On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 2:12 PM, Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:

On Nov 23, 2015, at 12:56 PM, Grimmund <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

The merchants were land-poor, and lacked the numerous legal rights and priviliges of the nobility, but they were generating income based on manufacturing or processing (or financial speculation), which generated a significant income without the investment and expense of feudal land.

The 3I seems to include the merchants in the nobility, and allows for promotion into the nobility. Land itself is no longer the limiting factor.

Hmmm, that makes the 3i more akin to the Hanseatic League and the Holy Roman Empire rather than feudal Europe.

Yes. Still close enough to "feudal" for most modern people.

A key part of the feudal tradition was the ongoing exchange of of land tenure for troops. The king owns the land, and distributes tenure of fiefs to the people who form his army. There is a fairly clear quid pro quo in the number of troops expected per the amount of land being held in fief.

(For pre-invasion England, it was one equipped trooper for every 5 hides of land, with a hide being a general economic measure rather than a strict area measure like acres or hectares. A 100 hide aministrative district fielded a unit of 20 men. Tenure changes after the Normans take over, but the basic system stays in place for several hundred years after the Bastard takes over. )

Early on, ownership of 5 hides put someone in the nobility, and they went trooping themselves, and the system functioned as a sort of "national guard" levy that was generally used defensively to fight invasions and piracy. The system doesn't produce a particularly useful force if you want to take them elsewhere and go raiding.

Eventually, with the rise of professional armies, and the aggregation of large chunks of land into the hands of a relatively small number of landholders, and the cost of supporting full time troops you rareley needed, fewer landholders kept military forces ready and available.

(This is also a result of strengthening central authority; when you can no longer raid your neighbors, and your neighbors can no longer raid you, because the King will bring and army and punish the transgressor, the direct need for troops to defend your holdings and raid your neighbors declines. When your borders are relatively secure from foreign invaders, your need for troops declines.)

The feudal military obligation became more and more often paid as money to hire troops, in lieu of troops themselves. Eventually it becomes entirely exected to be money instead of troops, with the Crown slowly becoming the sole control of a standing military force.

The 3I appears to be well past the straight-up land for troops or land for rents relationship.

There is still plenty of "feudal" loyalty floating around, even if it isn't backed by grands of income-generating land.

The whole thing looks more "Victorian" than "Feudal". (Hm. Steampunk Traveller.)

The 3I seems to have a mix of both private troops attached to various nobles (most of which, if they are big enough and capable enough, are also reserve 3I units), straight Imperial troops (who are presumably, in theory, directly loyal to the emperor), and merc units.

Dan

"Any sufficiently advanced parody is indistinguishable from a genuine kook." -Alan Morgan