Research RFI

[marct]

Hi Ike,

Sorry about the rushed response yesterday.

One of our reviewers is questioning the relevance of the WWI period (and specifically, our dating of c.1917) as a demarcation between the foraging/magazine-based system of warfare and the rise/dawn of the "machine" era of warfare (advanced industrial mechanized). There are basically two questions here, and any suggestions for books, articles, whatever, that address this distinction would be great. First, the reviewer wants to know why we choose 1917 (or WWI more generally) as the cutoff point between foraging and machine war.

It would help if we could see your period layout. I have one that I have used before, not for warfare per se but, rather, for socio-cultural changes. I used WW I (roughly) as a break point for several reasons, which may help. First, there was a very rapid development of mechanization and centralization of production, finance and distribution. In the US, you can see it with the deployment of Taylor's Scientific Management, Ford's Assembly line and the creation of the central banking system in 1913.

Second, there was a massive spread of communications and transportation infrastructure in both Canada and the US, and a deepening of centralizing tendencies in Europe. One of the key outcomes was to change the perceptions of people about the world; basically breaking the insularity of many national populations. At the same time, and certainly by 1917, the entire perceptual ediface that allowed European colonialism to operate - a sense that "we" are civilized and the height of social evolution - was drowned in the trenches along with beliefs in government "patriotic" propaganda (see the poetry of Seigfried Sasoon for some good illustrations of this, especially Counter-attack and Other Poems).

Third, look at the demographics in Europe and Canada (the US didn't suffer enough casualties for it to matter at the population level). The casualties in the war completely changed the entire gender balance as well as changing the class structures.

Fourth, look at how the war ended; not in a military "victory" but with a series of worker and soldier revolts.

Let's get back to your distinction for a minute. "Machine war" is dependent not only on the development of the machines themselves but, also, on the industrial infrastructure that can produce, maintain and supply them. The core shift that seems to happen in WW I is a shift away from fixed logistics lines (e.g. controlled by magazines and railroads and telegraphs) to flexible logistics lines (e.g. controlled by trucks and roads and telephone/radio/air drop).

Second, the reviewer does not ``get'' why the foraging era needs to be divided into foraging and early industrialization (with foraging still key). The "paradox" trend line for wins dips down around 1880 or so, and we attributed this decline to the introduction of railways, magazine-based logistics, rather than ``pure'' foraging like earlier in the 19th Cent.

Personally, I wouldn't say that there has been a "pure foraging" system operational since the 30 years war or, possibly, earlier. I would suggest that a better description would be the frequency distribution between foraging and issued supply (i.e. specially produced items that are not readily available for forage).

Again, I'm not quite sure of your era distinctions, but I would split it along the following lines (each with a number of sub-divisions):

Early Industrial Age: 1763 - 1848
Middle Industrial Age: 1849 - 1914
Late Industrial Age: 1914 - 1982

On why it might be dipping down in the 1880's, I would tend to agree, but you should also consider that breachloaders were being generally issued and you have the first mass deployments of early machine guns. This has several implications. First, it's really hard to forage for specialty equipment. Second, industrial production has reduced the cost of this equipment significantly which, in turn, changes the relative combat value of an individual soldier significantly. Third, the wars in Europe were mostly noyeaux combat, i.e. highly stylized and designed to avoid mass disruption by localizing conflict as much as possible (the US civil war was an anomaly that, for most Europeans, just didn't matter much).

I hope this helps a bit and I'll be glad to send you the reasoning and breakdowns I've used if you want them.

Marc