Rhomania in the 1650s, part 1-Seeds, Ships, and Stars:
The period of Roman history from the death of Andreas III to the end of the Army of Suffering has been compared to the 7th century or the late 11th or the early 13th. The analogy is not entirely accurate, as unlike those earlier periods the continuation of the Imperial state as an entity was not seriously jeopardized, at least after the defeat of Theodor. But it is not entirely inaccurate either. The era was a period of considerable suffering and upheaval for the Roman state and society, a fact that can be seen even in the bones of the time. The Romans of this age were shorter than both their forebears and descendants. As a people, they would endure this period, and they would also change.
Throughout the 1640s and 50s, Rhomania was clearly suffering from the effects of the Little Ice Age. In 1650, the Imperial administration listed 174 kephalates in the heartland territories, an increase of three with the addition of northern Mesopotamian lands taken by Odysseus. Previously in the 1600s, in any given year, even a good one, 15-20 kephalates would suffer from a failed harvest. The year 1614 was singled out as an exception because only 13 kephalates were afflicted, a fact officials found remarkable. This was due to the precarious nature of agriculture prior to the developments of modern farming, and most of the Empire’s land was not endowed very well for agriculture.
There were safeguards in place to alleviate the issue. A failed harvest could vary in severity; not all failures were equal. These certainly hit the affected people hard, especially the landless, but the effects could be mitigated. Tax exemptions were one of the most effective. A region that regularly produced a 4:1 crop yield would be rated a failure if the year’s take was 2:1. But the peasantry could potentially live (barely) with that lower yield, if they could direct all of what they reaped into seed corn and feeding their families. But to do so, no surplus would be available, either for taxes or the market. Hence the need for tax exemptions. As for the markets, the shortfall could often be alleviated by imports from other regions, since failed harvests tended to be local. Neighboring kephalates could assist, subject to the limitations of transport technology. And there were grain reserves, maintained for such emergencies, since everyone knew they were a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’.
So, the system could handle a certain failure rate, but crucially only so much. In 1639, 29 kephalates had failed harvests, and in all of the 1640s and 50s, the lowest failure rate was 35 kephalates, double the average at the beginning of the century. Furthermore, these failures tended to be greater, more likely to recur year after year, and cluster. These factors seriously undermined the safeguards. Repeated failures used up reserves, both private and public, and made it impossible to replenish them. Failed harvests over wider areas made it more difficult to send aid to afflicted regions, a problem especially in inland regions. And the tax exemptions to ameliorate the effects also meant the government was drawing in less revenue, precisely when it needed said revenue to bolster the draining public grain reserves.
Simultaneously, the grain from Scythia, southern Pronsk, and southern Lithuania (typically called Scythian for short, because it was all shipped south from the Principality, but the agricultural area was much larger than the Principality) became less reliable due to erratic weather patterns. Scythian grain also fed Russians to the north, and when shortages meant it was impossible to meet all demands, the concerns of fellow Russians took priority.
To make up for this, recourse was taken to the other two prominent non-heartland sources of foodstuffs, Vlachia and Egypt. Vlachia, by the vagaries of climate, was not usually as badly affected during this period (situations would reverse later in the century). Vlach landlords, in response to increased demands, expanded production via the method available to them, squeezing their peasants even harder. Peasants often had to work 5-6 days a week on their landlord’s holdings, leaving them precious little time to work on their own plots from which their families fed. [1]
Egypt was also having difficulties. The Nile was just beginning to recover from the salinization problems from the now-sealed canal, but the process was not far advanced. In addition, any ice age means that more of Earth’s moisture is locked up in ice caps and glaciers, which leaves less for everything else. With Ethiopia suffering from aridity, Egypt’s Nile floods weakened, with harsh consequences for the harvest.
The Roman government had to prioritize, with anger inevitably coming from those left out. Egyptian grain shipments that in normal times went to Thessaloniki, Smyrna, or Antioch were diverted to Constantinople, which typically was fed by Scythia and Vlachia. From the White Palace’s perspective, it was only logical to prioritize feeding and thereby keeping order in the capital, but it was also only natural that the denizens of those other cities to not be sympathetic with said logic.
Despite the increase of market agriculture in the last century, the market was of little help. It followed money, not need. Poor peasants listened to their children crying from hunger while watching foodstuffs being shipped away to better-capitalized regions that could pay higher prices. Instances of hijacking of food shipments in 1650 were quadruple those of 1610 (a trend matched elsewhere, although statistical evidence is better for Rhomania).
That was the constant background activity, but other things were happening as well. In 1654, there is a massive public ceremony in Constantinople, a great sendoff for the Princess Jahzara, the youngest daughter of Athena (and youngest grandchild of Demetrios III). As she is turning fourteen, she has reached the age when she is to wed the Prince of Texcoco, heir to the throne of Mexico.
The journey across the Mediterranean and Atlantic, in a small mixed Mexican-Roman convoy, is mercifully noneventful, as is the travel into the interior. Before she can go to her new home in Texcoco, she travels to Teotihuacan, which is where the wedding ceremony takes place with nearly 50,000 spectators. It is a new tradition of the Mexican court to have major ceremonies take place in Teotihuacan, an effort to stress older Mesoamerican traditions that predate the Aztecs.
Despite the use of the term ‘Mexico’, the Aztecs, “enemies of the human race”, are utterly despised and hated. ‘Those who did not bow’, the descendants of David and his men, the Texcocans, the Tlaxcallans, and the Tarascans, have a higher social standing in Mexican society partly because they ‘did not bow’. This hatred of the Aztecs has other consequences as it strongly colors the Mexican view of other ‘northern savages’ like the Chichimeca, taken as similar to the early Aztecs prior to their arrival in the Valley of Mexico.
Entirely coincidentally, at the same time as Jahzara and her entourage are crossing the Atlantic, a much bigger population movement is also traversing that ocean. It is the start of the Great Migration, when over a thousand emigrants a year for over a decade moved from England to the New World. The numbers overall don’t seem big, but they are in comparison to the pre-existing mainland Triune colonial populations, which had been around sixty thousand in 1650. With those colonies now more firmly established and out of their precarious beginnings, this marks the start of a stunning population increase.
The emigrants are overwhelmingly English and mostly Puritan, although not all. Dismayed by what they view as the increasing moral corruption and tyranny of church and state at home, they seek to create a new home for themselves in the New World. They are not the first to think so; even many Puritans specifically predate the Great Migration in emigrating to Terranova. But the rapid influx creates even more demand for land, naturally at the expense of the natives. The emigrants see themselves as a New Israel in their own Promised Land, which mean the natives are the Canaanites in this analogy, to be treated as such.
Other ships are in motion elsewhere. The Lotharingians had been highly active merchants throughout the Atlantic world, moving Baltic grain to markets in western Europe, transporting tropical goods from the Caribbean, and supplying the marked English appetite for eels. East of the Cape of Storms though they had been present but as a relatively minor player.
That has changed after their defeat by Henri II. While the kingdom was divided with the southern lands being annexed to France, commercially the split halves still largely cooperated. The defeat freed up many Lotharingian ships and seamen, while now they had access to Triune networks and bases in eastern waters, which whetted ambitions.
The Lotharingians did not start making waves until the 1640s, but they quickly were making big ones. They began concentrating on the waters of the western Indian Ocean, with its trade routes between Africa, Arabia, and India. Exports of ivory, slaves, and horses were valued commodities in India, particularly in the Empire of Vijayanagar, and the Lotharingians began to muscle in on the trade formerly dominated by the Ethiopians, Omani, and to a lesser extent the Spanish.
However, the Lotharingians found the going tough as many of the Indians preferred their older contacts to the new arrivals. But the Lotharingians took advantage of political turmoil; if established Indian rulers wouldn’t cooperate, perhaps new ones would. In 1648, the Lotharingians, in cooperation with an ambitious local ruler, destroyed the Ethiopian trading outpost at Thatta at the mouth of the Indus.
Several more naval victories over Ethiopian and Omani forces followed. The Lotharingian policy with their Ethiopian captives was to sell them into slavery in Indian markets, whether out of religious intolerance, racial bigotry, or desire for profit.
The Romans tried to help their Ethiopian allies, but there was little they could do. The fight with the Spanish had destroyed much of the Roman shipping in the east and the losses had not been made good. Two Roman ships as well as two Egyptian did take part in the defense of Ethiopian Aden against a Lotharingian fleet in 1653, which was a bloody defeat for the attackers.
Despite that success, the Lotharingians largely succeed in destroying Ethiopia as a naval and overseas power over the 1640s to 60s, save for outposts on the Swahili coast. Ethiopian attentions and ambitions thereafter focus on the continent of Africa, where they have remained to this day. Omani maritime strength also declined drastically, although relatively not as much as their Ethiopian allies, and never recovered to its pinnacle in the early 1600s.
Meanwhile, the death of the long-lived Venkata Raya plunges the Empire of Vijayanagar into turmoil, providing more opportunity to the Lotharingians. In 1658, just as Prince Demetrios is settling down in Kabul, a Lotharingian fleet, in cooperation with Deccan rebels, storms and sacks Surat, the oldest Roman holding in India.
The loss of Surat sparks Roman reprisals against Lotharingian merchants in the Mediterranean, but Lotharingian merchants were not heavily active in the eastern Mediterranean where these measures have the most effect. Retaliating against the Lotharingian metropole is impossible due to geography. Simultaneously, efforts to combat the Lotharingians in eastern waters, where they are expanding their activities into Island Asia, are hampered by the lack of ships and credit to fund new ones. Credit from the Imperial heartland has dried up, while Indian moneylenders (the main source for credit in Rhomania-in-the-East anyway) are focusing on the troubles in Vijayanagar.
But not everything everywhere was all strife and suffering. Take the great trade fair of St. Demetrios outside Thessaloniki in 1655, for example. This massive trade fair drew in peoples and goods from all over, with twenty different languages heard along the market stalls. Trade items ranged from ice from Mt. Chortiatis and local wines and cheeses to the finest silks and porcelains from Suzhou and Hangzhou, with designs customized for the Roman market. Even the new pineapple, the ultimate symbol of luxury and decadence, could be bought by those with enough coin.
For those who thronged to the trade fair, there was more than just commerce. The wrestling match between Little Ali (stage name: he was actually a giant Arvanite from Euboea) and Markos the Rhino drew in over thirty thousand spectators, a fifth of Thessaloniki’s normal population. Reportedly over three hundred thousand hyperpyra changed hands in gambling on the outcome. One person who made bank during the fair, although through different activities, was the sex worker known as the Dark Gothic Princess; she made over forty thousand hyperpyra during the week.
If one preferred more lofty activities, while the Dark Gothic Princess was making her money, Konstantinos Meletios was finishing up the construction of his observatory near Argos. Using his self-constructed telescope, he studied the world of Mars. He noted the Hourglass Sea, the first surface feature discovered on that planet, and calculated its size as being 60% that of Earth, with a day-length nearly identical to Earth. Given the tools at his disposal, his results are impressively accurate. After his calculations were complete, he mused about what beings dwelled upon that world, and pondered if while he was looking at them, they were looking at him.
[1] OTL Polish serfs would immediately recognize the system. This was how the early modern Netherlands got all those Baltic grain shipments that fed Dutch cities. See Braudel,
Civilization and Capitalism. This is a personal observation, but to me this seems like a good case study to explain the underdevelopment of eastern Europe vis-à-vis western Europe during this period.