Low-Tech Kingdom Population Density?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

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.

Advanced and specialized aren't the same thing. In a lot of ways my point is this is the same as the classic "Dark Ages" argument. There is no question Britain without trade is poorer, and stuff that depends on heavy capital investment is hurt by that, just as Dark Age Europe doesn't engage in the kind of huge projects the Roman Empire supported, but that doesn't actually mean its technology is more primitive, it's just different. Prior to the industrial revolution trade is expensive - less so for Britain than most places perhaps, because it has so much coastline with good harbors - but still very little that mattered to ordinary life comes from really far away.