I would have thought that an anthology like Multiverse could contain a mixture of stories, some true to Poul Anderson's vision but others continuing the discussion by disagreeing with it. Manse Everard thinks that:
"'...most human misery is due to well-meaning fanatics...'"
-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53.
Is it? "Fanatics" is a loaded word. Why not a story in which some "well-meaning" time criminals defeat Patrol conservatism and establish a (comparatively) "utopian" twentieth century free from World Wars, dictatorships, genocide and nuclear stockpiles? If you were a stranded Patrol agent, would you try to change history back to the way it had been? Of course, Eric Flint would still have to decide whether to write such a story.
What Flint does say, in relation to The High Crusade, is that, whereas Anderson was attuned to some perceived advantages of feudalism, Flint himself thinks that:
"...the best thing about the medieval period is that it's gone."
-AFTERWORD, p. 182. (See the above link.)
I agree with that. He goes on to say that, in the Dominic Flandry series, he "...was always rooting for the Merseians..." (ibid.) because the Terran Empire was rotting and decadent. It would be possible to write a story in which the Merseians turned out to be not so bad but, to do this, it would be necessary to contradict Anderson's clear presentation of the Roidhunate as aggressive, expansionist and supremacist. Avalonian human beings who fight to keep their planet in the Domain of Ythri and out of the Terran Empire are not traitors to their species and Dennitzan human beings who welcome beings of Merseian descent into their society and legislature are not traitors to their species but a human being who willingly served the Roidhunate would be a traitor because that regime offers only enslavement or extermination. Flandry prolongs the Empire to give some planets enough time to build the strength to survive during the Long Night, a worthy aim.
17 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
As for your speculations about an alternative 20th century, you or I would
first have to decide it would be worth aborting the timeline leading to the Danellians. Some might argue that a timeline without a Sarajevo and all its gruesome consequences does not necessarily mean even worse things would not happen. Altho I myself do have some sympathy for the idea of a world without a Sarajevo, WW I, and their hideous consequences.
I am not so sure there would not have been "nuclear stockpiling" even in a world without Sarajevo. At most, it might have taken somewhat longer before nuclear weapons and energy was developed. That might or might not have been better for us.
And I disagree with Flint's too dismissive view of "feudalism." I like and agree with its basic idea: decentralization. Instead of power being concentrated in an all powerful central gov't, power was distributed among local gov'ts. And this could and did take various forms: from land owning barons to city councils, or even village councils.
In any case, Flint missed how or why feudalism arose: because a society with a centralized gov't (like the Roman Empire) or the US (and the rest of the world in Stirling's Emberverse) with similarly "concentrated" gov'ts had COLLAPSED. For SOME kind of law and order to be restored, something like feudalism had to arise. Better that reasonably benign variants of feudalism to arise (as we see in the Emberverse).
I also disagree with Flint's poor opinion of Anderson's Terran Empire. For all the criticism leveled at it, what I noticed was that, on balance, the Empire wasn't that bad. Yes, Flandry strove to help prolong the Empire to enable as many worlds as possible to survive its fall--but I also suspect that, deep down, he really was at heart an Imperial loyalist.
I agree with you on criticizing Flint for his blind spot about Merseia. Yes, of course MANY Merseians, simply as individual persons, were decent persons. But that does not mean the ROIDHUNATE was so tolerable, for the reasons you listed. An ideology of racial supremacism inculcating a willingness to exterminate entire intelligent races rules out thinking it was better than the Empire.
Ad astra! Sean
It isn't that Eric dislikes the medieval period, it's that he dislikes it without -understanding- it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
A good way of putting it, Eric Flint not UNDERSTANDING why or how feudalism might arise.
In fast, the old, pre-Civil War US was a kind of feudalism, if we define that to mean a relatively weak central gov't over states which did most of the actual governing.
Ad astra! Sean
Well, it depends what you mean by "feudalism".
Feudalism wasn't just decentralized -- many times and places were that. It wasn't just the dominance of a class of timocratic warrior-landowners either; that's even more common.
It was the distinctive use of pledges of personal allegiance conferring mutual obligations as the systemic principle that was unique to feudalism, I think.
The closest analogue outside Europe would be post-Heinan Japan, which actually was fairly similar.
I don't think it's an accident that Japan was the only country outside Europe to modernize successfully in the 19th and early 20th centuries, -and- the country that had a social development most like Europe in the medieval and post-medieval periods.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I think you made a very important point: that a crucial feature of European feudalism was that "..distinctive use of pledges of personal allegiance conferring mutual obligations..." between a lord and his vassals that was a unique factor. The bargaining, horse trading, use of precedents and customs, etc., which went into defining those mutual obligations must have made up a huge part of the "common law" of various European countries.
And the "feudalism" of Japen, despite its differences from that of Europe, had something of that system of "...personal allegiance conferring mutual obligations"? I think I can see that, because the modernization of post-Tokugawa Japan seems to have been led by former daimyo and samurai, rather than a top down effort a la Peter the Great of Russia.
Ad astra! Sean
Personal allegiance means that feudalism is the rule of men, not the rule of law.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree. Take note of what I had previously said about bargaining, horse trading, use of precedents, etc. Once those things had become SET, they become the basis of law.
I recall, in one of Stirling Emberverse books, how Norman Arminger himself, autocratic as he was, unexpectedly found himself being compelled to at least take into account the consensus of what the new barons he had created would find tolerable. That too would become a basis for law.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: not really, because personal allegiance itself operated according to an increasingly elaborate structure of rules and precedents.
It was structured in terms of what each party gave and received.
Feudal law was very real: but it wasn't abstract. It conferred rights, but not abstract or universal ones.
Everything was very particular, very local, very specific. Custom had the force of law and in a sense -was- law; and of course custom and its interpretation were a continuous if often hidden series of pushes and shoves.
For example, early in the feudal period, in the runup to "1066 and all that", Harold Godwinsson was shipwrecked in Normandy, and William wouldn't let him go until he'd sworn allegiance.
(And tricked him into doing it on an altar which contained hidden saint's relics.)
Harold's counterargument was that according to English custom "a forced oath is no oath".
Note the importance both parties attached to oaths and their interpretation.
This was centrally important because to both, even fighting for the throne of England was dependent on precisely the interpretation and power of oaths.
William was a strong, stark ruler who men feared: but he couldn't -force- his vassals to rally to him. He didn't have a police force, much less secret police; or much of a standing army or bureaucracy.
His vassals, the barons, had to -want- to follow him, to believe that personal honor made it obligatory for them to rally to him. Other factors (like being able to hand out land if he won) were important, but this was the basic fuel of the machine.
In the case of his personal household knights, the men who ate every day from his board -- the equivalent of Harold's 'housecarls' -- that wasn't too hard. But with the feudatories who brought their menies to his banner, it was much more difficult and absolutely crucial.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! You brought out much more clearly what I had in mind in my own comments to Paul about feudal law and how much Harold Godwinsson and Duke William had in common. And these laws and customs limited how much William could muster for the invasion of England.
Ad astra! Sean
So, if a king ordered one of his vassals to torture prisoners, the vassal would be able to cite all sorts of other obligations and commitments that made it inappropriate and dishonorable for him to obey such an order?
Kaor, Paul!
I think that may actually be correct! I recall reading of how early Medieval law made no allowance for judicial torture. That unfortunately changed due to the influence and high status of Roman law when it came to be intensively studied in the new Italian universities.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: pretty much. Everything depended on specific circumstances. The webs of obligation could get -really- complicated, too.
George Martin, while a very good writer, gets some aspects of feudalism wrong in GAME OF THRONES -- his kings have far too much arbitrary power, for example: they're more like Roman Emperors.
There was an upside to the feudal system for monarchs, though: their power was more limited, but they were much more difficult to overthrow than Roman rulers, too.
Everyone in the system had a massive investment in its conception of legitimacy and of vested interest in things like the laws of succession.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly, a strict concept of dynastic loyalty gave many otherwise unstable medieval states the stability all gov'ts need if they are to be accepted as legitimate. It did take some time to go beyond the old Germanic concept that all the sons of the king, youngest as well as the eldest, bastards as well as those born of a queen, had an equal claim to the succession.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yup, primogeniture was a crucial innovation.
In England, it eventually got applied throughout the nobility -- which was crucial to England's unique course of evolution.
In most of Europe, all the children of a noble were nobles, who constituted a separate caste.
In England, only the heir to a noble title became a noble -- and he only became noble when he inherited.
All the children of a noble were legally commoners until then; the non-inheriting ones were commoners for the rest of their lives, unless they were granted a separate title.
This was directly equivalent to primogeniture for monarchs.
"The Royal Family" as a public institution was invented quite recently.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Agree, altho I also had the example of France in mind, after the accession of the Capetians. It became a cast iron principle that succession to the throne was ONLY thru the agnate legitimate male line descendants of Hugh Capet. That was why the daughters of the sons of Philip IV (and the son of Philip's daughter, Edward III) were all passed over and the crown bequeathed to Philip IV's nephew (son of his brother Charles of Valois), Philip VI.
Most of the English aristocracy followed a very similar rule of succession. And, yes, only the holder of a peerage was an aristocrat, in English law.
Ad astra! Sean
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