I objected mildly to what I saw as a sense of anachronism in the concept of the KoW as "the War Machine gone awry" (to quote Mark Smylie's original post of 10/31). Nick Brooke reminds me that anachronisms may be desirable in Glorantha; I agree that they are inevitable, but purely as a matter of individual taste try to avoid them when I can. Others' tastes may of course differ, and I see no reason for dispute here. Mark Smylie kindly presents the full citation for the Deleuze/Guattari article from which he derived the basic concept; he also gives a learned discussion of the piece's contents. Alas, the library here does not have _A Thousand Plateaus_, and given the razoring it got in the _Journal of Interdisciplinary History_ I don't feel inclined to use up my ILL allotment requesting it. If Mark believes it has something valid to say about the pre-modern world, I will defer to his judgment (though he has not made this strong a claim as yet). But I must admit to some private doubt that one can use Dumezil to show that "the war machine is exterior to the State apparatus" in any historically meaningful sense; that would require a monograph (or a mountain of monographs) dealing with the apparatus of individual states and their 'war machines' at specific points in time. And , of course, wide reference to pre-modern societies in an article does not ensure that the authors have anything but the modern world in mind. Indeed , the approach of some post-modernist thinkers to historical evidence is every bit as anachronistic as that of enlightenment figures who saw history as 'philosophy, teaching by example.'
Leaving the Deleuze/Guattari article to one side, there is an element to Mark's thesis that does seem anachronistic to me--the idea that the fundamental threat the KoW poses to Loskalm is the possibility that the strain of warfare may transform the Idealists into a doppelganger of their enemies. To my mind (and this may be a very idiosyncratic reaction) this is simply to transfer to Glorantha ideas that were widely mooted about the possible fate of the Western democracies during the Cold War. This is why I linked Mark's thesis to the late-twentieth-century idea of the 'National Security State'. Here I think that I've been misunderstood; to judge from Mark's recent comments ("To simply say that the concept of "the State" only applies to the nation-state strikes me as too narrow") and his excursus on Loskalm as a nation-state he read 'nation-state' for my 'National Security State'. They are, of course, different concepts.
I admit to a degree of hyperbole in my description of the meager complexity of culture (as Mark has taught me to phrase it) attributed to the KoW in earlier posts (i.e., pre 2:191). Mark challenges my remarks about the KoW's culture at length, but I think that recent posts have shown that I was perhaps not as far off as he suggests. Clearly, there is a faction ( now ably championed by Nick Brooke and Marin Laurie) that opposes the development on-list of the non-martial details of the KoW. I am not entirely sure whether they believe that all aspects of life in the KoW revolve around warfare, or they just don't want discussion that would tend to 'humanize' the KoW, to use Nick's phrase. Either way, this approach to the KoW does tend to make it into something resembling the bellator's creation that I argued against. Of course, as Mark's recent disagreement with Nick shows, Mark doesn't share this 'martial details only' approach to the Kingdom of War. In fact, I agree with many of the ideas that Mark has proposed for the KoW's culture; they are not the sort of thing that I was arguing against. Nor was I arguing against 'military culture' as one finds it described in Hale; he is discussing the special 'subculture' of Renaissance soldiers (IIRC), not arguing that Renaissance society centered solely on the military, or that we should only describe the martial element in Renaisance culture.
I can't agree, though, with Mark's assertion (contra my complaints) that
discussion of the KoW must begin with its militarism and reason back from
that. True, G:GCotHW does say little about the KoW and what it does say
emphasizes warfare. But while we must take the KoW's militarism into
account, we need not focus on it exclusively or base all of our reasoning
on it. As recent discussion on the list has shown, one can begin fleshing
out the KoW by choosing a terrestrial society which 'seems right' according
to taste and borrowing and adapting elements from it to fit. I too have
reservations about the Ottomans as a template for the KoW, but I'd be
willing to accept them *if* we lift not only the devshirme but other things
like the complex system of cadastral surveys (the tahrirs), or the unique
kanun law--and if a poet is a friend of Lord Death&, as Baki was a friend
of Suleiman the Magnificent. Alternatively, we can couple the emphasis
that G:GCotHW places on booty with Timothy Reuter's insights in "Plunder
and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire" to suggest that perhaps the KoW
resembles Carolingian Francia, and develop other elements of its society
from that analogy. Or we could take David Cheng's suggestion, and assume
that many aspects of life in the KoW are distorted versions of the culture
that prevailed in the region before the Ban (Orlanthi? Hsunchen?) and
'mutate' this template into a form that seems fitting. Whichever route we
take, there is plenty of opportunity to discuss aspects of the KoW that
have little to do with its militarism--if we are willing to.
In fact, though, I doubt if much of this development will take place. My
impression is that the posters who dislike the 'martial elements only'
approach are largely people who do not use the KoW in their own campaigns,
and thus have little incentive to develop the entity. Some ignore the KoW
because their campaigns are set far from the region and thus they don't
need it. Others, like me, dislike the KoW and have dropped it. Recent
ruminations about the Kingdom's pivotal role in the Hero Wars don't move me
to re-introduce the KoW to my campaign (set in Jonatela) as I don't use the
Hero Wars either (Imagine there's no Argrath/It's easy if you try). The
reason I'm attracted to RQ Glorantha is that it works very well for what in
other systems might be called 'low level' campaigns, where nobody saves the
world or becomes king (much less a god) by his own hand. Others doubtless
prefer different types of gaming. I have to wonder though, from reading
the digest--how many campaigns really get very far into the Hero Wars?
Clearly, some are set centuries earlier. And in all the speculation about
how Loskalm will fare against the KoW, I've yet to read a post which says:
'Well, in our campaign Loskalm trounced them nicely by 1632.' I'd expect
to read something like that (or its opposite) if people were really playing
out the Hero Wars. Maybe we need a 'When are We Setting Our Campaigns' to
parallel the geographical survey.
Apologies for the length of this, but I'm responding to several longish posts (8 Digests in 2 days!).
Jonas Pope
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