[X] I wish to transform this fief with a truly massive project.
It's one thing to commit a few hundred crown and a season's labour to the improvement of a road or the expansion of your house. What you have in mind is something altogether more ambitious: a great undertaking that may well transform the shape of your entire fief and the lives of those who live within it for generations, if not centuries.
Such a project would be far from easy, of course. The material costs alone would be substantial, perhaps even overwhelming. The work of planning, organising, and finally realising such a feat would no doubt prove massively time-consuming, as well. And that's to say nothing about how such an effort might build unrest amongst your tenants, who have more reason to resent the disruption to their lives that such a project might entail than to celebrate the potential for positive change that may not even manifest itself for years to come.
But you're committed to the idea. The costs may be great; but the potential benefits to the prosperity of your fief, the prominence of your family, and your personal fortune cannot be denied.
The only question that remains is which project, precisely, you mean to pursue. After some thought, you manage to narrow your options down to four.
The most straightforward means of increasing the prominence of your fief would be to turn it into a local centre of commerce, and you suspect you already know how that might be achieved. The route of a major canal passes not two days' ride from your barony. If you were able to secure the funds and resources needed to extend that canal to your own lands, then you would not only allow your tenants to sell their produce further afield with much greater ease but make your own barony the primary transshipment centre for the entire region, with the inhabitants of neighbouring villages being required to come to your fief and use your canal docks if they mean to compete with your tenants.
Alternatively, instead of making your village a centre of transport, you could just as likely render it a centre of production. A manufactory, appropriately equipped to turn locally produced raw materials into finished goods, could be precisely what your fief needs to elevate it to prominence. In addition, with so many Tierrans out of work, the prospect of employment in such an establishment would surely bring you a fresh influx of tenants—and a commensurate increase in income.
Of course, the problem with either of those two courses of action is that the costs of such an undertaking would be enormous and that any benefit one might receive from them would surely be gradual in coming. It may take years before a canal or a factory might turn a profit, decades before they're able to make good on the vast fortune you would inevitably have to expend in their establishment.
You could certainly think of easier ways to make a profit quickly and for less investment in time and money: your fief has a considerable amount of common land, broad expanses which aren't really being put to any organised, productive use. With permission from the Cortes, you could enclose it and use it to graze sheep or cattle, deriving substantial income from the proceeds. Of course, your tenants have long considered their access to common land as something of a right. They're unlikely to respond well to any news that you intend to enclose it.
Finally, there's the possibility of using the unique regional characteristics of your fief to some use. For example, the vast, old-growth forests which bound your fief have always proven a reliable source of high-quality building timber and firewood. Yet the harvest of such material has never been properly organised. By establishing a proper timber yard among modern lines and securing warrants to provide material to builders, commercial shipwrights—perhaps even the Royal Tierran Navy's own yards—you could find yourself bringing no small amount of industry, renown, and profit to your fief.
Ideally, had you the ability and the resources, you wouldn't have to choose at all, completing one project after the other. Alas, that is quite obviously not an option. Even one such undertaking will greatly tax the resources of your fief in its establishment and upkeep. It would be folly to embark upon a second.
Thus, you'll only be able to choose to embark upon one major project. It would be best to do so carefully…
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[X] I think a canal would be the best option.
It would be easy to consider the extension of a canal not unduly different from the extension of a road, but after some thought, it becomes evident that such an assumption would be far from the truth.
While a road would only require a shallow bed to be dug and surfaced, a canal would have to be excavated to a substantial depth, to the point where many tonnes of earth would have to be moved simply to advance the whole of the route a dozen paces. That would only be the first of your concerns. Then there's the matter of lining the sides of the channel to prevent erosion, the installation of locks and weirs to control the water level, and the negotiation of the route with your neighbours—who may not necessarily approve of the idea of you digging a canal through their lands to benefit your own.
Even getting the necessary materials together would be a massive undertaking in itself: thousands of tonnes of timber and stone; implements of excavations large and small; hundreds of surveyors, diggers, and engineers. Actually finishing the project would require at least three or four years' worth of labour and thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of crown.
But surely, such an effort would be worth it. Right?
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[X] I ought to consider building a manufactory more closely.
Regardless of the particulars, building a manufactory hall and its outbuildings would surely be a considerable endeavour. Its size alone would almost certainly make it the most expensive and expansive construction project your fief has ever seen. Once complete, you suspect that it would dwarf even your own manor.
Yet the hall itself promises to be neither the most costly nor the most important part of the whole undertaking, for a factory without the actual mechanisms of production would be little more than an empty shell. It is the machinery that will be at the heart of the project, and it will be that machinery that will almost certainly take up the lion's share of the cost: once ordered, it shall have to be painstakingly assembled in some faraway workshop, only to be shipped in pieces to the building site. Only once it is once again assembled and workers are trained in its use can even the first manufactured product be turned out.
The whole process could take three or four years to complete. Its cost would almost certainly stretch into the tens of thousands of crown. Yet a successful manufactory will not only bring you immense profit but provide your fief's tenants with a reliable source of work and income—and elevate its stature greatly.
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[X] I would like to consider enclosing my fief's common lands more closely.
In truth, enclosing your fief's common lands would almost certainly be the potential major project requiring the least expenditure of time and resources. The work of enclosing the commons itself could only be a matter of surveying and fence-building—the work of a season or two, at most. The acquisition of the needed stock to populate your new enclosures would only take another season. Likewise, it would only take a year or two and maybe two thousand crown worth of investment for the whole enterprise to begin turning a reliable profit. Indeed, in terms of cost and benefit, enclosure has much to recommend it.
Where the problem lies is in the fact that enclosing your fief's common lands will inevitably cause great damage to your relationship with your tenants. Though they do not put the land to any real organised use, it still possesses some utility as a source of edible herbs and other plants, a playground for children, and grazing land for the small number of animals that the tenants themselves possess. Every tenant has a different, minor use for the commons, but what they all agree upon is the fact that they have an ancient right to do so. Deny them that privilege, and you'll surely arouse some substantial discontent.
Of course, that may not necessarily be so great a deterrent. The mood of the mob is fickle and ever-changeable. Perhaps the proceeds from enclosure will be well worth the condemnation of your inferiors—and if things get too bad, you could always find some other way to secure their goodwill.
Right?
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[X] I daresay a timber yard might be an excellent idea.
Wulfram has long been well-known for both the size and density of its forests. Indeed, your fief plays host to several expanses of dense old growth, which might well yield some rather fine timber.
Even so, two particular obstacles have prevented your predecessors from taking advantage of such a resource.
The first is purely practical: though you know that you have a great deal of timber in your fief, and you know that a great deal of it may be quite good, you have no idea which trees, in particular, would be best harvested, and you lack the infrastructure to select, fell, and trim the trees in question, even if you were able to identify them. Remedying that problem is sure to take a great deal of work, for not only would you need those well-versed in the assessment of such things to look over your forests, but you'd also need to invest in machinery and labour to turn those forests into timber which might be transported and sold.
Indeed, the assembly of such knowledge and the establishment of such facilities may require two or three years of work, as well as several thousand crown of expenditure.
And that only leads you to your second problem: namely, that of selling your timber, for only by doing so at a sufficiently high price might you be able to recoup your initial expenditures. While individual building sites and individuals might need a few beans here and there, the real money is in securing a contract to provide timber to a shipbuilder. If you can do that, then perhaps the whole project will be able to turn a profit.
If you cannot…
