Introduction to premodern war and religions: comparison, issues and results

Abstract

Building and elaborating on the dossier’s five articles on East Africa, the Maghreb and Islamic Spain, Western Europe, the Aztec Mesoamerica, and the native American Northeast (plus Japanese and Byzantine history), this introduction discusses quandaries about comparison in the intertwined disciplines of History and Anthropology and suggests some hypotheses as to the relation between premodern warfare and religions. Side-switching was demonized (and punished as a quasi-religious sin) in Western Christianity, not so as a rule in the other societies here compared. It was ‘treason’. Sexual violence and rape was inhibited by religious conceptions in the same society, and among the natives of the American Northeast. Non-human powers might help or intervene in warfare, but there is no general pattern. As for the presence or absence of holy war, there may be correlation with the type of polity concerned. Established empires may be averse to the emergence of charismatic figures and sacral practices, as one sees with China and Byzantium. Central imperial elites may also dislike miracles, especially in offensive warfare. Evidently, while religion might shape this or that aspect of warfare, it was not the sole provider of ‘conditions of possibility’.