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On Mon, 11/23/15, Grimmund <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe
 To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
 Date: Monday, November 23, 2015, 3:29 PM

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

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

wrote:  

 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

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I also see it this way (the 'Victorian' aspect jumped out at me early on) but with the caveat that some private troops, (notably Norris's 'Huscarles') are actually considered *regular* 3I units, (re: FifthFW board game & numerous other references)

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