Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piperken" data-source="post: 9515601" data-attributes="member: 7047091">A few things to consider came to my mind while reading this, which I feel some have rightly alluded to but not stated outright:Setting aside magic (tm) along with the understanding how difficult it can be to ground in game how economics in a particular =time frame might work, there's a tendency to give short shrift to what peoples knew a long time ago, and what constitutes being skilled or not. For example, you could make a strong case for simply taking a peasant along with you as a hireling. Why?<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Many could farm, which requires knowledge about local soils, being able to tell the weather by looking at the sky, being able to diagnose different kinds of crop diseases, and how to best handle those.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Many raised animals, which required skills in husbandry, and in the cases where pens or basic enclosures were required, basic construction.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Some could hunt.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">They made their own clothes and knew how to mend them.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">They were knowledgeable about how to launder clothes, could dye them, and were aware of how to best remove stains from them.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">They could make soap. Do you know how to make soap from memory? I don't!</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Folk medicine (practiced primarily among women) was wide spread; one can argue how effective prayers to God, or reciting spells were, but there was rudimentary knowledge of herbs for many common ailments.</li> </ul>And so on.We also have a tendency not to credit the organizational capacity of poor/lower classes in history, reserving it as something that is learned say, in school, or in business, or in the capacity of employment. On the contrary, folks who're impoverished can be quite capable with management and developing networks, because of the necessity to do so; more so, they were able to do it with a lack of resources available.Last, I offer a summary of a brief fact from a recently translated England und Italien (1787 expanded edition), which may spark some additional contexts to think about. It was written by Johann Wilhelm von Archenholtz, who was a German who lived in England for roughly 6 years (1769-1779), and who spent nearly 17 years wandering the Continent. His purpose in writing this book was not as a entertaining piece of journalism, or as a travelogue as was popular at the time, but in light of the attention being given to England by the French philosophical writers, particularly Voltaire. It more falls under what we'd consider social-political commentary today, focused on describing customs, people, etc.While the time frame is not medieval/Renaissance: at one point Archenholtz notes that the English poor, wear shoes. Which is an unusual fact to mention... why note shoes are being worn, unless in other places you have been, the poor can not afford them?</blockquote>

Verification