Institutional rights

[unmerged(37275)]

I was reading a book on 18th century Europe which was examining the economic issues during the time period which led to slow industrial development in some countries over other. Many of these issues cross over into the 19th century, as most countries were very slow to adapt. I was wondering whether any would be modelled.

The book claims that the main stumbling block was around institutional rights. In some countries the landlords and guilds/towns had such power that they basically stifled industrialisation. Basically these groups did everything they could to ensure they made plenty of money. Guilds/towns prevented craftsmen from moving into the country and also ensured they gained a monopoly on goods. Thus they protected themselves from cheap industrial competition providing the goods from far away places were not flooding into the country. In turn, the landlords who made their money off serfs and peasants who had no choice and had no reason to develop their lands more effectively. Strong interests of the villages, particularly around common land etc prevented enclosure. All this prevented agricultural change.

Anyway, the question here is whether this could be modelled in the game. Similar perhaps to the sliders in EUIII, or perhaps part of culture techs. So some nations start with powerful landlords and villages which prevent agricultural development. Basically POPs are forced to remain as farmers due to ties to landlord and land. As the nation reduces these rights (and increase land enclosure), so POPs can start to convert to artisans, to model movement into towns and towards craft industries (though as the population of the nation increases, this should start to happen naturally). Farming in turn becomes more effeicient. A nation could also start with powerful guilds, which prevent pops from turning from Artisans into craftsmen and clerks. Perhaps POPs in the nation get a modifier on how much the goods will cost, as guild privilege decreases, so the cost of goods decrease until they are in line with the world market (to show the loss in monopoly). As the power of the guilds is reduced, so capitalists start to appear (perhaps a slow conversion of aristos to caps to show early speculation, followed by officers, clergy and clerks) factories begin to be built, and POPs convert to craftsmen and clerks. Trade rules could also help to erode guild and farming rights, as cheap food and goods from overseas flood in, so the privileged groups will struggle to keep competitive as their nations trade attitude increase.

Of course, decreasing privileges causes major upset for the aristos and artisans. Also, it increases the CON of your POPs (no longer kept down).

Anyway, just something I was thinking about while reading this book.

 

[Grosshaus]

I'm waiting to see a developer diary on laws and decisions, as this kind of thing could be implemented with them. Would fit nicely by having certain techs as requirement to make decisions, but normally not pushing you to make them as in Victoria 1.

 

[Orinsul]

this is the point i was attempting the other day albeit from the other side, If the old Rights are maintained, if the 'serfs' arent forced off the land and if the artisans, the guilds and free craftsman successfully resist those changes than Industrialism wouldnt be the most profitable course.

Youve got the wrong way round though, if Landowners had no reason to drive people off the land people would still be on the land, Wool became very profitable and so the aristocrats went to the government and asked for law changes to allow them to force the people off the common land so they could put sheep there, Thats how the Industrial revolution started.
The Guilds supported the craftsmen, not repress them, thats why craftsmen supported them, Ludditism and its sister movements abroad was a counter-act by the 'artisans' against industrialism in defence of the guilds and the old rights, People didnt fight industrialism because they were against personal rights or against profit or technology, they fought against it because it stood to destroy them and we only have to look at the facts of the last two hundred years and we can see that it did.

Its not a question of preventing 'agricultural development' but surely thatd be simpler that achieve and appease the whigs among us, but what is needed is a question as to make a choice as whether that development will lead by the aristocrats and artisans or the capitalists and factories.

Decreasing privileges should upset the artisans and the farmers and possibly turn a percentage of artistocrats into capitalists or atleast speed up the natural transistion. Remember that you are talking about the removal of Rights, its in the very title.

 

[unmerged(37275)]

Yes, but why did wool become very profitable? There must have been an increase in demand. Unlikely to be overseas demand, so it must have been local demand. This means that local people are earning more money (wage employment becomes worthwhile). Why would they be earning more money? Because the rights of the landlords are curbed enough to allow the peasants to make a proper living off the land (or landlords are forced to pay for their labour on his own land). Instead of being taxed, thrown off the land randomly etc, the peasants develop their plots so they can make enough money which they can use to buy wool items. Thus the start of the agricultural revolution.

Land enclouse or throwing people off land for wool production all amounts to the same thing. Landlords see they can make more money by enclosing their land/throwing people off of the land. However, this relys on the landlords being unable to make a decent living any other way. Why throw people off the land if they all work for you for free due to your power over them? Wool is profitable, so just tell them they will be shepards from now on. Only if you have to pay them a wage does it become profitable to throw them off the land (until industrilisation becomes so wide spread that even this can't keep you competitive). So only if the landlords rights are low will they have to throw them off the land to make decent money (and have to petition parlement to do this).

As for the guilds, that was pretty much what I meant. The guilds support the artisans and vice versa. The guilds have monopolies over crafts. Industrilisation threatans to destroy all the individual people who make goods as factories do it much more effeciently. Thus the rights and privilages of the guilds will be used to protect the artisan and prevent the factories from appearing. So guilds with a lot of power will stop industrilisation. Guilds with no power will not be able to do anything.

So, if aristos are powerful, there will be few people moving to be artisans (except through general pop growth). They have no incentive to change anything from the status quo. If aristos are weak and guilds strong, lots of peasants will be forced off the land, as those who own land try to maximise profit. Strong guilds prevent any factories, artisans produce small amount of inefficeint goods. Weak guilds and strong aristos means some industrilisation, but not much as most people cannot leave the land. Only in the case of weak guilds and weak aristos does industrilisation become profitable enough for everyone to bother with.

Anyway, points for disscussion.

 

[EGaffney]

People didnt fight industrialism because they were against personal rights or against profit or technology, they fought against it because it stood to destroy them and we only have to look at the facts of the last two hundred years and we can see that it did.

The problem is that this is very much a minority view, among historians and observers at large, and it contradicts evidence on both comparative living standards and internal migration from countryside to cities, each of which supports the idea that people as a whole chose industrial over agrarian employment, leading to more goods, the U-shaped equality-time curve, viable democracy, etc. We all have minority perspectives on certain social phenomena, but we can't expect them to be included in a game that is already going to struggle to attract an audience of reasonable numbers.

 

[unmerged(37275)]

I wonder if a lot of this is around the way people were paid?

In the beginning most people grew enough to feed themseleves. The rest was taken by the landlord who sold the items. Spare time was spent either laying around or working for free on the landlords land. As landlord rights were eroded, so the people could sell their own surplus and the landlord had to pay them to work on their land. Suddenly they have a bit of money lying around. What better thing to do than to spend it on industrial goods made by artisans. Suddenly there is a new market for industrial goods and so more people become artisans. The farmers start to improve their land, meaning that some of them start to earn some serious money. Landlords are forced to follow suit. These start to drive industrilisation. People are forced off the land and move to the cities. Population growth also starts to fuel this movement of people into cities. They set up small household industries, which are now profitable enough (partly due to more money from country and greater population who are buying). The new rich aristos and farmers start to gamble their money in new ventures and inventions to make their land better, and in turn start to invest in these artisans by providing captial to allow them to buy new machines etc themselves. Bang, the industrial revolution.

 

[ComradeOm]

I wonder if a lot of this is around the way people were paid?

Its not a matter of payment but you were closer the first time. The emergence of capitalism did indeed entail the systematic destruction of old institutional rights but this did not apply solely to guilds or the like. As oppressed as they were, peasants also had rights under feudal customs, certain protections that had been built up over the centuries. The erosion of these various laws/customs was as significant a factor as land enclosures (probably significantly more outside of Britain) in creating a new industrial proletariat

Which is not to detract from the very real allure that urban employment held for a peasantry based on subsistence farming. As EGaffney points out, ultimately people moved to the cities because it represented better choice

 

[unmerged(63310)]

Quote alot was also technology based profitability. Large landowners had most of the production and hence profit and power for most of human history. International trade and widespread literacy with cheap books brought old ideas out and sped up the spread of new ideas which risk taking people could gamble with and in a static society the outliers gains are very large initially so that when enough succeeded the land owning class supported the risk takers(since the land owners would also reap the majority of rewards) but fairly quickly a whole new class of people(bourgeoisie is typically named in western history) arose which controlled enough capital to invest in themselves without the landowners controlling the rewards.

Guilds and such were part of the old system related to rights and monopolies granted by the landowning class and when technology began to shake up the old system some members of guilds became the new capitalists(as did some landowners) but many also resisted the changes along with majority of the land owners. Some of the resistance was due simply to sources of power in society shifting to rest on less static foundations which appeared chaotic to a people used to a traditional conservative outlook but most of the resistance was simply people acting to protect their own interests. IE- many guilds were perfectly happy to use the new technology to increase their profits but they wanted to maintain their monopolies so wouldn't have to face outside competition but the most competitive guilds wanted to reduce monopolies because they knew they would make more profit. Landowners whose wealth was based on land began to realize that wealth was nothing without the cheap labor to reap it and competition from other sources of employment degraded their profitability to the point to remain competitive they also had to incorporate new technology to become efficient and that opened up new jobs as well(once you train someone to run machinery in basic industrialized society that skill set can be taken and applied to almost any mechanized job).

 

[Orinsul]

Wool prices were driven up due to the demands for wool uniforms during the napoleonic wars, the enclosers stole the common land and presented the landowners with a new opportunity for great, unprecedented profit. After the war rather than return the land to the people it was kept in the hands of the 'new millionaires' those people who had once been minor aristocrats and traders who would come to be known as capitalists, and used for the large scale farming of agricultural produce, this drove down the price of a farmers product and meant that very little ended up in the hands of the actual farmers as well as putting most rural people out of work.
So now a new group of people were born, poor and without secure work and without the right that had been guaranteed to all of their ancestors, to enough land to feed themselves and their family, without the guarantee of work and a home of their own, Those are the people who moved on mass to the cities and became the industrial workforce. Driven off the land by first wave of industrialism and the new resource that allowed the second.
This isnt a minority view its established history.
And the guilds were always middle-class, yes by the end they degenerated but then everything does, they were in need of reform but all they got was abolition, but their fall was not though none profitability but though government and centralised control of the economy, the guilds were more or less half way between a trade union and a government, a representative body of one industry that regulates thats one industry, weavers electing a weaver to set the laws that will govern weaving, in rude and very general terms. And then government took the ability to regulate the economic from the guilds as they wanted it for themselves and the guilds were pretty much idential to modern trade unions except in an age when their was little in the way of employer or employee as most of those people covered by the guilds were self-employed. Industrialism was the end to the craftsman, rather than one man who would make a single product he was replaced with a number of people who each made one peice of the thing and so without control of their production and without the skills or knowledge to make the whole thing themselves had no power over their conditions.

The Death of the Guilds gives more power the landowners, which is why the C19th saw them holding more power and more wealth than they ever had before. And then the next industrial revolution came along in the 1880s and gave the upper hand to the urban industrialists.
And peasents, atleast in england and most places that werent either france or east of germany, had more rights before the C19th than after, ever to-day in the democratic age the poor have less rights than under the old system, more freedoms but less rights.

 

[Sute]{h]

I think you attribute to much importance to wool prices Orinsul. A lot of other factors played a significant role in the industrialization: Technological innovations such as the steam engine and capitalistic ideology to name a couple of them. Attempting to make a mono-casual explanation is highly doubtful.

Also from a purely economic point of view industrialisd countries are better. They can produce far more goods for consumption than pre-industrial societies. So if the old rights are maintained and industrialization is prevented, you wouldn't end up with an equally productive society.

 

[Orinsul]

I never said it was wool, i said it was the encloses, that the people were driven off the land, Starting with wool was in response to a question above from Lord_richmond, post 6, and i was speaking in general terms, but the wool and foodstuffs price rises during the war is what took encloses from the exception to the rule and the mass encloses are the catalyst of industralism. In Pre-industrial societies if there was a time-saving technological advance then it would be used to create the same amount of goods but in a smaller amount of time so as to have work finished more quickly, as most people were self-employed and there wasnt really the market for the excess of goods, Industrialism didnt happen because the market was there, it made the market by supplying the product in excess, Industrialism was a shift in ethos, from working in order to get by to working for profit and profit as the motivation, from pride in the good to pride in the profit. And of course it was then thousand other things as well, we are talking about Humans, you cant take one thing and say this is it, but you can say this is important.
Yes you wouldnt end up with an equally productive society, but thats not a bad thing.

 

[telesien]

Two reasons for importance of wool in Britain
a) British islands were hit hard by black death. Rest of Europe got to the same number of people in about 100 years, in Britain it took more than 300. So they had a lot of land and few people. Sheep were the best option for them
b)When textile production became mechanized, the first machines were hard on the thread and cotton was too weak. Until the discovery of cotton gin (I believe that is the name for it...) it was necessary to mix cotton and wool 1:1

And the reason for industrialisation in Britain has also something to do with so called poor relieves. When people had some kind of protection againt famine, they were willing to leave farming and move to cities.

 

[unmerged(68110)]

In the case of England, factory work only became a "deliberate" choice once the Poor Laws were abolished.

It was much better to live by those than work 16 hours on those sh*tholes and die due to injury and disease with a miserable pay.

 

[Orinsul]

they werent abolitished, they were ammended beyond all recognition by people who mistook slavery for charity and thought they were doing the right thing.
the discussion probably ought to end soon as it seems not to be so much about the game unless one of you can figure a way to get it back, bound to get in trouble soon.

Laws by way of decisions could be used to preserve your people from industrial progress and certainly the poor laws could be included in the game but thatd mean starting with quite good social reforms and then getting rid of them mid-game only to slow work back to them again Certainly if there was a high minimun wage, 12 hour day and saftey regulations mass industrialisation wouldnt have succeeded, small local factories of a handfull of employees and producing goods for local needs maybe, but probably production wouldnt have been so consolidated. So if you raise all the Social Reforms straight off the bat that ought to change the way the world goes

 

[unmerged(37275)]

My long experience of these forums is that they don't usually close threads that are producing interesting historical debate, even if it becomes somewhat unconnected with the game. Anyway, this debate is related to the game and potentially to mechanics.

To come back to the point on institutional rights, really it is why did the landlords develop new ways of working? Why grow cotton? I mean if enclosure is so profitable, why did it take so long to establish itself in the rest of europe? Because in Britain the aristos had to find new ways of making money as their control over the peasants and the land was much weaker. They had to pay their peasants money to work their land, they couldn't just throw their peasants off the land to graze sheep and livestock (as the landlords in Spain could and did). They were weak. They had to get new laws created to do things which other landlords could do as their God given right. These other landlords had no real incentive to improve the land, as they were rich enought, and didn't have to pay for labour. Where the aristos were weak, tennant farmers and smallholders could appear, who could deveop their own land and become rich. Perhaps even buying enough land to beomce aristos themseleves. This is something the old aristo would not like. So again, in many countries the aristos (and local villages) did everything they could to prevent this from happening. It also added an incentive to the old aristos to follow suit to ensure they remianed rich themselves relative to the new farming elite. The more powerful the aristos, the less the peasants developed their own land.

It was not just aristos, but the rights of all the old institutions who in effect dictated how land could be used. To protect themselves they prevented the rise of the small land holder and tennant farmers who would help drive the agricultural revolution and thus later the industrial revolution.

I certainly agree it was a shift from working to get by to working for profit. But for most people, with the rules imposed on them from above, they could not work for profit. Only when the institutional rights of those above were weak could those below start to work for profit rather than to get by. Only working for profit could cause increases in artisans and eventually industrilisation. But if your landlord can make you work for free, tax you what he likes, destroy any improvements you have made to your land (such as roaming his sheep across them in Spain) you may as well sit around and do nothing than work/improve your land for no return.

 

[telesien]

I mean if enclosure is so profitable, why did it take so long to establish itself in the rest of europe?

Before enclosure the land was divided into smaller fields and land owned by one man was spread across large area. Some guys, sadly I've forgotten their names, came with theory explaining, that it was sort of primitive insurance. So when f.e. fire came, it destroyed only part of your fields. The same with flood or even hailstorm. It also helped with cooperation in villages. You and your twenty neihbours had narrow stripes of field in one location. You all were forced to grow similar crops there (cabbage wouldn't get enough sun around higher wheat) and when wheat harvest came, you all helped each other, since your fields were close. And when cabbage harvest came, it happened again. It was actually quite effective system. The main reasons for enclosre were: higher production, since you were no longer forced to grow the same crops as your neighbours or possibility to use machinery more effectively. It was also enabled by other forms of insurance against various catastrophes. All-in-all unenclosed land had its own advantages and so it is not that black and white as it might seem today

 

[unmerged(68110)]

@Lord_Richmond: The "New Aristocrat", that is, the landowner that had a clear interest towards being an administrator rather than an useless nobleman whose lands are completely improductive, was brought into being in Great Britain after the English Revolution. Although the Dutch had already created very efficient forms of land organization, distribution and rent systems, the descentralized nature of the Republic and the commercial character of that nation led to a much lesser focus on these matters... Something that the British had been worried for a while.

You have to consider that, compared to America or even the European continent, the British Isles are tiny. Really small. You are never THAT much far away from the shore, and while the land is reasonably good, it's just too damn small! So the land rent skyrocketed in the United Kingdom...

...Whereas in France or pretty much anywhere else (except the Netherlands) land was much cheaper. Land acquisition is far harder in the isles, so what to do? Better make my property be more productive then! The British aristocracy took a look into the case of the Netherlands, the French physiocrats, and so on and on, but while they were now making much more money by acting like administrators rather than noblemen, they were set against the rising industrial bourgeoise. This conflict would only be solved by David Ricardo who would utterly defeat the rural aristocracy by forcing them to help industrialization or "become enemies of the British people", so to speak.

And that's where I get to my point.

This new form of land management brought EXACTLY the aristocratic downfall, but only in countries where the land rent was too high. Better agriculture brought a mass of landless labourers who would form the cottage industry of the former ruralist soon-to-be industrialist, which would form the foundations of the factory. And there it goes.

Whereas it didn't happen where the land rent was low. A Scottish farmer lost his land. Instead of working his arse off in some crappy tool workshop or something like that, it was much easier that he went to America and kill some indians to get a large tract of land where he is able to produce just anything he would damn please. The incentive to work at industry in the New World came from the much higher wages (driven by low land rent) instead of lack of options.

This is only one of the many reasons why I would like to see Vicky II, or perhaps an expansion, handling the issue of land rent which was (and still is!) one of the major subjects in political economy.

 

[unmerged(37275)]

Thats an interesting point Pijama. Though surely it is more complex than that. Surely land rents were high not because of the lack of land for sale but because food was becoming more expensive due to the rising population and limited supply. If rich aristos own all the land, and they have institutional rights to it to prevent anyone else from buying it or using it then surely land rent would be relative only to the cost of living of the aristos. So as food becomes more expensive so they increase the land rent, to ensure they can continue to live in the style they are accustomed to. Only if their institutional rights are weak will there be a demand for land from non-aristos. In this case rents will increase relative to cost of living and demand for land.

Now this may lead to the aristos improving their land, but there doesn't seem a lot of point if you can still get the money by raising rents. Esp if the peasants have no rights, you can simply make them work harder/for less. Only if you are a small holder is there a real interest in developing your land, so you could get more money and join your richer counter-parts (and pay your rents if owed). Thus why most inititives started with the small land holder and moved on to the rich aristo. But this relied on the small holders being able to hold out against the aristos.