Axunai

Questions or discussions about Almea or Verduria-- also the Incatena. Also good for postings in Almean languages.
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Axunai

Post by Ran »

Despite all of the comparisons between China and Uytai, I've always felt that Axunai was a better match (or perhaps it's because I don't know a thing about Uytai!)

Both China and Axunai began as disorganized warring states, until an empire managed to unite the areas (Qin in 221BC, Axuna in 890ZE). The concept of the Empire then dominate both regions for the next several millennia, recurring again and again, no matter how many weird systems of government that China and Axunai try. Both nations also have very uniform ethnicity that can help explain their respective mentalities. In fact, several millennia later, Eretald is like Europe - the axis of power shifted from Cuzei to Cadhinor to Verduria, while the rest of Eretald continue to be a motley of quarrelling, individualistic states. Yet, in the same 3000 years, Axunai experienced a name change and a couple of revolutions, but the "feel" is the same - a uniform nation, pink-red on the map, that straddles the same areas and holds the same people. The similarity Axunai and China have with each other is striking.

The question is, could there have been something with their geography that has caused this? Guns, Germs and Steel talks of how uniform geography leads to uniform ethnicity, and hence, uniform empires. Is that the reason?
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Re: Axunai

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ranskaldan wrote:Despite all of the comparisons between China and Uytai, I've always felt that Axunai was a better match (or perhaps it's because I don't know a thing about Uytai!) [...]

The question is, could there have been something with their geography that has caused this? Guns, Germs and Steel talks of how uniform geography leads to uniform ethnicity, and hence, uniform empires. Is that the reason?
There are quite a few differences in religion, foodstuffs, etc.; but you're very right that China and Axunai are similar in their overall history and geopolitics. One of the main reasons is that both are 'hydraulic empires'-- states based on wide-scale water engineering. This leads to an acceptance of the role of the state, and makes complete independence seem like an absurdity... go ahead, just try to farm outside the irrigation system! You'll just starve to death!

In areas dependent on rainfall irrigation, by contrast, the state feels more like a necessary evil, and an unhappy people can always move somewhere else and start a new realm of their own.

Other hydraulic empires include Egypt (to this day) and the Inca Empire; and on Almea, Uytai, northern Neinuoi, and Dem?shimor.

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Post by Jaaaaaa »

Interesting! BTW, I dunno why, but I always alligned Cadhinor with the Mongols and Verduria with the British 0_o

Is it possible for threre to be a half-hydraulic state? Like only part of the country relies on irrigation and the other parts get heavy rianfall? Yeah, I know oyu'd need a big country, but heck.

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Post by Iscun »

The Gelyet are the Mongols. Cadhinas is Rome (at least to me, of course :) ).

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Post by Ran »

Jaaaaaa wrote:Interesting! BTW, I dunno why, but I always alligned Cadhinor with the Mongols and Verduria with the British 0_o
I myself aligned Ismahi with France, Kebri with Britain, Verduria with - nowhere in particular, Cadhinor with Rome, Cuzei with Greece.
Similarly, Axunai with China, Gelyet with Mongolia, Cheiy with U.S. (seriously!), Skourene with Greeko-Phoenicio-Vikings (...), Tzhuro with Arabs and Chia-Sha with the pre-Russia Siberians.
Is it possible for threre to be a half-hydraulic state? Like only part of the country relies on irrigation and the other parts get heavy rianfall? Yeah, I know you'd need a big country, but heck.
Perhaps the Southern half of China is rainfall, not irrigation. Now that I think about it, Southern China does seem to be more open-minded and independent (it's also a lot more hilly). It has a history of receiving Northern refugees (running away from barbarian invasions) and creating economic miracles (it's still a lot richer than the North).
However, from every other point of view, the South of China is still very much tied to the country psychologically, much like the North. Is there a reason?
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Post by zompist »

ranskaldan wrote:
Jaaaaaa wrote:Interesting! BTW, I dunno why, but I always alligned Cadhinor with the Mongols and Verduria with the British 0_o
I myself aligned Ismahi with France, Kebri with Britain, Verduria with - nowhere in particular, Cadhinor with Rome, Cuzei with Greece.
Similarly, Axunai with China, Gelyet with Mongolia, Cheiy with U.S. (seriously!), Skourene with Greeko-Phoenicio-Vikings (...), Tzhuro with Arabs and Chia-Sha with the pre-Russia Siberians.
All those identifications are pretty good, though as the author I'm aware of other borrowings: Kebri borrows some bits from Japan; Cuzei also borrows from Israel, and its epics from China; the Skourene language is intended to sound Indic; the Tzhuro matrilinearity is borrowed from the Amerindians; the Revaudo Revolution owes a good deal to the French Revolution. Of course I hope that I've added some elements of my own!

I don't feel too bad about such borrowings; till we meet aliens, our fantasies have to borrow from history anyway, and at least we can try to get beyond the Standard Medieval European Fantasy Land.
Is it possible for threre to be a half-hydraulic state? Like only part of the country relies on irrigation and the other parts get heavy rianfall? Yeah, I know you'd need a big country, but heck.
Perhaps the Southern half of China is rainfall, not irrigation. Now that I think about it, Southern China does seem to be more open-minded and independent (it's also a lot more hilly). It has a history of receiving Northern refugees (running away from barbarian invasions) and creating economic miracles (it's still a lot richer than the North).
However, from every other point of view, the South of China is still very much tied to the country psychologically, much like the North. Is there a reason?
I don't know. Doesn't rice cultivation (as in the south) take a lot of irrigation? As for the cohesion, it's easier for me to see why the West became fragmented, than why China didn't. The West has always been ridiculously poly-ethnic-- the Romans never really knit it all together. My understanding is that China basically just grew from the northern homeland. The South was originally populated by Tai peoples-- I have no idea why they came to identify with the Han... perhaps it just seemed like a self-evidently superior culture.

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Post by Ran »

zompist wrote:
All those identifications are pretty good, though as the author I'm aware of other borrowings: Kebri borrows some bits from Japan; Cuzei also borrows from Israel, and its epics from China; the Skourene language is intended to sound Indic; the Tzhuro matrilinearity is borrowed from the Amerindians; the Revaudo Revolution owes a good deal to the French Revolution. Of course I hope that I've added some elements of my own!
Mmm... some of those are really new to me!
I don't feel too bad about such borrowings; till we meet aliens, our fantasies have to borrow from history anyway, and at least we can try to get beyond the Standard Medieval European Fantasy Land.
True. Every single con-world out there features kingdoms ruled by kings, knights with heralds and over-elaborate armor, and citizens wearing tunic, hose, and sword on belt. It gets a bit tiring after a while.
I don't know. Doesn't rice cultivation (as in the south) take a lot of irrigation? As for the cohesion, it's easier for me to see why the West became fragmented, than why China didn't. The West has always been ridiculously poly-ethnic-- the Romans never really knit it all together. My understanding is that China basically just grew from the northern homeland. The South was originally populated by Tai peoples-- I have no idea why they came to identify with the Han... perhaps it just seemed like a self-evidently superior culture.
I think it's partially the massive refugee flow. Many of the southern provinces experienced fivefold, tenhold increases in population during the bad times. Also, since the south became a popular hideout for emperors running away from barbarians, (many simple stayed and ruled half of China for centuries) this also served to reinforce the idea of "us" (the civilized Middle Kingdom) and "them" (the bloodthirsty barbarians).
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Post by Iscun »

Sheesh. With Erel?e containing borrowings from China, Rome, Greece, Amerinds, and even Israel :o , Uytai is going to have to be REALLY different!

And hey, let's not bash the European Fantasy Land too much. I really like LotR. :D Nothing wrong with wizards, kings, and armor.

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Post by Raphael »

I'm not sure wether I would like to be ruled by sword-fighting riders who can force us normals to do practically everything they want, kill us at will without running much risk of being punished, have the legal right to be the first to sleep with a bride in the wedding night, and always get in trouble with their neighbouring counterparts who then invade and destroy everything we have, including ourselves.

Just my two cents.

Ah yes, and linguistically, Kebri is of course most like the Basques or the Finns.

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Post by Iscun »

Raphael wrote:I'm not sure wether I would like to be ruled by sword-fighting riders who can force us normals to do practically everything they want, kill us at will without running much risk of being punished, have the legal right to be the first to sleep with a bride in the wedding night, and always get in trouble with their neighbouring counterparts who then invade and destroy everything we have, including ourselves.
And all the non-Europeans were simply angels :? , like the lovely Huns, and the scourge of civilization itself, the Mongol Horde.

I certainly wouldn't like to be a Greek under Turkish rule, nor would I want to be an Aztec (Tens of thousands of people sacrificed each year. During some festivals, thousands would die per day!). Seriously, Europe was nice compared to a lot of the rest of the world.

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Post by zompist »

Iscun wrote:I certainly wouldn't like to be a Greek under Turkish rule, nor would I want to be an Aztec (Tens of thousands of people sacrificed each year. During some festivals, thousands would die per day!). Seriously, Europe was nice compared to a lot of the rest of the world.
Better to be a Greek under Turkish rule than a Turk under Greek rule. Modern Islamists are doing the best they can to make it unbelievable, but the medieval Islamic countries were probably the most comfortable places to be at the time, even if you weren't Muslim. Muslim Spain was the most advanced, tolerant, and rich part of Europe around AD 1000, and the Muslims regarded Europeans, with some justice, as dangerously ignorant barbarians.

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Post by Iscun »

zompist wrote:Better to be a Greek under Turkish rule than a Turk under Greek rule. Modern Islamists are doing the best they can to make it unbelievable, but the medieval Islamic countries were probably the most comfortable places to be at the time, even if you weren't Muslim. Muslim Spain was the most advanced, tolerant, and rich part of Europe around AD 1000, and the Muslims regarded Europeans, with some justice, as dangerously ignorant barbarians.
Yes, you are most correct, but what about after the Dark Ages, when Europe got on its feet again? I certainly wouldn't have wanted to live anywhere else. :)

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Re: Axunai

Post by - »

I also noticed a marked (and I assumed deliberate) similarity between Axunai and China. But just to sidetrack for a bit:
ranskaldan wrote:Despite all of the comparisons between China and Uytai, I've always felt that Axunai was a better match (or perhaps it's because I don't know a thing about Uytai!) [...]

The question is, could there have been something with their geography that has caused this? Guns, Germs and Steel talks of how uniform geography leads to uniform ethnicity, and hence, uniform empires. Is that the reason?
While <i>Guns, Germs & Steel</i> is an excellent book, it might not be so good an idea to take the stronger elements of Diamond's geographic determinism at face value. More "uniform" geography creates a possible condition for ethnic unity, but this doesn't necessarily make it inevitable.

In fact, as civilization develops, it probably gets <i>harder</i>, not easier, to keep such regions unified. China's numerous walled cities, with ample supplies of nearby food, could easily have become viable as independent states if they'd had the cultural predilection to remain so. There are other such regions whose more recently developed civilizations have never been politically unified -- West Africa for instance.

Generally speaking, I think what's emerging in modern historiography is that it's almost never possible to explain the specifics of a civilization from one cause. For example:
zompist wrote:One of the main reasons is that both are 'hydraulic empires'-- states based on wide-scale water engineering. This leads to an acceptance of the role of the state, and makes complete independence seem like an absurdity... go ahead, just try to farm outside the irrigation system! You'll just starve to death!
Okay, this is going to be a bit of a long rant, so bear with me:

A number of recent writers have pointed out significant problems with the "hydraulic" vs. "rainfall" thesis of why states develop in the ways they do. (Just so you know where I'm getting this from, I was first introduced to this debate by J.M. Blaut's trenchant critique in <i>The Colonizer's Model of the World</i>, and I've since come across more balanced and less polemical summary of the discussion in Brian Fagan's <i>People of the Earth</i>.)

The relatively despotic king traditions of Mesopotamia, for instance, may have actually <i>preceded</i> the development of large-scale irrigation works. (Irrigation of smaller scale is attested much earlier, but you <i>don't</i> need states for that kind of thing...)

The same is true of China, whose original northern heartland wasn't dependent on irrigated farming. (No more dependent, say, than Italy or Greece.) In fact, as I understand it, it's rice cropping -- which occurs in the higher rainfall environments subtropical and tropical south -- that needs intensive irrigation. And other rice-farming civilizations (India, Southeast Asia) aren't historically much more despotic on the average than, say, European civilizations through most of their history (excepting the modern era).

The Inca Empire was, arguably, founded not so much on "hydraulic" agriculture (though irrigation was important) as on the management of different ecosystems at different altitudes by a political elite. (Steve Stern talks a bit about this in an early chapter of <i>Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest</i>.)

Of course, none of this means that Axunai's history <i>couldn't</i> be explained in terms of its dependence on irrigation works -- just that that model would probably make its history quite different from that of superficially similar countries in Earth's history. I'm just pointing this out because it's the Axunaic societies (especially Xurno) that most fascinate me in Erelae, and these things might be worth thinking about in fleshing out their agricultural history.
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Post by Ran »

In a way, human history works just like weather. There are certain patterns, but in general, anything and everything can happen. Nevermind that Europe is a bunch of semi-barbarian kingdoms clinging to the Eurasian littoral - boom! 1000 years later, they rule the world. Human genius, climate, geography, culture, and luck - all these build onto each other and contribute to the direction of history.

Thus, there's probably no simple reason to explain why China or Axunai became so similar.
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Post by Jaaaaaa »

Yurp. It's so unpredictable and messed up... just like English! :D

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Re: Axunai

Post by zompist »

ils wrote:... While <i>Guns, Germs & Steel</i> is an excellent book, it might not be so good an idea to take the stronger elements of Diamond's geographic determinism at face value. More "uniform" geography creates a possible condition for ethnic unity, but this doesn't necessarily make it inevitable. ...

Generally speaking, I think what's emerging in modern historiography is that it's almost never possible to explain the specifics of a civilization from one cause.
I agree completely: no one factor explains everything, though sometimes the originator of the theory talks like it does. I like Diamond, but I also get interesting ideas from Jane Jacobs, Hernando de Soto, Marvin Harris, Robert Wright, Colin McEvedy, and many more.

In some ways the best thing is to work out a history and see what happens to people, and think what that will do to them. For instance, the rainfall agriculture bit is a minor determinant for the Cadhinorians; but the major event in their history was the centuries-long occupation by a hostile alien empire. They react to that experience with certain long-term convictions and attitudes. Then (partially as a response to that occupation) they themselves become an empire-- that determines some more of their attitudes. It's also a factor that they are the third people in their region to learn civilization: there are older traditions to look up to-- or look down at. There's the fact that their capital is in the middle of a large land mass-- so they're not likely to be great seafarers. And let's not forget that there's a certain amount of dumb luck in history.

Anyway, you put it all together and hopefully it coheres enough to please the reader. Personally, my goal is to put enough features together that the cultures work in a reasonable fashion, yet are obviously themselves, not just copies. That takes time, and when a culture is too obviously "Mongolia" or "China" or whatever, it tells me that the process isn't done.

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Post by pne »

ranskaldan wrote:
Jaaaaaa wrote:Interesting! BTW, I dunno why, but I always alligned Cadhinor with the Mongols and Verduria with the British 0_o
I myself aligned Ismahi with France, Kebri with Britain, Verduria with - nowhere in particular, Cadhinor with Rome, Cuzei with Greece.
I did pretty much the same, though more on a linguistic than a cultural basis; the parallels seem to me to be similar. And based on the language, I aligned Verduria with Spanish, since it's a descendant of Cadhinor (Latin) which has still remained fairly close phonetically compared to Isma?n (French).
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Post by JT_the_Ninja »

Aaaah! New post got so many replies so fast I didn't even notice! Hate when that happens.

So basically Almea is a counter-earth? Not that hard to believe. History tends to repeat itself.

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Post by zompist »

JonathanaTegire wrote:So basically Almea is a counter-earth?
Only in the sense that any imagined world is a counter-Earth.

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