Man of the Wold is right.
However I’ll make some notes.
- Purchase did not historically suffice to bring about types like Frodo and Bilbo. Such lifestyle and security as theirs (and that of some of their peers) requires not so much a monetary wealth, but steady income. Land and tradegoods were source of that in the earlier times but both require work to produce sustenance, even if Frodo and Bilbo had been slavemasters, they would have had to work supervising their cotton fields. Their lifestyle of ”idle class” requires advanced banking of 1600’s at least when it became a possibility to inherit a ”living interrest.” Earlier generations of Bagginses have created a nest egg that gives Bilbo and Frodo the option of becomning self made academics, gentleman poets and loremasters.
- Clocks – Mechanical clocks & locks were not invented till WAY latter era then middle ages, matches evident in the hobbit I’d estimate were invented around 1800’s. They had been invented in middle earth nevertheless. Dwarves have the requirement skills of metallurgy/chemistry and they do trade, those mines are not self sufficient. After all were clocks invented in middle earth before they were in ours or was it rather that muskets were invented after they were in ours? Eh? Different world.
- Coffee? Shire has temperate environment so coffee cannot grow there. Middle earth has less ragged coastline then middle ages Europe.Therefore structure of land trade would be more advanced and that of seatrade less. Trade is not discussed in the epic as it is everyday business. It is not as interresting or romantic for hobbit historians as it was for those of middle ages europe, percisely because it is more routine and structured and caravans of adventurous traders do not travel thousands of kilometers with news and tales. Hobbits might well have sold leaf, textiles & foodstuffs to Bree and bought other things from there. Maybe only Bucklanders (right translation I hope) who were considered strange traded with Bree and other hobbits with bucklanders. All of this routine trade happens in small hops of few dozen miles. Breemen get coffee by buying it from southern neighbours who buy it from southern neighbours who buy... It would have courced by several dozens of hands each time increasing in value just a bit before reaching shire. Bilbo must have felt pride in being able to offer the dwarwes coffee though he himself preferred one of the many local variations of (herbal?) tea. Maybe someone in Harad would have felt the same pride in being able to seat ones guests on hobbitmade nettle-textile mats... without even knowing what kind of creatures made them, only that they were from the far north and were wonderfully soft. After all there were no inns like prancing pony in the middle age society either. Travellers were rare occurance and they came from afar. In middle earth they are daily occurance and come from the closeby village.
- Bilbos silken clothes – imports from China? Potatoes from America? No. Silk could have, and nowadays is manufactured in Europe, the limiting factor is not the climate in China, but the spread of silkenworm. In ME there are no places called China or Europe or America. Silk cloth was manufactured by hobbits or men from silk harvested from silkenworms native to Eriador of middle earth. Same goes to potatoes.
- Stirrups and scale mail? What comes to the low point of tech in ME, several types of armor historically made obsolite by plate mail (400-700? AD) ar used. Warchariot is used and Lance is not. This implies that stirrups have not been invented and also explains why battles are usually fought afoot exept for some masterfull horse-people like rohirrim and easterlings, who use swords and spears for charges and mounted archery for skirmishes. All of this would date the military tech of ME to level corresponding our date definately preceeding 700AD.
All things like this lead to simple conclusions. By inclusion of things like clocks Tolkien wishes to emphasise that this world is not that of ours of any period. Middle earth is basically what our world could have been if wars only had occurred once in few hundreds of years or so and the great expeditions and industrial revolution not at all. It has thousands of years of history and devlopment along theese lines and trade, botany, agriculture, artisanly crafts, social organisations etc are highly developed. It cannot be compared to our world where socially developed artisan society is contradiction in terms. Our world pretty much transcended from self sustained life in homemade clothes directly to industrial eras mail catalogue shirts. The shire is pretty much anachronistic utopia.
Janne Harju
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