Afghanistan War Thought Experiment - Medieval Europe is the new Theater!

[Makalakumu]

I started reading a book, Life in a Medieval City, where they describe the history, the culture, and the layout of the land itself around Troyes in 1250. I am continually struck the similarities to Afghanistan. For example, the prominence of religion, the control by warlords, and state of constant tension and war all seem to have a modern day equivalent. Therefore, the thought came to me. What if a foreign power with modern technology, modern beliefs, and modern governmental institutions invaded a place in Medieval Europe? What would happen if they tried to take a region in Medieval Europe and turn it into a modern state? Let's lay it out as a thought experiment and see what happens.

Now, where in Europe are we talking about? Any suggestions? I'd like to suggest somewhere in Western Europe. Perhaps somewhere mountainous so we can make sure the geography is somewhat similar to Afghanistan.

 

[Sukerkin]

Germany would be a good candidate for such an experiment.

 

[Tez3]

There is nowhere like Afghanistan in Europe which is why our troops train in Kenya. I can't see the layout of the land being anything like Troyes either having been there several times, they make Champagne there which I adore. I don't get the warlords bit either, it was a region that was actually quite settled and certainly wasn't controlled by 'warlords', Theobald the 2nd of Navarre was in charge. This is Troyes in France the book is about? It was a cultural centre as well as being wealthy, I can see no similiarities between that and Afghanistan I'm afraid. I don't actually get what you are wanting to do either.

 

[granfire]

Germany would be a good candidate for such an experiment.

Elaborate.

 

[Sukerkin]

It's just that in the period that I think that Maka wants to grow this idea, the various states/fiefdoms in the region that eventually becomes Germany were an endless hotbed of factional conflicts - plus some mountains .

 

[Tez3]

Afghanistan isn't medieval as in medieval times in Europe. In medieval Europe there was culture, science and arts. Learning was important, there were schools and universities. There was medicine, crude by our modern standards but medicine all the same, we'd recognise life in medieval times quite easily. Afghanistan is more like the Iron Age.

 

[Tez3]

It's just that in the period that I think that Maka wants to grow this idea, the various states/fiefdoms in the region that eventually becomes Germany were an endless hotbed of factional conflicts - plus some mountains .

However Afghanistan doesn't equate to medieval Europe, as I said you'd have to go back to the Iron Age for that.

 

[Sukerkin]

I don't think that that matters all that much for what the OP has in mind, Tez. The pivotal point is that of religious and factional violent groups being presented with an outside force of hugely greater military power and technology. Or at least that's what I gleaned from the first post.

Also, whilst I might be a historian, the Iron Age is not an area of specialism for me - I'd be in with much more of a shout of being able to add something pertinent in a medieval Europe socio-economic setting.

 

[Sukerkin]

Of course, with an admittedly later period, Eric Flint has done a lot of imagining on this point with his splendid 16xx series of books.

 

[Jenna]

Being the C12th and C13th, the native peoples of those areas were well adapted to evading the Inquisitors. Not far from Troyes, the region of the Cathars from around the same period of the Inquisitions is similar and many of the evasions occurred across the mountainous regions. In this experiment, I think it is not as simple as imagining that the modern monster would utterly wipe out the simple civilisation. Reading of the Cathars, their capacity for subterfuge was considerable. Would this have a bearing?

 

[Makalakumu]

There is nowhere like Afghanistan in Europe which is why our troops train in Kenya. I can't see the layout of the land being anything like Troyes either having been there several times, they make Champagne there which I adore. I don't get the warlords bit either, it was a region that was actually quite settled and certainly wasn't controlled by 'warlords', Theobald the 2nd of Navarre was in charge. This is Troyes in France the book is about? It was a cultural centre as well as being wealthy, I can see no similiarities between that and Afghanistan I'm afraid. I don't actually get what you are wanting to do either.

This is great feedback. I just read the history from the fall of the Western Roman Empire up to 1250 and it saw that there were still a lot of similarities though. Sukerkin enumerated several in his post. I think it could be argued that at certain times, certain medieval rulers were like warlords, but they may be more dissimilar to warlords in Afghanistan though.

Maybe the time period needs to be moved back? Why do you feel like Afghan is more like Iron Age Europe? What date would you put on that? Where would you set the thought experiment? I'd like to limit it to Christian Europe if possible, but if you think that's not possible, why?

 

[Makalakumu]

Being the C12th and C13th, the native peoples of those areas were well adapted to evading the Inquisitors. Not far from Troyes, the region of the Cathars from around the same period of the Inquisitions is similar and many of the evasions occurred across the mountainous regions. In this experiment, I think it is not as simple as imagining that the modern monster would utterly wipe out the simple civilisation. Reading of the Cathars, their capacity for subterfuge was considerable. Would this have a bearing?

Could Inquisitors be seen as having some similarities to the Taliban?

 

[Jenna]

Could Inquisitors be seen as having some similarities to the Taliban?

Wow that is an intellectually provoking question. I am not one to reply properly and but in my opinion I think there are a number of comparisons that are certainly valid. Not only from a point of view of both groups having -I would say misguided- religious fervency, an adherance to torture as a viable means of cleansing and correcting "heretics" and but also because I feel (and this is my opinion) the Taliban see theirselves now as mobilising Afghanistan and the surrounding regions as a pivot for the wider dissemination of their faith and also for the concomitant demise of "competitor" faiths throughout the world - just as subsequent Inquisitions later attempted. Would it be the case then in terms of the OP hypothetical situation, that groups such as these having such a strong stranglehold upon their own people need to be reckoned with by modern usurpers? The Inquisitors had also a great deal of support (in public at least) like the Taliban and were not universally despised. So how then would the modern colonists deal with such a group as the Inquisitors? Would they weaponise them and make their job of religious indoctrination simpler? Or conversely, would they attempt to utilise those former suppressed peoples -like the shamed Cathars forced to mark theirselves with the yellow cross- to their own ends and eradicate the control of the Inquisitors? Or with sufficient technology and weapons are the Inquisitors not likely to cause a problem? I think it depends upon the values and moral of those colonists no?

 

[Tez3]

I would put the Taliban as more like the 'witchfinders' with half the population gladly joining in the witch hunts.

The case of the Cathars was as much about land as it was about religion, if you look up the history of the south of France v the north. Troyes is in the north where the weather and growing conditions aren't as good for growing as they are in the south where the Cathars where. http://www.cathar.info/1209_inquisition.htm

I don't know what time I'd put Afghanistan in, travelling through it it seems like an alien planet to be honest, something out of a Star Trek where they visit a backward planet. There's no frame of reference in our history I can put to it, there's no arts, no science, no learning or learned, no medicine as such and the slavery of the women is something I don't think we've had to the same extent. In Europe women were the property of their menfolk but they still had a value either for who they could marry, or the children they could bear or the work they did, women have no value at all in Afghanistan. In Europe even in the Dark Ages women had chances to be something other than just slaves although the choices were small, there still were female scholars and artists as well as beoming rulers etc. Civilisation has been dragged down to it's lowest point in Afghanistan. For most under the Taliban existing was the best they could do, it's not a lot better now but I don't think Europe had been like that since probably before the Stone Age. That populist saying 'bomb Afghanistan back into the stone age' is wrong, you'd have to bomb Afghanistan forwards into the stone age. Perhaps only Cambodia is somewhere that is similiar when it was under Pol Pot, I can think of nowhere in Europe that has ever been the same as Afghanistan.

 

[Makalakumu]

One of my friends visited Afghanistan after the Soviets left and before the Taliban came to power. It was a very different place, far more organized, maybe something more similar to Medieval Europe, I can't say. One thing I can be pretty sure of is that the constant war from the time that he visited up to the time that NATO invaded, probably caused the society to devolve into something far more chaotic. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the many wars that raged across Europe caused society there to devolve in a similar fashion.

 

[Big Don]

Germany would be a good candidate for such an experiment.

I read that book...
1632 by Eric Flint, it is available for FREE here.

 

[Tez3]

One of my friends visited Afghanistan after the Soviets left and before the Taliban came to power. It was a very different place, far more organized, maybe something more similar to Medieval Europe, I can't say. One thing I can be pretty sure of is that the constant war from the time that he visited up to the time that NATO invaded, probably caused the society to devolve into something far more chaotic. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the many wars that raged across Europe caused society there to devolve in a similar fashion.

Medieval society wasn't that chaotic and there wasn't as many actual 'wars' as you think. More skirmishing, jostling for power, rampaging and also the Crusades. You probably need to do some proper research into medieval Europe rather than just guessing. The medieval period lasted for about a thousand years so it's a big chunk of time to conjecture about. This is from the 5th century until the 15th. Europe changed massively over that time. The plagues probably caused more chaos than wars however they also changed societies. You have to take account of the Vikings, the Normans et al.
Afghanistan under the Taliban wasn't chaotic, it was very tightly controlled and very bloody. It was deliberately killed as a society to become what the Taliban wanted.

 

[Makalakumu]

I'm not just guessing. Remember, I started this thread by referencing a book that I am reading. My guess is that if a colonial power screwed with western medievel Europe as much as the west has messed with central Asia, we'd see similar extreme results.

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[Tez3]

I'm not just guessing. Remember, I started this thread by referencing a book that I am reading. My guess is that if a colonial power screwed with western medievel Europe as much as the west has messed with central Asia, we'd see similar extreme results.

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Medieval Europe was full of colonial powers and of colonies so you don't actually have to do any guess work just look up your history. Most of the wars in Europe at that time were 'colonial' wars with 'super' powers interfering in other countries, borders at that timew ere very fluid as various countries attacked and were defeated over land. Did you not wonder why England is always at odds with France? I think too the period you are talking about is correctly known as the Middle Ages rather than medieval which was a lot earlier. I think you are taking a very simplistic look at Europe at that time and not looking at the detail and as we know the devil is in the detail. You are assuming Europe was Europe in those days, it wasn't, the concept of Europe is a very modern one. I think you need to read up a lot more.

 

[Makalakumu]

Medieval Europe was full of colonial powers and of colonies so you don't actually have to do any guess work just look up your history. Most of the wars in Europe at that time were 'colonial' wars with 'super' powers interfering in other countries, borders at that timew ere very fluid as various countries attacked and were defeated over land. Did you not wonder why England is always at odds with France? I think too the period you are talking about is correctly known as the Middle Ages rather than medieval which was a lot earlier. I think you are taking a very simplistic look at Europe at that time and not looking at the detail and as we know the devil is in the detail. You are assuming Europe was Europe in those days, it wasn't, the concept of Europe is a very modern one. I think you need to read up a lot more.

Thanks for the advice. I have read over a dozen books on the subject and visited the place, which is more then most Americans, but anyway, if that's still not enough, well I'm not sure what to do.

The idea behind this discussion is to take a place in Europe, that is living with medieval conditions, and plop a modern colonial power down in it, attempting to transform it into a modern state. There are several problems with this, for example, how much history are people going to have with democracy? What about religion? What would the fanatics do? I imagine that the end result could resemble what is currently happening in Afghanistan.

The biggest difference is that whatever region we pick to start this conversation has to be devastated by war. The infrastructure is going to be damaged, the commerce interrupted, and the people scattered and living off of the land in some cases. At various times in Europe's history, warring armies have swept across the wrecked the place. Perhaps, a time shortly after one of those wars would suffice for conversation.