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<h3>287 — Cuzei’s Golden Age</h3>
<h4>In Eretald</h4>
The market is such a basic part of our world that we often think that it’s natural, and forget that it is an invention. The first <b>market economy</b> on Almea developed in <b>Cuzei</b>.
<p>Till now Cuzei, like every other state at this period, had little place for individual initiative. Most people grew their own food and made their own clothes and tools. (In Cuzei the cultivation of grain was collective.) Any larger project was undertaken by the government. What craftsmen existed worked for the nobles or priests.
<p>In the first century some of the larger Houses (<i>aurē</i>), and some of the growing cities, moved first to an abstraction of the feudal duties, and then to a true cash-based economy. Credit-based might be more accurate, as transactions were recorded not by the exchange of money but by recording units of work in the House’s books. In the cities there was a tendency to use mediums of exchange— pigs, chickens, silver, spices, and wine were early choices. Within a century or two, almost every village had its market, specialized craftsmen multiplied, and the cities boomed.
<p>Likewise, trade had traditionally been handled at the governmental level: when a deal could be worked out, one chief bartered goods with another; if not, the goods could be acquired by war, or by colonization. The first individual traders also came from Cuzei. As among the ancient Greeks, earning one’s living this way— aiming for a profit instead of an even exchange— was considered base and immoral. Cuzei never quite came to admire traders, but trading accounted for an ever-larger proportion of its economy. (The practice was also taken up by the Caďinorians and, more enthusiastically, by the Monkhayu.)
<p>Cuzei absorbed the other “High Cuzeian” state of Sūās in 104, which is generally taken to be the start of its <b>Golden Age</b>.<font size=1><sup></sup></font><font size=1><sup></sup></font>Suās is remembered today in the name of the Nansuael swamp, a partial translation of <i>guiscue lacatosuuele</i>, North Suuās Swamp.</sup></font></sup></font> All round its borders Cuzei could ponder a world which revolved around itself. The Nimoicū and Lovitrui, whom they called Little Cuzeians (we call them the Karazi, after their name in their own language), and the other Eastern kingdoms in Eretald owed it sovereignty <i>de jure</i>; nor was this power always nominal. These same peoples, and the rudimentary Caďinorian states of Araunicoros and of the Scadrorionit [V. <i>Šadoroi</i>] (along the middle Svetla) conducted their business in Cuêzi.<font size=1><sup></sup></font><font size=1><sup></sup></font>The Araniceri even named their city in Cuêzi; the name means ‘Port of the Eagle.’ The Verdurian form <i>Aránicer</i> shows replacement of the foreign -<i>coros</i> with the native -<i>cer</i>, but retains the less recognizable <i>arauni-</i> (cf. Caď. <i>ueronos</i>, V. <i>örn</i> ‘eagle’).</sup></font></sup></font>
<p>The Cuzeians began experimenting with <b><a href="Javascript:parent.al('Metallurgy');">iron</a></b> (as opposed to simply buying it from the elcari) around 1; by 200 they had learned to heat it with charcoal, creating the much harder <b>steel</b>. This increased the military predominance of the Cuzeians; if they did not create a larger empire it was only because they saw no need for one. They valued the pretense that all Eretald was united under the <i>narrûos;</i> but they had no stomach for actually ruling the impoverished primitives around them.
<p>The only bleak spot in the picture was <b>Munkhâsh</b>. The Munkhâshi had begun to get the upper hand in their battles with the Monkhayu, and by 250 they had extended their borders to the Ctelm (<i>Gaumē</i>) Mountains at the edge of Eretald.
<p>In 287 began the mission of <a href="Javascript:parent.al('Beretos');">Beretos</a> of Etêia Mitano (b. 260) to the court of the Caďinorian baron Berak, who held the Taucrēte Pass against the Munkhâshi. Within four years his mission had failed, and the Munkhâshi established a small military presence in Berak’s castle. <i>In the land of Babblers, </i>Beretos’ subsequent written apology for his mission and indictment of Cuzei’s arrogant “barbarian” policy, is one of our most important documents on early Caďinorian civilization (and a very honest depiction of contemporary Cuzei).
<p>Our first references to the <b>flaids</b> date to this time, already in possession of the island of Flora where they live today. Their origins are mysterious; the flaids say they won the island in a wager with an ogre. Biologically, the flaids must have diverged from other hominids one or two million years before; we can only speculate what they were doing for all that time. Perhaps they lived among the ilii.
<h4>In the south</h4>
The <b>Skourenes</b> acquired boats from the Jei, then copied them, then enlarged them into longboats suitable for exploring and colonizing the littoral. <b>Guṭḷeli</b> was founded in 124, other cities in quick succession.
<p>The Skourenes have proved to have a genius for urban republicanism and for commerce. Their governmental ideal was a free city (<i>ṭreta</i>), whose senate (<i>smapali</i>), was composed of wealthy or venerable men, the leaders of the clans (<i>bsopa</i>) which were the basic units of Skourene life. The cities of the lower Šinour— Imuṭeli, Iṭili, Engidori, Miligendi, Gasibur— can be said, at this time, to approximate the ideal. The Skourenes would eventually experiment with many variations of this form, chiefly differing in how much power the chief executive held as compared with the senate.
<p>The colonies at first retained a political attachment to their home cities. Imuṭeli has gone beyond this, taking over its rival Guṭleli and building itself a little empire. It has now gotten a little too powerful, and is due for a drubbing from its neighbors (295).
<p>The <b>Ezičimi</b> dominion over the Xengi has divided into smaller states, corresponding to the maximum radius of control under the Ezičimi system of government, which relied heavily on the personal oversight of the <i>nive</i> or king. As usual the map understates the importance of the state controlling the populous Xengi delta, <b>Axuna</b>. (The name derives from the goddess <i>Axun</i>, itself a form of the Wede:i <i>Akśim</i>, originally the Wede:i name of the Xengi.)
<p>Jei trading states have proliferated along the coast. A series of dynastic unions, culminating in the union of the houses of Jeinizun and Taŋgun in 250, resulted in a single Jei state, called the <b>Jei Union</b> (<i>Jeiboruŋ</i>). (<i>Jei</i> is the Wede:i name of the Ideis river; the word came to be applied only to the Jei states, so that the river had to be referrred to using circumlocutions like <i>yedo </i>‘at the river’. This was the source of the Axunašin name, <i>Yedeveiz</i>, which became Xurnese <i>Ideis</i>.)
<p>The organization of this state is more complicated than the simple shape on the map implies. Much of its territory was technically under the dominion of local chiefs, who were merely trading partners of the Jei; but as the coast was littered with Jei fortresses— dominating the local economy, interfering with local government, enforcing extraterritoriality for the Jei merchant princes, and prohibiting trade with other states— a trading partnership with the Jei looked pretty much like subjugation.
<p>The <b>icëlani</b> have not entirely disappeared from Luduyn, but they can no longer exclude the Mgunikpe from their forests.
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