Plausibility Check: Meritocratic Empire

I think the primacy of the simple primogeniture monarchy system is not as absolute at it appears on first glance. There have been elective monarchies in feudal states, oligarchies, papal conclaves and the Byzantines would often pick the best of the sons as heir.

In addition people and families are always rising and falling, particularly when military prowess and personal wealth are directly linked to political power. This creates a crude meritocracy at the layer below the monarchy in more absolute political systems.
 
Didn't a lot of important positions at court and in the civil service go to foreigners rather than native political favourites in the eastern empires?
 
Sorry for the long absence, my motherboard got fried at a most inopportune moment; fixed now.

First off, any kind of Confucian state is right out the door for this as far as I'm concerned. Rampant sexism of the doctrine is one thing but what really kills them is the whole "filial piety" and "wisdom of the elders over innovation" shenanigans. You're only ever going to get a calcified, regressive society out of that and China may have missed industrial revolution because of it (but that's a problem for another thread or five).

So in China I'd have to start with a successful regional anti-confucian reaction which then sets about resisting the period's empire(s) and gradually conquering (parts of) the rest of China and (unless it happens right in the middle of China, say the Changsha area) its other neighbours.

Dominus: your post and others have convinced me to drop the highly meritocratic bent of the proposed empire, not so much the gender-blind one. Power will consolidate after all, and history gives us plenty examples of corrupt matriarchs.

I know a bit about how medieval society worked, enough, honestly, to not consider the Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones series that brilliant a reference. I feel GRRM has greatly played up the worst elements of medieval life that have to do with abusive rulers and laws, downplaying instead the crushing effect disease had on human life back then (though he doesn't ignore them by any stretch).

Considering your (correct) illustrations of the two principal walks of life in medieval society, I don't see why they couldn't be extended to females as well. In fact, though they were subservient to their husbands under the law the female segment of the peasantry had it just as bad as the men in terms of backbreaking workload etc, and while they weren't generally at risk of being conscripted, they had other troubles the men didn't suffer (childbirth mortality and sexual abuse - as to this one, of course a small proportion of male commoners were abused, but nothing like what the girls suffered). It was only the noblewomen who sat on their hands a lot.

Still, arm the women and set them at the bastard foreigners, I say! As long as you don't put them on horseback too much a tradition of physical / martial fitness for women and girls is going to result in less complications and deaths in childbirth to compensate for the probably far lesser birthrate.

It's also possible to have a more fluid military aristocracy where competent peasants and foreigners are introduced into it to compensate.

As for a demographic calamity like the 2nd Punic War... well that would indeed break the back of such an empire. If I actually write this, maybe it will :eek: (I never said I want the protagonist state to end the TL in success!) but also imagine if the Romans had, not double, but 1.5x the troops in Italy at the moment Hannibal crossed the Alps because women served too.

Yes Hannibal was a brilliant battle commander but even he has limits and the economics of scale dictate that the Romans will, with 50% more soldiers, be naturally much more successful in defending Italy and lose a lot less troops in both relative and absolute terms => possibly Hannibal loses outright from the start. Unless he's packing fighting ladies as well... ;)

In the long term having women in the army in pre-gunpowder/industrial times WILL cause demographic problems, at least for the segments of the population that provide the military, yes.

But especially at the start, when the nation in question is "breaking out" from its early state as a bullied minor / rebellion / emerging border march of a larger, weakening empire, and the army-with-girls is tested in serious war for the first time without any big supplement of war-losses in the young female demographic, the army is going to be vastly superior to a male-only force coming from the same population and economy, in one way or another, because the human potential being thrown into it doubles.

Regarding the real or imagined limitations of females as combat troops:

1. History gives us plenty of examples of ladies at war who did well, even in hand to hand, so it IS possible.
2. If a woman is smaller and weaker than her male comrade, she also needs that much less to eat, drink and carry with her on campaign. Not all women are smaller and weaker than men and the difference will be even less once a population has selected for big, strong women for a few hundred years.
3. Horse cavalry and (even in light of pt. 2) longbow units are going to be male-dominated. Women will serve mainly in line infantry, garrisons, crossbow/composite-bow/firearm units. Artillery too; you don't need that much upper body strength to pull/push a heavy wheeled object on rough ground, though you need a lot of lower body. At least that's what my personal experience with carts of building materials and firewood suggests.
4. Women can be as violent, ferocious and cruel as men, especially if they're not taught otherwise by gendered programming during early childhood. I will not even discuss this; as far as I'm concerned it's an amply proven fact.
5. Female soldiers really, REALLY won't want to get captured. They'll fight like devils against Muslims especially.
6. An army at about 50:50 M/F which therefore mostly supports its own sexual needs will be a lot more disciplined on campaign. They'll still need a lot of camp followers to help supervise the brats :D

Finally, I'm looking for an initial PoD in the High Medieval period (even if it's outside Europe, guns are coming soon) with the big differences starting to show up in the early gunpowder age and the height of the pike and shot.

Edit: If this idea gets any traction I'd like to start brainstorming emergence points. At a first glance the candidate areas I can think about are the Aztecs or a revolutionary movement in China or somewhere along the borders of the Muslim world (on the side that's, you know, fighting the Muslims).
 
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Driftless

Donor
Minoans?
* Mercantile based (small) empire
* Comparatively higher leadership status for women
* I don't know about how they promoted from within
 
How meritocratic had been some historical 'big states' of Islam beyond the Ottoman, specially the 'golden age' Caliphates?

The Mamluks were fairly meritocratic, in an odd way. The tended to go really out of their way to prevent higher offices to be inherited, although it tended not to work exceptionally well.
 
Sorry for the long absence, my motherboard got fried at a most inopportune moment; fixed now.

First off, any kind of Confucian state is right out the door for this as far as I'm concerned. Rampant sexism of the doctrine is one thing but what really kills them is the whole "filial piety" and "wisdom of the elders over innovation" shenanigans. You're only ever going to get a calcified, regressive society out of that and China may have missed industrial revolution because of it (but that's a problem for another thread or five).

So in China I'd have to start with a successful regional anti-confucian reaction which then sets about resisting the period's empire(s) and gradually conquering (parts of) the rest of China and (unless it happens right in the middle of China, say the Changsha area) its other neighbours.

Dominus: your post and others have convinced me to drop the highly meritocratic bent of the proposed empire, not so much the gender-blind one. Power will consolidate after all, and history gives us plenty examples of corrupt matriarchs.

I know a bit about how medieval society worked, enough, honestly, to not consider the Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones series that brilliant a reference. I feel GRRM has greatly played up the worst elements of medieval life that have to do with abusive rulers and laws, downplaying instead the crushing effect disease had on human life back then (though he doesn't ignore them by any stretch).

Considering your (correct) illustrations of the two principal walks of life in medieval society, I don't see why they couldn't be extended to females as well. In fact, though they were subservient to their husbands under the law the female segment of the peasantry had it just as bad as the men in terms of backbreaking workload etc, and while they weren't generally at risk of being conscripted, they had other troubles the men didn't suffer (childbirth mortality and sexual abuse - as to this one, of course a small proportion of male commoners were abused, but nothing like what the girls suffered). It was only the noblewomen who sat on their hands a lot.

Still, arm the women and set them at the bastard foreigners, I say! As long as you don't put them on horseback too much a tradition of physical / martial fitness for women and girls is going to result in less complications and deaths in childbirth to compensate for the probably far lesser birthrate.

It's also possible to have a more fluid military aristocracy where competent peasants and foreigners are introduced into it to compensate.

As for a demographic calamity like the 2nd Punic War... well that would indeed break the back of such an empire. If I actually write this, maybe it will :eek: (I never said I want the protagonist state to end the TL in success!) but also imagine if the Romans had, not double, but 1.5x the troops in Italy at the moment Hannibal crossed the Alps because women served too.

Yes Hannibal was a brilliant battle commander but even he has limits and the economics of scale dictate that the Romans will, with 50% more soldiers, be naturally much more successful in defending Italy and lose a lot less troops in both relative and absolute terms => possibly Hannibal loses outright from the start. Unless he's packing fighting ladies as well... ;)

In the long term having women in the army in pre-gunpowder/industrial times WILL cause demographic problems, at least for the segments of the population that provide the military, yes.

But especially at the start, when the nation in question is "breaking out" from its early state as a bullied minor / rebellion / emerging border march of a larger, weakening empire, and the army-with-girls is tested in serious war for the first time without any big supplement of war-losses in the young female demographic, the army is going to be vastly superior to a male-only force coming from the same population and economy, in one way or another, because the human potential being thrown into it doubles.

Regarding the real or imagined limitations of females as combat troops:

1. History gives us plenty of examples of ladies at war who did well, even in hand to hand, so it IS possible.
2. If a woman is smaller and weaker than her male comrade, she also needs that much less to eat, drink and carry with her on campaign. Not all women are smaller and weaker than men and the difference will be even less once a population has selected for big, strong women for a few hundred years.
3. Horse cavalry and (even in light of pt. 2) longbow units are going to be male-dominated. Women will serve mainly in line infantry, garrisons, crossbow/composite-bow/firearm units. Artillery too; you don't need that much upper body strength to pull/push a heavy wheeled object on rough ground, though you need a lot of lower body. At least that's what my personal experience with carts of building materials and firewood suggests.
4. Women can be as violent, ferocious and cruel as men, especially if they're not taught otherwise by gendered programming during early childhood. I will not even discuss this; as far as I'm concerned it's an amply proven fact.
5. Female soldiers really, REALLY won't want to get captured. They'll fight like devils against Muslims especially.
6. An army at about 50:50 M/F which therefore mostly supports its own sexual needs will be a lot more disciplined on campaign. They'll still need a lot of camp followers to help supervise the brats :D

Finally, I'm looking for an initial PoD in the High Medieval period (even if it's outside Europe, guns are coming soon) with the big differences starting to show up in the early gunpowder age and the height of the pike and shot.

Edit: If this idea gets any traction I'd like to start brainstorming emergence points. At a first glance the candidate areas I can think about are the Aztecs or a revolutionary movement in China or somewhere along the borders of the Muslim world (on the side that's, you know, fighting the Muslims).

If that is what you want, then this thread should go to the ASB section. Even if you are right, there is no way that anyone of the societies before modern times would even think of the equality of men and women, especially in war.
 
So, with stuff like the ERE or just the entire Roman Empire surviving and even staying as great powers, while in other TLs Mexico is somehow able to stay close to its first empire borders, meritocracy and large-scale female soldiery is ASB?

Well, I don't know how creditable sources the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979) and David Nicholle's Attila and the Nomad Hordes (1990) are but they both say that Cuman women participated in battle (as light cavalry too; so maybe my idea that mounted cavalry and childbirth don't mix is an exaggeration; certainly the Kiphak-Cumans are not known for their demographic collapses).

This is presumably before Christianity and Islam proliferated in their ranks.

It's an earlier start than intended but maybe I could wank up the Western Cumans into raising a moderate empire in the lowlands between, say, the Dniepr and Danube (broadly) as well as a lot of pulses.

This would also avoid any anti-Islam my previous post might have stank of since the Cumans were religiously tolerant and there could even be a friendship with the Mamluk Sultanate once it appears, though that wouldn't be relevant unless the Western Cumans pursue a southern strategy (which is blocked by mountains and the Black Sea) and the Mamluks a northern one (which is just blocked by lots of mountains).

Still, I think I could wring an interesting, nice and bloody TL out of these guys and gals, if anyone's interested in reading it.


Edit: The general staging area is the orange border on this map. The brown borders represent the two locations for state development I'd prefer to use (one of them).
2cicjkz.png
 
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