AHC: Coloni don't fall to Serfdom

As for the equivalence with castles I'm not so sure.

What is your explanation, @darthfanta ?
Between the fall of the Western Han Dynasty and the middle period of the Tang Dynasty,the aristocratic families fortified their manors in the countryside.These forts are called '塢堡'.When the barbarians overran northern China when Jin rule in the north collapsed,the aristocrats remaining in the north and their tenants found refuge in these forts and managed to stop the barbarians from simply just having them massacred.Due to the prevalence of such forts,the barbarians couldn't clear out the aristocrats and eventually simply compromised with them.

Here are some models of such forts:

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Weren't the Baguadae essentially peasant rebellions?
Yes, they were. And so were the bucoli in Egypt, various latronicia in Italy etc. And the Middle Ages are rife with them. I think darthfanta meant: none of them managed to install a new regime or have similar far-reaching effects.
 
Weren't the Baguadae essentially peasant rebellions?
Yes, they were. And so were the bucoli in Egypt, various latronicia in Italy etc. And the Middle Ages are rife with them. I think darthfanta meant: none of them managed to install a new regime or have similar far-reaching effects.
OTL, it was pretty much Diocletian who came in and suppressed them, right? Could an emperor have come to power who just decided to negotiate the reintegration of these rebels instead (effectively allowing the land to be divied up in exchange for submission and service to the emperor)?
 
Yes, they were. And so were the bucoli in Egypt, various latronicia in Italy etc. And the Middle Ages are rife with them. I think darthfanta meant: none of them managed to install a new regime or have similar far-reaching effects.
So then the answer for how do you get from third century crisis to your solution on taking on the landed elite, rather than enacting serfdom rests in the success of the Baguadae I imagine.
 

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I'm not sure why in China,treating peasants poorly is a great way of wrecking the ruling elite,but in Europe and elsewhere,peasants can be put down quite easily if they do rise up.
My guess is it has to do with a combination of culture and economics. In Europe the peasantry was rather disarmed, much poorer, much less educated per person, much more malnourished, and had less access to trade items. There's less staple crops, less population density, no seed drills, no blast iron furnaces, and no centralized government apparatus that peasants can easily appropriate should they simply remove the aristocracy. In short, they don't have the many advantages their eastern counterparts would have had.

I suspect something culturally has to do with it, given peasant revolts seemed to be much more frequent and successful outside of Europe.
 
OTL, it was pretty much Diocletian who came in and suppressed them, right? Could an emperor have come to power who just decided to negotiate the reintegration of these rebels instead (effectively allowing the land to be divied up in exchange for submission and service to the emperor)?
Bagaudae were suppressed by Dio and Max, but there were later ones, too.
Having the Bacaudae succeed against such imperial armies is improbable on levels similar to my TL. But if the Galloroman Empire stays separate and even falls apart into smaller pieces, and the rest suffers likewise, then maybe an imperator of a part of Gallia could be prone to such a deal, especially to overpower his neighbours.
Maybe from here, something starts...
 
My guess is it has to do with a combination of culture and economics. In Europe the peasantry was rather disarmed, much poorer, much less educated per person, much more malnourished, and had less access to trade items. There's less staple crops, less population density, no seed drills, no blast iron furnaces, and no centralized government apparatus that peasants can easily appropriate should they simply remove the aristocracy. In short, they don't have the many advantages their eastern counterparts would have had.

I suspect something culturally has to do with it, given peasant revolts seemed to be much more frequent and successful outside of Europe.
In China,people were mostly disarmed as well,depending on the period.Problem seems to be that over time,a lot of the government armies don't mind defecting to these peasant armies.The officials and aristocrats don't mind doing so as well,if they think that a particular rebel leader is a good horse to bet on.I couldn't imagine entire Roman legions defecting over to peasant rebels in the Roman Empire otoh.

Chinese peasants were no more educated as their western counterparts.It's often mistaken that China,for the most part of it's existence was much more superior to it's Western counterpart.But I have to say that in many ways,it was eerily similar to the Roman Empire in terms of organisation.There was no government structure below the county level.Governance of the countryside depended heavily on the acquiescence of the aristocrats or landlords.

While you often see people from so-called 'humble' origins rise to great stations in China,most of these people are often just landlords who are not part of any particular aristocratic lineage.It's ridiculously expensive to buy books and writing equipment,not to mention get into a school or get a private tutor.Even in the Song and Ming Dynasty,it would almost be impossible for peasants to be educated.It's just that by the Song and Ming Dynasty,some of the smaller landowners like yeomans managed to pass the imperial examinations,though even this is extremely rare.If a peasant rises to great station,it's generally done through military service or through a violent overthrow of the government.
 
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So were the peasant leaders truly peasants then?
Did they have some religious background?

I know it´s difficult to generalise here. Still. The narrative that the major post-Constantine Christian confessions encouraged political apathy and acceptance of the given social order by the vast majority of the ruled populace has somehow fallen out of fashion in the last decades. But could it still hold some grain of truth?
 
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