Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 324: Stupid, the economy is important!
The agricultural revolution happened more than once.

The first agricultural revolution can probably be traced back to the Neolithic Age, followed by the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, modern times, and the present age...

It can be said that every agricultural revolution is clearly related to the innovation of production technology, and will at the same time lead to a leap in population and agricultural productivity.

Today, Gellis is standing in the Iron Age, looking to the future, and promoting another modern agricultural revolution.

Unlike previous ones, the modern agricultural revolution has brought about earth-shaking changes to the world's political landscape.

It refers specifically to the agricultural revolution that took place mainly in England from about the 15th to the 19th century. The movement began with the enclosure movement and went through various agricultural technological innovations, coupled with the introduction of crops from the New World of America. It is considered to be one of the important factors of the Industrial Revolution.

Of course, the range of 15 to 19 is just a rough estimate and not accurate.

In Gellis's personal opinion, the agricultural revolution can be roughly divided into two stages.

One is the early process of land rights confirmation and privatization, which is also the enclosure movement.

One is the explosive growth of agricultural productivity in the later period.

A little-known fact about the enclosure movement is that it appeared in Britain as early as the 14th century.

By the end of the 15th century and the 16th century, the noble lords in England intensified the enclosure movement, not only violently depriving peasants of their land, but also attacking church land, although this process was slowed down due to peasant uprisings in various places.

But it intensified again in the late 16th century and the 17th century. In the 18th century, Parliament simply passed legislation to approve it. After the mid-18th century, this "legal" enclosure movement was further intensified.

This enclosure movement, which lasted about 400 years, caused the small farmers who dominated the British agricultural system in the past to basically disappear by the end of the 18th century, and was replaced by large tenant farms that existed in the form of capital operation. According to some statistics, 4/5 of the land in the United Kingdom is concentrated in the hands of less than people.

These new landlords either operated the business themselves or rented the land to farmers for rent. The purpose of their agricultural production was to earn more monetary capital, so they exploited farm workers as efficiently as possible and cultivated as much land as possible with as few people as possible.

In this way, there will naturally be no agricultural surplus population that is easy to appear under the small peasant production model. The agricultural surplus population will be driven into the city and either successfully transform into non-agricultural wage workers, that is, the proletariat, or simply starve to death.

The other is the explosion of agricultural productivity in the later period, which is also recorded with a large amount of detailed data.

If 1500 is used as the baseline, by 1550 the per capita output of agricultural workers had increased by 30%.

By 1600, the per capita output of agricultural workers had reached 1500 times that of 1.8.

Later, when it came to 1750, it was more than three times that of 1500.

However, this did not stop. In just the next hundred years, in 1850, the annual output of a British agricultural worker was five times that of 5.

In other words, over a period of 350 years, without the advent of chemical fertilizers and the adoption of mechanized production, the output capacity of British agricultural workers increased fivefold.

Specifically in terms of agricultural yield per mu.

In the late 19th century, Britain, with the help of Chilean saltpeter and guano, successfully achieved a wheat output of 26.69 bushels per acre, which converted into Chinese units means a full 239 kilograms per acre.

Even if the seeds are deducted, it is still 215 kilograms per acre.

This is a number that far exceeds that of the northern plains of China at the same time, and it also represents that England has leaped from a literally bitter and cold place to the country with the highest output of agricultural workers in the world.

Such a booming agriculture meant a surge in the population supported by farmland, and the enclosure movement forced the surplus agricultural population to move to cities, providing the "firewood" necessary for the rise of the Industrial Revolution.

The enclosure movement not only did not reduce food production in Britain, but it also improved production efficiency.

The surplus food provided by England actually increased, enough to support England's thriving towns.

Various high-profit and value-added planting and animal husbandry industries also help agricultural capitalists accumulate funds quickly.

This violent and bloody process of primitive accumulation of capital was the beginning of the rise of British capitalism.

Gellis's interpretation of the British enclosure movement is actually nothing new.

For the vast majority of people in the class, these predictions he made were knowledge they had never encountered before and could be considered "divine revelation."

Naturally, Gellis would not directly follow the path of the British enclosure movement. The path he actually chose was a collective farm reform similar to the Soviet Union.

Compared with England's 400-year enclosure movement, the Soviet Union began promoting agricultural collectivization in 1927. By 1933, it took only six years to almost clear out all scattered small peasant production units.

But it is just similar, not a copy.

During this period, Gellis also proposed a relatively simple and easy-to-understand mathematical model to deepen the classroom's understanding of the importance of developing agricultural production.

"Generally speaking, in the early stages of urbanization, if the productivity of agricultural labor increases by 1%, the non-agricultural labor force can increase by about 2%."

“It’s a little counterintuitive, but it’s not complicated.”

"Assuming that there are 100 people in a fixed society, originally 80 people are needed to meet all agricultural food needs. After agricultural production efficiency increases by 100%, 40 people can meet the needs of 100 people. Then the original 20 non-agricultural population can actually increase to 60 non-agricultural population. In this process, the non-agricultural population increases by 200%."

And this is based on the assumption that there is no non-agricultural technological progress and the productivity explosion only relies on the growth of the non-agricultural population.

Once certain handicraft technology reforms are introduced during this period, the effect of agricultural production progress on social progress will essentially expand exponentially.

This also explains why, even without the Industrial Revolution, Britain had already embarked on the path to becoming a world hegemon in 1800.

Because in just three hundred years, a rough calculation shows that Britain's national strength has expanded dozens of times.

How many people does Gillis rule over?
Maybe it's 800,000, maybe it's 900,000, but in any case it should be less than one million.

You have to know that the current Kingdom of Jerusalem has unified the three Crusader States, which is an unprecedented territorial state, which is why it has so many people.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem also had an unusually high proportion of urban population, which meant that the agricultural population was only about 700,000 at most.

These 700,000 agricultural population were simply unable to support the nearly 300,000 urban population. In fact, the Kingdom of Jerusalem needed to purchase food from Egypt and Syria for a long time in order to maintain its bizarre urban population ratio.

Considering the potential conflict with mainland Egypt, for the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1190, improving agricultural production efficiency as quickly as possible was essentially a matter of life and death.

And ten years ago, Gellis emphasized in class.

Lance implemented various inspections day and night to urge farms in various places to carry out agricultural production reforms. And ten years later, it finally borne fruit, and in the autumn of 1200, an unprecedented harvest was ushered in.

When Yusuf arrived in Antioch with the letter from Gairis.

Reims, the supreme ruler of Antioch, was visiting the countryside of Antioch with an envoy from Masyaf.

During these years, Masyaf, the western stronghold of the Assassins, maintained a relatively peaceful relationship with the Antiochian Governorate.

The so-called relative peace means that Masyaf Fortress does not carry out any mission within the sphere of influence of Jerusalem.

At the same time, the forces under Jerusalem will not take the initiative to cause trouble for Masyaf Fortress.

This time of ignoring each other did not last long.

It was simply that Masyaf was too close to Antioch, and Antioch’s achievements over the years were enough to shock them.

Therefore, about a month ago, a special mission was sent from Masyaf to find out how Antioch had developed over the years.

Why is it so exaggerated that it is enough to make them envious?

A month ago, the delegation first arrived at a small town on the edge of the Antioch Governorate.

Here, the delegation from Masyaf met up with observers who were staying in the Jerusalem area.

This small town is located at the Amanus Pass. The Fort of Baglas located here was once the headquarters of the Antioch Chapter of the Knights Templar.

At that time, Reynald successfully preserved his forces in the Battle of the Sea of ​​Galilee, gathered the remnants of his army, fled all the way north, and finally arrived here.

The mountain pass itself is designed to guard against attacks from various nomadic tribes.

Of course, after the Grand Master of Antioch participated in the rebellion, the Antioch Chapter of the Knights Templar was reorganized in Reims, and this place was taken away from the Knights Templar.

In the summer of 1200, the Masyaf delegation arrived at Baglas Castle and met up with Altaïr, who was on observation duty in the Jerusalem area.

What they saw was a new town.

Due to the rapid development of Antioch in recent years, many war refugees from surrounding areas have chosen to gather in Antioch.

Together with the existing local people, they built a settlement around the castle similar to the Japanese castle town model.

And from here on, it officially came under the rule of Antiochus.

This small town does not have many permanent residents, and it lacks a bit of vitality except for the weekly market day. But no matter what, relying on Baglas Castle, this town is the seat of the county government of Baglas County, and it has all the functions and departments that a county government should have.

Here, the delegation also saw how the Antiochian Governorate collected transit customs duties.

"The amount of customs duty is not high. Generally speaking, if you pay in cash, it is 10% of the 20% tax. However, for some special goods, higher taxes will be imposed. For some goods that the Franks need, they will be directly exempted from tax."

Altaïr briefly briefed the delegation members on the matter of customs duties.

The deputy head of the delegation, Mohammed, noticed another detail: no one bribed the tax collectors, and the tax collectors did not actively ask for bribes.

In Mohammed's view, this can be described as magical.

He had asked Altaïr about this.

And Altaïr's answer made him sigh: The Franks are so powerful!
"On the one hand, the kingdom's tax revenue is indeed not high. On the other hand, if someone reports bribery, the merchant will face a large fine, and the tax collector will lose his job. This country, or rather the Paladin group, has an absolute religious piety towards bribery, solicitation of bribes, and even various illicit incomes."

The absolute piety in religious belief is something that these Assassins can understand, but what really surprises them is why non-Paladins can also do so.

Doesn't this mean that even the marginalized groups of the Gairis faith are actually being effectively restrained by the cult?

Altaïr gave a more in-depth explanation of this doubt.

Today, Antioch has carried out strong reforms targeting the tax collector group.

But not only was the management strict, the income of Antioch's public officials was also quite considerable.

A tax collector they met here might have an annual income of nearly eighteen gold dinars.

With the Paladin group as the backbone, they are able to exercise strict supervision over officials, and coupled with the considerable salaries, it is enough to maintain a relatively mild level of corruption.

Later, Altaïr led the delegation to a market here.

The essence of a market is that in areas where commodities are underdeveloped, in order to facilitate commodity trading, people from surrounding areas agree on a time and place, and then gather together at that time to exchange what they have.

It can be said that the less developed the commodity economy is, the more it needs to hold markets. However, the frequency of markets is extremely low due to the lack of commodities. However, with the development of the commodity economy, the frequency of markets is increasing, and the population choosing to live in market points will also increase accordingly, and finally develop into a new town.

When the Western Roman Empire collapsed, slavery collapsed along with it, or it was the collapse of slavery that led to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The original slave handicraft production relations collapsed along with it, and those slave-dominated production towns of the Western Roman Empire lost the foundation of their existence along with them.

From this era on, Western Europe entered the so-called "Dark Ages", and the commodity economy fell into a major setback due to the collapse of the old production relations.

But with the advancement of time and the development of productivity, new handicraft products continued to emerge. Markets sprang up like mushrooms after rain around churches and castles. These were the ancestors of many European towns in later generations and the reason why many churches owned cities.

The situation in Baglas Fort is similar today. There are a large number of scattered settlements around it, and this emerging town under Baglas Fort is needed as a market location.

Relying on Fort Baglas, the Governorate of Antioch provided a fair and safe trading environment to the surrounding residents, avoiding all kinds of illegal activities as much as possible.

When the castle town of Baglas Castle appeared in this area as a service provider, it began to continuously gather population and expand outward.

Especially when the market takes place, you can feel the vibrant energy unique to emerging towns.

A large number of merchants from Antioch brought strange but very practical goods to this border town.

(End of this chapter)