A industrial society that lags in military tech (RAR!)

[Gunhead]

I think you really should be looking at China and it's history instead of Japan. The thing is, the place is huge and even if you've eliminated the threat of external invasion, the internal threats remains. With that, you have a lots of places where dissent can grow into unrest and to full blown rebellion. To counter this the people in power need to establish a way to put down any insurrections and this is a lot easier if your soldiers are better armed than any local militias and such that a regional governor might have. Now, anyone planning an insurrection would also know this and in turn would be very interested in any kind of technology that allows his troops to make up the difference in numbers with superior weapons.
The lack of major wars would probably slow down the pace of weapons development, but it would not stop completely.

Once someone makes the leap from muskets to more advanced weapons, there's no going back. The initial political, religious or other sort of cultural resistance will crumble fairly quickly once you demonstrate the effectiveness of your new weapons and then everyone else will jump on the bandwagon. Those who don't will be caught on losing side.
With well established industrial base, you can start mass production too very quickly and arming whole armies is easy for anyone with access.

If things go into a full blown shooting war, it will increase the need for better weapons. They're already past the age where stone forts are the way to go and also cavalry has lost it's former dominance. The battlefield belongs to the infantry and artillery. They might not have grasped the concept, but once it happens it's again one of those points of no return.

-Gunhead

[SMJB]

The OP stated that the army had occasionally been used to quell small(ish) uprisings, so fighting a rebelling civilian population will be what they are most familiar with.

On the other hand, given these uprisings happening, I think weapons such as Molotovs might already exist. They're a popular weapon in riots today and the idea would probably have occurred to someone in those uprisings as a way to fight against the Army without firearms.

This does of course mean the Army would expect such weapons and would have at least a notion of how to deal with them.

Excellent points, that man!

Though it occurs to me that the army does have one potential weakness, one which might even turn out to be fatal--it would likely have turned into a large, intransigent bureaucracy by this point, and thus be unwilling to adapt, at the higher levels at least. Ironically, probably the best cure for this would be a devastatingly one-sided defeat in an early battle to wake the generals up to the need for change.

I think you really should be looking at China and it's history instead of Japan. The thing is, the place is huge and even if you've eliminated the threat of external invasion, the internal threats remains. With that, you have a lots of places where dissent can grow into unrest and to full blown rebellion. To counter this the people in power need to establish a way to put down any insurrections and this is a lot easier if your soldiers are better armed than any local militias and such that a regional governor might have. Now, anyone planning an insurrection would also know this and in turn would be very interested in any kind of technology that allows his troops to make up the difference in numbers with superior weapons.
The lack of major wars would probably slow down the pace of weapons development, but it would not stop completely.

Once someone makes the leap from muskets to more advanced weapons, there's no going back. The initial political, religious or other sort of cultural resistance will crumble fairly quickly once you demonstrate the effectiveness of your new weapons and then everyone else will jump on the bandwagon. Those who don't will be caught on losing side.
With well established industrial base, you can start mass production too very quickly and arming whole armies is easy for anyone with access.

If things go into a full blown shooting war, it will increase the need for better weapons. They're already past the age where stone forts are the way to go and also cavalry has lost it's former dominance. The battlefield belongs to the infantry and artillery. They might not have grasped the concept, but once it happens it's again one of those points of no return.

-Gunhead

Meh, progress is a lot like evolution--it only moves forward if there's selective pressure for it to do so. The reason there's no going back once one makes the leap to more advanced weapons is that anyone who tries to do so is going to get their asses kicked in the next war--and for five centuries, there hasn't been a next war to worry about. The fact that the empire has lasted for five centuries without major incident means that for whatever reason the governors of the various regions have never risen up against the central authority--which implies a good deal of stability/central control. So for whatever reason, a successful rebellion has never been anything more than a pipe dream. Meaning that few people will think of it as being anything more than a pipe dream and thus devote more than a passing thought here and there to it. Of those that do, how many are going to be having their thoughts go down useful corridors? We've certainly had wrong-headed military theorems gain traction in the real world, and that's without the benefit of never having to test them.

Furthermore, things sometimes look obvious in hindsight when they weren't going into it. For instance, we used muskets for centuries in spite of knowing that rifling made the projectiles more accurate. Why? Because we kept trying to use spherical bullets in them--and it worked, but it was a real bitch to hammer on a bullet larger than the bore of your gun for five minutes to jam it down in there, thus wasn't a practical weapon. Then someone invented a bullet with a concave base that expands to fill the rifling grooves, and we all realized that we've been being stupid.

Say, there's an idea, OP--someone invents an pneumatic bullet-loader for these primitive rifles and muskets.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I tihnk people are labouring under the illusion that the army has done nothing but sit on its arse and sign paychecks for five hundred years. As I pointed out, the OP states' they have been dealing with uprisings from time to time. In other words, this sudden civil war, where the army has to fight a large chunk of the populace, rebellious governors united together and whatnot is exactly what the Army has spent 500 years training for. It is not going to be a sudden shock along the liens of "oh shit, five hundred years of total peace just ended, we're fucked."

Consider this, if it had been that long a time of total peace, why is there even still an Army. The OP states there are no external threats, so it must exist to keep the government in power despite any rebellious thoughts from governors or whoever. Which means the Army would be used to acting as a heavily-armed police force, in fact that's all they've done for, what, going on fifteen generations? This is what they do, they'll be pretty good at it. Which means they will be used to fighting in urban areas because how much riot control do you do in open countryside?

Also, whilst there may not be any sudden jumps in weapons technology, like developing breech-loading rifles, I would be utterly astonished if there hadn't been incremental improvements in existing weapons. If nothing else the gunsmiths forging the arquebasuers (sp?) would inevitably come up with new ideas over 500 years of building the damn things. If you can make muzzle loading rifles with industrial precision they will be a lot better than the stuff we built in 1800 or so, simply from better machining skills, metallurgy and so forth.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ghetto Edit:

Something else just occurred to me from the OP. It states they have access to radios. That's going to have a huge effect on warfare simply from being able to communicate faster than messengers or semaphore. And I find it utterly implausible that this does not occur to the military commanders of this empire.

[SMJB]

Still, though, putting down small rebellions is one thing, putting down a nation-wide one, or at least one that's very large, is another. Still, though, it's really looking like the whole armored-cars-and-Molotov-cocktails thing will be an old hat by this point. And yeah, of course they'll be using radio--I know what I just said about things seeming obvious when they're really not, but come on, the need for good communications is an ever-present aspect of the battlefield, and radio is, well, radio.

Yeah, I can see the materials sciences aspects of the weaponry advance, but otherwise, with no exterior threats to worry about, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Here's a dark thought: the modern concept of provisioning armies and having depots and suchlike, instead of letting them live off the land, only dates back to Napoleonic times. So yeah.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Oh certainly they are not going to be experts at this scale of civil unrest/war, but they are hardly going to be utterly helpless and unable to adapt as some have suggested.

I would think that the Army has developed provisioning ideas rather than living off the land, after all they are moving forces around a good-sized continent rather than a relatively small single nation. If not, I would think it would be quickly established. After all, the High Command is in much closer contact with it's forces so news can get to HQ much faster which allows a centralized army-wide response rather than a field officer coming up with a solution only for his men.

[Formless]

Oh certainly they are not going to be experts at this scale of civil unrest/war, but they are hardly going to be utterly helpless and unable to adapt as some have suggested.

The only person who suggested that was energiewende. Brother-Captain Gaius made the more moderate argument that they will be slow to adapt, but they will adapt in time.

My argument is that it depends on the nature of the revolution. I don't think that China is necessarily a better model here than Ancient Rome, because China has a history of relatively frequent dynastic changes that we have no evidence for here. This hypothetical empire also seems to have a pretty effective weapons control policy that at the very least keeps firearms out of civilian hands (blades are kind of hard to police, knives especially). 500 years of stability leading to stagnant military advancement means they must be quite good at putting down the kinds of peasant revolts that you would see during the late middle ages through the Renaissance period, so the only kind of revolt that they would take seriously would have to be full blown secessionist movements in conquered territories or general nationwide unrest. The type of revolution where parts of that same military are motivated to defect and train a proper resistance army. Anything less would be "just" a riot, not a civil war.

Consider this, if it had been that long a time of total peace, why is there even still an Army.

Well, Zor did say that they were largely ceremonial. Ceremonial guards are not unheard of. It might suggest that the military is small, though, unlike the serious economic investment of the U.S. military industrial complex. It would be a mistake to misapply modern or western centric expectations here as well.

Which means they will be used to fighting in urban areas because how much riot control do you do in open countryside?

Depends on who is rioting. Railway workers? Miners? One of the biggest and most bloody riots in U.S. history started as a mining strike; rather than the stereotypical urban riots that you are thinking of from the latter part of the 20'th century, this ended up looking like a full blown WWI battlefield, with rifles, artillery, and even (HUGELY illegal) aerial bombing occurring before the end of it.

edit: riot control would also tend to preserve the tradition of pike warfare, unless they have switched over to shield and club style riot control methods.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Good point about the rioting. Zor did say that while ceremonial, they were a professional standing army, which does suggest they are at least considered important enough to maintain, which again suggests they must have a purpose. And since that purpose is apparently ceremonial roles and riot control, they would be rather familiar with the tactics needed to deal with it.

[Gunhead]

]Meh, progress is a lot like evolution--it only moves forward if there's selective pressure for it to do so. The reason there's no going back once one makes the leap to more advanced weapons is that anyone who tries to do so is going to get their asses kicked in the next war--and for five centuries, there hasn't been a next war to worry about. The fact that the empire has lasted for five centuries without major incident means that for whatever reason the governors of the various regions have never risen up against the central authority--which implies a good deal of stability/central control. So for whatever reason, a successful rebellion has never been anything more than a pipe dream. Meaning that few people will think of it as being anything more than a pipe dream and thus devote more than a passing thought here and there to it. Of those that do, how many are going to be having their thoughts go down useful corridors? We've certainly had wrong-headed military theorems gain traction in the real world, and that's without the benefit of never having to test them.

Technical advancement is not at all like evolution. You heard the saying "Necessity is the mother of invention"? Well it's not really true. Most innovations become a "necessity" after they've been invented. Fighting tools are also their own little niche, because technological advantage on the battlefield is such a desirable trait. The OP states the empire has fought small insurrections on it's soil, which given the landmass and the assumed population can still require serious military action to put down. You assume all rebellions must aim at toppling the whole empire, which just doesn't hold true. In addition, a rebellion doesn't have to be successful to drive in the fact that it's easier to put down a rebellion if you have better and bigger guns. Figuring this all out doesn't exactly take a genius, considering they've already taken the first steps towards the killer app of battlefield, which is guns. If the monoculture somehow keeps guns from the hands of civilians and all the leaders do their best to maintain the status quo, all that would happen is the development of guns would be slower. But this is not given because if someone does invent the next big thing in firearms, it's just a matter of time before it's adopted. By the OP, there is an instance that causes large scale civil war, this would pretty much mean someone thinks toppling the empire is a quite a bit more than just a pipe dream and has been thinking so for quite some time. People just don't go "HURRAH! FREEDOM AND EQUALITY FOR ALL! LETS REVOLT!". Even if it is a popular uprising of the masses, you honestly think people in power don't smell the opportunity to make a play for more power?

Bad military theorems do not explain why you'd neglect military development and the reason is simple. You put a bad idea in practice and you either lose and learn, lose and someone else learns or you win and either realize your idea was stupid, or keep doing it because it's not stupid enough to cause major harm and it might bite you in the ass later. The major hindrance in this case would be the lack of experience on how to conduct a major war, but the effect of this is lessened by civil wars not being full blown army vs. army fights but rather smaller scale skirmishing and so on, which the empire's military is already familiar with. This would also mean that most military theorists would be focused on how to fight against rebels and rioters and this by itself would advance certain aspects of their military sciences and push the desire for equipment better suited to the task. You could far more convincingly argue that they'd drag behind in heavy weapons. When you're hunting rebels and such, you have less need for artillery in most cases, but a breech loading rifle would be a huge boost to your troops.

Overall, for the monoculture to maintain the status quo, it would be highly desirable for them to have a better standard of armament by comparison and maintain monopoly on that. It's far easier to force people to cover in fear when your stick is a a lot bigger than theirs. I mean honestly, all power starts with the monopoly on violence.

Furthermore, things sometimes look obvious in hindsight when they weren't going into it. For instance, we used muskets for centuries in spite of knowing that rifling made the projectiles more accurate. Why? Because we kept trying to use spherical bullets in them--and it worked, but it was a real bitch to hammer on a bullet larger than the bore of your gun for five minutes to jam it down in there, thus wasn't a practical weapon. Then someone invented a bullet with a concave base that expands to fill the rifling grooves, and we all realized that we've been being stupid.

Say, there's an idea, OP--someone invents an pneumatic bullet-loader for these primitive rifles and muskets.

What's your point and how is this relevant in any way? It took another innovation to make a previous invention useful in large scale, which is nothing new in the history of invention.
And as to it being attributed to stupidity? That's just silly. You said it yourself, the musket era spans several centuries and just shows the desire for more accuracy was looked at all through out history and then a solution was found. But it's not like there was no other developments that made it far more desirable to make the swap from smooth bores to rifled guns.
If you're just saying maybe they didn't invent certain things, well certainly it's possible but considering the idea of spinning a projectile was known in the days of archery, I personally don't buy it.

-Gunhead

[Formless]

What's your point and how is this relevant in any way? It took another innovation to make a previous invention useful in large scale, which is nothing new in the history of invention.

The point is that if all they have had the deal with are relatively minor riots and peasant revolts * then the things they have probably been putting their development efforts into would be better pikes, swords, shields, billy clubs, armor, use of radio, and armored cars for safely deploying soldiers/police and arresting rioters. You can't assume that development of all technologies will be linear, that's kind of the point of the OP. Unless it has other uses, warfighting technology is derived from a perceived need for something specific and circumstance bound. Edit: the "next big thing" as you call it is irrelevant if no one adopts it.

Attack rioters with muskets and cannon, and you risk giving the people and your political opponents good reason to hate you, criticize you, and further rebel against you and your restrictive weapon laws. In many Asian cultures, restrictive laws only lead to the development of weapons that had plausible deniability, like the kama for instance; piss people off enough and this could fuel similar methods among revolutionary movements to develop their skills and weapons to subvert the military establishment. Guerrilla and insurgent warfare, for instance, with frequent arson attacks against military garrisons and political offices. You don't use the most brutal methods you have against rioters with inferior weaponry unless you don't give a damn about the political consequences. You apply appropriate force.

Its also worth noting that they just went through their industrial revolution within the last century, so certain technologies will be too recent to have yet had an impact. Cars probably have yet to replace trains as the transportation method of choice, aviation may still be in its infancy, radios may still weigh enough that "portable" means someone can carry it on their back. And so on.



* You keep alluding to "small insurrections", but that is not what was indicated in the OP. There is a qualitative difference between a riot and an insurrection. The latter implies a type of warfare, and we know they haven't had a proper war in 500 years. A riot tends to lack such organization or clear military/political goals.

[krakonfour]

Very interesting thread. I'll throw an idea out here:
-Stability for 500 years implies an economic abundance that leaves no-one desperate enough to attack another city. Just how can this be?

[Formless]

Its all one empire, like Rome. Who is going to attack cities? No one, unless the Romans are punishing your city for whatever reason. The standing army is there to enforce the rule of the empire.

[Gunhead]

The point is that if all they have had the deal with are relatively minor riots and peasant revolts * then the things they have probably been putting their development efforts into would be better pikes, swords, shields, billy clubs, armor, use of radio, and armored cars for safely deploying soldiers/police and arresting rioters. You can't assume that development of all technologies will be linear, that's kind of the point of the OP. Unless it has other uses, warfighting technology is derived from a perceived need for something specific and circumstance bound. Edit: the "next big thing" as you call it is irrelevant if no one adopts it.

Develop them how exactly? All of the weapons you mention would have little room for improvement. The only thing you can really do is produce them in large quantities and maintain good quality and all are rendered obsolete by firearms. Besides, if you're going to send pikemen to suppress a riot, you're already committed to lethal force. The only difference is how many men you need. With reliable guns, you can be totally outnumbered and still win. With melee weapons, you have to have certain parity in numbers so you don't get swamped.

Attack rioters with muskets and cannon, and you risk giving the people and your political opponents good reason to hate you, criticize you, and further rebel against you and your restrictive weapon laws. In many Asian cultures, restrictive laws only lead to the development of weapons that had plausible deniability, like the kama for instance; piss people off enough and this could fuel similar methods among revolutionary movements to develop their skills and weapons to subvert the military establishment. Guerrilla and insurgent warfare, for instance, with frequent arson attacks against military garrisons and political offices. You don't use the most brutal methods you have against rioters with inferior weaponry unless you don't give a damn about the political consequences. You apply appropriate force.

And what if the situation escalates? You have to have a back up in case your "appropriate" force is not enough.
You simply assume that the powers that be for some inane reason would totally disregard the possibility of an open armed rebellion just because it hasn't happened yet and wouldn't maintain something they can smack it with. I'm sorry but I don't generally assume people are fucking stupid, specially if they've maintained a 500 year dynasty spanning a continent without a major military conflict.

Its also worth noting that they just went through their industrial revolution within the last century, so certain technologies will be too recent to have yet had an impact. Cars probably have yet to replace trains as the transportation method of choice, aviation may still be in its infancy, radios may still weigh enough that "portable" means someone can carry it on their back. And so on.

Which would make your proposition of an armored car pretty null and void and that's a lot of buts and ifs. OP says they have aviation and IC engines. If there is a reason to mention them I'm assuming they're capable of something worthwhile instead of being just being showpieces. Even if we assume they are still in their infancy, it doesn't really change the fact that if they are highly industrialized, that implies pretty advanced metallurgy, explosives, machining and other tech that is appropriate for 1910 which was the ballpark the OP set the tech level.

* You keep alluding to "small insurrections", but that is not what was indicated in the OP. There is a qualitative difference between a riot and an insurrection. The latter implies a type of warfare, and we know they haven't had a proper war in 500 years. A riot tends to lack such organization or clear military/political goals.

Hey genius. Their empire spans a continent. If you have a the same level of population as our S. America, we're talking about millions of people and from the empire's point of view a large city causing a ruckus can be seen as just a local malcontents howling but you can have several thousand of people looting and rioting all over the streets.
It's a question of scale. If you look at the whole 500 years, a city rioting and rebelling for 10years is a footnote compared to the long patches of peace in between and anything smaller hardly worth mentioning at all.
When you're looking at large masses of people, you should keep in mind what sort of events are noteworthy when compared to the land area, population and time frame.



-Gunhead

[Formless]

Develop them how exactly? All of the weapons you mention would have little room for improvement. The only thing you can really do is produce them in large quantities and maintain good quality and all are rendered obsolete by firearms. Besides, if you're going to send pikemen to suppress a riot, you're already committed to lethal force.

Wrong on three accounts. Traditional pikes have an intimidation value that allows you to take control of a situation without necessarily having to engage in combat with rioters. As stated, pikes are a nightmare to attack. In fact, I've heard this is one of the reasons the U.S. army still keeps bayonets around-- they do riot control a little differently than domestic cops. Two, you can develop the pike further and create specialized offshoots specifically for riot work- I'm thinking of mancatchers. And oh look, the Japanese actually have such a weapon that is still used for precisely that purpose. You should also note the materials modern sasumata are made of and compare to their wood and steel counterparts, and that some historical examples have a spearhead between those forks to give a range of force levels to its user. Three, appropriate force is relative, not absolute. You can accept lethal force as necessary, and people will still be asking "how the hell are people supposed to retreat or surrender under a hailstorm of lead balls?" Billyclubs aren't completely non-lethal, either, and people know that. Yet they are considered more appropriate than, say, shooting a tear gas grenade directly into someone's eye socket.

With melee weapons, you have to have certain parity in numbers so you don't get swamped.

Just goes to show what you know about pikes.

And what if the situation escalates? You have to have a back up in case your "appropriate" force is not enough.

Of course. But if they are a weapon of last resort in riot situations, then they aren't going to be developed into a battle weapon. More likely, they will develop towards rubber bullets and shotguns. Again, consider the situation before declaring what the need will be.

You simply assume that the powers that be for some inane reason would totally disregard the possibility of an open armed rebellion just because it hasn't happened yet and wouldn't maintain something they can smack it with. I'm sorry but I don't generally assume people are fucking stupid, specially if they've maintained a 500 year dynasty spanning a continent without a major military conflict.

No, my assumptions have been clearly stated. Obviously they exist to keep order and maintain the dynasty. What I'm saying is that you are assuming a military institution which has not fought a war in 500 years will be preparing for the next war rather than the last one when they have no idea what the wars of the future will look like. People default to what they know, and long lasting institutions doubly so.

Which would make your proposition of an armored car pretty null and void and that's a lot of buts and ifs.

Again, energiewende proposed the armored cars (and the flamethrowers, for that matter). I don't think it is too unreasonable, given enough preparation time, but that depends on how much time they have to perfect motorized vehicles before full civil war breaks out. I make far fewer assumptions than you credit to me. I do, however, seriously consider the various possibilities especially when people are arguing for scenario x or y. Consider, for instance, that I did consider the possibility that air war might come about in its own strange way despite their limitations in weapons technology. This part of my post was just a reminder to people of what time period we're talking about. It was starting to look like people were jumping ahead a few decades-- or a century.

Hey genius. Their empire spans a continent. If you have a the same level of population as our S. America, we're talking about millions of people and from the empire's point of view a large city causing a ruckus can be seen as just a local malcontents howling but you can have several thousand of people looting and rioting all over the streets.

From the point of view of a large empire, such a successionist movement is NOT a small riot. Good job, you have failed to read all of my prior posts where I mentioned the most likely civil war scenarios will be over historical borders. Fuck off.

[SMJB]

I've tried my best to avoid reiterating Formless's points: (EDIT: ninja'd twice)

Technical advancement is not at all like evolution.

Sure it is. Some inventor builds some new thing ("random mutation") and puts it on the market ("the environment"), and people's desire for the new thing decides how far it proliferates ("natural selection").

Fighting tools are also their own little niche, because technological advantage on the battlefield is such a desirable trait.

Yes, because if Country A refuses to upgrade it's military tech, eventually Country B is going to straight-up conquer its ass! That's the selective pressure I was talking about. In a world without war, there's little reason to upgrade the weapons of war--and the government already has a monopoly on guns.

Lots of cultures have ended up straight-up giving up technologies they didn't strictly need anymore--the ancestors of the Australian Aborigines plum forgot about boats and fishing once they reached their new home.

By the OP, there is an instance that causes large scale civil war, this would pretty much mean someone thinks toppling the empire is a quite a bit more than just a pipe dream and has been thinking so for quite some time. People just don't go "HURRAH! FREEDOM AND EQUALITY FOR ALL! LETS REVOLT!". Even if it is a popular uprising of the masses, you honestly think people in power don't smell the opportunity to make a play for more power?

It has quite clearly been the next best thing to unthinkable as demonstrated by the fact that it hasn't happened. Furthermore, exactly what are you objecting to?

Bad military theorems do not explain why you'd neglect military development and the reason is simple. You put a bad idea in practice and you either lose and learn, lose and someone else learns or you win and either realize your idea was stupid, or keep doing it because it's not stupid enough to cause major harm and it might bite you in the ass later.

Lose to whom??? They've been fighting no one except rioting workers and peasants for centuries.

But this is not given because if someone does invent the next big thing in firearms, it's just a matter of time before it's adopted.

When you're hunting rebels and such, you have less need for artillery in most cases, but a breech loading rifle would be a huge boost to your troops.

Except that it's still non-obvious and there's no reason why anyone would have developed it in the interim. You keep assuming selective pressures that do not exist here. There's been no press for better guns because the enemy has never had guns, and reequipping and retraining the troops costs money. At no particular point was there a particular need for better guns.

Overall, for the monoculture to maintain the status quo, it would be highly desirable for them to have a better standard of armament by comparison and maintain monopoly on that. It's far easier to force people to cover in fear when your stick is a a lot bigger than theirs. I mean honestly, all power starts with the monopoly on violence.

Um, they do?

What's your point and how is this relevant in any way?

"The moral of the story, boys and girls, is that seemingly obvious advances are only obvious after they've been invented."

And as to it being attributed to stupidity?

Christ, literal-minded much? I wasn't saying they were actually stupid, I was saying that after the new bullets were invented, gunsmiths around the world slapped their foreheads saying, "How could I be so stupid as to not think of that???" (It is, after all, a bitingly simple solution to a centuries-old problem.) Because once the trick has been invented, it seems obvious. Like, say, breech-loading rifles.

If you're just saying maybe they didn't invent certain things, well certainly it's possible but considering the idea of spinning a projectile was known in the days of archery, I personally don't buy it.

[/quote][/quote]The fact that that was known since the dawn of archery was my entire goddamn point! It is an idea that is literally much older than gunpowder itself, and people have been trying to make it work in guns since the first gun was invented, and yet it took until right around the goddamn Civil War for someone to figure out the "obvious" solution to the problem, and that's with all the wars we were fighting during that time.

[Formless]

I imagine that from Gunhead's point of view, putting a knife at the end of a gun is obvious, but putting a gun inside the hilt of a sword isn't.

[Zor]

Ghetto Edit:

Something else just occurred to me from the OP. It states they have access to radios. That's going to have a huge effect on warfare simply from being able to communicate faster than messengers or semaphore. And I find it utterly implausible that this does not occur to the military commanders of this empire.

The Imperial Military does have radios and telephone set up for command and administrative purposes. Even though their army is still clad in plate and silk armor and has pikemen, arquebusiers, halberdiers as its main type of infantry.

Zor

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, because if Country A refuses to upgrade it's military tech, eventually Country B is going to straight-up conquer its ass! That's the selective pressure I was talking about. In a world without war, there's little reason to upgrade the weapons of war--and the government already has a monopoly on guns.

The guns they have at the start of the Long Peace are, frankly, so primitive that they don't have much advantage over spears, swords, bows and arrows. That's more than enough to create at least some incentive to upgrade or develop better firearms; if the state enjoys a monopoly, it should at least get some real mileage out of that monopoly.

Also, as noted, it seems very unlikely that any government could maintain a total monopoly/ban on firearms for five hundred years, given that there are very real civilian applications and probably a lot of people willing to bribe a government agent for a firearm license so that they don't get eaten by bears.

Lots of cultures have ended up straight-up giving up technologies they didn't strictly need anymore--the ancestors of the Australian Aborigines plum forgot about boats and fishing once they reached their new home.

Those were always technologies for which there was no demand, at least for a period of time- and the demand for weapons simply never really goes away in a human or humanlike society. It's not as simple as "is there a major war on, y/n."

Lose to whom??? They've been fighting no one except rioting workers and peasants for centuries.

It is actually possible to lose to such people, you know. Or at least to suffer humiliating local defeats (think of all the crap the Romans had to go through to get Spartacus back under control). The incentive to avoid that does tend to keep people tasked with fighting any revolts to at least... pay attention and think about their jobs, for lack of a better term.

Except that it's still non-obvious and there's no reason why anyone would have developed it in the interim. You keep assuming selective pressures that do not exist here. There's been no press for better guns because the enemy has never had guns, and reequipping and retraining the troops costs money.

Training them and keeping them armed for generation after generation in the first place costs money, retraining is little if any more expensive, and wild animals provide a selective pressure for more effective firearms, even if all humans are so full of the milk of human kindness that they'd never fight anyone.

I imagine that from Gunhead's point of view, putting a knife at the end of a gun is obvious, but putting a gun inside the hilt of a sword isn't.

To be fair, the latter was found very rarely in any time or place, as the sort of one-off curiosity that craftsmen like to make for rich idiots. The former became popular very quickly, once guns became effective and reliable enough.

See, in 1600 or earlier, individual guys with matchlock arquebuses were so ineffective that it was arguably more worthwhile to give any given soldier a spear and put him in a pike block. The main reason you bothered with arquebuses was to make sure the enemy couldn't just pick off your pikemen from range while steadily retreating faster than you could follow.

Improved musket drill and technique made it more worthwhile to arm your soldiers with guns instead of pikes. But you ran into a problem that the gun-men had basically no defense in hand to hand combat, so you had to keep a large fraction of your total force armed with pikes: say, a 1-1 pike/shot ratio. The bayonet suddenly allowed you to double the number of guns in your army, without seriously compromising the army's ability to protect itself in close combat.

Once there was any reason to bother with bayonets, they were added very quickly.

Now in the Long Peace, the main developmental pressure driving the bayonet would be that it makes musketeers a lot more effective at crowd control, because a line of men with spears is better at deterring a crowd without causing a massacre than a line of men with single-shot guns. Whether this matters enough to make it worth attaching bayonet lugs to guns, I don't know.

[Formless]

Also, as noted, it seems very unlikely that any government could maintain a total monopoly/ban on firearms for five hundred years, given that there are very real civilian applications and probably a lot of people willing to bribe a government agent for a firearm license so that they don't get eaten by bears.

Noted by you. However, repeating yourself doesn't make the idea that people would shoot a bear with a musket when modern firearms are less effective than pepper spray at deterring bears any less... fill in your descriptor here. I'm feeling lazy.

Keep in mind that back in the day hunting was a sport only enjoyed by nobles and rich people. If you hunted on the king's land, he would try you and probably kill you. Its not a universal human activity. I think Zor's scenario is plenty plausible enough to talk about without changing the parameters.

To be fair, the latter was found very rarely in any time or place, as the sort of one-off curiosity that craftsmen like to make for rich idiots. The former became popular very quickly, once guns became effective and reliable enough.

You are thinking of Europe. I was thinking of India, where I have been given to understand they were more common and practical. Not that the gun-blade is an inherently better idea, point being more that the history of ideas isn't deterministic.

I agree that a gun-spear or gun-pike combo will probably arise at some point as its got a combination of things the military wants in a weapon. What it would look like I think is harder to pin down; firearms from around the world take a surprising variety of forms prior to the popularization of European design. One possibility out of the endless possibilities might be, say, lacking the buttstock of our familiar rifles and have a longer haft for the blade to stick out.

[SMJB]

What I'm curious about is this industrial revolution. Such a thing would naturally be disruptive to the social order, what with the rise of capitalism and everything. Obviously the Empire either didn't decide it needed to be crushed or didn't suffer too badly from a failed attempt to crush it, though.

[Gunhead]

Wrong on three accounts. Traditional pikes have an intimidation value that allows you to take control of a situation without necessarily having to engage in combat with rioters. As stated, pikes are a nightmare to attack. In fact, I've heard this is one of the reasons the U.S. army still keeps bayonets around-- they do riot control a little differently than domestic cops. Two, you can develop the pike further and create specialized offshoots specifically for riot work- I'm thinking of mancatchers. And oh look, the Japanese actually have such a weapon that is still used for precisely that purpose. You should also note the materials modern sasumata are made of and compare to their wood and steel counterparts, and that some historical examples have a spearhead between those forks to give a range of force levels to its user. Three, appropriate force is relative, not absolute. You can accept lethal force as necessary, and people will still be asking "how the hell are people supposed to retreat or surrender under a hailstorm of lead balls?" Billyclubs aren't completely non-lethal, either, and people know that. Yet they are considered more appropriate than, say, shooting a tear gas grenade directly into someone's eye socket.

So, this is you saying that a pike hasn't got shit on a rifle with a bayonet? Thanks. Going by OP mancatchers probably would have already been developed considering it's 1910 technology and mancatchers are from the 14th century or there abouts, which was kinda my point. At no point have I advocated using lethal force as the primary means of riot control, merely stating if you're going to do it, gun is superior. And when I say pikemen, I mean pikemen. If I meant people with less than lethal weapons, I would have said so.

Just goes to show what you know about pikes.

No it shows you don't understand what parity means. People with guns have defeated numerically far superior forces and thus have parity in numbers. Now the same could be said about pikemen and the only difference is how many men with pikes or guns do you need to successfully repel the enemy, thus reaching parity, well disparity actually. In situation where you're willing to use lethal force, people with guns have a demonstrated advantage against people with no or inferior guns and thus you need less of them if you compare it to say people who are only relying on pikes. This depends on the exact situation but you obviously haven't considered that it's really a bit more intimidating when you threaten someone with lethal force rather than less than lethal and this usually means you need more people with less than lethal weapons to threaten a crowd.

Of course. But if they are a weapon of last resort in riot situations, then they aren't going to be developed into a battle weapon. More likely, they will develop towards rubber bullets and shotguns. Again, consider the situation before declaring what the need will be.

I did, and I'm not saying small level conflict like riots and such would be a sufficient impetus on firearms development, to the extent you would see firearms advance by 1910 in RL. I am saying, that even low level stuff like this enough to keep some level of weapon advancement going.

No, my assumptions have been clearly stated. Obviously they exist to keep order and maintain the dynasty. What I'm saying is that you are assuming a military institution which has not fought a war in 500 years will be preparing for the next war rather than the last one when they have no idea what the wars of the future will look like. People default to what they know, and long lasting institutions doubly so.

And I'm saying they would be preparing for a war. That's what military institutions do. Even if the empire nominally claims right over the whole continent, with 1910's communication technology you still need to delegate a lot of power to what ever regional leaders there are. This means each by right have their own military and police force at hand to keep the peace. Now, this means you really do want them to spy on each other and maintain low level of rivalry between the factions just to keep the package together. Now, this would keep the overall military progress slow, but it would not stop completely.

Again, energiewende proposed the armored cars (and the flamethrowers, for that matter). I don't think it is too unreasonable, given enough preparation time, but that depends on how much time they have to perfect motorized vehicles before full civil war breaks out. I make far fewer assumptions than you credit to me. I do, however, seriously consider the various possibilities especially when people are arguing for scenario x or y. Consider, for instance, that I did consider the possibility that air war might come about in its own strange way despite their limitations in weapons technology. This part of my post was just a reminder to people of what time period we're talking about. It was starting to look like people were jumping ahead a few decades-- or a century.

I basically said all I have to say about this. People treat this in some sort of "no guns" scenario, when it's blatantly obvious they have guns and the means to advance them if the need arose.
If the maker of the OP clarifies what kind of tech we are talking about, aside from having poor level of militarization, I might have some ideas what warfare would look like. As is, this is pretty much in the wild speculation territory and without additional information on the political and and economical situation you cannot make even remotely good predictions.

From the point of view of a large empire, such a successionist movement is NOT a small riot. Good job, you have failed to read all of my prior posts where I mentioned the most likely civil war scenarios will be over historical borders. Fuck off.

So you say. I have no interest what you might have previously said because the cause is irrelevant. The point being, that events that are currently happening can seem huge, but when looked at in a larger context are trivial. Which was to point out that since we don't know the population of the continent we cannot effectively gauge what constitutes as a "small riot".
Even the qualitative difference between a riot and an insurrection is debatable. Both can come about suddenly and suppressing either doesn't necessarily constitute as a "proper war", whatever your definition for a proper war may be. While old borders might be a cause or even a likely cause for a civil war, they sure aren't the only one.
Now did you get all that or do I need to go over it slower for your benefit?

-Gunhead

[Grumman]

Just goes to show what you know about pikes.

No it shows you don't understand what parity means. People with guns have defeated numerically far superior forces and thus have parity in numbers. Now the same could be said about pikemen and the only difference is how many men with pikes or guns do you need to successfully repel the enemy, thus reaching parity, well disparity actually. In situation where you're willing to use lethal force, people with guns have a demonstrated advantage against people with no or inferior guns and thus you need less of them if you compare it to say people who are only relying on pikes. This depends on the exact situation but you obviously haven't considered that it's really a bit more intimidating when you threaten someone with lethal force rather than less than lethal and this usually means you need more people with less than lethal weapons to threaten a crowd.

The question wasn't whether guns required parity against pikes, it was whether pikes required parity against the common rabble. And here I agree with Formless: even if a pike block doesn't win against such an adversary, it's not going to lose. Not many people are going to willingly skewer themselves so that maybe the guy behind them will get through.

[SMJB]

So, this is you saying that a pike hasn't got shit on a rifle with a bayonet? Thanks.

Which only matters if rifles with bayonets exist. Which they don't. Rifles don't exist yet. Way to miss his point, by the way: The point of putting a bayonet on a rifle is to make it able to function as a gun and as a pike; the very fact that they felt the need to do that implies that pikes are at least theoretically useful.

Going by OP mancatchers probably would have already been developed considering it's 1910 technology and mancatchers are from the 14th century or there abouts, which was kinda my point.

Your point was that there was no useful ways to upgrade the pike. Hey, here's an idea: materials technology. Assuming "1911 tech" is a general guideline and not a hard and fast "everything must be exactly equivalent to this date" rule, they could have pikes made out of fiberglass!

No it shows you don't understand what parity means. People with guns have defeated numerically far superior forces and thus have parity in numbers.

They've never needed parity with rifles because the enemy has never had rifles. Look, even if some advancement in guns was happening in the Empire, practical rifle bullets weren't invented in our universe until 1823. As in, less than a century before the equivalent time period of the story. The idea of rifles existing is ludicrous.

A phalanx of pikemen can easily excede parity with a bunch of rabble.

And I'm saying they would be preparing for a war. That's what military institutions do.

Victorious militaries have a tendency to think in terms of the last war. Besides, when the only way a future enemy is going to get better weaponry is if we invent it for them...

Even if the empire nominally claims right over the whole continent, with 1910's communication technology you still need to delegate a lot of power to what ever regional leaders there are. This means each by right have their own military and police force at hand to keep the peace.

First, require all nobles/governors/generals to send their heirs and offspring to be "guests" of the Emperor--read, hostages against their parents' good behavior--where they can be educated and cultured--and fed a little pro-Imperial propaganda (because why not?). Second, make sure all army units are a mix of soldiers from all regions. That's just what I thought of right off the top of my head, mind you.

If the maker of the OP clarifies what kind of tech we are talking about, aside from having poor level of militarization, I might have some ideas what warfare would look like.

Ahem. Literally four posts above yours:

The Imperial Military does have radios and telephone set up for command and administrative purposes. Even though their army is still clad in plate and silk armor and has pikemen, arquebusiers, halberdiers as its main type of infantry.

As is, this is pretty much in the wild speculation territory and without additional information on the political and and economical situation you cannot make even remotely good predictions.

Agreed. I recently asked about the nature of the industrial revolution they had.

The point being, that events that are currently happening can seem huge, but when looked at in a larger context are trivial. Which was to point out that since we don't know the population of the continent we cannot effectively gauge what constitutes as a "small riot".

Here's an idea, lets apply the anthropic principle: Guns have not advanced, therefore whatever riots there were obviously didn't break the threshold that would have gotten people thinking about the need for more advanced guns.

Even the qualitative difference between a riot and an insurrection is debatable.

...No, it's really not. An insurrection is by definition organized and protracted.

Both can come about suddenly and suppressing either doesn't necessarily constitute as a "proper war", whatever your definition for a proper war may be.

Now here's what the OP actually said:

Even so, weapons technology stagnates. The government sees no need to improve on what they have. Their military becomes more and more ceremonial and is at most used to deal with a few riots. At most they make use of industrial processes to streamline production.

[Titan Uranus]

Ghetto Edit:

Something else just occurred to me from the OP. It states they have access to radios. That's going to have a huge effect on warfare simply from being able to communicate faster than messengers or semaphore. And I find it utterly implausible that this does not occur to the military commanders of this empire.

The Imperial Military does have radios and telephone set up for command and administrative purposes. Even though their army is still clad in plate and silk armor and has pikemen, arquebusiers, halberdiers as its main type of infantry.

Zor

Why, though?

If the military's roles are pomp/circumstance and crushing riots, well, I would expect that there would be a pretty strong pressure to develop anti-riot weapons.

Unless there were absolutely no major riots or rebellions you would expect them to develop armored vehicles, rapid fire rifles (breech loaders existed in the age of pike and shot after all, as did magazine fed rifles(as airguns)), and better cannon in order to crack open city walls, should they still exist.

Many modern ideas are extremely old and were primarily stopped by impracticality due to poor metallurgy, primitive production methods, and other such reasons.

Considering the fact that non-weapons technology is at 1910 levels and is constantly advancing, you would expect this dynamism to carry over to the military if there is any pressure to improve technology.

The fact that this did not occur implies that either the military has no pressure to change (meaning no major rebellions for 500 years across an area the size of South America which, considering the massive changes in an industrializing nation seems impossible) or there are strong conservative elements (the way Japan's nobility kept power by preventing the distribution of weaponry).

But Japan also kept all sorts of technology static unlike this empire.


If the military was purely ceremonial then that would remove the pressure applied by riot policing.

But if the military is at all modernized you would expect the weapons and ammunition used to be produced in factories for cost and quality reasons if nothing else, these would provide great targets for rebel forces.

The army requires the support of the people in order to operate and to expand to the degree required to fight a major rebellion.


Also pikes are not such a great nightmare to attack in dense cities.
I would not expect a army that has not fought a real war in 500 years to hold their ground if their formation is broken by rebel mobs, militia, or regulars. And when they do run they will either drop their weapons (pikes at least) and bolt or die while running. Pike blocks in dense cities (I would assume most big rebellions would occur there or at the mines) would be simple to break with petro bombs thrown from the upper stories and as soon as part of the army breaks the entire army will likely break because there are no real veteran units or officers or ncos around which the army can rally. This will give the rebels time to organize a better defense.
This all assumes that the troops will be willing to kill their own people which I would not bet money on if they were raised from the general population.

Speaking of which, if the terms of service are short enough then the mobs and revolutionary units might well have more soldiers in them than the army units sent to fight them.

[Simon_Jester]

Noted by you.

I could swear others had mentioned it...

However, repeating yourself doesn't make the idea that people would shoot a bear with a musket when modern firearms are less effective than pepper spray at deterring bears any less... fill in your descriptor here. I'm feeling lazy.

Bear spray has to wait for aerosol spray cans, which historically were not invented until the 1920s. Firearms have been used for the purpose of dealing with violent predators for centuries before that- so it is far from a given that bear spray will somehow replace the caplock revolver.

Keep in mind that back in the day hunting was a sport only enjoyed by nobles and rich people. If you hunted on the king's land, he would try you and probably kill you. Its not a universal human activity. I think Zor's scenario is plenty plausible enough to talk about without changing the parameters.

Hunting is not a universal human activity, but it is not only wealthy people who travel into or through forests, or who have herds of animals that they will protect against wolves using bows and spears if necessary (but find firearms preferable, and will appeal for them if possible).

Remember that just as hunting-as-leisure is not a normal activity, being urban is not normal in societies up until the 20th century, and even until a few generations ago about half the population lived in rural areas, and had to deal with wild animals quite regularly. We don't think of large wild animals as much of a threat, we see them rarely and normally think of them as a part of nature to be preserved- a rare, endangered part. But that is in large part because they have been hunted extensively, by masses of people who were armed with guns and were pretty careless about leaving breeding populations behind because they thought of the animals as dangerous predators. Which they are, to a man armed with a bow or a spear.

To be fair, the latter was found very rarely in any time or place, as the sort of one-off curiosity that craftsmen like to make for rich idiots. The former became popular very quickly, once guns became effective and reliable enough.

You are thinking of Europe. I was thinking of India, where I have been given to understand they were more common and practical. Not that the gun-blade is an inherently better idea, point being more that the history of ideas isn't deterministic.

Could you point me to more information about this? I was under the impression that Indian armies typically used well defined musket-form guns, and ordinary swords, spears, and such, and had never before heard of this idea of whole armies armed with guns that have swords in them or vice versa

The question wasn't whether guns required parity against pikes, it was whether pikes required parity against the common rabble. And here I agree with Formless: even if a pike block doesn't win against such an adversary, it's not going to lose. Not many people are going to willingly skewer themselves so that maybe the guy behind them will get through.

On the other hand, pikes are extremely limited weapons if you are fighting in, say, a city street, because they are utterly unwieldy. Pike units can't be subdivided very well either- you cannot detail four pikemen to guard a street corner against looters, because four pikemen are practically defenseless unless they drop their pikes and pick up a backup weapon.

So if the army is largely occupied keeping order in cities, it will be thrown back on weapons like swords, clubs, and shorter, wieldier spears. Suddenly the appeal of a bayonet-tipped musket or rifle increases.