Having recently finished writing a 15k-word novella,* I am now returning to the draft of Book 2 in my worldbuilding guidebook series, the book focused on commerce and political economy. It looks like I’ll be adding a new chapter about class barriers and inequality, which will squeeze in a discussion of Peter Turchin’s theory of political conflict due to elite overproduction. (Much as I do with the work of James C. Scott, I’ll take any opportunity to bring it up!)

Fortuitously, I just found my copy of Fernand Braudel’s The Wheels of Commerce where it had been buried on my shelf behind a double layer of books for about a decade (!), and I have the sinking feeling that I’ll be adding even more material to the draft even though it’s already about 60k words long, which is about as long as you’d want a guidebook like this to be.

Just reading the first chapter, it seems clear to me that Jane Jacobs was inspired by Braudel (or perhaps by the same sources he cites such as von Thünen) in her discussion of “supply regions,” vast rural zones that are economically transformed by the needs of large cities. Braudel discusses how as metropolises such as London and Paris grew, town fairs across their countries became more and more specialized so that they predominantly offered a single good, becoming a predictable supplier to the merchants who would send their wares off to the insatiable cities:

“Cheeses came from Meaux; butter from Gournay, near Dieppe, or from Isigny; beasts for slaughter from the markets of Poissy, Sceaux and further afield from Neubourg; good bread from Gonesse; pulses from Caudebec in Normandy, where a market was held every Saturday . . . . Any region affected by London tended to specialize, to change and become more commercially-minded, in limited sectors as yet it is true, for between the modernized regions there still lay expanses of the old rural régime with its traditional farms and crops. Kent for instance. . . saw orchards and hops cover its fields to supply the capital, but Kent still maintained its identity, with its peasant-farmers. . .”

By about 1600, “[o]f the 800 market towns in England and Wales, at least 300 confined themselves to single trades: 133 to the grain trade; 26 to malt; 6 to fruit; 92 to cattle markets; 32 to sheep; 13 to horses; 14 to swine; 30 to fish; 21 to wildfowl and poultry; 12 to butter and cheese; over 30 to wool or yarn; 27 or more to woolen cloth; 11 to leather; 8 to linen; at least 4 to hemp—not to mention some very precise and idiosyncratic specialties: Wymondham dealt exclusively in ‘wooden spoons, taps and handles.'” (Long excursus into the informational problems of matching buyers and sellers omitted.)

Braudel also cites interesting statistics about markets and towns (sourced mostly from medieval England) that will be of use to the worldbuilder. With a handful of exceptions, villages did not have regular markets; but most towns did, and they tended to serve about 6000 or 7000 people total despite their typical population of 1000 (all these numbers subject to variation by period and locality, of course). In other words, villagers from the surrounding settlements (as well as itinerant peddlers and merchants) would converge on their local town every few days or every week. Each market tended to serve a radius of about six or seven miles, depending on the type of good and its mode of transportation. “In about 1600, grain transported overland did not travel more than 10 miles [ed: recall that a team of oxen traveling more than about 200km would eat more grain than they could carry], and 5 was more usual; cattle could be driven about 11 miles, sheep 40 to 70 miles; wool and woolen cloth would travel between 20 and 40 miles.”

At any rate, it seems that I will once again have to work harder to keep material out of my book than to put it in. But that’s the fun of it, I suppose!

*Currently trying to shop it around for publication, but I’ll probably lose patience and self-publish it before long. Here’s a very early scene that survived to the current draft with few changes.