I would also like to see ideas about how this would be represented. It's not like the Victoria 2 system was all that impressive. Use a national focus to increase the number of bureaucrats in a state, research bureaucratic techs, and increase your admin funding slider. Whoopee, within about 40-50 years you will have achieved that wonderful perfect green color of 100% efficiency.
It was a poor system for reflecting the fact that although we saw a modernization and standardization of administration in the core of modernizing countries, this was hardly as uniform or easy as V2 makes it seem. The expansion of administration saw major resistance and local shitstorms as peasantry and rural populations of more farflung regions opposed the imposition of a central governmental direction and most crucially a bigger presence of the taxman.
The physical expansion of bureaucracy was crucial to this. A bureaucracy centralized purely in the capital is actually a fairly pre-modern idea. It is Rome, Constantinople, Kaifeng, Baghdad. The mass concentration of wealth and administration in a central imperial capital. But what makes modern states so much more resilient and powerful is that they are not this.
Modern Administration is a thousand heads, not one; a hydra of ink and paper that cannot be vanquished. Paris or Berlin are important centers but what really revolutionized bureaucracy in the modern era is that you also had offices in Munich, or in Bordeaux, in New York, or in New Orleans. It was a standardized, scaleable, systemic network that worked very hard and fought very hard to penetrate every aspect of its realm, to flex its newfound muscles. Many American towns in the nineteenth century were still shooting tax collectors. After 1917 the country had a permanent income tax.
In Europe, you saw explosions of spontaneous resistance and violence in localities against the expansion of bureaucracy. You need to see how from 1836 to 1936 the reality of your state shifts from a small core and large periphery to a far larger core and an even larger periphery that is now moving abroad to other countries as you solidify your grip. I rib on the perfect green color but it is a wonderful teaching tool, just too easy to achieve. You should lust for that glowing green as you force tax collectors into every nook and cranny, every medieval backwater, every venerable autonomous feudatory, as you pry open the pocketbooks of your ever more alienated citizenry for that extra dollar, pound, or mark.
It was a poor system for reflecting the fact that although we saw a modernization and standardization of administration in the core of modernizing countries, this was hardly as uniform or easy as V2 makes it seem. The expansion of administration saw major resistance and local shitstorms as peasantry and rural populations of more farflung regions opposed the imposition of a central governmental direction and most crucially a bigger presence of the taxman.
The physical expansion of bureaucracy was crucial to this. A bureaucracy centralized purely in the capital is actually a fairly pre-modern idea. It is Rome, Constantinople, Kaifeng, Baghdad. The mass concentration of wealth and administration in a central imperial capital. But what makes modern states so much more resilient and powerful is that they are not this.
Modern Administration is a thousand heads, not one; a hydra of ink and paper that cannot be vanquished. Paris or Berlin are important centers but what really revolutionized bureaucracy in the modern era is that you also had offices in Munich, or in Bordeaux, in New York, or in New Orleans. It was a standardized, scaleable, systemic network that worked very hard and fought very hard to penetrate every aspect of its realm, to flex its newfound muscles. Many American towns in the nineteenth century were still shooting tax collectors. After 1917 the country had a permanent income tax.
In Europe, you saw explosions of spontaneous resistance and violence in localities against the expansion of bureaucracy. You need to see how from 1836 to 1936 the reality of your state shifts from a small core and large periphery to a far larger core and an even larger periphery that is now moving abroad to other countries as you solidify your grip. I rib on the perfect green color but it is a wonderful teaching tool, just too easy to achieve. You should lust for that glowing green as you force tax collectors into every nook and cranny, every medieval backwater, every venerable autonomous feudatory, as you pry open the pocketbooks of your ever more alienated citizenry for that extra dollar, pound, or mark.
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