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Good context. Thanks for that. Finding modern cognates to medieval nobility is fraught. In the republican era, it basically means "finger the bad guys." There'
by dalbasal 6y ago
Good context. Thanks for that.
Finding modern cognates to medieval nobility is fraught. In the republican era, it basically means "finger the bad guys." There's a tendency to label whoever you have beef with. Investors, bankers, the wealthy, political elites, the upper class...
Does Peace and War go into inter-nobility issues, or does the thesis rest on just the problem of a fixed size peasantry supporting a growing nobility? I could imagine these issues resulting in famines and peasant revolts. But, I can also imagine conflict emerging among nobility.
You can confer as many titles as you like, but France only has so many hides of land. Landless knights and penniless descendants of counts hanging around palaces and competing viciously for favour seems like it could be a recipe too. Somewhat more parsimonious with this modern thesis.
- learnstats2 6y ago>There's a tendency to label whoever you have beef with. Investors, bankers, the wealthy, political elites, the upper class... Are these supposed to be different groups of people?
- dalbasal 6y agoThey're pretty tightly clustered, but each have their own connotations, rhetorically. Remember that the original liberals and republicans were (arguably) conducting conflicts within this overall cluster. In France it was the sans culotte vs the old nobility and clerics. You could argue that zuck or murdoch represents either side.
- meekrohprocess 6y agoI don't think the sans culotte were part of the wealthy classes...doesn't it translate to something like, "without fancy pants"? I could see an argument that Zuck and Murdoch are like pied pipers leading the modern sans culotte around by the nose, though. I'm not looking forward to the upcoming Terrors, in that analogy.
- joe_biden123 6y agoif you read turchin's paper his model has 3 parts. one accounts for elite competition, another for general/unskilled population wealth and a third one for the society's economy. elites aren't the only thing that produces instability those 2 other things
- rjsw 6y agoSpain fixed the problem of too many landless knights by encouraging them to go off and invade South America.
- dalbasal 6y agoI'm sure we could write a whole social theory around this. Arguably, the spanish tradition continues under more modern institutions with the British and Dutch trade monopolies. Nobles and wealthy commoners could go off and stake their claims in the colonies. A more diverse elite. Instead of being a knight that can either farm (limited number of hides) or crusade, you could also be a textile merchant. You could be a ship captain, VOC clerk or mior Raj.
- Balgair 6y agoMost of Europe did that with their 2nd and 3rd sons. I can't seem to find the source, but I have heard that the flag of South Carolina has a crescent moon on it due to all the minor sons that came there to find their riches (Crescent Moons were common on the heraldry of minor sons). San Domingue, now Haiti, was also a place where these nobles went off to get rich. The new world was filled with these kinds of guys.
- rjsw 6y agoOne problem with the Jamestown colony seems to have been that the settlers were only this kind of people, not people who could do useful stuff.