With the increasing poverty of the rural population it might prompt some to trap small birds as a food source. Frex in Cyprus in the past song birds were a vital part of the diet for the poor providing some protein to their diet..they were trapped using sticks covered in lime so nothing too fancy
An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania
- Thread starter Basileus444
- Start date
Very good use of cause and effect. Actions of Imperial government taken to its logical consequence.
However, I don't get this cause-and-effect? Why would only minority (I assume you mean ethnic?) groups grow, or why would they grow so much more than state supported agricultural settlers? Shouldn't Greek settlers grow in the same numbers as well (or at least somewhat comparable, once they adjust to local conditions)? The text does not support the endpoint conclusion.
The paragraph is a bit confusing, it mentions minority populations but doesn't say if these are minority ethnic populations or agricultural minority.
That's a possibility. Pigeons are a cheap source of protein and are heavily utilized as such (and a source of manure) by the poorer peasantry.
I decided to nuke all of that section. This is supposed to be a look at Roman society on the eve of the climax of the Little Ice Age (c. 1640), so dealing with the effects of the Little Ice Age frankly doesn't belong. These bits will reappear, but later when we're looking at the aftereffects of the Little Ice Age.
Update has been edited with last couple of paragraphs removed.
What's the breakdown of property ownership between the imperial holdings outside the Sweet Waters and the Church? I assume local dynatoi still have the largest share among all the demographic groups.
B444, have you considered turning the Andreas portion of this timeline into a book? I assume you've been asked this before, but that period is so well done, with so much color, that you could probably succeed in publishing a work of althistory fiction covering the reign of Theodoros, Andreas, and the time of troubles, maybe with some elements changed. I know I'd buy it.
Later in the Context Series I have an update planned that will cover an estimated property distribution between the various classes in Roman society. I have some articles that make these estimations for specific locations in Ottoman society during this time period, so I have some basis to work with as opposed to just completely making up numbers, which I don't like to do.
I have considered turning the young Andreas portion, from the Black Day to the Fall of Rome, into one. But if I did, I'd convert it to a fantasy world as opposed to an alternate history setting to broaden the appeal. A good example would be Harry Turtledove with his creation of fantasy series that are really just fantasy-versions of Byzantine history.
The latest portion of Not the End: The Empire Under the Laskarids Chapter 8 part 2: The Re-Conquest of Anatolia has been posted on Patreon for Megas Kyr tier patrons. After the fall of Trebizond, Alexios Philanthropenos shifts his focus to the northern reaches of the central Anatolian plateau.
Thank you again for your support.
Me: "who?" . Looked it up and learned a new thing today. One of reasons AH is so interesting.
The Contexts of Roman Society, Part 7: In the Villages and the Mountains
They'd definitely be known as Vlachs ITTL. I figure they'll remain as a minority group in Roman Europe, perhaps retaining some linguistic distinction but otherwise culturally becoming very Hellenized.
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The Contexts of Roman Society, Part 7: In the Villages and the Mountains
The Roman Empire of the early modern period has a reputation of being a centralized state, and that is accurate, but that was by the standards of the early modern period. The Roman state was nowhere nearly as involved in the personal and daily activities of its population as are even the most libertarian of modern states. As just one example, licenses to operate motor vehicles on public roads, along with attendant limitations and penalties for breach, are accepted in modern states without a second thought. Had a similar suggestion been made to license horse-riding in early modern Rhomania, the espouser would’ve been viewed as insane. The only restrictions on riding a horse on public roads was that the rider couldn’t be a Jew or Sunni Muslim, while a ‘noble heretic’ had to have a certificate (membership in militia units or certain government posts automatically provided such certification).
The Roman administration had a hierarchy that reached out from Constantinople throughout the kephalates, but at the purely local level, the state was largely absent. The hierarchy existed above that level, but did not reach down into it. Cities and towns, as they were centers of administration, were somewhat of an exception, but once one got down to the level of neighborhoods, local administration was in the hands of locals. And 80% of the population lived in rural villages, where government officials were thin on the ground, present only when they came through the area on their circuits.
In those villages, most administration and leadership was in the hands of village elders, the oikodespotai, and the village assembly. Certain serious issues such as cases of murder were supposed to be referred up to kephalate authorities, but most enforcement of local law and order were settled in the village by the village. These were decided by local custom, as bounded by Roman law, such as a revised version of the Farmer’s Law, approaching its 1000th birthday but still largely in effect.
Village authorities were integrated with provincial authorities. Tax assessors would assess the total taxes due on all village land, but then the village authorities would be the ones responsible for divvying up the taxes between the villagers themselves. This did lead to opportunities for corruption and tax evasion by village elders, but there were limits. Even richer peasants could ill afford to alienate their poorer neighbors given the need for support during bad harvests. Furthermore poorer peasants could only be squeezed so much, and in the event of tax arrears those taxmen knew who the richer peasants were, and would go after them first to make up the shortfall.
Despite being called oikodespotai, the village elders and richer peasants (the categories were almost always synonymous) rarely had the power to be despotic. Village assemblies were typically made up of the head of every landed household, and all had a voice. Now some had a bigger voice than others, but that was based on informal rather than formal means. Furthermore there was an emphasis on unanimous consensus, with voting done in the open and the minority expected to give way and accede to the wishes of the commune. Given the need for the support of the commune when, not if, bad times came, the minority could reliably be expected to cooperate. (Note that only landed household heads were present in the assembly. Landless laborers, besides being economically precarious, were also political nonentities.)
The above description assumes an entirely free village. The presence of a large landowner, holding all or some of the village-worked land that were then populated and worked by tenants, would complicate things. But even so, the presence of a village commune would push back against landowner power and the commune could always appeal, if need be, to provincial authority. That did not mean that powerful landowners couldn’t leverage their power disparity into something resembling a de facto fief, especially in more isolated areas where Roman provincial authority was weaker (the dynatos that so enraged a young Demetrios Sideros, Kephale of Skammandros, is one infamous example), but it was harder and lacked legal basis.
These big landowners, which could just as easily be a monastery instead of a dynatos, were a feature of the lowlands and hill country where farming dominated. In the mountains and wilds, matters grew more complicated and local elites could wield substantially more power and autonomy. The most successful of these were often known as ‘mountain lords’. (The term can be somewhat misleading as mountain folk might be organized into structures more reminiscent of a lowland village commune rather than a hierarchical chiefdom, and even the most lordly mountain lord couldn’t be anywhere as autocratic as a Roman Emperor.)
External frontiers are clearly marked on political maps of the period, but the power and independence of local peoples and elites could be such that these zones could be labeled internal frontiers, zones where the state’s writ was thin or even nonexistent. These were not restricted to mountains, but also could include desert, forest, and marsh. However mountainous zones tended to allow for larger internal frontiers.
The life for peoples on the other side of these internal frontiers didn’t differ that much from those state-side. Agriculture was practiced where it was possible, but forestry and animal husbandry was more substantial because of environmental factors. In Isauria, sheep outnumbered humans over three to one. There was substantial trade, with mountain herders coming down into the lowlands for winter pastures, trade opportunities, and work. In many lowland places, migrant labor from the highlands for bringing in the harvest was essential. Those migrants would then return to their upland homes with the goods they’d bought with their earnings, or graze their herds on the stubble. Many highlanders also ended up in service in the Roman army. There was a frontier, but it was a very permeable one, with state authority the item that had the most difficulty in crossing.
Elites, these mountain lords, held their local power mainly through charisma and kin affiliations, and varied substantially in strength. Most were minor in the grand scheme of things. If they caused trouble for the state, it wasn’t Constantinople’s concern, but that of the local Kephale; the issue rarely got big enough to warrant moving up the chain. Yet there were efforts to integrate these mountain lords into the state structure. They would be given titles and pensions and gifts, which would help those mountain lords assert their superiority over their own people.
In return these mountain lords would help keep the peace. They would ensure the shepherds coming down the mountains would be doing so to trade, not to raid. They would take care of bandits trying to operate out of their territory and extradite rebels and criminals who had fled into their land. Essentially, since the central state lacked the ability to police these internal frontier zones, the state subcontracted the effort to these mountain lords.
Overall, the process worked, but there was always friction. The mountain lords wanted the biggest possible payment, while state officials, for reasons of economy and pride, wanted the smallest. Furthermore, mountain lords that were viewed by their people as too compliant to state directives could be viewed as weak, which would led to said mountain lord (or his replacement) needing to demonstrate his independence. Thus disputes over compensation and autonomy could turn violent, with raids from the uplands met by retaliatory expeditions from the lowlands until a new and momentarily agreeable status quo could be devised.
(The dynamic also explains much behind the relationship between Tbilisi and Constantinople. Because of Georgia’s geography, mountain lords are far more prominent in Georgian society and politics, but the relationship is similar. The mountain lords furthermore tend to view the Georgian King as a Lord of Lords. If a Georgian King is viewed not as the friend of Rhomania but instead as a lackey, those lords would take it as a sign of weakness and act accordingly. Thus it was essential for Tbilisi, in order to maintain its authority within the Kingdom, to vigorously assert its independence whenever Constantinople proved too presumptuous.)
As stated before, most mountain lords were small-scale. If and when affairs turned violent, the local Kastrophylax could usually deal with it. This was the case with the Epirote mountain lords, for example. But some were bigger fish, such as the largest Albanian clans like the Kastrioti who had played such a prominent role during the Time of Troubles. Able to wield potentially a force in the low thousands and positioned to cut the Via Egnatia, if they caused trouble it would require the Macedonian tagma.
Thus those mountain lords got payments which dwarfed those the petty ones received, and the White Palace also paid for some of their young men to go through the School of War and serve in the army as Roman officers. On the one hand, it was dangerous to give them more military knowledge, especially first-hand knowledge of how the Roman army worked. But it was a good way to Romanize the highlanders and fine military uniforms, especially if decorated with decorations for military valor, were marks of respect in these upland societies.
However two mountain lords stood above the rest; to continue the fish analogy, these were sharks. The first was not technically a Roman issue, but was well placed to make himself one if he was in the mood. This was the Prince-Bishop of the Black Mountain, or as the Lombards knew him, the Dux of Montenegro. These clerical warlords (supposedly when the Prince-Bishop learned of Archbishop Bone Breaker, he replied “Finally the Germans have produced somebody interesting”) gained their highly autonomous status by skillfully exploiting the Roman shattering of the medieval Serbian state in the mid-1400s. The Serbian state gradually reformed, with the Black Mountain as part of it, but the Prince-Bishop took requests, not orders, from the King of Serbia.
The Prince-Bishop could sometimes be an issue, such as when fishermen from Rhomania poached on his fishing spots, or when he got irritated at the level of tolls his trade goods had to pay at Dalmatian ports. But much more of a concern to the White Palace was the second of these great mountain lords, the Grand Karaman.
The Karamanlis dwelled in the ancient land of Isauria in south-central Anatolia, which has a tradition of defying empires since the days the Kings of Hatti marched south to battle Pharaohs under the Syrian sun. Their name derived from the Turkish beylik that had arisen with the fracturing of the Sultanate of Rum during the late 1200s. Not even Alexios Philanthropenos had been able to break them, and while they recognized Roman suzerainty, in their mountain fastness they ruled themselves.
They were not sealed off from Roman society however. Roman highways skirted their territory, heading for the Cilician Gate (which had a permanent garrison of two thousand, and the Kastrophlax was #8 in seniority in the whole Empire). There was constant trade between the uplands and the lowlands. The Karamanlis were also devout Christians. While they had no respect for perfumed and silken bishops, they respected the tough ascetic holy men who dwelled in the byways and mountains of Anatolia. When one of them spoke, they listened.
Karamanlis are common throughout Rhomania. When the young and then-Kaisar Andreas was wounded in the siege of Constantinople, it was a Karamanlis that led the militia contingent that ended up rescuing him. They served throughout the Shatterer’s Army, and a prized family heirloom of the Grand Karaman is a pair of swords given to his ancestor by the Good Emperor himself. It is a tradition for them to serve in the Roman army, and to serve with distinction.
But the likes of the Karamanlis were not subservient. Isauria in the mid-1600s was a poor land, even by the standards of interior Anatolia. Agricultural surpluses were meager even in good times. Peasants fleeing debt collectors could often find shelter with their highland cousins, and if said debt collectors proved too persistent, a musket ball to the throat was a proven method for ending an annoying conversation. When this happened, Roman authorities looked the other way; it just wasn’t worth the trouble.
The name Karamanlis was more numerous than those who dwelled in the mountain zone where the writ of the Grand Karaman held sway directly. Given the ruggedness of the terrain, that land could not have supported many. But the name resonated strongly throughout the region, with the chief city of the region, Laranda, often still being referred to as Karaman. While the villages of the lowlands were firmly on the state-side of the internal frontier zone, the connections between Karamanlis across the frontier were strong and deep.
Furthermore the Karamanlis had a reputation for military prowess, only bolstered by their storied history of service in the Roman army. Perhaps a good example of that is their famous battle cry, supposedly coined by Andreas Niketas himself. If roused to the attack, they blow their war horns and then shout “The horns of the mountain! The mountain falls on you!” It is usually the last thing their opponents hear on this earth.
I love the decentralized (by modern standards of course) nature of Roman society. Looking long-term the inevitable centralization of the Industrial Age will be interesting to track for sure. Great update, thanks for delving into this.
Is there an OTL analogue for the Grand Karaman in the Ottoman Empire of the era?
Is there an OTL analogue for the Grand Karaman in the Ottoman Empire of the era?
I’m loving these updates. They make you think well beyond the context of the TL. We think of the “early modern” era in a certain way, and culturally it feels closer than mediaeval times because the language and literature is more accessible, but in many or even most ways it has more in common with the centuries and millennia before it than the way we live now.
@Basileus444 created an account to say thank you for your time and effort for this incredible masterpiece. I have been an avid reader since I was at university nearly a decade ago now.
The overall narrative with intermittent personal experiences of characters is brilliant. Although my favourite are these histories. The research you do really shows through your work. Another aspect I really appreciate is your honest portrayal of war and how states act (that’s either ignored or purposely left out). Especially important with the current situation playing out in Eastern Europe.
I look forward to your next update.
The overall narrative with intermittent personal experiences of characters is brilliant. Although my favourite are these histories. The research you do really shows through your work. Another aspect I really appreciate is your honest portrayal of war and how states act (that’s either ignored or purposely left out). Especially important with the current situation playing out in Eastern Europe.
I look forward to your next update.
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I don’t know of any Ottoman-era analogues. For that example I was drawing on the ancient period. See “Bandit Highlands and Lowland Peace: The Mountains of Isauria-Cilicia” by Brent M. Shaw in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient Vol. 33, No. 2 (1990), “Continued” in Vol. 33, No. 3. These two articles cover the history of the region and its relationship with imperial powers from the Hittites to the beginning of the Byzantine era.
Haven’t decided for certain, but something like that is highly likely.
They most certainly are. They’re a mid-tier, comparable to the bigger Albanian clans.
Sometimes I wonder if proto-modern might be a better term than early modern. The early modern era certainly shows aspects that we consider modern, but they impacted only a small minority of the world’s population, even in the late 1700s. If you took an average human from 1750 CE, they’d have much more in common with an average human of 1750 BCE than with an average human of 2022.
Thank you for your kind words; I really appreciate them.
The Contexts of Roman Society, Part 8: The Environment of the Romans
The Contexts of Roman Society, part 8: The Environment of the Romans
Humanity has been shaping the environment, for good or ill, as long as it has existed (and even earlier, considering that the use of fire and stone tools by hominins predates the existence of homo sapiens sapiens). The industrial age merely expanded humanity’s ability to shape the environment; it certainly did not create it. A stone ax as well as a chainsaw can cut down a forest; the chainsaw is simply much faster.
Romans had been profoundly shaping their environment during the century between the end of the Time of Troubles and the height of the Little Ice Age. The arguably most significant projects were in the area of draining swamps and lakes, such as Lake Giannitsa in Lower Macedonia, Lake Copais in Boetia, and Lake Askania in Bithynia. These were hardly the only works, but they were the biggest, even though none of the three lakes were completely drained away during this period. Lake Askania still exists today, while the elimination of the other two was the work of future generations. Nevertheless a substantial area was drained.
Much of the work in this regard accomplished during this period was really during the Flowering, the mid-to-late 1500s. These large-scale drainage works required an immense outlay of resources and only the state or dynatoi could muster the resources needed. After the beginning of the Great Uprising, the Roman Empire was almost constantly in a state of war for the next half-century, and state funds for these projects dried up.
Ironically, at the time when these works were at their zenith, the level of land hunger was relatively low as populations were still recovering from the Time of Troubles. The projects had been just as much for providing work programs and asserting governmental authority and power as they’d been about directly creating more arable land. But when the projects fell silent but populations continued to grow in the 1600s, the land hunger issue became more and more pressing. Yet the demands of war meant little was done.
In the late 1630s, the governments of Demetrios III and then the Regent Athena tried to revive many of these work projects, this time expressly to address the land issue. However the crash of the Roman economy decapitated the revivals as effectively as the Great Uprising and the Eternal War killed the originals. Athena’s government did continue to try and push these projects, recognizing the need for them, particularly after making promises, but the scale of the works in 1650 was one-sixth of what had initially been hoped.
The state wasn’t the only source for these drainage projects; smaller but still impressive works could and were funded by dynatoi; much of the drainage work along the lower Sangarius River during this period was privately funded. These smaller private works also were more active in the post-1600 period than the bigger state projects.
Yet these efforts tended to exacerbate the land issue, not alleviate it. State projects usually divvied up the new land into relatively modest plots and sold or distributed them as such. The dynatoi funding these smaller-scale projects wanted the resulting drained land for themselves. Once the land was drained, they enclosed it and created commercial farms. The drainage works on the lower Sangarius, near Constantinople, had been made explicitly for the owners to then cultivate cereals for the Constantinople market.
While that certainly benefited the landowners and the cities, this was actively worse than useless for the mass of rural poor, which was 75%+ of the population. The wetlands were not as useful as arable fields or vineyards or the like, but they had not been useless, and wetland resources had been common to all. Thus the rural poor lost access to those common wetland resources; their condition had actually been made worse.
One counterpoint to the above is that the draining of swamps would’ve reduced the incidence of malaria, which would be to the benefit of neighboring peasants even if they got no land. But for a peasant, owning land, any land, even a small patch, was an important source of pride and self-respect, as well as giving them a voice in the village assembly. Thus the usage and availability of land was always on their minds. Meanwhile the rural village was much healthier than the contemporary city, but the disease load was still high by modern standards. Thus while the reduction of malaria would make a difference, the peasants with their focus on the land would’ve been unlikely to be mollified.
Activities in the swamps had declined in the 1600s, but activities in the forest only escalated. The era in question saw an immense demand for forest products. Lumber was needed for construction and the building of ships, with the large grain haulers and battle-line ships each consuming literal acres of trees. The growing population, especially in the cities, demanded more firewood for cooking and heating.
The large uptick in metals production also devoured forests. For every kilogram of iron produced required about 15 kilograms of charcoal, which in turn necessitated over 100 kilograms of wood. Considering the amount of metal that went into outfitting a single Roman tourma, much less the entire army, it is unsurprising that the heavy military demands of the first half of the 1600s consumed huge tracts of Roman woodland. (Efforts to use coke, from coal, to make up for this faltered because nearly all of Rhomania’s easily-accessible coal was low-quality lignite; England was much better endowed in this regard.)
Even by 1650 the Empire as a whole wasn’t suffering a timber shortage. Certain areas, such as the Pontic coast, were still heavily wooded. Ships leaving the Pontic coast for other waters often towed tree trunks in the water behind them, to sell them at their destinations. But the consumption of forests had sharp regional repercussions, with many local areas suffering from shortages, such as coastal western Anatolia. Even if forests were still present, as they were cleared, often to make room for arable land, they became less and less accessible. And given the bulkiness of timber and the already-mentioned transportation difficulties in a pre-steam engine society, this was not a case where better-endowed areas could reliably and consistently support poorer areas.
Deforestation could have serious repercussions beyond just the direct lack of timber. Loss of forest cover altered rainfall patterns, which could be quite damaging to farming that did not have much of a margin for error. Peasant households needed to fuel their cooking and heating fires somehow, and if firewood was not available, then animal dung would be used. This was already a common practice in tree-poor central Anatolia, as in central Asia. For pastoralists, this was not an issue, but for farmers who also needed that manure to fertilize their fields, this short-term fix undermined their long-term prospects. One major attraction of replacing wheat with corn was that the cobbs and stalks of the latter could be used for fuel, thus mitigating this issue.
The denuding of hills of trees also vastly increased erosion issues. The soils were thin and now exposed to the elements, especially when the terraced fields were left fallow. As the seventeenth century progressed, downstream Rhomania suffered increasingly from floods clearly caused by erosion from deforestation upstream. Thus more farmland was damaged, and the accumulation of soils also helped to create new marshes where ones did not exist before.
The Roman government was not blind to at least some of the dangers of deforestation. Forest Wardens, to protect forests and their resources for the Roman navy, now had centuries behind them. But the difficulties of policing these wide and rugged areas, with the never-ending demand for timber, firewood, and newly cleared lands, meant their efforts were never adequate to the task. As population grew and the good holdings fragmented, it was simply impossible to keep Romans, both peasants and herders, from expanding up the hillsides and into the forest zones. Even when the long-term issues were readily apparent, local and short-term concerns simply took priority.
Given the issue of population growth combined with landholding fragmentation and the environmental degradation just mentioned, many historians consider that Rhomania in the mid-1600s was approaching a Malthusian [1] crisis, even without the Little Ice Age. The disruptions caused by the War of the Roman Succession and the resulting high deaths certainly suggests a system running close to the edge already. Some have argued against this, since the population of the period doesn’t seem extreme compared to earlier periods. However it is likely that increased environmental degradation, particularly through the intense deforestation of the 1550-1650 period, combined with the expansion of animal husbandry to feed carnivorous city diets, lowered the carrying capacity.
These problems were hardly unique to Rhomania. Spain and Italy were in very similar positions. Europe north of the Alps was better endowed agriculturally than the Mediterranean basin, but the large population growth of the past century, combined with limited improvement in agriculture, meant that it too was pushing at its Malthusian limits. Ironically Persia, northern India, China, and Japan which had suffered from political instability during this period which had limited population growth, if not holding or reducing it, were thus better placed. They too would be struck by the rigors of the Little Ice Age, but with less pre-existing Malthusian pressure. Mexico was in a similar position, although there it was because of pre-existing population loss from Old World diseases on the native population.
Given the limitations of the possible, immeasurably constrained compared to modern capabilities, averting a crisis entirely was not possible. But the likes of Demetrios III, Athena, and their officials had not been blind and there were efforts to change course. The attempt to revive the large drainage projects had already been mentioned, which if successful would’ve helped to reduce the land hunger issue. That would’ve also helped the deforestation issue, which would also have been aided by plans for reforesting certain areas (with the goal of sustainably managing the new growths). Further proposals to improve various transportation infrastructures, even on a relatively small scale, would’ve helped encourage more productive commercial-style farming by making markets more available.
However the economic crises of the late 1630s and early 1640s ground this process, if not to a halt, at least to a barely noticeable crawl. Little was thus done throughout the 1640s, partly because the effects of the Little Ice Age were already hampering economic revival. In short, time was needed for these efforts to bear fruit, but that time would not be given.
[1] There’s likely going to be a Roman alt-Malthus in the near future, as a part of Roman society’s response to the Little Ice Age. (Note the ‘alt’ part; Roman Malthus won’t be a 1:1 match with the English version.) But I don’t have a name yet, so for the sake of simplicity I’m using the OTL term.
Is there going to be a Triune alt-Malthus to correspond with the English OTL version?
If there’s enough population growth could Rhomania send settlers into Syria and Egypt?
The Empire is fully willing to commit genocide to get rid of undesirables. What'll it do to alleviate food shortages?
All very ominous, but realistically and inevitably so. The depth and richness of this timeline is incredible and to carry such texture across centuries of TL past the POD is a colossal achievement. You’re five centuries into an ATL yet rigorous as ever.
Dammit, my phone had buggered up the quotes. I’ll put your comments in italics:
Sometimes I wonder if proto-modern might be a better term than early modern. The early modern era certainly shows aspects that we consider modern, but they impacted only a small minority of the world’s population, even in the late 1700s. If you took an average human from 1750 CE, they’d have much more in common with an average human of 1750 BCE than with an average human of 2022.
I agree, but it’s interesting that it needs to be said. I’m currently reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a novel written over several years in the 1760s. These people-writer and characters, who represent his world- arguably fall within your definition. Yet the point is this is not so many generations ago, and their language (in English) feels closer than us than it does to Shakespeare because of a quirk of the wider fallout of the Great Vowel Shift, or whatever. The language feels close to us, and so do the pre-Victorian bawdiness and the features that have (wrongly) been compared to postmodernism. The humour feels positively Pythonesque, despite the fact that the author would have worn a wig and called his intimate family “thou”.
This is not so many generations ago. A major character recalls battles of the 1690s. Yet it all feels so timeless. We have more in common with the distant past than we think.
Dammit, my phone had buggered up the quotes. I’ll put your comments in italics:
Sometimes I wonder if proto-modern might be a better term than early modern. The early modern era certainly shows aspects that we consider modern, but they impacted only a small minority of the world’s population, even in the late 1700s. If you took an average human from 1750 CE, they’d have much more in common with an average human of 1750 BCE than with an average human of 2022.
I agree, but it’s interesting that it needs to be said. I’m currently reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a novel written over several years in the 1760s. These people-writer and characters, who represent his world- arguably fall within your definition. Yet the point is this is not so many generations ago, and their language (in English) feels closer than us than it does to Shakespeare because of a quirk of the wider fallout of the Great Vowel Shift, or whatever. The language feels close to us, and so do the pre-Victorian bawdiness and the features that have (wrongly) been compared to postmodernism. The humour feels positively Pythonesque, despite the fact that the author would have worn a wig and called his intimate family “thou”.
This is not so many generations ago. A major character recalls battles of the 1690s. Yet it all feels so timeless. We have more in common with the distant past than we think.