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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jul 14 2024, 11:00am
Post #26 of 34
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As I wrote earlier, my thoughts have been thrown up in the air by this conversation, and I am interested to see where the pieces have landed. 
Past me would heve nodded to the idea that it is the less admirable aspects of hobbit culture that lead to (or at least assist in) the collapse of an Arcadian paradise to a police state. But current me is unsatisfied, and wants to know exactly how that is a key factor . And I can't answer that.
For example: I see hobbits as being trusting of each other but suspicious and condecending of 'outsiders'. There does not seem to be any strong central authority. Only by implication is there a legislature or some way of enforcing things*.
But are those factors key to teh collapse? To examine that I thought let's flip hobbit culture and imagine that it is highly martial, with a warrior class and a king-like ruler with duties to defend the realm. YOu can further imagine that it has regular and friendly relations with other societies and cultures. That would make it like Rohan. Rohan also comes close to a collapse that is to do with Saruman's influence. The particulars are, of course, different. But I think it makes it perfectly reasonable to argue that having a standing Shire army might not stop Lotho (and/or Saruman). Someone could merely argue that to collapse teh Shire successfully Lotho (and/or Saruman) would have taken pains to gain control of the army; or to neutralise it in some other way. Ditto with any other institutions or structures that hobbits putatatively could have had to stabilise their way of life.
So perhaps it is a little more nuanced, and we should say rather that hobbit culture (all the positives and all the negatives together) does not prevent this particular collapse. I think in any case something that is a societal strength in one set of circumstances is a weakness or problem in another.
We don't seem to have anything explicit from Tolkien about exactly how and when Saruman became involved in Shire affairs. Subject to whatevever there might be in The Nether Appendices (LOTR Appendices G,H,I...)* I think we are left to make assumptions. Two obvious ones to me are:
- Lotho is an independent political entity. Until Saruman turns up to ruin the Shire by way of personal vendetta, Saruman's interactions with Lotho are limited to being a customer.
- Saruman is behind Lotho's "odd ideas" and assists or organises Lotho's rise and fall as part of a Sarumanic scheme.
Assumption (1) leads me to think of Lotho as the least of the Dark Lords. A characteer of whom one might say: "...frightful evil can and does arise from an apparently good root, the desire to benefit the world and others - speedily and according to the benefactor's own plans - is a recurrent motive." (Tolkien, Letters 1e. Letter 131). We do not know whether Lotho starts off with noble motives; or pretends to himself that he is doing so; or is corrupt from the outset. But (within Middle-earth as I understand it, at any rate) the means will corrupt the ends, and it will all lead to more and more domination of other wills. And that's always a suspect thing to do in Toliien.
Assumption (2) leads me to think of Lotho as 'a wormtongue' (a person who is a tool of Saruman). If we imagine that Lotho is Saruman's tool -- willingly, unwittingy, witllessly: take your pick -- then we can compare him with other wormtongues. There is the trope-namer Grima Wormtounge (capital-W) who we see in detail. Saruman has also inflamed the Dunlendings, at least according to Gamling (translating for us at Helm's Deep):
“‘I know that tongue. It is an ancient speech of men, and once was spoken in many western valleys of the Mark. Hark! They hate us, and they are glad; for our doom seems certain to them. “The king, the king!” they cry. “We will take their king. Death to the Forgoil! Death to the Strawheads! Death to the robbers of the North!” Such names they have for us. Not in half a thousand years have they forgotten their grievance that the lords of Gondor gave the Mark to Eorl the Young and made alliance with him. That old hatred Saruman has inflamed.”
We don't know whether Saruman has stirred that up in person, or whether 'Wormtongues may be found in other lands' applies to Dunland too. But I don't think that detail matters for what I want to argue, which is that Saruman uses varied means to corrupt societies. He chooses tools suitable for each task. And that would in turn suggest that it is no wonder that the Shire hobbits fail to prevent their collapse - it has been engineered precisely to work within their cultural customs, rules, prejudices and so on. Other wormtongues (or Saruman in person) go about things differently in other societies.
All that leads to a further thought -- which is still based on assumption (2) and so invalid if one chooses other assumptions. Gandalf says to Frodo:
“‘Hobbits really are amazing creatures, as I have said before. You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you at a pinch.”
In that case, where Saruman goes wrong is to study for a month, and neglect the hundred years. And so it is teh return of the hundred-year-surprise hobbits that at last allow counter-revolution to get going.
---
*In LOTR Tolkien explains:
“Otho would have been Bilbo’s heir, but for the adoption of Frodo. He read the will carefully and snorted. It was, unfortunately, very clear and correct (according to the legal customs of hobbits, which demand among other things seven signatures of witnesses in red ink).”
Now for me, this is just mild humour, and at the same time shows us something of hobbit culture. But I suppose by implication there must have been some mechanism by which these 'legal customs' arose: a law-making body, perhaps. And maybe there the implication is that there is also some mechanism - courts or whatnot - to dispute a will that is unclear or incorrect.
**The Nether Appendices (LOTR Appendices G,H,I... ) are unpublished to date, and their existence, contents and even whereabouts is contraversial. Some Say that Tolkien reacted to his ever-increasing fan mail by writing Appendix G, in which he attempted to answer all the questions fans had from reading the LOTR text as published. But this created to need for Appendix H (longer than G), which would answer all the new questions fans would demand answers to if they ever got hold of Appendix G. And so to Appendix I (the longest to date)...
Opinions differ as to whether Tolkien completed Appendix I, thus instantly creating the need for Appendix J (and so on). Some Say he realised his task was impossible, and others that he got all the way to Appendix Z -- after which "he would have to stop, wouldn't he?"
Around Oxford local legend has it that the Nether Appendices exist, were written out on vellum and are concealed within a secret vault in the Martyrs' Memorial. But attempts to verify this, or to retrieve the corpus, have so far failed. Some Say that an early attempt was met by a very old man sitting on the steps of the memorial who said "the way is shut". Understandably this rather freaked people out.
Since then, a Student Society at Oxford University believe they have worked out the ritual required to unlock the secret vault. Unfortunately to date they have been thwarted in doing so. The procedure may be shared with you here, provided it is described in invisible ink:
[Acessibility note for orum members who are using a text reader: this portion of the text is displayed in white, meaning that sighted forum members will probably not be able to see it unless they select it with their cursor]. The putative procedur involves drinking oneself nearly insensible at a nearby pub. This should be completed just before midnight. Then one staggers to the Memorial, strips to the waist, and daubs oneself with teh elf rune G on the chest and left bicep. (There is usualy a kebab van in the area able to offer tahini or chili sauce, should oen have forgotten to bring the necessary body paint. But therie is fierce contoversy over which is better.) Once suitably prepared, all that remains is to procees three times counter-clockwise around the Memorial, chanting Ave Vellum Corpus.
Then, Some Say, the vault will open. Or possibly only if the pilgrim is a True Fan Of Tolkien. Anyway, nobody has been able to complete this process, because the police tend to arrest pilgrims before the climax, citing public order offences. This reaction from the authorities is of course taken to be the ultimate proof that the procedure would work; that all this is true, and there is a conspiracy to stop us knowing all the things we particularly want to know because the knowledge would do us no good...
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Jul 14 2024, 11:13am)
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jul 14 2024, 11:10am
Post #27 of 34
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Tolkien's thoughts on government
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There is an interesting post on that by our sorely-missed TORNsib Brethil. It's in the context of discretions seemingly being the better part of the Valar. But the quote from Letters are relevant to thsi discussion, I think.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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Silvered-glass
Rohan
Jul 16 2024, 9:39am
Post #28 of 34
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Lotho and Economic Weaknesses in the Shire
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I think Lotho was an independent political entity. He became powerful because Saruman the Wise wasn't aware of the going market prices in the Shire and grossly overpaid for his premium-quality pipe-weed supply while thinking that he got a good deal. Saruman overpaid so grossly that the Sackville-Bagginses became so rich over the years that Lotho could have paid the full undiscounted market price for Bilbo's mithril shirt, but he decided to buy the Shire instead.
I've talked before about how the fact that the Shire being an isolated region that doesn't mint its own coinage would have led to deflation and low nominal prices due to the low amount of coins in the local circulation. This in turn would make the Shire vulnerable to major cash infusions from the outside potentially upsetting the entire economy. Lotho spending his foreign money created sudden inflation, which caused economic hardship and bankruptcies all over the Shire. The story doesn't really talk about it, but Frodo's decision to sell Bag End could have been inspired by the string of forced sales to the Sackville-Bagginses already in progress in the Shire.
So in the end I think the weakness that allowed for Lotho to take over and enforce his preferred policies wasn't in the hobbits themselves as much as in their economic system. Bilbo was wise to only take two small boxes from Smaug's massive hoard. Those were enough to make him mega-rich anyway with the then-current money prices.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jul 17 2024, 11:41am
Post #29 of 34
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I can certainly see how that exact chain of events could be behind the little we know about the descent of the Shire into authoritarianism.
And someone could come up with other ideas that differed in detail but shared a point about economics - that abrupt and vast injections of cash (or other wholesale economic change generally) might be very destabilising all by itself. Or at least such things have proved very disruptive to real-life societies.
I also still very much enjoy squire's thoughts from a previous discussion about the economics of The Scouring:
Saruman is said to have 'purchased' large quantities of produce from Lotho's holdings. Lotho's capital for acquiring his lands also came from Saruman. What on earth did the hobbits do with all the incoming specie (gold or silver) or, if Saruman used trade goods, the incoming craft products like tools, metalwares, or the like? My economic understanding is not great, but this seems like a recipe for either hyperinflation, or rapid forced industrialization. We do see signs of industrialization, in the symbolically enlarged Mill, but as the hobbits say, there's no more grist for the new mill than there was for the old. This wise comment highlights that a necessary agricultural revolution, with its vastly increased productivity in the fields, had not yet taken place.
All this suggests that the real-world model to look to is, not England's own development, but Europe's imperial control of other world regions. Saruman (as the industrial power) controls and exploits the rich farmlands of the Shire as if it were India or Africa. Plantation produce is paid for by dumping surplus industrial trade goods on the captive market of imperialized peasants, with the elite classes either coopted or imprisoned.
Although none of this is particularly sustainable as a serious economic thesis (the hobbits are entirely self-sufficient and prosperous and lack any sense of greed, and we've already gone over the impossibly short timeline!), I think the imperial analogy is a lot more powerful than the socialist one in terms of Tolkien's thinking. "How did Saruman pay for the agricultural goods he purchased from the Shire?" squire, 2016
I think one could see the economics of The Scouring as yet another example for Debt: The First 5,000 Years -- a book by anthropologist David Graeber (2011). The Wikipedia article on that books sums up the thesis (as I remember it ) fairly well:
A major argument of the book is that the imprecise, informal, community-building indebtedness of "human economies" is only replaced by mathematically precise, firmly enforced debts through the introduction of violence, usually state-sponsored violence in some form of military or police.
My subthread has been about choices and morality, rather than about economics and money. We've been discussing whether the hobbits in any way brought about their own collapse; or whether they were helpless victims of irresistable outside forces or or unforseeable outcomes. This economic reading seems to replace Saruman with 'economic logic'( or 'capitalism') as the outside forces -- at least intitially, until Saruman turns up to ruin the Shire as a vendetta.
I'm not sure where that leaves us as to who was morally culpable, if anyone.
Finally - I know these sorts of discussions can rile some forum members if they think we're somehow divining The True Meaning Of Tolkien. So for avoidance of doubt, I really don't think that Tolkien was writing economic or political allegory, or even that the make-believe country of the Shire was his "escape to the one place nor r-r-ruined by Capitalism".
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Jul 17 2024, 11:47am)
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Hamfast Gamgee
Tol Eressea
Jul 18 2024, 9:39am
Post #30 of 34
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We are not really told how money works in the north of middle -earth at the time. Pennies, silver and bronze and gold coins seem to be the general currancy everywhere regardless of the country. Which is the case in nearly all of the more civilizied parts of fantasy countries everywhere. When one considers the real world trouble which for example the UK had in adopting or not the euro, the unrealistic nature of this does not appear to bother anyone! Frodo did have a bag of coins on his journey which he thought would be accepted everywhere. And the value of them was more or less the same in the Shire or Bree. After all he didn't say in the Prancing Pony 'Dear me Buttebur knows how to charge doesn't he?' or, 'amazingly cheap in these parts isn't it Merry!'
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Jul 18 2024, 3:40pm
Post #31 of 34
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Money makes Middle-earth go around!
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We are not really told how money works in the north of middle -earth at the time. Pennies, silver and bronze and gold coins seem to be the general currancy everywhere regardless of the country. Which is the case in nearly all of the more civilizied parts of fantasy countries everywhere. When one considers the real world trouble which for example the UK had in adopting or not the euro, the unrealistic nature of this does not appear to bother anyone! Frodo did have a bag of coins on his journey which he thought would be accepted everywhere. And the value of them was more or less the same in the Shire or Bree. After all he didn't say in the Prancing Pony 'Dear me Buttebur knows how to charge doesn't he?' or, 'amazingly cheap in these parts isn't it Merry!'
Bree is nearly Shire-adjacent (if less so than Buckland!) so it probably shouldn't be surprising that Shire currency is accepted there at face value. Do we ever learn that Bilbo or Frodo (or any other hobbits) spent any money anywhere east of Bree-land? I can't recall any such instances. If Pippin had tried to purchase a meal and a pint in Minas Tirith then perhaps his coins would not have been accepted or he would have had to convert them to the local currency. We have no idea.
“Hell hath no fury like that of the uninvolved.” - Tony Isabella
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Jul 18 2024, 3:45pm)
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Felagund
Gondor
Jul 18 2024, 8:13pm
Post #32 of 34
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some cutting room floor thoughts of my own
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Brilliantly put!
In that case, where Saruman goes wrong is to study for a month, and neglect the hundred years. And so it is teh return of the hundred-year-surprise hobbits that at last allow counter-revolution to get going.
On the possibility of a Dunlending 'wormtongue', the only substantive reference we have to an individual Dunlending at that time is the "squint-eyed southerner", who Frodo and his companions encountered at the Prancing Pony. As per notes used to construct 'The Hunt for the Ring' (Unfinished Tales), he was:
one of Saruman's most trusted servants (yet a ruffianly fellow, an outlaw driven from Dunland, where many said he had Orc-blood)...
This individual was as much an outsider to his milieu as Gríma had made himself an insider within his. Setting him aside, with or without a local wormtongue, I reckon the Dunlendings were the equivalent of dry tinder, awaiting any half decent spark, to awkwardly paraphrase Gamling, to enflame them against those thieving Strawheads.
Regarding...
We don't seem to have anything explicit from Tolkien about exactly how and when Saruman became involved in Shire affairs.
... the aforementioned 'The Hunt for the Ring' is as close as we get to a venn diagram of how/why/when:
Saruman had long taken an interest in the Shire - because Gandalf did... and because (again in secret imitation of Gandalf) he had taken to the 'Halfling's leaf', and needed supplies... Latterly other motives were added. He liked to extend his power, especially into Gandalf's province, and he found that the money he could provide for the purchase of 'leaf' was giving him power, and was corrupting some of the Hobbits, especially the Bracegirdles and the Sackville-Bagginses. But he also had begun to feel certain that in some way the Shire was connected with the Ring in Gandalf's mind. Why this strong guard upon it? He therefore began to collect detailed information about the Shire, its chief persons and families, its roads, and other matters. For this he used Hobbits within the Shire, in the pay of the Bracegirdles and the Sackville-Bagginses, but his agents were Men, of Dunlendish origin.
Re-reading this passage, you could argue that, irrespective of whatever cultural or societal weaknesses the Shire may or may not have had, the amount of leverage and intel Saruman accumulated meant it probably didn't stand a chance anyway! Saruman doesn't need to march in with Uglúk and Mauhúr, screaming "hobbit flesh!". He's got the place well and truly sized up if not trussed up, before he even steps across the border. A couple of hundred thugs, a few key Quislings and just enough Mitläufer and the Shire was all his - minus those pesky Tooks and Brandybucks, of course!
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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Felagund
Gondor
Jul 18 2024, 8:15pm
Post #33 of 34
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More Nether Appendices please.
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Jul 18 2024, 10:01pm
Post #34 of 34
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He chooses tools suitable for each task. And that would in turn suggest that it is no wonder that the Shire hobbits fail to prevent their collapse - it has been engineered precisely to work within their cultural customs, rules, prejudices and so on. Other wormtongues (or Saruman in person) go about things differently in other societies.
Saruman was corrupted by his pride and by Sauron, who was in turn corrupted by Morgoth, who corrupted himself (or Iluvatar has a skeleton in his closet that only Morgoth's therapist knows about). I think you laid out a great case that any and all societies in M-earth were corruptible, and the smart corruptor went about using their strengths and weaknesses against them. Ex.: Hobbits are trusting: a strength, but part of the plot to count on them having their guard down as Lotho grew his power. Rohan was corrupted via Wormtongue, and Gondor was corrupted (at the top) by Denethor's pride and the palantir linked to Sauron.
I think the fact that Galadriel could be tempted by the Ring in the heart of her realm and after thousands of years of acquired wisdom shows that everyone was corruptible. We don't see Elrond facing any challenge, but I can't think he was immune. Gandalf knew he would be corrupted by the Ring. The list goes on.
I have the sense that Tolkien wanted every good society in M-earth to be challenged/corrupted in the War of the Ring because he felt they were all going to be put to the test whether they liked it or not, whether they sought out power or not, so I think "fate" (Tokien) doomed the Shire to fall at least briefly under a dark regime. The rest of the story, which I believe is crucial, is how they fought back against corruption and resurrected the virtues of their society.
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