Question
Did the advent of agriculture affect the conduct of warfare?
Answer
There definitely WAS warfare before agriculture, and non-agrarian patterns of conflict continued long after agriculture became the mainstream way of life. In fact, non-agrarian lifestyles are characterized by a near-continuous state of warfare. The Pax Romana was Pax because non-Romana was by default not very Pax.
When you study world history written from the point of view of settled agrarian empires and nation states, you'll see the non-agrarian cultures on the peripheries described as "warring tribes."
This was historically all about vendettas, rivalries, territorial raids and so forth. The purpose of this warfare was to maintain a dynamic balance of power. This is because non-agrarian cultures do not claim territory per se, but more ambiguous rights such as rights of passage, access to water, right to free movement along migratory routes of herd animals and so forth. It is much harder to draw boundaries when your use of land resources is so fluid.
Within non-agrarian cultures, the constant warfare helps negotiate the dynamic balance that ensures access in proportion to military strength. It is transient warfare in a sense. Marriages and inter-clan alliances are the other side of the equation. While both agrarian and non-agrarian cultures weave complex patterns of alliances, agrarian ones tend to be more formal treaties, while non-agrarian ones tend to be tacit and situational and based on up-to-the-minute equations of trust and mistrust.
When an agrarian culture tries to draw boundary lines based on farming, a very different pattern of conflict emerges. The conflict between homesteaders and cowboys (farmers vs. cattle herders) is the most recent example.
Even when nomadic people settle, curious symbols of nomadic patterns of warfare crop up. In ancient India for instance, the Ashwamedha Yajna (horse sacrifice) was practiced. A king who had dreams of empire would let a horse run free and follow it with his army, fighting whoever dared to stop the horse. Where the horse ran unchallenged, the local king was assumed to have accepted the overlordship of the imperial aggressor without a fight. At the end, the horse would be sacrificed. An unpleasantly bloody way to conduct politics. There is something extremely pastoral-nomadic about this ancient practice.
There are of course, also differences in combat operations. Agrarian armies tend to be organized in industrial ways, with teamwork and coordination being the source of power. Non-agrarian "armies" tend to be mostly about personal honor. They fight with very weak coordination, but far greater individual skill and valor. The means often matter more than the ends: to fight with honor and lose is considered better than fighting with deceit and winning. This makes sense, since to lose honor in a system where continuous warfare is the norm, is to lose status and power permanently. Again, as late as the cowboy era, honor was everything -- when herds of 10s of 1000s of cattle could be traded on a handshake, to have your word doubted was to have your career destroyed. Which is why the cowboy culture also had the norm that a gunslinger duel could be sparked by the slightest suggestion that somebody was a liar.
By contrast, honor is mostly an ornamental idea for agrarian types. Land doesn't move, and can be measured.
Reality is of course a good deal messier (the Roman army, for instance, deployed forces that combined the trained and coordinated units and "irregulars" fighting, usually at the vanguard). On the other side, Genghis Khan's armies boasted sophisticated models of coordination.
But as a first approximation, the agrarian = coordinated, non-agrarian = less coordinated distinction is accurate. A lot of this has to do with communication technology. Until recently, settled civilization simply had better, faster and more reliable lines of communication.
There is no one answer to which style is more effective. In some terrains where upfront planning plays off and there is a lot of advance information that can be gathered, coordinated armies tend to win. The more chaotic and illegible the battlefield, the more the less-coordinated style of the non-agrarians is an advantage.
Modern guerrilla warfare combines the best of both agrarian and non-agrarian styles of warfare, which is why it is so effective in asymmetric warfare against conventional military models.
When you study world history written from the point of view of settled agrarian empires and nation states, you'll see the non-agrarian cultures on the peripheries described as "warring tribes."
This was historically all about vendettas, rivalries, territorial raids and so forth. The purpose of this warfare was to maintain a dynamic balance of power. This is because non-agrarian cultures do not claim territory per se, but more ambiguous rights such as rights of passage, access to water, right to free movement along migratory routes of herd animals and so forth. It is much harder to draw boundaries when your use of land resources is so fluid.
Within non-agrarian cultures, the constant warfare helps negotiate the dynamic balance that ensures access in proportion to military strength. It is transient warfare in a sense. Marriages and inter-clan alliances are the other side of the equation. While both agrarian and non-agrarian cultures weave complex patterns of alliances, agrarian ones tend to be more formal treaties, while non-agrarian ones tend to be tacit and situational and based on up-to-the-minute equations of trust and mistrust.
When an agrarian culture tries to draw boundary lines based on farming, a very different pattern of conflict emerges. The conflict between homesteaders and cowboys (farmers vs. cattle herders) is the most recent example.
Even when nomadic people settle, curious symbols of nomadic patterns of warfare crop up. In ancient India for instance, the Ashwamedha Yajna (horse sacrifice) was practiced. A king who had dreams of empire would let a horse run free and follow it with his army, fighting whoever dared to stop the horse. Where the horse ran unchallenged, the local king was assumed to have accepted the overlordship of the imperial aggressor without a fight. At the end, the horse would be sacrificed. An unpleasantly bloody way to conduct politics. There is something extremely pastoral-nomadic about this ancient practice.
There are of course, also differences in combat operations. Agrarian armies tend to be organized in industrial ways, with teamwork and coordination being the source of power. Non-agrarian "armies" tend to be mostly about personal honor. They fight with very weak coordination, but far greater individual skill and valor. The means often matter more than the ends: to fight with honor and lose is considered better than fighting with deceit and winning. This makes sense, since to lose honor in a system where continuous warfare is the norm, is to lose status and power permanently. Again, as late as the cowboy era, honor was everything -- when herds of 10s of 1000s of cattle could be traded on a handshake, to have your word doubted was to have your career destroyed. Which is why the cowboy culture also had the norm that a gunslinger duel could be sparked by the slightest suggestion that somebody was a liar.
By contrast, honor is mostly an ornamental idea for agrarian types. Land doesn't move, and can be measured.
Reality is of course a good deal messier (the Roman army, for instance, deployed forces that combined the trained and coordinated units and "irregulars" fighting, usually at the vanguard). On the other side, Genghis Khan's armies boasted sophisticated models of coordination.
But as a first approximation, the agrarian = coordinated, non-agrarian = less coordinated distinction is accurate. A lot of this has to do with communication technology. Until recently, settled civilization simply had better, faster and more reliable lines of communication.
There is no one answer to which style is more effective. In some terrains where upfront planning plays off and there is a lot of advance information that can be gathered, coordinated armies tend to win. The more chaotic and illegible the battlefield, the more the less-coordinated style of the non-agrarians is an advantage.
Modern guerrilla warfare combines the best of both agrarian and non-agrarian styles of warfare, which is why it is so effective in asymmetric warfare against conventional military models.