Yes. And you needed technological improvement to do intensive development, which was rare.
No it wasn't. The early modern period, which EU4 represents, was a period of unprecedented technological development. It wasn't as breathtaking as the industrial revolution, but it definitely laid the foundations for the emergence of industrial technology. EU4 period saw the introduction of various agricultural and industrial techniques which were much more capital intensive than ever before.
Technological improvement CAN happen (better scythe or new crop); so it mean province can produce more. But it's event (Agricultural Revolution, exactly) or tech improvement, not some ruler decision.
No it isn't. The technology existing on theory or on paper doesn't automatically translate to real world implementation. Many of the new technologies were, as I said, unprecedentedly capital intensive and required institutional and administrative changes to become viable. Capital, you see, needs to be accumulated by businesses and producers, and the state often needed to be involved in ensuring that accumulation.
but it allow you to place more people (tax), resourse zones (production), military infrastructure (manpower).
Again, you can't just expand the population by state fiat.
There are no such things called "resource zones". You seem to think that development is the state clearing away the brush, and telling producers to get at it. It's like saying that organizing a party involves an empty room: the quests will bring the cake and the beer, of course.
There were no empty lands in Europe anymore. Intensive development was the only plausible way to grow.
Expanding production would involve promoting new techniques. It would involve legal changes to clear away feudal restrictions. It would involve increased investment in effective public goods (such as property laws, contract laws, new business types, new financial arrangements). Urbanization requires new urban administration, municipal government, joint-stock enterprises and much much more. These changes actually consume state capacity, whereas It doesn't take much administrative effort to clear away marshes. Simple land use expansion is a so called shovel ready project: people do it on their own.
Simple - taxation shows head tax. No matter how you will take money to pay it, if you're listed in taxpayer list, you should pay. So you can up tax fee, fight corruption and finish intermediate links such as local collectors. Or you can up number of people who are taxpayers, but they need to live somewhere and do something.
There is no way to remove local intermediaries if you have no communication technology. Intermediaries were inevitable: tax leasing was pretty much the only way to collect revenue on a large scale. From Rome to Civil War US, it was the
publicani who collected revenue for the state.
The taxation system was always porous: you had no income taxes or reliable "head counts". What you had were tax farmers, who bought a tax farm, a collection turf so to speak, and owning it privately, they collected payments from the local peasants. There were differing tax farm arrangements: The tax farmers might pay a lump sum to the state in exchange for receiving a turf, which they could use as their credit card far as the law allowed them, or the tax farmers were state officials who collected revenue and took their own slice. The opportunities for corruption and graft were, naturally, huge if the tax collectors were not appropriately monitored by the law.
The other way to collect revenue was to impose tariffs, which is represented by tariff income and trade income.
The third was to establish state run or state-associated businesses and produce goods, which is represented by the production income.
But you can't just take humans to your manpower and put them in some empty field, right? You need some infrastructure.
The reservists are not housed in an army base. They live their own lives, farming, raising children, going to work, and so on. Until they are called to fight for the state.
Expanding the reserve doesn't necessarily call for new military infrastructure. It requires time from the military organization, whose professional soldiers need to go down to the provinces to train and instruct men, and then raise them to the reserve.
So it's not an issue with connection between local and central authority but improvement of province itself.
Yes, the local modifiers are almost overwhelmingly related to problems with local and central authorities. Non-accepted culture or religion interferes with communication and creates distrust. Non-cored provinces are not properly integrated and do not communicate with the capital.
That or they are temporary or exceptional circumstances.
And that level of technology wasn't good in tecnological improvement, you know - even Smith don't have technological upgrades in mind, he believed that industry have limited capabilities (so colonial rush again and free trade!).
The people at the time didn't understand many things. Smith believed in the labor theory of value and other silly nonsense.
The early modern era saw many technological changes. Living in 1444 was very different from living in the Napoleonic age.
