Agriculture, the growth of nation-states, and how these might be different in a fantasy world

[ParagonDireRaccoon]

How might agriculture and the growth of nation-states work out differently in a fantasy world?

One model of the growth of nation-states in the real world starts with sedentary agriculture. Sedentary grain agriculture and livestock can support larger populations than other forms of agriculture and animal procurement (swiddening and hunting, for example). This contributes to specialization, and to standing armies. Some of the oldest city/nation states had standing armies as soon as sedentary agriculture became viable- if you have fertile farmland, another group might (and likely will) want that land. So maintaining standing armies was a necessity for maintaining the city/nation state, and contributed to specialization. A smaller percentage of the population can provide food for the entire population, but the state must tax them to provide food for themselves and the army, and to fund the bureaucracy that is required to collect taxes and conscript troops.

There are downsides to living in a city/nation state- disease (infectious diseases are transmitted from livestock to humans, a side effect of keeping livestock and also of the poor/nonexistent sanitation of early cities), taxes, conscription, and warfare.

There is relatively recent scholarship that examines the history of people who choose not to take part in the nation-state system historically, and also in modern-day mountainous Southeast Asia. The nation-state provides a narrative that groups without sedentary agriculture are precursors to civilization and have failed to achieve civilization, but some notable scholars are examining 'primitive' peoples as people who choose not to organize in nation-states rather than as people who have failed to achieve 'civilization.'

So several of these factors could be different in a fantasy world. With magic, it could be possible to provide food and water for a population without sedentary agriculture. Without the need for valuable farmland, there is not the same need to protect large areas of land. That would reduce the need for standing armies, and would reduce the need for bureaucracy to collect taxes to support the standing army and to support the bureaucracy. Without the need for livestock, there would be fewer diseases (excepting diseases of magical origin, which would be another factor to consider). There would be fewer factors contributing to the growth of nation-states, and fewer reasons to avoid nation-states as well.

So this is a fun intellectual exercise for me, and something I might write up when I have more time. But I'd love to hear thoughts on the subject.

[LazarX]

Man can't live on create food and water spells alone.

But seriously, magic would have to be far more common than it is typically assumed to dispense with agriculture. Most of the present gaming worlds are built using an approximation of the standard transitionalfeudal model which is still heavily agriculturally based.

Warfare is inevitable once you have the concept of property, land claims, and those who would dispute ownership or right to it.

[Drejk]

I see standard elves as successful hunter-gatherer civilization with minimal agriculture. They would use magic to increase growth of plants they gather and animals they hunt which allows them to exceed real world limits of hunting/gathering, allowing for permanent settlements (with large from which they gather resources giving less settlement density than for agricultural civilizations).

[Arssanguinus]

There are also massively fewer elves then humans.

[Klaus van der Kroft]

ParagonDireRaccoon wrote:

How might agriculture and the growth of nation-states work out differently in a fantasy world?

One model of the growth of nation-states in the real world starts with sedentary agriculture. Sedentary grain agriculture and livestock can support larger populations than other forms of agriculture and animal procurement (swiddening and hunting, for example). This contributes to specialization, and to standing armies. Some of the oldest city/nation states had standing armies as soon as sedentary agriculture became viable- if you have fertile farmland, another group might (and likely will) want that land. So maintaining standing armies was a necessity for maintaining the city/nation state, and contributed to specialization. A smaller percentage of the population can provide food for the entire population, but the state must tax them to provide food for themselves and the army, and to fund the bureaucracy that is required to collect taxes and conscript troops.

From what I understand, standing armies were a very rare thing in ancient times, precisely because how tremendously expensive they were to maintain. One of the reasons Rome had so much success conquering everything it met was because there were no professional armies to face; as Luttwak thoroughly explains in his Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire and then in his Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, most nations outside of the big ones (Rome, Persia, Parthia, etc) fought based on their traditional fighting methods, rather than as trained soldiers. The "soldier profession" was a very rare thing and usually reserved for empires that had tax systems large and efficient enough to support them. That's why standing armies pretty much disappeared during the Early Middle Ages in western Europe; no one had the capacity to support them anymore. That was one of the big reasons for the rise of feudalism.

That doesn't mean early human settlements didn't have to fight for their ground, but it does put into perspective how they fought and the level of expenditure they put into it. Most communities had some kind of traditional fighting method (generally based around a particular weapon or style), which was more or less emphatized depending on the context. Perhaps there were proto-police forces and special guard detachments. But these constituted the minority, because settlements cannot support permanent armies. The concept also wasn't as solid as we think of it today, because the needs for soldiers were different; in pre-canaanite times, for instance, an invasion could mean 200 farmers are rampaging towards your village, so you just round up your own farmers and try to fight them off. Armies meant specifically for war usually required either a very tense context where you are constantly threatened or an expansionist drive for conquest, which rarely was something small communities attempted to do.

ParagonDireRaccoon wrote:

So several of these factors could be different in a fantasy world. With magic, it could be possible to provide food and water for a population without sedentary agriculture. Without the need for valuable farmland, there is not the same need to protect large areas of land. That would reduce the need for standing armies, and would reduce the need for bureaucracy to collect taxes to support the standing army and to support the bureaucracy. Without the need for livestock, there would be fewer diseases (excepting diseases of magical origin, which would be another factor to consider). There would be fewer factors contributing to the growth of nation-states, and fewer reasons to avoid nation-states as well.

Magic could greatly change the way communities are formed, agreed. It would depend on how common it was and what it required to function.

Say, if magic was a very bare-bones thing requiring simply inspiration or natural talent and not depending on study and research, it could have delayed the need for agriculture if it was common enough. I would imagine hunter-gatherer bands would have gathered around those magically empowered, or naturally formed around them, as being able to cast fireballs and hold monster would certainly be a plus in terms of survival. However, if it was a rare thing, unless it was also cataclysmically powerful, most humans would have gone onward with the same process we historically had.

On the other hand, if magic was more of the wizard type, I don't think we would have seen the social impact until later. Essentially, wizard magic works a lot like real-world alchemy, with amazing feats that people can study, but don't entirely understand. However, since being able to teleport is certainly more powerful than creating aqua regia, I would assume wizards would have risen to the top quite early, just as most ancient societies were often ruled by priests.

[ParagonDireRaccoon]

Great points everyone. In the Tolkien fantasy setup, Elves and Dwarfs had great empires, without large-scale agriculture and with the aid of lots of magic (in the case of elves). So one way to model a fantasy world is changing environment (decline of magic) led to a decline in population of elves and dwarfs, and humans grew in numbers with sedentary agriculture. Or a world could be set up so magic is strong in some areas, and elves and dwarfs have strong kingdoms in those areas.

[EWHM]

I've generally made the approximation that magic plus medieval tech gets you the equivalent of very early industrial revolution lifestyles. Plant growth, in particular, gives a pretty substantial yield increase each year, allowing a higher population density and larger cities (the agricultural area around each city where it is practical to transport food is more productive). This also allows races like the elves to get by on less farmland since they're likely to have more access to plant growth and similar magics. They might farm proportionately only half the land that similarly situated humans do, hunt and gather on the remaining land, and let land fallow a lot more often---say a rotation like corn/soybeans or clover/nothing/nothing.
Plant growth would take up a lot of the slack, especially considering that they're not scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of land quality for agriculture like the humans probably are (planting 2x as many acres often doesn't give 2x the return, because you probably were using the best suited 1x to begin with).

[EWHM]

One big meta narrative I've used a lot is this:
An empire or empires will rise. They will populate to their carrying capacity---Malthusian trap as it were. Through magic and bigtime infrastructure improvements, they'll extend their carrying capacity but they'll have a hard time keeping up with population growth. This in turn will lead to wars of expansion for lebensraum. Eventually some random event or war will lead to apocalypse as the rug of carrying capacity is pulled from under the empire (just the druids/nature priests/etc pulling plant growth for a year or two will do it, a mini ice age, etc). Then the four horsemen ride. Typical campaigns are set in the aftermath of this, delving in the ruins. But it is a cycle that naturally repeats itself.

[Immortal Greed]

I like the thread, and I'm doing some world building at the moment.

So I wanted to make a setting that was a bit different, so the central country is surrounded on almost all sides by demihuman and monster threats. Good good, now these constant threats kill off a lot of people. Mostly adventurers but they also ruin the common peoples' day. The country though, is not heavily militarised, it is no Rome. Thus there is a place for adventurers, and military forces are typically just in warband size (20 or so, maybe a few of these for a real serious battle, 40 vs 60 monsters, that sort of thing).

It has agriculture of course, some areas have heavy farming and fishing, but other areas rely on herds. I wanted to keep the pop somewhat low, especially the armed and capable of fighting population. So the central region, the agricultural heartland with the most people, is protected by the border states that take the most casualties. This prevents giant stonking armies, which I don't want for this game (been there, done that).

Magic? Well it is actually a sort of low magic setting. Spellcasters are pretty individualistic and don't feed everyone, or massage their poor feet. Now I know another dm that took this in the opposite direction. Heavy magic, heavily involved with agriculture and trade. It ended up being a high population world, close to steampunk, a lot of people in and around and moving, high tech, almost no starvation. Solo adventurers were less important, or even a group of them, there were just so many damn people and factions around and the system worked and relied on magic to do so.

I didn't like it, so I went in the opposite direction. A lot of threats, limited armed population base, low magic. As a consequence, heroes and warbands are crucial for the country's safety.

[Immortal Greed]

Klaus van der Kroft wrote:

ParagonDireRaccoon wrote:

How might agriculture and the growth of nation-states work out differently in a fantasy world?

One model of the growth of nation-states in the real world starts with sedentary agriculture. Sedentary grain agriculture and livestock can support larger populations than other forms of agriculture and animal procurement (swiddening and hunting, for example). This contributes to specialization, and to standing armies. Some of the oldest city/nation states had standing armies as soon as sedentary agriculture became viable- if you have fertile farmland, another group might (and likely will) want that land. So maintaining standing armies was a necessity for maintaining the city/nation state, and contributed to specialization. A smaller percentage of the population can provide food for the entire population, but the state must tax them to provide food for themselves and the army, and to fund the bureaucracy that is required to collect taxes and conscript troops.

From what I understand, standing armies were a very rare thing in ancient times, precisely because how tremendously expensive they were to maintain. One of the reasons Rome had so much success conquering everything it met was because there were no professional armies to face; as Luttwak thoroughly explains in his Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire and then in his Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, most nations outside of the big ones (Rome, Persia, Parthia, etc) fought based on their traditional fighting methods, rather than as trained soldiers. The "soldier profession" was a very rare thing and usually reserved for empires that had tax systems large and efficient enough to support them. That's why standing armies pretty much disappeared during the Early Middle Ages in western Europe; no one had the capacity to support them anymore. That was one of the big reasons for the rise of feudalism.

That doesn't mean early human settlements didn't have to fight for their ground, but it does put into...

The time of warbands yeah. Which fits better with fantasy.

[Matt Thomason]

ParagonDireRaccoon wrote:

Great points everyone. In the Tolkien fantasy setup, Elves and Dwarfs had great empires, without large-scale agriculture and with the aid of lots of magic (in the case of elves). So one way to model a fantasy world is changing environment (decline of magic) led to a decline in population of elves and dwarfs, and humans grew in numbers with sedentary agriculture. Or a world could be set up so magic is strong in some areas, and elves and dwarfs have strong kingdoms in those areas.

Personally, I'd like to see how that model changes when the elves and dwarves are given the ability to adapt better to life without magic. Whether over time their societies grow to the industrial age alongside human ones, or whether it leads to the individual cultures combining.