Azish Bureaucracy

[NysemePtem]

So the Azish Bureaucracy is famous enough throughout Roshar that they joke about it in Alethkar. But it seems incongruous to me that they can have this enormous bureaucracy which apparently requires constant filling out of official forms without something like a printing press. 

I know that xylography (woodblock printing) is an option, but it's far from an easy task - especially on such a massive scale. They have forms for things as simple as dietary restrictions - not just messages scribbled out, but actual forms. Sigzil gives us more hints about just how much paperwork is involved in even an ordinary Azish person's life. This means there's probably thousands of different forms - which entails many, many times that number of carved woodblocks if the Azish government remains this densely bureacratic throughout the entire country. Not to mention, those woodblocks have to be replaced, and if Azish Bureaucracy is anything like ours, they have to be updated as well. 

Paper manufacturing is another issue, but a smaller one. I imagine that, if nothing else, massive amounts of paper can be made through soulcasting. 

Anyone have ideas on how the Azish support their bureaucracy?

-Spanreeds do solve some problems, like making copies of forms for records, but unless you can create more than two paired spanreeds it would still take a crazy amount of effort to make all those forms. 

-Jasnah is precise enough that she can soulcast fire into words, but fabrials can't achieve that precision, and there aren't enough. 

-could the Azish have something like a Gutenberg press?

My initial impression of Rosharan technology leads me to believe otherwise, but I could be wrong. Some other fabrial could be involved, or maybe the Azish are just more mechanically inclined. 

[DiePie]

I would think that it would only be, like, the nobility of the country that does this, they see filling out forms as a sign of civilization so they do it; but if you were to go down the chain to the lower class (who would make up the majority of the population) and the people administering them, you'd find a lot less paper. 

Also, the Azish bureaucracy seems a lot more efficient, so they probably end up collecting more in taxes, which would allow them to support that bureaucracy.

I don't know that this is enough, because paper was expensive at this time.

[NysemePtem]

6 hours ago, DiePie said:

I would think that it would only be, like, the nobility of the country that does this, they see filling out forms as a sign of civilization so they do it; but if you were to go down the chain to the lower class (who would make up the majority of the population) and the people administering them, you'd find a lot less paper. 

Also, the Azish bureaucracy seems a lot more efficient, so they probably end up collecting more in taxes, which would allow them to support that bureaucracy.

I don't know that this is enough, because paper was expensive at this 

True. Probably helps enforce a class hierarchy 

[Nellac]

14 hours ago, NysemePtem said:

So the Azish Bureaucracy is famous enough throughout Roshar that they joke about it in Alethkar. But it seems incongruous to me that they can have this enormous bureaucracy which apparently requires constant filling out of official forms without something like a printing press. 

I know that xylography (woodblock printing) is an option, but it's far from an easy task - especially on such a massive scale. They have forms for things as simple as dietary restrictions - not just messages scribbled out, but actual forms. Sigzil gives us more hints about just how much paperwork is involved in even an ordinary Azish person's life. This means there's probably thousands of different forms - which entails many, many times that number of carved woodblocks if the Azish government remains this densely bureacratic throughout the entire country. Not to mention, those woodblocks have to be replaced, and if Azish Bureaucracy is anything like ours, they have to be updated as well. 

 

I think you're not taking into account soulcasting. They could make a woodblock press and then soulcast it into steel or something similar that will last a long time. They could also make it out of Wax or something similarly easy to carve.

Here's my best thought. They create molds of each individual letter. These can be created with wax to make them precise then soulcast into metal.They place these in a tub with the spaces filled by blocks. They write the message they need, then fill the tub with water. Then soulcast the water into metal/wood and you have your base for printing a form.

I know that's not written the best, but I think it gets the gist of the point across.

[Karger]

They have an extraordinarily high literacy rate and maybe something like shorthand.  Dalinar notes that their writing system looks a bit odd so maybe they can use it to write faster.  Also they don't have much in the way of military conflicts for most of the region and they might be wealthy enough to support a large population of people who just copy out duplicates.  They do not have many soulcasters and those would be impractical for remote areas.

Edited March 2, 2020 by Karger

[Frustration]

They could just have large amounts of empty duplicates on storage, they could certainly make more than are used on a daily basis 

[Karger]

4 minutes ago, Booknerd said:

They could just have large amounts of empty duplicates on storage, they could certainly make more than are used on a daily basis 

The question is how you make those without a printing press.  Copying them by hand sounds like a pain.