"...the entire tribe, male and female, must be a military as well as a social and economic unit. Everybody worked, and everybody fought, and in their system the proceeds were more evenly shared than on Terra." (p. 372)
That sounds good to me:
no uniformed police or armed forces set apart from the rest of society;
a socioeconomic unit instead of division into classes with competing interests;
everyone works and the products of their labor are distributed more evenly.
It is again mentioned that the Shamanate traffics with the Ice Dwellers - spirits? demons? - but this time the Shaman, who unites the chiefs, asks Flandry whether he dares to go with him "'...to meet the Ice Folk?'" (p. 373)
On Mars as described by Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and CS Lewis, it is possible to meet intelligent beings that are not, or no longer, organic. However, although Flandry accompanies a Shaman, he is about to meet native organic intelligences.
We have recently returned from a long day out and I have started to read To Kill A Mockingbird so this might be the only post for today. I find affinities between Harper Lee and Mark Twain and thus indirectly with Poul Anderson.
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The socio/political arrangements of the Tebtengri Shamanate could only work amidst the unusual and special circumstances seen on Altai.
No police? No need when all adults of military age are, de facto, soldiers and policemen themselves.
And that more even distribution of goods, services, profits, etc., could only work with relatively SMALL numbers of people. With large populations you will INEVITABLY get social divisions and division of labor, with grater returns for some over others.
I have read Harper Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD twice. Very much worth reading, IMO. Never thought before of comparing her work to that of Mark Twain or Poul Anderson's works.
Ad astra! Sean
Tribal-level societies often have an arrangement where everyone (or at least every adult male) is a warrior, and expected to guard the public peace.
In fact, in colonial America, all adult males (except slaves, of course) were required to serve in the militia(*), and to turn out for the "hue and cry" to pursue criminals. For a long time, uniformed specialist police were regarded as the sort of tyrannical things the French did.
The downside was dueling, blood-feuds, and a really, really casual attitude towards violence.
This was a continuation of early Germanic models. The Vikings had their 'Things' where everyone, or at least all heads of household, could vote and speak and decide judicial cases. They were also given to hitting each other with axes a lot.
The tribes Flandry falls in with on Altai also have a continuous serious war on their hands, and have to devote most of their social resources to it. Sort of like Sparta, except that they're not agricultural and hence don't have to have a huge underclass.
This was true on Earth, too. Steppe nomads trained every free male (and to a lesser degree, women) to war, and all the men could ride off to fight because at a pinch the women, children and older men could look after the herds for a while.
(*) in England, the militia was in practice restricted to people which some, though not necessarily very much, property. In America it largely reverted to the earlier more universal model, because in colonial America 80%+ of the free population were by English standards more or less middle-class, farmers and their families, and independent artisans and theirs, often also owning land.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, I have read of how it was France which pioneered in specialist, full time police forces. Something the Anglo/Americans disdained for a long time. And one example of how casually violence was taken by them was the large number of petty offenses punishable with death (what came to be called the Bloody Code in England). Iow, they still had a "Germanic/Nordic" attitude about crime.
Ad astra! Sean
The French riot police have a reputation to this day. There is a comic song, "The Bold Gendarmes."
Note that gendarme is derived from “gen d’armes” which meant “man-at-arms”; it was a term for soldiers, specifically armored cavalry.
"Gen d'armes." Brilliant!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I had not known that about the origins of "gendarmes." I did know a Medieval "man at arms" was a fully trained and armored soldier, like that of a knight, except for lacking the "accolade" (being knighted). But I think men at arms were eligible for knighthood.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: they were. They were also the types that the French kings used to enforce their claim to universal jurisdiction as feudalism broke down. There wasn’t much distinction between a standing army of soldiers and a regular uniformed police force.
Both were the ‘fist of the State’. Still are, for that matter.
Note that feudalism hadn’t drawn a clear distinction between military and police functions either. A lord was a knightly warrior and also presided over his own court; both were expressions of his being a “man of power”. There had always been a tension between this and the left-over Roman sense of law as abstract rules, and also with the demotic view of law as the community’s enforcing its collective sense of ‘rightful custom’. The proportions of each varied from place to place and time to time. The Church had always kept up Toman legal concepts, for instance, and manorial courts might meet in the lord’s hall but they were also community institutions and paid attention to custom.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Re your first comment immediately after mine above: basically, I had that in mind, men at arms gradually taking on functions we associate with police forces. Probably beginning during the later phases of the Hundred Years War as the English were being driven out of France.
Yes, I can see how manorial courts were based on local, customary law and precedent. And how that can clash with written, abstract, codified law.
Ad astra! Sean
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