John Buchan describes in detail the Scottish landscapes where his contemporaneous characters live, work, hunt, shoot and fish. Dominic Flandry's friends include the Mayor Palatine of Britain. Thus, this Mayor's territory includes those same Scottish landscapes but changed by more than a thousand years of history.
In the Terran Empire period:
Who lives in Britain?
How do they live?
What work do they do?
How urbanized are the British Isles?
How many historic castles, mansions or palaces remain standing?
Does Blades Street, Lancaster, still exist?
Will the Mayor and his guests - including the Emperor and Flandry? - be able to reproduce the kinds of sporting and leisure activities described by Buchan?
I would welcome an addition to the Technic History answering such questions.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I think we can get an idea of how many people live and work on the Terra of the Imperial era by taking note of how people live and work on the most advanced colonial worlds, such as Hermes. We do get quite a detailed description of life on Hermes in MIRKHEIM, for example (I do realize that story is set LONG before Flandry's time). Except that on Terra, such descriptions would have a more urbanized "feel."
It's a pity we never see the Mayor Palatine in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS. Since Flandry had rather exacting standards on who he would call his friends, I think it's fair to say the Mayor was probably a reasonably decent person.
I would say the island of Great Britain was so heavily urbanized that it needed legislative and legal action to ensure a reasonable amount of open ground. Tax exemptions could be granted to land owners ON CONDITION their lands were not urbanized, for example. I think the estates of one of the Scottish peers is the largest in the UK--so, I can imagine his descendants in the Imperial era continuing to hold these lands on such conditions.
And if the Mayor Palatine is a descendant of the former British royal family, his estates probably comprised much of the former Crown/Duchy of Cornwall domain and would be held on similar conditions.
I would hope many of the castles, palaces, and great houses of the UK survived the perils of the coming centuries until the Empire arose! Some of them probably passed into the hands of the Emperors, others would be museums, others would still be in private hands, etc.
I rather Blades Street, or my own home street of "Berkeley" would still exist by then. Cities can be destroyed and rebuilt, or simply change piecemeal as time passes.
Yes, I would expect the Mayor, and his friends and guests, including Flandry and the Emperor himself, to hunt and fish if that was what they liked. We see Chives going fishing in the High Sierra at Flandry's country retreat at the end of A STONE IN HEAVEN, for example.
Sean
Sean,
Big houses in the Lake District have become hotels, outdoor pursuits centers, owned by the National Trust for the public to visit, still privately owned but letting tourists pay to look around etc. Thus, many people get some benefit from them.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course! I did have the National Trust in mind, or whatever it might be called after the Empire arose, running some of these great houses as museums or outdoor pursuits centers. I would also see nothing wrong in some of them remaining purely in private hands.
I have suggested in other comments that the Imperium would desire and encourage large portions of Terra remaining unurbanized for practical reasons as well. My thought was the Imperium would not want Terra to be totally dependent on synthesized food or imports from other planets for the food people would need. So wide regions would be set aside for agricultural purposes.
Sean
I have read books and seen videos on the concept of 'rewilding'. In the case of Scotland, the advocates of this want to reduce the number of large herbivores, sheep and deer, so the temperate rain forest of millenia ago can be restored. The deer numbers would be reduced by some mix of human hunting and the re-introduction of large predators like wolves and wildcats.
I rather like that as an aspect of some high technology future.
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