Talk:Endemic warfare

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Additional information and associated task forces: This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-Class status: Referencing and citation: not checked Coverage and accuracy: not checked Structure: not checked Grammar: not checked Supporting materials: not checked To fill out this checklist, please add the following to the template call: <!-- B-Class-1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations. --> |B-Class-1=yes/no <!-- B-Class-2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. --> |B-Class-2=yes/no <!-- B-Class-3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. --> |B-Class-3=yes/no <!-- B-Class-4. It is free from major grammatical errors. --> |B-Class-4=yes/no <!-- B-Class-5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. --> |B-Class-5=yes/no This article is not currently associated with a task force. To tag it for one or more task forces, please add the task force codes from the template instructions to the template call.

It should be noted that 'Kalahari Bushmen' are "Band society" instead of "tribal society", and that difference might have something to do with subsistence and organization (tribe vs. band, agriculture vs. foraging).

What about early Japanese Samurai Society before the late sixteenth century?. I am honestly not sure about this, but it seems a good example of high threshold endemic warfare. It was constant clan warfare between various rival factions, though the country has been an empire for an incredibly long time (a thousand years or five thousand depending on who you ask) it hadn't actually been ruled by said Emperor in five hundred years or so by the late sixteenth cuntury and hadn't had a controlled by a Shogunate in a couple hundred. The Various Samurai clans were in a state of constant fratricidal warfare. Samurai Society was clearly a warrior Society despite its extreme level of advancement and cultural refinement, but the fighting could not be be considered low threshold in any case. The battles were highly ritualized yes, but some were quite large, involving thousands (or arguably tens of thousands) of men. Even in the smaller battles invloving hundreds or even dozens of men the battles were not low threshold since they always involved ritualized single combat to the death on a large scale. Since the ritual for honourable combat involved however many men figting one on one until one side had killed off the other side (usually the larger army, though subterfuge, spies and the ability to choose favorable terrain were factors, then as know). This seems to me a clear example of high intensity endemic warfare among a warrior people, but I am not an expert and wouldn't know where to start in adding citable facts on the point. It is an interesting side note that a more capable contributor might look into, I Don't think that adding an internal link on the Sengoku Period would be a problem though.Colin 8 18:50, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree -- the Sengoku period should not be on here. I'm not too familiar with Japanese history, but that was ... well, real warfare. --GenkiNeko 19:24, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio

Most of this edit by user 89.102.140.194 appears to be a copyvio from this website.

I don't have time to pursue this matter further at the moment, I think I will simply delete the offending material for the time being. Gatoclass 19:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV

This article is biassed towards describing tribal warfare as ritualized and less lethal than modern warfare; e.g., the first paragraph states that "Endemic warfare is often highly ritualized to minimise fatalities". This view is rejected by many scholars who have studied tribal warfare, including works by scholars in the list of references in this article. E.g. Keeley argues in his monograph "War before civilization", listed in the references, that tribal warfare was often much more lethal than modern warfare, as far as death tolls are viewed against total polulation size. This problem needs to be addressed, and hence I added the POV tag. --213.139.161.102 (talk) 14:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree, although tribal warfare certainly was ritualized and had strong connections to spirituality, it wasn't to reduce casualty's. In many cases the rituals were preformed before battle to ask the "spirits" for victory. In some cases it did, however, prevent a group of people from ganging up on one person as this was perceived as very dishonorable and could wave the deal that was made with the spirits/gods/what have you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.159.193.94 (talk) 07:08, 4 February 2008 (UTC)