this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
221 points (100.0% liked)

chapotraphouse

13530 readers
1002 users here now

Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.

No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer

Gossip posts go in c/gossip. Don't post low-hanging fruit here after it gets removed from c/gossip

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Tamriel is not a capitalist country, but imo it seems pretty clear the province of Cyrodiil is a province wherein the capitalist mode of circulation prevails and enjoys the patronage of a continent-spanning empire to extract various luxury/exotic goods from periphery areas for profit.

In Morrowind, this was ofc very, very clear (East Empire Company, monopoly on Ebony, paper contracts, co-opting local rulers, etcetc its all very British empire).

In Oblivion we see the imperial core which is suitably saccharine on its surface but horrifying just below (e.g. the murderous countess of Leyawiin, the feeding of prisoners to vampires in Skingrad, Bravil's general horribleness, beggars everywhere, etc.)

In Skyrim we see a part of the Imperial core (but not the core-core) 200 years after the Empire suffered its greatest crisis, defacto collapsed and 'returned' with a tiny portion of its territory (notably missing: the sugar plantations of Elweyr, the Ebony mines of Morrowind and Hammerfel; the tropical trees of Black Marsh i.e. the areas from which the majority of wealth would have likely been extracted).

Also I'd note that client-kings was very much characteristic of early Roman expansion (although definitely not so much the periods of higher imperial power). Pseudo-feudalism isn't really descriptive of what we see in any of the TES games imo; Oblivion uses titles such as 'count', but so did/does capitalist Britain.