Why the Alethi are not a medieval society

king of nowhere · February 28, 2016

I disagree. Have an up vote though.

Having fired both modern and older artillery pieces, I can tell you that aiming a cannon is not easy.

At its most basic, aiming a cannon requires that you adjust left or right for accuracy. Then lock that in place or the force of the shot will ruin your next one. Then you need to adjust for range, up and down. The only way to do that is to guess, then fire the cannon and see where the shot lands. Modern armies use spotters for this. Again, having done this, it takes a few minutes for even a well practiced spotter and artillery crew to get rounds on target.

...

What is the incentive to make these things? They won't kill shard bearers, who would have to be university level stupid to get hit by something the size of a cannon. To defeat an army? Your own shard bearers can do that with no expense and far faster. To intimidate? The Alethi charged into freaking lightning. If that doesn't break them then an old school cannon is a cakewalk. To look cool? Shard. Plate.

When siege weapons were mentioned, I assumed we were speaking of balistas, not cannons. Ancient romans used balistas (basically, giant crossbows that fired a spear as a projectile) and they were fairly accurate, since they were capable of targeting the leaders of the enemy armies with those. They should be accurate enough that hitting a shardbearer is reasonably possible, and powerful enough that they will punch through plate, or at least crack it significantly. In fact, those weapons would make more sense in alethkar than in our world.

Also, I think people here are overestimating the effect of shardbearers on warfare. We are told that there are less than 100 sets of shards in the whole world, about half of whom in alethkar and jah keved. Many nations only have a set or two. The vast majority of battles have nothing to do with shardbearers, especially in the west. You don't stop using a weapon just because it is ineffective against one single unit the enemy has, especially when it is still effective against the rest of the army. Especially not when nothing else you have is really effective against it anyway. And you can see that even the alethi, with their many shardbearers, still use many things that are useless against sharbearers, like armors and shields and bows, simply because the army is not made of shardbearers. Hammers would be better than swords and spears against plate, yet most alethi troops are equipped with spears, because they work better against lightly armored targets, which are the majority. In a similar light, they did use metal armor on scadrial despite the presence of allomancers, because the advantage of having armor against regular troops is enough to compensate for the disadvantage when fighting allomancers. The concession they made to allomancy was making the armors so that they could be removed quickly.

So I argue that roshar lacks gunpowder not because they have no reasons to develop it, but because as far as physical technology goes, they are fairly backwards. And that's caused by magic, because they are focusing research on magic technology rather than mundane technology. Shooting a bullet with a fabrial is apparently very difficult, so they don't have it. Making a spanreed is instead quite simple, so they have instant communication before they have gunpowder, while in our world the opposite happened.

The fact that gunpowder would be difficult to store with the wet climate could help prevent its general use, but only after it has been discovered. We have no indication that gunpowder has ever been discovered on roshar. The disincentive on discovering it is not that it would be ineffective, but that studies are focused on fabrials instead of alchemy.

Edited February 28, 2016 by king of nowhere

sheep · February 28, 2016

“Ah,” he said, clapping ample hands, “dear young woman. Are you in the market for a nice novel? Some leisure reading to pass the cruel hours while you are separated from a lost love? Or perhaps a book on geography, with details of exotic locations?” He had a slightly condescending tone and spoke in her native Veden.

“A romantic novel,” she said, holding her satchel close to her chest. “Yes, perhaps that would be nice. Do you by chance have a copy of Nearer the Flame?”

The merchant blinked. Nearer the Flame was written from the viewpoint of a man who slowly descended into madness after watching his children starve.

Chapter 8, "Nearer the Flame", WoK

Shallan strode down the mansion’s back steps to the kitchen, thumping each foot down harder than it would normally fall, trying to imitate being heavier than she was. The cook looked up from her novel and dropped it in a wide-eyed panic, moving to stand.

“Back already?” the cook said, not looking up from her novel. She was Herdazian, from the accent. “His gift tonight wasn’t nice enough? Or did the other one spot you two together?”

Chapter 52, "Into the Sky", WoR

Dalinar stared at them. Palona even had a novel out and was reading.

“They were making a racket,” Sebarial said. “Wandering around, shouting at one another, weeping and wailing. Very poetic. Figured someone should get them moving. My army is already off on that other plateau. It’s getting rather cramped there, you realize.”

Palona flipped the page in her novel, barely paying attention.

Chapter 86, "Patterns of Light", WoR

I think one of the things we should be considering when we decide how much Alethkar and Roshar are stuck in medieval stasis is whether or not they have invented the printing press. This obviously leads to a big discussion on Vorin cultural attitudes towards gender role expectations, but I shall ignore that for now. From the quotes above these are things we know and can infer about how widespread reading and owning books is:

Not only does Kharbranth's Palanaeum have tens of thousands of books, but there is enough demand and stock available for the presence of multiple bookshops in the city
Reading for leisure is a common hobby
Shallan, rural Veden country girl, knows about the hyped bestsellers
Amaram's cook (are Herdazians all darkeyed?) can afford books on a servant's salary. Is paper soulcast?
Sebarial's mistress (also Herdazian) has books and doesn't mind bringing them to a place where they might get wet, lost or destroyed

None of this would make much sense if books were copied by hand, unless they have fabrial technology that makes one writing hand holding a spanreed pen copy onto multiple sheets of paper simultaneously. But this would leave massive quality control issues when one pen runs dry, and you'd still need people to proofread and change pages as necessary. It would still make books too expensive for servants, since you'd only be producing something like 2-8 books for 12 hours of copying.

They have the Soulcaster technology to make printing presses. You can carve the type out of wood and soulcast them to lead, and copy the type using wax or clay impressions to make another set, and another. Soulcasters are very expensive, but you'd have to do it once. Engravings and illustrations in books can be soulcast from carved wooden panels as well, if they don't have the chemistry technology for acid etching. This could perhaps explain the existence of Adolin's fashion folios. It's incredibly time consuming to make drawings by hand for each folio, especially if you want the drawings to stay on model from book to book. But if the picture pages were made from engraved plates, or multiple plates per page for shading/colour, it would be feasible.

Having printing technology, I would say, moves Alethkar out of medieval level and into early modern. Though cultural taboos prevent the whole population from being literate, the presence of books seems common enough not to be remarkable. Whereas in a truly medieval setting, books would have been hand-copied and illuminated on animal skin parchments, meant to last for 200 years at least due to their massive expense. Romantic novels for girls' leisure reading show that books can be disposable.

It was time to go woo her betrothed. Somehow. The novels she’d read made it seem easy. A batting of eyelashes, blushes at appropriate times. Well, she had that last one down in good measure. Except maybe the appropriate part.

Chapter 47, "Feminine Wiles", WoR

And something I've wondered from the first quote, "spoke her native Veden". Does this mean Alethi and Veden are different languages? Are they branches from a common root, like Danish is to Dutch, or dialects of the same language that may or may not be mutually intelligible, like Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese?

**Rasarr** · February 28, 2016

@sheep - an upvote for you, very good point. I think it'd be interesting to ask Brandon whether Roshar has printing press, and if not, how can there be so many books. I'd personally lean towards interpretation that there are printing presses, but the design may use fabrials in some way.

Also, regarding the discussion about gunpowder development and Shardplate - could it be that Rosharans didn't think about developing gunpowder because they can't see a weapon more potent than Shards? I mean, Shardblade and Shardplate are "heirloom" of those Knights Radiant, once servants of the Almighty, the powerful weapons that mystically lend you strength, that kill without cutting flesh and can be disappeared and appeared as one desires. The "atypical" weapon designs, such as Veden half-shards (was that the name of those fabrial shields?), Sadeas' grandbow or that giant hammer of somebody else's are all pretty much adapting existing weapons to Shardplate/blade's standards, and going by what Navani says in WoK, the weapons research is focused on emulating Shards. So I'd guess that gunpowder was never investigated, because Roshar doesn't "have to" imagine what a better weapon would look like. They already have their "ideal" to strive for - the Shards - so rather than chasing some vague theoretical concept, they focus on figuring out how to make more of those "perfect weapons".

ecohansen · February 28, 2016

Books seem to have different values at different times. The Davar family library was very small, despite their nobility. Shallan was initially charged 10 emerald broams for 7 books, with each broam being worth 1000 diamond chips. So, one book would have cost 4 years' worth of Kaladin's bridgeman pay.

Nevertheless, Kaladin's poor surgeon father had several books of medical illustrations, and we've seen books being treated cheaply in other situations.

One guess: Roshar might have developed something like whole-page woodblocks instead of movable-type printing presses. Since all the masculine trades would require only illustrated texts, it seems like there would be an incentive to treat the page as the unit to be reproduced, instead of the letter. So, very popular books would have each of their pages engraved into a woodcut, which could then be mass-produced cheaply. For rarer books, it wouldn't be worthwhile to undertake the initial engraving-investment, and so things would still have to be hand-scribed and expensive.

edit: I just remembered that we've actually seen a version of this: The common soldiers' maps at the warcamp were made from rubbings from an engraved shell.

****

I would also note that China developed movable-type printing in the Song Dynasty, but remained feudal and "medieval" for another half-millenium: the printing press is only fatal to medievalism in certain circumstances.

Edited February 28, 2016 by ecohansen

sheep · February 28, 2016

“Excellent,” the merchant said, a bit of the gleam returning to his eye. “Of the philosophical works you listed, we didn’t have anything by Yustara. We have one each of works by Placini and Manaline; both are collections of excerpts from their most famous writings. I’ve had the Placini book read to me; it’s quite good.”

“Fair price?” he said, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “For a book? I’ve no idea. I just figured he’d be trying to take you for as much as he could. That’s why I asked around for who his biggest rival was and came back to help get him to be more reasonable.”

“It was that obvious I’d let myself be swindled?” she asked with a blush, the two of them walking out of the side street.

Chapter 8, "Nearer the Flame", WoK

It was kind of obvious that Shallan was being taken to the cleaners at the bookshop before Yalb stepped in. The books she wanted were expensive, yes, but for obscure historical texts in low demand, 3 broams for the set is much fairer...though how close it is to cost price is up for debate, as Yalb says they probably could have haggled lower if Shallan wasn't in such a hurry. The books she wanted are rare enough to have only one copy or none in stock - that probably means there are less than 10 copies for sale in the whole city. When you consider that on Earth, you can buy pocket romances at the supermarket for $6 a pop, but a technical handbook or scientific textbook for a specific and rare discipline costs $250, the idea of books priced in broams doesn't seem too ridiculous. Any Rosharan textbook on fabrial science would need multiple custom diagram illustrations.

You must remember that Kaladin's poor surgeon farmer didn't start being poor until Roshone became the citylord. Up until then, the Stormblessed family ( :lol: ) were comfortably middle class relative to farmers that made up the rest of the village.

Lirin walked to the side of the room and gathered up a few small, clear bottles. He was a short man, balding despite his relative youth. He wore his spectacles, which he called the most precious gift he’d ever been given. He rarely got them out except for surgery, as they were too valuable to risk just wearing about. What if they were scratched or broken? Hearthstone was a large town, but its remote location in northern Alethkar would make replacing the spectacles difficult.

The town’s only fabrial clock sat here on the counter. The small device bore a single dial at the center and a glowing Smokestone at its heart; it had to be infused to keep the time. Nobody else in the town cared about minutes and hours as Lirin did.

Chapter 10, "Stories of Surgeons", WoK

Lirin had glasses and a fabrial clock. Since Lirin didn't get paid in cash/spheres, it's possible that he got paid in gifts and luxury gadgets. It's ambiguous whether Wistiow meant to hand over the jar of diamonds that got Lirin into so much trouble, but if he did, perhaps the possibility of other expensive but useful gifts is not out of the question. And since Hearthstone doesn't have a bookshop, the medical manuals may have been bought during Lirin and Hesina's mysterious youth, or given as graduation gifts after finishing an apprenticeship.

_{And side note - Lirin doesn't go outdoors with his glasses while Renarin jumps off roofs with them. Interesting.}

I agree that illustration-heavy pamphlets or manuals for men would be more suited to woodblock or engraved plate printing. The glyphpairs we've seen are so stylised that the shape in context gives the meaning.

Seriously, they look completely different. And stylising glyphs produces "homophones" as well, since Sadeas' glyphpair is drawn as Tower + Hammer.

This would be such an esoteric text that it would be unrealistic to have all the glyphs in movable-type form. How frequently would you even need to write "Ironstance" when setting pages? Woodcuts are fragile enough that after 30 or so impressions, the edges start to deteriorate and your fine details go fuzzy. It's fine for small runs or big glyphs, like highstorm notices. For anything you want to keep crisp for a long time, if you make re-prints or second editions, it would have to be engraved on metal or Soulcast wood.

Movable type is only realistic for the women's script.

I consider the presence of printing presses as a marker for entering a "new age" if its use in context is for the free spread of information. If it exists in-universe to make books cheap enough for servants to read for leisure, then that is definitely non-medieval.

king of nowhere · February 29, 2016

I would have to say that what we define as "middle age" is quite arbitrary. we pick two dates, the fall of the western roman empire and the discovery of america, and decide that in between is the middle age, but it's not like the farmers woke up on 13 october 1492 and said 'oh, look, the renaissance just started'.

Originally, the middle age is considered a dark period between the greatness of the roman empire and the elightenment of the renaissance, but modern historians have shown this idea to be oversimplicistic. Technology kept progressing in the middle age, with new inventions like crop rotation and mechanical clocks, that romans din't knew. So we see the renaissance as a time of progress and the middle age as a time of stagnation, but in truth progress existed in both times. And in general the life of 99% of the population didn't change. The farmers kept farming, existance of printing press and spyglasses notwithstanding. The governments kept being feudal in many places, in others they gradually shifted to absolute monarchies. It was only with the industrial revolution that the llives of everybody were heavily impacted. So, a better term for the alethi society would be "preindustrial", and we can consider middle age and renaissance to be fairly simillar (I know a professional hystorians would kill me for that statement, but really, our knowledge of roshar is limited, and heavily approximated; we can say that the difference between medieval and renaissance is too small to be determined by our limited data, so we will consider them as roughly equivalent. While instead we would immediately notice if roshar had an industrial society).

Now, one thing the renaissance had over the middle age is the birth of the scientific method, which paved the basis for the industrial revolution later. Maybe we can define the renaissance as the time when the seeds for the industrial revolution were planted, though I'm sure historians would tear my simplicistic definition to shreds.

Anyway, we may wonder if roshar has a scientific method. And the answer is, maybe. Sure, we have seen people do stuff that really look like science. jasnah is taking a modern approach to her field, navani would be welcomed as a collegue by modern engineers, and those ardents we saw in one interludes were studing spren systematically - and, more importantly, they were taking measurements; the importance of measurements for science cannot be overestimated. So, it would look like roshar is at least experiencing the beginning of a scientific revolution.

But then we must think again. Jasnah is an historian. As important as the study of history is to avoid the mistakes of the past or realize what is more likely to happen in the future, it does not advance natural sciences. And the other people we've seen doing sciencing, they were all studying spren and fabrials - manifestations of investiture, not natural phenomenons.

So, it would seem that the civilization of roshar is taking a widely different course than in our world. instead of learning of physical laws, they will learn of the laws of investiture. Probably the eventual results would be similar, with infused gems taking the place of oil and coal, but it's actually a very different process going on.

Long story short: rooshar is probably more akin to the renaissance than to the middle age, but it is very different from both times, different enough that it does not really matter whether you try to define it as "renaissance" or "medieval" because both are wrong. The only tag you can safely put on it is the more generic "preindustrial"

SnopyDogy · February 29, 2016

Wow, this thread has generated more discussion then I thought it would. :rolleyes:

I disagree. Have an up vote though.

Having fired both modern and older artillery pieces, I can tell you that aiming a cannon is not easy.

At its most basic, aiming a cannon requires that you adjust left or right for accuracy. Then lock that in place or the force of the shot will ruin your next one. Then you need to adjust for range, up and down. The only way to do that is to guess, then fire the cannon and see where the shot lands. Modern armies use spotters for this. Again, having done this, it takes a few minutes for even a well practiced spotter and artillery crew to get rounds on target.

Then you've got the bloke in shard plate who is no longer where your shot just landed and just cut through your entire army in that time and is busily hacking your crew apart. Did I mention that for a modern shell, each one weighs about 20 - 40 kilograms? Takes time to load that shell and you don't want to store it too close to the cannon just in case one cooks off and kills everything.

I can't see how an older cannon would survive long enough to hit a shard bearer with solid shot. You'd need grapeshot to even come close and that wouldn't carry enough force over sufficient range to penetrate a shard plate. At the range required to pack that kind of punch the shard bearer is already on top of you.

Bear with me on this rant, it'll probably make sense at the end.

Any shot fired, even from the most high powered modern rifle, is effected by wind. Enough that aiming straight at a target at 150 meters with a strong breeze will make that bullet miss. It's easy for a trained rifleman to compensate, but a cannon crew of (at least) 4 men? A cannonball has more surface area to catch the wind too so it would move further off. How is a cannon going to hit an extremely fast moving target at close or long range when it takes minutes to adjust each time, then flight time for the shot?

How good is the average steel made on Roshar? High quality steel wasn't common until 1856 by Sir Henry Bessemer. Until then steel was of low quality and quite likely to fracture after extended use, meaning a supply of parts would be needed. This is a common failing of the Alethi army at least, it is specifically mentioned that their army relies extensively on soul casters to provision their army. Cannons cannot be made by blacksmiths in camp and a damaged barrel must be completely reconstructed because it would never have the requisite strength otherwise. The Alethi could not maintain firearms or artillery without a direct supply line to Alethkar.

Modern artillery kills by the explosive force it delivers. Older models used blunt force trauma with a much smaller explosion. Grapeshot, the stuff you use to kill infantry, doesn't explode at all. Unless you hit directly, which is difficult, the explosive force of gunpowder isn't enough to put out a big enough blast wave to kill a shard bearer. The fire from an explosion is just an afterthought, the real damage comes from the shockwave which precedes this. That does more damage to the internal organs than you see on the outside. Shard plate would take that force and neutralise it before it got the soft squishy stuff inside.

What is the incentive to make these things? They won't kill shard bearers, who would have to be university level stupid to get hit by something the size of a cannon. To defeat an army? Your own shard bearers can do that with no expense and far faster. To intimidate? The Alethi charged into freaking lightning. If that doesn't break them then an old school cannon is a cakewalk. To look cool? Shard. Plate.

tl;dr - The Alethi don't have the capability or incentive to make gunpowder weapons. In place of that they'll stick with what works, like every other people on Earth did until they were shown something different by the British.

I have two problems with this, the first is that no artillery gunner in their right mind would have tried to aim a single cannon at a shard bearer unless he had nothing better to shoot at. the purpose of artillery is to cause massive damage to as many soldiers as possible, in this role the aiming issues aren't as big of a deal as you are shooting at large large target, 100s or 1000s of men. If a shard bearer got it it would be pure luck either way.
My second issues is that you are vastly estimating the effectiveness of shardplate. Look at the following quote describing shard plate in battle agains Pashendi:

"Weapons bounced off his armor, leaving tiny cracks."

Page 783, Kindle Eddition, Way of Kings.

If Parshendi weapons can cause plate to crack, even slightly, with every hit then i think it is safe to assume that a cannon ball would probably kill a shard bearer in a single hit. Same goes for a company or more of musket men firing volleys.

By the way, ingredients for gunpowder are: Potassium Nitrate, which can be distilled from manure, charcoal (or interestingly enough, bone) and sulphur. It's on wikipedia for all those federal agents reading this. None of these things are hard to come by so I don't think it can be said that "gunpowder" doesn't exist on Roshar.

My personal theory with regards to why there is no gunpowder is that one or more of these ingredients are harder to find on Roshar then on earth. Nobody invented gunpowder because they set out to do so, it was most likely an accidental discovery. If the ingredients are harder to find then it is much less likely that it would be discovered. Also it looks more time is spent playing with stormlight then with chemicals too.

I think one of the things we should be considering when we decide how much Alethkar and Roshar are stuck in medieval stasis is whether or not they have invented the printing press. This obviously leads to a big discussion on Vorin cultural attitudes towards gender role expectations, but I shall ignore that for now. From the quotes above these are things we know and can infer about how widespread reading and owning books is:

Not only does Kharbranth's Palanaeum have tens of thousands of books, but there is enough demand and stock available for the presence of multiple bookshops in the city

Reading for leisure is a common hobby

Shallan, rural Veden country girl, knows about the hyped bestsellers

Amaram's cook (are Herdazians all darkeyed?) can afford books on a servant's salary. Is paper soulcast?

Sebarial's mistress (also Herdazian) has books and doesn't mind bringing them to a place where they might get wet, lost or destroyed

None of this would make much sense if books were copied by hand, unless they have fabrial technology that makes one writing hand holding a spanreed pen copy onto multiple sheets of paper simultaneously. But this would leave massive quality control issues when one pen runs dry, and you'd still need people to proofread and change pages as necessary. It would still make books too expensive for servants, since you'd only be producing something like 2-8 books for 12 hours of copying.

They have the Soulcaster technology to make printing presses. You can carve the type out of wood and soulcast them to lead, and copy the type using wax or clay impressions to make another set, and another. Soulcasters are very expensive, but you'd have to do it once. Engravings and illustrations in books can be soulcast from carved wooden panels as well, if they don't have the chemistry technology for acid etching. This could perhaps explain the existence of Adolin's fashion folios. It's incredibly time consuming to make drawings by hand for each folio, especially if you want the drawings to stay on model from book to book. But if the picture pages were made from engraved plates, or multiple plates per page for shading/colour, it would be feasible.

Having printing technology, I would say, moves Alethkar out of medieval level and into early modern. Though cultural taboos prevent the whole population from being literate, the presence of books seems common enough not to be remarkable. Whereas in a truly medieval setting, books would have been hand-copied and illuminated on animal skin parchments, meant to last for 200 years at least due to their massive expense. Romantic novels for girls' leisure reading show that books can be disposable.

And something I've wondered from the first quote, "spoke her native Veden". Does this mean Alethi and Veden are different languages? Are they branches from a common root, like Danish is to Dutch, or dialects of the same language that may or may not be mutually intelligible, like Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese?

Good point, I hadn't thought about the printing press. And yes paper/parchment is soulcast:

"... onto unnaturally large seamless sheets of parchment. Such parchment was obviously Soulcast."
Page 352, Kindle Edition, Way of Kings.

I would have to say that what we define as "middle age" is quite arbitrary. we pick two dates, the fall of the western roman empire and the discovery of america, and decide that in between is the middle age, but it's not like the farmers woke up on 13 october 1492 and said 'oh, look, the renaissance just started'.

Originally, the middle age is considered a dark period between the greatness of the roman empire and the elightenment of the renaissance, but modern historians have shown this idea to be oversimplicistic. Technology kept progressing in the middle age, with new inventions like crop rotation and mechanical clocks, that romans din't knew. So we see the renaissance as a time of progress and the middle age as a time of stagnation, but in truth progress existed in both times. And in general the life of 99% of the population didn't change. The farmers kept farming, existance of printing press and spyglasses notwithstanding. The governments kept being feudal in many places, in others they gradually shifted to absolute monarchies. It was only with the industrial revolution that the llives of everybody were heavily impacted. So, a better term for the alethi society would be "preindustrial", and we can consider middle age and renaissance to be fairly simillar (I know a professional hystorians would kill me for that statement, but really, our knowledge of roshar is limited, and heavily approximated; we can say that the difference between medieval and renaissance is too small to be determined by our limited data, so we will consider them as roughly equivalent. While instead we would immediately notice if roshar had an industrial society).

Now, one thing the renaissance had over the middle age is the birth of the scientific method, which paved the basis for the industrial revolution later. Maybe we can define the renaissance as the time when the seeds for the industrial revolution were planted, though I'm sure historians would tear my simplicistic definition to shreds.

Anyway, we may wonder if roshar has a scientific method. And the answer is, maybe. Sure, we have seen people do stuff that really look like science. jasnah is taking a modern approach to her field, navani would be welcomed as a collegue by modern engineers, and those ardents we saw in one interludes were studing spren systematically - and, more importantly, they were taking measurements; the importance of measurements for science cannot be overestimated. So, it would look like roshar is at least experiencing the beginning of a scientific revolution.

But then we must think again. Jasnah is an historian. As important as the study of history is to avoid the mistakes of the past or realize what is more likely to happen in the future, it does not advance natural sciences. And the other people we've seen doing sciencing, they were all studying spren and fabrials - manifestations of investiture, not natural phenomenons.

So, it would seem that the civilization of roshar is taking a widely different course than in our world. instead of learning of physical laws, they will learn of the laws of investiture. Probably the eventual results would be similar, with infused gems taking the place of oil and coal, but it's actually a very different process going on.

Long story short: rooshar is probably more akin to the renaissance than to the middle age, but it is very different from both times, different enough that it does not really matter whether you try to define it as "renaissance" or "medieval" because both are wrong. The only tag you can safely put on it is the more generic "preindustrial"

I agree that the best general term we have to apply to Alethi society is "Pre-Industrial". The question for me is are they closer to the stereotypical (or even real) medieval sociality or are they closer to industrialisation? i think they are closer to the latter, thus my original post.

sheep · February 29, 2016

Is Alethi society closer to medieval or proto-industrial? Let's analyse this from an economics perspective. I will use "proto-industrial" as it's the better fitting term, because medieval times technically are pre-industrial. Proto-industrial in this context means the set-up of conditions that transition a society from a primary sector agricultural economy to "value added" production based economies. Ignore this if you ~~don't care~~ thought reading fiction was supposed to be fun, or if you think I'm boring, sorry guys.

So after skimming WoK/WoR and wavering back and forth - if we use the history of Western Europe as a measuring stick - I conclude that the Alethi economy is closer to medieval levels. This is only one aspect of Alethkar, and I'm not saying it applies for all of Roshar, nor that their technology/culture/etc is medieval.

“He’s been complaining vocally about the fees that Elhokar charges to use his Soulcasters,” Dalinar said softly. It was the primary form of taxation the king levied on the highprinces.

“You spoke with Vamah?”

“Yes. He saw through what I was doing.”

“Of course he did.” There was a hint of amusement in Sadeas’s voice. “I wouldn’t have expected anything else.”

“You told him you were increasing what you charge him for wood?”

Sadeas controlled the only large forest in the region. “Doubling it,” Sadeas said.

Chapter 15, "The Decoy", WoK

This is collusion and an oligopoly in the making. A consumer-based industrial society requires a basic framework of fair-play guarantees. The regulatory framework doesn't necessarily have to come from a government, but its existence ensures that consumers are protected from conflicts of interest, insider trading, and price fixing. Why is this important? Because entrepreneurial innovation is incentivised by profit, and a stagnant oligopoly without market regulations can effectively block out anything it doesn't want.

Long-term economic efficiency, consumer welfare, and "the big market picture" is modern economic philosophy. Maximising profit through collusion was normal practice way past the medieval age, and was not considered immoral nor illegal. Using your insider knowledge was considered perks of the job, and a part of accepted life just like nepotism or under-reporting taxes. I don't condemn what Dalinar and Sadeas did as wrong, as it's presumed to be accepted behaviour for a time when there are no regulatory laws. They don't even have a regulatory authority since Elhokar hasn't appointed a Highprince of Commerce.

“Well, a lighteyed man owned two or three silversmith shops in Kholinar, one of which was across from my grandparents. He never did like the competition. This was a year or so before the old king died, and Elhokar was left in charge of the kingdom while Gavilar was out at the Plains. Anyway, Elhokar was good friends with the lighteyes who was in competition with my grandparents. So, he did his friend a favor. Elhokar had Ana and Da dragged in on some charge or another."

Chapter 44, "One Form of Justice", WoR

Classic medieval guild behaviour right here, good job Roshone. "Rent-seeking" is the economic term for increasing your profit by introducing or manipulating restrictive policies. Here's an example of rent-seeking in action:

Tailors' Guild sells shirts for $5
They hold a charter (AKA contract of monopoly) from sucking up to Mayor Elhokar, saying that only shirts produced by Guild tailors are allowed to be sold in town
A seamstress from neighbouring town tries to sell shirts for $4
The Tailors beat her up and burn her shirts
The seamstress has two options: leave town or join the Tailors' Guild, which involves signing up for 10 years of unpaid apprenticeship and paying 20% dues for the rest of her life after becoming a full Guild Tailor

Of course, this is a primitive and inefficient way to deal with market competition, but very traditionally medieval. If this was an industrial or otherwise more sophisticated economy, Roshone would have gotten mechanical buffing wheels and steam hammers and outcompeted Moash's family, then bought out their shops. The fact that he relied on connections instead says that economy slants toward the medieval side.

"The last of the quarries is running out. If it becomes known that we no longer have resources, it will go badly for us...You need to bring Jasnah’s fabrial to us. We’ll quickly use it to create new quarries of valuable stone."

Chapter 29, "Errorgance", WoK

This scene shows that the Davars are living off their capital (the Soulcast marble quarries) and once they're gone, they're back to square one. I'm making a few presumptions here, but the fact that they are doing this, has a few implications:

There are no existing means, or they are not aware of any, to invest the capital to provide long-term revenue.
No mention of investment opportunities means few large businesses and no chartered companies exist. Which suggests that most of Alethkar is on subsistence level production and there is not enough production surplus, evenly distributed wealth, nor demand to create a profitable consumer market. In comparison, the Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602.
They owe individual creditors directly, instead of going the less violent path, through a bank. That means there are no banks or equivalent financial organisations. Again, a sign of medieval lack of regulatory structure and legal authority.

I think anyone would rather mortgage their mansion to a bank, if it existed, than accept a Soulcaster from a dubious secret society that asks for unknown "favours" as payment...

“Almost all permanent residents. I have the most complete force of tailors, artisans, and cooks in the camps. Already, I’ve set up twelve manufactories—textiles, shoes, ceramics, several mills. I control the glassblowers as well.”

“From what I’ve heard,” Shallan said, “your forces are among the least successful in the war against the Parshendi.”

Sebarial got a twinkle in his eyes. “The others hunt quick income from gemhearts, but what will they spend their money on? My textile mills will soon produce uniforms at a much cheaper price than they can be shipped in for, and my farmers will provide food far more varied than what is supplied through Soulcasting. I’m growing both lavis and tallew, not to mention my hog farms.”

Chapter 40, "Palona", WoR

This is only section in the entire series that gives me any hope at all that Alethkar isn't just another stasis-mired crem-farm in terms of economy. Almighty bless Sebarial! He sees the light of innovation, yea, verily he does!

Sebarial understands supply chain, he sees long-term competitive viability, he knows where to target the market. The fact that he has built manufactories (probably sweatshops) means that he understands efficiency comes from assembly lines and bit-production. In the old fashioned medieval guild settings, one shoemaker would spend 6-12 years apprenticing, learning how to make every part of the shoe from the last, the sole, the tongue, the toebox, etc, and have his work inspected at each stage before he can pass to the next. A factory means workers are trained to make one part only, which they can put their full attention to. This churns out shoes faster and cheaper per worker compared to the guild model.

Good thing he is a Highprince, because the Guild of Shoemakers and Cobblers would be tempted to burn down his factory before long.

So based on an economic analysis, Alethkar is mostly medieval in economy, but slowly, slowly tipping towards a more capitalist society. The seeds of proto-industrialism are there, but we will have to see if the Desolation kills it off.

One thing that I'd like to know more about is the Alethi middle class, the first and second nahn of citizen darkeyes, and the tenners to the sixth dahn of lighteyes, who make up society's trained professionals and bureaucrats. They are the largest segment of consumers with the expendable wealth to buy luxuries, yet they are also the group that could make best use of market regulation and legal protection.

tl;dr - Alethkar economy is mostly medieval, but this doesn't mean they will be like that forever. Probably.

^{Disclaimer: I am not an economist, nor do I make claims to be one.}

SnopyDogy · February 29, 2016

So based on an economic analysis, Alethkar is mostly medieval in economy, but slowly, slowly tipping towards a more capitalist society. The seeds of proto-industrialism are there, but we will have to see if the Desolation kills it off.

One thing that I'd like to know more about is the Alethi middle class, the first and second nahn of citizen darkeyes, and the tenners to the sixth dahn of lighteyes, who make up society's trained professionals and bureaucrats. They are the largest segment of consumers with the expendable wealth to buy luxuries, yet they are also the group that could make best use of market regulation and legal protection.

tl;dr - Alethkar economy is mostly medieval, but this doesn't mean they will be like that forever. Probably.

^{Disclaimer: I am not an economist, nor do I make claims to be one.}

Excellent point. I hadn't thought of the economy. It defiantly looks more medieval. However I suspect the Alethi economy might be a little backwards compared to others. The Thaylen for example might be a lot closer to the sort of capitalist society that was around at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

I would like to dispute a couple of points. The first is the Davar finances. Given the politics involved it wouldn't surprise me if the reason why Lin Davar didn't borrow from a bank was politics, if someone owes you a lot of money then you would be more likely to help them stay afloat so you get a return on your investment. Same for using the soulcaster, Lin got more then just the soulcaster in that deal (the soulcaster may have been the least of it for all we know).

As for why they weren't talking about investments when the loans came due, that is easy. They had no capital to invest. They were selling what little they had left to try and stay ahead of their creditors, they simple weren't in a position to invest. I wouldn't consider the Davar's finances as a typical example, altho it is the best we have.

My second point is regarding the potential for an oligopoly. We have to remember that the united Alethkar is only 10 or so years old at the most, and is barely even united at all in many ways. I have to wonder if this is allowed at lower levels in the economy, i.e. is this political manoeuvring at the high level and not typical of day-to-day business in Alethkar.

Third point; given what happened to Roshone what he did probably isn't legal under Alethi law, or if it is legal it is a least frowned upon, or getting caught is frowned upon.

Fourth point; When the industrial revolution began in Britain many of the protection you talk about weren't present either. However she was in a little war with France at the time, which created unprecedented demand for things like guns, uniforms and rope. (actually rope manufacturing was one of the first things to be industrialised in a modern form, using water powered factories. The Royal Navy used a Lot of rope.) By the time the war ended the Industrial revolution had gained enough steam (litterly) to be self sustaining. While the war wasn't the only source of demand for products it was probably the single biggest one and would have help overcome some of the problems of a very unregulated economy.

Having typed all this up my arguments feel a little flimsy compared to yours, especially when I remember them having "moneylenders" but no banks

I really would like to get a better look at the middle and lower classes, preferably in a major city (which is something we haven't seen at all yet). In fact now that I think about it, with Kaladin being the (nearly) only darkeyed point of view character we have actually seen less of darkeyes then we have of lighteyes. And Kaladin's pov has been dominated from inside the military which is probably one of the worst povs we could have for determining how close they are to an Industrial revolution.

The main reason why I think they are closer to the industrial revolution then to the middle ages is because of the pace of change we are seeing in technology, especially fabrial. Much of the fabrial Technology we see appears to be relatively recent, if it had been around for longer (like is suspect fabrial clocks have) then it would be more wide spread. I'm hoping Dalinar's flashbacks (which will go back 20 years further then the others) in the next book will give us some idea of how recent it all is. If the heating and cooling fabrials are around in Dalinar's youth then the tech is 30+ years old. but if they don't start showing up til Alethkar is unified then most of it so only about 10 years old or so. one of the things that did happen in the lead up to the Industrial revolution was an increase in the development of new technology.

Edit:

After thinking a little I'd like to go back to my Britain at war point. A case can be made that a state of total war would cause greater demand for industrialisation than any other peace or ordinary wartime economy could. I suspect a desolation would count as a case of total war. in such a case, assuming the everstorm didn't flatten them straight away, then the pre-war economy probably wouldn't have a great effect of weather or not they industrialise.

Instead I see the bigger factors being:

1) How much of the population is well educated and how good is that education, i.e. how much of the population can innovate. which comes back to my point about how fast the Alethi might be innovating.

2) how much of the population was living off subsistence agriculture vs off surplus. just before the Industrial Revolution in Britain this reached a magic 80/20 Subsistence/surplus ration iirc. given that soulcasters seem able to support the approx. 500,000 on the shattered plains it is possible that the Alethi are close to this ratio. (this is sort of related to the above, the better this ratio, the better the above is going to be). A good indication of this would be the population of Kholinar. If it is around 1 million, then it suggest something close to this ratio, if it is only 200,000 - 300,000 then it suggest something more like 85/15 or 90/10.

3) Do they have a good enough tech base to act as a seed? Maybe?

I would like to state this tho: if in any total war between otherwise equal powers, where one Industrialises and one doesn't the one that doesn't, the industrial power will win.

wonder what the void bringers would do if the humans Industrialise? would this be enough to convince Odium he could lose?

Edited February 29, 2016 by SnopyDogy

sheep · February 29, 2016

I would like to dispute a couple of points. The first is the Davar finances. Given the politics involved it wouldn't surprise me if the reason why Lin Davar didn't borrow from a bank was politics, if someone owes you a lot of money then you would be more likely to help them stay afloat so you get a return on your investment. Same for using the soulcaster, Lin got more then just the soulcaster in that deal (the soulcaster may have been the least of it for all we know).

As for why they weren't talking about investments when the loans came due, that is easy. They had no capital to invest. They were selling what little they had left to try and stay ahead of their creditors, they simple weren't in a position to invest. I wouldn't consider the Davar's finances as a typical example, altho it is the best we have.

Borrowing money from an individual and relying on them not to kill you because their investment is lost is gambling with the Sunk Cost Fallacy, that if they keep throwing good money after bad, the ship won't sink. At some point, an experienced moneylender or usurer would know when to recognise a loss instead of continuing to help. In a situation between borrowing from a bank with your estate as collateral and a dodgy individual with your life as collateral, then most would choose the bank - unless there are no banks. Or you're planning to do something illegal and dangerous.

In a perfect capitalist world, Lin Davar would have taken the Soulcaster and used the marble to buy a partnership in a masonry company. Then he would use the increased stock value of the masonry company as collateral with the bank to pay back the lenders of the Soulcaster, while collecting dividends from the sale of marble mantelpieces and tiles. But sadly, Alethkar doesn't seem to have invented publicly traded joint-stock companies.

Effectiveness of a collusion based oligopoly depends on distance between competitors, and ease of transport of goods, and ease of communication. It works on the Shattered Plains since Dalinar controls the Soulcasters, and Sadeas owns the trees, the only source of wood available within reasonable distance. I looked on the map, and Vamah's princedom is northwest, near the Veden border. Vamah has no choice because it would be cheaper to pay for Soulcasting than it would be to ship trees from his home province. Within large cities and towns in Alethkar, I would say local collusion is a fact of life, especially if you count guild charters signed by local Citylords. Few people would risk a highstorm and travel 3 days to the next town to save a few spheres on wagon wheels. From what we've seen, the princedoms are pretty much autonomous, down to local level. Sadeas doesn't really get involved with what Amaram does, and Amaram tries to stay out of petty politicking that Roshone does. And from historical precedent, it wouldn't be surprising at all for a local mayor, in a medieval economy, to endorse guild charters for his mates.

As for what Roshone did, he reported Moash's family on "some charge or another". Probably breaking some minor long-forgotten rule on the level of "Roof eaves must be at 45 degree angles and cleaned of crem no less than three times per year", but a rule nonetheless. Since they were, we presume, business owning darkeyes of relatively high nahn, they had the right of inquest. The charge was valid and what Roshone did, though morally ambiguous, was not illegal. He attempted the same rules lawyering with the Stormblessed family, but he had no proof of Lirin's accused crime of stealing spheres, so he got Tien instead.

With the production demand of war - I would say that the ramped up productivity only applies to the localised area of the Shattered Plains.

"She wastes money while Alethkar languishes. People in outer towns starve as they send food here, with the understanding that it will be passed on to soldiers who need it. It rots because the queen can't be bothered."

"They have plenty of food on the Shattered Plains," Llan said. "They've got gemstones coming out of their ears there."

Interlude 1-12, Words of Radiance.

The wealth and investment in the Shattered Plains stays in the Plains. There's a net increase in per capita income and productivity over the 6 years of the Vengeance Pact as 100 000 soldiers and an equal amount of civvie service workers filter in, but from the little we know of Kholinar and Hearthstone, it hasn't spread its golden tentacles outwards.

Sebarial knows that the gemhearts will keep the princes camping the spawnpoints, which is why he sets up farms and factories. So the economy there will become self-sustaining and perhaps become a new princedom - if the Desolation doesn't wipe everyone out. But it will take years before the rest of the kingdom catches up.

On fabrial technology - it's described as all relatively new. Grandbows and Halfshards, spanreeds and dehumidifiers, most of them pioneered by Navani and her scholars. The problem with fabrials is that they're limited by the amount of gems they have, and due to the expense of gems and their method of collection by the Highprinces, the wealth and innovation will stay with the wealthy, filter slowly and slightly into the middle class, and probably won't even reach the lower. Using spheres for light, the simplest of fabrial technology, is relatively common. But even now, the poorest people still rely on lanterns and candles for their light. If the industrial revolution does take place, darkeyed peasants will barely see a change in their quality of life for a decade or two. Though comparing to real life historical precedent, that's not so surprising.

This is a really interesting discussion to have.

Hopefully I explained my conclusions well enough to that people don't think that my interpretations on the Alethi economy wasn't just pulled out of my chull. :mellow:

Mace · February 29, 2016

Good discussion here.

I'd like to weigh in.

I think some of you are misunderstanding the reasons some things were invented. Especially in the warfare department. Take the crossbow for example, while it does have a lot more power than the standard bow, this was a secondary improvement over the fact that anyone could fire a crossbow affectively, while only a person trained with a bow and with a strong enough arm could fire a bow affectively. The true advantage of the crossbows the reduced training time required, increased short range accuracy and finally the improved power and armour piecing.

I also believe that siege weapons like the catapult (If I remember correctly the Aleithi have a type of catapult using a fabrial) or even the cannon were not invent to kill more soldiers, they were invented to cause holes and damage in city walls. While a shardbearer can jump or climb up a city wall easily while weathering the hail of arrows, they wouldn't be able to take a city on their own. Somehow armies in Roshar need to deal with walls, so I don't see why there wouldn't be people inventing things to destroy or scale walls, and therefore siege equipment

This all being said, the best point within this thread are that fabrials would be distorting the way science developed over time. Instead of thinking of ways to launch a large stone at a wall with physics, the engineers of Roshar would be thinking of ways to use fabrials to achieve the same thing. The result being that certain inventions in our history which are variations or items based on others wouldn't be invented because the required understanding of physics is not being developed due to the magic system in place.

So yes some engineers would be thinking about how to kill a shardbearer, so they work on fabrial shields or similar. Others would be thinking along other lines. like, how can we scale that wall around Kholinar? or how best to kill all the spearman around a shardbearer so we can focus on him after.

Also some of you forget that engineers don't know the effectiveness of their inventions until after. So stating that inventing the cannon is meaningless because you can't hit a shardbearer for reasons 1 through 4 makes no sense, because how is the engineer trying to figure out how to fire this ball of metal 100s of metres going to know his final product is going to be difficult to aim and slow to reload?

TL;DR: Inventors usually work around one problem they see in the world and invent something to resolve it. E.G the crossbow because bows required too much training and skill to use well. The warfare parts of this discussion seems to think all military advancements were pure up the kill rate inventions when most RL military advancements were not.

The Magic system is place will change the way science develops on Roshar as opposed to RL. However the same problems exist so alternative inventions should be popping up.

Pathfinder · February 29, 2016

To ring in on the whole gunpowder and siege weapon portion of this thread. As stated by Mace, typically siege weapons are intended to take down walls or buildings, not single targets, so I feel debating that the advancement of gunpowder is tied to siege weapons is faulty, especially that was not the order in its development. The first gunpowder driven weapons were attached to spears, and were more like flame throwers. Then they started putting shrapnel in with it. Also I think the reason we have not seen any siege weaponry yet is not due to lack of gunpowder, but due to the environment. Typically a army gathers up, and makes camp outside the city they are laying siege to. They do occasional attacks, cut off supply lines and food, and set up siege weapons to damage walls, barracks, and gates. If this was on Roshar, it would require the attacking army to sit out in the open during highstorms. Siege weapons would suffer massively as they take a lot to move, a lot to set up, a lot of time to fire, and a lot to dismantle for something in the grand scheme of things that is very fragile. By the time the army showed up, and braced themselves out in the open by using soulcasters for windbreaks, and set up their siege weapons, a highstorm would have come by and damaged the siege weapon before it could have even fired. But if we consider that an infantry man can strap a fire lance to their spears, or throw grenados at a shardbearer and shatter large pieces of the armor, then gunpowder suddenly isn't so limited by the shardplate.

heridfel · February 29, 2016

Typically a army gathers up, and makes camp outside the city they are laying siege to. They do occasional attacks, cut off supply lines and food, and set up siege weapons to damage walls, barracks, and gates. If this was on Roshar, it would require the attacking army to sit out in the open during highstorms.

To add to this, if the besieged city has Soulcasters which can produce food and water, it's nearly impossible to cut off the supply lines.

There's also the challenge of being the victim of your own success. So you destroyed the walls which encircle a town or city - unless those are on the lee side of the city, you've now opened a hole to let the highstorms inside. The town probably won't do too well on its own after that, which cuts down on its value quite a bit.

SnopyDogy · February 29, 2016

... If this was on Roshar, it would require the attacking army to sit out in the open during highstorms. Siege weapons would suffer massively as they take a lot to move, a lot to set up, a lot of time to fire, and a lot to dismantle for something in the grand scheme of things that is very fragile. By the time the army showed up, and braced themselves out in the open by using soulcasters for windbreaks, and set up their siege weapons, a highstorm would have come by and damaged the siege weapon before it could have even fired....

To add to this, if the besieged city has Soulcasters which can produce food and water, it's nearly impossible to cut off the supply lines.

Most sieges in the middle ages (where the attackers won) were resolved by starving out the besieged. As you have both pointed out I suspect this is impractical on Roshar. Actually storming a fortified town wasn't popular until canons came along and allowed attackers to effectively breach walls in relatively short periods of time (weeks instead of months or years). On Roshar most sieges would have been resolved by an assault on the walls with siege towers (explains the design of Dalinar's bridges), rams and ladders. I suspect this one of those arias where having a shard bearer would help as they would make a great forlorn hope.

I think some of you are misunderstanding the reasons some things were invented. Especially in the warfare department. Take the crossbow for example, while it does have a lot more power than the standard bow, this was a secondary improvement over the fact that anyone could fire a crossbow affectively, while only a person trained with a bow and with a strong enough arm could fire a bow affectively. The true advantage of the crossbows the reduced training time required, increased short range accuracy and finally the improved power and armour piecing.

Interestingly the same argument applies to muskets.

I think some people are getting siege weapons confused with field artillery. The Roman Scorpio is a good example of field artillery and the howitzer is the dominant form today. Canons were defiantly field artillery, especially the lighter canon. the job of field artillery was to kill men, best example of this is WW1 where field artillery killed millions.

A good example of siege weapons would be battering rams or seige towers, or even the humble ladder. all of these are designed to breach or bypass fortifications like walls. Heaver canons would defiantly used in this role, in fact the very heavy 24 pounder guns were exclusive used in this role being too big and heavy to be effective field artillery.

ecohansen · March 1, 2016

The main reason why I think they are closer to the industrial revolution then to the middle ages is because of the pace of change we are seeing in technology, especially fabrial

It seems here like you're committing the same crime you're accusing us of: Europe-norming . It seems like the rate of technological advancement is a particularly poor metric for measuring the state of a society as a whole. Aristotle and Plato agreed on very little, but they agreed that the chief virtue of society is giving philosophers the leisure to think, by means of the menial drudgery of the majority of the population. Several preindustrial societies had intellectual golden ages while the vast majority of their populace was mired in serfdom: The Greeks had inventors like Heron of Alexandria and Archimedes; the Song Dynasty invented the printing press, the compass, and the mathematical matrix; and of course there were Ummayyad Arabia and Gupta India. Before companies could afford R&D departments, the best way to get a high rate of technological innovation was to have a lot of upper-class people with both education and leisure: Alethkar obviously has that in lighteyed women and in ardents. Nevertheless, the life of a serf in any of these intellectual periods would be fairly indistinguishable from the life of a serf in medieval Europe, and none of these periods of intellectual innovation wound up leading to any sort of major revolution: not democratic, not industrial, not capitalist, not agricultural, not educational, not informational. They only led to new and better toys for the upper classes.

Conversely, China under Mao was a horrible place for intellectuals and inventors, but had a massive shift from agrarian to industrial society, and with one of the biggest increases in median lifespan in human history.

Since fabrial research is being done by the leisured upper classes and ardents instead of by proto-industrialists, it seems like they will tend to invent fabrials that meet the whims of the upper classes, rather than the needs of society as a whole.

Edited March 1, 2016 by ecohansen

SnopyDogy · March 1, 2016

It seems here like you're committing the same crime you're accusing us of: Europe-norming . It seems like the rate of technological advancement is a particularly poor metric for measuring the state of a society as a whole. Aristotle and Plato agreed on very little, but they agreed that the chief virtue of society is giving philosophers the leisure to think, by means of the menial drudgery of the majority of the population. Several preindustrial societies had intellectual golden ages while the vast majority of their populace was mired in serfdom: The Greeks had inventors like Heron of Alexandria and Archimedes; the Song Dynasty invented the printing press, the compass, and the mathematical matrix; and of course there were Ummayyad Arabia and Gupta India. Before companies could afford R&D departments, the best way to get a high rate of technological innovation was to have a lot of upper-class people with both education and leisure: Alethkar obviously has that in lighteyed women and in ardents.

This is basically my argument. The rate of change, of innovation, in most of the times you are talking about was still very slow. it was there, innovation has always been there, but it was slow. as you point out the more of the citizenry which had free time to innovate the more innovations there were. what made the Industrial Revolution different from the times you mention is that the number of those innovates was higher then it had ever been before (that is what made the 80/20 ration so magic, and for the record that ratio is now better then 10/90, complete reversed from where it has been for 99% of human agricultural history). What i was trying to say is that there appears t be a rapid increase in the rate of innovation in Alethi society, and I'd like to know how big this increase is as it would help us determine how close they are to an industrialised society.

There are several times in human history where we see a big improvement in the rate of innovation. 1) the start of agriculture, which for the first time allowed some people to think about more then where the next meal was coming from. 2) the widespread use of the printing press, which help spread information 3) the beginning of the industrial revolution, 4) the information revolution (internet). you'll notice that these are getting closer and closer together. So what i think (ymmv) is that this rate of innovation we are seeing is less medieval and more renascence or near-industrial.

also most of the benefits of the early industrial revolution took decades to filter down from the rich to the poor. Actually in some ways i agree with your point that they seem to be creating toys for the rich, more so then was the case in the early industrial revolution. However the desolation will probably change that. in a total war setting (which I believe a desolation is) the entire economy goes into fighting the war. no one is going to have the time or resources to spare in that case to build a heating fabrial for some rich lord. however they might build them if troops are freezing to death and they are running out of wood. So a desolation would distort the priorities of the economy and may force an industrial revolution earlier then we might have otherwise expected. This is what I believe.

Mind you I'm not as sold on my own argument as I appear... anyone got a knife I could borrow?

Botanica · March 1, 2016

Just a note: Brandon did talk about his Asian influence when he was visiting Taiwan.

I learned Korean during my two-year stay in Korea, so WoK is influenced by Korean culture in some way. But at the same time, I got inspired from the Chinese Three Kingdoms Period and used much stuff in my settings. [This really amazed me since I’ve never heard anything about it before.] I also applied some Chinese calligraphic elements and Confucian ideas of art. The characters’ appearance is not clearly written in the book, though they do look like Chinese.

Have you read The Way of Kings? In fact, when I was writing Alethkar, what I imagined was China during the Three Kingdoms Period. That assassin sent by the Parshendi [He meant Szeth in the prologue.] went to the palace, and what the others saw of him can be referred to the descriptions of white Europeans found in the Chinese Yuan Dynasty. He [szeth] is the only white people in that scene.

(Source)

Edited March 1, 2016 by Botanica

ecohansen · March 1, 2016

Wow! Three Kingdoms Period is NOT the period I would have thought of. Just, wow. I'll have to do a lot of re-thinking.

Pathfinder · March 1, 2016

This is basically my argument. The rate of change, of innovation, in most of the times you are talking about was still very slow. it was there, innovation has always been there, but it was slow. as you point out the more of the citizenry which had free time to innovate the more innovations there were. what made the Industrial Revolution different from the times you mention is that the number of those innovates was higher then it had ever been before (that is what made the 80/20 ration so magic, and for the record that ratio is now better then 10/90, complete reversed from where it has been for 99% of human agricultural history). What i was trying to say is that there appears t be a rapid increase in the rate of innovation in Alethi society, and I'd like to know how big this increase is as it would help us determine how close they are to an industrialised society.

There are several times in human history where we see a big improvement in the rate of innovation. 1) the start of agriculture, which for the first time allowed some people to think about more then where the next meal was coming from. 2) the widespread use of the printing press, which help spread information 3) the beginning of the industrial revolution, 4) the information revolution (internet). you'll notice that these are getting closer and closer together. So what i think (ymmv) is that this rate of innovation we are seeing is less medieval and more renascence or near-industrial.

also most of the benefits of the early industrial revolution took decades to filter down from the rich to the poor. Actually in some ways i agree with your point that they seem to be creating toys for the rich, more so then was the case in the early industrial revolution. However the desolation will probably change that. in a total war setting (which I believe a desolation is) the entire economy goes into fighting the war. no one is going to have the time or resources to spare in that case to build a heating fabrial for some rich lord. however they might build them if troops are freezing to death and they are running out of wood. So a desolation would distort the priorities of the economy and may force an industrial revolution earlier then we might have otherwise expected. This is what I believe.

Mind you I'm not as sold on my own argument as I appear... anyone got a knife I could borrow?

I think another thing that needs to be accounted for (not disagreeing with anyone by stating this, I love where this discussion has been going, and this is just to add), is the fact that Roshar has gone through multiple "dark" ages. Now when I say that, I am coining the term not in reference to the culture but more from the loss of technology and starting from square one. The difference however, is a large part of the previous technology, the current culture had preserved, and learned how to employ which has given them a leg up. For instance, if I recall correctly, the technology of concrete that the greeks had was lost for hundreds of years before we figured it out for ourselves. Even now we cannot replicate the way they build where whole buildings stand without any need of binding agent. They were able to stack the stones in such a way that the stones themselves sat perfectly. Greek fire we also have yet to replicate. Now maybe what I am recalling are myths, or false history passed down, but I was using this more to illustrate the point. How much would our technology have been affected if after the dark ages, people were able to reverse engineer far more technologies than we were able to. I liken soulcasters, shardplate, and shardblades to the bronze age version of us discovering replicators, shields, and laser guns. By themselves, insanely over powered, but even though they have would not have been emulated directly, it certainly would point technology in the right direction by knowing it is possible. Storms, we could have ended up with computers like fallout 4, years before we actually made ones the size of rooms.

king of nowhere · March 1, 2016

industrialization is less about innovation and more about mass production. the two are of course intimately llinked, because the new productive processes are innovations, but the whole point of the industrial revolution is increased productivity. through all the preindustrial history, the GDP has been around 2000 dollars (purchase power parity) per year per capita. all the innovations of the more enlightened societies didn't change that, because there was a hard limit on how much could be produced. that figure started to skyrocket only with the industrial revolution. the availability of large amounts of goods also changed life and everything in a way that hadn't been seen since agricolture.

The innovations of a renaissance are an important stepping stone to achieve industrialization wiithin a few centuries, but the process is not inevitable. china had achieved a renaissance level, then some shortsighted emperor decided to forbid boat buildiing, or clock making; had that not happened, it may have been china that conquered europe, and not the reverse. another possibility is that progress is stopped by a devastating war, or epidemics, which may well be what's happening on roshar.

other possible missteps are specific of a fantasy setting; namely, can the magic be mass produced, and how feasible is that? If we take as an example a magic system like that of D&D, it becomes clear that a highy enlightened magical society can never achieve industrialization because you can't mass produce magic items; they have a cost in experience points, in diamond dust, and in wizard's time. so a society, by seeking the road of magic for its immediate benefit over natural sciences, may actually go in a dead end. this probably is not the case on roshar; fabrials seem to work under very reproducible principles, and once they are made, they are fueled with stormlight, which can be provided regularly. Still, it's questionable if fabrials can be made in a factory. If they cannot, they are likely to remain the playthings of rich people.

Jimmy · March 2, 2016

Just a note: Brandon did talk about his Asian influence when he was visiting Taiwan.

(Source)

This makes a lot more sense now. My assumptions were very much based around European development and the difference between the Medieval period and the Renaissance. Again, mainly in weaponry because that is where my background is. That'll teach me to assume things.

I completely agree that mass production is a good demarkation line between the industrial revolution and the late Renaissance. It's the fuzzy line between the Renaissance and the Late Medieval ages that confuses the issue for me. In many ways the Alethi are in their own Renaissance period in story, fitting for a Chinese oriented (see what I did there) culture. But in others they are most definitely feudal in nature. My knowledge of that time period is too fuzzy to offer better analogies.

The Alethi seem to be handicapping themselves in the way that only half the population, with the exception of a very few storm wardens, are even trying to build progress. This is tied into Vorinism which dictates that it is unmanly to read, study or create.

Which makes me wonder...

Considering that Earth's issue of having few educated women historically is the reverse of Roshar's, was Vorinism written specifically to create this handicap in a society that didn't follow a similar path to ours, i.e. they had relative male and female equality? Female Heralds seems to support this theory prima facie. Only male or only female education means that a lot of productivity and great minds are potentially lost. Did Vorinism do this on purpose and if so, how has that contributed to their society staying in the place it has for what seems like a very long time?

ccstat · March 2, 2016

I really like the economics points made by Sheep, but I think the issue of the Davar creditors may have been misconstrued. While the situation may still provide evidence for lack of banks and joint-stock companies, I believe Lin had reasons not to choose those routes even if they were available.

In a situation between borrowing from a bank with your estate as collateral and a dodgy individual with your life as collateral, then most would choose the bank - unless there are no banks. Or you're planning to do something illegal and dangerous.

Illegal and dangerous about sums it up. Lin was positioning himself to become the next Highprince, an elevation that the Ghostbloods apparently thought he had a shot at achieving. If they weren't perpetrating murders and other illegality on the sidelines to clear his way, I would be very much surprised. The soulcaster they lent him is something he could not have gotten anywhere legitimate. Their use in Vorin culture is tightly restricted to the ardentia, and would certainly have been considered taboo. As sister to the King, Jasnah may be able to "use a soulcaster" despite their objections, but a minor house lord is another matter, especially for the purpose of producing personal wealth.

Now that I say this, though, I realize that the soulcasting subterfuge was performed with the express purpose of satisfying his other creditors and keeping the house solvent until the political scheming could pay off. So prior to and apart from the loan of the soulcaster, Lin had already sought out individual creditors (not banks) for loans. So the original interpretation probably still stands.

Pathfinder · March 2, 2016

I really like the economics points made by Sheep, but I think the issue of the Davar creditors may have been misconstrued. While the situation may still provide evidence for lack of banks and joint-stock companies, I believe Lin had reasons not to choose those routes even if they were available.

Illegal and dangerous about sums it up. Lin was positioning himself to become the next Highprince, an elevation that the Ghostbloods apparently thought he had a shot at achieving. If they weren't perpetrating murders and other illegality on the sidelines to clear his way, I would be very much surprised. The soulcaster they lent him is something he could not have gotten anywhere legitimate. Their use in Vorin culture is tightly restricted to the ardentia, and would certainly have been considered taboo. As sister to the King, Jasnah may be able to "use a soulcaster" despite their objections, but a minor house lord is another matter, especially for the purpose of producing personal wealth.

Now that I say this, though, I realize that the soulcasting subterfuge was performed with the express purpose of satisfying his other creditors and keeping the house solvent until the political scheming could pay off. So prior to and apart from the loan of the soulcaster, Lin had already sought out individual creditors (not banks) for loans. So the original interpretation probably still stands.

Add to that that people typically go to loan sharks when banks won't lend you money. Lin was massively in debt. Any bank would view him as high risk with minimal chance of paying back (especially considering his means of paying back was as you stated ccstat, illegal, so he couldn't exactly say "I can totally pay you back because a criminal organization is going to give me a religious relic I am not supposed to have to make mineral deposits that do not exist yet, to make the money to pay you back). Loan sharks on the other hand, do lend to such people because they will get massive amounts of interest on the money, or simply kill the person and collect on the money some other way (sell into slavery, etc). So like ccstat said, just because we do not see him go to a bank instead of a loan shark, does not mean they do not exist. It could just be it is not a viable option for him.

having re-read the points made, I believe if I recall correctly the order of operations was Shallan's mother dies->Lin handles his estate poorly losing money->Lin continues to spend the same level of money to maintain appearances->Davar family near or are bankrupt. At this point if Lin went to a bank, they would refuse based on his poor management, lack of any further resources on his land to recoup and pay them back, and given his reputation doubtful anyone on the up and up would seek to make a trade agreement with him for him to pay back the bank. Given no other choice, he sought less savory creditors, but continued to drive his house into ruin, to which he then reached out to the ghostbloods to solve the creditor problem. I am fairly sure that was the order, but I can check later on to be sure.

sheep · March 2, 2016

On Alethkar and banking:

I would personally say that the use of printing presses and modern banking is part of the set-up conditions of transitioning an economy (and society maybe) into proto-industrialism. But printing can only work effectively if writers and publishers are free to print whatever instead of being censored, and if banking can only work effectively if it has a framework of legitimate accountability and "fair play" that gives investors a reason to trust it. If there is no appearance of accountability or regulation, people would rather hide their money in their sock drawer or in the mattress rather than depositing to the bank, if they are afraid the manager will take the money and run, or invest it in really terrible companies (ie, dog wedding party supplies) owned by friends. Managers can be getting away with dubious things with investor capital, but what matters is that the financial institutions give the appearance of being trustworthy.

When your banks earn themselves a terrible reputation and confidence falls, this is what happens to society:

Bank runs - everyone dogpiles the ATM and withdraws as much as they can before the bank closes
People stop depositing, new investment capital dries up
Entrepreneurs and innovators who had good ideas get no funding
People are afraid and can only keep their money in their undie drawer (loses value after inflation) or invest in very safe companies (government bonds, necessary public companies like water treatment plant, energy) which have small but steady gains and won't risk folding.
Large companies stay large, new companies and innovators close as they have large set-up costs before they can produce dividends, but the seed capital has dried up
Market stagnation happens - duopolies, oligopolies, monopolies, all those good Greek words that make you want to hit Go and collect $200

So image and appearance, regardless of what is going on in reality, is important to the function and existence of banking. Pyschology in general is important in the study of economics, but we won't dig that deep.

And this is why I do not think banks - crucial to the development of a industrial society - exist in Alethkar. I won't say that small credit unions, or money pot lending between the noble families and crafts/trades guilds don't exist. They probably do, and they rely on connections to get loans. But central banks and federal fiscal policy don't, and neither does "fair play" investment and lending.

A slave could apply his earnings to his slave debt and, after years of labor, earn his freedom. Theoretically. He suspected that the option to pay off a slave’s price was a sham, intended to keep slaves docile. The debt was enormous, far more than a slave sold for, and virtually impossible to earn out.

Chapter 4, "The Shattered Plains", WoK

Tvlakv gave her a ledger detailing how much each slave had paid down on their slave debt. Kaladin caught a glimpse; it said that not a single one of the men had paid anything. Perhaps Tvlakv lied about the figures. Not unlikely.

Chapter 6, "Bridge Four", WoK

From what we have seen of Alethkar, they have a primitive understanding of finance. Debt is portrayed as a burden, not an investment. They do not have regulation. Debts and interest are calculated arbitrarily, because there is no governing authority for bureaucratic oversight. And, of course, Alethi income and wealth distribution make it so most people are really poor and have no assets, capital, or collateral to store in banks. They only have their bodies.

Lamaril waved Gaz over, so he reluctantly approached. Then he took a sphere out of his pouch and passed it over. A topaz mark. He hated losing it. He always hated losing money.

“You owe me twice as much as this,” Lamaril noted, raising the sphere up to look through it as it sparkled in the sunlight.

“Well, that’s all you’ll get for now. Be glad you get anything.”

“Be glad I’ve kept my mouth shut,” Lamaril said lazily, leaning back against his post. It was one that marked the edge of the lumberyard.

Gaz gritted his teeth. He hated to pay, but what else could he do? Storms take him. Raging storms take him!

Chapter 30, "Darkness Unseen", WoK

WHY DOES EVERYONE DECIDE TO GET LOANS FROM THE DODGIEST PEOPLE OMG AHHHH

He said he was glad at least one of them had escaped the fate that was coming to the house. He thought that the rest of them—her three brothers and Balat’s betrothed—were doomed.

They might be right. Not only would Father’s debts crush them, but there was the matter of her father’s broken Soulcaster. The group that had given it to him wanted it back.

Chapter 1, "Santhid", WoR

If only banks existed - then people would have an alternative loans without putting the lives of their children as collateral. I know Lin Davar never liked Jushu, but Shallan was his favourite and a debt collector wouldn't care which child he took. In fact, a creditor might just take all of them.

Shallan’s slaves were a quiet group. They had tattoos on their foreheads, rather than brands. It was the kinder way to do it, and usually marked a person who had entered servitude willingly, as opposed to being forced into it as a punishment for a violent or terrible crime. They were men with debts or the children of slaves who still bore the debt of their parents.

Chapter 24, "Tyn", WoR

Shallan could have been one of them!

And this is the lack of "fair play" that I meant. Without a fair play atmosphere in finance, people are discouraged from taking loans because they don't want to risk having their families sold if their business idea fails. There are little or no restrictions on lenders reclaiming assets. It's shocking that they can even take light-eyed children as slaves. So there are no laws, or the law is vague on it, or Vorinism accepts it as normal since the only legal authority we have seen to actually do stuff is the Ardents, who write and approve marriage and betrothal contracts. So people are encouraged to hold onto their broams, to not buy things, to not open up a consumer friendly market. They are encouraged to do things safely, to farm instead of open a business, to keep to their rung of the social ladder instead of expanding into the middle class. In this kind of environment, I cannot see how banks exist.

I know most of you agree with me on the primitive state of Alethi finances, but I just wanted to elaborate and clarify.

But here is one silver lining!

Elhokar, being a big baby as usual, can't decide to fund a waterpark in the Shattered Plains by printing more money. Since spheres can't be clipped (cutting metal shavings off coin edges to sell) and you can't "water down" the money by mixing it with cheaper copper or tin, as was done in the old days, Elhokar won't be able to cause accidental Zimbabwe-tier hyper-inflation. None of the highprinces would be able to destabilise Alethkar either.

Which is good for now, but what happens in the future when the population is high enough that the money supply is so small that it's starting to limit the economy? Maybe they'll do away with gem standard like we did away with gold.

Pathfinder · March 3, 2016

On Alethkar and banking:

I would personally say that the use of printing presses and modern banking is part of the set-up conditions of transitioning an economy (and society maybe) into proto-industrialism. But printing can only work effectively if writers and publishers are free to print whatever instead of being censored, and if banking can only work effectively if it has a framework of legitimate accountability and "fair play" that gives investors a reason to trust it. If there is no appearance of accountability or regulation, people would rather hide their money in their sock drawer or in the mattress rather than depositing to the bank, if they are afraid the manager will take the money and run, or invest it in really terrible companies (ie, dog wedding party supplies) owned by friends. Managers can be getting away with dubious things with investor capital, but what matters is that the financial institutions give the appearance of being trustworthy.

When your banks earn themselves a terrible reputation and confidence falls, this is what happens to society:

Bank runs - everyone dogpiles the ATM and withdraws as much as they can before the bank closes

People stop depositing, new investment capital dries up

Entrepreneurs and innovators who had good ideas get no funding

People are afraid and can only keep their money in their undie drawer (loses value after inflation) or invest in very safe companies (government bonds, necessary public companies like water treatment plant, energy) which have small but steady gains and won't risk folding.

Large companies stay large, new companies and innovators close as they have large set-up costs before they can produce dividends, but the seed capital has dried up

Market stagnation happens - duopolies, oligopolies, monopolies, all those good Greek words that make you want to hit Go and collect $200

So image and appearance, regardless of what is going on in reality, is important to the function and existence of banking. Pyschology in general is important in the study of economics, but we won't dig that deep.

And this is why I do not think banks - crucial to the development of a industrial society - exist in Alethkar. I won't say that small credit unions, or money pot lending between the noble families and crafts/trades guilds don't exist. They probably do, and they rely on connections to get loans. But central banks and federal fiscal policy don't, and neither does "fair play" investment and lending.

Chapter 4, "The Shattered Plains", WoK

Chapter 6, "Bridge Four", WoK

From what we have seen of Alethkar, they have a primitive understanding of finance. Debt is portrayed as a burden, not an investment. They do not have regulation. Debts and interest are calculated arbitrarily, because there is no governing authority for bureaucratic oversight. And, of course, Alethi income and wealth distribution make it so most people are really poor and have no assets, capital, or collateral to store in banks. They only have their bodies.

Chapter 30, "Darkness Unseen", WoK

WHY DOES EVERYONE DECIDE TO GET LOANS FROM THE DODGIEST PEOPLE OMG AHHHH

Chapter 1, "Santhid", WoR

If only banks existed - then people would have an alternative loans without putting the lives of their children as collateral. I know Lin Davar never liked Jushu, but Shallan was his favourite and a debt collector wouldn't care which child he took. In fact, a creditor might just take all of them.

Chapter 24, "Tyn", WoR

Shallan could have been one of them!

And this is the lack of "fair play" that I meant. Without a fair play atmosphere in finance, people are discouraged from taking loans because they don't want to risk having their families sold if their business idea fails. There are little or no restrictions on lenders reclaiming assets. It's shocking that they can even take light-eyed children as slaves. So there are no laws, or the law is vague on it, or Vorinism accepts it as normal since the only legal authority we have seen to actually do stuff is the Ardents, who write and approve marriage and betrothal contracts. So people are encouraged to hold onto their broams, to not buy things, to not open up a consumer friendly market. They are encouraged to do things safely, to farm instead of open a business, to keep to their rung of the social ladder instead of expanding into the middle class. In this kind of environment, I cannot see how banks exist.

I know most of you agree with me on the primitive state of Alethi finances, but I just wanted to elaborate and clarify.

But here is one silver lining!

Elhokar, being a big baby as usual, can't decide to fund a waterpark in the Shattered Plains by printing more money. Since spheres can't be clipped (cutting metal shavings off coin edges to sell) and you can't "water down" the money by mixing it with cheaper copper or tin, as was done in the old days, Elhokar won't be able to cause accidental Zimbabwe-tier hyper-inflation. None of the highprinces would be able to destabilise Alethkar either.

Which is good for now, but what happens in the future when the population is high enough that the money supply is so small that it's starting to limit the economy? Maybe they'll do away with gem standard like we did away with gold.

That is not how banking developed. First the concept of banking does not require paper money/printing press. Modern banking as we know of it existed since 1397 a la the Medici Bank, which was 43 years prior to the printing press. Yes paper money existed for a very long time, but it was not a prerequisite for the existence of banks. Banking in fact went back even further, but I reference the Medici Bank as it is the first form of modern banking.

Regarding the slave place, banking had existed for 200 years before indentured servitude popped up. Yes in the books they are referred to as slaved, but the classical definition of a slave could not pay off "a debt" and be free. With indentured servitude you could.

I just feel like you are drawing a lot of false positives or correlations on something we do not have enough information to confirm.

Why the Alethi are not a medieval society

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