historical references for "points of light"?

[S'mon]

The description sounds most like the eastern tracts of the Holy Roman Empire in the 18th century, the classic Ravenlofty 'Hammer Horror movie' setting.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I went back and looked at some of the assumptions of the OPs PoL post and did some math.

Let's say that the basic unit of society in this setting is the village, because of the danger there most likely won't be thorps or hamlets and villages will tend toward the upper end of the category for mutual protection. So villages of around 900 individuals. This is not the historical medieval era when settlements were villages were usually around five miles apart. Here things are spread much wider days of travel from one settlement to another over rough largely trackless wilderness. Let's say a merchant "caravan" takes five days to go from one settlement to the next on average. These will be mule trains not wagons, they'll be heavily loaded to get the most out of each trip and they'll be traveling over rough trackless terrain. [(16x.2/3)x1/2]x5->26 miles between settlements. Being generous we will assume this is a straight radius even though it would include a lot of meandering and going around obstacles. Which leaves us with each village being isolated in an area of approximately 2124 square miles. Which gives an average population density of .424 people per square mile. Roughly twice that of the neolithic where population densities generally ranged from .1 to .2 per square mile. For comparison if applied to Europe this would create a total population of (10,180,000x.424)->4,316,320

 

[Terramotus]

I know it sounds implausible, but believe it or not, the idea that the 'dark ages' or 'feudal age' was a time when barter reigned supreme and coins were meaningless is actually a popular myth rather than a historical reality. After Rome ceased to control its territory in the West directly (i.e. the 'fall' of the Roman Empire), the new Germanic rulers of the Roman West largely continued business as usual, minting and spending coins just as the Romans had (see a couple of examples here). Even in Britain, where things really were fairly 'dark,' there was plenty of coinage about. Barter will be more important in a PoL setting than in a non-PoL one, but a barter economy and a coin economy are not mutually exclusive.


Check out the example I gave earlier of the Medieval Baltic. It really was as PoL as I claim, and a coin economy operated just fine. As long as you're strong enough to protect your points of light and the trade routes that connect them (as the monks militant and warlike pagan nations who ruled the Baltic were), then coins will equate to spending power even in a bandit-ridden war-torn land of mostly untamed wilderness.

Not quite. The link you gave is for Merovingian coinage. There's a strong link between the closing of the Mediterranean due to the Moslem conquests and the destitution of the Merovingian monarchy - they made most of their money through the tonlieux (trade tariffs). This lead to an increase in power in the landed aristocracy, and the crown being controlled by "Mayors of the Palace", much like the Shogunate in Japan.

After the Merovingians lost power and the Carolingians took over, they ceased minting the gold Solidus and only minted the silver Denier. All sorts of things disappear from the records then: papyrus, oil, spices, etc. Trade, as it was known in the West, died. There's a definite case to be made, in fact, that this is when the Roman Empire really died in the West. Many people lived much as they had in the Empire up until this point, but everything changed when the Mediterranean economy was disrupted. For a single example, the large Roman latifundia (sort of like large farming planations) don't make nearly as much sense when there's little market for a cash crop.

The Baltic is also a special case, and you can't really apply information about them to the rest of Western Europe for the time period. They maintained a seagoing trade and more of what we would recognize as an economy, even though they didn't have any trade links with the Orient. However, the Viking invasions at the close of the Carolingian period ended their prosperity. Eventually the Vikings also revived trade in the Baltic, and actually forged the first semi-direct links the west had with the Orient through the trade along the Russian rivers.

I think a key portion of the whole Points of Light concept is the dearth of trade, though your point that currency never truly disappeared is accurate. When all you have is the intermittent peddler or emissary of a distant lord, information about the outside world is sparse. But if you're part of a regular economy, even a small part, you probably at least know where the product of your labor is going, and there's probably regular information going back and forth when the product is transported.

As such, I don't think Sengoku Jidai era Japan is a great example of the Points of Light concept. Neither is the middle or later Middle Ages. By the High Middle Ages trade had been revived and the Moslem stranglehold on the Mediterranean had been loosened. Heck, the Crusaders were able to get to the Levant by ship via Venice (which admittedly appears to at least have retained trade in the Aegean throughout the period, though probably not much farther), while in the 8th century it was said that the Christians could no longer float a plank upon the sea.

For references for the common reader, I recommend any of the numerous books on Charlemagne for flavor, and "Daily Life in the Age of Charlemagne" by Pierre Riche for details about the world if you can lay your hands on it.

For further reading for someone more interested in the period, Henri Pirenne's "Mohammed and Charlemagne" and Pierre Riche's "The Carolingians" are both great.

I also recommend Norman F. Cantor's "The Civilization of the Middle Ages" to anyone who's at all interested in the Middle Ages. It's highly readable and very accessible to even a novice in Medieval history.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Interesting stuff.

The bottom line appears to be that "points of light" is most of human culture across history, with the exception of a lot of the First World at this point in time.

The corollary to this is that the Forgotten Realms as previously portrayed is more our world only with elves flitting about and such, and doesn't have a lot to do with authentic medieval anything.

 

[The Shadow]

The corollary to this is that the Forgotten Realms as previously portrayed is more our world only with elves flitting about and such, and doesn't have a lot to do with authentic medieval anything.

Assuredly. I can't help but smirk just a little when people call FR and other similar RPG settings 'medieval'. (And I say that while *enjoying* FR and other such settings, I might add.) The mere existence of polytheism (well, a weird unique-to-modern-fantasy version of henotheism, sort of) pushes things well out of bounds on my own internal flavor-meter.

After that, it's just caviling to point out all the other differences, but they are many. That isn't to say they are *bad*, of course! Just not 'medieval'.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

What about the Americas?

Say, the American Southwest and Northern Mexico with its mix of farming cultures, nomads, hunter gatherer groups, and vast wildernesses? Still had trade, but also had its share of chaos and periods of isolation. Cultural groups were often very spread out and even spread among other cultural groups. The area had its share of golden ages where there was relative parity and stability and dark ages in which whole cultural systems and groups were disrupted or dissappeared. Even up to the Pueblo revolution where the Spanish left horses, sheep, metals, and a whole host of weird treasures behind.

Just make the weird environment more a product of monsters than weather or deforestation and the patter works just fine.

I'd say you could make very similar cases for Central and Southern MesoAmerica's 'dark' ages or declines, and North America after the plagues looks pretty much exactly like Tolkien's Norhtern Middle Age, where people do travel, but there are horribel dangers, vast areas of die off, and even a town so large as Bree with its Inn or Rivendell with its guest house would be a salvation and a wonder.

 

[Flobby]

All civilization up until about, oh, 1700-1800.

Large parts of the world today are like that: huge swaths of countries that, yeah, the Fodor's book says they're 'modernizing' or 'coming into the 21st century' (Hey! Look! This one little village has internet access and this kid who eats maybe four times a week has a Spider-Man shirt! Look how much culture has penetrated into the dark areas of the world!) but 'law' only reaches as far as the muzzle of a gun. There are large, large areas of the world where except for a certain veneer and awareness the people there live much as they did 1,000 years ago.

I know this risks bringing the subject off-topic, but actually thats not true. There's a huge varitey in they way people live/d. And 'moderns' aren't neccessarily less supersitious than peolpe of the past, etc...

 

[hero4hire]

I think M. Night Shyamalan's The Village could provide a lot of inspiration for the PoL concept (ignoring the "Twist" part)

 

[Kunimatyu]

I know this risks bringing the subject off-topic, but actually thats not true. There's a huge varitey in they way people live/d. And 'moderns' aren't neccessarily less supersitious than peolpe of the past, etc...

Superstition has nothing to do with it -- being dirt-poor with no way to leave does, and it's pretty common, especially in much of sub-Saharan Africa and South America, among others. Huge areas of China are very sparsely settled, too -- hell, there are rural areas getting access to a *railroad* for the first time.

 

[loseth]

The link you gave is for Merovingian coinage.

That was intentional. The Merovingians are unambiguously in the 'Dark Ages.' The Carolingians are not.

After the Merovingians lost power and the Carolingians took over, they ceased minting the gold Solidus and only minted the silver Denier. All sorts of things disappear from the records then: papyrus, oil, spices, etc. Trade, as it was known in the West, died. There's a definite case to be made, in fact, that this is when the Roman Empire really died in the West. Many people lived much as they had in the Empire up until this point, but everything changed when the Mediterranean economy was disrupted. For a single example, the large Roman latifundia (sort of like large farming planations) don't make nearly as much sense when there's little market for a cash crop.

Oh, I agree. I never implied (and never would imply) that trade didn't decline after the transfer of sovereignty in the Roman West. My point, which I think you agree with, is that neither coinage nor a coin economy disappeared during this time.

The Baltic is also a special case...

Definitely. I wasn't trying to give the Baltic as an example of medieval Europe, just answering the OPs request for historical models for PoL. And the Baltic's a good one, don't you think?