Many clan traditions evolved organically instead of being laid down from the beginning by Nick Kerensky. For example, the tradition of batchall started on Arcadia during Operation Klondike.
So... I was looking around for sources, and couldn't find any for the tradition of bondsmen and abtakha. Did it also evolve on Arcadia since the section described Shogunate troops becoming fully fledged clan warriors?
There's the practical aspect at work here on top of the fine sources cited by previous posters.
What do you do with the guys who surrender? How do you maintain order? How do you present a good reason to give up, instead of fighting to the last breath?
in a Civil War?
Killing prisoners motivates your opponent to
keep fighting, and the whole Pentagone break up happened because Kerensky forced guys who were hooked on the prestige of being the top-dogs in society by dint of their military position into civilian positions and roles that lacked that prestige, in an environment where such roles really DID lack that prestige. The Bondsman thing provides a motivation for enemy soldiers to give up and surrender instead of fighting to the bitter end-because it gives them that path to the top of society they were rebelling to get in the first place.
Given the demographics involved here, it was a sharp move by Nicky to start it, because it meant NOT having to kill them to the last man, and it meant NOT having to deal with nearly as many back door insurgencies, and it generated access to additional bodies to throw at the next target.
The Bondsman thing is really a clever way to deal with a situation where you have a huge number of military trained personnel with very few genuine civilians mixed in, and you also have a civil war involving people who only a couple decades earlier were fighting shoulder-to-shoulder in the most brutal war in their history.
The unique environment of post-exodus SLDF in the Pentagon worlds made it a viable option, where in a less artificial condition elsewhere, it would be pure stupidity.