Some points about Harchong

You missed the most likely variation: the Joseon [or maybe Goryeo, I don't have a reference handy on the date of this version, but it was in place throughout the Joseon] - admission to the bureaucracy strictly by competitive examinations accessible only to sons of noble or bureaucratic families. Competent - by whatever standard the exam setters use to define 'competent' - administration, no trace of social mobility. The Koreans did it this way precisely to address the 'problem' of mobility, which the aristocracy was objecting to.

imperatorzor wrote:Going through the books, there are several facts about the Harchong Empire of note. This is taking into consideration the fact that Harchong comes off as something of an expy of Imperial China.

First of all there is the matter of Harchong's Government. Harchong's society is highly stratified with a large underclass of impoverished peasants, serfs bound to the land and out and out slaves and a very powerful nobility with a lot of power over their fiefs and not much in between. Despite that the nobility does not do much to actually run their lands, instead having most of the Administration being handled by an Imperial Bureaucracy that is efficient when properly motivated. To me this seems bit incongruous. There's two ways such a bureaucracy could be set up which i'm going to call the Edo system and the Sui system based off real world history.

The Edo system has hereditary offices in the Imperial Bureaucracy. A knightly house has among it's assets the office of Census Taker for a rural barony who is under the command of a regional police director who is from a Baron's family. The problem with this is that it means that the Bureaucracy is ultimately just an extension of the nobility and as such they are actively involved in the running of their country. Given that the nobility and the bureaucracy are two different entities this seems unlikely.

The Sui System has competitive examinations: an exam is held every year and the guys who score the highest get junior positions in the the Bureaucracy as new offices are created and to fill gaps by people who die or retire. This system does mean that the nobility and the bureaucracy are separate animals and would even explain partially why the government is so corrupt because you have bureaucrats who's income is a measly salary and want to help their families as much as possible (this is a big problem in modern India). The problem with this is that is the fact that such an institution would also allow social mobility and undermine a hard and fast class system. Some blacksmith's or merchant's son is as sharp as a nail, aces the exam and gets a position in the Imperial Bureaucracy. With that posistion he can protect his family from the whims of the nobility and one way or another give them some of the "spontaneous gifts" which imperial bureaucrats receive.

The reason for the names I chose for those systems comes from real world systems. That of Edo Japan and china's Sui Dynasty. In the case of the latter, said system was brought about by Emperor Yang of Sui specifically to replace the exiting nobility.

The second matter is the fact of the Harchong Navy. Unlike the Desnarian Empire, Harchong has overseas colonies in South Harchong. In taking and holding these colonies, the Empire would need to have some naval tradition to transport soldiers to South Harchong and deal with pirates harassing the flow of trade and taxes across the Gulf of Dolhar. The last thing that even the corrupt court nobles and mandarins would want is for those provinces to be severed from the rest of the Empire.

Zor

You need to be very careful with these comparisons. First, the numbers aren't contemporary. Since they are for fairly precise dates, they may not be [in fact, IIRC, aren't] either peak or long-term average numbers. They also reflect very different definitions of the terms used. In pre-partition Poland, all land-owners were by definition noble - the terms can be regarded as synonymous. In early modern England, owning land wouldn't even automatically put you into the middle classes, never mind the aristocracy. "Noble" refers strictly to members of the peerage and their families. Likewise, it is often assumed that serf and peasant are equivalent - and there may even have been places and times when that was very nearly true. Certainly, in Eastern Europe, the number of peasants who were serfs actually increased steadily through the late medieval and early modern periods, as the flip side of the equation of nobility and land ownership, the weakening of central authority and consequent pulling of a fast one by the land owners.

From what we've seen so far, in Harchong there are no rich peasants; in fact, it sounds rather like there aren't, at least in practice, very many free peasants. That implies that land ownership does indeed equate to nobility and puts the aristocracy very much at the high end of the range - probably well over 10% of population, very possibly above 15%. Given that the rural population is likely closer to 80% of the total than not... Actually, that number is more likely to be correct for the north than the south, if industry is concentrated as much south of the Gulf as it appears to be. And since we don't know if industrial property is regarded as comparable to agricultural [probably not: it was late in the 19th century before that was true in the UK] we don't know if the smaller role of agriculture in the total economy reduces the nobility, or just the rural population percentage. It probably does not reduce the proportion of 'peasants and workers', and may not increase the free population much if at all. OTOH, it probably does increase the middle classes, which would make the nobility smaller as a proportion of the total.

Hmmm... the more I think about it, the more I realise that we really don't know anything at all about the structure of Harchong society. For that matter, we don't really know as much as some might think we do about Charisian society - I wouldn't even want to take a stab at estimating rural vs urban population there.

OK. I don't think that there are any really good real-world comparisons, but: 10-15% upper class, 5-15% middle classes, 70-80% lower classes, with the bureaucracy drawn from the top 15% except in the Church. A non-aristocratic churchman, though, is going to find advancement to the upper ranks much easier someplace else, so they probably don't stay in Harchong. And no, that low value for the middle classes isn't a mistake - that's one of the places Harchong is probably more like continental Europe than China: a strong middle class only appears where commerce is a major portion of the economy.

Kakai wrote:

SYED wrote:We know the harchong have the greatest population, i am wondering how much of htat is free and how much of htat are the nobility.

Well, we can't say for sure, but comparing with real life, the percentage of nobility in society varied between 2 (England) and 10% (Poland). I guess with how overblown the bureaucracy in Harchong is, 5-10% would be a nice guess as to the number of people with "blue blood" and their families (in Japan, which modeled their nobility on China, one of countries Harchong was based on, it was 5%). As to slaves/serfs, their percentage in society of the Imperial Russia (the other country Harchong was based on) was 45% by the end of XVIII century. That would mean that the "freemen" make up between 50 and 55% of society.

Translated to numbers (taking Harchongese population as stated in FAQ at face value) this would make:
nobility:.........~9 700 000 (pretty absurd number - 1-2% would probably be closer to reality)
freemen:......~97 000 000
serfs/slaves:...87 300 000

Even with nobility being 1% of society, it's still nearly 2 million people, so I guess it wouldn't be that easy to finish them all off.

(edited to fix the numbers)

imperatorzor wrote:The second matter is the fact of the Harchong Navy. Unlike the Desnarian Empire, Harchong has overseas colonies in South Harchong. In taking and holding these colonies, the Empire would need to have some naval tradition to transport soldiers to South Harchong and deal with pirates harassing the flow of trade and taxes across the Gulf of Dolhar. The last thing that even the corrupt court nobles and mandarins would want is for those provinces to be severed from the rest of the Empire.

Zor

I seem to remember something about the Harchong Navy from one of the first books. If I recall correctly, they did and possibly in fact still do, have a huge navy... on paper. Most of the ship have long since been disarmed, and the money allocated to their upkeep is lining bureaucratic pockets, but on paper the navy existed (and possibly still exists)... and they did keep enough actual ships to scare anyone else off. Particularly the pirates, who understood that if they got too annoying (cost the bureaucrats and nobles too much money) they would get crushed.

As for tradition, rank in the Harchong navy, if I recall correctly, was strictly a matter of time in service (for the officers, at least), with the most aristocratic families making sure they sons' name was entered years before birth, just to ensure that they would reach the rank of admiral eventually. Going to sea, at any point in that career, was apparently optional. Which is why the admiral in command of the Harchong galley force which sailed against Charis was at the same time almost too old to put on a uniform, and completely inexperienced.

We all know how that ended ...

You're most likely right, as I've been looking more for data that fits to countries Harchong was based on (China, Russia) than proper time periods. Not sure if it was just me being bad at google-fu, but there seems to be surprisingly little data on the makeup of medieval and other societies on the Internet.

I guess here's some data that's probably closer to Harchongese (scroll a bit to the graph). It's medieval England and in short, the article divides the populace into ~15-16% of the "free" (nobility+freemen, with nobles being <1%) and remaining ~85% of the "unfree" (ie those who didn't own their land). That would give you 29,1 million "free" and 164,9 million "unfree". Of the former, 2 million could be noblemen (like Sounour showed us, it would work), while the rest could be some artisans, merchantmen and the like. It would probably fit better.

As to Charis, it's a merchant country, so I guess the percentages I gave before could be a bit closer to reality.

Louis R wrote:You need to be very careful with these comparisons. First, the numbers aren't contemporary. Since they are for fairly precise dates, they may not be [in fact, IIRC, aren't] either peak or long-term average numbers. They also reflect very different definitions of the terms used. In pre-partition Poland, all land-owners were by definition noble - the terms can be regarded as synonymous. In early modern England, owning land wouldn't even automatically put you into the middle classes, never mind the aristocracy. "Noble" refers strictly to members of the peerage and their families. Likewise, it is often assumed that serf and peasant are equivalent - and there may even have been places and times when that was very nearly true. Certainly, in Eastern Europe, the number of peasants who were serfs actually increased steadily through the late medieval and early modern periods, as the flip side of the equation of nobility and land ownership, the weakening of central authority and consequent pulling of a fast one by the land owners.

From what we've seen so far, in Harchong there are no rich peasants; in fact, it sounds rather like there aren't, at least in practice, very many free peasants. That implies that land ownership does indeed equate to nobility and puts the aristocracy very much at the high end of the range - probably well over 10% of population, very possibly above 15%. Given that the rural population is likely closer to 80% of the total than not... Actually, that number is more likely to be correct for the north than the south, if industry is concentrated as much south of the Gulf as it appears to be. And since we don't know if industrial property is regarded as comparable to agricultural [probably not: it was late in the 19th century before that was true in the UK] we don't know if the smaller role of agriculture in the total economy reduces the nobility, or just the rural population percentage. It probably does not reduce the proportion of 'peasants and workers', and may not increase the free population much if at all. OTOH, it probably does increase the middle classes, which would make the nobility smaller as a proportion of the total.

Hmmm... the more I think about it, the more I realise that we really don't know anything at all about the structure of Harchong society. For that matter, we don't really know as much as some might think we do about Charisian society - I wouldn't even want to take a stab at estimating rural vs urban population there.

OK. I don't think that there are any really good real-world comparisons, but: 10-15% upper class, 5-15% middle classes, 70-80% lower classes, with the bureaucracy drawn from the top 15% except in the Church. A non-aristocratic churchman, though, is going to find advancement to the upper ranks much easier someplace else, so they probably don't stay in Harchong. And no, that low value for the middle classes isn't a mistake - that's one of the places Harchong is probably more like continental Europe than China: a strong middle class only appears where commerce is a major portion of the economy.

Interesting. A major reason why you aren't finding the data is that there's so little of it. Another is that interpretation of the available sources is always extremely subjective, meaning that it's invariably controversial: nobody was writing dictionaries at the time. The site you cited is a nice example - Somerville doesn't give any sources, but I can think of at least two writers on the period, Tierney and Noble, who would sharply dispute the equation of 'don't own the land they farm' with 'unfree'. By no means were all who held land by service 'tied' to it. For all of Frankish-dominated Europe at the time, in fact. It was more prevalent some places than others, of course, but, IIRC, Tierney doubted that it ever hit 50% of the population west of the Elbe and only started heading that way to the east in the 15th century. It was also low, interestingly given their later behaviour, in Christian Spain. Part of the confusion is due to ascribing late-14th and 15th century practice to earlier periods, despite changes in law, custom and the use of the relevant terminology. One response of land-owners to the Black Death was to attempt to tie peasants to their lands so they didn't have to compete for labour. They got pretty short shrift in England, did little better in France [both countries with strong Royal court systems with the teeth to enforce judgements], not terribly well in western Germany and much better further east - where there were _not_ effective courts to block a patently illegal proceeding. So what you can understand by "villein' isn't consistent and not allowing for that will lead to some pretty glaring errors. Given that how it should be understood when and where is one of those controversies...

Kakai wrote:You're most likely right, as I've been looking more for data that fits to countries Harchong was based on (China, Russia) than proper time periods. Not sure if it was just me being bad at google-fu, but there seems to be surprisingly little data on the makeup of medieval and other societies on the Internet.

I guess here's some data that's probably closer to Harchongese (scroll a bit to the graph). It's medieval England and in short, the article divides the populace into ~15-16% of the "free" (nobility+freemen, with nobles being <1%) and remaining ~85% of the "unfree" (ie those who didn't own their land). That would give you 29,1 million "free" and 164,9 million "unfree". Of the former, 2 million could be noblemen (like Sounour showed us, it would work), while the rest could be some artisans, merchantmen and the like. It would probably fit better.

As to Charis, it's a merchant country, so I guess the percentages I gave before could be a bit closer to reality.

Louis R wrote:You need to be very careful with these comparisons. First, the numbers aren't contemporary. Since they are for fairly precise dates, they may not be [in fact, IIRC, aren't] either peak or long-term average numbers. They also reflect very different definitions of the terms used. In pre-partition Poland, all land-owners were by definition noble - the terms can be regarded as synonymous. In early modern England, owning land wouldn't even automatically put you into the middle classes, never mind the aristocracy. "Noble" refers strictly to members of the peerage and their families. Likewise, it is often assumed that serf and peasant are equivalent - and there may even have been places and times when that was very nearly true. Certainly, in Eastern Europe, the number of peasants who were serfs actually increased steadily through the late medieval and early modern periods, as the flip side of the equation of nobility and land ownership, the weakening of central authority and consequent pulling of a fast one by the land owners.

From what we've seen so far, in Harchong there are no rich peasants; in fact, it sounds rather like there aren't, at least in practice, very many free peasants. That implies that land ownership does indeed equate to nobility and puts the aristocracy very much at the high end of the range - probably well over 10% of population, very possibly above 15%. Given that the rural population is likely closer to 80% of the total than not... Actually, that number is more likely to be correct for the north than the south, if industry is concentrated as much south of the Gulf as it appears to be. And since we don't know if industrial property is regarded as comparable to agricultural [probably not: it was late in the 19th century before that was true in the UK] we don't know if the smaller role of agriculture in the total economy reduces the nobility, or just the rural population percentage. It probably does not reduce the proportion of 'peasants and workers', and may not increase the free population much if at all. OTOH, it probably does increase the middle classes, which would make the nobility smaller as a proportion of the total.

Hmmm... the more I think about it, the more I realise that we really don't know anything at all about the structure of Harchong society. For that matter, we don't really know as much as some might think we do about Charisian society - I wouldn't even want to take a stab at estimating rural vs urban population there.

OK. I don't think that there are any really good real-world comparisons, but: 10-15% upper class, 5-15% middle classes, 70-80% lower classes, with the bureaucracy drawn from the top 15% except in the Church. A non-aristocratic churchman, though, is going to find advancement to the upper ranks much easier someplace else, so they probably don't stay in Harchong. And no, that low value for the middle classes isn't a mistake - that's one of the places Harchong is probably more like continental Europe than China: a strong middle class only appears where commerce is a major portion of the economy.

This is nice analysis. I think we do need to differentiate between N. Harchong and S. Harchong, however. The north is primarily agricultural with huge plantations with both serfs and slaves. The south, however, apparently has a sizable commercial sector with some slaves toiling in factories, but with the owners being merchants. Also, there is supposed to be a sizable number of artisans there.

Both merchants and artisans are probably free. But I suspect that they are a comparatively small slice of the population compared to other realms such as Charis or Dohlar.

Don

Keith_w wrote:A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

It's not ingenuity; it's just a practical application of the Infinite Number Of Monkeys principle.
------------------
If you go too far in making things easy for idiots, you wind up making them hard for normal people.

Imaginos1892 wrote:

Keith_w wrote:A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

It's not ingenuity; it's just a practical application of the Infinite Number Of Monkeys principle.

I am sorry, but I have to disagree. Having worked in the information technology field for a very long time, I have found that it does not take an infinite number of monkeys to mess up a simple task, simply many ingenious fools messing the same simple task up in manifold different and wondrous ways.

The artisans and merchants would be the middling classes I referred to. They are presumably more numerous in the South, so the relative proportions of the three groups should be different in North and South Harchong [which, BTW, should mean some cultural differences between the two areas, as well].

However, there may not be as many of them even as I allowed for. I just reread the discussion between Duchairn and Magwair in LAMA, where the take-over of the Southern foundries is discussed - and there is a clear reference to the noble owners of same. This suggests that industrial property is at least acceptable as an addition to agricultural wealth. It also indicates that everything of serious economic value is firmly in the hands of the nobility, leaving very little room for the growth of a middle class. Also, while Duchairn grabbed control of the Southern foundries first, he makes it clear that he'll be going after the Northern industrial plant shortly. I think that a lot of people assume that that's because the south had the larger industry and therefore had to be rationalised first, but there's not actually anything in this text to indicate that's the reason. It probably is newer and more efficient, and thus easier to improve quickly. More importantly, though, it's occurred to me that it may have been taken first because it was the softer target, and therefore easier to set the precedent with. It appears that the North dominates the Empire, so the northern nobility will have far more political clout both within the Empire and with the vicarate. It would have been harder to get Clyntahn to agree to take their toys away from them as the first move even if the same number were affected, and much harder if there are in fact significantly more of them. [assuming i'm not forgetting something in one of the other books, of course]

n7axw wrote:
This is nice analysis. I think we do need to differentiate between N. Harchong and S. Harchong, however. The north is primarily agricultural with huge plantations with both serfs and slaves. The south, however, apparently has a sizable commercial sector with some slaves toiling in factories, but with the owners being merchants. Also, there is supposed to be a sizable number of artisans there.

Both merchants and artisans are probably free. But I suspect that they are a comparatively small slice of the population compared to other realms such as Charis or Dohlar.

Don

Louis R wrote:The artisans and merchants would be the middling classes I referred to. They are presumably more numerous in the South, so the relative proportions of the three groups should be different in North and South Harchong [which, BTW, should mean some cultural differences between the two areas, as well].

However, there may not be as many of them even as I allowed for. I just reread the discussion between Duchairn and Magwair in LAMA, where the take-over of the Southern foundries is discussed - and there is a clear reference to the noble owners of same. This suggests that industrial property is at least acceptable as an addition to agricultural wealth. It also indicates that everything of serious economic value is firmly in the hands of the nobility, leaving very little room for the growth of a middle class. Also, while Duchairn grabbed control of the Southern foundries first, he makes it clear that he'll be going after the Northern industrial plant shortly. I think that a lot of people assume that that's because the south had the larger industry and therefore had to be rationalised first, but there's not actually anything in this text to indicate that's the reason. It probably is newer and more efficient, and thus easier to improve quickly. More importantly, though, it's occurred to me that it may have been taken first because it was the softer target, and therefore easier to set the precedent with. It appears that the North dominates the Empire, so the northern nobility will have far more political clout both within the Empire and with the vicarate. It would have been harder to get Clyntahn to agree to take their toys away from them as the first move even if the same number were affected, and much harder if there are in fact significantly more of them. [assuming i'm not forgetting something in one of the other books, of course]

Here is another thought. Consider the bureaucrats. Corruption and bribes probably explain how at least some of them got their jobs. I wonder what percentage of the population they are. And we do know from textev that they are a power center countering the aristocracy, having managed to build an imperial army independent of the feudal levies. That suggests competence however corrupt they might be.

Don