Atlas of Medieval America

[Jord839]

And yes you should start a thread on this.

Do we put it in this forum or over at ASB, though? If we want to use the handwavium, ASB would make sense, but I don't want this to turn utterly ridiculous or anything.

 

[King Gorilla]

This forum. Threads on ASB tend to go bad quickly, besides we are basing it off of someone's existing work.

 

[Jord839]

This forum. Threads on ASB tend to go bad quickly, besides we are basing it off of someone's existing work.

Thread here

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Yeah, I'd agree about the city states. Whatever caused this regression might have an effect(eg, nuclear collapse would mean while some cities are unlikely to regain their role) but from what I've seen of his idea the East Coast is more or less intact, if more primitive.

Largely, he seems to focus and flesh out the Plains and the Cowboy culture more than any of the other ones. Although he puts a little info towards the Eastern areas.

It would be interesting to figure out how the "states" have changed in the overall scheme of things. I can see Ohio being a powerful nation on its own, for example. And the New England Republics make me think of Italy, with the amount of wars and intrigue.

I finally found his page on Iowa, and it seems it's a nation founded by Cowboy tribes that eventually went native, so a Norman sort of thing. That seems plausible for them to fight their way in, but my regionalism demands I argue with the massive area they've claimed. I can picture them expanding into Western Illionois and southwestern Wisconsin fairly easily, though.

I liked the blog's assumption that the Applachians and Ozarks have become clan-dominated and much like Scotland, with some "lowland culture" in the major cities that remained. Makes for an interesting story telling idea.

I have my doubts about a full-fledged voodoo state in N'awlins, but it might be a drastically different version of that religion, which would make things interesting.

Finally, the scientology thing is just messed up. That's a parody I'm fairly certain, but it would be an interesting thing to try and flesh out and develop.

Should we start a thread on this?


I also agree about the South needs to be fleshed out more. I attributed the change to the mass mixing of White southerners with Black southerners, and combined with the trading they should be doing with the nearby Carribean states, I can picture some influence there. Probably not full fledged voodoo witchdoctor stuff though.

Not so sure about fantasy though.

I've been to the South, it isn't as black as the author suggests. Blacks are a minority there as they are most places in the USA, the only exception are the cities. If you mix blacks with whites what you get are whites with some black ancestry, and I don't think you'd retain much black culture, if most of those people look in a mirror and see a white person.

And how realistic is it to suppose that the races will mix like this and suddenly become a uniform single race gradiated by latitude? There are countries nearby in which blacks are the majority, I'm thinking of Haiti and Jamacia, those islands are within reach of a medeval coaster of the United States, or by a "Viking Longboat" I think there will be trade between the Carribean islands and the continent of North America, so we'll have a steady supply of blacks and latinos visiting the United States, and they won't all want to marry the nearest white person they see and mix their genes with them.

I think in a medeaval world the cities become much less important, what once was metropolises of millions will become cities of a few hundred thousand at most, more likely of a few tens of thousands in most cities. Cities are unhealthy places anyway in the middle ages. medeaval cities have poor sanitation, and they typically dump their sewage into a stream out in the middle of the street, the water supply is dirty and full of disease, most people would rather live in agrarian villages than in an unhealthy place such as a medeaval city.

 

[Hendryk]

And how realistic is it to suppose that the races will mix like this and suddenly become a uniform single race gradiated by latitude? There are countries nearby in which blacks are the majority, I'm thinking of Haiti and Jamacia, those islands are within reach of a medeval coaster of the United States, or by a "Viking Longboat" I think there will be trade between the Carribean islands and the continent of North America, so we'll have a steady supply of blacks and latinos visiting the United States, and they won't all want to marry the nearest white person they see and mix their genes with them.

No, that part makes sense. One could imagine the Southern US population having the same general skin tone as, say, Brazil, which itself has a regional gradient.

I think in a medeaval world the cities become much less important, what once was metropolises of millions will become cities of a few hundred thousand at most, more likely of a few tens of thousands in most cities. Cities are unhealthy places anyway in the middle ages. medeaval cities have poor sanitation, and they typically dump their sewage into a stream out in the middle of the street, the water supply is dirty and full of disease, most people would rather live in agrarian villages than in an unhealthy place such as a medeaval city.

Actually medieval cities were "demographic dumps", i.e. more people died than were born in it. The reason they had a stable or growing population was precisely that more people kept moving in from the countryside, looking for economic opportunities that weren't available elsewhere, getting away from the rigid social hierarchies of the rural regions, seeking safety in numbers, or for a rare privileged few pursuing a decent education.

The idea that people would want to get away from the cities is very much an upper-class romantic conceit.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

No, that part makes sense. One could imagine the Southern US population having the same general skin tone as, say, Brazil, which itself has a regional gradient.


Actually medieval cities were "demographic dumps", i.e. more people died than were born in it. The reason they had a stable or growing population was precisely that more people kept moving in from the countryside, looking for economic opportunities that weren't available elsewhere, getting away from the rigid social hierarchies of the rural regions, seeking safety in numbers, or for a rare privileged few pursuing a decent education.

The idea that people would want to get away from the cities is very much an upper-class romantic conceit.

"Oh I heard there was a plague in the city, lets move there! Oh boy can't wait to die the countryside is getting too crowded so lets go to the city and catch something so we die like lemmings."

 

[Hendryk]

"Oh I heard there was a plague in the city, lets move there! Oh boy can't wait to die the countryside is getting too crowded so lets go to the city and catch something so we die like lemmings."

Your grasp of medieval history is reminiscent of your understanding of current events.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

No, that part makes sense. One could imagine the Southern US population having the same general skin tone as, say, Brazil, which itself has a regional gradient.

So how does this happen? Does Brazil invade and exterminate all the White people? Do white people suddenly become horny for black folks? The South wouldn't be such a conservative place as it is now if the majority of its people were black. I sense someone's political agenda here, a sense of revenge perhaps in wiping out Southern culture and replacing it with something Third World perhaps, "naked savages" all all that? Yeah southerners are suddenly going to prance around in their loin cloths while picking cotton and tobacco all naked while beating their bongo drums to rythmic African music. Well why not bring the Elephants and lions while they were at it?

Actually medieval cities were "demographic dumps", i.e. more people died than were born in it. The reason they had a stable or growing population was precisely that more people kept moving in from the countryside, looking for economic opportunities that weren't available elsewhere, getting away from the rigid social hierarchies of the rural regions, seeking safety in numbers, or for a rare privileged few pursuing a decent education.

The idea that people would want to get away from the cities is very much an upper-class romantic conceit.

Great opportunity, well your talking about the Rennassance, the dark ages were all about retreating from the cities and living on the great manors and estates that became feudal baronies and the like.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Your grasp of medieval history is reminiscent of your understanding of current events.

Well would you want to live in a stinky smelly medieval city where they dump sewage and offal into the streets and it runs into your drinking water? Would you like hordes or rats spreading all over the streets eating garbage and spreading bubonic plague and small pox? Those are the great attractions of the medieval city, I can see why a peasant would want to go there.

Perhaps you can explain yourself better.

 

[Moltke]

I agree that Ohio could be an incredibly powerful kingdom. It has access to the great lakes trade routes, navigable rivers, fertile soils, a common culture, and many sizable industrial cities (which through handwavium survive the apocalypse) New England would make a great parallel to italy. Republican city states and merchant princes in a constant struggle for prestige and dominance.

Agreed that an Ohio-Indiana-Penn-Kentucky state would be very powerful ITTL. Good thoughts on the NE comparison. I would like to see larger map with political borders and such. Beyond Iowa are the plains just essentially no-mans-land then?

 

[Leo Caesius]

Your grasp of medieval history is reminiscent of your understanding of current events.

Have you ever read Graham Robb's Discovery of France? It's been bandied about before on this forum. I'm reading it right now and it's really rather engaging.

Robb makes the point that one third of the children born in Paris during the first half of the 18th century, NOT because Parisians were more promiscuous, but merely because the villagers would send their unwed daughters there when they became enceinte. It was even higher at the beginning of the century.

 

[Hendryk]

Well would you want to live in a stinky smelly medieval city where they dump sewage and offal into the streets and it runs into your drinking water? Would you like hordes or rats spreading all over the streets eating garbage and spreading bubonic plague and small pox? Those are the great attractions of the medieval city, I can see why a peasant would want to go there.

Perhaps you can explain yourself better.

I'm not going to do your homework for you. Whenever we've tried to correct you in political discussions, you've gone "Lalala I can't hear you". Well, I suggest you don't take it from me since you don't consider me a reliable source. Rather, start with a classic, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade by Henri Pirenne. It's sort of dated now, having been published in 1925, but it's a good start. A money quote for you:

The supposed dislike of the barbarians for towns is an admitted fable to which reality has given the lie. If, on the extreme frontiers of the [Roman] Empire, certain towns were put to the torch, destroyed and pillaged, it is none the less true that the immense majority survived the invasions. A statistical survey of cities in existence at the present day in France, in Italy and even on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, gives proof that, for the most part, these cities now stand on the sites where rose the Roman cities, and that their very names are but a transformation of Roman names. (...)

It is also well established that these cities were the centers of an economic activity which itself was a survival of the preceding civilization.

 

[Leo Caesius]

Well would you want to live in a stinky smelly medieval city where they dump sewage and offal into the streets and it runs into your drinking water? Would you like hordes or rats spreading all over the streets eating garbage and spreading bubonic plague and small pox? Those are the great attractions of the medieval city, I can see why a peasant would want to go there.

Perhaps you can explain yourself better.

From Robb, p. 72ff:

"At the end of the eighteenth century, doctors from urban Alsace to rural Brittany found that high death rates were not caused primarily by famine and disease. The problem was that, as soon as they became ill, people took to their beds and hoped to die. In 1750, the Marquis d'Argenson noticed that the peasants who farmed his land in the Touraine were 'trying not to multiply': 'They wish only for death'. Even in times of plenty, old people who could no longer wield a spade or hold a needle were keen to die as soon as possible. 'Lasting too long' was one of the great fears of life. Invalids were habitually hated by their carers...

'Happy as a corpse' was a saying in the Alps. Visitors to villages in the Savoy Alps, the central Pyrenees, Alsace and Lorraine, and parts of the Massif Central were often horrified to find silent populations of cretins with hideous thyroid deformities. (The link between goitre and lack of iodine in the water was not widely recognized until the early 19th century.) The Alpine explorer Saussure, who asked in vain for directions in a village in the Aosta Valley when most of the villagers were out in the fields, imagined that 'an evil spirit had turned the inhabitants of the unhappy village into dumb animals, leaving them with just enough human face to show that they had once been men'.

The infirmity that seemed a curse to Saussure was a blessing to the natives. The birth of a cretinous baby was believed to bring good luck to the family. The idiot child would never have to work and would never have to leave home to earn money to pay the tax-collector. These hideous, blank creatures were already half-cured of life. Even the death of a normal child could be a consolation. If the baby had lived long enough to be baptized, or if a clever witch revived the corpse for an instant to sprinkle it with holy water, its soul would pray for the family in heaven...

Ninety-nine per cent of all human activity described in this and other accounts took place between late spring and early autumn...

An official report on the Nievre in 1844 described the strange mutation of the Burgundian day-labourer once the harvest was in and the vine stocks had been burned: "After making the necessary repairs to their tools, these vigorous men will now spend their days in bed, packing their bodies tightly together in order to stay warm and to eat less food. They weaken themselves deliberately".

Human hibernation was a physical and economic necessity. Lowering the metabolic rate prevented hunger from exhausting supplies. In Normandy, according to the diary of Jules Renard, 'the peasant at home moves little more than the sloth' (1889); 'in winter, they pass their lives asleep, corked up like snails' (1908). People trudged and dawdled, even in summer. They ate more slowly than modern people. Life expectancy at birth now seems dismally low: in 1865, it was a few months over forty years in only twenty departments; in Paris and Finistere, it was under thirty; the national average was thirty-seven years two months. Life expectancy at five was fifty-one. Despite this, complaints about the brevity of life are far less common than complaints about its inordinate length. Slowness was not an attempt to savour the moment. A ploughman who took hours to reach a field beyond the town was not necessarily admiring the effect of a morning mist on the furrows and the steaming cattle against the rising sun, he was trying to make a small amount of strength last for the working day, like a cartload of manure spread over a large field...

Even for prosperous peasants, disaster always loomed. Few lives were free from sudden setbacks. Every year, several villages and urban districts went up in smoke. An English traveller, crossing the Jura from Salins to Pontarlier in 1738, was told that 'there is scarce a Village in all this Tract that does not perish by Flames once at least in 10 Years'. Thatch was cheap (gleaned from harvested fields in October) but it harboured huge populations of insects and caught fire easily unless it was completely covered by a layer of clay, quicklime, horse manure, and sand. (In some parts, thatch was outlawed in new buildings in the mid-nineteenth century and replaced by the red corrugated iron that was thought to add a pleasant touch of colour to the landscape.) Many people burned to death in their homes or were killed when their house suddenly fell on them. The spontaneous combustion of dung heaps and haystacks was a surprisingly common cause of destitution and was often blamed on jealous neighbors and pyromaniac witches.

Frosts, floods, and livestock disease were the most frequent calamities after fire, but the greatest natural disasters were caused by hail. A ten-minute hailstorm could wipe out the work of a generation, demolishing roofs, stripping trees, flattening crops and covering the ground with a carpet of twigs, leaves, and small dead birds. In 1789, the town of Pompey near Nancy was still recovering from the effects of a hailstorm that had decimated its harvest twelve years before...

These disasters affected all but a tiny minority of people. In a land of small, vulnerable pays, the section of the population comfortably referred to as 'the poor' could suddenly swell to enormous proportions. At the time of the Revolution, almost half the population of France could be described as poor or indigent...

Although he belongs to a later era, the peasant Breton Jean-Marie Deguignet (1834-1905) wrote his memoirs, which are somewhat instructive about the life of a peasant:

1834, July. Born at Guengat in Lower Brittany. Poor harvests and sick livestock force his father, a tenant farmer, to leave for the city.
1834, September. At the age of two months, moves to Quimper with some planks and straw, a cracked cauldron, eight bowls and eight wooden spoons. His earliest memory: watching his mother pluck fleas from his dead sister's head.
1840. Lives in the village of Ergue-Gaberic. Is kicked in the head by a horse and badly disfigured. For several years, suffers from a repulsive suppuration.
1834-44. Is taught to read Breton by an old seamstress and learns the 'noble profession' of begging.
1848-55. Works as a cowherd, as a field-hand on a government-sponsored farm and as a servant to the Mayor of Kerfeunteun, a suburb of Quimper. Learns to read the newspaper in French.
1854-68. After enlisting in the army, serves in the Crimea, Algeria, and Mexico.
1868-79. Returns to Brittany, marries a young girl and rents some land from the owner of the chateau at Toulven.
1879. The farmhouse burns down, and the landowner refuses to renew the lease. 'Another fifteen years of my life wasted. After working so hard to improve that farm, now I had to leave it.'
1880-82. Crushed by a cart and left half-crippled, he finds work as a fire-insurance salesman. His alcoholic wife is sent to the asylum.
1883-92. Obtains a license to sell tobacco in Pluguffan near Quimper. Rents a field and begins to rebuild his fortune. He supports himself and his three children.
1892-1902. Forced to sell his tobacco shop and disowned by his children, he lives in slums and garrets, becoming progressively poorer and writes his memoirs 'when the weather permits'.
1902. Evicted from his rented 'hole' because of complaints about the filth. Suffers from paranoid delusions and attempts suicide. Committed to the mental hospital at Quimper. Dies at the age of seventy-one in 1905.​

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

From Robb, p. 72ff:

"At the end of the eighteenth century, doctors from urban Alsace to rural Brittany found that high death rates were not caused primarily by famine and disease. The problem was that, as soon as they became ill, people took to their beds and hoped to die. In 1750, the Marquis d'Argenson noticed that the peasants who farmed his land in the Touraine were 'trying not to multiply': 'They wish only for death'. Even in times of plenty, old people who could no longer wield a spade or hold a needle were keen to die as soon as possible. 'Lasting too long' was one of the great fears of life. Invalids were habitually hated by their carers...

Wishing to die is generally not a survival trait. Those who wish to die will soon be dead, leaving those who wish to live.

Would a person living in the forests of North America build his home out of animal crap and hay? I think villages where farmers resort to building their homes out of animal feces and hay have been farming there for much too long. People who love the crap and roll in it, often get sick and die, especially when they live in large communities where everyone's crap is everywhere. Live by yourself in the forest and you can always piss and crap downstream from where you live and thus avoid eating and drinking it.

 

[Leo Caesius]

Live by yourself in the forest and you can always piss and crap downstream from where you live and thus avoid eating and drinking it.

I'm sure that's exactly what the people living upstream of you would be thinking as well.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I'm sure that's exactly what the people living upstream of you would be thinking as well.

That is why in the middle ages, its generally a good idea not to live too close to your neighbors and to stay out of cities altogether. In the wilderness, you can drink the water and probably not die of it, the moment you have a neighbor living upstream pissing and crapping in it, your in trouble!

 

[Hendryk]

That is why in the middle ages, its generally a good idea not to live too close to your neighbors and to stay out of cities altogether.

Yeah, why would anyone want to live with large numbers of other people in the middle ages? The countryside was so nice and safe. Plenty to eat for everyone, never a lean year. No roving bands of robbers, barbarians, raiders or free companies. No nobleman demanding half your harvest in taxes. And last but not least plenty of potential matches that didn't happen to already be related to you. Really, it's a wonder anyone moved to the cities at all.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Yeah, why would anyone want to live with large numbers of other people in the middle ages? The countryside was so nice and safe. Plenty to eat for everyone, never a lean year. No roving bands of robbers, barbarians, raiders or free companies. No nobleman demanding half your harvest in taxes. And last but not least plenty of potential matches that didn't happen to already be related to you. Really, it's a wonder anyone moved to the cities at all.

The North American Indians seemed to have avoided cities altogether, and they were nomatic too, so if their shit started piling up too high they'd pack up their teepees and hunt Buffalo elsewhere, that way they could find fresh springwater to drink from that no one has had a chance to crap in yet.

 

[Leo Caesius]

That is why in the middle ages, its generally a good idea not to live too close to your neighbors and to stay out of cities altogether. In the wilderness, you can drink the water and probably not die of it, the moment you have a neighbor living upstream pissing and crapping in it, your in trouble!

If you've ever been camping, you'd know that it's not advisable to crap or piss in a stream, but rather further inland so that the soil can filter it before it hits the water.

Assuming we see the development of parallel social structures in this medieval America, you might not have the right to hunt, either, without explicit permission from the owner of the land -- to infringe upon his land rights in this regard was to invite execution.

 

[Hendryk]

The North American Indians seemed to have avoided cities altogether, and they were nomatic too,

Well, don't you think there just might have been a correlation between their being nomadic and their avoiding cities?

Not to mention that the only cities they got to be in contact with were those of white settlers who didn't care much about having Injuns in their midst.