No Royal Road: As Old Worlds End and New Ones Begin: Part 2 | Regrettable Century / Varn Vlog

Notes

evidence of [[capitalism]] starts in the Italian city states in the 1100s
[[Banaji]] believes that capital can even be found as early as Rome
after the collapse of Rome taxes were still collected in the same way
in Rome, the weakened metal base of the currency meant that it was unreliable outside of the empire
Roman society was big on manumission, and one tension the late empire faced was the fact that it wasn’t getting new slaves because it had stopped expanding
Roman slavery was not chattel slavery
Roman slaves ended up become tenants
Serfdom involves an agreement to a lord, that the subject must hand over some kind of extraction to the lord, and the lord in exchange offers protection
Peasants don’t have bonds, serfs do
Sheriffs initially were for tax collection purposes
Most of the time punishments were physical, imprisonment was pretty rare
European punishments were relatively rare in general
Absolutism and divine right of kings were ideas of modernity, not the feudal era