>Get thee to a Judge Dee Book and look up Van Gulik's comments
>about how overtaxed the Mandarins were by their onerous
>responsibilities and the few assistants that they had. Kralori
>Mandarins do deal with the public from day-to-day - it is their
>_job_.
Get the to the Genertela book - "Mandarins rarely deal directly with the populace, but are served by a variety of functionaries of officers."
I'm going to go with the Genertela book rather than a book of non-Gloranthan historical detective fiction (albeit a well researched one). Not that I'm opposed to some leeway here (for MGF, I'd prefer to have at least the occasional underfunded mandarin), but I think on many other issues you'd be the first one to say that Kralorela isn't the same as China and we should look at Gloranthan rather than historical sources where possible (though China is the primary source of RW inspiration).
>Public works _is_ Mandarin business
Not the actual construction parts. The people who lift the rocks, etc are presumably state employees, implying a large state aparatus (and plenty of taxes and other sources of state income to pay all these people). Probably not as high as China achieved at its height (The First Emperor of China, Qin Shuanghi, managed to get 15% of the population working on his grandiose projects, such as his tomb and the Great Wall), but substantial.
>and the armed forces has its
>own hierarchy which is not concerned with the day-to-day government
>of Kralorela.
Sure, but being able to specialise to the extent of having a large separate hierachy of the government that is concerned only with military matters and not day to day government (in contrast to, say, the Orlanthi) is a sign of being a large centralised state.
>But none of these punishments actually are anything like the ITC
>for its purported punishment of the worst criminals.
Hey, if your employing underqualified torturers, thats your own problem. Local torturers can perform some very serious punishment. Sure, you don't get the ITC economies of scale, but there are still some skilled practioners around - probably even some that can trace their techniques to ITC practioners.
(NB as you know from the Judge Dee books, torture of prisoners to extract confessions was legal in China in some eras, IFF the prisoner was found guilty. Not necessarily the same in Kralorela, but has MGF potential and has been suggested before)
>> You could choose to infer that the juxtaposition of those two
>>phrases in the same sentence with an 'and' in between was not meant to
>>imply any connection between the two whatsoever. I don't.
>
>Then could you explain the circumstances of the sacking of Sha
>Ming during those two recent campaigns that I mentioned? Was it
>over the late payment of taxes?
Sha Ming has been sacked more than twice (ie several times), so the circumstances of those two particular campaigns don't preclude it having been sacked for late payment of taxes at other times.
Any explanation why the two phrases were linked by the word 'and' rather than a full stop if they were not intended to be connected?
> And was this a standard practice
>for _all_ Kralori cities as you alleged?
I imagine not paying your taxes on time is not standard practice for Kralorelan cities, thus avoiding the issue. Also, not all provinces and cities have quite the reputation of Boshan and Shi Mang, so other cities probably get slightly get more leeway. But sufficient recalcitrance probably merits the same response eventually.
>> which would, again, tend to indicate that they rule, not via
>>goodwill, but via military force when necessary.
>
>So? I said "Its rulers prefer to govern through goodwill...".
Governing by goodwill, plus the occasional sacking of a province, doesn't seem to differ to me particularly in essential nature from governing by goodwill, plus the occasional torture of the worst criminals, especially as you don't seem to be disputing that they certainly execute wrongdoers when necessary. Both would seem to imply that however they prefer to rule, they do not shy away from ruling by violence when they have to.
>but the point remains that ITC as a brutal tool of repression is
>distinctly at odds with the philosophy that the Mandarins espouse
>- - such as their treatment of the Immanent Masters.
I think that the Kralori distinguish between thoughtcrime and
crime. They punish people for performing criminal acts, not necessarily for
holding wrong beliefs.
And there probably ARE mandarins who would not resort to such vicious
punishments, but there are other mandarins who would.
>the legal system is whatever
>the Mandarin says it is.
The Emperors make laws, from Mikaday on, which bind the mandarins as well as the rest of the populace, and the exarchs too. Sure, the mandarins have a great deal of power, but that legal specialists exists implies its not that arbitrary a legal system.
>And was the ITC was the standard punishment for troublesome
>slaves?
Was Sheng a standard troublesome slave? He was a former nomad chieftain, and he took on an Exarch. And lost, but he still took on an Exarch.
>I do distinctly recall being called mistaken because I
>had the temerity to suggest that the purpose of the camps was
>for enlightenment by one who felt that the camps were brutal
>tools of repression for the worst criminals and dissidents.
I never said that the camps might not have a mystic explanation - just that in practice they are used as a tool of oppression far more than they are used as a mystic path. If the camps contain a bona fide mystic path, yet the majority of the people who enter are criminals who find only a painful death or worse, what does that make the purpose of the camps? Is the official explanation the whole truth, or is the use to which it is in practice put also relevent? I think it would be wrong to deny its mystic aspects, but it would be equally wrong to say that it wasn't used by the state enthusiastically for more pragmatic purposes.
Its quite possible for it to be a genuinely reformatory path and also a brutal tool of repression. There are paths that, while they can achieve genuine reform, very few would undertake voluntarily. The New Model Prisons that briefly replaced the excesses of the convict prisons in Australia and elsewhere, for example, were credited with quite a few cases of genuine reform of the worst criminals, but only a very few (and thats a very charitable estimate) would ever undertake the program of years of utter silent nameless solitary confinement and continual observation, with only a bible to read, voluntarily, despite its similarity to the extremes of monasticism. And madness was also a common result as well as reform.
Cheers David ------------------------------
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #385
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