49 ms·

The Moral Economy of the Shire

264 points by thecosas 2y ago

neaden 2y ago
I feel like this article misses something obvious, which is that Hobbits aren't humans and the world of LotR includes people doing things that we would describe as magical. Hobbits for instance have a semi-magical ability to hide by how it's described in the books. If their society seems unrealistic for humans with medieval technology, I think that just shows us that Hobbits are fundamentally different from humans. The apparent almost total lack of Hobbit on Hobbit violence in the book also shows that Hobbits are just psychologically different from humans.
- skybrian 2y ago
  Sure, it's fantasy and you could stop there. But the story often treats them as little people in a medieval setting and I think it wouldn't be enjoyable without that point of reference. So it's worth making comparisons.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  We also see, in the Amazon series, a group of apparently hunter-gatherer hobbits with iron and textiles. The conclusion I come to is that Hobbits magic up manufactured goods from the idealized English countryside of Tolkien’s imagination. If you have some English ancestors who lost a pot, it time-slipped into Middle Earth. Presumably they are where the socks go. Ever notice an excess of old keys around the house? Hobbits need boxes!
  - prerok 2y ago
    In the Amazon series are proto-Hobbits, before they settled down. So, they had a different society from the ones we read about in the books. But, yeah, the time travelling pots and socks must be how it worked :) Kind of like Skynet in the future compiling our C++ code :)
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    Tolkien is hardly responsible for the Amazon writers' unwillingness to think about the logic of the setting and abide by it.
- porknubbins 2y ago
  Hobbits are pretty clearly intended to represent a kind of idealized English rural life. There would be little reason to for humans or hobbits to commit violence living in small villages or other kinship based settlements where everyone would know everyone. Smeagol killed for the ring just after discovering it so Hobbits are capable of violence but their way of life does not normally call for it. Also Hobbits are in no way innocent as they do pranks and commit petty theft from the farmer.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Most violence is committed between people that know each other rather than between strangers.
    - adamrezich 2y ago
      This aphorism does not take warfare into account.
      - rexpop 2y ago
        Aphorism? There is substantial evidence supporting the statement that most violence is committed by people who know each other rather than by strangers. Here are some key findings from various sources: - Sexual Violence: According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the majority of sexual abuse cases reported to law enforcement show that 93% of juvenile victims knew the perpetrator: 59% were acquaintances, 34% were family members, and only 7% were strangers¹. - General Violence: Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) indicates that less than half of all violent crimes were committed by total strangers. A significant portion of violent crimes were committed by acquaintances, friends, and relatives⁵. - Homicide: In 2004, only 23% of murders were committed by strangers, highlighting that a larger percentage of homicides occur between individuals who know each other⁴. These statistics demonstrate that violence is more likely to occur within known social circles rather than between strangers. It's important to note that these findings are based on reported cases and surveys, which can have limitations, but they provide a general understanding of the patterns of violence. Source: Conversation with Copilot, 6/3/2024 (1) Perpetrators of Sexual Violence: Statistics | RAINN. https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violenc.... (2) Violent Crime by Strangers and Nonstrangers - Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/vcsn.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/vcsn.pdf. (3) VIOLENCE BETWEEN LOVERS, STRANGERS, AND FRIENDS. https://journals.library.wustl.edu/lawreview/article/6708/galley/23541/download/ https://journals.library.wustl.edu/lawreview/article/6708/ga.... (4) Statistics In-Depth - National Sexual Violence Resource Center. https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics/statistics-depth https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics/statistics-depth. (5) STRANGER AND ACQUAINTANCE RAPE: Are There ... - University of Arizona. https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/stranger-and-acquaintance-rape-are-there-differences-in-the-victi https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/stranger-and-acq....
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  I do wonder, just a little, if rather than fantasy this touches on the idea that a homogeneous people in w well-ordered society with a functioning economy might not commit much violence among themselves. If such were the idea being espoused, then whether or not the idea was valid, it would be difficult to talk about openly in our current political climate. If it could be shown to be invalid for whatever reason, then the idea might be attacked that way, but it'd be better still if it could just be dismissed as childish drivel.
  - throwaway22032 2y ago
    It'a a priori obvious that this is valid, but politics, propaganda etc do not run for the benefit of the common man.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - kadkads 2y ago
    The most important aspect would be the functioning economy. Crime rate drops with higher income. >homogeneous people https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/06/in-ethno-national-conflicts-it-really-is-the-little-things-that-tick-people-off.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/06/in-ethno-nationa... > In numerous cases of apparently ethno-nationalist conflict, the deepest hatreds are manifested between people who—to most outward appearances—exhibit very few significant distinctions. It is one of the great contradictions of civilization and one of the great sources of its discontents, and Sigmund Freud even found a term for it: “the narcissism of the small difference.” As he wrote, “It is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of hostility between them.” It's just a part of the human condition, sadly, to hate others based on the smallest of differences. And you will always find a difference, even among the most homogeneous of societies - be it the color of your hair, the pigment of your skin, your accent... it follows then that a homogenous society is not a solution; rather, fostering awareness and understanding around discrimination is the way forward.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
- jjk166 2y ago
  Also I imagine a Hobbit's calorie requirements are substantially lower than a man 3 times their size. They're no less intelligent (indeed they are shown to be particularly clever), they have access to draft animals and basic machines, so their agricultural productivity is likely still high. This should allow for substantially greater surpluses even before we invoke magic.
  - froidpink 2y ago
    Yeah but also what about second breakfast
    - js8 2y ago
      There's a reason why hobbits use round doors. ;-)
- lordnacho 2y ago
  The way I see it, all the fantasy races ARE humans, just humans with a different emphasis. The ones called "humans" are the vanilla people that have average human qualities, and then every other has its own slant on humanity. They all still have recognizably human emotions, desires, social structures, and so on, they are just each a study in some particular area. Maybe you have a race of people who are more spiritual, or a race of people who are more warlike, or hierarchical, or egalitarian, and so on.
hprotagonist 2y ago
The other obvious answer is that the Shire is distributist in its economy.
- skybrian 2y ago
  How do you mean?
  - 7thaccount 2y ago
    Look up distributivism. Catholics like Chesterton advocated for it as something of a middle ground between the abuses of capitalism and communism after the Pope write an encyclical on the tragedy of workers. They recognized both capitalism and communism as being abusive. Tolkien would have been aware of the theory I believe and it could have influenced him. Distributivist thinkers promote a more localized system of government with a strong community where the ultimate goal isn't milking out all value (capitalism). One of my issues with distributivism is I'm not sure if we'd have the technological advancements under such a system (your local community isn't going to design and manufacture an Xbox or advanced medical equipment). It does sound more equitable on paper though. https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/11/distributism-shire-political-kinship-tolkien-belloc.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/11/distributism-...
    - orwin 2y ago
      That sounds a lot like anarchist communism, what are the difference?
      - hprotagonist 2y ago
        metaphysics, for a start. Rerum Novarum is fascinating reading. They're nonexclusive options, though: dorothy day, for example, was comfortable in both camps (as much as she was comfortable in a camp at all)
      - 7thaccount 2y ago
        There are still strong property rights and ownership of the economy should be more distributed, but they don't advocate for some elite government entity to come scoop up everything and decide who gets what or outlaw people from owning land and property. Unlike capitalism, instead of a factory making some kind of widget or product (example: ice cream) that makes one individual very rich and provides a low salary to a hundred workers, you'd have thousands of people across the country doing all kinds of jobs like that and hopefully making a living wage. Unlike communism, you don't have a fully centralized power dictating all aspects of life. I'm no expert on this theory though and it isn't perfect. Such a society probably doesn't build an iPhone...maybe that is the point haha. Or maybe it can, but I'm guessing technological advancements and discoveries would take longer with less efficiency and specialization.
hatthew 2y ago
This article is interesting, but feels like a bit of a stretch to me, particularly when making assertions as bold as "I suspect the only reason it’s not spelled out is because Tolkien assumed any reader would understand that intuitively." I am not a master of the LotR lore, but my assumption when reading the books years ago was that Tolkien wanted an idyllic utopian society of rural leisure, and didn't necessarily work out a fully realistic plan for how such a society could be sustainable long-term in the real world with real humans. LotR is a fantasy world, and such worlds are filled with fantasies: imaginary things that are unrealistic and don't need to be physically feasible.
- jerf 2y ago
  Even in-universe the Hobbits aren't fully "realistic"; they are supported by the Rangers keeping the many and sundry threats of Middle Earth off of their borders. Without that protection the whole system actually fell apart even in-universe. There's not a lot places in the real history of the real world where a society had no defense burden, and they don't tend to be long-term stable either.
  - indigochill 2y ago
    Iceland is one example. They have a coast guard but no standing military. On the other hand, their independence is formally guaranteed by the US (and maybe others, I don't remember), so nobody's gonna be trying to annex them any time soon. On the other hand, Iceland's only been "independent" since slipping out from Denmark ~WW2.
    - 082349872349872 2y ago
      I guess the US guarantee is what kept the "cod wars" limited to shouldering? (how well might current DDGs stand up to a similar full and frank discussion?)
      - JackFr 2y ago
        Never new about that. Fascinating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars
bulbosaur123 2y ago
Real life equivalent to Shire is essentially Island of Sark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sark
- macleginn 2y ago
  Which is portrayed in a very non-Tokienesque way in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Pye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Pye
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- thecosas 2y ago
  This wikipedia page is a treasure trove of rabbit holes. Thank you!
- myroon5 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car-free_islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car-free_islands
rhelz 2y ago
As an American, I had to read LOTR about 5 times before I started to perceive the class-based nature of the world of Middle Earth. Class here is not as in-your-face as it is in Great Briton. What's fascinating to me is that this sort of world/economy/way-of-life is the backdrop of virtually every fairy tail, fantasy novel, or even video game (e.g. World of Warcraft). For some reason, this kind of world--which in actuality is on of the most rigid and with the least opportunities--is nevertheless the world which, in our imaginations, is the one most brimming with possibilities and the most potential for adventure. Why this kind of world? When I asked my father that question, he pointed out that fairy tails often start with brothers "setting out to seek their fortune" and invariably have the youngest brother coming out on top. The reason was the laws of primogeniture--the oldest son inherits everything, so in every generation, all of the younger sons had to do just that--go out and see if they could make something happen, because despite their privileged upbringing, they were going to get dumped out into the wide world to fend for themselves.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  > Class here is not as in-your-face as it is in Great Briton. Only because (a) you're a fish in water, and (b) the US national fiction is "we're all middle class".
- thinkingemote 2y ago
  Adventure was had within ones own class strata in older stories. Or at least the main characters don't change substantially in class even if they encounter others and grow and change. It's only recent stories that the adventure was about transgressing the strata. It's the American way, the frontier is the edge of one's station in life to be crossed over. Australia has a similar but different classless idea. I think it's more working class as the common level but there's less acceptable social movement. Tall poppy syndrome.
andyjohnson0 2y ago
I enjoyed the author's counterfactual description of the "Sauronic Empire" [1] that was established following Sauron's victory at the end of the third age. https://nathangoldwag.wordpress.com/2024/02/10/the-sauronic-empire/ https://nathangoldwag.wordpress.com/2024/02/10/the-sauronic-...
cess11 2y ago
Tolkien, the catholic anarchist, made his utopian village into something feudal with a 'landed gentry'? I suspect this person is reading things into these simulations of folklore that are unlikely to have a foundation in the author. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/j-r-r-tolkien-from-a-letter-to-christopher-tolkien https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/j-r-r-tolkien-from-a...
coldtea 2y ago
>The implication in both books and movies is that most Hobbits spent their time either farming or enjoying leisure time, but this makes little sense, when one considers what we know about premodern agriculture and what little of life and culture in the Shire. That's not even wrong. Medieval peasants in certain places like Italy had like half the year off as public holidays. And those of us old and rural enough to have seen pre-modern life in rural villages, known there was still a lot of leisure time going around. As for domestic chores, those were a couple of hours at max, intermingled with other work and leisure - and having the grandparents living close by meant more hands for helping with cooking, kids, and so on. In those villages there was (and still is, a little less so, but compared to modern city life orders of magnitude more) leisure time, people hang in the public square and cafes for hours on end, and it's not that different today. People from the city are often surprised like "wtf, is anybody working here?".
- WalterBright 2y ago
  I have serious doubts about such leisure time. For example, cooking with a fireplace is an all-day affair as it requires constant monitoring and a constant supply of wood. Next, making cloth and sewing it was a major time sink. The evidence for that was how valuable cloth was, such that it was recycled endlessly until it was more or less dust. Third, children were put to work in the fields as soon as they could walk. This does not suggest a surfeit of labor. Fourth, there was the daily feeding and maintenance of the animals. Fifth, have you ever tried sawing a plank with a handsaw? Building a house and a barn had to be a massive amount of hand work. Bone evidence from American colonist farmers is that they worked physically very hard, and did not live to be old. Getting enough food was a constant problem. They didn't grow very tall.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >For example, cooking with a fireplace is an all-day affair as it requires constant monitoring and a constant supply of wood. That's a modern urban misunderstanding. Tons of recipes they used to do (and we still do) just need a wood stove and the ocassional adding of woods every half hour or so (less if it's bigger). You put all the ingredients and let it cook (stews, potatoes and veggies, soups, the ocassional meat, eggs, greens, etc). And others just take a couple of hours. There's nothing about cooking with a wood stove (or a fireplace) that makes it a "full day affair" (huh?). Growing up in rural Europe we cooked with a woodstove primarily (this kind: https://stock.adobe.com/gr_en/search?k=old+wood+stove&asset_id=657714872 https://stock.adobe.com/gr_en/search?k=old+wood+stove&asset_... though less fancy) and it was never a problem for leisure time. We had a gas stove too, but the wood stove is what we cooked on 80% of the time. >Next, making cloth and sewing it was a major time sink.* You don't have to make clothes all the time. They didn't care for "fast fashion" trends back then. And you can sew while socializing even. >Third, children were put to work in the fields as soon as they could walk. That's because they were organically integrated into the family life and work. Everybody did some part. Doesn't mean they worked particulary hard, and even that was mostly not a thing in the 20th century, as rural kids still went to school just fine. >Fourth, there was the daily feeding and maintenance of the animals Which doesn't take that much, unless it's a larger for-profit business, which for the rural people it weren't - it was for their personal eggs, milk, and meat, and the ocassional exchange and gift. So small henhouses and such, takes next to no time. >Fifth, have you ever tried sawing a plank with a handsaw? Building a house and a barn had to be a massive amount of hand work. Luckily they didn't do it that often. Once per family was enough, and they could build it in a month or so (usually bringing in some people doing construction work too for the more advanced ones). They also added rooms piecemeal if they needed more. And in our parts, those rural village houses were made with bricks and stones, and many still stand, even centuries later (heck, many are still used). >Bone evidence from American colonist farmers is that they worked physically very hard, and did not live to be old. Getting enough food was a constant problem. They didn't grow very tall. Sucks to be them.
efitz 2y ago
The reason that there is no discussion of the economics of the Shire in LOTR is because it’s not relevant to the story and the land and the people are all fictional. It doesn’t have to work. Tolkien was setting up a dichotomy between the idyllic, paradise-like shire where everyone lives in harmony with nature and has lots of leisure time and no one wants of necessities and everyone gets along , etc, is to set up a counterpoint vs industrialization and ugliness and capitalism etc. it’s just a big old trope. Just like sets in a play, it’s two-dimensional. It’s also a backdrop setting up an “innocence lost” storyline for the protagonists. The bottom line is that it’s a utopia and utopias only exist in stories; real people are fallible and have many motivations, some of which are not noble, and so such a place can’t exist.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  It's not that much different from the Star Trek Utopian world run by a benevolent dictator and his selfless incorruptible staff.
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    There's always the mirror universe...
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  But it's also a playground, and once we close the book we can still explore the world built. Sure, the set is two dimensional, but we can try to figure out how it might work.
- veddox 2y ago
  If you think the Lord of the Rings is one big trope, you really haven't given it enough consideration. Yes, Tolkien has very clear moral and social ideals, but using this as grounds to portray LotR as "two-dimensional" absolutely does not do it justice. There's so much more nuance to it! The Shire is idyllic, but no paradise. Its inhabitants are lovable, but petty and smallminded, they squabble and feud and betray each other. Good and evil exist, but aside from Gandalf and Sauron, all "good" characters have faults and mixed motivations and all "evil" characters are at least potentially redeemable. The stories of Middle Earth are shaped by Tolkien's (conservative, Christian) worldview, but he definitely did not write a utopia.
veddox 2y ago
Because this opinion has surfaced a number of times here: Yes, Tolkien did care deeply about the realism of his world. And because he spent his whole life studying pre-modern societies, the societies he creates in Middle Earth do function very realistically. I think there are two reason why many readers miss this: (1) Much of Tolkien's world-building is implicit rather than explicit. He doesn't talk about Aragorn's tax policy because he doesn't need to; Aragorn is recognisably a feudal king and there is a standard way taxes are done a feudal system (i.e. the vassals take care of gathering them). Tolkien has a deep understanding of how such societies function, but much of this comes out indirectly in the story, through the way the characters behave and what they can and cannot do. (2) Pre-modern societies are so deeply different from modern ones (economically, culturally, and socially) that I think many readers stumble across things they find unexpected and dismiss it as "unrealistic fantasy", without understanding that in such a context, this is exactly how one would expect the world to work. For example, the deep devotion and self-sacrificial service Sam shows to Frodo is often discussed in terms of friendship (and it is a great friendship), but one cannot fully understand it unless one also understands it as a (very positive) master-servant relationship. If you want a better understanding of the deeper realism of LotR, I cannot recommend Bret Devereaux' blog highly enough. He is an ancient military historian and has written extensive (but entertaining!) analyses of both LotR and GoT. See here for two samples: https://acoup.blog/2020/05/22/collections-the-battle-of-helms-deep-part-iv-men-of-rohan/ https://acoup.blog/2020/05/22/collections-the-battle-of-helm..., https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-was-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-i/ https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-wa...
- justanotherjoe 2y ago
  I think the argument about the taxes is that, being a wholesome person is largely orthogonal to being a good king, like it is being good with a sword doesn't make you a good monarch. For example, letting Grima leave edoras because 'enough blood has been spilled' is really cool, but dubious and questionable. Though I don't know much about ME and maybe in that world, the challenges present in the real world don't exist there.
  - Svip 2y ago
casualrandomcom 2y ago
"Premodern agriculture was characterized primarily as being low-surplus and high-labor, it takes a lot of people a lot of time to produce enough food for everyone to eat, and there’s rarely much left over." This i contentious, I have actually read scholars that argue the opposite.
- automatic6131 2y ago
  >This i contentious, I have actually read scholars that argue the opposite. It is far from contentious, you are probably mixing up "premodern agriculture" with "pre-agriculture". Furthermore, as detailed in an article [1] referenced (and linked to) by this post, you are probably mixing up the labor paid as rent vs the whole of the labor required to survive 1 - https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/regulation-industry/medieval-peasants-really-did-not-work-only-150-days-a-year https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/regulation-industry/medieval-...
- kasey_junk 2y ago
  It’s contentious that premodern _agriculture_ was high labor? The contentious point I’ve seen is that hunter gatherer societies perhaps were not high labor. Do you have any sources I can look at?
casualrandomcom 2y ago
"By learning how the Shire worked, we can start to understand how our own past worked, in all its complexity and contradictions." Sorry but this is totally preposterous. Why should we look at our past through a fictional creation of one author? Why don't we go directly to the sources that that same author had? Makes much more sense.
- DonsDiscountGas 2y ago
  Because this way is more fun
thinkingemote 2y ago
The economy of the orcs and Mordor was more interesting to me for some reason when reading the books. One can easily imagine the good guys having functioning societies but the bad ones we expect disorder.
- checkyoursudo 2y ago
  This is where the D&D multiple axes (plural of axis, not plural of axe, though D&D has those as well) of alignment comes in handy. Evil can be orderly, systematic. An evil society could be well functioning, with evil law and evil order.
gumby 2y ago
The whole of the context* of the LOTR can best be understood through the lens of this comment by Tolkien: > My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself Paul Fussell in “The Great War and Modern Memory” (which I highly recommend) tied comments like these to the change in mentality of the (primarily) English upper classes and gentry. Just living and working closely with working and agrarian class soldiers led to a realization that yes, they struggled with poor boots through no fault of their own (an example Fussell quotes), only visible because for the first time they saw them as comrades due to the shared experience in the trenches. And that changed the mentality of many in the upper classes, who came back from the war and voted liberal or even labour when before that would not have been even imagined. This essay talks about the effect of capitalist colonialism in Viet Nam (I agree with the author’s point here) but Tolkien’s experience reflected the consequence of an interesting domestic shift in the British isles, as industrialization increased the separation between the classes. Contrast the comradeship of Henry V in Shakespeare’s eponymous play: a group of aristos and a mob of peasants looking for money and just a change of being stuck on the land: the trench experience was a forced reversion to a social propinquity common from ~800s to the 1700s. * I don’t mean to imply there is a “correct” reading: it’s an adventure story, a masterful recreation of the tradition of the Sagas, and other things. But even as a naive 12 yo in the 1970s I realised it was a deeply conservative story. Not a reactionary one: Tolkien doesn’t appear to want to go back. But a recognition of what (in his mind) was lost. Good riddance, as far as I’m concerned! That sense of loss IMHO is much better captured by T. H. White’s roughly contemporaneous “Once and Future King”, a much more sophisticated, but less filmable, book.
DonsDiscountGas 2y ago
If there's a few large landowners and many tenant farmers, I think there would need to be lots of police/military in order to uphold that property arrangement. Otherwise the tenants just start taking land.
- brazzy 2y ago
  > Otherwise the tenants just start taking land. ...and do what with it, exactly? Farm it, like they're already doing? The conflicts would not be about the land, they would be about rents/dues/duties/taxes. And there would only be conflicts when the tenants feel like those are unfair and they're not getting anything back in return. Which is not neccessarily the case. The article goes into quite some detail how the patronage system provides benefits to the clients, and how actual historical peasant revolts were often not about overthrowing the social order, but merely restoring it to a previous state.
L-four 2y ago
Thanks now I know this is valid English. "Batman's Batman fell off Batman's bat-horse"
franciscop 2y ago
> Premodern agriculture was characterized primarily as being low-surplus and high-labor, it takes a lot of people a lot of time to produce enough food for everyone to eat This is _only_ because, in medieval times, when there was enough food people had more children until there was no longer enough food for everyone, maintaining the equilibrium and making it to be "just enough" most of the times, with a lot of "not enough" between those. Incidentally that is also how most animals and normal evolution operate. But what if they only have ~2 children per couple, so they CAN easily maintain this lifestyle? Specially given they are long-lived (taking care of things long-term) and have culture+technology either from abroad or from long ago (mills, craftsmen, etc). I can definitely see this more plausible than the jump to classes the post does. As a personal note, once I visited the UK countryside and was surprised by the amount of wild berries there were, we grabbed a bunch and there was definitely enough that we could've eaten for few days. Sure probably not a whole town and not all year round, but these were _just_ the wild ones, with a bit of work I can see how lush the land could become.
- taskforcegemini 2y ago
  kids were an important resource and in many cultures still are. At some point cheap labor and eventually are the retirement plan.
- rossdavidh 2y ago
  One distinctive feature of the Shire, is that it was surrounded by mostly empty space. A combination of emigration (the Elves), war (Arnor and later Arthedain vs. Angmar), and plague, had opened up a lot of open space. This is not just how the Hobbits got the Shire in the first place (the King of Arthedain had spare land to grant them), it also allowed them to expand when their population needed to. Buckland was described by JRRT as a "colony" of the Shire, and after the LotR they expanded westward again, creating the Westmarch (hence "the Red Book of Westmarch", which LotR was supposedly translated from). What the Hobbits would have done if they had been in a place without room to expand, is interesting to debate, but in the actual Third Age they could have lots of kids, and just expand into more good farmland when they needed to, because emigration, war, and plague had cleared the areas around them.
- 2y ago
optimalsolver 2y ago
Related: JRR Tolkien, Enemy Of Progress https://www.salon.com/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/ https://www.salon.com/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/
kelnos 2y ago
> Tolkien does not describe the political economy of the Hobbits in any detail, because it’s rarely relevant to the story I find this kinda a funny statement, because Tolkien wrote so much about his world, about things that were rarely relevant to his actual stories. In hindsight, it feels like a surprising omission that he left this out. Then again, it's been close to 30 years since I read The Silmarillion, so I don't recall if political economy ever really came up that much for other communities in Tolkien's world. So maybe that's just a general topic that he didn't find of enough interest to write about.
xg15 2y ago
It's a great article. It also made me aware of a fun bit of unreliable narration in the Hobbit that went completely under my radar before: In the Hobbit, the Tooks are introduced as the slightly quirky, more adventurous and less reputable cousins of the Baggins. (Marrying a fairy/elf, running off into the blue, owning magical artefacts of foreign origin, etc) The characters in LOTR are likewise: Frodo Baggins comes over as serious and at times almost statesmanlike, whereas Pippin Took seems more like a boyish mischief-maker mostly looking for adventure. In contrast, OP suggests the Tooks are really the much more powerful, wealthy and reputable family: They have an entire region - Tookland - under patronage; they have a permanent claim to the Thain office, making them something like the representatives of the Shire to the outside world; the Old Took also seems to be at the root of several of the hobbit families. If you take that suggestion, then some things look different: Their "adventurousness" could really just be a greater awareness and connection to the outside world than the "normal" hobbits, something that probably comes with the Thain office. On the other hand, the Baggins seem to have been an extremely conservative family even for hobbit standards (before all the events of the books at least) : It's mentioned that Bilbo looked and behaved like an exact copy of his father. The family also had a reputation for being so predictable that you could answer any question that you'd want to ask them already in your head, without bothering to actually ask the question. So it might be that the description of the quirky Tooks and reputable Baggins was really just the self-perception of the slightly stuck-up second family of the land making some friendly scoffs at the first family of the land. (Of course things change massively already at the end of the Hobbit, when Bilbo sacrifies much of the families predictability and gains worldliness instead - and at the end of LOTR anyway when the entire social order of the Shire is basically redone and Tooks, Baggins, Brandybocks and Gardeners probably all have equal ranks in society)

264 points by thecosas 2y ago

I feel like this article misses something obvious, which is that Hobbits aren't humans and the world of LotR includes people doing things that we would describe as magical. Hobbits for instance have a semi-magical ability to hide by how it's described in the books. If their society seems unrealistic for humans with medieval technology, I think that just shows us that Hobbits are fundamentally different from humans. The apparent almost total lack of Hobbit on Hobbit violence in the book also shows that Hobbits are just psychologically different from humans.

skybrian 2y ago
Sure, it's fantasy and you could stop there. But the story often treats them as little people in a medieval setting and I think it wouldn't be enjoyable without that point of reference. So it's worth making comparisons.
bee_rider 2y ago
We also see, in the Amazon series, a group of apparently hunter-gatherer hobbits with iron and textiles. The conclusion I come to is that Hobbits magic up manufactured goods from the idealized English countryside of Tolkien’s imagination. If you have some English ancestors who lost a pot, it time-slipped into Middle Earth. Presumably they are where the socks go. Ever notice an excess of old keys around the house? Hobbits need boxes!
- prerok 2y ago
  In the Amazon series are proto-Hobbits, before they settled down. So, they had a different society from the ones we read about in the books. But, yeah, the time travelling pots and socks must be how it worked :) Kind of like Skynet in the future compiling our C++ code :)
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Tolkien is hardly responsible for the Amazon writers' unwillingness to think about the logic of the setting and abide by it.
porknubbins 2y ago
Hobbits are pretty clearly intended to represent a kind of idealized English rural life. There would be little reason to for humans or hobbits to commit violence living in small villages or other kinship based settlements where everyone would know everyone. Smeagol killed for the ring just after discovering it so Hobbits are capable of violence but their way of life does not normally call for it. Also Hobbits are in no way innocent as they do pranks and commit petty theft from the farmer.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Most violence is committed between people that know each other rather than between strangers.
  - adamrezich 2y ago
    This aphorism does not take warfare into account.
    - rexpop 2y ago
      Aphorism? There is substantial evidence supporting the statement that most violence is committed by people who know each other rather than by strangers. Here are some key findings from various sources: - Sexual Violence: According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the majority of sexual abuse cases reported to law enforcement show that 93% of juvenile victims knew the perpetrator: 59% were acquaintances, 34% were family members, and only 7% were strangers¹. - General Violence: Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) indicates that less than half of all violent crimes were committed by total strangers. A significant portion of violent crimes were committed by acquaintances, friends, and relatives⁵. - Homicide: In 2004, only 23% of murders were committed by strangers, highlighting that a larger percentage of homicides occur between individuals who know each other⁴. These statistics demonstrate that violence is more likely to occur within known social circles rather than between strangers. It's important to note that these findings are based on reported cases and surveys, which can have limitations, but they provide a general understanding of the patterns of violence. Source: Conversation with Copilot, 6/3/2024 (1) Perpetrators of Sexual Violence: Statistics | RAINN. https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violenc.... (2) Violent Crime by Strangers and Nonstrangers - Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/vcsn.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/vcsn.pdf. (3) VIOLENCE BETWEEN LOVERS, STRANGERS, AND FRIENDS. https://journals.library.wustl.edu/lawreview/article/6708/galley/23541/download/ https://journals.library.wustl.edu/lawreview/article/6708/ga.... (4) Statistics In-Depth - National Sexual Violence Resource Center. https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics/statistics-depth https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics/statistics-depth. (5) STRANGER AND ACQUAINTANCE RAPE: Are There ... - University of Arizona. https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/stranger-and-acquaintance-rape-are-there-differences-in-the-victi https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/stranger-and-acq....
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
I do wonder, just a little, if rather than fantasy this touches on the idea that a homogeneous people in w well-ordered society with a functioning economy might not commit much violence among themselves. If such were the idea being espoused, then whether or not the idea was valid, it would be difficult to talk about openly in our current political climate. If it could be shown to be invalid for whatever reason, then the idea might be attacked that way, but it'd be better still if it could just be dismissed as childish drivel.
- throwaway22032 2y ago
  It'a a priori obvious that this is valid, but politics, propaganda etc do not run for the benefit of the common man.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kadkads 2y ago
  The most important aspect would be the functioning economy. Crime rate drops with higher income. >homogeneous people https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/06/in-ethno-national-conflicts-it-really-is-the-little-things-that-tick-people-off.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/06/in-ethno-nationa... > In numerous cases of apparently ethno-nationalist conflict, the deepest hatreds are manifested between people who—to most outward appearances—exhibit very few significant distinctions. It is one of the great contradictions of civilization and one of the great sources of its discontents, and Sigmund Freud even found a term for it: “the narcissism of the small difference.” As he wrote, “It is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of hostility between them.” It's just a part of the human condition, sadly, to hate others based on the smallest of differences. And you will always find a difference, even among the most homogeneous of societies - be it the color of your hair, the pigment of your skin, your accent... it follows then that a homogenous society is not a solution; rather, fostering awareness and understanding around discrimination is the way forward.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
jjk166 2y ago
Also I imagine a Hobbit's calorie requirements are substantially lower than a man 3 times their size. They're no less intelligent (indeed they are shown to be particularly clever), they have access to draft animals and basic machines, so their agricultural productivity is likely still high. This should allow for substantially greater surpluses even before we invoke magic.
- froidpink 2y ago
  Yeah but also what about second breakfast
  - js8 2y ago
    There's a reason why hobbits use round doors. ;-)
lordnacho 2y ago
The way I see it, all the fantasy races ARE humans, just humans with a different emphasis. The ones called "humans" are the vanilla people that have average human qualities, and then every other has its own slant on humanity. They all still have recognizably human emotions, desires, social structures, and so on, they are just each a study in some particular area. Maybe you have a race of people who are more spiritual, or a race of people who are more warlike, or hierarchical, or egalitarian, and so on.

hprotagonist 2y ago

The other obvious answer is that the Shire is distributist in its economy.

skybrian 2y ago
How do you mean?
- 7thaccount 2y ago
  Look up distributivism. Catholics like Chesterton advocated for it as something of a middle ground between the abuses of capitalism and communism after the Pope write an encyclical on the tragedy of workers. They recognized both capitalism and communism as being abusive. Tolkien would have been aware of the theory I believe and it could have influenced him. Distributivist thinkers promote a more localized system of government with a strong community where the ultimate goal isn't milking out all value (capitalism). One of my issues with distributivism is I'm not sure if we'd have the technological advancements under such a system (your local community isn't going to design and manufacture an Xbox or advanced medical equipment). It does sound more equitable on paper though. https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/11/distributism-shire-political-kinship-tolkien-belloc.html https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/11/distributism-...
  - orwin 2y ago
    That sounds a lot like anarchist communism, what are the difference?
    - hprotagonist 2y ago
      metaphysics, for a start. Rerum Novarum is fascinating reading. They're nonexclusive options, though: dorothy day, for example, was comfortable in both camps (as much as she was comfortable in a camp at all)
    - 7thaccount 2y ago
      There are still strong property rights and ownership of the economy should be more distributed, but they don't advocate for some elite government entity to come scoop up everything and decide who gets what or outlaw people from owning land and property. Unlike capitalism, instead of a factory making some kind of widget or product (example: ice cream) that makes one individual very rich and provides a low salary to a hundred workers, you'd have thousands of people across the country doing all kinds of jobs like that and hopefully making a living wage. Unlike communism, you don't have a fully centralized power dictating all aspects of life. I'm no expert on this theory though and it isn't perfect. Such a society probably doesn't build an iPhone...maybe that is the point haha. Or maybe it can, but I'm guessing technological advancements and discoveries would take longer with less efficiency and specialization.

hatthew 2y ago

This article is interesting, but feels like a bit of a stretch to me, particularly when making assertions as bold as "I suspect the only reason it’s not spelled out is because Tolkien assumed any reader would understand that intuitively." I am not a master of the LotR lore, but my assumption when reading the books years ago was that Tolkien wanted an idyllic utopian society of rural leisure, and didn't necessarily work out a fully realistic plan for how such a society could be sustainable long-term in the real world with real humans. LotR is a fantasy world, and such worlds are filled with fantasies: imaginary things that are unrealistic and don't need to be physically feasible.

jerf 2y ago
Even in-universe the Hobbits aren't fully "realistic"; they are supported by the Rangers keeping the many and sundry threats of Middle Earth off of their borders. Without that protection the whole system actually fell apart even in-universe. There's not a lot places in the real history of the real world where a society had no defense burden, and they don't tend to be long-term stable either.
- indigochill 2y ago
  Iceland is one example. They have a coast guard but no standing military. On the other hand, their independence is formally guaranteed by the US (and maybe others, I don't remember), so nobody's gonna be trying to annex them any time soon. On the other hand, Iceland's only been "independent" since slipping out from Denmark ~WW2.
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    I guess the US guarantee is what kept the "cod wars" limited to shouldering? (how well might current DDGs stand up to a similar full and frank discussion?)
    - JackFr 2y ago
      Never new about that. Fascinating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars

bulbosaur123 2y ago

Real life equivalent to Shire is essentially Island of Sark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sark

macleginn 2y ago
Which is portrayed in a very non-Tokienesque way in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Pye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Pye
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
thecosas 2y ago
This wikipedia page is a treasure trove of rabbit holes. Thank you!
myroon5 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car-free_islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car-free_islands

rhelz 2y ago

As an American, I had to read LOTR about 5 times before I started to perceive the class-based nature of the world of Middle Earth. Class here is not as in-your-face as it is in Great Briton. What's fascinating to me is that this sort of world/economy/way-of-life is the backdrop of virtually every fairy tail, fantasy novel, or even video game (e.g. World of Warcraft). For some reason, this kind of world--which in actuality is on of the most rigid and with the least opportunities--is nevertheless the world which, in our imaginations, is the one most brimming with possibilities and the most potential for adventure. Why this kind of world? When I asked my father that question, he pointed out that fairy tails often start with brothers "setting out to seek their fortune" and invariably have the youngest brother coming out on top. The reason was the laws of primogeniture--the oldest son inherits everything, so in every generation, all of the younger sons had to do just that--go out and see if they could make something happen, because despite their privileged upbringing, they were going to get dumped out into the wide world to fend for themselves.

082349872349872 2y ago
> Class here is not as in-your-face as it is in Great Briton. Only because (a) you're a fish in water, and (b) the US national fiction is "we're all middle class".
thinkingemote 2y ago
Adventure was had within ones own class strata in older stories. Or at least the main characters don't change substantially in class even if they encounter others and grow and change. It's only recent stories that the adventure was about transgressing the strata. It's the American way, the frontier is the edge of one's station in life to be crossed over. Australia has a similar but different classless idea. I think it's more working class as the common level but there's less acceptable social movement. Tall poppy syndrome.

andyjohnson0 2y ago

I enjoyed the author's counterfactual description of the "Sauronic Empire" [1] that was established following Sauron's victory at the end of the third age. https://nathangoldwag.wordpress.com/2024/02/10/the-sauronic-empire/ https://nathangoldwag.wordpress.com/2024/02/10/the-sauronic-...

cess11 2y ago

Tolkien, the catholic anarchist, made his utopian village into something feudal with a 'landed gentry'? I suspect this person is reading things into these simulations of folklore that are unlikely to have a foundation in the author. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/j-r-r-tolkien-from-a-letter-to-christopher-tolkien https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/j-r-r-tolkien-from-a...

coldtea 2y ago

>The implication in both books and movies is that most Hobbits spent their time either farming or enjoying leisure time, but this makes little sense, when one considers what we know about premodern agriculture and what little of life and culture in the Shire. That's not even wrong. Medieval peasants in certain places like Italy had like half the year off as public holidays. And those of us old and rural enough to have seen pre-modern life in rural villages, known there was still a lot of leisure time going around. As for domestic chores, those were a couple of hours at max, intermingled with other work and leisure - and having the grandparents living close by meant more hands for helping with cooking, kids, and so on. In those villages there was (and still is, a little less so, but compared to modern city life orders of magnitude more) leisure time, people hang in the public square and cafes for hours on end, and it's not that different today. People from the city are often surprised like "wtf, is anybody working here?".

WalterBright 2y ago
I have serious doubts about such leisure time. For example, cooking with a fireplace is an all-day affair as it requires constant monitoring and a constant supply of wood. Next, making cloth and sewing it was a major time sink. The evidence for that was how valuable cloth was, such that it was recycled endlessly until it was more or less dust. Third, children were put to work in the fields as soon as they could walk. This does not suggest a surfeit of labor. Fourth, there was the daily feeding and maintenance of the animals. Fifth, have you ever tried sawing a plank with a handsaw? Building a house and a barn had to be a massive amount of hand work. Bone evidence from American colonist farmers is that they worked physically very hard, and did not live to be old. Getting enough food was a constant problem. They didn't grow very tall.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >For example, cooking with a fireplace is an all-day affair as it requires constant monitoring and a constant supply of wood. That's a modern urban misunderstanding. Tons of recipes they used to do (and we still do) just need a wood stove and the ocassional adding of woods every half hour or so (less if it's bigger). You put all the ingredients and let it cook (stews, potatoes and veggies, soups, the ocassional meat, eggs, greens, etc). And others just take a couple of hours. There's nothing about cooking with a wood stove (or a fireplace) that makes it a "full day affair" (huh?). Growing up in rural Europe we cooked with a woodstove primarily (this kind: https://stock.adobe.com/gr_en/search?k=old+wood+stove&asset_id=657714872 https://stock.adobe.com/gr_en/search?k=old+wood+stove&asset_... though less fancy) and it was never a problem for leisure time. We had a gas stove too, but the wood stove is what we cooked on 80% of the time. >Next, making cloth and sewing it was a major time sink.* You don't have to make clothes all the time. They didn't care for "fast fashion" trends back then. And you can sew while socializing even. >Third, children were put to work in the fields as soon as they could walk. That's because they were organically integrated into the family life and work. Everybody did some part. Doesn't mean they worked particulary hard, and even that was mostly not a thing in the 20th century, as rural kids still went to school just fine. >Fourth, there was the daily feeding and maintenance of the animals Which doesn't take that much, unless it's a larger for-profit business, which for the rural people it weren't - it was for their personal eggs, milk, and meat, and the ocassional exchange and gift. So small henhouses and such, takes next to no time. >Fifth, have you ever tried sawing a plank with a handsaw? Building a house and a barn had to be a massive amount of hand work. Luckily they didn't do it that often. Once per family was enough, and they could build it in a month or so (usually bringing in some people doing construction work too for the more advanced ones). They also added rooms piecemeal if they needed more. And in our parts, those rural village houses were made with bricks and stones, and many still stand, even centuries later (heck, many are still used). >Bone evidence from American colonist farmers is that they worked physically very hard, and did not live to be old. Getting enough food was a constant problem. They didn't grow very tall. Sucks to be them.

efitz 2y ago

The reason that there is no discussion of the economics of the Shire in LOTR is because it’s not relevant to the story and the land and the people are all fictional. It doesn’t have to work. Tolkien was setting up a dichotomy between the idyllic, paradise-like shire where everyone lives in harmony with nature and has lots of leisure time and no one wants of necessities and everyone gets along , etc, is to set up a counterpoint vs industrialization and ugliness and capitalism etc. it’s just a big old trope. Just like sets in a play, it’s two-dimensional. It’s also a backdrop setting up an “innocence lost” storyline for the protagonists. The bottom line is that it’s a utopia and utopias only exist in stories; real people are fallible and have many motivations, some of which are not noble, and so such a place can’t exist.

WalterBright 2y ago
It's not that much different from the Star Trek Utopian world run by a benevolent dictator and his selfless incorruptible staff.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  There's always the mirror universe...
pavel_lishin 2y ago
But it's also a playground, and once we close the book we can still explore the world built. Sure, the set is two dimensional, but we can try to figure out how it might work.
veddox 2y ago
If you think the Lord of the Rings is one big trope, you really haven't given it enough consideration. Yes, Tolkien has very clear moral and social ideals, but using this as grounds to portray LotR as "two-dimensional" absolutely does not do it justice. There's so much more nuance to it! The Shire is idyllic, but no paradise. Its inhabitants are lovable, but petty and smallminded, they squabble and feud and betray each other. Good and evil exist, but aside from Gandalf and Sauron, all "good" characters have faults and mixed motivations and all "evil" characters are at least potentially redeemable. The stories of Middle Earth are shaped by Tolkien's (conservative, Christian) worldview, but he definitely did not write a utopia.

veddox 2y ago

Because this opinion has surfaced a number of times here: Yes, Tolkien did care deeply about the realism of his world. And because he spent his whole life studying pre-modern societies, the societies he creates in Middle Earth do function very realistically. I think there are two reason why many readers miss this: (1) Much of Tolkien's world-building is implicit rather than explicit. He doesn't talk about Aragorn's tax policy because he doesn't need to; Aragorn is recognisably a feudal king and there is a standard way taxes are done a feudal system (i.e. the vassals take care of gathering them). Tolkien has a deep understanding of how such societies function, but much of this comes out indirectly in the story, through the way the characters behave and what they can and cannot do. (2) Pre-modern societies are so deeply different from modern ones (economically, culturally, and socially) that I think many readers stumble across things they find unexpected and dismiss it as "unrealistic fantasy", without understanding that in such a context, this is exactly how one would expect the world to work. For example, the deep devotion and self-sacrificial service Sam shows to Frodo is often discussed in terms of friendship (and it is a great friendship), but one cannot fully understand it unless one also understands it as a (very positive) master-servant relationship. If you want a better understanding of the deeper realism of LotR, I cannot recommend Bret Devereaux' blog highly enough. He is an ancient military historian and has written extensive (but entertaining!) analyses of both LotR and GoT. See here for two samples: https://acoup.blog/2020/05/22/collections-the-battle-of-helms-deep-part-iv-men-of-rohan/ https://acoup.blog/2020/05/22/collections-the-battle-of-helm..., https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-was-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-i/ https://acoup.blog/2019/05/28/new-acquisitions-not-how-it-wa...

justanotherjoe 2y ago
I think the argument about the taxes is that, being a wholesome person is largely orthogonal to being a good king, like it is being good with a sword doesn't make you a good monarch. For example, letting Grima leave edoras because 'enough blood has been spilled' is really cool, but dubious and questionable. Though I don't know much about ME and maybe in that world, the challenges present in the real world don't exist there.
- Svip 2y ago

casualrandomcom 2y ago

"Premodern agriculture was characterized primarily as being low-surplus and high-labor, it takes a lot of people a lot of time to produce enough food for everyone to eat, and there’s rarely much left over." This i contentious, I have actually read scholars that argue the opposite.

automatic6131 2y ago
>This i contentious, I have actually read scholars that argue the opposite. It is far from contentious, you are probably mixing up "premodern agriculture" with "pre-agriculture". Furthermore, as detailed in an article [1] referenced (and linked to) by this post, you are probably mixing up the labor paid as rent vs the whole of the labor required to survive 1 - https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/regulation-industry/medieval-peasants-really-did-not-work-only-150-days-a-year https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/regulation-industry/medieval-...
kasey_junk 2y ago
It’s contentious that premodern _agriculture_ was high labor? The contentious point I’ve seen is that hunter gatherer societies perhaps were not high labor. Do you have any sources I can look at?

casualrandomcom 2y ago

"By learning how the Shire worked, we can start to understand how our own past worked, in all its complexity and contradictions." Sorry but this is totally preposterous. Why should we look at our past through a fictional creation of one author? Why don't we go directly to the sources that that same author had? Makes much more sense.

DonsDiscountGas 2y ago
Because this way is more fun

thinkingemote 2y ago

The economy of the orcs and Mordor was more interesting to me for some reason when reading the books. One can easily imagine the good guys having functioning societies but the bad ones we expect disorder.

checkyoursudo 2y ago
This is where the D&D multiple axes (plural of axis, not plural of axe, though D&D has those as well) of alignment comes in handy. Evil can be orderly, systematic. An evil society could be well functioning, with evil law and evil order.

gumby 2y ago

The whole of the context* of the LOTR can best be understood through the lens of this comment by Tolkien: > My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself Paul Fussell in “The Great War and Modern Memory” (which I highly recommend) tied comments like these to the change in mentality of the (primarily) English upper classes and gentry. Just living and working closely with working and agrarian class soldiers led to a realization that yes, they struggled with poor boots through no fault of their own (an example Fussell quotes), only visible because for the first time they saw them as comrades due to the shared experience in the trenches. And that changed the mentality of many in the upper classes, who came back from the war and voted liberal or even labour when before that would not have been even imagined. This essay talks about the effect of capitalist colonialism in Viet Nam (I agree with the author’s point here) but Tolkien’s experience reflected the consequence of an interesting domestic shift in the British isles, as industrialization increased the separation between the classes. Contrast the comradeship of Henry V in Shakespeare’s eponymous play: a group of aristos and a mob of peasants looking for money and just a change of being stuck on the land: the trench experience was a forced reversion to a social propinquity common from ~800s to the 1700s. * I don’t mean to imply there is a “correct” reading: it’s an adventure story, a masterful recreation of the tradition of the Sagas, and other things. But even as a naive 12 yo in the 1970s I realised it was a deeply conservative story. Not a reactionary one: Tolkien doesn’t appear to want to go back. But a recognition of what (in his mind) was lost. Good riddance, as far as I’m concerned! That sense of loss IMHO is much better captured by T. H. White’s roughly contemporaneous “Once and Future King”, a much more sophisticated, but less filmable, book.

DonsDiscountGas 2y ago

If there's a few large landowners and many tenant farmers, I think there would need to be lots of police/military in order to uphold that property arrangement. Otherwise the tenants just start taking land.

brazzy 2y ago
> Otherwise the tenants just start taking land. ...and do what with it, exactly? Farm it, like they're already doing? The conflicts would not be about the land, they would be about rents/dues/duties/taxes. And there would only be conflicts when the tenants feel like those are unfair and they're not getting anything back in return. Which is not neccessarily the case. The article goes into quite some detail how the patronage system provides benefits to the clients, and how actual historical peasant revolts were often not about overthrowing the social order, but merely restoring it to a previous state.

L-four 2y ago

Thanks now I know this is valid English. "Batman's Batman fell off Batman's bat-horse"

franciscop 2y ago

> Premodern agriculture was characterized primarily as being low-surplus and high-labor, it takes a lot of people a lot of time to produce enough food for everyone to eat This is _only_ because, in medieval times, when there was enough food people had more children until there was no longer enough food for everyone, maintaining the equilibrium and making it to be "just enough" most of the times, with a lot of "not enough" between those. Incidentally that is also how most animals and normal evolution operate. But what if they only have ~2 children per couple, so they CAN easily maintain this lifestyle? Specially given they are long-lived (taking care of things long-term) and have culture+technology either from abroad or from long ago (mills, craftsmen, etc). I can definitely see this more plausible than the jump to classes the post does. As a personal note, once I visited the UK countryside and was surprised by the amount of wild berries there were, we grabbed a bunch and there was definitely enough that we could've eaten for few days. Sure probably not a whole town and not all year round, but these were _just_ the wild ones, with a bit of work I can see how lush the land could become.

taskforcegemini 2y ago
kids were an important resource and in many cultures still are. At some point cheap labor and eventually are the retirement plan.
rossdavidh 2y ago
One distinctive feature of the Shire, is that it was surrounded by mostly empty space. A combination of emigration (the Elves), war (Arnor and later Arthedain vs. Angmar), and plague, had opened up a lot of open space. This is not just how the Hobbits got the Shire in the first place (the King of Arthedain had spare land to grant them), it also allowed them to expand when their population needed to. Buckland was described by JRRT as a "colony" of the Shire, and after the LotR they expanded westward again, creating the Westmarch (hence "the Red Book of Westmarch", which LotR was supposedly translated from). What the Hobbits would have done if they had been in a place without room to expand, is interesting to debate, but in the actual Third Age they could have lots of kids, and just expand into more good farmland when they needed to, because emigration, war, and plague had cleared the areas around them.
2y ago

optimalsolver 2y ago

Related: JRR Tolkien, Enemy Of Progress https://www.salon.com/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/ https://www.salon.com/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/

kelnos 2y ago

> Tolkien does not describe the political economy of the Hobbits in any detail, because it’s rarely relevant to the story I find this kinda a funny statement, because Tolkien wrote so much about his world, about things that were rarely relevant to his actual stories. In hindsight, it feels like a surprising omission that he left this out. Then again, it's been close to 30 years since I read The Silmarillion, so I don't recall if political economy ever really came up that much for other communities in Tolkien's world. So maybe that's just a general topic that he didn't find of enough interest to write about.

xg15 2y ago

It's a great article. It also made me aware of a fun bit of unreliable narration in the Hobbit that went completely under my radar before: In the Hobbit, the Tooks are introduced as the slightly quirky, more adventurous and less reputable cousins of the Baggins. (Marrying a fairy/elf, running off into the blue, owning magical artefacts of foreign origin, etc) The characters in LOTR are likewise: Frodo Baggins comes over as serious and at times almost statesmanlike, whereas Pippin Took seems more like a boyish mischief-maker mostly looking for adventure. In contrast, OP suggests the Tooks are really the much more powerful, wealthy and reputable family: They have an entire region - Tookland - under patronage; they have a permanent claim to the Thain office, making them something like the representatives of the Shire to the outside world; the Old Took also seems to be at the root of several of the hobbit families. If you take that suggestion, then some things look different: Their "adventurousness" could really just be a greater awareness and connection to the outside world than the "normal" hobbits, something that probably comes with the Thain office. On the other hand, the Baggins seem to have been an extremely conservative family even for hobbit standards (before all the events of the books at least) : It's mentioned that Bilbo looked and behaved like an exact copy of his father. The family also had a reputation for being so predictable that you could answer any question that you'd want to ask them already in your head, without bothering to actually ask the question. So it might be that the description of the quirky Tooks and reputable Baggins was really just the self-perception of the slightly stuck-up second family of the land making some friendly scoffs at the first family of the land. (Of course things change massively already at the end of the Hobbit, when Bilbo sacrifies much of the families predictability and gains worldliness instead - and at the end of LOTR anyway when the entire social order of the Shire is basically redone and Tooks, Baggins, Brandybocks and Gardeners probably all have equal ranks in society)