Restructuring the Empire: The Sideros Reorganization, Part 3
These various reforms take time to implement and for the effects to be truly felt. It takes time to assemble the new tax rolls and assign officials, to organize departments and offices. While every initiative of the reorganization leaves Demetrios III’s desk at some time in 1636, the new system isn’t fully in place until shortly before his death.
The rest of the 1630s continues in the postwar economic slump. Aside from the lack of demand from the Roman government and army, trade with Western Europe is rather disrupted because of the war along the Rhine and the upheavals in central Europe. Some economists blame the new higher taxes on the rich for lessening civilian demand and thereby weakening the economy; the Roman government has consistently to this day viewed such arguments as tenuous at best and certainly self-interested. Many of the taxes end up going back out into the Roman economy anyway as the government invests and develops certain projects, some of which were proposed decades earlier but not made possible until the greater income made available by said higher taxes.
There are several economic initiatives that take place during this time that are significant, even though they do not bear fruit until the reign of Odysseus at the earliest. The most ambitious and definitely most significant is the Don-Volga canal. Roman war industries had relied heavily on Russian raw materials and a canal between the two great rivers would immensely ease transport of said materials.
After negotiations with Great Pronsk, Georgia, and Khazaria regarding the placement of the canal and the divvying of canal dues, construction begins in 1638. Construction takes fourteen years, involving an army of mostly Russian and Georgian laborers paid by Roman coin. (To compensate the Romans, it is agreed that all canal dues will accrue to the Romans for the first thirty years of operation, after which Great Pronsk, Georgia, and Khazaria shall each receive one third.)
When finally completed after significant expense of coin and blood (prisoners were given labor sentences here, including seven thousand Allied POWs, of which at least three thousand died during construction), the Don-Volga canal is an immediate boon. More Russian raw materials are available for Roman industries, enabling them to expand production. This lowers the cost, but this makes said products more available to the Roman populace, the growing demand making up for the lower price of each individual piece.
This also spurs Roman investment in Siberian development, the canal’s completion considered the point where Siberia really begins to take off. Roman capital provides the means to improve infrastructure, the goal of which is to make it easier for Siberian materials to make it to Roman workshops. But this makes it easier for the growing Russian populace to emigrate eastward, providing the manpower to develop Siberian industry.
Another canal proposed in the late 1630s is a Corinthian canal. Unlike the Don-Volga canal which seems like a great idea to everyone, this one is contentious. Monemvasia, the Gibraltar of the East, the second most populous town in the Helladic theme after Corinth itself, has spread out far beyond the Rock that was the medieval town. Aside from the great causeway connecting the island to the mainland, substantial work was done during the Flowering to expand and secure harbor facilities.
The port that exports most of the Empire’s malmsey wine, one of the Empire’s most successful trade goods in Latin Europe, the Monemvasiots make up a disproportionately large portion of the Empire’s merchant marine. Also as the only town of the Peloponnesus to never fall under Latin rule, they have a certain moral clout. Aside from Malmsey and other local exports, Monemvasia’s harbors are a common port of call for merchant vessels entering or exiting the Aegean or ships moving from the central to eastern Mediterranean or vice versa. As a result, the Monemvasiots are very concerned that a Corinthian canal would seriously damage their business, their lobbying killing the proposal.
While not as visually impressive or historically significant in their own right, there are several other infrastructure projects that get started up in the late 1630s. There had been such works back during the Flowering but the expenses of war starting in the 1590s had sucked up the needed revenue. With the tax reform that is not such an issue. Also the work projects are a way to provide jobs for dismissed soldiers as well as civilians and refugees whose livelihoods have been destroyed at some point.
Most of the work involves drainage of swamps and lakes, the largest being at Lake Askania at Nicaea, Lake Copais in Boeotia, and Lake Giannitsa in Lower Macedonia. None of the lakes are completely drained away at this time, although eventually the latter two are completely drained. Lake Askania remains to this day as one of the major lakes of western Anatolia. The reasons for these projects are to produce more arable land, reduce flooding risks, and destroy unhealthy swamps.
Also during 1634 an army engineer, part of the army under Amirales’ command, had been given a brief leave and had spent it exploring Attica. On his last day before heading back to his post, he explored the remains of the ancient mines of Laurium. Three years later he comes back with a team to start setting up mining operations again; there are still ores here.
By the end of Demetrios III Sideros’ reign, the mines are producing lead in quantity with a smaller production of silver. It provides a substantial boost to the local economy, particularly Athens as Piraeus is where the ores are usually shipped out. This is what provides the push that soon elevates Athens to the second city of Hellas (after Corinth), passing Monemvasia which lacks the space to grow, unlike the ancient city of Theseus. [1] To pump water out of the mineshafts, two primitive steam pumps are used, Spanish inventions that initially require Spanish artisans to build and operate the devices.
However modern Athenians proud of this turn of events are less pleased to find out that much of the lead ends being an ingredient in various products of the Roman cosmetic industry, with rather unhealthy effects on many Romans.
Historians love to divvy up histories into distinct periods. It is crucial for organizing things but such labels are usually meaningless when viewed from the ground. No one woke up and realized that they were out of the early modern and were now in the mid-modern (the period defined as extending from the War of the Roman Succession to when the Industrial Revolution is considered to have fully arrived).
Many of the Romans easily could not have noticed the Sideros Reorganization. Their daily lives had changed little. The rates may be altered somewhat and the officials sporting different titles and badges, but they were still census officials and tax collectors. For the Paroikoi, which still made up the vast bulk of the population, dwarfing the other three categories, their lives went on much as before.
That is because the Roman government, for all its capabilities, was still an early-seventeenth-century government. Its reach fell far short from what would be expected by a modern Roman citizen. Villagers had relatively few interactions with government officials, save for the tax collectors and the circuit kouaistor, and in regards to the latter villagers preferred to settle cases amongst themselves if possible.
Those Romans in towns and cities were a different story, but it is estimated that in 1635 slightly less than 30% of Romans dwelled in a settlement 2000 strong or more. It was a different story with the Orthodox Church as every village had a local priest. Aside from his religious duties, he was often called upon to mediate disputes and represent the village to Imperial officials.
Some villages are effectively owned by monasteries as they own all the land of the village, the inhabitants all tenants of the monasteries. In those cases the monks govern the village although the tenants have the right of appeal to the Kephale. When monasteries attempt to block said appeal, and they have, the government usually, but not always, comes down hard on the monks.
Other villagers are owned by dynatoi, great landowners who control the entire area. These are fairly rare by 1635, far less common than the monastic villages. While many dynatoi have large landholdings, these are usually in central Anatolia where the landscape is dominated by pastoralists. The landlord in these cases also governs the village, although with the tenants also having the right of appeal to the Kephale. The government takes an even dimmer view of dynatoi blocking appeals than they do monasteries.
Tenant farmers have to pay rent to their landlords, either in money, goods, or labor or a mix thereof. In this situation, the government taxes the farmers still but removed what they pay in rent from their taxable income. But they then turn around and tax the landlord, adding the rents to his taxable income. This works out better for monastic landlords because as a church institution, their tax rate is lower.
With the new differential taxation setup, this actually benefits the Roman government as the dynatos gets taxed at a higher rate than any of the individual paroikoi. Naturally there is a lot of pushback for this, but aside from the Roman army itself the tax collectors can call upon the new tzaousiosi. In past generations it was hard for the central government to enforce taxes on dynatoi landlords as said dynatoi were the officer corps of the army. With the School of War supplying that need, the dynatoi no longer have that leverage.
There are also farmers who are directly tenants of the state, working government lands. For taxation purposes they are treated as freeholders. While they are encouraged to improve the land with tax exemptions, they aren’t allowed to alienate or divide their holdings, and often held to a contract to work the land for a specified number of years.
The majority of the villages are freeholders however, governing themselves directly. The interest of the Roman government certainly extends to the villages, ensuring taxation and recruitment are unimpeded and protecting trade, law, and order. But in internal affairs, the government usually stays out unless asked. While the Roman Empire is highly bureaucratized by the standards of the early 17th century, it is still far short of what would be expected of a modern state.
Rhomania is an autocracy, the Emperor an absolute monarch. Now the theory doesn’t always fit the facts, as the personality of monarchs vary and the Imperial bureaucracy is always a major player. But as a general rule, that statement typically holds up.
But at the local level, Roman society can be surprisingly democratic. Villages are typically governed by some sort of village council, elected by voters. While the specific criteria vary from village to village and region to region, usually each landowner has a vote and elects a certain number of landowners to the council. There are always property requirements for voters and sometimes higher ones for council members. Sometimes women are allowed to vote if they have enough land in their own name, although none seem to have been allowed to serve on council. The number of councilors and length of service vary widely.
While republics conjure up images of Venice in the Roman psyche, the Roman government doesn’t seem to be bothered one bit by these arrangements. For the most part, the councils keep order inside the villages, with the village priest, circuit kouaistor, or Kephale stepping in if called upon. This saves the Roman government a lot of administrative costs. The councils too often act as representatives of the village and intermediaries with the government, for example in requests for tax exemptions due to a disaster or to petition for infrastructural development.
The allocation of taxes is often done with the input of the council, a setup that while decreasing administrative costs certainly opens up possibilities of corruption. Ideally if councilors are directing taxes away from themselves onto their neighbors, the neighbors can appeal to the government. Circuit kouaistors make annual rounds throughout the district, with the goal that justice will be easily available to all Romans. That said, no system is perfect and the goal is certainly more feasible in the more densely populated themes.
In the towns and cities, the grip of the Roman government is tighter with officials appointed directly by Constantinople. But there are exemptions. Thessaloniki, Smyrna, Antioch, Nicaea, and Trebizond all have communes, city councils elected in a similar fashion to those of the villages although with wealth rather than land as the qualifier. Certain positions and duties are filled by them rather than the Kephale, with the right to levy some taxes on city-dwellers to support those activities. Many other towns and cities have elected councils that act as advisory boards to the governmental officials, with the right to appoint minor town officers such as fire marshals and town clerks. In settlements that are the residence of the Kephale, the Kephale or his Prokathemenos preside over the council, including the commune cities.
This was all in effect before the Sideros Reorganization and continues afterwards. But the growing number of Roman officials means that there is steadily growing contact between the countryside and officialdom. On the one side is a somewhat democratic (if one is a landowner) system, on the other a (in theory) meritocratic bureaucracy where placement requires education and passing exams, both overseen by the Emperor. The intermingling of these two strands is the history of modern Roman political theory.
[1] Credit to
@Lascaris for the drainage and mine suggestions.
