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this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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chapotraphouse
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You can extract resources without being capitalist. Unlike the historical Chinese dynasties, the imperial core territory is not self sufficient, they are entirely reliant on resources and manpower from the provinces to maintain control over their holdings.
yeah like the Romans. but Oblivion, Skyrim, and Daggerfall offer basically no evidence for that besides an aesthetic affinity between the Empire and Romans. Morrowind has more of that character and a nativist resistance streak, but the Empire can't even implement the ban on slavery there, so it's clearly tenuous.
after however many thousands of years of Lore there is for Tamriel, "core territory" surely expands. the "core" of the Huang He was good agricultural land in very remote times, but lacked mineral resources. once the agricultural produce of the valley state(s) grew enough to enforce influence over more expansive territory and bring those into the fold. after a really long time, huge swathes of land beyond the chief rivers of China are 'core' and we call them self-sufficient.
even if Cyrodiil itself is insufficient (which i kind of doubt on paper, cause they had to give them farms and mines, rivers and hills for gameplay variety) the whole continent is the integrated economic system we're talking about, and this is acknowledged even by the rebels in Skyrim with their "Talos made the empire" type shit. it's also supported with the games calling all the disparate 'countries' of Tamriel "provinces", the common language being spoken between the whole continent, and the long history of unification.
I'd argue this is intentional; the Septim Empire consciously mimics the Reman empire's aesthetics to bolster its legitimacy.
I wanna point out that Tamriel the continent has existed for thousands of years, but the Septim Empire of a United Tamriel lasted only around 400 years, and during a large part of that was consumed with internal conflicts, outright civil wars and failed Akaviri adventures.
Before the Septim empire, there was a thousand year interregnum of warlords under a nominal akaviri potentate. Before that, there was a Reman empire for a few hundred years which nominally controlled the entire continent except for morrowind, but the extent of its control on the Summerset Isles was getting tribute.
I also think that the imperial core of the Septim and Reman empires is likely not just cyrodiil, but likely extends to High Rock and Skyrim (empire of (tamrielic) man after all). It should also be noted that not the entirety of Cyrodiil, High Rock or Skyrim benefits from being "imperial core" to equal extents (c.f. beggars) or at all (e.g. goblins, reachfolk, orcs). In historical imperial cores, the benefits of imperialism trickle down, so to speak, to the imperial core's relative poor rather than being spread to the imperialised so i would assume this to be the case here
400 years of Septim, 400 years of Reman-everything-but-morrowind is a really long time, and clearly stuck ideologically in the between period being called "interregnum" with the warring states attempting to recreate that same system. Morrowind being the latest Septim-addition, and being subject to EEC exploitation is a bit more like a core-periphery relationship, but we don't actually know the extent to which Septims or Remans actually exerted control over other provinces "just tribute"--->"slave sugar plantations"
the clumsy thing about doing world-systems analysis to Tamriel is that the exploitative core irl had new frontiers for a capitalistic expansion, but Tamriel doesn't have new anything new for many centuries besides Akavir which they don't successfully exploit. so people itt are postulating some sort of medieval neoliberal turnabout where a core territory of the Empire (Skyrim) is a peripheral subject. much simpler to just think of it as medieval China or Holy Roman Empire
The in between period is called the 'interregnum' because the Akaviri Potentate originally positioned itself as a temporary regency pending the discovery of a new dragonborn emperor, and because Tiber Septim leaned on the Reman empire for legitimacy, not because each warlord saw themselves as trying to become emperor.
The various warring states were not attempting to recreate the Reman empire; in general they were just returning to the status quo before Reman united most of the continent against the Akaviri invaders (who then swore fealty to him). When I wrote 'nominal' control I meant:
Reman troops on the coast of black marsh with most of the coastal argonians swearing some form of fealty on pain of having their hist trees burnt to the ground
Alinor officially being subservient, but even Reman diplomats not allowed outside the diplomatic district of the capital
Half or more of high rock, hammerfell and skyrim being de-facto independent (reachfolk, orcs, alikr)
An unknown portion of the jungles of cyrodiil filled by ayleids still
The Septims and Remans are entirely seperate entities with entirely separate organizational structures (as far as we know anyways; we have mostly just myth/song/legend for the Reman period).
Setting aside Reman empire bc there's a distinct lack of information on it, we have indication in Morrowind of the empire's relationship to the province it has the least official control over. So imo at least this tells us that the provinces outright conquered and forcefully integrated would have even more unequal trade relationships (and e.g. in Argonian account we hear of slavery in Black Marsh, of Argonians, by imperial immigrant-landlords).
I wanna re-iterate my position that Skyrim is part of the Septim/Mede Imperial Core; i have no interest in arguing about what others in the thread are arguing.
"Tamriel" is a continent. The Empire is based in the human core of Cyrodiil, 1/2 of High Rock and Skyrim. The Imperial Core of the Human Empire has tons of New Frontiers to expand into; Black Marsh, Morrowind (Temple preserve of Vvardenfel newly open for business and settlement in Morrowind), Valenwood, the Orc controlled territories of High Rock (eventually taken over through co-optation), the goblin controlled territories of Cyrodiil, any area considered 'wild' and therefore being "unproductive" (given time, this would likely see the empire drawn into conflict with the Bosmer bc green pact, but thats part of why the Septim empire pushes the cult of the 8 and 1 so much).
And you mention the HRE, but it should be noted there was a whole frontier (both for the feudal lords and for the bishops) to the East of it for the entirety of its existence. There was continual economic pressure put on them, German merchants (and bishops) and outright settlers throughout Hungary, Poland, the Baltic. When the HRE was created, like half of Germany wasn't even German or Christian and that would change within 300 years.