Founding a new village.

[Darmalus]

Lets say that a kingdom has acquired a large area of uninhabited, lightly forested land and wants to fill it with nice productive villages. You are a steel-working but still pre-gun society.

How does one motivate the peasantry to move in and do the hard work of chopping trees, clearing fields, building buildings, digging mines, and all those other productive tasks you want them to do?

When you motivate them, how do they go about doing this? Would it be like wagon trains in the US westward expansion? Something else?

How would this change if there were real, if infrequent, monsters in the lands? Monsters as dangerous as, say, an enraged killer elephant.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Define 'kingdom.' Is this a glorified tribal society with a leader who calls himself king? A feudal realm with more sophisticated concepts of land rights, allodialism, etc? Or a defined nation-state with a legally codified monarch? All three can be 'kingdoms,' but have different relationships with land ownership and how the common peasantry inhabits it.

In our tribal kingdom, most of the peasantry probably personally know or are directly familiar with the king, and regardless of any one person's feelings about said king, still probably enjoy a sense of representation and communal interest in the king's interests, and vice versa ("the king is our chief, and he leads our people"). The king can say to his people that the lands in question should be settled, and may be personally involved in setting up or even going on an expedition to assess them as a suitable colony or migratory location for his people. Many of the kingdom's warriors will be his personal retainers in some capacity, so an armed expedition will probably involve the king pretty directly.

In the feudal kingdom, it gets more political. When you say "the kingdom has acquired a large area," ... who has acquired the area, exactly? The king himself? Or one of his vassals? The kingdom doesn't own land per se, rather, individual lords own land; a kingdom is then defined by whoever the politically strongest lord is (the king, by virtue of getting the other lords to swear fealty to him). So the ownership of the land in question becomes a serious political issue within the kingdom, because land generally equates to power. This can be the source of all sorts of drivers for the question of how the land is colonized: Rival lords (or the king himself) may try to rush some of their own serfs into the land in question in order to legitimize a claim over it. Perhaps favorable taxation or military protection is offered as an incentive for the commoners to move to the area, or perhaps more tyrannical methods of military persuasion (though such a lord would probably be unwise to be so brutal with his own serfs).

In a stronger monarchy, the kingdom itself probably owns all allodial land, held by the king himself and then doled out through semi-hereditary titles (which may very well revert to the king under certain circumstances). The exact relationship between the king, the nobility, and any bureaucracy which may be present might be important to figure out, as it may have an effect on how the land is treated. Assuming the king is sufficiently strong politically and/or legally, however, he could probably issue a decree to colonize the new land. As above, favorable taxation and other incentives could be offered - perhaps even the promise of a minor social promotion to some of the colonists, by elevating key individuals into the gentry or even minor nobility. The king might also delegate the problem to a subordinate member of the nobility. "Duke Whatsyourface, His Royal Highness Derpwad II has decreed that you are to take responsibility for these lands and see to their proper settlement and development in the name of the Kingdom."

Regardless of the socio-political structure, the moving and settling of the peasantry will likely be pretty similar, although the more sophisticated monarchy might have the more robust infrastructure of a full nation-state and thus official state-funded involvement in transportation or military escort. Finding suitable peasants might be difficult, as feudal populations are relatively stationary and bound to the land they live on, and the tribal population probably isn't very large and not easily split to sustain a colony without migrating wholesale. The national monarchy is the only one of the three likely to be able to easily transplant settlers. In any case, they would probably come from a poor area depleted of natural resources and promised a better life in the new lands.

The military itself is another possibility to consider. How does this kingdom's military operate? If it has some sort of standing army (unlikely in a feudal environment, but it's worth asking), land for farming or settling may be a form of payment for military service. In which case the land find is a boon - you can only pay soldiers with new land for so long before running out of land!

[Simon_Jester]

In broad outline:

Lets say that a kingdom has acquired a large area of uninhabited, lightly forested land and wants to fill it with nice productive villages. You are a steel-working but still pre-gun society.

How does one motivate the peasantry to move in and do the hard work of chopping trees, clearing fields, building buildings, digging mines, and all those other productive tasks you want them to do?

Take peasants who do not own land- who are not, in other words, freeholders. This can include those too young to inherit (in other words, the 'over' part of 'overpopulation'). Or those who have been driven off their land by events elsewhere in the kingdom. Or those who lost their land due to debts or other factors.

Move them. Tell them that if they improve this land they will be freeholders on it.

When you motivate them, how do they go about doing this? Would it be like wagon trains in the US westward expansion? Something else?

Pretty much- if you're trying to settle in a complete wilderness, something like a wagon train is necessary.

How would this change if there were real, if infrequent, monsters in the lands? Monsters as dangerous as, say, an enraged killer elephant.

Organize a militia to defend settlements and hunt the monsters. Pay bounties on the monsters- big ones. Encourage people to find these monsters' lairs and poison them or kill them by other means that don't involve challenging a berserk elephant to a wrestling match.

[madd0ct0r]

In Vietnam, the south was settled when two families ousted the old royal family, with the weaker of the two requesting to be sent to claim that land to avoid a second civil war.

The mother country had serious famines and plauges for that centuray, so migrants were common, as were exiled noble familes from other countries such as china.

Peasant migration was less Wild West nuclear families and more entire villages (extended clans) moving en-masse together. My wife's family can trace their ancestry back a thousand years or so to the guy who 'founded' a village in such a fashion. Given a culture of ancestor worship, it quite literally could be your ticket to immortality.

Monsters the size of an elephant are still less dangerous then other people.

[Zixinus]

How does one motivate the peasantry to move in and do the hard work of chopping trees, clearing fields, building buildings, digging mines, and all those other productive tasks you want them to do?

Simple: promise them they own whatever land they gain and have to pay only a relatively light, direct tax. If necessary, provide support in the form of supplies, resources and perhaps things like transport (ships going over sea), necessary experts (carpenters, miners, healers, botanists, etc.) or even fighters to keep the settlers safe. Then you just have to wait until the settlers build themselves a community. If a colony can form there, it will eventually. If it can't, you have lost as much resources as you supplied.

The tricky part will be keeping the settlers loyal to you, especially a few generations in. Brother-Captain Gaius provides a good overview how that might work.

Motivating peasants to go and try colonize new land is actually fairly easy. Medieval society was actually pretty crammed and every resource regulated, even "wild" areas like forests. There were plenty of people that could not fit in the margins and were desperate to find something, somewhere to find resources of their own. This is especially true if you have overpopulation. In a pre-industrial society, the most valuable resource was arable land. Everyone was eager to get it and it was not hard to find people who were willing to work it if they had the tools.

For an agricultural-based society, as long as they have the right tools and resources, converting wild areas to farmland is a self-growing process, especially if they have access to trade. They can take the wood, leather and other such resources and trade it for livestock and seeds that they can turn to food. If you have a reliable source of food and possibly some trade good, than economy will make it grow.

How would this change if there were real, if infrequent, monsters in the lands? Monsters as dangerous as, say, an enraged killer elephant.

It would depend entirely on how manageable the monster attacks are and how detrimental they are to a fledgling colony and how hostile they are. As well as how much they can do against them (say, scare them off or otherwise convince them to leave settled areas alone) or how much resources are needed to kill an attacking monster. If all it takes is a brave man with good aim and a spear, they will just be an occasional problem. If you need over fifty well-organized men, all armed to the teeth with steel weapons, armor, specialized equipment, etc, you are looking forward to a very slow expansion. If it takes someone with rare magical skills that can reliably take care of them, you may be looking at members of future leaders or nobility.

A monster attack that may not kill many people but habitually destroy crops is a devastating blow. If the monsters are not interested in the crops, only the people and can be stopped by walls, then it is manageable.

If a dead monster has valuable resources like excellent skin, plenty of edible meat and (in case of something like an elephant) good bones, than you'll have hunting parties living off it and making trade goods. Put out a bounty for killing them and if it is possible for hunter teams to specialize against them effectively, you may be looking at exterminating the species entirely by accident.

[Elheru Aran]

Medieval tech is entirely capable of building walls firm enough to hold off even large wildlife. Perhaps not quickly, but capable enough.

People are easily motivated by greed. Tell them they can have x amount of land for minimal costs, and if their life is based upon the use of land, then they'll be happy to go there and do what you want them to as long as they derive a return greater than they were previously. The details are not terribly important. Sometimes it even suffices simply to indicate that they are free to go there, and fill them in on the details once they get there.

[Simon_Jester]

Walling off the village isn't hard; walling off the fields is more labor-intensive. This is actually a problem with real animals like elephants in Africa, which are big and strong enough that conventional fences won't stop them if they want to break into your field and trample your crops.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, that would be the hard part. You could perhaps have a situation where your farm-hands are also trained to fight these large animals, and during the week they sleep in a small fortification (a tower? small keep that also functions as crop storage?) in the fields; on the weekends they get a relief and go home, or it's a week on/week off kind of thing. If the animals start eating their crops, they can muster immediately rather than having to ride/run out from the walled village.

[Lord Revan]

how many large herbavore mythic beasts are there anyway? Only one I can remember of hand is the Unicorn and those are "only" horse sized and very timid and easily spooked.

[The Romulan Republic]

Something that might perhaps be an option: scatter caltrops around the edges of your fields.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caltrop

www.historynet.com/weaponry-the-caltrop.htm

With a few gaps to let workers and domesticated animals in and out, of course.

Edit: I added another link since the first one didn't work.

[Darmalus]

I want to thank everyone for their input, it's been very helpful and inspired a few ideas.

The monsters are a variety, with ogres and trolls (both omnivorous with a preference for meat) being the biggest concerns. The land was once monster-infested wilderness until being purged, but the colonists are wary of any that managed to survive. I imagine that there could be all sorts of strange/monstrous herbivorous around and having a population explosion now that the orcs and dragons that ate them have been exterminated.

It's a strong kingdom (monarch, nobility and bureaucracy) so having organized expeditions of mixed landless/desperate/adventurous peasants and retired soldiers works for the setting, possibly going farther than is safe to seek out the best land rather than the nearest acceptable land.

The discussion about walls reminded me how much old stonework would get recycled, so having the villagers quarry old orc buildings and temples would be both logical and potentially stir up angry spirits.

[Irbis]

Lets say that a kingdom has acquired a large area of uninhabited, lightly forested land and wants to fill it with nice productive villages. You are a steel-working but still pre-gun society.

How does one motivate the peasantry to move in and do the hard work of chopping trees, clearing fields, building buildings, digging mines, and all those other productive tasks you want them to do?

When you motivate them, how do they go about doing this? Would it be like wagon trains in the US westward expansion? Something else?

How would this change if there were real, if infrequent, monsters in the lands? Monsters as dangerous as, say, an enraged killer elephant.

If you want to see how it was done in real life - google colonisation on Ius Teutonicum (German law). You give settlers package of rights, plus 10-25 years of tax freedom and land, in return they promise to develop it and cannot leave unless they pay damages. Woods? You have to make houses and other buildings out of something. See for example this book, page 12:

https://books.google.pl/books?id=NpMxTv ... frontcover

These lands actually had big, dangerous animals, aurochs and wisents, but hunting them was legal only for nobles who actually did that quite often to complement their diet and maintain fighting skills.

[Thanas]

Something that might perhaps be an option: scatter caltrops around the edges of your fields.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caltrop

http://www.historynet.com/weaponry-the-caltrop.htm

With a few gaps to let workers and domesticated animals in and out, of course.

Edit: I added another link since the first one didn't work.

Certainly not, metal costs a lot and you don't think about the scale of fields necessary here. If they can afford to scatter caltrops on that scale, they'd be very rich nobles and merchants, not farmers.

[Zixinus]

Couldn't they be made out of wood and bone?

[Thanas]

Couldn't they be made out of wood and bone?

His site specifically talks about metal caltrops, and bone/wood caltrops can pretty much snap under decent force applied to them anyway.

[madd0ct0r]

There are naturally occurring. Caltrop thorns, but then you may as well plant hedges, just as farmers did in real life

[Thanas]

There are naturally occurring. Caltrop thorns, but then you may as well plant hedges, just as farmers did in real life

And none of them ever stopped an invading army of monsters.

[madd0ct0r]

in real life? eh?

[Purple]

in real life? eh?

When your life depends on farming a herd of wild cows or elephants are monsters.

[Thanas]

in real life? eh?

There should be () around "of monster".

[Irbis]

in real life? eh?

In real life you had, for example, the much recently lamented Crimean Tatars that were terrible plague in southeast Poland and Ukraine, organizing two major (and several dozen smaller) cavalry raids per year that burned everything, crops, buildings, everything, slaughtering any farm animals or humans too weak to walk, driving everyone else into slavery.

That was actually far bigger threat than in OP, but real life defenses against that were pretty much strongpoint based - reinforced bunkers in fields, palisaded villages, thick walled churches. Everyone was forbidden by law to go unarmed anywhere - either with bow or gun*, a ranged weapon that could held assailants at bay until one can get into cover or warn others. Even in forested areas no one bothered with fencing or hedging fields, it would be far too much work for anything effective and besides, big animals (even horse sized) are good in either forcing passage or going around the blockade.

*and a lot of guns at that, one simple confiscation intended to stave off peasant rebellion gathered 60.000 long guns. That, for reference, was more than most states could even field in XVII century, save for a handful of biggest powers.

[Zixinus]

I actually thought about this and if the monsters are big and have big feet, you may discourage them by simply creating a rows of stakes in the ground. When a monster steps on one they'll get sprinters in their foot by their own weight. It would require nothing but wood and perhaps some sort of visual warning. It may not be enough to stop them but it may be enough to discourage them from going towards certain areas.

[madd0ct0r]

I was actually thinking along those lines - thornbush corralls or bomas that livestock could be watched over at night in. So you'd have the central castle, the castle grounds, and fortified churches with cattle areas further out.

something like the examples halfway down the page here: http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php? ... #msg248234

[Zixinus]

Just a note to add: the stakes locations would have to be dug up and the stakes should have a base that is x-shaped with the stake at the centre. Then dig them in. This way when stepped on the stakes will far less likely sink. I am sure that it would be possible to do this with nothing but raw wood (maybe even with something like bamboo if available) and you can create it by creating holes in the stake that you push the support sticks trough or join them.
There should be non-stake standing sticks occasionally to warn humans and perhaps animals of the stakes.

I imagine that it would be massive work and that it would be more around non-walled areas rather than fields. Storehouses, toolsheds, etc that could not be around the wall.

[Sea Skimmer]

An abattis is the only practical large area defense, Russia built lines of them hundreds of miles long during its expansionary phases. Someone can hack through one given time, but any defense will be breached given time. Main limitation is you need decently big trees to fell to make it, but that shouldn't be a problem in recently settled land the way it would be after protracted human inhabitation deforests everything. The Russian lines filled in gaps in the forest with rather extensive earthworks though, generally putting in heavy rough cut logs into a mound of earth and piling wood debris behind it. In the most important areas they'd build proper palliside fences, which are more resistant to storm and infiltration , but actually harder to fully demolish and breach then a big abattis. Even modern bulldozers have serious problems with a big enough abbattis in a dense enough forest.