Low-Tech Kingdom Population Density?

[rust]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

What then do you consider the minimum population to maintain TL 4~?

Unfortunately all I can contribute to the discussion is some semi-educated
guesswork, I did not have the time for any research, but perhaps it shows
one possible way to approach the problem.

First, a TL 4 society needs a lot of different specialists to function. I do not
have a reliable number, but I think that 500 types of specialists (artists, bu-
reaucrats, craftspeople, merchants, physicians, scholars, etc.) is not too far
from the truth.

Second, a single specialist is not enough to serve the society and keep the
tradition of the specialty alive, so each specialty will need a small communi-
ty of its specialists. There are specialties where comparatively few people
are required, for example astronomers, and specialties where a lot of people
are needed, for example bakers. Lacking reliable data, I would think that an
average of 100 people per specialty could do. With 500 specialties and 100
specialists each we would get a total of 50,000 people.

Third, these 50,000 people have families, with parents, partners and children.
Since magic is available to fight diseases, the number of children per family
can be lower than in our world's history, but I still think that the average fa-
mily should have 5 members. Which gets us 50,000 specialists with 5 family
members each, a total of approximately 250,000 people.

Fourth, now we have got the specialists and their families, the core of the
urban population. Someone has to feed them, to create and transport the
various raw materials, and all that. I would assume that at least 80% of the
entire population are of that kind, so the 250,000 people mentioned above
are no more than about 20% of the population. If 250,000 people are 20%,
the entire population should be approximately 1,250,000 people.

My gut feeling (again, I have no reliable data) is that my numbers are on the
conservative side, so for one of my own settings I would think that 1.5 milli-
on people as the base of a TL 4 society could be made plausible.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

TL 4 is noted as starting in the 1450s. Europe had around 50 million people at that point in time and the British Isles around 3 million people. If we cut the British Isles of the 1450s off from the rest of the world, you are saying that the Isles wouldn't be able to maintain their technology base but would instead revert down to ... TL 2 or so?

Yes. Without Britain's extensive overseas trade routes there is no way that it could have maintained a TL4 society.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

TL 4 is noted as starting in the 1450s. Europe had around 50 million people at that point in time and the British Isles around 3 million people. If we cut the British Isles of the 1450s off from the rest of the world, you are saying that the Isles wouldn't be able to maintain their technology base but would instead revert down to ... TL 2 or so?

Something like that. The effect wouldn't necessarily be a direct link between population/geography and technology, but the economics of the situation would doom higher TLs. Without long-range and high-volume shipping, navigation decays along with related mathematical disciplines. Without a lot of people with a lot of money (made by trade with the continent), there's nobody to pay for clocks or fancy Gothic architecture, so those skills die out. There's also less call for advanced accounting techniques like double-entry bookkeeping and even letters of credit, so those fade away. Without imports, they're cut off from specialized materials like alum, the lack of which hurts a range of other trades. They could maintain things like more advanced crop rotation schemes, since you don't need a particularly elaborate economic and geographic context to do that, but for the most part, over a couple of generations, they'd become essentially indistinguishable from TL3 or even TL2.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

What then do you consider the minimum population to maintain TL 4~?

Not develop it (as they didn't develop it themselves in the first place), but maintain an existing body of knowledge and the infrastructure necessary to make use of it?

As I said in the post which you quoted, I think that an isolated society with similar capabilities to the Roman empire in Marcus Aurelius' Day, Britain in Queen Anne's Day, Japan under the Tokugawa Shoguns, etc. requires tens of millions of people. If you just want muskets and affordable books and lots of towns, you can probably make do with a few million people.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Yes. Without Britain's extensive overseas trade routes there is no way that it could have maintained a TL4 society.

That's nonsense.

Britain has always been a pretty rich place. Even at the height of the Empire trade accounted for less than half the economic activity of the country (for 1900 per capita income 44 L, per capita trade (imports + exports) 18L 14s). Sure losing 42% of your economy would be really bad news, but it's not dropping several TLs bad news. The Great Depression knocked 30 to 35% off global GDP without doing much to the global TL.

[tjbuege]

Since this is fantasy, I would think if it's your own world/creation, you could have whatever population density you want. I've used the online medieval demographics site, and I think it's great for getting in the ball park for earth-like conditions. But I'm sure there are worlds out there that break all the rules. Just some up with some reason why a really high population density can support itself. Unless, of course, you are looking for earth-like realism. If that's the case, disregard what I just said, go with what everyone else is saying! :)

Tim

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by malloyd

That's nonsense.

Britain has always been a pretty rich place. Even at the height of the Empire trade accounted for less than half the economic activity of the country (for 1900 per capita income 44 L, per capita trade (imports + exports) 18L 14s). Sure losing 42% of your economy would be really bad news, but it's not dropping several TLs bad news. The Great Depression knocked 30 to 35% off global GDP without doing much to the global TL.

There is a huge difference between a decline in trade for five to ten years and being completely isolated from your trade partners, correspondents, cultural influences, etc. indefinitely. Matthew Riggsby gave a good list of examples of the things which would fall out of use or become more expensive. Some things work when you have tens of millions of people on three continents to sell to, buy from, correspond with, study with, etc. but not when you have a few million people on a cluster of islands.

[Terwin]

Originally Posted by tjbuege

Since this is fantasy, I would think if it's your own world/creation, you could have whatever population density you want. I've used the online medieval demographics site, and I think it's great for getting in the ball park for earth-like conditions. But I'm sure there are worlds out there that break all the rules. Just some up with some reason why a really high population density can support itself. Unless, of course, you are looking for earth-like realism. If that's the case, disregard what I just said, go with what everyone else is saying! :)

Tim

Especially using magic.

Just the double-harvest from Bless crops could radically change your population ratio.
Instead of each farmer feeding roughly 1.25 people, you can now feed ~2.5 people/farmer and you have gone from 80% farmers to 40% farmers.

Taking the 250K specialists/townsfolk from Rust above, you now only need ~170K farmers instead of 1 million farmers, thus putting you inside your 700K target population.

This also happens to coincide well with towns/cities being relatively close together as depicted in many fantasy settings.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Matthew Riggsby gave a good list of examples of the things which would fall out of use or become more expensive. Some things work when you have tens of millions of people on three continents to sell to, buy from, correspond with, study with, etc. but not when you have a few million people on a cluster of islands.

I think most of them are nonsense too. And become more expensive isn't really a factor. With 60% of your economy still there, there's little reason at all to expect nobody to be able to pay for clocks, and none at all to expect them to give up financial instruments. There are substantial alum sources in Yorkshire, though historically they aren't actually developed until mid TL4, and don't supply a majority of British alum until well into the 17th century, apparently largely for financial reasons connected to Royal monopolies abolished by the Commonwealth.

And anyway, he doesn't even touch what are probably the two biggest distinguishing innovations of TL4 - guns and printing. Nobody is going to give up guns, and individual smiths are entirely able to manufacture them. Though I will admit powder is likely to get more expensive - England *has* sulphur sources, Bath for instance, but a lot of TL4 production comes from Sicily. A society with nothing Roman villagers don't have except flintlocks and printed Bibles probably still looks more like TL4 than TL2.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I think most of them are nonsense too. And become more expensive isn't really a factor. With 60% of your economy still there, there's little reason at all to expect nobody to be able to pay for clocks, and none at all to expect them to give up financial instruments.

This is one of the questions where justifying my professional opinion would take more time and work than I have space for in a forum post. The basic problem is that the technologies of travel and trade and overseas war, and the materials and goods and ideas and workers imported, tend to be key to a society's most advanced and specialized technology. So let's look at your example of the British Isles in 1450 suddenly being cut off from the continent.

For raw materials, we already discussed alum (and disagreed about it ... I don't have time to research the question). Without the mines of the Tirol, there would also be problems with gold and silver shortages. Some specialized ores aren't available any more, and even if they can be found the English must invent how to work them since much of that knowledge is in the heads of foreign guildsmasters. On the bright side, there are no more foreign luxuries like silk to buy with silver anyways.

The best armourers are in Flanders, the Germanies, and Lombardy. England can produce plenty of common armour, but new suits for the rich will be inferior to the old, and it has to take work away from other tasks to produce as much armour as it used to consume. When English kings wanted to improve their industry, they imported workers from the Low Countries and the Germanies, but this is no longer possible.

The key developments in gunpowder technology were on the continent, although the English were not bad at gun-founding. Elizabeth's England depended on overseas powder mills and arquebus makers, which was a problem when she got into her Spanish war. Once again, when Elizabeth or Henry VIII wanted to improve their native powder and smallarms industry, they imported workers from Flanders and the Germanies. This is no longer possible, and with only one island chain's wars, buyers, and tinkerers improvements will be even slower. With less and worse armour, the arquebus loses a key advantage over the longbow.

The limitations of gunpowder technology and the end of trade across the North Sea, the Bay of Biscay, and the Mediterranean cut off a lot of exciting developments in shipbuilding, rigging, navigation, and so on. The experts call this a North Sea technology for a reason ... it was developed all around the North Sea and Baltic with developments by individual captains and shipwrights influencing others in different countries.

The collapse of trade and the end of continental wars also devastates port cities like London and the Cinque Ports. With just fishing and coastal trade and pirate-fighting, their population is likely to shrink. England was already rustic, and it gets more so.

A lot of the best cloth mills were in Flanders, so England loses its comparative advantage in wool production and has to weave more of its own cloth. Without any export market, these probably won't be as advanced as the best Flemish mills. Pasture falls out of use, and men who were doing other things turn to weaving.

A lot of the most exciting developments in scholarship are happening in Italy and Flanders. These vanish: no more people like Tito Livio, and no more correspondence with Poggio Bracciolino or authors-turned-spies picking up the latest tricks of the storyteller's trade in Milan. England is on its own culturally, and doesn't have a flood of new classical texts. It will never rediscover the Greek classics, because nobody in England in 1450 can read Greek, because most of the manuscripts are in other countries, and because there are no more enthusiastic Greeks and Italians to encourage English scholars to learn it. Its access to Arabic and Persian literature ends, and the exiled Jews just over the channel and their learning are gone too. Without Italian, Flemish, and Dutch paintings to use as an example art history develops differently. Without wandering master builders from the continent, buildings are less sophisticated.

The printing press was about to be invented. The idea may have reached England, but without a proof-of-concept on the continent (and Flemish paper mills to import from) it may never be developed.

Hopped beer was being developed around this time because it could be shipped from the Germanies to England without spoiling. Without this demand, the English probably stick to small beer brewed on a small scale. (See Richard Unger's Beer in the Middle Ages).

So the result is a poorer Britain without the latest gadgets and cultural innovations. It does not have libraries of tens of thousands of codices, cities of hundreds of thousands of people, large oceangoing ships, and other technologies which characterized the societies which I said that this kingdom could not resemble (I am not using TL jargon here, because I consider it useless for serious discussion).