At 04:40 AM 7/23/04, Ken Koester wrote: >Robert Sallade wrote: > >> >>I believe that in Dragon, Vlad relates why armor and the technology of >>battle has been held in check. Basically because of the sorcerous arms >>race. As technology is mostly driven by the need to improve defensive >>capability, and the Dragaerans rely on sorcery, it is only logical that >>they would stay much the same. >? You've lost me, here. Are you saying that *all* technology is mostly >defensive driven? That's clearly wrong; cf. Gimpel's =The Medieval >Machine= for just one selection of counterexamples. Or are you saying >that military technology is mostly defensive driven? Again, I'd have to >disagree. Most of the 20th century arms race seems to have been driven by >the need for offensive capability, and I think you could make the same >case for the 16th-17th century revolution in arms as well. The very most >one could claim is that technology is equally driven by both, as one side >tries to outdo the other. You can see that phenomenon happening most >clearly in the evolution of the capital ship from about 1855 to >1940-ish. But since then, more effort has gone to the offensive side of >the scale, I feel. And the phrase, "the best defense is a strong offense," means...? The arms race of any century is driven by the need not to destroy others, but to safeguard resources. The best way to safeguard resources is to take what you can defend and then improve on what you used (offensively). This makes others think twice about trying to take things back or forces them to improve technology so that you can't take more. >>The technological state assumes that the Empire is still agrarian and >>therefore cannot sustain an extremely large population so I'd think that >>15 to 20 million would be the best it could do. With that number of >>people there is bound to be socio-economic and geographical differences >>in the manner of speech. >This seems much too conservative. Agrarian France had 26M+; Britain, >5.6M+. Europe as a whole could not have been less than 60M, and the >Empire is *at least* as large as Europe, to judge from travelling times >(before teleportation, that is). China must have had at least 100M. . . . >ah, I just pulled out my Braudel. In 1650, he cites a population for >europe (including European Russia) of 100M; Good examples, but one thing stands out here. The largest single empire you mention is 100M. The rest are continental populations. I'd need to check source material on this, but I believe China employed selective education as a means to achieve control over so many bodies. This included instilling a belief that the Emperor was god. Having a semi-educated populace that might aspire to higher status (the civil service tests) allows local governors to rule by proclamation. There were a great deal of people who could not read, but no one was disallowed from learning how. (definitely need to check sources on the following) Some governors made it a point to have anyone who asked taught to read. The second highest you quote for a single population is 25M which is not that much higher than my estimate. >There are hints. We certainly see noble families with few offspring >(although one would suspect the Teckla to offset this, and if they make up >90% of the population, they probably do). OTOH, we also see an Empire >large enough & complicated enough to have as one of its main functions the >balancing of trade of natural resources & food from one part of itself to >the other. So it has to be more than a simple agrarian society. Remember that agrarian does not mean subsistence farming. You cannot form an empire on providing goods and services without a means to feed the population. The vast majority of the population is involved with farming (the Teckla), therefore most of the Empire deals with food. The balancing act of resource management simply means that there is another, smaller segment of the population that has been freed from farming by better farming methods. Mercantilism does not preclude that a society is agrarian. >Finally, if the Empire *is* as depopulated as you would guess, based >largely on the difference in life expectancy, what of the Easterners? >*They* should be plentiful, & pushing on the boundaries in their teeming >hordes constantly. Yet over time, one gets the impression that both sides >have pushed themselves into equilibrium. the Dragaerans have advantages, >of course. But one gets the impression that the Empire has just a bit of >population pressure within itself helping to turn the attention of various >warlords eastwardly. It is possible that the Easterners are much more populous. Army size would be greater than what the Dragaerans could muster. Then there is the problem of geography. Logistically, getting a large army over those mountains unseen (or even whole) and ready to fight would be a royal pain in the butt.