Commonfolk of the Anarchy

[Drakevarg]

Last night a question brewed in my mind regarding Islas Carmesi, the pirate-founded nation I mentioned in The Unknowable Formula. Namely, why anyone other than an aspiring merchant-king or a criminal would want to live there.

For a bit more context, Islas Carmesi is a chain of tropical islands roughly the size of Brazil and was founded as a nation a little over 700 years ago by one Hackett Rotadler, a pirate and alchemist who invented Dragonpowder, an explosive chemical compound that enabled him to make a fortune while guaranteeing his independence. Details on that in the other thread, but the takeaway is that Islas Carmesi's ability to maintain its economic monopoly and by extension its independence has been more or less established as plausible. Now for the harder part...

Islas Carmesi is at its core a conglomerate of industrial, mercantile and criminal enterprises to create a constantly-fluctuating but ultimately stable nation built around the export of Dragonpowder and further sustained by other trade goods, both black market and otherwise. However, while this may be all well and good for the merchant barons and pirate lords at the top and the various coattail-riding entrepreneurs and lowlifes profiting from this structure, in the end all systems must live and die on the backs of the commonfolk.

Now, the curiosity that I'm left with is why the average person - the simple people who work the fields, prepare the food, paint the houses, lay the bricks... why would they ever want to live in a nation as openly and proudly cutthroat as Islas Carmesi? For the common criminal or the merchant class it's easy enough to justify - great risk for great reward. Islas Carmesi is the sort of place that can chew you up and spit you out in an instant, but it's also the sort of place where a pauper can be made royalty with the right combination of guile and luck. But for those with no greater ambition than a full stomach and a roof over their head, it seems like the sort of place where only accident of birth would compel anyone to suffer through such a place.

And that becomes an issue with the origins of this nation - prior to being founded by Captain Rotadler, that region of the world was almost entirely uninhabited - it was initially a mostly-barren desert akin to Egypt or Australia, with a fairly tiny native population especially given the state of the world at the time (a few centuries prior a massive cataclysm had wiped out 99% of the population, which for an already desolate place like this left it practically empty). Its current tropical state is mostly thanks to a few significant global climate changes that occurred after its foundation, so almost all of Islas Carmesi's population is the result of immigration.

Now, one theory floated by me is that the bulk of these commonfolk could simply be slaves - it's a pirate nation with absolutely no legal system to speak of, so it's hardly beyond belief that they would simply abduct the people they need - but one problem that occurs to me with such a theory is that to create the nation as it exists today, with several major cities and possibly the most powerful naval fleet in the world, one would need an enormous working class. Sure many of them would be criminals in their own right, especially among the urban population just out of survival necessity, but for the rural population it seems like such a large concentration of slaves would be impossible to sustain in perpetuity. Revolt would be inevitable, which isn't out of the ordinary for a place like Islas Carmesi, but at the same time makes me wonder how the necessary food supplies and such could be maintained.

Just thought I'd open this thought process up to the public, see what everyone else thought. Input encouraged.

 

[trentonian7]

You'd do well to consider the mercantile states of medieval Italy, golden age islands like Tortuga in the Carribean, and modern day developing countries with corrupt governments such as in South America or Africa.

I agree a very large slave population would be found- larger than you think. Slaves are wayyyyy more profitable than hired labor. You might consider a very high ratio of slaves to freemen, perhaps 4 or 5 slaves to every freemen.

If the only common folk come from immigrants, perhaps they are descended from early colonies before the island's got particularly bad. Furthermore, the scions of the merchant families and pirates will eventually form a common class- the pirates and merchants will have families and not everyone in those families will decide to join a pirate crew. After 700 years, not only will the number of pirates decline, but the common class will have greatly grown, supported by a slave class. They would likely have fierce competition from the slaves, however. Perhaps certain islands ban slavery.

 

[Erudite]

Australia is like... 70% desert? The Americas were undiscovered forests and terrifying animals.

Australia was filled with criminals, and the aboriginal population remained.

The Americas was colonized with criminals, slaves, adventurers, those looking for a fresh start, etc.

I don't think one answer needs to satisfy your problem if the place is the size of Brazil (the 5th largest country in the world).


If you ARE looking for simple answers to satisfy, why not consider:

1) Agreements that criminals from other areas of the world are shipped there for labour in exchange for good Y.

2) Agreements that undesirables are sent from around the world for good Y. Think the poor, those occupying good land that need to be relocated, etc. The potato farmers of Ireland were given nothing to leave, and forced onto ships destined for nothing but hard work.

3) Agreements for slave labour in exchange for housing etc. Currently, Chinese (and other labourers from a plethora of countries) are being essentially enslaved in Dubai to build massive buildings for - you guessed it - nothing more than a place to live and food. In China there's something like 7 people per household, and considering the one child policy means there weren't multiple mouths to feed, this means multiple generations/families are living under the same roof. Just to escape is enough for some.

4) I live in a place that many consider a ******* just because it's my home. Our population is enslaved to the government and the Irvings, and it doesn't do much to say otherwise. People are content to fish, hunt, and live as they always have, regardless of the macro level economics of the area.


Just some thoughts towards your quandary.


Oh, and en edit towards a point made by the person before me. It's possible that the rest of the world is worse? Think Syria and the exodus that has occurred as a result of the turmoil there.

 

[Drakevarg]

All good points. To take note of Erudite's point 4) in particular, I figured that would factor in eventually as it always does, but the question I was chewing on was why anyone of a rural persuasion would want to move there in the first place for their descendants to consider it home at all.

So in general conclusion, the commonfolk of Islas Carmesi are probably a mix of exiles from other lands, scions of merchant and pirate families, exported laborers, and good old-fashioned slavery. Funny thing is that since the place has no formally recognized legal system, these days the majority of them would likely just be former slaves that had nowhere else to go.

Since there is no legally-binding way to mark someone a slave, running away or simply braining your slavemaster in their bed makes you a freeman for all functional purposes. Though by the same account the only thing keeping a freeman free is their ability to keep themselves that way when someone decides they need labor they don't want to pay for. Over time I think the systems would balance themselves out in a series of small slave populations, labor unions, and remote rural villages doing their best to avoid the turmoil of anarchic industry.

 

[Erudite]

Great position to take. I'd love to see how this develops, hopefully bits and pieces keep coming!

 

[skip.knox]

Here are some other possibilities to consider:

Refugees. Feeling from religious persecution, economic dislocation, political tyranny, displaced by plague or famine ... lots of reasons for refugees. Some, at least, stay and have kids.

Opportunity. Especially in the early years, the founders of this place could have offered free land, freedom from taxes, or other incentives, pulling people in.

Overpopulation elsewhere. Another form of economic dislocation, granted, but with different nuances.

Colonies. You said the place is as big as Brazil. So, again particularly in the early years, other people may have come to the islands not yet controlled by the pirates, only to get conquered in a later generation.

Retirement. Even pirates get old, fat, lazy. Running a nice big estate from a comfy villa can, for some, be more attractive than fighting desperate battles on the high seas. Also, not every pirate kid is going to want to grow up to be a pirate.

In short, there are plenty of bases for populating your lands.

 

[Drakevarg]

All good ideas. I would note as a caveat on the second suggestion that to this day there's nothing one would call "taxes" in Islas Carmesi. Or state-owned land. There is no recognized government in the land at all, at least not in the sense of anything resembling a codified set of laws. There's the controlling industrial factions, sure, but each of them have their own ways of handling things and any agreements made between them are, by definition, essentially ad hoc and kept through honor, force and economic necessity. Which one could argue is the same thing as a government stripped of pomp and circumstance, but the point is that there are no standardized expectations.

Which I suppose even that could be appealing to the common folk, even those lacking cutthroat ambitions. Maybe there's no real difference between the bandits in the woods and the people from the castle demanding money to keep you safe from them, but at least here they're honest about that.

 

[Drakevarg]

Just a small note to clarify an earlier inaccuracy: finally decided to take the time to calculate the approximate size of Islas Carmesi instead of just eyeballing it. Based on my current (not particularly detailed) map of the globe, Islas Carmesi is not nearly as big as Brazil. The current calculations put it at closer to 1,937,500 sq. miles, or somewhere between Australia and India in size.

It's actual size is probably significantly smaller than that because my method of mapping is highly susceptible to the coastline paradox and the nation is after all an island chain.

 

[Drakevarg]

Huh. Do posts have an expiration for edits? Well, new post then.

Finally finished drawing a map of the place. Each grid square is 50 sq. miles.

 

[MiguelDHorcrux]

You got "commonfolk" all wrong. There are people who love living in such conditions. Consider Saudi Arabia, Libya, Cuba and even North Korea. While not nearly as close to your fictional nation, these countries are undoubtedly horrible places to live in, yet you can find countless of their citizens legitimately loving and liking to stay. And by that I mean not just because of patriotism, but because they actually find little but solid reasons to love and like their countries. They might love its rustic and solemn appeal, or love the thrill of living in such dangerous societies, but the point is, the commonfolk can learn to love their horrible homes.

As for anarchy, well, it does not mean chaos and war. Anarchy is just the absence of a higher government with a solid grip on its dominion. Consider the international scene. Our world is anarchic. The highest authorities are states, and no power has a hold on all of them at once. Yet there is an absence of a global war. Sure there are regional wars and transnational crimes, but these are otherwise specks in the bigger picture: that the international scene is at peace. Mayhaps the same can be said for Isla Carmessi? Sure the place is dangerous on the dark alleys (or even out in the open) and the righteous way of living is basically nonexistent, but hey, it is an intact state and may at least get its acts together should an outside invasion kick in, or at least that's how I understood it from your description.

And lastly, but perhaps my main answer to your question: INCENTIVE. If the incentives to stay is better than the incentives to go, then why go? Again, back to the countries I mentioned earlier. Their people find actual incentives to stay better than what they will get if they go. They have very little, material and otherwise, but why risk that to go somewhere where they might have none at all? We used to have neighbours in the Philippines who were illegal immigrants from Vietnam. They ran away during the Vietnam War, and all of them have one thing in common: They have a lot of family and friends who stayed because they legitimately believed that warzone Vietnam is a better place to live in than the great unknown. What if the citizens of your country think the same? That a country who makes its living out of dragonpowder, without an effective police force and social and health services whatsoever, where people drop dead and due process is a daydream, still turns out to be a better place to stay in than alternatives?

 

[Drakevarg]

As for anarchy, well, it does not mean chaos and war. Anarchy is just the absence of a higher government with a solid grip on its dominion.

This is in fact what I literally meant by Islas Carmesi being an anarchy. The region has no state government or uniting legal system whatsoever - the closest thing it does have to that is the united interests of the controlling industrial factions that know the secret to Dragonpowder - and this shifts on a fairly regular basis. I wasn't using it to describe a war and chaos, it really is just the best word to describe the governmental structure of the region.

As for the rest of your observations, I was never questioning why anyone would stay in a place like Islas Carmesi. People grow attached to their homes for all sorts of reasons. I was wondering why the common person would want to move there in the first place. As mentioned previously, when the country was initially founded it was a functionally-uninhabited desert with almost no natives. So nearly the entire population of Islas Carmesi immigrated in after the fact. That was my curiosity - it's one thing to want to stay with your home through thick and thin, it's quite another to look at a place that is openly and proudly a hive of pirates and cutpurses and say "that sounds like a lovely place to move."