https://nathangoldwag.wordpress.com/2024/05/31/the-moral-economy-of-the-shire/ Goldwag's Journal on Civilization Menu Skip to content * Home * Maps of the Multiverse * Historical Bibliography * Senior Thesis * About * Contact * Donate Search Search for: [ ] [Search] The Moral Economy of the Shire May 31, 2024June 1, 2024 / nathangoldwag [hobbiton_the_shires_middle-earth_matamata_new_zealand_-_panoramio_7] [Who paid for this?] There's a certain meme that I see making the rounds on Facebook every so often about the bucolic nature of life in the Shire, from Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and because I am the way that I am, every time I see it, it makes me start thinking. "Are there taxes in the Shire? If not, how does the government function? Are there worries? Does the lack of taxes relate to the lack of worries? How do people think a whole economic system built around drinking and pipe-smoking even works?" Luckily, I think there are answers to this. Tolkien does not describe the political economy of the Hobbits in any detail, because it's rarely relevant to the story, but I think we can learn a lot about it from what he does mention. In Tolkien's legendarium, the Shire is built out an idealized version of rural English society. By looking at how he depicts this-and what eventually happens to it-we can learn a lot about how these sorts of societies function and change over time, and what the benefits and drawbacks of living life Hobbit-style really are. We'll begin with a quick sketch of the Shire's government. This won't take long, because there's not much of it. We're told explicitly, right at the start of Lord of the Rings: The Shire at this time had hardly any 'government'. Families for the most part managed their own affairs. Growing food and eating it occupied most of their time. In other matters they were, as a rule, generous and not greedy, but contented and moderate, so that estates, farms, workshops, and small trades tended to remain unchanged for generations. The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien, pg. 9 Legally speaking, the Shire took the form of a royal grant from King Argeleb II to the brothers Marcho and Blanco in 1601 TA, granting their people the right to settle the lands between the Brandywine River and the Far Downs, in return for which they were to maintain the bridges and roads, aid the King's couriers, and acknowledge him as liege-lord. After the downfall of the Kingdom of Arnor, the Hobbits chose to maintain this legal continuity by establishing the office of Thain, a hereditary chieftainship who could take the place of the absent monarch. This office originally belonged to the Oldbuck family, but some centuries prior to the events of Lord of the Rings had passed to the Tooks. The Thain was the nominal Head of State for the Shire, and had the authority to summon the moot and muster in times of emergency, but this was mostly ceremonial, given the lack of emergencies. The only other office of note was the Mayor of Michel Delving, elected every seven years at the Free Fair at Midsummer. The Mayor's only real task was to preside over banquets, but by tradition and custom, he also held the posts of Postmaster and First Sheriff, thus controlling the only two governmental organs of note, the Messenger Service and the Watch. The former does exactly what you'd expect, the latter was the closest thing the Shire had to a police force, though it was a fully-volunteer outfit whose main tasks were rounding up stray livestock and discouraging "outsiders" from entering the Shire. We can conclude from this, right away, that yes, the Shire likely had few, if any taxes. Individual taxation requires a large administrative apparatus to collect, and large numbers of full-time bureaucrats, which is why it was so rare in Medieval Europe. (This is the irony of George R.R. Martin's famous complaint of "what was Aragorn's tax policy?" He probably didn't have one, and depended on feudal vassals to administer his holdings.) The minimal government of the Shire would likely have been funded out of bridge and road tolls, tariffs, and/or theoretically-voluntary gifts from elite families, a common custom in Ancient Mediterranean democracies such as Athens. But what does this tell us about the broader social and economic structures of Hobbit society? The implication in both books and movies is that most Hobbits spent their time either farming or enjoying leisure time, but this makes little sense, when one considers what we know about premodern agriculture and what little of life and culture in the Shire. This could describe a pure subsistence economy, based around producing just enough food to ensure survival, and some of the text seems to suggest that, but it's clear that that can't be true. The Shire has a well-developed economy, with mills, full-time craftsmen, inns, and the large-scale cultivation of luxury crops, despite having almost no foreign trade (Southfarthing pipe-weed being found as far away as Isengard is taken as proof of Saruman's meddling) or industry. Premodern agriculture was characterized primarily as being low-surplus and high-labor, it takes a lot of people a lot of time to produce enough food for everyone to eat, and there's rarely much left over. How does this jibe with the leisurely lives of simple pleasure that our Hobbit heroes seem to enjoy? There's actually a very obvious answer, which is that our protagonists aren't typical Hobbits. Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, and Pippin are all very clearly members of the landed gentry, the landowning class that controls most means of economic production and maintains social dominance over the Shire. This isn't really extrapolation or interpretation, it's more-or-less text, and I suspect the only reason it's not spelled out is because Tolkien assumed any reader would understand that intuitively. Bilbo and Frodo are both gentlemen of leisure because the Baggins family is independently wealthy, and that wealth almost has to come from land ownership, because there isn't enough industry or trade to sustain it. They can afford to go on adventures and study Elven poetry because they draw their income from tenant farmers renting their land. Merry and Pippin are from an even higher social tier; both are the heirs to powerful families that hold quasi-feudal offices (the Master of Buckland, for the Brandybucks, and the Thain, for the Tooks). [shire][It's kinda weird that there aren't any crops] As I said before, this is the traditional system of social organization in the English countryside, sometimes known as "squirearchy". The gentry, in this paradigm, aren't nobility-they don't have a distinct set of legal privileges. Serfdom, or other forms of labor bound to the land, doesn't seem to exist, and there's no evidence of military vassalage as an organizing principle. Instead, we can see that a relatively small number of families owns much of the land, and much of the agricultural capital-mills, granaries, oxen, plows, etc-allowing them to wield a high level of informal economic and social control over their community. Most other Hobbits would either be tenant farmers, paying most of their produce back to their landlords in rents, or yeomen, independent small farmers who owned their own land, but were still dependent on the gentry in many respects. We can see a small, burgeoning urban bourgeois emerging in the small towns and villages, perhaps, but without foreign trade or industrialization, this can't grow to challenge the gentry, and no proletariat is likely to exist yet. Understanding this sheds a great deal of light on Tolkien's explanation of the Shire's governance. The lack of much organized administration is not, as some suggest, a form of democratic anarchism, but instead the result of elite control. All Hobbits were, in any case, clannish and reckoned up their relationships with great care. They drew long and elaborate family-trees with innumerable branches. -- The Thainship had ceased to be more than a nominal dignity. The Took family was still, indeed, accorded a special respect, for it remained both numerous and exceedingly wealthy. The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien, pgs. 7, 9 This is a society organized around family and clan dynamics, where power flows not from the office, but from who you know, and the web of favors, debts, and relationships you can call upon. The Tooks are not powerful because they hold the Thainship, they hold the Thainship as a signifier of being "the first family" of the Shire, in terms of wealth and influence. The Mayor of Michel Delving's main job is to preside over banquets because, in a political structure like this, those sort of social events are where everything is actually decided and established, in the subtle, informal relationships between the families who own everything. There's no bureaucracy or administrative apparatus because there is no need for one. The Shire is not conducting war or diplomacy or trade, and isn't administering large populations of subjects, and there would be no reason for the Oldbucks, Brandybucks, Tooks, etc to support the kind of centralization of state power that could challenge their informal reign. From everything we're told, the Shire is a very agriculturally productive region, which helps explain the lack of debt-peonage or other forms of unfree labor. It also explains the relative "looseness" of the system we're looking at here; the gap between the lower gentry and upper yeomanry isn't very large, and most families are able to support themselves with only minimal assistance. The other term we need to know if we want to understand the Shire is "clientelism", perhaps more commonly refereed to as "patron-client relationships". This is a social-political structure that emerges organically in many different contexts, and consists of a set of mutual, hierarchical obligations between powerful "patrons" and a network of "clients" who depend on them, economically, socially, or politically. It seems likely, from what we see of the Shire, that clientelism is the main organizing force within Hobbit politics. This would be far from unusual, in this sort of system. But because our small subsistence farmers are mostly focused on controlling and mitigating risk rather than enhancing raw yields, often the most important thing they could get from the large landholder was not a tangible thing at all: access to vertical patronage ties. Just like the smallholders could establish horizontal ties with fellow small farmers, they could also try to establish those ties with the big fellow in the big house. Of course the mechanisms for establishing the ties were different: few peasants could banquet an aristocrat and most aristocrats would be insulted by a suggestion of an alliance through marriage. Instead the ties were strictly vertical - that is they were unequal. They often began with the farmer working at least a bit as a tenant on the big farm, but also typically included political support, sometimes military support (that is, coming out to fight when the large landholder did, often as common troops in his retinue) and no small amount of social deference. Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part II: Big Farms, Brett Devereaux (Source) To understand this, let's look at a prototypical example of this; the relationship between the Baggins and the Gamgees. Both Samwise Gamgee and his father, Hamfast Gamgee, are employed by Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, but the relationship is clearly far deeper than that. Throughout Lord of the Rings, Frodo treats Sam almost a feudal retainer, not just a person in a employee relationship, but someone who owes personal fealty to him, an attitude clearly reciprocated by Sam. There's affection, friendship, and even love between them, but in the context of a hierarchical relationship. It's never in question who "Mister Frodo" is, though it's clear that this loyalty comes with expectations and obligations. Sam is not a slave, not is he bound by oaths of vassalage, or contract. He is loyal because he is expected to be, and because the Baggins repay loyalty with patronage, both to him, and his family. The poorer Hobbits, and especially those of Bagshot Row, did very well. Old Gaffer Gamgee got two sacks of potatoes, a new spade, a woolen waistcoat, and a bottle of ointment for creaking joints. -- "Well, you can't say fairer than that," said the gaffer. "Mr. Frodo Baggins is a real gentlehobbit, I always have said, whatever you may think of some others of the name, begging your pardon. And I hope my Sam's behaved hisself and given satisfaction?" The Fellowship of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien, pg. 37 The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien, pg. 991 The Gamgees are likely tenants of the Baggins, or at least dependent on them for access to agricultural capital. They likely send much of their income up to Bag End in rent, and provide services, as gardeners, batmen, valets, traveling companions, etc. They also provide support, in a social and civic sense, as we see. If Frodo had gone to the Free Fair to run for Mayor, the Gamgees and other tenants would have voted for him, and would have accompanied him in public, to demonstrate his status and prestige. But in return for this, they could expect generous gifts on holidays, loans of money on favorable terms, lax enforcement of rental arrears in time of drought and famine, and legal support in disputes. Tolkien himself said that Sam was inspired by his experience as a young Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers in WWI. My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, ed. Humphrey Carpenter, pg. 89 This, however, should not surprise us. Tolkien was serving in the British Army, and armies are always embryonic reflections of the societies that raised them. For bachelors Bilbo and Frodo, these were personal, individual relationships. But the norm was likely closer to webs of debts, favors, and obligations, traded back and forth between families, cemented by marriage alliances and social ties. We're told repeatedly that gift-giving and hosting feasts are two of the primary preoccupations of Hobbits. To modern ears, this may come across as utopian, or idyllic, but these sorts of status displays were a key part of many economic and social systems. In many Pacific Northwest Native American tribes, this was known as "potlatch", and served as both a political and economic system, in which conspicuous displays of generosity were used to denote power and prestige. The Shire clearly has a monetary economy, but gift-giving remains important. The entire first chapter of Lord of the Rings is devoted to Bilbo's 111st birthday party, which is a huge event that attracts intense attention from across Hobbit society, and involves massive displays of largess, solidifying the Baggins' social position, and cementing ties with neighboring families and rival clans. Or at least, it would have been, if Bilbo hadn't had an ulterior motive. I think all of this is pretty reasonable extrapolation from the text. Tolkien was decidedly not writing direct allegories, but he made no secret of the fact that he was drawing upon his substantial academic knowledge of premodern history and society to shape his world. That's a big part of why it works so well. But what I find fascinating about this topic is the way in which Lord of the Rings doesn't just depict the traditional agricultural political economy, but the way in which it demonstrates what happened to it. The title of this post is taken from the 1976 book The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia, by James C. Scott, which I read in undergrad. The book analyzes a series of peasant insurrections in Indochina and Burma in the 1930s, and argues that their root causes was the disruption of traditional sociopolitical and cultural norms, the so-called "moral economy" by colonialism and market capitalism. Of key importance was his contention that the casus belli was not only, or even primarily, increased exploitation in a purely material sense, but the disruption to traditional patronage networks that had sustained them for generations. Peasant households should not be seen as small businesses, trying to maximize their annual profits, but as people trying to survive. A single failed harvest could mean death, and in this situation, the patronage networks were a vital social safety net. A peasant in this system gave most of his income to his landlord, without fail, but he could trust that in case of disaster, he would have some recourse. [61mnvd8rull] More modern market economics brought opportunity-but also risk. As landowners became integrated into the globalized economy, backed up the military might of colonial regimes, they had less and less reason to uphold the traditional bargains with their tenants and smallholders. Plantation-style cultivation of cash crops for market could produce riches, but also catastrophe in the case of drought, famine, or economic downturn-all of which occurred in Vietnam in the 1930s. Traditional elites in Indochina had often been lenient regarding peasants, because they had to be, unable to strictly enforce taxation or rent in times of scarcity, and dependent for social and political support on their clients. That was not the case for French authorities in Saigon and Hanoi. On the very first page, Scott describes "the position of the rural population" as "that of a man standing permanently up to his neck in water, so that even a ripple might drown him." (Moral Economy, pg. vii). The perhaps counterintuitive conclusion is that peasants are often quite conservative. They'll fight to support the social order, if they think it's in their interests, and are often quite wary of change. The arrival of deracinated capitalism could be quite advantageous, in the long run, but in the short run could destroy communities that had found a rough balance of survival. Another famous example of this is the Great Peasants' War of 1524-1525, in the Holy Roman Empire. Reading the Twelve Articles, one of the lists of grievances drawn up by Swabian peasant leaders, it is noteworthy how they are couched in a language of conservatism and tradition, demanding the restoration of ancient privileges, justified in religious language. Of the demands, Four, Five, and Ten are in regards to traditional feudal privileges that were being eroded, rights of fishing, hunting, gathering wood, etc. Six, Seven, and Eight are demanding regulation of the customary labor provided by peasants to their lords, insisting on lower rents and quotas. I don't think anyone would argue that European farmers in Germany today aren't better off now than they were in the 1500s. But the period of economic transition could be brutal. This process of consolidation and commercialization undermining traditional social arrangements can be seen in the Shire, mostly in the last few chapters of The Return of the King, when our heroes return from abroad. "It all began with Pimple, as we call him," said Farmer Cotton; "and it began as soon as you'd gone off, Mr. Frodo. He'd funny ideas, had Pimple. Seems he wanted to own everything himself, and then order other folks about. It soon came out that he already did own a sight more than was good for him; and he was always grabbing more, though where he got the money was a mystery: mills and malt-houses and inns, and farms, and leaf-plantations.........of course, he started with a lot of property in the Southfarthing which he had from his dad; and it seems he'd been selling a lot o' the best leaf, and sending it away quietly for a year or two. But at the end o' last year he began sending away loads of stuff, not only leaf. Things began to get short, and winter coming on, too. Folk got angry, but he had his answear. A lot of Men, ruffians mostly, came with great waggons, some to carry off the goods south-away, and others to stay. And more came." The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien, pg. 989 Lotho Sackville-Baggins was a member of the Shire's gentry, and it seems a relatively powerful one. He made contact with Saruman-we're never told how-and thus gained access to a source of capital outside the traditional Hobbit system via foreign trade, which allowed him to accumulate enough economic control to emerge as de facto ruler, bringing in foreign mercenaries to suppress local resistance and beat down his competitors. In Tolkien's writing, Sauron and Saruman represent the forces of modernity, tearing down tradition and continuity, and this is just yet another example of that, the social order being corrupted by money and power, undermining the Way Things Should Be. It is no coincidence that the counter-revolution is led by Frodo, Pippin, and Merry-scions of some of the leading families of the gentry-or that Lotho's main opposition came from that same establishment. "You see, your dad, Mr. Peregrin, he's never had no truck with this Lotho, not from the begining: said that if anyone was going to play the chief at this time of day, it would be the rightful Thain of the Shire and no upstart. And when Lotho sent his Men they got no change out of him. Tooks are lucky, they've got those deep holes in the Green Hills, the Great Smials and all, and the ruffians can't come at 'em; and they won't let the ruffians come on their land. If they do, Tooks hunt 'em. Tooks shot three for prowling and robbing. After that the ruffians turned nastier. And they keep a pretty close watch on Tookland. No one gets in nor out of it now." The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien, pg. 986 Of course, one of the primary themes of Lord of the Rings is the inevitability of change. The forces of darkness may be defeated, but the power of the Three Elven Rings are broken too, and the beauty of the Old World fades away. All we can do is fight to preserve what we can. And thus, though Lotho's plot to establish an oligarchic dictatorship in the Shire is defeated, things will never go back to the way they were before the War of the Ring. One of the interesting developments that can be seen, if you read the Appendices closely, is that Samwise Gamgee ends up basically running the Shire. After Frodo departs for the Undying Lands, he inherits Bag End, and presumably the wealth and prestige of the Baggins family. In FO 6, he is elected Mayor of Michel Delving, and serves seven consecutive seven-year terms. He has thirteen children, and is the founder of a new family line, the Gardeners. His daughter Elanor serves as a maid to Queen Arwen of the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor, cementing his connection to the royal court, and her husband Fastred Fairbairn was made hereditary Warden of the Westmarch. His daughter Goldilocks married Faramir Took, the son-and-heir of Pippin Took, and the thirty-third Thane of the Shire. We aren't told many details about the rest of his children, but it's clear that the Gardiner family is in a position of unparalleled influence and power. So, what does this all mean? There is an unfortunate tendency for these sorts of essays to be framed as REVEALING THE SURPRISINGLY DARK HIDDEN REALITY OF THE SHIRE or whatever, which is not the point I'm trying to make. When I write about the economics and politics of fictional worlds, it is usually because we, consciously or otherwise, base much of our understanding of the real world off of our perceptions of them. I think Tolkien was very aware of the sort of society he was depicting in the Shire, and that he was describing an idealized, imaginary version of it that never quite worked as well as one would hope. There's nothing wrong with that, but one of the consequences of modern life is that we're so alienated from our subsistence systems that we've ceased to understand them. The idea that farming is easy or effortless, or that food is only scarce because of modern capitalism, or that peasants "had it easy" compared to office workers, is disturbingly common. We see a petty aristocrat like Frodo Baggins, and don't see all the labor that goes into sustaining his lifestyle. We see a successful peasant family like the Gamgees, and don't see all the tradeoffs and compromises necessary to scrape out a living. We see the hierarchies of traditional rural society, and because it's alien and exotic, we see it as natural and idyllic, instead of merely a different system for organizing labor and wealth. Tolkien liked to describe Middle-earth as a mythical lost past of our own Earth, and though that doesn't really make any sense, it's true he constructed his fictional universe from pieces of our own. That's why I think this sort of analysis can be useful. By learning how the Shire worked, we can start to understand how our own past worked, in all its complexity and contradictions. I think that's important. [d8h3y1k-249d3d5f-6e3e-4975-86db-4d3f6f38e214][Map of the Shire ( Source)] Share this: * Twitter * Facebook * Like Loading... Related Literary Analysis, Lord of the Rings Post navigation - What Should Israel Do? 22 thoughts on "The Moral Economy of the Shire" 1. [ab3d91d] arthurdawg June 1, 2024 at 10:09 am Awesome! I have thought about the Shire in this exact way, but don't have the background to examine it in such detail. LikeLike Reply 2. [f6568b5] JohnT June 2, 2024 at 3:47 am Both this and some of the pieces in Deveraux's blog are really interesting demonstrations of the strengths of Tolkien's worldbuilding. When someone with understanding goes into how the battles or the core nations work, it usually emerges that the system is reasonably understandable in the context of some previous human societies, and that the various throwaway references actually do seem to fit into a coherent whole, perhaps even more so than in some more recent and more elaborately constructed fantasy worlds. Part of it is that Tolkien was an academic and ex-soldier with lots of relevant knowledge, and part of it is that he has a good understanding of his underlying systems but rarely tries to explain them, he just uses them. In my own experience if you are trying to explain something complex, it feels much more credible if you only explain the top layer at first but can reliably answer questions on the layer of complexity below. To take your example, I am very confident that Tolkien *could* have explained how Aragorn's tax system worked, roughly, because it would broadly be that of a medieval West European king, which he understood very well. But if he'd explained Aragorn's tax system then a) he would not so quickly have been able to explain the deep details of that and b)the whole thing would have been desperately dull LikeLiked by 3 people Reply 3. [5eb8975] David Haskiya June 2, 2024 at 3:56 am I think there were some limited foreign trade, but long-standing fully integrated systems and so not as disruptive as the new trade routes with Isengard. That would be trade with and through Bree and either directly or via Bree with the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains. The latter needed food, enjoyed pipe-weed and their crafted goods, and perhaps metal ingots, were likely in demand by the peoples of the Shore and Bree. I do think the trade with Dwarves was direct because they are mentioned a few times as travelling through the Shire. They were considered strange but unlike Elves not as creatures of almost legend. So I always imagined some Dwarven mule and waggon trains showing up at the major fairs of the Shire, to do some trading. This trade would likely have been mediated through the elite families of the Shire. After Bilbo went there and back again, maybe one of those families were the Bagginses! LikeLiked by 3 people Reply 4. [76b1629] topherbrennan June 2, 2024 at 10:34 am "I think Tolkien was very aware of the sort of society he was depicting in the Shire, and that he was describing an idealized, imaginary version of it that never quite worked as well as one would hope." I am not sure Tolkien was quite so self-aware as this. In the forward to the second edition, he says the Scouring of the Shire was inspired by the way "the country in which I lived in childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten"--I take this to be a reflection of the belief many people hold that "everything has been going down hill since when I was a kid!", which comes from people who think this way not realizing it's they who've changed, not the world. It comes from them not realize they've just become more aware of the world's problems, and more burdened by adult responsibilities. The result is that the Shire is a child's view of the English countryside circa 1900, unencumbered by any serious understanding of history, sociology, or anthropology. There are many individual details drawn from real life, which help lend it a feeling of verisimilitude, but they don't really add up to a coherent whole. Among other things, the fact that the Shire has exactly 1 modern institution--the post office--makes no real sense but Tolkien has fond childhood memories of sending and receiving letters so in it goes. The idea that Sam's relationship with Frodo reflects patron-client relationships in some traditional societies is tantalizing, but I don't quite buy it. Sam feels more like a fantasy of how the British gentry would've liked to imagine their servants. Sam has no real motives beyond devotion to Frodo, which makes Tolkien's claim to have based him on enlisted men he served with in WWI very strange--did Tolkien imagine they volunteered out of devotion to individual members of the British upper classes, rather than patriotism, outrage at German treatment of Belgium, and so on? LikeLiked by 1 person Reply + [0c527b7] ad9 June 2, 2024 at 4:32 pm During the British Army's expansion of 1914-16, the recruiting did indeed follow people s social networks, so you could find entire battalions formed from the employees of the North Eastern Railway, London stockbrokers and so on. So personal loyalties did indeed help drive recruiting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pals_battalion#:~:text= The%20Pals%20battalions%20of%20World,being%20arbitrarily%20allocated%20to%20battalions . "This should be a battalion of pals, a battalion in which friends from the same office will fight shoulder to shoulder for the honour of Britain and the credit of Liverpool." LikeLike Reply o [6ca7222] ajay June 3, 2024 at 9:14 am And not only that, but the officers of that sort of battalion would often be those at the top of the social hierarchy in peacetime - think about the Lovat Scouts, or McCrae's Battalion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ McCrae%27s_Battalion LikeLike Reply # [76b1629] topherbrennan June 3, 2024 at 1:27 pm Frodo's relationship with Sam has specifically been compared to the relationship of many officers with their batmen. The catch is that I've heard of officers giving their batmen jobs after the war, I've not heard of an officer bringing one of his household employees along as a batman, much less any cases of that being a man's entire reason for joining up. "Local notable recruits a battalion of local boys" is not the same thing as "household employee enlists specifically so he can stick by his boss's side". IDK, maybe I underestimate the extent to which some British house-servants got their identities wrapped up in their job. Sam is in some ways the same type of guy as the butler in another famous British novel, The Remains of the Day, who is similarly devoted though the novel has a more satirical take on this attitude. LikeLike Reply + [6ca7222] ajay June 3, 2024 at 4:35 am Sam has no real motives beyond devotion to Frodo Oh, hang on though. Initially he wants to see Elves and mountains and all the things he's heard about in Bilbo's stories. He wants to go over the hills and far away, just like lots of other young men who join the colours. Then once he's been to Elrond's council he's committed to the mission; he's been told by his old gaffer to look after Frodo, sure, but he also knows how important it is to destroy the Ring and, remember, when he's given a choice between those two objectives (at the end of Book IV) he chooses the Ring. LikeLiked by 1 person Reply o [76b1629] topherbrennan June 3, 2024 at 1:13 pm Having re-read Lord of the Rings fairly recently, I think we're pretty clearly meant to understand that "see the Elves" is just cover for Sam being set on looking out for Frodo whether Frodo wants Sam's help or not. In particular, when he gets caught eavesdropping on Frodo and Gandalf's conversation, he claims it was initially accidental and then he tried to hear more out of curiosity, but later it becomes clear it was no accident, and he was spying on behalf of Merry and Pippin (because again, all three are set on looking out for Frodo whether Frodo wants their help or not). LikeLike Reply + [72c42a0] yorksranter June 3, 2024 at 7:23 am Very specifically, Tolkien didn't volunteer until 1915, by which time the old regular army had been heavily weakened and the first line Territorial Force (probably the closest thing to actual yeomen going) also hit hard, and what was referred to as the "New Army" was being formed with wartime volunteers. A pre-war Lancashire Fusilier might well have come from a very rural, traditional, and (importantly) Catholic background but these guys were overwhelmingly industrial or office workers from Manchester, Liverpool, or the East Lancashire milltowns. An army is a mirror of the society that raises it but this society was the most industrialized and urbanized society in the world at the time; the small peacetime professional army could be less so, in fact much less so, because it was small and professional. To give an idea of the scale of the mobilization even before conscription was imposed in 1916, Tolkien was serving in the 11th Battalion of his regiment. If I had to speculate, the relationship would probably be a more modern one of *solidarity*, as on the job, and battlefield comradeship - but this wasn't something available to him in his imaginative and experiential world as a deeply bourgeois Oxonian, so he assimilated it to something he *did* understand or at least thought he understood (feudalism not being something thick on the ground in the banking community of Joe Chamberlain's Birmingham, to say the least!) LikeLike Reply o [6ca7222] ajay June 3, 2024 at 10:55 am I think it is also worth noting that Sam isn't the only character in the book who is very obviously based on the modern soldiers Tolkien knew. Think about the Orcs. They are recognisably soldiers, and, more to the point, bad soldiers. The Elves and Dwarves and Rohirrim and so on are warriors from myths, but the Orcs aren't. They are grubby, foul-mouthed, backbiting, disloyal, shirking soldiers. "I'll give your name and number to the Nazgul!" one Orc threatens another. You can't imagine Eomer talking like that to a reluctant Rider. Riders of Rohan don't have army numbers. LikeLiked by 1 person Reply + [72c42a0] yorksranter June 3, 2024 at 7:27 am Also on this: around 1900 was a historic nadir of British agriculture, which was struggling to compete with imports from the new steamship export powerhouses - the US, Canada, Australia, Argentina. The so-called high farming period was being crushed by the first globalization. When the maritime supply chain came under threat, this would lead to a dramatic policy shift towards protectionism and modernization and a big revival of farm incomes. But that was far in the future and I reckon he wouldn't have liked it much. LikeLike Reply + [6ca7222] ajay June 3, 2024 at 9:10 am "the fact that the Shire has exactly 1 modern institution--the post office--makes no real sense but Tolkien has fond childhood memories of sending and receiving letters so in it goes." Post offices are only just a modern institution - established 1635. LikeLike Reply o [6ca7222] ajay June 3, 2024 at 9:22 am If you want something that's really prochronistic, it isn't the twice-daily postal service in the shire, it's the clock on Bilbo's mantelpiece! LikeLiked by 1 person Reply 5. [38567e1] Daniel Gallaghan June 2, 2024 at 11:08 am fascinating. Wondering how this resonates with Ted Kacynski's manifesto calling for a post industrial society. LikeLike Reply 6. [6733617] Shane June 2, 2024 at 2:44 pm Excellent article! LikeLike Reply 7. [4a681ca] Avi June 3, 2024 at 3:59 am Thank you for an enlightening article, both clear and enjoyable to read. One thing the Hobbits can ignore in their economy is their need for a standing army. The Rangers protect them for "Free", thus giving them an "edge" in the economic struggle. Real "Rural" Britain could not... LikeLiked by 2 people Reply + [72c42a0] yorksranter June 3, 2024 at 7:33 am Well, the real thing chose to have a small professional force funded by the taxes, backed up by a much bigger yeoman mobilization capacity. And, of course, a huge navy - which is something that doesn't fit into the framework at all because it's by definition tax-funded, heavily professional, and physically built by a vast industrial workforce. LikeLiked by 1 person Reply 8. [6ca7222] ajay June 3, 2024 at 4:29 am Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, and Pippin are all very clearly members of the landed gentry, the landowning class that controls most means of economic production and maintains social dominance over the Shire. This isn't really extrapolation or interpretation, it's more-or-less text, and I suspect the only reason it's not spelled out is because Tolkien assumed any reader would understand that intuitively. But there's one absolutely colossal difference between Bilbo et al and the typical member of the landed gentry: Bilbo doesn't have any servants! Sam works in his garden, but not full-time, and there's no one else at all. Bilbo Baggins is one of the richest hobbits in the Shire. And he does his own cooking, day to day. He does his own washing up. This would have stood out a mile, to a reader of Tolkien's day. And it's made really obvious even to us because every other character we meet in the books is very conscious of his position in a vertical hierarchy. They're lords or kings, or vassals of lords, or sons of the King of Mirkwood, or Marshals of the Riddermark, or Orc soldiers, or Orc officers. They serve, or they are served, or both. It's one of the first things they say when they're introduced. But not the hobbits. And it's not just a lack of servants - no hobbit has employees of any kind. Hobbits work for Humans (at the Prancing Pony for example) but no human or hobbit works for a hobbit. I don't think this is an error - the point about Hobbits is that they do not seek dominance, which is why they can resist the Ring. One of the funniest moments is the Ring trying to tempt Sam. It's spent the entire book going "put me on, Gandalf, gain the power you need to save Middle Earth; put me on, Galadriel, become a Queen of terrible beauty and might; put me on, Boromir, become the leader your father expects you to be..." but with Sam it's baffled and just goes "...idk you could have a really big garden?" Another point: yes, Hobbits like parties and feasts. But they don't like big parties. Bilbo's birthday party is completely unprecedented. It's only 144 people which is not ludicrously huge - I've been to weddings with more guests. Tolkien would have been to formal dinners many times the size. But we keep being told that no one in the Shire had ever seen anything like it. It's not "the biggest party since the Old Took's birthday" or "since Master Brandybuck's wedding" or whatever. It's the biggest party ever. Why has no one had a party that big before? Because Hobbits cook for themselves and there's a limit to how much one Hobbit or one family can manage. Bilbo doesn't; he gets caterers in. Lots of them. On "Party Business". He has bouncers which seems inherently un-Hobbitlike. Because the Ring has eventually, after sixty years, got its claws into his mind. Just as it tries to corrupt Men by promising them victory, just as it tries to corrupt Elves by promising them eternal rule and unfading beauty, just as it tries to corrupt Wizards by promising knowledge, it corrupts Hobbits by promising enormous parties. LikeLiked by 3 people Reply 9. [359afd2] Brett June 3, 2024 at 11:27 am This is excellent. I think we more or less get confirmation of the Gamgees being tenants of the Baggins from what happens when Lotho Sackville-Baggins takes over Bag End - he evicts the Gaffer from his home, something which he presumably can only do because he owns the land. That said, I don't get the impression that they "send payment " to the Baggins so much as perform service in kind. The Gamgees perform the gardening service for Bag End, and in turn they get patronage gifts and the right to use their own land for gardening and probably farming for extra subsistence. LikeLiked by 1 person Reply 10. [5ae4242] mindstalk0 June 3, 2024 at 12:34 pm ""it corrupts Hobbits by promising enormous parties." lol The Shire does have some force though, not just dependence on the Rangers: it has the Bounders, guarding the borders, and we're told the number had been greatly increased recently. So who decided that? Are they paid in coin (taxes) or are border families supposed to feed and host them? (My headcanon is that the Free Fair that elects Mayors every 7 years, also can act as a legislative assembly every summer, at least approving or vetoing proposals from the Mayor like "we need more Bounders and funding for them." But it's headcanon.) When Frodo sells Bag End, the Gaffer is described as being depressed about having Lobelia as a _neighbor_, not as a landlady. Baggins wealth being from land-rent would make sense, but there's no mention of estates and tenants, even when Frodo is pretending to be poor and selling stuff off. They're simply described as having _money_ -- and for early 1800s England, there was another option, commonly seen in Jane Austen: government bonds, reliably paying 4-5% interest. The Shire doesn't have the government for that, but maybe private banking? Investing in Took business ventures? So, the Shire has various elements that look recognizable, but as written I don't think they gel to a fully coherent whole, or at least not a real historical model. LikeLiked by 1 person Reply + [5ae4242] mindstalk0 June 3, 2024 at 1:25 pm Oh right, another comment. Almost everyone treats Sam as Frodo's servant, including Sam, _except for Frodo_. When they set out from Bag End, he guesses (correctly) that Sam has overloaded Sam's pack to spare Frodo, and Frodo intends to equalize the loads. At Crickhollow, it's Pippin who sleepily calls out an order to Sam; meanwhile Merry treats all of them as equals in terms of bath access. When Frodo splits off from the Fellowship, he intended to do so on his own, without a thought for "my servant", until Sam catches him out. Sam certainly acts as Frodo's servant, but Frodo seems to accept it more than expect it, and to have no qualms about operating on his own (vs. gentry like Bertie Wooster being helpless without help.) You could view this as a very idealized master/servant or officer/batman relationship; OTOH, as mentioned, Bilbo and Frodo normally don't really seem to keep domestic servants, and do their own chores. (You could also view this as Tolkien not having a good idea of how much manual labor is involved... I like to think Bilbo pays for a laundry service, at least.) (You can also view it as fuel for Frodo/Sam shipping, with Sam being devoted to Frodo far and above the call of 'duty'. Or as simply Sam being committed to the success of the Mission.) LikeLiked by 1 person Reply Leave a comment Cancel reply [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] D[ ] Search for: [ ] [Search] Categories Categories[Select Category ] Follow Goldwag's Journal on Civilization on WordPress.com Follow Blog via Email Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. 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