What kind of State? (was Smugg

[Kenneth Gauck]

Rather than respond to Jim and Gary on a point by point basis, which would
be long and technical, I would rather say a few words about how one might
see the state. I do this because I see the issues in the posts on this
thread to hinge on that broader issue.
All references refer to English kings.

First there is the high medieval state. It (or something like it) are
current in Rjurik. In Anuire and Brechtür it represents the previous kind
of state. In this kind of state, the regent's revenues are mostly rents
from his own lands (60%+). Additional revenues were derived from feudal
prerogatives, judicial authority, and various extraordinary taxes. When
adjusted for inflation, revenues remained constant (varying between £60,000
and £120,000, corrected to 1273-84) between the reigns of Henry II
(beginning in 1154) and Henry VI (ending in 1461).

Consider the position of Henry II
http://home.earthlink.net/~c558382/Henry.htm
Total revenue was tiny (adjusted to 1273-84 its £60,000) and whatever
functions the king would have liked to undertake, few officials and little
money were available. The size of Henry's court barely exceeded that of his
chief barons and clerics. Soon afterward, John estimated his own budget was
smaller than the Archbishop of Canterbury. Clearly, no army of customs
officials are available in this kind of state to prevent trade without the
cooperation of local (including guilder) interests. In a state like this,
regents play guilders off against one another.

The next kind of state is where I begin BR. The feudal forms are still
there, but have been bastardized, and the new forms are either embryonic, or
available for development, but as yet still not dominant. State government
is still a part of the regent's household, and run by officials like
stewards, chamberlains, marshals and heralds, and promotion comes from with
in the household based on loyalty to the regent and good, able service.
Henry VIII once ran a war out of his kitchen (that is to say the budget for
the war was added to the kitchen budget, and administration of the war was
handled by kitchen officials) because Henry's most able administrator was
running the kitchen at the time. Only in the next phase of government would
a regent think to move the person to the "war office" rather than run the
war from where the person was located in the household. In 1275, Edward I
first established an export duty on wool, other taxes being added later.
The purpose of this tax was to keep wool from being exported, the economic
theory of the time being to prevent resources being drained away. So, the
idea was to keep wool in England rather than to export the stuff to raise
cash. The second reason for this, and it goes very much to what I didn't
like about the tone in the earlier posts, is that the guilders wanted to
protection and cooperation of the regents. The idea that regents could
coerce guilders to pay taxes on their trade routes unwillingly, seems
totally opposed to the historical situation. Edward succured his customs
voluntarily (through Parliament) and did so in a spirit of give and take.
Again he had no army of customs officials to watch over every port in
England, he had the cooperation of the guilders. During this phase, the
total revenue of the crown did not increase, because the contribution of the
guilders merely offset inflation's reduction of the personal income of the
regent from his lands. Also, contributions from guilders and priests, were
highly variable, extraordinary, not subject to coersion, and required the
other guild or priest regent to back the project. I would see contributions
by these priests and guilders as being subsidies offered to a regent, not
compelled taxation.
See http://home.earthlink.net/~c558382/subsidy.htm

The final stage relavent to BR, is the Renaissance state. Here, government
begins to seperate from the regent's household. New ministers are created
to run new bureaucracies, rather than new jobs being assigned to existing
household functions. One of the first created in many realms was a ministry
of war. Ministers were no longer chosen because the regent liked to have
them around, but because they excelled in subordinate duties. Regents
became somewhat more constrained in who they selected as ministers, because
the sphere between the regent's private household and the public sphere of
government began to emerge. During this phase, state revenues varied
between £90,000 and £120,000, but in the Protestant north, priest regents
were destroyed by the refomation, and the state took over the temple
holdings. In Catholic Spain and France, getting a hold of vast new amounts
of money resulted from the next phase.

This raises the interesting question of the meaning of province and holding
levels. Because I think its perfectly reasonable to think of level
increases beyond, say, 5 as being more development, than simply adding more
people. After a certain point one can imagine new institutions, such as
banking, creating new wealth, which permits the higher level holdings. When
you look at areas like Daulton, Anuire, and Caulnor in Avanil, are people
living just as they have for a thousand years, only farming more
intensively? Are farms being sub-divided ever smaller? Or are people
begining to move off the farm and engage in new occupations? Are cities in
such places for the first time spilling beyond their walls, never to be
enclosed again, except at emence cost?

Are the city of Anuire, Ilien, Endier, Calrie, Tariene, and Caerlinien (in
Riverford) great new centers of business and banking? Making money from
transactions that never touch those great cities? Are they the London,
Geneva, Amsterdam, Lyon, Bordeaux, and Nantes of Anuire?

As I see it, feudal states are limited to light and moderate taxation, where
light taxation represents the income from the regent's hereditary income,
and moderate taxation might represent the subsidies that loyal towns,
temples, or guilds might offer, or extraordinary taxation, tolerated in
times of crisis, but cause for rebellion in times of peace.

More advanced states, as exist in Anuire and Brechtür, as well as in
Khinasi, exist in more complex societies where there is more wealth. Again
light taxation would represent the regent's hereditary income, but moderate
taxation would represent the normal hearth taxes, salt taxes, which people
have become accustomed to. Severe taxation in such societies represents the
extraordinary, barely tolerated for the shortest duration, under the most
estream circumstances, and otherwise cause for rebellion.

As always further extraordinary claims can be made using your law holdings.

But there is another issue here as well. And that is play balance. Why
should priest or thief regents be inferior, less able to control their
destinies, vulnerable to landed regents? Shouldn't each position be just as
challenging, just as fun to play as the next position? Its one thing to
make a particular position harder, but to systematically make one class,
race, or kind of regent superior to the others flies in the face of play
balance, and the idea that each of these comes with its own mix of strengths
and weaknesses.

Kenneth Gauck
c558382@earthlink.net

[JulesMrshn@aol.co]

In a message dated 11/30/98 11:02:47 PM Central Standard Time,
c558382@earthlink.net writes: