Of course, just invent firearms, simple really...
Do you know how to make them and where to get all the needed resources?
How to introduce modern morals to an ancient civilization?
- Thread starter EmptyHusk
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- civilization morality
Of course, just invent firearms, simple really...
Do you know how to make them and where to get all the needed resources?
Volt Cruelerz
Software Engineer Hoosier in Florida
- Location
- Florida
All? No, of course not. I've studied the historical influence of firearms, but not the material science involved. If I were the one that got stuck back in time, there would be a ton of trial and error and probably a lot of exploding barrels at first.
But that's beside the point. I was speaking relative to this discussion. We're talking about bootstrapping a civilization. Anything related to that is necessarily hard and complex. That said, compared to other things you could do to centralize power, creating muskets and cannons is fairly easy.
- Location
- The Old Dominion
It took from the 13th to the late 15th century to get to from devices that threw arrows and rocks to classical cannons and the arquebus then you got the the original musket which was a specialist heavy anti-armor weapon came came along in the 1500s along with the caliver which was a intermediate sized gun between the arquebus and Musket then it took though most of the 17th century to get to what we think of today when it comes to muskets and that's without getting into changes of the firing mechanisms such as matchlocks, wheellocks, snaphaunces and flintlocks .
Its not a process that would be quick.
Its not a process that would be quick.
- Location
- Uruguay
I think it is already mentioned on the first post, but in this hypothetical situation, if it is something like designs of machines or chemicals reaction, you either know it or have access to said information (though I think that smockless powder is beyond the reach of anybody without modern technology).
But more than the trial and error of making guns right, I think that the biggest problem would be to create and sustain an army, because you would need to improve steel quality and production a lot, as well as developing the techniques and machines needed to make guns.
Didn't people have problems finding saltpetre to make more gunpowder on the renaissance era?
But more than the trial and error of making guns right, I think that the biggest problem would be to create and sustain an army, because you would need to improve steel quality and production a lot, as well as developing the techniques and machines needed to make guns.
Didn't people have problems finding saltpetre to make more gunpowder on the renaissance era?
The problem was always never the lower nobles but the high nobility, indeed in pretty much every case I can think of it was the strengthening of said lower nobility that allowed the increased centralization... Indeed I would argue that you should probably strengthen the lower nobility/weaken the high nobility first before you introduce advanced firearms because otherwise that attempt might backfire. Without a strong central organization already in place I wouldn't bet on guns being that effective in establishing one.
(Plus you don't need guns to centralize a medieval kingdom (and even less in case of some of the ancient empires) as examples like ancient egypt, rome or various medieval kings like the early Norman conquerors or the early Staufers in Sicily show. )
Volt Cruelerz
Software Engineer Hoosier in Florida
- Location
- Florida
I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. The reason Europe finally started assembling into larger states was guns allowing militaries to conquer land far faster as well as being used to quell rebellions. Until then, kings were actually rather weak and couldn't impose their will on the lower nobles who were the source of their army.
Please explain what examples you're referring to.
And obviously no, you don't need them to build a centralized government, but it certainly helps.
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Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
...
No. That's stupid. Stop being stupid.
The Mesoamerican, Persian and Roman Empires all assembled huge states that remained stable for centuries without access to any form of firearm, while the Hungarian Black Army circa the 1400's had all the guns it could possibly want, but never achieved any imperial ambitions. "GUNS = CIVILIZATION" is an obnoxious piece of pop-history twaddle that sometimes seems to endure only to irritate actual scholars. The process of Europe assembling into larger and more cohesive states was... well, honestly there were too many reasons to easily count, but off the top of my head I'd advise paying more attention to internal administrative strength, logistical improvements, the rise of modern universities and increasing urbanisation.
Like, guns coexisted alongside medieval feudalism since the early 1200's. It took them a long time to evolve into the kind of siegebreaker weaponry that could even meaningfully contribute to the decline of the feudal system.
Also, looking back at some of your previous claims, "... make a standing army. With them, you can conquer far faster and keep the lower nobles in line." lol. No, there are reasons medieval nobles were extremely wary of standing armies; they are not passive bodies. Far from keeping the lower nobles in line, they often acted as a powerful political bloc in and of themselves. A professional army means famed generals with opportunities for glory and power. Even today, national armies still act as kingmakers.
Now, this thread has been "Press E to make it stop" from the start for me, so if you'll excuse me,
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- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The thing about a standing army, even beyond it being a political bloc of it's own, is that it's also a huge drain on your money.
You know, the money you use for feeding your people, for building roads, for making repairs, for paying people and everything else. You also have to constantly arrange training for them, hire generals, quartermasters, train officers, engineers et-fucking-cetera.
You know, the money you use for feeding your people, for building roads, for making repairs, for paying people and everything else. You also have to constantly arrange training for them, hire generals, quartermasters, train officers, engineers et-fucking-cetera.
Very true plus there is another factor to consider. You need to make sure it stays loyal to you, which could be difficult if your totally uprooting the society it comes from.
Not to mention insisting on no extorting money or other favours from citizens and trying to limit any looting and the like when its waging war, either offensive or defensive with other states.Also any local nobles or other groups who have access to troops and may have supplied much of the nation's defences in the past are likely to feel somewhat threatened by such a force. Which if they step in before its set up could be fatal, most especially to you.
- Location
- Not the hills of home
Well first off, it would obviously depend on where I was placed exactly and the time period. Taking from your list of examples, my favorite would be Egypt, particularly pre-Roman Egypt or Bronze Age Egypt.
I would do this because of several factors - the cult of personality around the Pharoh, the geographic centralization around the Nile, the gold reserves in the Eastern Desert and access to the riches of Nubia.
The first is rather easy. For many parts of Egyptian history, the Pharoh was basically a god-king, heavily tied to the Egyptian religion as a source of their legitimacy. Religion and the status it grants me will be a critical role in justifying the social advancement of gender equality and the like in the minds of the nobles and common folk. Religion would play a part in how I justified and spread those beliefs to the population. The Pharohs also had a stronger standing against the nobles and guilds than many of the other civilizations mentioned. This added centralization would be critical to advancing any of the ideas.
Secondly, Egypt is centered around the Nile. Control the Nile and you control the main source of transport and agriculture in the kingdom. It also has the added benefit of being where the vast majority of the population are and thus avoids the issue of far flung groups of people where my control would be weak and opponents are strong. This makes it much easier to spread ideas, techniques, and ideals throughout the kingdom.
The resources of the Eastern Desert and Nubia also tended to fall into the Pharaoh's hands much more than the nobles, though not entirely. That gives me wealth to build, trade for what I need and keep the keys to power in line, assuming I'm in a time period where gold, silver ect is that kind of commodity. If not, well that sucks and back to the drawing board on that one. But the previous two points should be strengthened will the reliance of grain and such.
With that said, the process would very step by step. I'd look to improve agricultural production by introducing better practices (field rotation ftw) introducing better tools (even if it is literally just looking to see what came after the tools they're using right then and moving on to that) and using a very trial and error approach practice for the odd project where I get ambitious enough to try and skip a few steps (like, say, metal tools). In the meantime, I would be leaning heavily on historical texts and examples to see how nations set up effective systems civil service and bureaucracy, how they limited the power of nobles were appropriate and generally nicking good ideas from other civilizations for Egyptian use as the situation allows, like the Incan messaging system or Chinese exams for civil servants and so on. Improving transport, especially across the Nile would be another priority. Building a school, only one to start, to help churn out more literate peoples would be important as well. Slipping in better medical practices here and there (primitive sewer systems going away from drink water for example) would also happen.
Many of these would be a trial and error approach, and realistically when all is said and done I would have very few of the objectives complete by the end of my life - even if I lived to a ripe old age of 100 and didn't suffer the onset of dementia that could undo my work. While it is possible to make great advancement in things like gender equality and living standards for the common man, much of my work would be laying the foundation for those objectives to come about -it's incredibly unlikely I'd see them done myself and I don't really have a way to stop it all crashing down a Pharaoh or three down the line. The system I'm trying to change would be the source of my power, so things like slavery and serfdom wouldn't likely end in my lifetime, though I could potentially offer a way out that didn't exist before as free men under conditions.
Now, if I lived unnaturally long that would give credit to the living god idea and I'd take full advantage of that to push for further reform and ideas leading to a more modern state. But it would still be a step-by-step process. Turning my attention from issue to issue and slowly building up the ideal state. But certain ideas, such as education as a right a voice for the common man (especially when I would have to adopt a more absolutist approach to rule for many of the other aspects to happen) and so on would take centuries to come about.
Draucus
Mowbedan Mowbed
- Location
- College
To be honest, I think if you enter into a situation like this assuming that modern moral strictures are inherently superior to those of our predecessors you're more likely to be overthrown than effect change.
Morals on a societal level are primarily dictated by factors economic and technological. So the best way to steer, say, ancient Greek society away from fucking prepubescent boys and throwing unwanted children off cliffs would be to introduce modern technologies which might alleviate the societal pressures which encourage these behaviors. Some easy one would be penicillin, crop rotation, steel, and the implementation of a social safety net.
Granted, none of those would really help with the boy fucking. To be fair we're still struggling with that issue in Afghanistan.
Morals on a societal level are primarily dictated by factors economic and technological. So the best way to steer, say, ancient Greek society away from fucking prepubescent boys and throwing unwanted children off cliffs would be to introduce modern technologies which might alleviate the societal pressures which encourage these behaviors. Some easy one would be penicillin, crop rotation, steel, and the implementation of a social safety net.
Granted, none of those would really help with the boy fucking. To be fair we're still struggling with that issue in Afghanistan.
ZeroXSEED
Economic Authoritarian Muslim Leftist
- Location
- In the name of orange!
- Pronouns
- He
First start with mass, cheap education for the kids.
Contrary to what people claim, early age education does make huge difference in mental and intelligence development.
Revolutionize agriculture, this will force mass unemployed farmers to build cities instead of another farming villages. This in turn will create 'middle class' that normally only exist in very small quantity.
With smarter, wealthier peasants, they will began to question many, many injustice that the noble inflicts on the bourgeois and the proletariat.
Add some rebellion or two.
Add industrialization with surging cities.
Welcome the renaissance age.
Contrary to what people claim, early age education does make huge difference in mental and intelligence development.
Revolutionize agriculture, this will force mass unemployed farmers to build cities instead of another farming villages. This in turn will create 'middle class' that normally only exist in very small quantity.
With smarter, wealthier peasants, they will began to question many, many injustice that the noble inflicts on the bourgeois and the proletariat.
Add some rebellion or two.
Add industrialization with surging cities.
Welcome the renaissance age.
randomideguy
I'm a feedback whore
- Location
- Texas
Spend a few years writing down pretty much everything I can think of - since I have access to the knowledge the internet that should result in a fairly large library. Bring in people with education to do it (I guess that means wealthy people) but also bring in people with sicknesses that are easily cured by modern medicine who would've been more or less abandoned by society. This can help get me a reputation as a pseudo-Christ like character with very devoted followers. Maybe develop some rudimentary weapons to arm said followers.
Fortify the library, start taking kids and raising them up with a modernist ideology while maybe using some other future knowledge to keep the adults at bay (if not use some chemical agents).
Within a generation we'll have a group of loyal, armed, and modernist soldier/students to go out and conquer the world.
Well... that took a quick turn into utter supervillainy. Would make a fun book, though. Could call it The Modernist.
Fortify the library, start taking kids and raising them up with a modernist ideology while maybe using some other future knowledge to keep the adults at bay (if not use some chemical agents).
Within a generation we'll have a group of loyal, armed, and modernist soldier/students to go out and conquer the world.
Well... that took a quick turn into utter supervillainy. Would make a fun book, though. Could call it The Modernist.
- Location
- Uruguay
Welcome the renaissance age.
Yay!
Right, and since you are suppoced to be on the biggest possition of power, how do you prevent your death on those revolutions?
In other worlds, what would be better? Aiming for a democracy, an monarchy that has to keep the wellbeing of the people in mind/as priority (not necessarily an hederitary monarchy), or/and a parliament that represents the people?
That... seems like a dictatorship, or at least a theocracy, not sure if that would help the general masses or destroy the middle class.
ZeroXSEED
Economic Authoritarian Muslim Leftist
- Location
- In the name of orange!
- Pronouns
- He
Become a legislator that put myself between nobles and the peasant.
Either way should works, constitutional monarchy and democracy are as good as people use the concept.
Tibby the Cat
Meow
- Location
- St. Louis
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Nya/Nyan
Develop merchant capitalism.
I'd need to find a way to increase the power of the merchant class and empower any parliament-esque institution present in the country. If there is no parliament this is much harder. If the king has successfully centralized power away from the feudal lords without any such institution we're really fucked. There needs to be some way for merchants to make a lot of money and not just have it confiscated by the state. This might require moving to a different country and trying it over there.
You'll need to have a somewhat socially mobile merchant class established. In the case of Venice they had a special type of contract wherein the junior partner would physically accompany the ship and payload back to the home port while the senior partner put in the money to fund it. The junior partner would receive a somewhat larger share of the return than the proportion of money he put in, because he went through the trouble of accompanying the cargo. This is how new families entered the upper class in Venice, and a rough majority of all the junior partners in these contracts were from new families that lacked political connections. This system, wherein new blood enters politics, allowed Venice to prosper as the legislature thus had less of an interest in restricting entry into the market and you didn't have the economy dominated by inefficient monopolies. When the aristocrats closed the political system the real death knell to the Venetian economy was the abolition of this type of contract.
First though you need a more powerful merchant class, you can work from there. Modern economic knowledge and other scientific knowledge can give these people an advantage over foreign competitors, allowing you to have a more successful local merchant class, which could hopefully leverage this into political power. The only way to keep this from being quashed is if the central authority is sufficiently weak and decentralized that the various nobles are too busy fucking about with one another to notice you.
Simply introducing new technologies is in no way a surefire way of success. Feudal and imperial regimes have long intentionally banned new inventions so as to avoid disruptions to the ruling order. Hapsburg Austria banned railroads and factories and tried to prevent urbanization and minimize literacy. Imperial Rome intentionally shunned some labor-saving inventions so as to keep the plebeians occupied. If the government is too weak to be bothered fucking about with you you're much better off here. Just don't let them consolidate power.
If you eventually manage to get some rudimentary parliament with a variety of merchants having some power, just make sure that the ruling coalition is sufficiently diverse and that no one faction has too much power. Under these conditions the rule of law can develop. If any one faction is capable of monopolizing power you will not have this happen.
Basically try to get a Magna Carta to happen. You need this to happen and become a manner of cultural institution like in the England before the glorious revolution, something people will reference and which has a lot of legitimacy. Then I dunno try to cause circumstances such as the glorious revolution to occur. It'll take several lifetimes.
EDIT:
Lol yeah seriously, why are people focusing on the military when this is like, fundamentally a question about statebuilding?
Just use peasant levies and militias christ. Or well, if you get a strong merchant class use foreign mercenaries. Maybe give them plots of land or something, maybe voting rights after their service is up if you've gotten wide enough suffrage that it isn't completely out of the question. Basically setting up a foreign legion.
Or like, mercenaries, and peasant levies, and militias. And some stuff from the nobles because those dudes are still going to be around.
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- Location
- SMS Odette II
I didn't realize they still unironically teach Whig history in school these days.
Tibby the Cat
Meow
- Location
- St. Louis
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Nya/Nyan
No, I just mostly pulled it out of my ass based on a single book I read, being honest.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This thread has reached it's apex; any posts following this will be desperate scavengers, trying to make the best of a fallen age.
tankdrop24
Tread First into Hell
- Location
- The Center of the Universe: Toronto, Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I know this is going to be very unpopular, but my honest opinion is: don't.
Attempting to externally force a set of moral axioms on a so-called 'less advanced' civilization (which, really a set way of determining how true that is a whole different can of worms) has never gone well before in human history. The first thing that leaps to mind even suggesting it are residential schools.
It's generally bad to assume that 'less advanced' act the way the do for no reason, and depending on how you enforce these changes, they'll either just ignore it (because they don't see the logic behind the moral code you are selling) or they'll follow the word but not the spirit, and resent the hell out of you for it.
Attempting to externally force a set of moral axioms on a so-called 'less advanced' civilization (which, really a set way of determining how true that is a whole different can of worms) has never gone well before in human history. The first thing that leaps to mind even suggesting it are residential schools.
It's generally bad to assume that 'less advanced' act the way the do for no reason, and depending on how you enforce these changes, they'll either just ignore it (because they don't see the logic behind the moral code you are selling) or they'll follow the word but not the spirit, and resent the hell out of you for it.
- Location
- Uruguay
I know that there are reasons behind the way people acted. Every society had in some way a pragmatic reason to do things that now we see primitive and barbaric.
This tread is more about what one would need to do to change that on a pragmatic level.
Saying that your moral code is best only because is more advanced or is more correct and trying to impose it would only get you killed or weaken your nation significantly.
On the other side, doing something as improving the amount of food you can produce and reducing the amount of people that is needed to work on farms would have economical impacts.
This tread is more about how one would do what has already happened in our world while trying to avoid the unfortunate events that came with it.
More about which technologies and reforms could help to deal with those suddenly unemployed farmers, what politics would be involved in giving those workers better rights, what economics would be being a system that avoided monopolies, and which elections systems could help to avoid corruption.
But it doesn't matter much, this thread has kind of been declares dead by the moderator.
Tibby the Cat
Meow
- Location
- St. Louis
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Nya/Nyan
Would you mind elaborating on the issues with the post, by the way? You're more knowledgeable of history than I am, and I don't fully understand where or how I'm being inaccurate, only that I probably am somewhere in there.
I'm interested in the subject and would like to know more.