When Coya marries David Falkayn, she joins van Rijn's first trade pioneer crew led by David.
When the Falkayns start a family, they stop pioneering and their crew disbands. Coya works as a free-lance computer programmer. For example, Danstrup Cargo Carriers want an analysis of their best strategy in case of war with Babur.
Later, the Falkayns lead the colonization of Avalon.
The circumstances preceding the Babur War:
Polesotechnic League self-regulation breaks down;
competition becomes more cut-throat;
governments fall out with each other as well as with the merchants;
the end of the Pax Mercatoria draws near;
Coya had never fully approved of it but dreads the future.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember that, Coya doing research for her grandfather. And what amused me was how she stumbled across Falkayn's earlier discovery of Mirkheim by accident, merely because of doing some routine academic back checking from sheer habit!
Ad astra! Sean
Secrets will out!
Incidentally, Poul's conception of the League changed -- it was less 'ideal' at its peak in the earlier stories, which were later modified a bit.
The stuff about limiting competition and jacking up prices was cut out, for example. This was, I thought, a decline in realism.
Merchants (and capitalists in general) don't -like- competition; they do it because they don't have a choice.
Eg., Andrew Carnegie, the early steel magnate, cheerfully joined cartel arrangements when times were good and prices high.
During panics and recessions, he equally cheerfully broke them (they weren't enforceable at law in the US, of course) and used his lower costs to drive rivals into bankruptcy.
Carnegie Steel, which he dominated absolutely, was extremely successful, extremely innovative, and extremely unpopular, and it also paid lower dividends than most. Carnegie wanted bigger market share, not immediate bucks, and he forced his policy on the corporation because he'd jiggered the organization to give him a hammerlock.
Its successor, US Steel (which J.P. Morgan put together -- and Morgan did -not- like competition) paid much higher dividends... but it also steadily lost its originally dominant market share, and it innovated less than Carnegie had done.
Meanwhile Carnegie happily spent his declining years, and the immense wealth he got from the US Steel founding, giving away his money.
The original model for the League in the Technic stories was the Hanseatic League, a coalition of merchant city-states, which cheerfully exploited monopolies when they could.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
More intriguing comments, some of which should be in any COMPLETE COLLECTED WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON, such as how it was not realistic of Anderson to eliminate that bit about limiting competition and raising prices. Limited, of course, by realizing prices can't be raised so high that the goods offered for sale could not be sold.
Carnegie and Morgan were both fascinating men!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: When J.P. Morgan died, he left $50 million, the equivalent of about $3 billion now.
One of his friends exclaimed: "And we all thought he was rich!"
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I read up a bit about J.P. Morgan. Really, he wasn't such a bad man--and I've thought Teddy Roosevelt was too hard on him.
By Gilded Age standards 50 million dollars would not be thought that much! And, even today, with our debauched, inflated dollar, it's still pretty big a sum.
Ad astra! Sean
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