What's Wrong: Kony 2012

For all those who have watched the 30 minute video Kony 2012 I first wish to say I'm sorry, but it is emblematic of what is wrong with society today. Not there...here. What's wrong with us. What's wrong with me.

Let me first point out an interesting phrase that the video uses: we will fight war. We will fight war? How do you "fight" war? The phrase itself is hypocritical. And the video shows little of what "fighting" this war will/would mean. It would mean if a child soldier shoots at you, you shoot back. It means nation-building. It means casualties. It means war. 100 American advisors may help, but if history tells us anything it's doubtful that advisors will move the war in a major way. To fix the problems that many countries in Africa face would require sacrifice, sorrow, and blood. Would you give yours?

Now here is why I am ashamed. Back in the day if you believed in a cause you did it yourself. You picked up a rifle and bought a ticket to the front lines. In the Spainish Civil War Americans went overseas and fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. 2,800 served in the conflict and 700 died. Instead of lobbying our celebrities and military they were actual individuals who dropped everything for a cause they believed in. During the conflict in Libya I was listening to the BBC and they interviewed some of the rebels there. They had a translator, but then one of the guys starts talking and he says he’s from the Bronx. He heard the call and dropped his career in finance to fight for the freedom of his homeland. I had to think. Could I have done this? Ultimately I decided I couldn’t. I, too, am a part of this generation that comfortably sits in paradise while we lobby for others to fight for us. In this case it’s not even our troops as they’ll simply be advisors.

I doubt there’ll be a swift end to the violence that rages across the Congo basin any time soon. Hate breeds hate and until serious socio-economic changes occur we’ll see kids with rifles in the news til the day we die.

Now, I'm not against this movement. I think it has the right motivations. However, the internet hasn't changed anything. Fixing the problem will still require blood, money, and yet even more money and blood. Will you give yours?

If you haven't seen this video you can check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

3. Piracy Part 2 - Violence For Profit

This is the third part of the series violence for profit and the second on piracy. The podcast is available here or you can see the podcast here: http://historyontherun.libsyn.com/webpage

You’ve all probably heard of Captain Kidd sometime in your life. However, you probably don’t know all that much about him. Think for a second. Do you know which oceans he plundered? Can you tell me anything of his character? Probably not. He’s one of the pirates that everyone has heard of, but nobody knows anything about. So, who was Captain Kidd. Well, we know he was born in Scotland in 1654 and he had a hard life which drove him to sea for a living and over the next two decades of his life he learned his trade. In February 1689 at the age of 35 he was a part of the crew of the privateer ship the Sainte Rose, a French ship. Now, operating with a French ship wasn’t too bad for Kidd and the other British sailors, but when the news broke about how Britain was now at war with France they were operating in the middle of any enemy ship! Kidd and the others pleaded fealty to the mostly French crew, but when they attacked the island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean Kidd and the other British sailors doubled back to the boat, overpowered the crew, and returned as champions to a British port. The governor let Kidd keep the ship and he named it the Blessed William. Unfortunately, Kidd was double-crossed by a portion of the crew and was left stranded on the island of Antigua. After a year he was able to capture a ship and return to sea where he pursued the men who left him stranded. He named the ship Antigua after the island he had been marooned on. That led him to New York where he became a member of the gentry there and engaged in trade, privateering ventures, and was a father of two. Kidd desperately wanted to become a captain in the British Navy, but he did not have the pedigree or money to make it happen. He became involved with several businessmen who were putting together a privateering expedition along the West African Coast.

This is where things began to unravel. Kidd’s crew was the most desperate of crews. To be someone who would want to go to sea in such abysmal conditions took a special type of desperation. To get men to join the royal navy they would often use press gangs who would get you drunk and let you wake up aboard one of Her Majesty’s ships. This added to the fact that a third of his crew had died of a sickness after just starting caused some last minute recruiting of the dregs. These men wanted money and after 18 straight months of no rich targets they were not happy with their Captain.

Kidd had decided to go after targets along the West African Coast and to swing through the Indian Ocean looking for targets. His hope was to find pirates operating on this seaway where there were many plump Indian and Arab targets to choose from. Unfortunately, after no good legal targets to choose from Kidd picked one of the not-so-legal targets. He attacked an Indian vessel (really British) and took the cargo. It was worth about 6000 in today’s dollars. On his way back his ship fell apart, half of his crew deserted, and they had taken some of the goods, so he used the Indian vessel to travel back to the Caribbean. Lamentably, he found that he was now a wanted pirate when he got back, and all of his financial backers, including Richard Coote the governor of New York, had turned against poor Captain Kidd. When Kidd returned he was tried publicly and was found guilty of piracy. It was quite a sensation on the streets and the name of captain Kidd and piracy in general was discussed quite a lot in upper circles who debated the trial of the would be aristocrat gone bad. Kidd was led to the scaffold as he shouted he was innocent and then hung in front of a cheering crowd. His body would be put in a cage and posted on the banks of the River Thames. The bulk of Kidd’s loot would go towards building a hospital for injured sailors in London.

Kidd was not a successful pirate. I simply chose to tell his story because it is an interesting yet little known tale. He was a victim of the changing times that would come, in twenty years to wipe out the Golden Age of Pirates. Peace was bad for the business of privateers and the new northern European powers tried to destroy the monster they had created over the past 100 years. While many privateers switched careers to the shipping industry, other, more bloodthirsty men, went the way of the pirate. The royal navies suddenly had hundreds of men who sailed under their own flag and were crazy for blood, gold, and loot. They were unlike the semi-aristocratic men like Morgan and Kidd. They were the common sailor who were the more violent types and could not simply switch livelihoods that easily. The Royal navies were the most active during the Golden Age and slowly brought it to a close.
So, let us again switch scenery. Piracy was coming to an end in much of the Western Oceans, but I have not yet talked about the East. The first recorded incidence of piracy in China occurred in AD 589, but despite its lack of acknowledgment in the historical record it is likely that piracy was alive and well in the South China Sea well before that. When a dynasty was powerful in China the emperor would have the strength to reign in piratical activities. During times of unrest or weakness the pirates would basically create their own fiefdoms and attack any ships that went their way. Let me read a section from Angus Konstam’s book: Piracy: The Complete History to show something:

“In fact, the business of piracy was different in China from anywhere else in the world. For a start, piracy was highly organized. Rather than operating in individual ships or even small groups, pirates congregated into fleets. Instead of occupying small havens, Chinese pirates tended to control large sections of the coast…However, for the most part these Chinese pirate confederations or empires kept well away from politics, and simply ruled their pirate fiefdoms as independent states.”

These pirates operated basically up until the Europeans arrived and were driven out, but during their heyday they ruled the water. In 1661 Koxinga attacked the island of Formosa which was under Dutch control with 400 ships and 25,000 pirates. Koxinga was the son of Cheng Chi-Lung, another pirate king who crossed the Manchu or Qing Dynasty and both he and his son payed the price and were eventually defeated. After the fall of Koxinga’s pirate empire at the end of the 17^th century in 1681 the pirates would be fragmented for 100 years until Cheng Yih who would create an empire just as large. Cheng was born in Vietnam and his family has been in the piracy business for generations. Cheng Yih expanded his operations to the North in Kwangtung and would bully other pirates to follow his flag. By 1805 Cheng Yih had created a pirate league that dominated the South China Sea. Cheng divided up his forces into six fleets. A black, red, white, blue, yellow, and green fleet sailed the South Sea. Each of these fleets would dominate their area, control the seas, make ships pay to get through, and dominate trades like the Opium trade which had thousands of Chinese addicts. Cheng Yih personally controlled the largest of these fleets which had 600 ships and 30,000 pirates under his control, and, if all the fleets were to be merged together Cheng Yih could muster a force of 150,000 pirates and 1,200 ships which is the largest pirate fleet ever. If anyone threated Cheng’s Empire he could easily bring together all the fleets and beat off the Europeans or any attempt by the Imperial government to restrict him, which they didn’t really want to.

Imagine that. 150,000 pirates……that is something that you can’t even begin to imagine. Imagine being a European sailor, knowing that you will be sailing through waters where 150,000 pirates are spread out between you and where you want to go? Imagine that were you today. Would you go? Would you invest in a boat that might go there? You know the largest you might get in a pirate fleet in 2,000 or so pirates, but in the East we have forces of 150,000. He could even defeat European forces such as in 1804 where he beat a Portuguese fleet that was sent out to beat him.
Tragically Cheng Yih’s career took a tragic end when he died during a voyage in 1807. His wife Cheng Shi took over his massive Empire as he had no sons. However, Cheng Shi would not have much time at the helm as her Empire began to crumble. The different fleets began to fight each other, the British began to bring in more ships and fight piracy, and Imperial forces began to try to bring the opium trade under control. In 1810, after three years of rule, she accepted an Imperial offer of amnesty and retired to control a sector of the opium trade. The British would begin to dominate the Chinese market and Chinese politics and they began by defeating piracy and making the waters safe for free trade. The last major force was defeated at the Red River Delta where 1,800 pirates and 58 ships were destroyed by the British Navy as it swept down the Chinese coast.

Piracy has not died. Today it is still a major threat to world shipping, but it is nothing like what it was. There are no massive armies that terrorize Europe, no forces of 150,000, and nothing that can challenge the modern navies. For the most part these modern pirates operate in small groups in speed boats that cruise the waters around Somalia and the area around the Philippines and Indonesia where there is a lot of boats and a lot of nooks and crannies for pirates to hide in. Everyone remembers when the Somalian pirates took Richard Phillips, an American captain of the Maersk Alabama was taken hostage and then saved by Navy Seal snipers.

So, let’s discuss some trends in piracy and pirate history. For one we can note that piracy has always existed and it will probably always exist. The ancient Egyptians experienced piracy and we still deal with pirates today. We can analyze the historical trend in piracy however. Pirates, privateers, and others who profit from raiding all live for anarchy. One of the terms that historians have created that can help explain the lack of piracy in most parts of the world today is Pax Britannica and Pax Americana. Let me explain Pax Britannica first. When Britain began to dominate the waves and cut out its empire it began to become the most powerful country in the world. The beginning of Pax Britannica begins at the fall of Napoleon and ends with the two World Wars that crippled the British Empire giving it a 200 percent debt to GDP ratio, a bombed out country, and a much weaker navy. During that time Britain destroyed piracy in every major ocean, spread parliamentary democracy around the world, and helped police international conflict. The 19^th Century saw barely any conflict and very few wars. It was the failure of this international system that Britain led that saw a return once more to trouble on international waters as nations. After the two World Wars America took over Britain’s role as globocop and continued the patrolling of waters and the commitment to free trade. Today America has the most to benefit from keeping the sea lanes free of pirates and therefore commits resources to do so. While Britain did have a navy that was the most powerful in the world during Pax Britannica, America today arguably has both the most powerful navy and army which may cause Pax Americana to last longer than Pax Britannica did. It’s an amazing thing to examine, but, as the Human Security Reports say there has been a dramatic and steady downfall in violence every decade since the Second World War. That means that the 90’s were more peaceful than the 80’s which were more peaceful than the 70’s and so on.

From an economic point of view it has been said that piracy can be merely a way for countries to put a tariff on the goods of other richer countries that might not want to trade with it. For example in Somalia the piracy trade is one of the largest generators of wealth in the country. Piracy can in many ways be a libertarian’s dream way of fighting wars. When a country declares war on another it can profit from charging for letters of marque from privateers. The only problem with that approach, as the British found out, it is hard to make those privateers go away when you want peace. Some nations, such as the Barbary States made it into an entire industry and relied on the corsairs for both revenue and power. Another thing that pirates provided in terms of economic benefit was a free form of national defense. Pirates such as Henry Morgan were really the only thing between the Spanish and the settlers of Jamaica. For the pirates themselves piracy was simply a business, a trade, a means of life. Most of the men who engaged in true lawless piracy were probably mentally ill in some way, but most privateers liked to think of themselves as patriots and would not attack their own countries ships under any circumstances.
Now, the economic effects to the global markets from piracy are large. For one, it raises the costs of global trade by making insurance costs go up. The costs go up even higher as the wages you have to pay for sailing through pirate infested waters must be higher than without. Lastly, the amount of goods being sent decreases as fewer businesses can cope with the costs of sending their product to market. Less goods for the same supply makes prices go up, trade goes down, and decreases globalization. While some might argue that the taxes that go towards the Navy outweigh the costs associated with piracy it is ultimately incorrect if we look at the historical record. As British sea power grew piracy decreased and globalization began to occur. If anything, we know that markets like an absence of war, piracy, and violence to work best. We can also see that as you invest in a global market the costs of that market go down as countries get incentives to police their own waters. All across Europe we don’t see any piracy anymore because as liberal capitalism spreads, so too spreads governments that want trade and don’t want piracy. If you let piracy defeat globalization by providing no police we could see a slide back into the era when armadas of 150,000 pirates sailed the high seas.

Piracy: The Complete History by Angus Konstam

Empire of Blue Sea by Stephan Talty

http://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-11542&y=-7598&z=5

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-04-12/world/somalia.pirates_1_navy-snipers-three-pirates-bill-gortney?_s=PM:WORLD

Piracy and World History: An Economic Perspective on Maritime Predation by J. L. Anderson From the Journal of World History,

the Human Security Report http://www.hsrgroup.org/human-security-reports/human-security-report.aspx

1. Vikings - Violence For Profit

Podcast is available here

this is the somewhat typed up transcript of the above podcast. Enjoy.

Hello and welcome to the first episode of the first season of History on the Run. Each of these episodes will be coming out weekly. On Friday to be specific, but you can download and listen to them at your own leisure. Whether it’s walking, running, doing chores, or driving to work, I will give you something to think about and talk about with your friends. While I love History, and every episode will have dozens of historical nuggets in them, history is boring by itself. Let’s face it. Dates, names, and places can be interesting, but without something else history is just some people who did some stuff in some places. In a college setting you’d be getting all of the Social Sciences and that is what we’ll bring here at History on the Run. Psychology, economics, sociology, political science, international relations, and every part of that great tree of the social sciences will be touched upon. But, without further ado, let’s get on with the show.

Imagine living in a big city. Every day you hear reports coming in. Stories of the foreboding presence sweeping in from the north filters into your conversations. The only feeling that you can possibly have had that comes anywhere close to what these people feel is that sinking feeling of a deadline you can’t avoid coming up. Just think of it, that dread, boiling in your chest. It’s the procrastinator’s nightmare. Now just think of that feeling times ten. Imagine that today. New York, Washington, San Francisco, Chicago, you name it. Imagine this city surrounded by 40,000 Danes and there’s only you and 200 men at arms assigned to defend the city.

This is what happened to Paris during the 9^th century. While Paris didn’t have the Champ de Elyees, the Eiffel Tower, or the Arc de Triumph it was still an important city of medieval France. At this time France was the heart of the Carolingian Empire, and the locals had tried their best to halt the Viking raid. The Vikings traveled in their famous longboats up and down all of Europe’s rivers. Only twenty years before Vikings in Russia had attacked the capitol of the Byzantine Empire Constantinople! The Vikings were everywhere the rivers could take them. Luckily for them every major city was on some major river, so the pickings were plentiful.

The Carolingians tried to stop the Vikings with everything possible. The most important of these fortifications were the fortified bridges. Paris had two of these fortified bridges to block off the river, and these bridges were the defenders’ best hope at holding off the Viking menace. Bishop Gozlin and Count Odo had to attempt to defend the bridge only two hundred men at arms. While 40,000 might be an exaggeration by Abbo, the poet who recorded the event, we can see that there was a very large Viking force in place. The Danes landed in seven hundred ships and demanded the surrender of the city. Count Odo, however, refused to give up the city to the Danes. Count Odo and his brother Robert the Strong took charge of the defense and fought off attacks against an unfinished tower on the bridge. The attacks failed and the Vikings regrouped for a new plan. The Danes first built siege engines and according to Abbo a thousand shots were fired into the tower. The defenders must have been shell shocked at this point, and the constant barrage repetitively wrecking every defense holding back a force of men who want to rip you apart probably left them nerve-wracked and senseless. At this point the Danes assaulted the tower in three separate groups with each formed into a testudo formation. The testudo is a group formation where all of the troops hold their shields so that every side has shields facing out. The people in the center hold the shields above their heads to catch any arrows that land on top of the group. The Danes would have had to move in a tight formation and move slowly to maintain the formation and have good discipline to make sure anybody who fell from an arrow or a javelin gets replaced. They filled in ditches and cut off the tower from the bridge back to the city and killed the men inside. They then tried to break into the city proper and get their hands on men, women, and children to sell as slaves and all of the valuables they could get their hands on. Luckily for the defenders they held until the Carolingian Emperor showed up. You can just imagine the relief that must have swept over the defenders when they heard the new.

Let’s step back from the siege for a second and ask why did these raiders descend to pillage, loot, and burn Europe? Why did they become the nightmare from the North? I think it’s too often that we look just at their own culture and ignore what made these men become the nightmares of bishops, counts, and emperors from France to the Byzantine Empire. In a way, we do two polar opposite things to these people. We either try and make them into us or we emphasize how they’re not like us.

Let me explain myself here. When we study Vikings you’ll hear a lot about Norse family structure, their history, their culture, their religion, etc, but very seldom do you get into the psychology and economics behind the actions of these raiders. While families, religion, trade, and other such things are very interesting the real importance lies in what they did that changed history. To put it bluntly it’s the raiding, ransoming, and violence that makes these men really interesting. What made them do what they did? What would it take to make you do it?

The second thing we do is we distance ourselves from these types. Take pirates for example; everyone knows about Blackbeard and other worse pirates. We think of cruelty, a feverish desire for wealth, and of course, a love of the rum. What we don’t look at is the motivation. Did it make economic sense to be a pirate? What were the rewards? What caused this? Why isn’t it happening now? Could it happen now? Is it happening now?

So, you might be thinking what is this podcast? This podcast is a lecture series. Each series will be broken down into five lectures. Each series will revolve around a theme. The theme of this series is Violence for profit. The first lecture will deal with Vikings, the second with pirates, mercenaries will come next, we’ll move on to gangsters, and lastly we’ll deal with the armies of conventional states.

So, Vikings, where was I…..Ah yes, the Siege of Paris. The reason the Vikings did these things was simple: profit. Money. Wealth. And for the Vikings it was incredibly profitable. After Charles arrived it did not suddenly look like a clip from the Lord of the Rings with Gandalf leading the relief force to save everyone from the barbarian horde. No, it was quite different. When Charles arrived he paid the Vikings to go away. He would be deposed after coming to the aid of the three year siege with his moneybags. The Carolingian Empire would break up and would not be put back together. Charles would be known as Charles the Fat. Not only did Charles the Fat pay the Danes, but he also let them pass into Burgundy which was not under his control to sack, pillage, and destroy that territory. The Vikings must have made off rather well. After being paid they were able to keep what they had taken from the area around Paris and they were allowed to go into Burgundy to raid for slaves and other goods.

The Vikings got their income through a multitude of ways. One way was simply by trading. The Germans in Denmark had a healthy trading relationship that stretched back to Roman and Celtic periods of history where ideas, goods, and people moved between the cultures. As they began to trade with the new European states after the fall of Rome they also began to raid, and they then began to conquer. The Vikings from Norway, Denmark, and Sweden set up kingdoms in England, Ireland, and Russia through conquest. In Normandy France they were actually invited in. The French were having so many problems fighting the Vikings off they hired Vikings to take care of these other Vikings. It’s like in the business community where you poach your competitor’s employees to use against them.

So let’s imagine that these raiding ventures are a business. Where do they get their revenue? First they get it through the acquisition of goods. Anything that had value they could simply take and sell. This included slaves. At the siege of Paris any free men they found in the countryside were taken into bondage. The Vikings had a long history of slavery. When attacking other neighboring local villages they would take the prisoners and sell them as slaves, and when they met other cultures taking them as slaves was done without hesitation. In Ireland, for instance, the Vikings were incredibly involved in the slave trade. ‘The Annals of Ulster’ record times when the Vikings swept down and took cattle, men, women, children, and anything else they could lug onto their ships. The Vikings used their large trade network to send their slaves all over the known world. We know that many of slaves went to Muslim Spain, but it’s possible slaves could have been traded along the entire network that stretched from Iceland to India. We know that their trade network expanded this far because in an archeological dig on the Swedish island of Helgö a small statue of Buddha was found. Clearly globalization is nothing new. It’s also interesting to think that in the Arab World or India there are people with an Irish heritage they don’t even know about.

Now today we have ceased to view human beings as being part of a market, but this is simply because cultures can decide what is a market and what is not a market. For example there is a market over my time and my labor, but there is no market over me. Certain things like Dum dum rounds, mines, and chemical weapons are markets for some and for others as horrid as slavery. We in America do not allow a market for the time of children to exist, but in many other countries around the globe they have no qualms about such a market. Interestingly enough while we make a market for a child’s labor illegal here in the US we deal every day with markets that deal with child labor. For the average Viking a slave was the same thing as any other good and was bought and sold at in capitalist markets where prices and quantities were controlled by supply and demand. If you’re still not following me let me give you another example. Today our friends are not markets. When we are on Facebook we don’t think about profit, revenue, or any other business terms. But what about the future? Is this going to change? Some people would like this to change and are trying to turn your friendships into a business….for you. Here’s a clip from a site talking about a new Social Network site called MyPage5

MyPage5
Quote, “They call it “the MOST FINANCIALLY REWARDING social networking site in the world”, which is true to some extend. You earn $5 just for signing up and the rest is as followed: (you can do most of these as many times as you want to), Create blog= 4c, Blog Comment= 1c, Upload video= 3c, Video comment= 1c, Post classified= 1c, Start topic in a group= 1c, Group Comment= 1c, Profile comment= 1c, Upload photo to album= 1c, Photo comment= 1c, Band comment= 1c, Chat reward= 2c, plus 5% of your referral’s daily activities. As you can see, there are a lot of ways to make money on this site. You will be paid via pay pal.”

http://www.blogstash.com/5-social-networking-sites-to-make-money-socializing/

Other sites are popping up like daisies. Things like FrensZone, 60gr, ApSense, Gather, and so many more are trying to attract Facebook’s users by letting them share in the spoils

Ok, I think we’ve got a bit distracted. Ok, Viking revenue streams. We have goods, slaves, and of course land. Land, before the industrial revolution was one of the most valuable things in the world. Land came with serfs who were people tied to the land and were basically slaves. Land got you food, people, and of course status. The one thing you had to do was defend your land and your people because others wanted to take it. When the Vikings thought they could keep the land they did. In the areas that had a strong state with a long periods of Roman Rule the Vikings weren’t able to take any land, and in the case they did they were invited by the ruler. In Russia, Ireland, and England there wasn’t a strong state that was able to resist Viking advance. In the case of England there had been Roman rule, but it had not been for as long a time as France and was always a periphery of the Empire. In the case of Normandy the Vikings had been invited in and were able to become an established part of French culture.

So, goods, people, and land are all forms of profit for the Viking raider. Another way of creating wealth for the future mascots of the Purple People Eaters from Minnesota involved zero violence. Historians have labeled the term Danegeld. It was basically a tribute system that prevented the Vikings from attacking. The threat of violence that generated tribute was the final form of income for these raiders. The best part is not a drop of blood was spilt in the process.

The Vikings developed technology in their boats that allowed them to travel up rivers easily. These longboats were able to travel across oceans and across Europe. They were such good sailors that nobody….let me repeat that….nobody…..tried to challenge the Vikings at sea. Charlemagne, by far the pinnacle of the Carolingian Empire only fortified the border. It’s hard to imagine that one of the greatest military commanders of the Middle Ages would back away from challenging the Vikings at sea if he thought there was any chance that he could beat them. This means that the Vikings had complete control of the seas. This gave them the strategic advantage because they could land anywhere at any time. This mobility gave them an ability to strike all of Europe’s major cities…..and they did.

However the Vikings did need to fight once they landed. Boats don’t win wars on land…ok…that’s not quite true, but nonetheless the Vikings had to be a force on the battlefield to be the scourge of Europe. The Vikings certainly had the tactics, weapons, and battlefield prowess to be just that. The main armor that would have been worn by Viking warriors was chain mail with an iron helm with a nose guard. Chain mail is basically thousands of little steel or iron links that formed a shirt. Any type of slash would have the same effect as a blunt object, but stabbing attacks were often able to pierce the chain mail mesh. To give this a little personal flair I own a shirt of chain mail….and let’s just say I enjoyed wearing it around at places like….school. Someone would always think they were clever and stab me with their pencil asking, “does this hurt?” Unfortunately, as I said, a stabbing motion is just able to pass through the rings, and so yes, it did hurt. Another thing about chain mail is it often times went just past the hips like a very short skirt. That means there was little protecting your shins from blows. Lastly, the Vikings carried a wooden round shield to deflect blows.

The main weapon of the Vikings was not an axe, but a sword. They did use axes as well, and we’ll get to that, but the main weapon of choice was a 2 to three foot Frankish broadsword. Ironically it was Frankish weapons that were used to terrorize the France. Every free Scandinavian had some skill with a blade as it was also a weapon of defense. Throwing axes, and later in the 10^th century a two handed axe started to be used by the Scandinavians. Finally, along with spears both bows and javelins were used by Vikings to great effect. Most Vikings hunted for game regularly, so their ability with a bow should not be underestimated.

In the Icelandic Sagas there is a great detail given to battles and how they took place with a large amount of detail involved. One of the things that this shows is that everyone who listened was familiar with an assortment of weapons and their uses.

Viking fleets would often merge and this meant that several thousand Vikings wearing armor that was the best for its times could emerge basically anywhere. For military historians it’s a stroke of genius. For the Vikings at the time it was just a good way to make money and get land. Which, of course, they did.

Stay tuned next week for the next lecture in the series “Violence 4 Profit”. We’ll be looking to Pirates. Not only were they the scourges of the seas, but they were oftentimes good business ventures.

Sources:

Piracy: The Complete History by Angus Konstam

The Medieval Siege by Jim Bradbury

War in the Middle Ages by Philippe Contamine

The lecture series The Vikings by Kenneth W. Harl

The lecture series The Medieval World by Thomas F. Madden

http://www.blogstash.com/5-social-networking-sites-to-make-money-socializing/