> He mentioned native allies at several points actually, though he doesn’t emphasise them
I also quoted the author about allies: “Discounting their native allies, they were probably outnumbered ...”
So that qualifies as mentioning native allies. It mentions the allies as being so inconsequential that they can be discounted when considering the forces they were up against.
> and their purported numbers are still like 100x lower than the forces they are facing.
Source?
> Also addressed by the article.
That part of my comment was not about the article.
> I feel modern academia (and also Guns Germs and Steel FWIW) desperately try to do the opposite these days - to claim that the natives where not militarily, technologically or logistically inferior to Europeans despite getting conquered by Europeans in what look like very lopsided battles.
First of all popular understanding (which is what I was talking about) seems to like narratives of dominating conquest. That goes both for Mongols and conquistadors.
Secondly they have arguments for their theories. That they are “desperate” speaks to their motivation and not the end result of their theories. So you would have to engage with their counter-arguments instead of falling back on saying that it looked lopsided. (Are you critiquing their history or their motivations? Different things.)
> I feel that is just as dishonest as the opposite. Nobody does this to the Mongols or Huns or whatever. Their superiority is accepted at face value.
I would hope that historians try their best to figure out why the Mongols or the Ottomans and whoever won, using a variety of approaches, arriving at the most empirically solid theory whether that is tech/logistical superiority or whatever else. But that is not known to me.
I also quoted the author about allies: “Discounting their native allies, they were probably outnumbered ...”
So that qualifies as mentioning native allies. It mentions the allies as being so inconsequential that they can be discounted when considering the forces they were up against.
> and their purported numbers are still like 100x lower than the forces they are facing.
Source?
> Also addressed by the article.
That part of my comment was not about the article.
> I feel modern academia (and also Guns Germs and Steel FWIW) desperately try to do the opposite these days - to claim that the natives where not militarily, technologically or logistically inferior to Europeans despite getting conquered by Europeans in what look like very lopsided battles.
First of all popular understanding (which is what I was talking about) seems to like narratives of dominating conquest. That goes both for Mongols and conquistadors.
Secondly they have arguments for their theories. That they are “desperate” speaks to their motivation and not the end result of their theories. So you would have to engage with their counter-arguments instead of falling back on saying that it looked lopsided. (Are you critiquing their history or their motivations? Different things.)
> I feel that is just as dishonest as the opposite. Nobody does this to the Mongols or Huns or whatever. Their superiority is accepted at face value.
I would hope that historians try their best to figure out why the Mongols or the Ottomans and whoever won, using a variety of approaches, arriving at the most empirically solid theory whether that is tech/logistical superiority or whatever else. But that is not known to me.