spoiler(s) Wars to come

First: the massive mess of N Harchong.
putting down the warlords and defending against the
Emperor.

Second: Siddarmark civil war Eats aligned with the CoGA
and the Border States.
The South aligned with G.D. of Silkah (GDoS ?)
Central and Northern trying to hold it all together

Third: The war to partition Sodar and Delferahik
between Desnair and New South Harchong (NSH ?)

Fourth: The defense of Greentree Island

Just my take anyone have more?

Hello TangoLima,

Good list, but it may be more all-in-one inclusive as we have that comment from RFC a year or two ago, at a con IIRC, that in the next war both sides would have steam power.

TFT has shown the airships as long range cargo carriers, so they can reach Glacierheart etc when it's needed from Dohlar or Silkiah.

Granted, having demonstrated they can carry 20-25 tons of cargo, current models could carry almost as much as bombers, which will be targeted on the artillery gun line, especially if the ICA left some of those 10" near RR guns with the SRA.

Surprisingly, TFT didn't include any references to any type of machine gun ( which could be filled in in the next book), or of gliders (ie Cayley, 54 years before Kitty Hawk, so ~1400 years before NA/ME woke up), or the potential for diesel powered planes as ground strafers that might be launched from even bigger dirigibles while they stayed out range and at higher altitude than they might when bombing.

I do suspect we'll have a hand wringing session where Cayleb admits they could and should have done more to help Siddarmark.

I'm actually less interested in the war than the construction of the non-electric world, if RFC lets us know of the other industrial advances made during TFT.

Very interesting times, certainly.

Best wishes to you and yours,

L

TangoLima wrote:First: the massive mess of N Harchong.
putting down the warlords and defending against the
Emperor.

Second: Siddarmark civil war Eats aligned with the CoGA
and the Border States.
The South aligned with G.D. of Silkah (GDoS ?)
Central and Northern trying to hold it all together

Third: The war to partition Sodar and Delferahik
between Desnair and New South Harchong (NSH ?)

Fourth: The defense of Greentree Island

Just my take anyone have more?

Actually, Im not sure about Siddarmark civil war. It seems more likely that Siddarmark would werpnt further into right-wing dictatorship.

Dilandu wrote:Actually, Im not sure about Siddarmark civil war. It seems more likely that Siddarmark would werpnt further into right-wing dictatorship.

"Right-Wing" and "Left-wing" are really difficult terms to apply in that situation. The political context and meanings we're used to don't really apply to how any of the populaces on Safehold tend to think.

Best description I can think of for Siddarmark would be "Garbage Fire"

We don't have ANY idea how that's going to play out. The Banking systems are deservedly shot, again, the entire populace is out for blood and doesn't much care whose, the Lord Protector is basically anti-qualified for the job, Parliament is apparently passing anything with ink on it at this point, and the one person who is managing to engage in ANY kind of theoretical long-term planning or informed decision making has apparently decided to invest all his time and energy on burning down his own country, then buying up property at fire-sale prices.

That's not any sort of consistently right-wing or left-wing set of policies, that's just a total national meltdown. For the next five years, they may as well be making decisions by throwing random darts at the wall.

Odds are pretty good that they will eventually pick a random neighbor, then find an excuse to invade them and seize their assets. That's a common desperation tactic for all sorts of political ideologies.

If worst comes to worse, it may also be another civil war at the same time, too.

Dilandu wrote:Actually, Im not sure about Siddarmark civil war. It seems more likely that Siddarmark would werpnt further into right-wing dictatorship.

actually, from the textev, appears that it is more likely a left wing dictatorship (all non-government participation in the TSRR was elimated, and expropriation is usually done by the government, with the assets held by the government - in short the means of production are falling into the government hands - a sort of communist manifesto)

And if Siddermark attempts to invade Silkiah, the Lord Protector had better not be in the capital, or he will discover just how far a Thunderbolt can throw a 10 inch shell.

And attempting to invade the Temple Lands could be a bad, as I suspect that Charis would frown severely on the attempt

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Dilandu wrote:Actually, Im not sure about Siddarmark civil war. It seems more likely that Siddarmark would werpnt further into right-wing dictatorship.

actually, from the textev, appears that it is more likely a left wing dictatorship (all non-government participation in the TSRR was elimated, and expropriation is usually done by the government, with the assets held by the government - in short the means of production are falling into the government hands - a sort of communist manifesto)

I agree with Krenn. The left-right paradigm is very blurred at the extremes and in Siddermark specifically.
Recall that Woodrow Wilson nationalized the Railroads in the US and the regulated wages for the industry once the RRs were re-privatized. Was this policy an experiment in classic socialism or an impulse towards fascism? Both policies centralized political and economic control over elements of national wealth. How each policy executed control is different, but not the aggregation of control.

In Siddermark Hygyns reduced representation in the TSRR Board to government interests only. He nationalized Charisian owned assets. Does that mean all assets were privatized? No. The TSRR is still owned by private Siddermark interests as well as the government. However, it is totally controlled by government. Furthermore, the government is still representative at this point, so government ownership is actually public ownership. Is all that fascism, socialism, some combination of both or does it even matter? The key element to all this is the aggregation of wealth and political power leads to the same crappy economic conditions.

These are the sorts of conditions that breeds rebellion. I just don't think that any Siddermarkian rebellion will be driven by one guiding principle. Siddermark is similar to the Empire of Charis in that the provinces were added to it over time. Those provinces were once separate nations rather than colonies planted by Siddermark. There are still deep differences between the cultures/societies of those provinces. They will respond to the same stresses differently. The leaders they choose will view those problems differently. Finally, the resources they bring to bear in addressing those problems will be different.

Just think about the different needs of Glacierheart and the Old Province. Glacierheart needs to export their coal to get the best prices for their resources. Old Province needs to import raw materials as inexpensively as possible to produce finished goods to sell first and foremost to their domestic customers. Exporting goods means competing with Charis, the Temple Lands and Dohlar. Its much easier to produce for domestic consumption and use tariffs to manage domestic markets. Those tariffs will likely make exporting coal to nations targeted by tariffs more difficult. That is assuming the coal miners don't have to suffer through wage and price controls as well as the odd official that needs to be bribed or ligarch that wants a piece of the operation. That last part will be true and cause problems everywhere.

Without a unifying element these problems will fracture Siddermark into regional interests. Interests that will see their needs best addressed separately from the whole nation.

Thank You All for the insightful comments.
This will require full thinking-cap mode to digest.

Regarding Siddarmark, much will depend on Hygyns' ability to bring about at least moderate economic prosperity to those who voted for him and how long it will take Siddarmark to recover financially. If we look at what happen to Wiemar Germany, they underwent several years of political and economic turmoil with hyperinflation and governments that rose and fell after only several months in powers. Hitler and his Nazi Party had actually done very little to improve the lot of the common German yet they had capitalized on the existing recovery while rallying Germans with a message of hatred of "non-Aryans". Yet ultimately, it took several years before Germany could begin an offensive war against all of Europe and they still needed Italy and Japan on their side and their non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union.

So Siddarmark could potentially go that way but they are surrounded by Silkiah to the south, the border states to the west and Dohlar to the southwest. Without Charis, the AOG would be able to pose a serious threat to Siddarmark if it attempts to expand into the border states (and I'm pretty sure there are enough Siddarmarkians who are skittish about invading the Temple Land). Silkiah's security is guaranteed by Siddarmark and Charis, meaning they'd have to violate yet another treaty and potentially go to war with Charis, which is something Hygyns probably wants to avoid. That leaves Dohlar and its increasingly close relationship to Charis (especially with Alanah's marriage to Thirsk's grandson). So they're hemmed in unless they're willing to go to war with Charis or if they're able to ally with Desnair (assuming they're willing to set aside centuries of animosity and mutual bloodletting).

PeterZ wrote:Recall that Woodrow Wilson nationalized the Railroads in the US and the regulated wages for the industry once the RRs were re-privatized. Was this policy an experiment in classic socialism or an impulse towards fascism? Both policies centralized political and economic control over elements of national wealth. How each policy executed control is different, but not the aggregation of control.

Wars tend to produce centralized control of economies, simply to orient them to war production, and that can happen on both sides of the fence. The question is what happens to the controls once the war is over and that sort of centralized planning isn't required.

An interesting volume to look at is Peter F. Drucker's "The End of Economic Man". It's actually his first book, and the original draft was written in 1933 when he still lived in Austria. He was trying to understand how totalitarian fascism could arise and succeed in Germany and Italy.

While he didn't use those terms, his answer was essentially "The old gods had failed."

Europe was a fundamentally Christian place, and Christianity had ideals of how the world should be and how people should behave. (See Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" and R. H. Tawney's "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" for excellent discussions of the influence religion had on economic development.)

The French Revolution promoted the ideals of liberty and equality.

The Industrial Revolution in Britain provided the ideal of capitalism providing vastly increased production that would make everybody better off, and lessen the distinction between the extremely rich and the very poor by creating a middle class that was the next stage in economic development.

World War I put paid to the idea of liberty and equality as absolute monarchy reasserted itself.

The Great Depression following World War I put paid to the idea of capitalism providing partial economic equality.

For both Germany and Italy, though they expressed in an somewhat different forms, the purpose of Fascism was full employment. They would get full employment by centralized government control of the economy, and putting the economy on a war footing, and producing war materiel. The problem with that, of course, is that at some point you have to fight a war to justify doing it.

With the failure of the old ideals, the question was what new paradigms would replace them? Fascism explicitly didn't provide a new ideal, and that lack proved ultimately fatal.

(And speaking of Fascism, See also Seymour Martin Lipset's "Political Man." Lipset was a sociologist analyzing politics. His contention was that Oligarchy was a system imposed from above, by a ruling class preserving its rule. Dictatorship was imposed from below, by a successful revolution of the poor against the rich, and designed to preserve and extend their power. Fascism was fundamentally a middle class movement, supported by a group that saw itself squeezed between the existing rich industrial class and a rising and increasingly assertive proletariat seeks a larger piece of the pie. The true supporters of Fascism in Germany and Italy were middle class. The notion that the rich industrialists supported Hitler, for example, proves to be not really the case. They did what they thought was needed to preserve what they had and cooperated with the government, but many would have been far happier not having to.)
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Dennis