wouldn't be seeing the difference. It's clearly not about just about levies vs professional.

No; as I said, there were several factors, of which levies vs. professionals was only one.

Like I already pointed out, even a scholar that starts from the assumption that Roman army were as big as primary sources state don't think the Romans spent all their revenue on the army.

Yes, but I don't see the relevance of this? I said that ancient governments didn't do much apart from warfare, not that they didn't do anything whatsoever apart from warfare.

Well I don't think the ancient logistical system was able to support 100k-300k army+navy over such distances either with the same arguments and ultimately that's the problem, we need more data to say more about the specifics and at this point we can't yet trust primary sources uncritically even if we don't have any alternatives.

Nobody's trusting primary sources uncritically; that's why we aren't arguing for a three-million-strong Persian invasion in 480. And regarding the point about ancient logistics not being able to support an army of 100-300k, most historians studying the period seem to disagree with you. They might be wrong -- scholarly consensuses are sometimes mistaken, after all -- but I think it puts a stronger burden of proof on your position than just "I don't think this was possible".
 
Top