Pre-industrial élites are, primarily, vicious & brutal gangs of thieves. So how can one write or read or think about þem wiþ anything but a shudder of disgust? Schizophrenia! We should shudder in...
Dear good man Brad. How the hell do you do this (and everything else)? Kindly distribute those surplus lobes of neural capacity that must swell out of your cranium.
For me, it's #4 which is the best reason not to tell the tale of Thermopylae as Herodotus tells it. But I also think there's an element of #3 as well: Thermopylae is just not that important. Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea were important and we should tell that story, leaving Thermopylae as a footnote.
A comment regarding the early agrarian society. Slowly advancing technology at 4% per year was probably being divided between agricultural and military, and very little towards healthcare, with respect to trauma and infectious disease. For sure conquering empires of the era kept check on a Malthusian reality.
One more thing you have noted in Thomas Jefferson’s classical studies was that of the declining Roman Empire under duress from over-luxury, corruption, and contempt by the plutocrats, thus contributing to its fall. Correspondingly in the modern era, we see the advanced Global North countries decline with a similar trajectory. One only wonders if economic abundance leads to this destination? If so, is this a function of social construct, human spirit, or codified within the homosapien genes?
Could a matriarchal society guide this path better and still handle the rigors of external competition and conflict? I have yet to see where history has given guidance.
I wonder if Chris Wickham's recent work does not present some problems for Brad's pre-industrial grand narrative. In Wickham's version of the European feudal economy, things were not as bad in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, at least after 950 or so, as Brad suggests. Both Wickham's 2021 Essay "How did the Feudal Economy Work?" and its recent enormous expansion, "The Donkey and the Boat", while very much Marxian in their overall outlook, were fairly upbeat in their assessment that most peasants, most years, made above-subsistence livings. The Lords could be mean, yes, but the peasants had advantages (that they played to the hilt) and managed the lords pretty well. If Wickham is right, the "enough" condition that Brad mentions so often was actually being met hundreds of years before the technological revolution, and the "not enough" story would fail to explain the social structure pre-industrial Europe.
As a defense of Sparta, this really won't do. I think we can all agree that behind the veil of ignorance, we would all much rather be born into Athenian society (perhaps a 40% chance of being a slave) than Spartan society (as much as 90% chance of being a much worse off slave.) What about Persian society? One could have a debate; but I think Athens > Persia > Sparta.
The question you seem to be raising is, but what if you were guaranteed to be born a thug with a spear? In that case, I think Persia > Sparta because it was so much more successful an extortion operation and Athens > Sparta because the life of an Athenian thug seems to have been much more interesting than that of a Spartiate.
Dear good man Brad. How the hell do you do this (and everything else)? Kindly distribute those surplus lobes of neural capacity that must swell out of your cranium.
For me, it's #4 which is the best reason not to tell the tale of Thermopylae as Herodotus tells it. But I also think there's an element of #3 as well: Thermopylae is just not that important. Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea were important and we should tell that story, leaving Thermopylae as a footnote.
Oh, professor -- what a sagacious ramble through the centuries, like Diogenes with his lamp, looking for one peaceful and productive culture!
A comment regarding the early agrarian society. Slowly advancing technology at 4% per year was probably being divided between agricultural and military, and very little towards healthcare, with respect to trauma and infectious disease. For sure conquering empires of the era kept check on a Malthusian reality.
One more thing you have noted in Thomas Jefferson’s classical studies was that of the declining Roman Empire under duress from over-luxury, corruption, and contempt by the plutocrats, thus contributing to its fall. Correspondingly in the modern era, we see the advanced Global North countries decline with a similar trajectory. One only wonders if economic abundance leads to this destination? If so, is this a function of social construct, human spirit, or codified within the homosapien genes?
Could a matriarchal society guide this path better and still handle the rigors of external competition and conflict? I have yet to see where history has given guidance.
I wonder if Chris Wickham's recent work does not present some problems for Brad's pre-industrial grand narrative. In Wickham's version of the European feudal economy, things were not as bad in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, at least after 950 or so, as Brad suggests. Both Wickham's 2021 Essay "How did the Feudal Economy Work?" and its recent enormous expansion, "The Donkey and the Boat", while very much Marxian in their overall outlook, were fairly upbeat in their assessment that most peasants, most years, made above-subsistence livings. The Lords could be mean, yes, but the peasants had advantages (that they played to the hilt) and managed the lords pretty well. If Wickham is right, the "enough" condition that Brad mentions so often was actually being met hundreds of years before the technological revolution, and the "not enough" story would fail to explain the social structure pre-industrial Europe.
As a defense of Sparta, this really won't do. I think we can all agree that behind the veil of ignorance, we would all much rather be born into Athenian society (perhaps a 40% chance of being a slave) than Spartan society (as much as 90% chance of being a much worse off slave.) What about Persian society? One could have a debate; but I think Athens > Persia > Sparta.
The question you seem to be raising is, but what if you were guaranteed to be born a thug with a spear? In that case, I think Persia > Sparta because it was so much more successful an extortion operation and Athens > Sparta because the life of an Athenian thug seems to have been much more interesting than that of a Spartiate.