Distinguished Speaker Series

Synopsis: Military historians and military planners tend to focus on military operations associated with initial conquest: marches, battles, sieges, perhaps raids, devastations, etc. For most of history, such "operations" were intended to expand the resource base of the aggressor. They were about conquest and the ensuing rearrangement of political authority that benefited from that resource base. Historians and military planners have spent less time thinking about how a conquering society accomplishes that rearrangement and resource extraction. How does the winner manage or control those territories or peoples after an initial military victory? Furthermore, most military historians examine conquest by and of hierarchical sedentary agricultural societies, mostly states. This presentation compares agricultural states to tribal societies on the steppe and in the wilderness, and examines how the landscapes affect the logistics of conquest and control. In the end, the strong role of the military in a post-conquest rearrangement of political authority means that logistical systems are key to shaping strategies of control.