Poul Anderson can present complicated politics even in a short story. The Shahdom of Persia rules the city of Mirzabad which turns out to have been called Jerusalem a long time ago, back when Hebrew was a living language. The Shahdom is weak and the Ispanyans have established a wardership but that too is shaky. Persia is Zarathustran but the Prophet Khusrev from the Zagros Mountains has proclaimed that his New Revelation will cleanse Zarathustranism of its current corruption and idolatry. Led by Zigad Moussavi, the Puritans, followers of the Prophet, have seized Mirzabad. The Ispanyans, taken by surprise, have withdrawn into their stronghold, the Moon Tower. In the harbour town of Sicamino, the Saxonian consul, Konrad von Heidenheim, had instructed the viewpoint character, Ro Esbernnson, to enter Mirzabad, there to inform Otto Gneisberg, factor of the Bremer Handelsbund, that, in the event of trouble from the Puritans, Saxonian traders should not flee but should send carrier pigeons with requests for help to Sicamino. The consulate will then dispatch troops that have already been marshalled for this purpose. Saxonia must take this action to prevent the Russians, ruled from Kiev, from moving in. If that were to happen, then Saxonia would be caught between Russia and Frankland. When Ro has entered Mirzabad, the Saxonian traders of the Bremer Handelsbund are no longer in their premises on the Street of the Magi because, like other foreigners, they have sought refuge with the Ispanyans in the Moon Tower which is now surrounded by Puritans who prevent anyone else from entering the Tower. However, Ro argues that they need not prevent anyone from leaving the Tower, adding that the traders must return to the Street of the Magi to take charge of newly arrived perishable goods. Mission accomplished.
16 comments:
Geography determines a lot of politics -- not in a 'foredoomed' way, but by setting likely and unlikely scenarios.
It's quite likely, for example, that if there analogues corresponding to France, Germany and Russia, that France and Russia will be aligned against Germany.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And whoever ruled the British Isles of that alternate world might well be very anxious to keep anyone from dominating the Continent.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: as the US -- also an island, tho' much bigger -- is anxious to keep any rival power from dominating Eurasia. Same thing, larger scale.
Though different periods, different geopolitics.
In 150 CE, for example, two empires -- the Eastern Han dynasty in China and the Romans -- together ruled over half of the human race. Something like 110-140 million out of 200-220 million.
Of course given the technology of the time, they couldn't interact much -- too much unexplored ocean and Central Asia in the way; trade on the Silk Road and the oceanic route through the Indian Ocean went through a long series of middlemen.
Marcus Aurelius sent an embassy to China, but its fate isn't securely recorded.
I'm having fun modifying that.
There's very little in an 1820 sailing frigate the Romans couldn't have built, if they had someone to give them the plans...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I did not think of that, how anyone who became the master of Europe/Asia would be a threat to the Us (as was the case in your Domination books, after the Draka conquered Europe and most of Asia). And we all know the current regime in China nurses ambitions for dominating at least the western Pacific.
And I've been wondering if Russia will become a Chinese satellite. Putin's humiliating dependence on Chinese support in the bungled war with Ukraine might end with Moscow becoming very much a junior partner of Beijing.
And I look forward to reading your books set in Antonine Rome! The new tech introduced by the stranded time travelers WOULD drastically change things.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yeah -- technology doesn't determine the choices people -make-, but it does determine what choices they -have-. It sets the limits of the possible.
Eg., the Roman Empire was something on the order of 12%-14% urbanized at its peak.
That was probably the maximum possible for a large area (it was about 2 million square miles and 1/3 or so of the human race) given the agricultural technology available.
Roman agriculture was advanced in some respects -- they had productive crop rotations with legumes, for example, and sophisticated budding and grafting techniques, and their agricultural -economic institutions- were well-developed, with things like selling crops before they were harvested, hypothecation contracts, sub-contractors, etc.
Their yields per acre were higher than any substantial area in that part of the world were going to have for over a thousand years.
The kicker was the low -labor- productivity, particularly at crucial points of the agricultural year.
They had workarounds -- massive movements of migrant workers at harvest-time for example, certainly hundreds of thousands of them -- but it did set an iron upper limit on the nonagricultural part of the economy.
A few innovations my American involuntary time-travelers introduce blow the limits off; cradle-scythes, sulky plows, simple grain-drills, better horse-harness and wagons, and so forth.
These don't require any technology the Romans didn't have, just the ideas and a demonstration, but to take a single example the amount of grain you can reap in a day goes up by 10x if you go from sickles to cradle-scythes.
Or to take the other thing I mentioned, the Romans -could- have built early 19th-century type sailing ships if they had someone with the plans and models to walk them through it. It wouldn't have been as easy as putting a couple of wooden 'fingers' on a scythe, but with money and authority, probably no more than a year or so.
Likewise a whole range of other things.
Canals, for instance. The Chinese were just beginning to build long-distance canals at around this time -- some sections of the Grand Canal that eventually ran from the Yangtze Delta to Beijing.
The Romans were great at hydraulic stuff, but they just didn't have some -concepts- about canals. Frex, the mitre lock -- one of those simple ideas that's easy enough to -implement- once you've got the concept, but which makes it possible to take canals over hilly country between watersheds.
But in other ways, Roman building technology was -more- advanced than 17th-18th century Europe: they did things with cement and concrete that are still quite advanced, and their aqueducts are still a wonder.
So canals linking the Gironde and Mediterranean (and hence the Atlantic with the Mediterranean), the Rhine and the Danube, and eventually the rivers across the North European plain all the way to the Volga would be well within their reach with some pointers. Big construction projects weren't a new concept for them!
(Canal transport is typically 15x-30x cheaper than road travel, btw.)
On an geopolitical level, note something that Harry Turtledove pointed out in his alt-history GUNPOWDER EMPIRE: cannon and gunpowder are -expensive- in terms of a preindustrial economy.
This has all sorts of political implications: it favors governments with a big tax base over smaller ones, for example, and ones with good organizational capacity.
And it makes feudalism difficult. European feudalism was, militarily speaking, based on the superiority of knights and the difficulty of taking a castle. Cannon affect both!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
A beautiful mini-essay, many thanks! And new tech can expand the range of possibilities. Esp. if it allows for more efficient use of labor.
And the later stages of the Hundred Years War demonstrated in real history what Turtledove talked about, as the French finally got the hang of how to fight the English. The Constables and Marshals of Charles VII used cannon to batter down the castles and fortresses held by the English, a process ending with their complete expulsion from France, except for the Calais enclave.
Ad astra! Sean
Is there any way cheap steel such as was made by Bessemer could have been done without steam engines?
Draft animals pulling wagons on steel wheels over steel rails would be helpful anywhere canals are impractical.
Wire rope would also make possible fairly cheap transport where conditions are poor for both canals and railways.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/01/aerial-ropeways-automatic-cargo-transport.html
Search me.
Kaor, Jim!
Let's not have our time travelers stranded in Antonine Rome trying too much too soon! (smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
Jim: you don't need steel rails for animal-draught railroads.
Even with the (much heavier) steam locomotives, thousands of miles of early American railways were made with -wooden- rails topped with strips of wrought iron nailed on.
Iron was, however, relatively very expensive in the Roman Empire.
That's because they made it via "bloomeries" (Catalan forges and the like), which produced small quantities of wrought iron directly from ore, which then had to be hammered over and over again while hot to get the slag out.
Now, at the same time China had blast furnaces with waterwheels providing forced draught; at the same time they had fineries (to change cast iron into malleable wrought iron) and cupola furnaces to re-smelt it for casting directly into tools -- cast-iron plows, for example.
Their hydraulic draught mechanisms used belting, crankshafts and 'push' (piston-cylinder) bellows.
Shortly after that (4th century CE) they started using coal to smelt iron.
That didn't happen in the West until the 18th century -- an independent reinvention, but 1400 years later.
I just don't understand how any one person knows all this stuff.
Paul: it's my hobby -and- the way I earn my living. 8-)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And the Americans stranded in the Rome of Marcus Aurelius already had enough on their hands coping with the changes they had already introduced. Improved methods of making iron/steel could wait a few years!
Ad astra! Sean
"That didn't happen in the West until the 18th entury -- an independent reinvention, but 1400 years later"
Which leaves me wondering why it was an independent reinvention, rather than a copy from the way the Chinese were doing it, or maybe a reverse engineering the way Europeans developed ways of making porcelain after being impressed by Chinese porcelain.
On a separate issue: could the Romans have made lenses suitable for a Galileo level telescope? Even if the Romans didn't care about the astronomy, they would have appreciated the use of a semaphore telegraph.
Kaor, Jim!
I don't think there was consistently regular European contacts with China before the 18th century. Think of how long it took to sail from France or the UK south along the west coast of Africa, then past the Cape of Good Hope, then to India, the East Indies, THEN you start getting near China. It was probably even longer going west, then south along the east coast of South America, thru the Straits of Magellan, then came the sheer vastness of the Pacific Ocean before reaching the Spanish Philippines.
So I don't think it was that surprising Europeans has to independently reinvent Chinese style methods of making iron.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment