An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania

Gyranos is a man at the right place, but unfortunately it sounds like his colleagues (so to speak) will do their darndest to water down and mess up his reforms.
Not quite the right place. He's mixing some good ideas like universal education with some pretty bad ones. Inheritance law anyone? Although if the inheritance limitations are on land only it should mean the dynatoi are forced to invest on things other than land which CAN be inherited like say ships or factories...
 
Not quite the right place. He's mixing some good ideas like universal education with some pretty bad ones. Inheritance law anyone? Although if the inheritance limitations are on land only it should mean the dynatoi are forced to invest on things other than land which CAN be inherited like say ships or factories...
It says "120 modioi of land or equivalent capital assets" so it's certainly not only a limit on land. It seems fine to me for it's clear intention of breaking the financial back of the dynatoi class.

The modioi is a variable unit of measurement but broadly this would be a smidge under 360 square kilometres per inheritor. A member of the British Landed Gentry might have 2 or 3. 360sqkm is around a tenth of Kent.

This amount of wealth is a high enough limit to still encourage people to accumulate wealth. And that doesn't even take into account family size and what may soon well emerge of very well landed women in such a system.
 
The quality of land is also a factor I feel for the limits, as by the acre Rhomania is limited in that a good proportion of its landmass is hilly scrub and mountains in the Anatolia, good for grazing. You could see a limit on herd numbers too, as a way to limit the influence on the textile trade, and degradation of the land.
 
The quality of land is also a factor I feel for the limits, as by the acre Rhomania is limited in that a good proportion of its landmass is hilly scrub and mountains in the Anatolia, good for grazing. You could see a limit on herd numbers too, as a way to limit the influence on the textile trade, and degradation of the land.
I figure that probably falls under the 'equivalent capital assets' part.
 
I figure that probably falls under the 'equivalent capital assets' part.
Good point.

It is going to be interesting though how the Romans will have to compete with eventually cheaper textiles coming out of Northern Europe. Will they go the quality route if they can't compete with the quantity. A reverse to their silk trade with the east.
 
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Good point.

It is going to be interesting though how the Romans will have to compete with eventually cheaper textiles coming out of Northern Europe. Will they go the quality route if they can't compete with the quantity. A reverse to their silk trade with the east.
North European textiles will mostly be wool so they could just shift to focus on cotton. 19th century Egypt was able to compete with British cotton no reason Rhomania can't.
 
Good point.

It is going to be interesting though how the Romans will have to compete with eventually cheaper textiles coming out of Northern Europe. Will they go the quality route if they can't compete with the quantity. A reverse to their silk trade with the east.
I'll admit to not being especially well read on this, but why would they not be able to compete? Especially if they are able to industrialize at a reasonable pace they've got Egyptian cotton and the Anatolian plateau is historically a major sheep herding region (pretty much ever since Arab raids forced farmers to switch to something they can move to safety in times of trouble.)
 
North European textiles will mostly be wool so they could just shift to focus on cotton. 19th century Egypt was able to compete with British cotton no reason Rhomania can't.
That could be late leveller for Roman industry, B444 mentioned would happen. It is labour intensive however and could see the rise of importation of slaves until a picking machine can be invented.
 
I'll admit to not being especially well read on this, but why would they not be able to compete? Especially if they are able to industrialize at a reasonable pace they've got Egyptian cotton and the Anatolian plateau is historically a major sheep herding region (pretty much ever since Arab raids forced farmers to switch to something they can move to safety in times of trouble.)
It comes down to the grazing cycles, with the British having the best geography for wool quality, and seasonal production. Between the grasses and the breeds, is what put English wool as the benchmark. Though being Bogomist the historical monopoly the Monasteries had over the wool trade would be non-existent, so would open the door for the nobles and yeoman to be the movers.

As you and EP mentioned though, there are other textiles. Flax is one that slipped my mind, so the Romans could corner the linen market, as well as hemp.
 
It is going to be interesting though how the Romans will have to compete with eventually cheaper textiles coming out of Northern Europe. Will they go the quality route if they can't compete with the quantity. A reverse to their silk trade with the east.
I doubt they'll be able to compete in woolen products, IMO. The Latins have better breeds like merino sheep for wool and the facilities to produce it like in England, Spain, or Flanders (even if their industries declined since the POD). I'd expect any wool production or clothing in Anatolia will be made for the local market, not necessarily for export.

The Romans can definitely be more competitive in cotton and silk production though, especially since they have Egypt for the former, but considering that India and China still have their monstrous textile industries, they might still be derided as products of inferior quality that are unfit for the nobility. For the middle class, though? It will be good enough.

That could be late leveller for Roman industry, B444 mentioned would happen. It is labour intensive however and could see the rise of importation of slaves until a picking machine can be invented.
Using Sudanese slaves for Egyptian cotton wouldn't be a bad idea (seems like a natural extension of their use in sugarcane cultivation), but I wonder how this will affect the local peasants or grain production.
 
Isn’t Roman silk still something of importance?

At this point that method of silk production has become pretty widespread. Sicily and Southern Italy were historically centers of it actually, so maybe they've pulled back some advantage there.
Silk production and weaving will almost certainly remain viable in parts of Rhomania. The Silk industry around Mt. Lebanon survived and thrived until the opening of the Suez Canal dramatically lowered prices to import the cheaper industrially-produced Japanese Silk which began to out-compete local producers. With the Canal of the Pharoahs now closed (and itself being less efficient than the Suez regardless) such conditions remain for that silk industry to remain viable. Its OTL collapse directly led to the first wave of Arab immigration to the United States and Canada, heading mostly for burgeoning industrial centres around Detroit-Windsor, Chicago, New York, and other areas of Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Mostly Michigan though with the auto boom. Such an event only happened because the historic money-maker became non-competitive without a viable local alternative and so those workers went to places where there labour was in demand. I suspect a similar event will occur in Rhomania when/if a new canal opens up unless they adopt protectionist policies to preserve the industry. Silk may not come from Japan but even if it comes from China, Indonesia, or India the end result would be the same.
 
It says "120 modioi of land or equivalent capital assets" so it's certainly not only a limit on land. It seems fine to me for it's clear intention of breaking the financial back of the dynatoi class.

The modioi is a variable unit of measurement but broadly this would be a smidge under 360 square kilometres per inheritor. A member of the British Landed Gentry might have 2 or 3. 360sqkm is around a tenth of Kent.

This amount of wealth is a high enough limit to still encourage people to accumulate wealth. And that doesn't even take into account family size and what may soon well emerge of very well landed women in such a system.
Where you got the 3 square km? One modios was no more than 2,973 square meters, 30,000 square feet (Byzantine ones ie 31.23 cm not 30.48 cm). 120 make 356,760 square meters, roughly 88 acres for Anglosaxons. Now that's quite a bit more than the average Greek or German peasant but dynatoi level rich it is not, it's what a pronoia holder would have.
 
Where you got the 3 square km? One modios was no more than 2,973 square meters, 30,000 square feet (Byzantine ones ie 31.23 cm not 30.48 cm). 120 make 356,760 square meters, roughly 88 acres for Anglosaxons. Now that's quite a bit more than the average Greek or German peasant but dynatoi level rich it is not, it's what a pronoia holder would have.
I said "a smidge under" for a reason. 3km or 2,973m, the difference is minimal.
 
Thinking on it, multiple textiles could keep Rome's industry treading water until it catches up with modern cotton production/processing.

I mentioned the idea of quality, Roman Angora anyone? Linen could also become the wear of the masses with how much flax Egypt produces. Wool is great for colder climates but linen is perfect for warmer, and that is a much bigger market. There is also the production of medical supplies, with the turning of the scientific revolution in Rome, both cotton and linen will be important for the medical world. Them and honey.
 
I wonder if education for girls and women is set forward or back by this? It is clearly a good idea, but I could see it getting tossed out if there is a widespread reaction to the perceived excesses of the Tourmarches. Especially since Gyranos was trying to insist that all of his reforms were enacted as a complete package, so they might be repealed the same way.
The association is not going to help, and will be used by detractors. Whether or not that will be significant I haven't desired. Gyranos is a character who gets more complicated and significant the more I think about him.
One could totally see this man's ideas being a major influence on some future enlightened despot in the mold of Napoleon I.

In fact, this whole misadventure and the resultant international backlash feels like it could precipitate the very kind of economic collapse that, when combined with the blossoming of enlightenment thought, growing consolidation of wealth (here from the abolition of 'Just Economics'), and perhaps an ill-timed crop failure or two, caused the French Revolution.

If, over the next decades we see Rhomania supporting a Republican revolution in the New World to spite the Triunes, it's probably time to start buying stock in "long knives."
Mike Duncan is currently going through 'An Anatomy of a Revolution' Appendix on the Revolutions podcast, and a lot of things there are really sounding familiar.
Reading the end of the first 1650s update,to what OTL Martian feature,if any,does the Hourglass Sea correspond?
Syrtis Major Planum. IOTL Huygens saw a surface feature on Mars and named it the Hourglass Sea for its shape.


Can't really respond too much to other comments (but thank you for kind words) without covering stuff that will be appearing in upcoming updates, but I'll address some points here.

Gyranos: He's meant to be a mix of ideas, some better than others. (Opinions may vary on which go in which category.)

Land values: I don't remember if I officially stated it somewhere, but 80+ modioi is the threshold for putting one in the 'rich peasant' category (zeugaratoi). This is derived from The Economic History of Byzantium, which used land records from late medieval Macedonia. (Don't have the specific reference handy, but these aren't numbers coming solely from my imagination.) With that, I'd say 120 modioi is about the point where 'rich peasant' starts morphing into 'lower mesoi', to give an idea of scale. To clarify, that is assuming first-rate arable land. Byzantine tax law IOTL took quality into account, as well as quantity, when levying assessments.

Textiles: Don't want to wade too much into this, since trying to figure out the Industrial Revolution and all this near-field stuff is too much. But what we'll likely see is Roman textiles still staying strong inside Rhomania itself, but becoming less competitive outside of the Roman tariff bubble. We've already been seeing that with Roman textiles over the last 200 years or so.
 
Rhomania's General Crisis, Part 2.1: The Regime of the Tourmarches
Rhomania’s General Crisis, part 2.1-The Regime of the Tourmarches:

Ironically, one of the first things the Tourmarches do is to promote themselves to Strategoi. Plytos, Nereas, and Gyranos all become Strategoi of the Athanatoi, Varangians, and Akoimetoi respectively. The elevation of the first two isn’t unusual, considering their service records, but Gyranos going from a career staff officer to commanding a guard tagma is. The new Strategos himself is wary and uncertain of the move, but his colleagues argue that it would be better politically if he commanded a guard tagma rather than remaining in the War Room.

The political aspect is also why they go for guard tagmata rather than the larger theme tagmata. The latter would put more troops directly under their command, but they’d be stationed away from the capital, and proximity to and influence over the Emperor is the true basis of their power. Meanwhile Isaakios Laskaris also moves up, becoming Strategos of the Thracian tagma. Although the Thracian theme recruits from Constantinople, the capital is not part of the theme and the headquarters is in Adrianople. However, that is close to the capital, with regular carriage service, and Isaakios is quite frequently in Constantinople, not Adrianople.

The Four ‘Tourmarches’ also rely on placing friends and ideological supporters in key positions, or the support of ones already in place. Examples of the latter include the Strategos of the Armeniakon and the Megas Tzaousios; the last is particularly helpful, since that is effectively the Imperial Chief of Police and Intelligence Services. Examples of the former are the promotion of war hawks to be Strategoi of the Optimatic and Opsikian themes, meaning that three of the five guard tagmata and all three theme-tagmata next to the capital are commanded by Tourmarches or their close allies.

Timing here helps the Tourmarches out, given the passing away of old guard elements whose prestige might’ve hampered them. Between 1655 and 1659, Thomas Amirales, Manuel Philanthropenos, Iason Tornikes, and Konstantinos Mauromanikos, all prominent leaders from the War of the Roman Succession, die. A changeover in leadership was thus necessary anyway, with the Tourmarches perfectly placed to take advantage.

That does not mean the Tourmarches have carte blanche. Even though all of these arrangements are legal, since they are decreed by Emperor Herakleios III who is the authority, many still feel that there is something shady about all this. It smacks too much of political appointments, which disparages the honor of the Roman army, and there are many Roman soldiers and officers who’ve had quite enough of that. This is the case even among some war hawks who support the Tourmarches’s agenda. Plus, there are many officers and officials who while not hostile to the Tourmarches or their agenda are not necessarily supportive of them either. These neutrals need to be wooed or, at the very least, not alienated, so a clean sweep isn’t possible.

There might’ve been more pushback, if not for the nature of much of the early pushback. Much of the criticism came from civilian officials who disliked the non-bureaucratic nature of the promotions. Some more came from newspaper editors, who eagerly covered the controversy as a way to boost sales in a stale but competitive news environment. Per their usual practice, the Roman newspapers exaggerated and exacerbated the issue. Personal and scurrilous attacks and vicious prose were more exciting, which mattered more than accuracy.

This pricked at sensitive nerves. Military-civil relations in Rhomania had been shaky since the War of the Roman Succession, and these opened up old wounds. They resented what they viewed as slanderous and unqualified civilian interference. The Tourmarches were fellow soldiers, at least, and so officers and soldiers supported them against the criticism, or at minimum kept silent on the matter.

The phrase ‘mutilated victory’ is commonly used to describe the war hawks’s attitudes to the peace that followed the War of the Roman Succession, and they certainly wished to redress what they viewed as its shortcomings. But much of the bitterness and anger was directed less at the Latins but at what many military men viewed as the stupid and ungrateful civilians behind them. The bitterness aroused in many an officer’s breast by the calumnies against them in Roman newspapers during the war was the wound that proved most stubborn to time’s effort to heal it. Even many officers who were no longer interested in expansionist policies still expressed strong resentment against Roman civil society.

It should be noted that discussions of military and civil society here are concentrated in the uppermost quintile of Roman society. For most Romans, the rural poor, politics continues to be that of the village. Also, the expansion of candidates able to get into both military and civil ranks has weakened another previous bond across this divide. Individuals are less likely to have family relations working on the other sides, removing that earlier connection, while the lingering tensions of Mashhadshar and the War of the Roman Succession hamper the creation of a collective corporate identity to replace it.

This attitude had festered in Roman military culture, spreading down the ranks from the officers and dekarchoi who’d served in the War of the Roman Succession. For the moment it was useful, since it made it harder for army recruits from the peasantry to find solidarity with peasants staging grain riots, but some were concerned that if this kept up, Rhomania might turn from ‘a state with an army’ into ‘an army with a state’. Others, including Nereas, seemed to like such an idea.

Roman print media (which includes not just early newspapers, which get much historical attention, but the more common broadsheets and pamphlets devoted to one specific topic or event), not content with alienating military and civil society, were also trying to fragment and alienate Roman civil society. It is extremely unlikely that this was their conscious intention, but in their writings it is clear that dramatics took serious priority over accuracy. While the market was small by modern standards, it was huge by the standards of the mid-seventeenth century, but also an extremely competitive one. Invective was a good way to get attention, and so many indulged in it. It sold well.

A good example is the coverage of grain riots during this period. The beginning of the Regime of the Tourmarches had, of course, done nothing to mitigate the effects of the Little Ice Age and the pressures they were putting on society. Riots and uprisings related to food availability, price, and distribution were increasing in number and scope as support systems failed. But these grain riots could vary quite widely.

Many ‘riots’ barely deserved the name, since they were surprisingly nonviolent. If grain merchants attempted to ship food out of an afflicted district, likely because other better-capitalized regions offered more profit, they would be stopped and their goods confiscated. Oftentimes, they weren’t even just taken away by the rioters. The rioters would pay for the confiscated grain, but at a price that the rioters considered just and within their means.

This is not to say that violence couldn’t happen. It did, but oftentimes it was triggered by resistance to the demands of the rioters. Local officials were frequently in sympathy with the rioters, especially in the more orderly ‘riots’, since they viewed those demands as just. Nobody could expect fathers and mothers to be silent as food was shipped away in front of them while behind them their children cried from hunger.

But that made for a boring read, especially as the story repeated itself. So, the tales were improved. They grew more violent, the behavior of the rioters more bestial. Taking imagery from the War of the Roman Succession, they even became cannibalistic, reportedly murdering babies and mixing their blood with the flour made from the stolen grain. Interestingly, none of these lurid atrocities took place in close proximity to where they were reported, but were always at least ‘one theme over’. People knew their neighbors well enough to not believe they’d engage in cannibalism and child sacrifice, but people further away were a different matter.

Historians debate over how significant these accounts were in shaping attitudes. Athena, when Regent, did little to curb them, because she saw them as utterly ridiculous and thought that no one intelligent would believe such tales. The Tourmarches thought they were useful as they emphasized the need for law and order, for a strong and firm hand at the helm which they could provide. Others, such as the Patriarch of Constantinople, thought that they contributed to an atmosphere of suspicion and fear and anger.

It is probable that this issue loomed larger after the fact than during. The papers had been more significant earlier, during the War of the Roman Succession, in alienating army officers, who kept a memory of grievance. While their circulation was widespread during this period by the standards of the time, that still left many millions of Romans who infrequently or with noticeable delay were exposed to the print media. In the aftermath of the War of Wrath and the Army of Suffering, the print media was exposed to intense criticism for its perceived role, partly because of that precedent, and the popular narrative has largely copied those criticisms.

After solidifying their power base, the Tourmarches convince Herakleios III to pass a decree that nullifies all legal restrictions on land sales and purchases, the first step in removing any just profit provisions. All land sales are to be solely on contracts between the parties, freely negotiated with no infringements by other parties. Previously, many land sales were limited by rights of preemption. A peasant couldn’t sell their plot to a village outsider without the relatives or village neighbors having a right to preempt the sale. Those are now gone, and the land price can be whatever is negotiated between the parties.

Given the recent harvest failures, now is a very bad time to be a smallholder. Desperate for money to feed their families, many are forced to sell their land, with speculators taking absolutely as much advantage as possible. Notably, both Isaakios Laskaris and Konstantinos Plytos expand their landholdings by more than 40%, while paying only 15% of what the lands were worth based on 1650 tax assessments. They are far from the only example. This is not to say that the only beneficiaries were dynatoi. Even peasants slightly wealthier than the neighbors could and did take the opportunity to enlarge their holdings. But for the recipients, who’d lost their source of livelihood and sustenance (and gotten very little for it), it was absolutely devastating.

Those who had lost their land might stay on as tenant laborers if that was an option, but that was not always the case. Marginal farms could be converted into pasture, which needed much less labor, and in that case the former occupants were just in the way. (And it should be noted that the owners of marginal farms were the ones most likely to be driven to the wall by the Little Ice Age and forced to resort to such desperate measures.)

The dispossessed head for the cities hoping for food and jobs. They are mostly disappointed in those hopes, and their presence exacerbates sanitation issues, with issues of overcrowding and waste removal. Many don’t have to endure ruined hopes for long as endemic urban diseases ravage the newcomers. Others head in the opposite direction, to the highlands, where they often become brigands.

The consolidation of land into larger agricultural estates is a good thing from the Tourmarches’s perspective. These larger estates are more effective at producing large surpluses that can be used for the army, since they focus on efficiency rather than security as subsidence small-scale farming does, and they have the advantage of economies of scale. Furthermore, the mass of dispossessed poor is the ideal recruiting ground for an army.
 
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