This was informative, thank you! I agree the named lords of named geographical regions getting to decide how many troops to send vs. hold back definitely smacks of a federation. Many of the other things I've seen in my period, but that's a big litmus test there.
de facto, the reason Denethor listens to what the Lords of the Fiefs have to say is because if they start flipping him off he can't do shit, because he has no way to make them do fuck all:
But as I mentioned, absolute monarchs in my period also have to listen to their lords. I think I would summarize the difference like so:
- Can you make any given noble do what you want, but if you piss off too many of them you're looking at a coup, so you have to listen to them as a group? You might be an absolute monarch.
- Can you not make any given noble do shit, and you have to beg and/or bargain with each one for anything they give you? You might be the head of a federation.
was a warfare of - increasingly - either professional national standing armies, or (at the beginning of it) extremely professional mercenaries.
But sometimes this is how you got the standing army: by convincing your powerful subjects that the national emergency demanded troops, and then hanging onto them tooth and nail once you had them, and using them to your own advantage.
Your description of Gondor's internal situation actually reminds me a fair bit of Savoy when Victor Amadeus II came to power (1684): several distinct adjacent provinces that I think were possibly even more linguistically and ethnically different than Gondor's, powerful enfeoffed nobles running the show, poor communications even by the standards of the time in much of the area in question (we're talking about the Alps here), a fortified capital city (Turin) in a strategic location, powerful neighbors (esp. France) who want to conquer your state, nobles (like the Governor of Milan) who don't send the amount of requested troops to the head of state's aid during wartime, causing the head of state to complain, famine and general logistical difficulties.
And Victor Amadeus, who of all the rulers I've studied during my period has the personality most like Denethor, used this situation to turn his collection of provinces into an early modern centralized absolutist state*. When Louis XIV's France was threatening to invade and/or invading almost as soon as VA came to power (which I think was a much more immediate threat than Denethor faced--I seem to recall he had more lead time before the occupation of his capital), he used that situation to dramatically increase the size of the army, impose centralized taxation on rebellious subjects, build up a modern bureaucracy, etc.
You've made a convincing case that by the time Pippin shows up, Denethor hasn't managed to do this, but if he had, it wouldn't have been without precedent.
VA had one big advantage that Denethor didn't, which you alluded to: the foreign policy scene. Tolkien's wars are fought for principle. VA's wars were fought for land and wealth. Denethor didn't have the option of switching sides every few years to try to play Mordor and, say, the Corsairs of Umbar off against each other while he bought himself time to build up his army and consolidate his state. Saruman tried that, and we know how that ended.
But Denethor had the advantage of this "Númenórean-accultured-Idea of Gondor" that VA did not. His state was cobbled together over the centuries via inheritance and conquest, and his family didn't even have strong ties in some of the provinces, who were like "Who the fuck do you think you are?" He was actually trying to trade off some of his existing, more remote and less culturally bound, provinces for territory that would be easier to administer.
This has been an awesomely fun discussion, thank you!
* It's a continuum; "centralized" and "absolutist" usually mean "making sure the nobles retain enough power to want to go along with this program," "being smart enough not to ask your nobles to do anything they're not going to do," etc., not "one person has all the power."
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Re: reposting to avoid Rogue Strikeout!
Date: 2022-06-19 04:47 pm (UTC)de facto, the reason Denethor listens to what the Lords of the Fiefs have to say is because if they start flipping him off he can't do shit, because he has no way to make them do fuck all:
But as I mentioned, absolute monarchs in my period also have to listen to their lords. I think I would summarize the difference like so:
- Can you make any given noble do what you want, but if you piss off too many of them you're looking at a coup, so you have to listen to them as a group? You might be an absolute monarch.
- Can you not make any given noble do shit, and you have to beg and/or bargain with each one for anything they give you? You might be the head of a federation.
was a warfare of - increasingly - either professional national standing armies, or (at the beginning of it) extremely professional mercenaries.
But sometimes this is how you got the standing army: by convincing your powerful subjects that the national emergency demanded troops, and then hanging onto them tooth and nail once you had them, and using them to your own advantage.
Your description of Gondor's internal situation actually reminds me a fair bit of Savoy when Victor Amadeus II came to power (1684): several distinct adjacent provinces that I think were possibly even more linguistically and ethnically different than Gondor's, powerful enfeoffed nobles running the show, poor communications even by the standards of the time in much of the area in question (we're talking about the Alps here), a fortified capital city (Turin) in a strategic location, powerful neighbors (esp. France) who want to conquer your state, nobles (like the Governor of Milan) who don't send the amount of requested troops to the head of state's aid during wartime, causing the head of state to complain, famine and general logistical difficulties.
And Victor Amadeus, who of all the rulers I've studied during my period has the personality most like Denethor, used this situation to turn his collection of provinces into an early modern centralized absolutist state*. When Louis XIV's France was threatening to invade and/or invading almost as soon as VA came to power (which I think was a much more immediate threat than Denethor faced--I seem to recall he had more lead time before the occupation of his capital), he used that situation to dramatically increase the size of the army, impose centralized taxation on rebellious subjects, build up a modern bureaucracy, etc.
You've made a convincing case that by the time Pippin shows up, Denethor hasn't managed to do this, but if he had, it wouldn't have been without precedent.
VA had one big advantage that Denethor didn't, which you alluded to: the foreign policy scene. Tolkien's wars are fought for principle. VA's wars were fought for land and wealth. Denethor didn't have the option of switching sides every few years to try to play Mordor and, say, the Corsairs of Umbar off against each other while he bought himself time to build up his army and consolidate his state. Saruman tried that, and we know how that ended.
But Denethor had the advantage of this "Númenórean-accultured-Idea of Gondor" that VA did not. His state was cobbled together over the centuries via inheritance and conquest, and his family didn't even have strong ties in some of the provinces, who were like "Who the fuck do you think you are?" He was actually trying to trade off some of his existing, more remote and less culturally bound, provinces for territory that would be easier to administer.
This has been an awesomely fun discussion, thank you!
* It's a continuum; "centralized" and "absolutist" usually mean "making sure the nobles retain enough power to want to go along with this program," "being smart enough not to ask your nobles to do anything they're not going to do," etc., not "one person has all the power."