I’m not sure to what extent ‘industry’ as we modern folks think of it would even be on the foreseeable horizon. Hard to be certain. I don’t recall any mention of some of the early components of that in our history, windmills or watermills as a simple source of power…on the other hand, there are at least some mechanical devices, such as the printing press.
It seems like a situation where the existence of magic as a powerful force might rather divert the intellectual energies of society away from technological development, though. As long as there’s an overlap between the sorts of minds who would make good inventors and the sorts of minds who would make good theurges, at least.
(In either case, the MC expecting or planning for industrial development strikes me as something almost implausibly foresighted…)
In answer to your second question, yes. Included in the curriculum in addition to reading will be the fundamentals of wisardry because in my MCs’s opinions, the best way to permanently destroy the hold of the Hegemony’s religion is to visibly show it for a lie by showing how anyone with sufficient education and intelligence can learn wisardry. The state would maintain control of the supply of aetherial blood or whatever replaces that if our MCs are able to utilize Xaos instead.
The main thing my MCs rebellions would be willing and able to offer is an end to the Hegemony’s attempts to invade Halassur and the permanent removal of the Hegemony from Halassur’s borders. If Halassur expects land (particularly Nyral), then my MCs would refuse or make vague and meaningless promises. From what I recall of the text, the border wars typically happened when the Hegemony tried to expand into Halassur. In any case, I specified “temporarily” as if overthrowing the Hegemony leads to a second war right afterwards to prevent or reverse foreign encroachment then so be it, but overthrowing the Hegemony comes first and would be a lot easier with the aid of another great power. My MCs intend to make every effort to actually win, not just to survive by hiding in the middle of nowhere.
Yes, the enemy of my enemy, however to get to Nyral they need to occupy the even more vital Isthmus of Erezza (including the location my mc would prefer as the new capital).
Still I would rather take their “help” in the form of their money and supplies, as opposed to their armies, since if they occupy anything it may become difficult to dislodge them.
I agree with most of those, a real peace treaty and a demilitarized border, possibly with some minor border adjustments in their favour and perhaps even token “reparations” would all be things my mc could agree to. Any significant territory in Erezza and Nyral, not so much since those are absolutely vital regions, not only for future developments but in order to balance out the Xthonic heartland of Shayard and Karagon proper.
This is where I partly disagree, overthrowing the Hegemony means absolutely nothing if it is just going to be replaced by another decadent slavocracy or Xthonic faith based theocracy. Mere regime change at the top, while changing little else would essentially be worthless to my mc.
My MCs would be willing to accept training instructors to teach the rebellion’s people how to use various weapons and if Halassur is willing to send an instructor in wisardry then one such instructor would be accepted as well and wisardry instruction manuals are always welcome. My MCs would have any foreign instructors kept under watch. My MCs would prefer that most of the fighting be done by those the Hegemony keeps oppressed because they will be more motivated towards the goals my MCs would prefer. My MCs would not accept foreign troops in anywhere close to greater numbers than what the rebellion could field in trained fighters which is laughably small for a rebellion at the moment.
I would say the one difference is that while my MCs would find themselves once more at war against an evil empire, at least they would have better supplies, training, and resources at the start of that second war. If Halassur did insist on trying to take over the Hegemony, then my MCs would certainly be willing to expand the rebellion into Halassur’s territory and fight Halassur next if necessary.
I doubt the land that once comprised the Hegemony would be in any financial position to afford even token reparations. Instead the rebellion could offer perhaps reduced to zero tariffs for 99 years or something like that and most favoured nation status when it comes to trading.
You’d still lose the element of surprise and this time be up against a truly foreign enemy but one that knows most of our tricks. I don’t know if a slightly better resource base at the start is going to help much there, particularly if we have domestic uprisings to contend with as well.
Possibly, however if we would be able to avoid dropping that mountain on Aekos and capture it and that palace relatively intact then my mc would rather melt down every decadent piece of jewelry, ornamentation and even table silver (at least we’d be rid of the decadent junk that way) to pay for “reparations” and loans, rather than expose what is likely to be an already struggling and extremely fragile economy to the depredations of unrestrained foreign competition as that would just be another way of achieving a Pyrrhic victory. After all we wouldn’t want to “win” against the Hegemony just to have Halassur buy the entire economy out from under us, as that would also reduce us to a figurehead at best.
Yes, but if the currency is backed in silver and gold, you just destroyed your currency (and everyone elses) by flooding the market with more silver and gold.
Yeah, but with no tariffs and unrestrained competition from every merchant and “businessman” in Halassur our economy would be done for anyway in such a scenario, might as well take the nuclear option then, or we could use the threat of it to keep interest rates, tariffs, repayments and reparations at a sustainable level.
The economy of the Hegemony likely isn’t competitive already, since trade seems to be fairly minimal and mostly conducted by Abhuman and Halassur merchants anyway. If our merchants and businessmen are already unused to foreign trade, let alone foreign investment then we had better avoid entering into a treaty, the likes of which @Norilinde proposes, unless like Qing China we really have no choice.
For the record, when I suggested most favoured nation status as a concession, I meant it in the modern free trade agreement sense not the Chinese Unequal Treaty sense. I admit I had forgotten that the same phrase was used for both but I had hoped apparently in vain that the hyperlink would clarify. There is no way in Xaos that my MCs would agree to grant extraterritoriality.
Since Halassur apparently has a slavery-based economy, I have my doubts that it is much more competitive than the Hegemony’s economy but we’ll see. In any case, having the newly liberated lands that were formerly the Hegemony flooded with relatively cheap foreign-made goods may be bad for domestic producers but would be good for domestic consumers assuming they don’t just get laid off but rebuilding after a successful rebellion would provide plenty of employment opportunities. Furthermore, if need be, certain vital industries can be subsidized which might be a good idea anyway and it might still be cheaper than agreeing to even token reparations to secure aid to win the rebellion. I expect that the lands newly liberated from the Hegemony will be bankrupt and unfortunately also starving so any concessions for assistance during the rebellion must have long-term repayment plans. If the Merchant’s Guild wants to pay the bill to repay foreign assistance during the rebellion to avoid the tariff issue, then my MC would be happy to enter a bidding war for the Rebellion’s favor between Halassur and the Merchant’s Guild.
This may work for you, but since my new state needs educated “elites” and the only sufficiently educated castes and classes in the Hegemony are the nobles, the priests and the merchants my mc pretty much only has one option, which means the merchants will, unfortunately have a disproportionate amount of influence. Still that is a necessary evil as the priest and noble castes absolutely cannot be relied upon, seeing as how they are our foremost enemies.
I absolutely agree about that. However, my MCs will not have forgotten how our smuggling contact paid the rebellion only approximately 1/10 of the profit made from smuggling. Thus my MCs would view the Merchants Guild having to either deal with reduced tariffs for Halassur or repaying foreign aid as fitting. Those merchants that actually helped the rebellion would be compensated with tax breaks or something similar, but the rest can deal with the consequences of not having helped the rebellion when it mattered. My MCs view their relationships with merchants in a strictly business sense, those merchants that did help did so mostly for profit not out of altruism and their prices were higher since the rebellion had no alternative. Those helpful merchants will still be rewarded though not because they deserve a reward but because a message needs to be sent to other merchants that helping the new government does not go unrewarded. Well, it is fitting then that the merchants will have to deal with reduced tariffs for a foreign competitor or repaying foreign aid themselves because by that point, the merchants will have no choice.
Yes, but if you go and crash the currency @idonotlikeusernames, you crash your economy and when you crash your economy, you’re in deep trouble. There are other ways to do it, offer incentives to traders and businesses so that they can build up and become competitive, but yes, impose tariffs to buy time for them to expand production.
But flooding the market with the stuff the currency is backed with will spell economic disaster.
Technically, in my scenario we’d dump that stuff on Halassur, so it would flood their market, not ours. Besides, waht else can my mc do with decadent crap that he has no use for, but sell it off or find a way to turn it into money?
That is the sad, sad consequence of them having the upper hand, an upper hand that will, in my mc’s case, not go away for a couple of decades either. Setting up a better education system will realistically take at least a generation (or two) to begin to bring in the rewards, until that time my mc is, as @P_Tigras described it, a hostage of sorts to the merchant class.
That kind of stuff needs an established state and tax-code to have any effect at all, whereas tariffs merely require an iron grip on the borders, something much more easily achieved. Letting the rest “deal with the consequences” of essentially being (overly) cautious businessmen and standing on the sidelines for too long isn’t going to help us any if that means selling out our economy to foreign interests. Basically we need those people to really get the economy going again and we need to protect them with steep tariffs (particularly on the basics that we really ought to produce ourselves) while we do so. Even if those tariffs mean more hardship for the general population in the short term.
The best my mc could do would be low tariffs on “luxury goods” (read “decadent crap”), but then under his rule there’s not going to be much of a demand for that sort of stuff anyway and the other way around the new state would be the largest seller of all the goods confiscated from former nobles and the old church so not levying an extra tariff on goods the new state itself is the main seller of is something we could live with, if we have to.
See, above, but yes, considering just how much my mc needs the merchant class the new state will offer what support it can, though I don’t expect that to be too much.
That’s the idea, our business-people may be evil capitalists, but at least they’re our evil capitalists.
Similar here.
That might only vaguely apply if you somehow secure the support of enough of the old oppressors (as in priests and nobles) to keep the government going, but that will almost certainly have other very unpleasant outcomes, mainly the slavocracy continuing under a slightly different guise, just with different people at the top. Then it’s “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” indeed. Considering just how much my mc really cannot stand the old bosses, particularly the ecclesiasts and their “church”, that’s very much not an option for him.
Switzerland uses other countries money, not melted down looted junk from their own (former) citizens, though. (They were smart enough to let foreign tyrants loot the money and then invariably “lose” the account info of large portions of it when those people were killed or deposed.)
Which would be nice if it was backing a paper currency, at the moment those precious metals still, literally are the currency, in which case hoarding huge, unspent (and indeed unusable) “reserves” of the stuff isn’t going to help us. Unless of course we introduce a new, paper currency…hmmm…you know the more I think about it…yes, that might work, provided of course that we can find a way to make falsification of it very difficult indeed.
There is also the fact that some of it might be worth more in the original, jewelry form to foreign collectors, as opposed to melted down precious metals and single gems.
Lastly there is a huge amount of said decadent crap, paintings, non-metal statues, books, ornate furniture, clothing and perhaps even some of the more decadent foodstuffs and beverages that cannot be melted down in the first place, so the only use those things have are for export. However since I envision the new state selling much more of those kinds of things than we import, while not ideal, we could live with a fairly low added tariff on those kinds of things.
Building up the nations culture requires new art of all forms as the old “art” has a decidedly unsuitable narrative attached to it. It glorifies a horrible caste system and religion, was created on the backs of the suffering of countless slaves. The heroes it aims to immortalize are my mc’s villains and its “values” are poisonous.
Similarly with the surviving pieces of even older “art”, my mc doesn’t want a bunch of coins, statues and Gryphon banners glorifying Shayard’s old conquering royal families as that is also a past my mc wants no part of.
I agree, but my rebellion would require new culture for a new era, all the old crap is worse than useless.
Basically you have described Hasburg Spain dynasty. Our monarchy spent all those Americans goods in two things arts and wars. Only Art stayed and given us so much money People thinking in Louvre But the most important picture museum with pictures until 1812 is The Prado. Louvre is just a toodler compared.Rembrandt, Rubbens, Bosco Van Dick, Van Eik, Velazquez, Goya ,Tintoretto, Berroquio, Rafael, Donatello, Miguel Angel, Botichelli, Murillo, … Thinking in whatever and there’s half of their known wokrs are here. All the rest of riches have been long gone but culture remains and gives more prosperity that the mere gold or jewellery.
True, but like I said my mc’s issues with it would be that most of it glorifies either Xthonos, the caste system and the ruling slavocrats or the old royal family and their “nobles”. None of which fit in the narrative my mc wants to tell.
Art is art, sometimes it covers the bad, but it also covers the good. If you destroy your history, you are no better than those who you beat. You need to be willing to tolerate the good and the bad, for instance, much of that artwork that @poison_mara mentioned covered a bunch of autocrats that systemically destroyed Spain. Yet, they are proud of their heritage and look forward to the days that they can surpass the deeds of their ancestors.
Use that as a way to acknowledge the evils of society and create new art to commemorate your new, glorious, and righteous People’s Republic of Shayard.
Yes. In the Civil war The Prado s bombed by Franco even in Nazis were scandalized by it. Yeah, Hitler considered that in the Museum the real values of Arian European culture were placed away from Modernist tendencies. But a bunch of normal people of Madrid not politicians give their lives to hide ALL the pieces of Museum away. And hiden well. When the war was over they deposit the pieces in a neutral society of nations building they didn’t ask for money just that the pictures and sculptures returned home. Picasso give some of most famous pictures to Spain free in his testament he just ask to be given to a Democrat government and place in The prado near his beloved Velazquez. Politicians screwing it and put the damn Picasso Gernica in other museum. Just to giving the note really.
The paradox is we Spanish people values more art than money . That and we are stupid I suppose. Those civilians could sold the pictures or something like that or ask for political amnesty in Spain afterward. Nothing some even were jailed. We ace the Honourable romantic side like Quijote… Sadly the monetary and logical not. That’s why we are Spain and not Switzerland.
(They were smart enough to let foreign tyrants loot the money and then invariably “lose” the account info of large portions of it when those people were killed or deposed.)