And it is an interesting subject, indeed, Atlantia. You are not offending, I only wanted to be a little knotty with your asessment, as a friend. It seems that the destiny of societies is to conquer all the societies and terrritories which don´t belong to the same social grouping and territory. This open the possibility of creating great empires and cultures, and to unite progessively the world in a single humanity. Not bad if the local cultures and societies keep a space to survive with dignity meanwhile the adapt and developo trasitional links with a new order in a bigger and more rich context.
You all have bringed one important point: conquest and domination has been as a political enterprise, as a military one. Clausewitz said that the war was "the continuation of politics by other means". In other words, war is just another specific way to make politics. In the same line, the fights for the liberation of the subjugated colonies, has been also a political fight, and when they won, it has been more a political triumph than a military one.
Conquest is usually a very complex process, in which many times the characteristics of the conqueror´s weapons are not the only decisive element to explain the victory of the conqueror, but only when very unequal war technologies are used to fight, and the victims had not enough time to absorb the new weapons AND technologies of the conquerors. I belive this is the case with stone age peoples confronted by fireweapons. I don´t recall many battles in which the european conquerors were defeated, but there most be some few. Nepal also offered a good resistance to the english (in fact, they were never really conquered by the english), and I uderstand they defeated them in battle. I believe many of the weapons from the conquered peoples were a good ones, and many of their warriors fough valliantly. And those weapons are the ones which precisely bring us here in the sharing of this passion.
My regards
Gonzalo
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