Military Systems Reflect Their Civilian Societies

I have written this maxim a few different ways, but it is worth writing again: no army can help but recreate its civilian social structures on the battlefield.

When analyzing a historical army or creating a fictional one, everything must begin with that idea, that military systems grow out of and reflect their ‘civilian’ societies or—for societies that lack civilians as such—reflect the civilian side of the lives of their members. That means that armies tend to recreate civilian hierarchies, with similar—often identical—lines of status between the two.

So to understand what kind of military our society might come up with, we first need to ask some key questions about the civilian society….

— Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part I: Why They Fight – A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry