Lords and Manors in T2K

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Mohoender

It works fine during an entire part human history. Japan and Western Europe of course. But the most interesting country to adopt this system was the Byzentium Empire. There, each soldier was to gain a certain estate after his time. The main drawback to this system is that you quickly run out of free land.

In Europe, feudalism worked great (if you weren't a serf) until after the Black Plague. After that, so much of the population had died that hoards of surviving people could basically move into places and take anything (including property) with little fear of reprisal, and surviving skilled people were almost worth their weight in gold. Survivors could demand fair treatment and wages, because the surviving employers who needed them couldn't necessarily just hire someone else -- in many cases, there wasn't anyone else. So feudalism might not necessarily work in the T2K timeline. Feudalism also didn't work so well after the Black Plague because in the countryside, land was often there for the taking; there was a lot of room for food production and not enough farmers. Again, farmers could demand a fair price for their goods.

OK, so let's throw a wrench into the works. After the Black Plague, the land was viable, the surviving people were mostly those who had either an inborn resistance to the plague, those who survived catching the plague and had built up resistance, and those who had the tiny bit of decent, enlightened medical care that existed at the time. Though there were marauder bands, recent historical research has shown that they weren't as prevalent as was once believed. There were also almost no firearms of any sort; even trained bowmen and crossbowmen were scarce.

In the T2K world, much of the land is poisoned by chemical, biological, and nuclear warfare. Firearms are everywhere, and a modern firearm is easier to use and makes one more dangerous than even the best crossbow of the Middle Ages. (Assuming you have the guts to pull the trigger...unless you are a psycho, you'd be surprised how morally difficult it is to pull the trigger on a human being that first time.) A sort of "Nuclear Autumn" makes crops even harder to grow. Much technology is either non-functional, has to be fixed by skilled personnel, or just plain useless -- and most folks in the modern world (especially in the industrialized world) just don't know what to do without that tech. They are used to calling the police and EMS when something goes wrong, and emergency services are scarcer than hen's teeth. There aren't any grocery stores anymore -- or for the most part, any stores at all. And after the November Nuclear Strikes, the change would be sudden -- learn fast or die.

So much of those 51% of the population that survived the nuclear exchange might well find themselves under the thumb of a warlord that has guns, food, gear, medicine, and the skills to use them, as well as the wherewithal to use those abilities as a weapon to keep the surrounding population in line and subjugated as virtual slaves. Serfdom has returned (if not outright slavery).

It could go either way, and in the T2K world, serfdom and sort-of "co-ops" will probably both exist.