Post by Therese NorenPost by Jasper JanssenThe thing is, in Randland, as in any pre-industrial urban
society, there is no real alternative to drinking alcohol. Tea doesn't
exist yet
It's been a while since I read the books, but I seem to remember Aes
Sedai tea parties. They also drink kaf.
Otherwise, you're entirely right.
Yeah. I know. I actually thought of that before hitting send, but I didn't
have the energy to rephrase my post.
Somehow, this became an extremely long post. Wow. and vaguely on-topic,
too.
That's of course cause they're not exactly pre-industrial -- they're also
the survivors of a catastrophically destroyed *post*industrial
civilisation, with several attempts at industrialisation in between. *And*
I think they're actually more in the early 17th century timeline
organisation-wise, which is really already starting to industrialise in
some ways.
Sea trade to The East and The West, as we in our timeline start getting in
the 15th century, is probably one of the first major outflows in our
timeline. You need a whole heck of a lot of manpower and knowledge in one
place to be able to and *want to* build oceangoing sailing ships. You also
need a fair bit of spare capital that just doesn't appear in Medieval
feudal subsistence farming. You need *cities*.
By the early 17th century, the process is well underway: In the
Netherlands we get Leeghwater[1] draining swamps and lakes left and right
to provide Lebensraum (And doing to our overly wet farmland what
irrigation does for deserts, with similar improvements in yield), and at
the turn of the century some unlucky (since he didn't get feelthy rich off
it) miller's son developed a way to hook a saw to a windmill and get an
automatic feed -- creating the first powersaws and a 30 fold or so speed
increase over two men with a big-ass saw.
By the end of the 17th century, the Zaanstreek alone holds over 400
sawmills (there are 5 left in the whole country, now), which are going
permanently to make planks -- mostly for ships -- out of the Baltic wood
imported from Scandinavia. The Zaanstreek, at that time, is one big
thriving industrial zone, without a steam engine in sight. It's where
Peter -- later Czar Peter the Great -- came incognito to learn (ie, steal)
the secrets of building ships. It's also the one thing that cause the
Netherlands to have its Golden Age then, the merchant fleet in particular,
backed by the best Navy (quality-wise, if not in quantity[3]) in Europe
(and thus probably in the world).
In France, somebody is digging a big-ass and difficult canal running
between the Atlantic coast and the Mediterranean across a small mountain
pass using a bunch of locks, providing France's riverboats and barges with
Med access despite the war with Spain which makes it nigh-impossible to
sail the pillars of Hercules.
In Sweden, production of pig/cast-iron and forged steel is industrialising
into giant concerns (especially under the demand for cannons, swords, etc
in the various wars in Europe), blast furnaces going 24/7, especially
after the introduction of rolling mills (what was it, mid 17th century?
Post Gustavus Adolphus, I think, but not by very much) which upped the
forging capacity tenfold, and kept Sweden an economic powerhouse even if
its military and political might never again matched that it had Gustav II
Adolf. 1/3 of Europe's iron production was in Sweden, and they only
allowed finished products out (iron cast into shape, or steel), not the
raw iron, so they capitalised on that mightily.
Basically, the Industrial Revolution does not start with steam engines --
that's the middle bit. It starts well before that, first with mostly human
labour, and then with wind and water (Sweden, even then, used hydro
extensively).
Randland is somewhat confusingly placed -- they have cities, they're not
at war, mostly, but they don't seem to have a big thriving merchant class
ready to invest in all sorts of crazy schemes, or at least in Great Big
Fucking Assloads of luxury goods[2]. They don't have places of higher
learning even for the nobility, let alone richer merchant sons, except the
Aes Sedai. It takes Rand to set up the universities. Once Rand does so,
they proceed *within the freaking year* to have a prototype steam engine
that only blows up once very so often (and, hello, not that hard to solve.
It's called a safety valve, and it's crude technology compared to the
pistons), not to mention all sort of other nifty things.
One of the things that wealthy citizens -- be they merchant class or
nobility -- do first when they get the opportunity is provide their
children with education, however such things are measured in the time.
Ancient Greece had its natural philosophers and their students, Rome had
(first) those same natural philosophers and slave tutors from Greece, from
the first millennium or so there is the Church, and then in the 1300s to
1500s we start seeing schools and universities again, successful enough
that some survived to the present day.
Randlanders.. don't follow the pattern. They've got long range (extremely
long range) trade, it's even fairly cheap (since frex Saldaean ice-peppers
(was that it?) are expensive on the other side of the continent, but not
worth their weight in gold), and fairly safe (since, well, no major wars
until recently for a whole 20 years, and that one only covered half the
continent). Basically, there's not as much wealth around as it seems there
should be.
Jasper (</ramble>) Janssen
[1] Ironically named, n'est-ce pas?
[2] Tulips.
[3] I was thinking the other day while reading up on Michiel De Ruyter,
Maarten Tromp, Witte de With and Piet Heijn (Piet Heijn, Piet Heijn, Piet
Heijn zijn naam is klein, zijn daden benne groot), that several of the
events in their various careers sounded a lot like some of the things that
happen to Honor Harrington.