Jim,

Your comments were so very American (North American). Many have conjectured
the kinds of ideas might not have even developed, let alone come to exclude
the older ideas, without the American model (esp. the American Revolution
and again after 1945). The discovery of a hemisphere with no meaningful
occupation (at least from the POV of the Europeans) meant that a society
could be built anew. This has resulted in a world view among Americans (and
to an extent all neo-European societies) of superiority. In the United
States such ideas were so well defined as to have a succession of names: A
City on a Hill, Manifest Destiny, &c. But similar ideas were expressed from
the Yukon to the Tierra del Fuego.

Much of this is a consequence of the vast quantities of free resources
available to anyone who might take it. If men believe there is no limit to
the wealth they can obtain they are more likely to attempt to increase it,
rather than share it. This is true for the New World's attitudes towards
science, religion, taxation, progress, socialism, and economics.

It is in America that concepts like "liberty" shifted from their traditional
meanings (privilege) to its modern meaning (freedom).

If I might do some finger wagging of my own, let me point out that your
interpretation is thoroughly presentist, beliving that history must
inexorably move in the direction of what is now. Since we live in a more
scientific age the trend must be more science. Actually the basic era which
is the heart of BR, the Renaissance is less scientific than the late middle
ages. Scientists like Galilio were not persecuted in the middle ages.

Further even if one believes that a scientific world must follow in Cerilia,
it is hundreds of years away. Why impose that worldview on Cerilia now?
Why rouse Cerlilians from their (to quote Kant) self-indused slumber?

If you want to talk about what Cerilia might look like in the equivilent of
our 18th century with the Enlightenment and the resumption of the scientific
advance, I am perfectly pleased to do so. The 18th century is my field of
study. But it is in part because of that that I resist making BR into the
18th century in my own campaign. I can tell the difference, and I consider
it vast. They may both have aristocracies, but they are vastly different
worlds, hardly static.

Begining in the 12th century, with the first commercial revolution, Whiggish
historians have been pointing to a percieved death of the aristocracy, and
yet they are very much alive and well in the 18th century. Why? Because
they were not, as the Whigs suggested, static and tied to yesterday. Rather
they were often the leaders to tomorrow. Even in the 19th century, when in
truth nobility was eclipsed by the middle class, aristocracy was vigorous
and active. Since then we have invented celebrity to fulfil the remaining
functions of aristocracy.

Therefore, my comments on BR will assume a period view of things (late
medieval/ Renaissance) and will not anticipate later eras, even my own dear
18th century. Science (that pesky 19th century word) IMC will be equivelent
to esoteric investigations into the arcane aspects of nature. Further I
assume that Cerilia has its own historical trajectory, and need not immitate
our own. Indeed the very laws of physics might be fundamentally different.
I, for one, would be ferfectly happy running my campaign on the plogisten
theory, and banning the idea of cumbustion. Metal does not conduct
electricity in my campaign. Needless to say, there will be no New World
IMC either. The world was concieved as unchanging (or at best decaying)
until the 18th century (and even then decay was a dominant theme, and it
remains so if you follow American politics at all). So it is in my
campaign.

Kenneth Gauck
c558382@earthlink.net