Tuesday 11 January 2022

Empires In Time And Space

Britain, where I write these posts, has had two involvements with Empire: Roman and British.

The title character of Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys Tetralogy is a Romano-Briton whose narrative begins on Hadrian's Wall, just one county north from here.

Time Patrol milieu HQ is in London, 1890-1910. Patrol agents must protect Queen Victoria from a German assassin from 1917. (In another fictional timeline, Queen Victoria, after encounters with a werewolf and the time-traveling Doctor, founds the Torchwood organization whose job description is to defend the British Empire against threats either extraterrestrial or supernatural.)

In the Terran Empire, modeled on the Roman and sometimes sounding like the British, Britain has the status of a Mayoralty Palatine.

We are just about to watch a TV program about a newly discovered Roman archeological site in Northampton.

13 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

Oh, more than two.

There was Canute’s North Sea realm, then the Normans, then the Angevins, then the 100 Years War - 1066 started a process with England being part of a greater French-based realm, and ended with England aspiring to rule a Continental empire. Then there was the conquest of Ireland, starting with Strongbow, and of Wales.

The English have always been a savagely warlike and expansionist people, from their very origins.

Convincing so many people that they’re cute harmless hobbit-like gardeners is a true triumph of propaganda over evidence.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

You beat me to listing how the English were empire builders more than just twice! The attempts at conquering France during the Hundred Years War was when England aspired to setting up an empire on the Continent.

I had to laugh at that last sentence! Yes, the English were not at all "...cute harmless hobbit like gardeners"!

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

We still aren't!

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And in many ways I think that is good!

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

My father's mother came from a farming family in Wiltshire who'd been there since before Domesday Book -- he did some research on it later, consulting local parish records and the like, and he could trace them back that far. Not rich, not poor, ordinary yeomen farming their land (with the occasional priest or blacksmith or miller) and doing their bit, sticking close to home except in wartime.

But that's only the ones who inherited the Uphill family's farms, or married neighbors.

My grandmother was the youngest of 13, setting off to the New World to make her way, since she had no inheritance except lots of skills and willingness to work hard.

(To her dying day, she considered women who bought bread or butter in shops to be lazy and ignorant; she made her own of both, and very well, too. She could also make a stubborn cow let down its milk just by wagging a finger and giving a sharp word, by repute.)

My father also found Uphills all over the world, from Utah to Patagonia to Caithness to New Zealand, mostly farming, others in everything from the Anglican clergy to various armies and navies, product of generations of younger sons and daughters off to make their way far from home.

That north-Wiltshire parish had played a part in making a quarter of the world English-speaking!

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Gee whillikers! I buy my bread and butter from stores! Am I supposed to grind wheat to flour, and use the flour to bake my bread? Ditto, churning milk to butter. (Smiles)

Even Medieval farmers were generally content to take their grain to the local miller for grinding.

So your father's mother came from a family of the rural middle class. And I would have thought some of those adventurous Uphill relatives of yours who ended up in the Army or Navy might have done very well indeed. Sort of like the Scelhams in your BLACK CHAMBER books. One or two might even have been raised to the peerage! (Smiles)

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: Oh, they bought their flour -- their part of Wiltshire isn't great wheat country. Up on the chalk, it is.

Incidentally, "different as chalk and cheese" refers to that type of geological difference, originally, IIRC. Chalk downs, high and dry and rolling, are for grain and in places where the soil's even thinner, sheep. "Cheese" country is lower and wetter.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

That I had not known, chalk downs being good for growing wheat. And for someone as ignorant of farming as I am, it also seems counterintuitive.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: it's a matter of drainage and soil chemistry. The chalk is alkaline (chalk is a form of lime), which wheat likes, and it's well-drained and warms up faster, which is also good for growing winter wheat, and it's easier to plow, which reduces costs.

Heavier, damper lowland soils are better for fodder and grass. Also cattle are less touchy about getting their feet wet than sheep.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

That explains a lot. Many thanks!

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

One of the results of the "agricultural revolution" (more of a moderately quick diffusion of better techniques combined with experimentation that took several centuries) was that grain production in Britain became concentrated on "light" (sandy to sandy-loam) soils, rather than on the heavy clays, which were more fertile -with medieval methods-.

The new techniques emphasized use of fodder crops, including nitrogen-fixing legumes, and roots, which allowed much higher livestock densities despite the drier climate, which produced a lot more manure.

Often the livestock side of things wasn't very profitable in itself, just paying its own costs, but the increased fertility made up for it by making profits from grain sales.

So gradually the light dry soils of the eastern part of England (and Scotland, in places like East Lothian) became specialized in intensive mixed farming with a grain emphasis, while the damper, heavier soils, and the wet hill-country to the west and northwest, were put to grass and specialized in livestock, buying in most of their grain.

Previous to that, nearly every location tried to grow its own grain if it could, no matter how lousy the climate.

S.M. Stirling said...

That was what broke the upper limit on population.

Late Roman Britain probably had around 4-5 million people; by 1066, the population was around 2 million... and that was after a period of expansion, which shows you how the post-Roman period went.

Then it gradually rose again until the early 1300's, reaching about the level of Roman Britannia, then a combination of bad weather famine and the Black Death (waves of the latter) knocked it back down below 2 million again by the late 1400s, then it started to grow again, and reached 4-5 million by the mid-1600's, and then stabilized and declined a bit with emigration, late marriage, etc., falling until the 1720's.

But by then the 'agricultural revolution' knocked the Malthusian limit off, and a new pattern of growth set in that lasted until the 1870's.

Then of coure modern food imports allowed another long spurt of growth that's gone on to our own day.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

And that population growth due to imports made it esp. CRUCIAL for the UK to do well in commerce, industry, financial services, etc., in order to pay for those imports. By then agriculture could only feed about half the people.

If Poul Anderson had set the beginning of THE HIGH CRUSADE a few years later than 1346 the setting would have been different, and grimmer. The Black Death reached England that year, just after Baron Roger seized the Wersgor space ship. If the Wersgor had arrived in 1347 the baron, if alive, might not have been able to shanghai that ship.

Ad astra! Sean