An Age of Miracles III: The Romans Endure
- Thread starter Basileus444
- Start date
Seems like the reforms Sophia is implementing will really future proof Rhomania against more societal threats down the line. General Crisis is one big teething phase to prepare them for a more Modern World.
Will respond to posts later.
No update today (March 5). Update schedule is going to be a little off the next couple of rounds, with the possibility of me just taking this month as a hiatus. I haven't decided on that yet.
No update today (March 5). Update schedule is going to be a little off the next couple of rounds, with the possibility of me just taking this month as a hiatus. I haven't decided on that yet.
Take as much time as you need. I'd rather wait for high quality than have you rush something out just to make a deadline.
Take as much time as you need! We’ll be avidly awaiting your return but do it at your own pace.
Take care!
Second the preference of fewer updates if the quality remains - we'll be waiting!
Seconded. Take your time, real life comes first.
Thanks for keeping us informed. Good stuff like yours is always worth waiting for.
Absolutely, take whatever hiatus you need. You’re under zero obligation to any of us and it’s been very kind of you to provide us with all this wonderful content!
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March Updates on Hiatus
Thanks for the kind words of support. I appreciate them.
March is going to be a hiatus month for this TL. For patrons, please note that means there will be no update to Not the End: The Empire Under the Laskarids for this month, but there will be no charges either.
Thank you.
March is going to be a hiatus month for this TL. For patrons, please note that means there will be no update to Not the End: The Empire Under the Laskarids for this month, but there will be no charges either.
Thank you.
Rhomania's General Crisis, Part 17.3: Sustaining the War, Part 4
Rhomania’s General Crisis, Part 17.3-Sustaining the War, Part 4:
The establishment of the Lower Council in late 1662, despite its quick revision from the initial plan, created several long-term implications for the future of Roman governance. The Lower Council was hardly proportionally representative. The twelve tier-representatives retained represented at most half the population, with eight of the twelve (dynatoi and mesoi) representing roughly a tenth. Yet it was a crack in the autocratic-bureaucratic makeup of the Roman government.
The concept of broadening the franchise had also been planted, even if after a couple of weeks this would go dormant for quite some time. The concept of the need for education for representatives was also established, as was the idea of selecting representatives via sortition instead of election. The last would become a particular feature of Roman government.
The earliest Lower Council meetings did provide some useful advice, which certainly helped in giving the new institution desperately needed creditability. It was decided in consultation between Sophia, various officials and courtiers, and the Imperial and Lower Councils that the concepts of just price, just profit, and just interest could not be abandoned. To do so would be to abandon justice and that would simply invite more Armies of Suffering. (That the Tourmarches in Constantinople had elected to remove these restrictions provided a strong contrarian reason for their retention.)
But the current setup needs to be revised. What exactly constituted the line between just and unjust profit was debated, with 10% being a common figure. But the representative for the Paroikoi Tier IV pointed out that in sales of olive oil, a common farmer could often get a profit of 25%, with that high rate being a strong incentive for olive oil production and a significant source of income for the wealthier peasantry. It is agreed then that the just profit rate is 25%, with the increase being considered also a good compromise for those who do feel that the just profit concept discourages business initiative.
Another reform that aims to win the support of those who want to lessen restrictions is to abolish all non-governmental rights of ‘first purchase’ and ‘first sale’. The exception for government institutions, including civic authorities, is to ensure that public granaries will be stocked. These rights, particularly that of ‘first sale’, have been commonly bestowed on religious institutes, especially monasteries. This was a common complaint for said monastery’s neighbors, since they were unable, legally, to sell their own produce until the monastery had done so, and the uneconomically-minded monasteries, secure in their privilege, sometimes were rather dilatory in bringing their own products to market or merchant. This also attracts those government officials who are keen to curb the economic power of the church.
These reforms encounter the same issues of enforcement that had been present before with the concepts of just profit. Large-scale purchases, such as that of landholdings and of wholesale merchandise, and transactions in cities and towns can be much more easily policed. A farmwife selling eggs or eggplants or a peddler selling needles in a hill village is a different story. But such small-scale transactions are less of a worry, simply because of their small scale. There is quite a big difference between being cheated of a few folloi on a pair of scissors and being gouged of hyperpyra on a vineyard or a consignment of Thrakesian textiles. What is far more significant, both then and for the future, is the affirmation of an ideal, even if said ideal is never fully realized, even in the present.
Partly based on advice from the Lower Council, another reform, this one aimed squarely at the countryside, is the authorization for what become known as ‘country banks’. These are small-scale local credit unions. Previously, capital throughout much of the countryside had been limited and loan opportunities outside of a loan-shark who heartily ignored the concept of ‘just interest’ very scarce. These are designed to eliminate the issue.
These country banks are administered locally and have only a little capital, boosted sometimes with small government grants. Their administrative success is often hit-or-miss, but locals tend to find them more trustworthy than banks off in distant cities. After all, it is much easier to give Andronikos down the street a good thrashing for mismanaging the bank as opposed to some man in an office a hundred kilometers away.
But they do provide, when successful, a useful injection of capital. Their stocks may be small, but they are not financing massive loans. The loans are for local initiatives, the improvement of a road, financing an olive grove, or paying for the breeding of mules. These are the kinds of projects that would never get the attention and support of government officials who want something more grandiose, but they support initiatives that materially improve the lives of those locals who know their needs and are better able to address them.
This is very much a long-term process, with clearly noticeable-by-outsiders fruits taking decades to ripen. The country banks themselves eventually largely disappear as communications and transportation improve (partly as a result of initiatives financed by the country banks), being replaced by larger and broader credit institutions, but, in the words of one historian, ‘in their time they paid for the forks that ended up in the hands of the half of the Romans that previously did not have one’.
Another economic reform is interesting because Constantinople implemented an identical measure at practically the same time, late 1662, and with near-identical results. This was the issue of paper money to make up for a shortage of bullion and to pay for needed supplies and salaries. Merchants are instinctively skeptical of the paper notes and despite government pressure were unwilling to take them at face value. Their market value relative to their face value plummeted rapidly.
Eventually, in both areas loyal to Constantinople and Thessaloniki, they stabilized at half their face value when both governments, desperate to save this expedient, make a substantial concession. Paper currency that stands in for gold and silver currency can be used to pay tax liabilities, although at their market, not their face value. This makes the paper notes substantially more useful to consumers and halts the collapse in value, although suspicion keeps the market value from climbing back up closer to the face value.
This does present the temptation for both governments to try and print their way out of financial shortfall, but here the mirror continues. Both are worried about a backlash like that caused by the IBC scandal, where imperial bank certificates flooded the market in quantities much greater than expected, causing faith in all of them to collapse. Given the clearly established issues of trust, both governments are afraid of ruining this expedient by pushing it too far. (This emotional-economic scar proves to have a long half-life.) But even with this caution, these measures do help to expand the supply of credit and capital, helping economic growth over the long-term.
Another issue that comes up is the matter of common lands. Village commons are an important part of village life and the resources gleaned from them are often essential for the sustenance of the poorer peasants who have little or no land of their own. In a process that can be seen, to varying degrees, from Caledonia to Cilicia, these commons are often under threat.
There are many who want to enclose common lands and turn them into private landholdings, whether for farming or other purposes; sheep-grazing meadows is a typical goal. Those who wish to do so are aided by the fact that most common lands don’t have clear documentary proof of ownership. After all, there is no individual owner; it is held in common by the village as a whole. Its usage as common land is dictated by ancient custom and tradition, but without documentary support such arguments carry little weight in law courts. Many richer landowners use this loophole to take common lands and turn them into their own private property, with a practically-universal indifference to the sufferings of those dispossessed of their customary rights.
This issue, amongst others, played a major role in the formation of the Army of Suffering. Sophia and her counselors are not willing to roll back already-existing enclosures, viewing that as too much of a legal can of worms. There would be all kinds of issues of compensations for improvements and in many cases the damage has already been done. Those affected negatively have already decamped or died.
But that doesn’t mean that future abuses should be tolerated. Common lands by customary usage should be protected, but at the same time there is a strong interest in protecting private property. The solution here is the concept of communal-private property rights. Effectively, the village, as a sort of corporation, assumes the private property rights of the common lands with the villagers acting as shareholders, with appropriate documents being drawn up to that effect. Once established, attempted enclosure of common lands without agreed legal compensation would be no different from the theft of land from a private landowner.
This does not end the issue. Drawing up documents to establish claims across the whole Empire would be a long process, with many peasants not understanding the need, and their suspicions of the whole affair which would slow matters even further. That this often ended up being to their own cost, as many took advantage of the slow closure of the loopholes to wiggle through beforehand, did not help reduce said suspicion.
But it does lower many concerns. It does eventually raise others as some argue that communal lands are inefficient and would be better-utilized in private hands. Rhomania has a tradition going back centuries of allowing unutilized waste hands being transferred, despite ownership claims, to those who have proven able and willing to develop them. But that is for waste lands not being used at all, not for lands being used but not being optimized to their maximum extent. Inefficiency is to be deplored but does not justify expropriation.
I dunno, this reads more like short-circuiting many of the mechanisms and incentives that led to capital formation and the accumulation of best practice and know-how that led to the Commercial and Industrial Revolutions in the first place.
I know that they were never going to be a first mover due to the sheer dearth of industrial resources but this isn’t going to help.
I know that they were never going to be a first mover due to the sheer dearth of industrial resources but this isn’t going to help.
That's where the State can intervene with tax money. Instead of the Wild West type of unrestricted development and risky behaviors that free market capitalism leads to, the Roman Empire can pick and choose what to invest in and get the best returns. State Capitalism ho!
Yea… the faith this board generally has in the capacity for state interventions to make up for market mis- or over-regulation, particularly in capital markets… is not something I share in the least.
One need only look at modern “neo-mercantilist” economies with vast mis-allocations of credit, gluts of productive capacity in concentrated sectors, huge demand deficits because the citizenry has too much income transferred away to support state-led development and “export competitiveness,” and imploding birth rates to understand why.
I assume that as markets become more sophisticated, state capacity increases, and societal-level risks fall, Roman bureaucrats are going to lengthen the leash a bit, otherwise good luck achieving broad-based industrial modernity without the “gouging” pricing signals that rapidly allocate productive capacity within complex supply chains.
But, I dunno, maybe the author intends the Romans to be the Soviets.
Cryostorm
Monthly Donor
I do want to point out there's a big difference between a command economy like the Soviets and a state capitalist style economy, which is essentially what China, South Korea, Japan and to lesser extents what Germany, France, and even the US at times used.
Also I get the feeling that the principal of just profit is going to be applied differently for different industries and goods, food and housing profits might be more constrained than luxury good profits for example. The just profit thing also only applies to Rhoman citizens buying goods domestically, and not to exports sold in foreign nations.
As for locking some of the commons away for the villages, that's no different than the modern day parks and municipal land we have today, and is a very small percentage of existing land. It just ensures public lands stay that way unless fairly purchased, not stolen through legal chicanery.
Also I get the feeling that the principal of just profit is going to be applied differently for different industries and goods, food and housing profits might be more constrained than luxury good profits for example. The just profit thing also only applies to Rhoman citizens buying goods domestically, and not to exports sold in foreign nations.
As for locking some of the commons away for the villages, that's no different than the modern day parks and municipal land we have today, and is a very small percentage of existing land. It just ensures public lands stay that way unless fairly purchased, not stolen through legal chicanery.
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Cryostorm
Monthly Donor
Also, 25% is still a pretty big profit margin, bigger than margins for some industries get today, and what's considered part of the cost of production can be fluid so it won't have a huge effect outside of short-circuiting some of the more blatant and egregious examples of the 18th-19th century tycoons and unscrupulous merchants.
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