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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greenfield" data-source="post: 6408518" data-attributes="member: 6669384">Well, I can't exactly complain about us wandering off topic, since I'm he one who started it, so I might as well jump in with both feet... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Japan's entire currency was based on rice.  Their base coin, the Koku, was valued as a specific measure of rice, enough for a peasant farmer to surviv on for one year.Each year, after harvest, one of the great houses, the Mitsui caln to be specific, had the duty of collecting that harvest and issuing to each farmer their Koku of rice, as well as one for each member of the family.  This clan held the harvest in trust for the Emperor until planting season, when they distributed the seed needed.In essence, they had the entire gross national product of their nation in their care for several months of the year.  Interest free, in fact.  Did you ever wonder how the Mitsui family got into banking?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Now this wasn't always the way, just during the Shogunate period, if I recall correctly. (And I probably don't, so feel free to correct me.)Russia ended their Serf system under Czar Alexander, right around the time of the American Civil War.  The Czar ordered it, against the wishes of the nobility, to show support for the Union efforts to end slavery in the US.  Russia was just about the last of the great powers to have serfs.As for the medieval system being oppressive, remember that to the nobles, the peasantry were the foundation on which their wealth and power were based.  They needed their workforce, healthy and motivated, so unless there was actual unrest in the region the smart lords took good care of their people.  It was the "obligation of the nobility to care for the lower classes in their charge".  Literally Nobles Oblige.  If there was a blight or crop failure, it was in the lord's best interest to open his grainary and distribute food saved for emergencies, so his people wouldn't starve.  It wasn't just kindness, he needed these people to work the fields in the following years.  He hadto care for them.  He needed them.Remember that due to sharp differences in diet, particularly access to meat and other protein during childhood, as well as better health care, the nobility were taller, stronger, more intelligent and so strikingly different in appearance that they truly believed themselves to be a different breed, a better breed.  The peasants believed the same, and social stratification was taught from a young age as part of the Divine plan.  To rebel against the social order was rebelling against God, as far as they were taught.  So the nobles tended to see their peasants as children left in their care, for they too were taught that God had placed them there for that very purpose.Because so much of the day to day economy in most regions depended on barter and trade, credit and reputation, strangers were always viewed with suspicion.  Travel was a rare thing, not only because horses were expensive and therefore restricted to the nobility, but also because most people were serfs, unable to leave the land.  So someone who you didn't know, from another town or region, was viewed as possibly being a runaway or criminal, and certainly not deserving of credit.If they arrived on horseback, of course, that said they had money, in which case the common folk were rightly afraid, since the nobility were essentially above the law, and such people could do pretty much anything they wanted.</blockquote>

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