Comments on: The Ancient War Uniforms Fallacy

By: Lafayette C. Curtis

Lafayette C. Curtis — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:05:45 +0000

Hmm. You remind me about two journal entries I've written some time ago about this very subject. One examines the prevalence of uniforms in ancient and medieval fighting forces while the other deals with battlefield identification among non-uniformed fighting forces. Both of them are somewhat simplistic since they're meant as guidelines for fiction writers rather than actual historical discourses, but they may be able to add something valuable to the debate.

By: Airminded · Military History Carnival 7

Airminded · Military History Carnival 7 — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:01:53 +0000

[...] do with Thermopylae), while the skwib uncovers the lost PowerPoint slides of the battle of Salamis. Coming Anarchy points out that, contrary to many computer games and movies, most pre-modern armies did not use [...]

By: strategist

strategist — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:19:50 +0000

I was thinking about this the other day when reading about the battles between Caesar and Pompey’s forces during the Roman civil wars. I guess that it would have fairly easy to distinguish enemy troops when it was Romans fighting Celts, Persians or Goths, but hellishly difficult when it was Romans fighting Romans. In the case of Romans vs ‘barbarians’, key distinguishing features may have been different weapons, different battle garb, and different ways of fighting and manoeuvring, rather than ‘uniforms’.

By: Curzon

Curzon — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:16:20 +0000

Nick: indeed, officers have had uniforms through a good part of history (Hannibal’s soldiers being the first with their white tunics with crimson linings), but regulars wearing uniforms is much more recent as per the post. Of course, powerful professional, imperial armies, that in many ways acted more like police forces in the provinces, were different — hence Roman, Ottoman, and as James points out, British uniforms. But that was the exception, not the rule.

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:03:38 +0000

I believe it was a general rule of thumb that regulation uniforms were introduced a lot earlier for officers than for non-coms. This was particularly the case in the Royal Navy: regulation uniforms were first issued for officers in the mid-18th century, and for ratings something like a 100 years later!

By: James Bennett

James Bennett — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:34:50 +0000

My impression was that standard, distinctly colored uniforms for soldiers came into being in Europe in the 17th century as part of the general revolution in military affairs that came with Mauritz of Nassau and his system of standardized drill. With all the black powder smoke on the battlefield, brightly colored uniforms and big, distinct battle standards really helped keep the friendly fire casualties down. The British redcoat dates back to the beginning of the 18th century at least, certainly contemporary paintings show it. Although Lex’s point about the difficulty of prducing large numbers of colored uniforms in pre-industrial times is well taken, the size of armies prior to the French Revolution tended to be much smaller, too.

By: University Update - Video Games - The Ancient War Uniforms Fallacy (10/9/2007)

University Update - Video Games - The Ancient War Uniforms Fallacy (10/9/2007) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:46:27 +0000

[...] The Ancient War Uniforms Fallacy (10/9/2007) » This Summary is from an article posted at ComingAnarchy.com on Tuesday, October 09, 2007 This [...]

By: Adrian

Adrian — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 05:22:56 +0000

Plus, uniforms just make it more difficult to switch to the winning side during the battle.

By: Lexington Green

Lexington Green — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:04:43 +0000

"...the rise of the state and nationalism..." More importantly, the rise of factory production and chemical dyes. Only then did vast quantities of uniformly colored cloth become available. If you read the wonderful Swords Around a Throne: Napoleon's Grande Armee, there is a lot of discussion of just how hard it was for a handwork economy to generate enough uniforms for hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and how hard it was to come up with quantities of dye that would actually last under field use. On long campaigns even "uniformed" troops were marching in threadbare, bleached out uniforms. No doubt earlier armies would have liked to have had truly uniform "uniforms", but until we had factory production and dyes, it was not achievable.