Hi, What is mankinds track record when the populance gets unarmed? Say from the stoneage to today.  What nations, countries ect, have disarmed their people and how long until they were conqured or enslaved from outside or within?  Thanks JB  

Since we're doing primarily nineteenth and twentieth century history lately, I can only do the obvious:

Soviet Union, 1917(18)-1991
Germany, 1930something-1940something (heh)
China, 1949-present
Afghanistan, 1996-2001 although right now the new government is taking away civilian arms
Great Britain, 1995/1996-present
Sweden (I believe, dunno the dates)
Possibly other communist states (Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam)

Mexico, enslaved by there corrupt government.

I believe that Japan is a country where absolute gun control was enacted, but you would be well-advised to check out the facts for yourself before you believe me.  In any event, the abolition of firearms did not eliminate violence.  

After the Portuguese first made contact with imperial Japan, a very strong cottage industry of firearms manufacture was established in Japan, and by the 1600s, Japan was a leading producer of matchlock type firearms.  

The authorities saw the firearm as a cheapening of the warrior tradition and a threat to the ideal of skill in combat.  They therefore cooked up a scheme where they demanded all iron implements to be melted down for the casting of Shinto (religious) bells.  Of course, guns were handed in with the rest of the steel items.  All were melted down, and guns were forbidden.

from this time until the arrival of Perry's Black Ships, guns were non-existent in Japan.  

How the hell did those people progress from a feudal agrarian state to a world naval power by 1910????????  Freaks.  

When were the Swedes disarmed?  I do know target shooting is done there, as well as hunting.  I don't know about handguns.  Funny, nobody mentioned Nazi Germany.  John

Actually guns there were banned by the Tokugawa Shogunate for the same reasons as everywhere else.

FOR THE CHILDREN!

Not. Guns in the hands of peasants makes it hard for samurai to keep oppressing them... oddly, the Tokugawa came to power with the aid of their arquebus-armed commoner footsoldiers.

With no guns outside gummint control, the gummint was able to explosively industrialize by exacting a terrible toll on the peasantry and worked. Amazing what central control can do with no effective resistance.

All Hail the Overmind. Don't struggle. It hurts less if you don't struggle.

I was going to bring up Japan, but I see someone beat me too it!

In Europe, firearms were a key element in ending fuedalism. A serf armed with a crude firearm can kill the best knight. In Japan, it quickly became obvious that in order to maintain their fuedal system, firearms must be removed from society.

"cheapening of the warrior tradition and a threat to the ideal of skill in combat" my ass, it was about maintaining control of the population.

Unlike Europe, Japan had this option--but it was a stupid option. The Japanese were lucky that the Americans who ended up opening their society were not intent on plunder and rape.

I don't believe that the Japanese would have resisted their government if they had been armed--in Japan, collectivism and submission to authority have been very effectively been integrated with the culture.

Firearm ownership encourages freedom and individualism, and freedom and individualism encourages firearms ownership. At least, that is what I believe. It is interesting that some of the "intelectuals" who support gun control are clearly motivated by the idea that firearms promote individualism, self-reliance, and similar values. Actual gun crime is an argument they will use, but it isn't the reason they support gun control.

I understand the pragmatic reasons for authorities banning firearms.  But for whatever reason, the Japanese people were amenable to being disarmed.  Honshu isn't that small an island, and some firearms could be squirreled away somewhere.  We all know that if necessary, we could devise some scheme for hiding guns in Rhode Island.    

This suggests two possibilities:
1) firearms were not so devastatingly effective that SOMEONE would always be tempted to stash one in order to upset the balance of power.  This makes sense when you look at the merits of matchlocks vs. Archery.  Japanese archery was pretty well developed, and there is little doubt that a skilled archer can fire faster than a muzzleloader.  I guess the muzzleloader's easier to conceal than the bow.  Who knows?  

2) There was some sort of cultural rejection of guns that ran deeper than the pragmatic recognition that guns threatened the ruling class.  I ain't even gonna try to analyze that one.  

What's also interesting is that Japan, unlike just about everywhere else, was not carved up by colonial powers.  Considering all the other examples, a country like Japan, opened by the West in the 1870s, should have been colonized with all the concomitant splendor that this entails.  I mean, if we were interested in colonizing the Phillipines, why wouldn't we have occupied Japan? At least the Japanese didn't have barongs, krises and specialized knives for decapitation.  

Amen on that... I hunt pheasant in Mexico from October to the first week of January. I was outraged at all the restrictions they placed on guns there... minimum barrel lengths, a ban on "el tipo militrar" ("assualt weapons"), restrictions on ammunition size and the registration requirments. The laws there are almost as bad as they are in my home state of sunny Kalifornia. [:D]

adited fur bad spelin...

I agree with this 100%. These "intelectuals"  are the same ones who want/think that the government can solve all the world's problems. These idiots are the antis that scare me the most. They not only want to ban guns becuase they think that guns cause violence, but they truely believe that if people were submisive and let the government control every facet of their lives the world would be a better place.

Japan has a long and zesty tradition of peasant revolts. Don't overestimate the conformity thing... they are still quite human.

They were disarmed first in 1598 by Hideyoshi, who confiscated all legally owned swords from commoners, using his military. Firearms were never really adopted as a civilian weapon to speak of, not in any great numbers.

Musket vs. Archer: You can train a peasant to stand in a line and shoot usefully well in a short time. Effective archery takes both training and physical conditioning, which take years.

Cultural Rejection of Guns: Nope. Only by the old school samurai clans, who got shot dead by the samurai clans that DID gleefully adopt the gun. Guns played a very very significant role in the balance of power in post-1500's Japan.

Fair enough!  :)   I am wondering why there was no technological revolution in japan, and also why there was no closet manufacture of arms.  Were the people so carefully watched that there was no way for makeshift blackmarkets in arms to spring up?  

To me the remarkable thing about Japanese history is that the island successfully banned a technological item, shut its doors for a time and then became an industrial power between 1860 and 1900.  the shift from a feudal state to an industrial state seems sudden and relatively successful.  

Sorry... I'm kind of a Japan History wonk. [:E]

For some reason, firearms development in Japan stayed frozen at the matchlock level from the 1580's to the modern era, when Japan modernized after the Meiji "Restoration" of 1868. Foreign weapons were of course found in the hands of the rare criminal, but because Japan was almost totally isolated until then (a period between 1600 something and 1868), there was little access to either the guns or the associated technology. The Tokugawa government maintained a police and surveillance state that any modern dictatorship would be proud to emulate, and matchlock weapons aren't all that useful to criminals.

Japan's industrialization, for whatever reasons and methods behind it, is remarkable. By any measure, it was an astounding success, one of the few successful top-down transformations of a nation. Japan was, at the time, already a highly mercantile, literate society with a strong, stable culture, albeit very repressive. There's a lesson here for all those perennial failing states in the Third World. Japan did it by itself. [+]:D]

Hell Spearweasel, no big deal, you've got me thoroughly outclassed on the topic of Japanese history.   No law against that!  :)

ABout secret police:  a friend grew up in Eberswalde (East) Germany.  After reunification his scientist parents discovered that three of their four adjoining neighbors were Stasi informants.  Must be a little chilly now ...

basically, it is safe to say that any country, who's populace was shown by history to be oppressed, the citizens were unarmed.

although life was pretty good for the average Roman, the possession of swords was strictly forbidden. they could not allow a far-off region to rise up against them, once conquered.

on to fuedal England, France, and basically every other pre-Enlightanment country of Europe.  all were unarmed as the various monarchies were only interested in gaining wealth for the crowns, the people starved. a hungry mob is an angry mob! (thanks B. Marley) this in turn affected the "empires" of each sovereign. the English colonies of India, Ireland and Palestine were all unarmed, as was the French Congo of the Renaissance. the English allowed the America's to be armed as this was necessity, and the crown believed that the Brittons in America would never revolt, why would they? (hee hee!)

the first thing the Soviets did, in Ukraine anyway, was to disarm them. they knew that being fiercly independant, the Ukrainians would not support any movement towards global socialism, let alone within their boredrs. it turned out to be a smart move on the part of Stalin, who tried to wipe Ukrainians off the face of the planet through the artificial famine of 1931-1933. imagine how hard it would be to prevent a farmer from surrendering all of his crops, if he were armed!

in the later years, after all the regions and countries have been beaten, starved, deported or threatened into submission, the government realized that in the North, and especially in Siberia, Irkutsk, Yakusk and other areas West of the Urals, that guns were the only way in which the locals could eat. most were nomadic reindeer herders and huntsmen, and they never really resisted the communist ideology (actually they didn't care, as long as they could remain nomads) so they were allowed to keep their arms. what the Soviets did instead was to ban ammo for private sales. they "socialized" the ammo, and rationed out 5 rounds of ammo per season, per family.

then came Adolf's Germany. he knew what he had to do to prevent a revolt of his evil ways, and smartly banned all civilian guns in the early 1930's.

since then, Cambodia, Korea, Cuba ~ EVERY Communist country, and EVERY dictatorship has thrived on the unarmed. where there are no dictators, and no guns, the oppressors are now the common theif, gangster and druglord. just look at modern Britain, Austrailia or Kalifornia.

My understanding is that Japan mostly isolated itself from most outside contact and doing its best to rid itself of previous Western influence, including destroying most guns and genocide of Christians.  

Then Japan sat comfortably ignorant of the outside world until the US ultimatum via the USN and Adm Perry to open their borders in 1854.  Then they realized things weren't all that peachy when their smoothbore cannons were obviously outranged by contemporary (rifled?) cannons.  Include steamships in the USN side and it was obvious that technology had left Japan behind.  Jap historical records show the amazement they felt in watching US ships travel without wind and pouring out smoke from their stacks.

 Being the adaptive folk that they are, Japan decided to play catch up in an all-out manner.  One of the gifts Adm Perry's group brought was a miniature steam locomotive run on some temporary tracks.  They also took some Jap leaders on a tour of USN warships.  In 7 years the Japanese had built their first steam warship, and 11 years after that they had a running railroad line between Tokyo and Yokohama.  In other words they crammed about 200 years of progress into 18 as their beginning.

Considering that they caught up enough in 80 years to rival the US and Britain in air/naval/army military strength and even begin their own nuclear weapons research during WW2, they sure caught on fast.

This isn't the only older example of them adapting.  When China's Kublai Khan was sending raiding parties to Japan's coast, Jap military culture was for mostly a limited samurai caste.  The Khan's troops were trained in larger unit type combat and defeated many individual samurai in uneven battles.  1 vs a boatload are bad odds.  As Japan figured out their mode of fighting wasn't a match for the Khan's raiders, they started arming larger numbers into formal units in sort of a mimic of Chinese tactics.  Follow up Kahn raiders faced a tough time, especially when their 40,000+ ship invasion armada was wiped out by the famous "kamikaze" storm and the survivors mopped up by ready jap troops.    

My amateur and flawed opinion only, based on sketchy past readings.

Edmund

...and before I forget, the unarmed pre-large military unit Japanese civilians suffered cruel atrocities at the hands of Chinese raiders (not that the Japs were any kind of angels when the tables are turned).  

You could say this is an example of a civilian population-
Before:  at the cruel mercy of raiders
After:  wiping out the raiders in battle

As another example, I think China largely had a sort of civilian disarmament prior to WW2:  somewhere I read that most everything but pistols were illegal to own.  Therefore, pistols, and pistols with shoulder stocks and full-auto became widespread.  Although this was enough for organized crime groups, it wasn't really any kind of threat to outside invasion, such as when Japan invaded and in the rape of Nanking, killed upwards of 500,000-one million civilians.

Contrast this to what a Japanese officer said after the war to "why didn't you invade the US west coast?" and he replied something about "we were not about to step into that quicksand" meaning they knew guns and even military rifle competition were legal for American civilians and any invasion force would be in deep doo-doo.

Edmund  

Whoops, double post hiccup

Edmund Rowe is awfully accurate for an "amateur". Everything he's said is correct based on what I've seen, heard, or read. I love this forum... :)