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Comment by poulsbohemian | Hacker News Reader

This is very similar to the situation that caused the Swiss to become the mercenaries of Europe. If you were the second son, you weren't going to inherit the farm and thus in a resource-poor country like Switzerland of the Middle Ages, your best choice was to go abroad and find some feudal lord putting together an army. Thus you became a "freelance" and hopefully found riches. I've always thought Machiavelli's dislike of mercenaries was poorly placed, as after all they were simply following the economic incentives.

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This is supposedly one of the ways the crescent got on the South Carolina state flag.

Under French heraldry, it indicates a third son (when they bothered to use cadency on their coats of arms). Since his chances of inheriting the family lands & fortune were low, many of them set out for Charleston to seek their fortune, following the southern branch of the Huguenots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_South_Carolina

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadency

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenots#North_America

Does this have anything to do with New Orleans as well?

You mean "The Crescent City"? That's to do with the shape of the river.

> Machiavelli's dislike of mercenaries was poorly placed, as after all they were simply following the economic incentives.

That is part of the reason he did not like them, their loyalty was bought and the "prince" who used them did not have any other leverage. It is difficult to win and then govern with mercenaries as the protectors of the kingdom. A long standing mercenary army does not convey legitimacy, and when disbanded there are issues of proper resettlement and worry about a rival acquiring their service.

I think Machiavelli's was worried that the mercs would take over. Which is effectively happened in India princes and kings hiring foreign mercs from France and Britain.

Another example is the Janissaries in turkey.

Machiavelli wasn't just "worried"; he'd seen it be attempted (sometimes successfully). Facino Cane, Vitellozzo Vitelli, and famously Francesco Sforza. (Often this would happen on the death of the previous hereditary ruler, or through taking independent control of territories conquered in an employer's name.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facino_Cane

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitellozzo_Vitelli

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_I_Sforza

Janissaries were slave-warriors rather than mercenaries, though.

true though they did later on wield massive power

Slave-warriors in the name only though. They were literally one of the most powerful classes in the entirety of the empire for many centuries, after the dynasty and the dirigents themselves.

Sure, but they were not mercenaries. They did not enroll, but were taken from their families in occupied lands as small children, raised and educated as warriors, and the only career option they had, and family they knew of is the army.

Certainly. I just wanted to clarify what "slave-warrior" meant in this context, because in itself the word makes me think of actual slaves living in misery and getting thrown onto enemies to keep them busy getting killed. Originally janissaries were taken forcefully, but the careers they made, many families bribed the collectors to pick their children, and later, muslims too forced the govenrment to make the concession of accepting their children into janissary "ocak"s. Not only, but janissaries started getting families (forbidden initially), and making their children janissaries too, and thus the corruption of the janissaries. Also, janissaries were not mere warriors. They took part in many activities and had many responsabilities in peace time. E.g. the firemen of Constantinople were janissaries. They were also the ruling elite in some remote parts of the empire.

BTW while "taken from their families" is correct, many kept ties with the families. The Sokollu dynasty of grand viziers who practically ruled the empire for decades were taken the same way, but the first of Sokollus, Mehmen Sokollu, was not only able to pass on his position to his relatives, he re-established the Serbian Orthodox Church and got his brother to become its patriarch. We can discuss the humanitarian aspects of this, but practically, these people are not slaves at all; in fact, thinking that these people were slaves is downplaying what a disaster actual slavery is.

I am living in Serbia and, although you are right about Mehtmet-Pasha Sokolovic (Sokollu), it was certainly not the norm. It is difficult to judge different times from the modern perspective, but the actual term that is used for the period of Serbian history from the 14th to 19th century is "Turkish enslavement". Whether it is worse to live as a Christian "raya" under Ottomans or a serf under Christian kings is maybe open to discussion, but no one here consider that time as a glorious time of the opportunity for Serbian/Christian culture here. Quite the opposite, it stagnated the whole Balkan region from one of the centers of European culture to the backwaters.

PS. There is a book by the Nobel laureate Ivo Andric about exactly the times of Sokollu, that HN readers might find interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_on_the_Drina

While I will not dispute the Empire did cause all its region to become stagnant and backwards in comparison to Renaissance and post-Renaissance Europe (because that's an indisputable fact), both you as a Serb and I as a Turk should be very careful and sceptic with regards to national historical narratives of our respective countries, because they are infested with lies and misrepresentations, like in all over what was Ottoman territory in Asia Minor and the Balkans. The shitshow that 19th century through WWI was in this region has produced the worst incarnations of nationalist states that have caused the bloodiest of massacres and the worst of baseless yet pertinent illusions. If I return to the actual topic, while I do agree that the Ottoman Empire was not a time of glory for the Eastern Christians, and that we all can be glad that it does not exist any longer, most of that time was way better than most national narratives represent it, including that of Turkey up until quite recently (now there's a wave of neo-Ottomanism here, based on anachronic and nationalistic illusions on what the empire was; before, the view of the Empire was not much different here that what you describe).

I think we agree more than we disagree.

My comment was mentioned to highlight that in many practical ways, the Christian population was practically enslaved to the Muslim overlords (regardless whether them being "real" Turks, or, more commonly, local converts, or even Janissaries). Much more than a Christian serfdom was a lightweight variation on slavery.

Christian population as a whole had very little to choose whether their children will be taken away and become Janssaries, at least until late times, and once taken away, those people had very little influence about their career choices. They were slaves in all practical ways the slavery means. For some exceptions, that slavery turned out to lead to high positions (like Sokollu) but, on the other hand, if the subject population retained their independence, talented people like Sokollu might have had opportunity to build up their local communities/states, instead of conquering the world for Ottoman sultans? :)

PS. I am personally an atheist, so I do not tend to look at the things here from the Christianity: right; Islam: wrong perspective.

We disagree at the definition of what slavery is. My definition of it is complete subordination to some masters, with no rights and in an inhumane situation (e.g. Afro-American slavery). Your definition seems to be that it is any sort of subjugation to some foreign powers. Even the fact that almost all businesses in the Empire were run by Christians prove, with my definition, that the situation was not that of enslavement, but instead that of imperial dominance. According to your definition, almost all imperial rule since Hittites necessarily include some sort of mass enslavement (which is not totally unagreable, but IMHO probably not a very useful way to assess history). I guess we can safely disagree there, as both definitions can be correct, depending on the viewpoint. Apart from that, we also agree on being atheists, as I can say I'm one too (I'm also of the opinion that "nation" is a useless and perilous abstaction, BTW, which means I'm not getting at this from a nationalistic PoW).

Serbian (and other smaller nations) in Austria-Hungary were under what you would call imperial dominance. In Ottoman Turkey, it was definitely much heavier. In many ways, local Christian population in Balkans was literally enslaved. That's one of the reasons that large part of Serbian population collectively fled en masse from old Serbia to then Austria-Hungary in 16th century, and left a literally empty countryside, which was later re-populated by Serbian and Albanian population from even poorer mountainous areas.

I mean, finding cases of African American slaves that lived and worked as cooks or home attendants, or nannies, or whatever easier jobs were available in the South, in addition to much harder cotton picking would not be an argument that those people were not enslaved. The fact that one does not literally carry chains the whole day does not mean that he is not a slave, if the owner can literally decide on the life and death, without much consequence.

If we talk about imperial dominance in Ottoman Balkans, I would accept that local Muslim population (largely converts) lived under imperial dominance. Christian peasants - much, much heavier.

Primogeniture was pretty common in the middle ages in Europe. I've read arguments that it's a big reason why the Normans basically went out conquering England, the Mediterranean, etc.

Primogeniture doesn't really set in until the High Middle Ages, and even then, there was still a fair amount of splitting inheritance up among sons (that's why the Holy Roman Empire consisted of so many small states: some of the duchies were given to splitting up to give to second and third sons).

The Norse themselves still tended to follow partitioning laws, at least until the Scandinavian kingdoms started to coalesce. The repeated invasions of England between Ethelred the Unready and the final conquest of William the Bastard were not driven by second sons needing kingdoms for themselves, it was driven by England having the best tax base in the North Sea but high political stability, as well as the dying out of family lines.

Key point about the latter: when Edward the Confessor died without issue, the claims to the English throne were:

* Edward's brother-in-law and most powerful vassal, Harold Godwinson (son of the person who put Edward on the throne in the first place)

* William, the bastard son of Edward's maternal cousin. Bolstered by "when he was staying over when he was young, he totally promised me the throne when he died."

* Harald Hardrada, whose claim is "Cnut was King of England. He died, so his claim passed to Harthacnut. Harthacnut and Magnus made an agreement that, should one die without issue, the other would inherit his lands. Harthacnut died without issue, so Magnus should have been King of England. Magnus died without issue, so his claim winds its way back to me, his father's half-brother by way of mother."

Eh. They could become merchants or craftspersons too. The options weren't starve to death or kill for money.

Different times, social customs and norms. Generally they would have been trained in combat and warfare and not as merchants or craftsmen, which at the time were considered lower in the class hierarchy then the 2nd son of a lord or knight.

In essence him being a crafts-person or merchant would have been looked down on by everyone.

It would have been unthinkable, in a lot of history, for a nobleman to become a merchant or a craftsman. Not just "people think you're weird," but like your family and friends would disown you and your potential customers would all think you're insane and you'd have no way to learn the job anyway because no commoner would dare take you as an apprentice. The modern Western world has no analog for how deep the noble/commoner divide was.

Third sons wouldn't starve to death in any case, but they would rattle around the family lands making a nuisance of themselves and borrowing money from Dad. Noble families got some income from their tenants' taxes, generally, but it wasn't always enough to maintain yourself in high style. In some times/places, noblemen could get involved in trade, but that would mean funding other people's endeavors, not becoming merchants themselves. And sometimes even that was restricted or frowned upon.

This sort of sounds like Brahmins in the 19th century?

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