Conquest (military)
Military conquest refers to the use of armed force to dominate an adversary and assert control over them, typically involving organized groups such as nations, tribes, or city-states. This practice has been a consistent aspect of human civilization, with its roots tracing back to early agricultural societies, where the development of settled life and specialized labor led to the emergence of professional armies. Motivations for military conquest can vary widely, from personal disputes, as depicted in literature such as Homer's "Iliad," to large-scale territorial competition for resources, exemplified by the Crusades aimed at reclaiming the Holy Land.
The consequences of conquest have historically been severe, often involving significant loss of life, civilian casualties, and the oppression of conquered populations. Military conquests have also led to large-scale migrations, as people flee violence and oppression, resulting in cultural and linguistic intermingling. Notable examples include the successive conquests of England, which transformed its demographics and culture over centuries. Despite its inherently destructive nature, military conquest has inspired countless works of art and literature, reflecting the complex interplay between war, society, and creativity. Understanding military conquest offers insight into its profound impact on human history and social development.
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Conquest (military)
Military conquest is the use of armed force to overwhelm an enemy in order to exert control over that enemy. While this general form of conquest can and does occur between individuals and small groups, military conquest usually implies a conflict between groups such as city-states, tribes, clans, or nations, each of which uses a portion of its citizenry to form an army.
Background
Conquest by military force has been a feature of civilization for far longer than historical records have been kept. At first glance, it might seem like a feature more appropriate to the most primitive, tribal formations of a society—something that would have been left behind when groups began to end their nomadic, hunter-gatherer existence and settled down into organized settlements. Contrary to this expectation, however, the development of agriculture and permanent settlements is often seen as a factor that increased the frequency and intensity of military conquests. This is because one of the benefits of agriculture was that people had more free time and began to develop specialized forms of labor. Instead of spending most of the day locating food and shelter, people could tend their crops and then still have time for other activities. This led to the development of professional soldiers and to technological advances in the area of weapons, armor, and military strategy. In other words, as human beings became more civilized, they developed both a greater capacity for and a greater interest in military conquest.
Overview
The motivations for which military conquest is undertaken are many and varied. They can range from conflicts between particular individuals to large-scale struggles between nations competing for resources. Homer’s mytho-historical Iliad (ca. 750 BCE) provides an example of an interpersonal motivation for conquest. The tale relays the ten-year war between Greek armies and the city-state of Troy. As the story goes, the two forces came into conflict because Paris, son of the Trojan king, abducted Helen, a Greek beauty who was the wife of the Greek king Menelaus. Helen becomes a symbolic representation of an inner motivation for armed conflict.
It is far more common for military conflict to arise when two or more groups of people are in competition, either for natural resources or because they both wish to occupy the same territory. A notable example of this phenomenon is in the medieval Crusades (1095–1291). The Crusades were a series of military campaigns waged over several centuries, in which armies from various Christian European kingdoms attempted to recapture the Holy Land (Jerusalem and the surrounding region, which is sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims) from Muslim forces. Several of these campaigns met with success, but over the long term, the conflict was not sustainable and the Christian invaders were eventually overcome.
The aftermaths of history’s military conquests were frequently unpleasant. Consisting of armed conflict, the conquests inevitably resulted in significant loss of life on the battlefield. In many cases, there were also civilian casualties resulting from assaults by the victorious forces, diseases carried by the invaders against which locals had no immunity, and famine that was often the result of invaders destroying crops in order to deprive their foes of the ability to resist. Throughout history, victors often enslaved the conquered populations, either forcing them to labor where they were or transporting them to be sold or to live in servitude elsewhere.
Unsurprisingly, many who otherwise would have faced such consequences chose instead to flee. Military conquest has been responsible for many of the large-scale migrations of people, as they sought to escape oppression and death by finding more hospitable areas in which to dwell. Thus, military conquest was indirectly responsible for numerous instances of cultural and linguistic intermingling, often with huge consequences for the development of society, language, and customs. For example, England was subjected to military conquests in many successive waves by the Celts, the Romans, the Germanic tribes of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and then the Normans, led by William the Conqueror. The latter defeated the English king, Harold II, at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Each wave of conquest brought new changes to the people and even the landscape of England. The Romans left behind great monuments such as Hadrian’s Wall near the border with Scotland, the Germanic tribes blended their languages with that of the inhabitants of England, and the Normans brought the language, culture, and religious influence of northern France.
Despite its inherently destructive nature, military conquest has often been a source of inspiration for creative works in many different media. Besides the Iliad, many other works of literature have been inspired by military exploits, including All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by Erich Maria Remarque, which tells the story of a German soldier during World War I; War and Peace (1865–69; translation, 1886) by Leo Tolstoy, which has as its backdrop Napoleon I’s attempts to conquer Russia; and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854), which celebrates the bravery of British troops as they charged Russian forces during the Crimean War. Music has also been influenced by military conquest; for example, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture commemorates Russia’s defeat of Napoleon in that year. In the twentieth century, the art form most dedicated to chronicling military exploits has been filmmaking. War is a major element in films as diverse as Casablanca (1942), Seven Samurai (1954), and Saving Private Ryan (1998), to name only a few. While the suffering and death caused by war is eminently regrettable, it is difficult to imagine what history would look like had people long ago discovered peaceful means of resolving their differences, so integral has military conquest been to the development of modern society.
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