Re: [GZG] [OT] Books (Weber/White/Meier)

On 7/22/08, emu2020@comcast.net <emu2020@comcast.net> wrote:

> How do you fight a country that can afford to lose a million people a
year
> and still have plenty left over?

1) The British did beat the Chinese.  Three times in the 19th century.
 With relative ease.  For that matter, in 1900, a combined expedition
of Japanese, Russians, Brits, Italians, Germans, and Americans fought
their way to Peking and dictated terms to the Imperial government.
Not without some difficulty, but but again superior training,
doctrine, and understanding of technology (not posession of superior
technology--many Chinese units had bought Mausers) won out over mass
numbers.

2) Speaking of the British, with an army smaller than today's NYPD,
they conquered the Indian Subcontinent, which (given that 'India' of
that time covers five nations today) actually totals more bodies than
than the Chinese.  How did they do it?	Not superior technology, many
Indian states were buying German and French artillery and hiring
mercenaries to use it--converting their GNP directly into combat
power, or so they thought.  Superior discipline, training, and
fighting spirit won out in engagements where the British forces were
outnumber 3 or 5 or 10 or 15 to one.  Oh, and using internal divisions
of the society and proxy actors helped a great deal.

Everything has context.  And the right context makes a mockery of
purely numerical calculations of economics.

John
-- 
"Thousands of Sarmatians, Thousands of Franks, we've slain them again
and again.  We're looking for thousands of Persians."
--Vita Aureliani

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
http://vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu:1337/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l