Last year I posted an article about Joe Abercrombie’s epic fantasy novel The Trouble With Peace and how it dramatized the conflicts that made our world. The book is out in paperback tomorrow and I would highly recommend reading it.

The novel is set in a kingdom that is on the cusp of an industrial revolution. The power of Kings and nobles is being challenged by both a rising class of merchants and industrialists and an emerging industrial working class, who are unhappy about the conditions they live in.

You can hear a brief clip from the audiobook read by Steven Pacey below:

This extract focuses on King Orso, newly crowned king of The Union, who has the unenviable task of leading his country through this time of transition and upheaval. Listening to this clip of the audiobook made me think about this section from my previous article, in which I explored how The Trouble of Peace highlights the arguments made by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson’s in their seminal work on economic development Why Nations Fail.

The Union and English history

In the United Kingdom (where I am writing from) the origins of the inclusive institutions that led to the industrial revolution can be traced to the political changes brought about by the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of the 17th century. In Abercrombie’s novel, The Union is at a similar turning point.

Like England at the time of the Glorious Revolution, The Union is a monarchy but power ultimately rests with a group of people and is not solely invested in an absolute monarch. The Union is governed by the Closed Council, a group of senior noblemen around the king who hold offices of state. This transition from absolute monarchy to group rule is the beginning of the process of creating inclusive institutions.

Acemoglu and Robinson identify two aspects of a society that is needed for inclusive institutions. They are “centralised government” and “pluralism”. Both of these began in England at the beginning of the Early Modern period, when King Henry VII disarmed the rebellious nobleman and created a bureaucracy around the king.

This centralised power allowed for a government to be created. It also created pluralism because with the loss of their arms the barons lost their military power and thus they had to attain power and influence through non-military means. This led to them pushing for more powers for parliament.

Hobbesian Sovereigns

Recently I have been reading about Thomas Hobbes and how he thought of The Sovereign. King Orso is not a Hobbesian Sovereign has he doesn’t have the total power to make decision about his subjects as Hobbesian Sovereigns do. He has to balance the demands of the members of his Closed Council and those of the newly rising powers in The Union.

What I hadn’t appreciated about The Trouble With Peace when I first read it was that it’s not only about the economic changes that Acemoglu and Robinson identify in Why Nations Fail, but it’s also about the political changes that occurred that moved us away from a Hobbesian conception of the Sovereign to something more like the small-l liberal democracy we have today.

King Orso has to bear in mind some (but not all of his subject’s wishes) when he makes decisions for the Union. This is a step on the path towards a nation where The Sovereign is a body not an absolute ruler and is responsive (to a degree) to the wishes of all its subjects.

More on Hobbes soon

I will have more thoughts on Hobbes in a new blog post coming shortly. For now, I will say that if you’re interested in economic and political history and enjoy reading fantasy novels then I can recommend The Trouble With Peace. There’s a lot to dig into with this book.