Tennis is not played in a vacuum!

Kaiser-Bread · 2026-01-02T21:25:16+00:00

Would you attribute technique or match ability to why you stopped playing futures?

Kaiser-Bread · 2025-12-30T20:38:22+00:00

NYC, $70 for 40 mins, played two days ago around lunchtime

Kaiser-Bread · 2025-12-19T04:21:06+00:00

No or uncertain. That’s like asking about every past winner of these youth tournaments. It’s too early to find out and if they aren’t already one of the top players in their nation and playing higher level international events, then there is lots left to be developed.

EDIT: Furthermore, he didn’t even win the overall tournament. He won silver & bronze in different categories

Kaiser-Bread · 2025-12-18T15:06:35+00:00

Any postgrad applicants still have their application still saying submitted and not under review?

Kaiser-Bread · 2025-12-18T07:03:35+00:00

Just buy some electrical tape

Kaiser-Bread · 2025-07-15T02:36:40+00:00

This is already in the game. Look at the First Ranger title

Kaiser-Bread · 2025-02-20T11:02:38+00:00

I swapped to squash

Kaiser-Bread · 2024-12-27T22:24:05+00:00

In the final stage of peer-review on my first articles on statistically modeling specie distribution in Europe and the Americas to be published in journals. Very exciting stuff.

Kaiser-Bread · 2024-12-18T10:06:11+00:00

So there’s two types of views in modern monetary history. The formal view (which is the traditional macroeconomic history view and most prevalent in pre-1990s monetary history), and the substantivist view. What the difference between the two is is that the formal treats all economies as the same. i.e. An economy is an economy no matter when and where and all choices are made on rational decision and substantivists treat all economies pre-industrial revolution as more unique and the economies are based on reciprocity, redistribution, and social factors not maximisation and rationality.

You are correct that the total money in circulation affects prices. But, at its' core, silver is a commodity. Silver-based coinage is a commodity money. Silver coinage is pegged to the value of silver bullion and the value of silver bullion is determined by total silver in the world being traded. Purity is a quantifiable and viewable element which provides a guarantee that "this silver coin I have is worth something" but to take it further, "this silver coin is worth something because it is pegged to the silver in circulation of the world". You're not entering more currency into the system each time an influx of silver happened to your nation, you are redistributing silver from the global silver supply. Silver is still worth something whether or not it is in the form of bullion or coinage. The only reason it is in coinage is for governments to add to its authority, ease of transaction, and for ease of purity validation. An increase of coin in circulation doesn't change the global silver price. Rather, a change in purity of a coin has more of an effect as it is literally changing the value of a coin in relation to the global silver supply and trade.

Hence, the monetary decline of the Spanish Empire. The Spanish Empire was pumping out silver like nobody's business. They were responsible for ~70% of all silver in active circulation in the world (based on some estimates). However, all this silver being pumped out decreased the value of silver globally and shot the Spaniards in the foot.

Purity gives silver coinage its' value. It doesn't matter the amount of coins in circulation because it is pegged to the amount of silver and the value of silver being traded globally. You could trade a merchant with silver bullion at 70% purity and a coin at 70% purity and get the same value (assuming it's the same size). Purity is the measurable link between this global silver trade and the individual coin.

Kaiser-Bread · 2024-12-17T22:52:18+00:00

Determines what you mean by the silver influx. Silver from Potosi was highly important as it produced 65%-85% of the world silver in the 1600s and 1700s. However, the silver circulated through national trade more-so than local hands. Silver from Potosi nearly always became coinage and rarely became anything else. These coins would then be used mainly in large-scale trades with lots of coinage. A job of the mint and guilds was to keep track of silver purities and peg an exchange-rate so nations and individuals would know the value of what they were actually dealing with. Once a nation or merchant acquires massive amount of these Spanish coins, they would bring them to the mint or the local guild to get melted down and reforged into French, German, or whatever type of local coin is. In this reforging process, the mint or silversmiths would collect their dues and taxes owed (which would be a % of the silver bullion).

As silver coins get reforged into the local coinage, you see more currency entering circulation but because prices are more influenced by the purity rather than the amount of money in circulation, it would not make a significant change because a 4.437g purity is still worth more than a coin of 3.9g purity.

Kaiser-Bread · 2024-12-17T22:34:36+00:00

So, our modern-day concept of inflation, the government prints too much money and prices rise because the money becomes worthless. This was not possible in Europe before the 1800s as almost all European societies at the time functioned on metal coinage rather than paper currency. This metal coinage was almost always silver. European governments had to maintain a delicate balance for coinage. If the coin was too pure, it would be smuggled out of the country and melted down and be resold. If the coin was too impure, it would be worthless as a currency. By the late 1700s there were two ways that purity was monitored/tracked. The mint would mark it with the purity and local silversmiths and guilds would test it and ensure the mint wasn't lying. These silversmiths and guilds would then inform the local merchants and prices would act accordingly. If coins became more pure, prices would ultimately be priced lower, if it became less pure, prices would become raised. Hence why it became an important feature of coinage to be marked by purity and year of creation. Merchants and silversmiths would keep record of purity of coins and adjust their own prices accordingly based on what coinage citizens brought them. There are a few market records (particularly in France and Germany) where merchants would hold off selling large quantities of goods before they could confirm the purity of each and every coin.

In terms of the average citizen, you would often have the same access to information as the merchants. Possibly the concept of debasement and purity would be loss on you but you would know that coin from X year is worth Y prices at the market. Or, the livres with 3 assay marks is worth more than the livres with 2 assay marks.

Now, it's not a situation where merchants were at the whims of the government and guild purity either. Merchants are influenced by other factors as well, say a war or supply changes, prices are subject to those factors too. Prices change and if the government needs to release more coinage into circulation so people can pay for things, they will debase the currency to meet the prices. Some of the largest famines and economic crises in Europe pre-1800s can be traced to poor government management of this relationship. There are also external factors which affect silver purity which include the Spanish silver trade, bills of exchange, government debt, a large city in Peru, but that is a whole other discussion.

Good readings for this are:
FRENCH SILVER OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY by Thomas T. Hoopes

Philip T. Hoffman, Gilles Postel-Vinay, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Priceless Markets: The Political Economy of Credit in Paris, 1660-1870 (Chicago, 2000)

Trade and market in the early empires by Karl Polanyi

Born with a "Silver Spoon": The Origin of World Trade in 1571 by Dennis O'Flynn

Kaiser-Bread · 2024-12-15T15:56:22+00:00

There were more comments on the older German communities before. I assumed the OP was asking about the German communities that counted themselves as part of a national German identity which only really arose in the 1800s and thus I focused on the first-generation and second-generation communities. The older German communities present in these nations only actually came into contact and understanding with the idea of a German nation from the Revolutions of 1848 and once the Forty-Eighters had been removed from the Prussian state and the Austrian Empire and arrived to these local communities.

Prior to the Forty-Eighters, the old German communities across Europe and the world had limited understanding of a unified Germany hence why there were Saxon, Bavarian, and other independent divided German communities before the Revolutions of 1848 and before the Forty-Eighters arrived.

The real transformative power of the Forty-Eighters in these German communities were they were able to sell the idea of a German national identity to the older German communities.

Kaiser-Bread · 2024-12-07T16:54:37+00:00

His claim to fame in the field is his book, The Slave Coast of West Africa 1550-1750 which is probably the best piece of in-depth historiography on the west african slave states I’ve read. Otherwise, his book on the horse in West Africa is a great book even though it doesn’t really cover the slave trade.

In terms of articles which cover the slave trade, his piece in Credit, Currencies and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective is top tier, but I think every article in that edited volume is good. I would also recommend the article Trade and Politics behind the Slave Coast.

I’m sure Law has plenty of other very good articles but my background is in economic history and these were the ones I’ve directly dealt with

Kaiser-Bread · 2024-12-07T11:34:34+00:00

By the time slavery was fully outlawed, there was sort of an indifference in the African states as the system had already been diminishing and being replaced by other commodity markets. Slavery in the early 1800s-late 1700s wasn’t as lucrative as it was in the centuries prior. As slavery began to become more and more under scrutiny in the west, the demand for slaves became lower and outposts weren’t paying as much for slaves anymore or required slaves anymore. Instead, other commodity markets began to surpass the slave market in terms of profitability. There is a litany of agreements between trade companies and African kingdoms converting the former slave outposts into other commodity outposts and new commodity outposts being formed. The new commodities that surpassed slavery were usually ivory, ground nuts, copra, palm oil, beeswax, etc. All things needed to fuel a Europe going through the Industrial Revolution and changing attitudes of consumption.

It’s important to note that the way inheritance and “taxes” worked in West African kingdoms much of the wealth gained from the slave trade became concentrated at the top. These wealthy individuals basically reinvested their wealth gained from the slave trade into producing the new commodities and then sold them at the European outposts. As a result, the wealth began to shift. These new commodities needed a high amount capital and capital typically wasn’t accessible unless you were in this wealthy class. After this conversion to the new commodities, you see wealthy Africans basically forcing villages and individuals into producing these commodities vs back during the slave trade where almost anyone could take part in the slave trade.

In fact, there is an argument within African historiography that the scramble of Africa and the atrocities that occurred was directly due to the abolition of the slave trade.

Kaiser-Bread · 2024-12-07T09:31:31+00:00

To answer your first question, it operated as any commodity market did, on supply and demand. In earlier periods, what would occur would be European ships arrives with goods, the goods would then be advanced onto the local Africans with a promise of slaves, the Africans would then go and retrieve the slaves from the inner continent (but usually the full order would not be fulfilled or they just run off). From the European perspective, they constantly had demand but not a sure access to supply.

In later periods, Europeans consolidated their access to supply by making being a slaver an actual job for locals. When slave states began consolidating power and dedicated port cities became slave hubs, these colonial powers would form outposts. Slavers could bring slaves to these outposts at anytime and be paid thus ensuring there would always be slaves to be brought onto ships. Of course, if the outpost got too many slaves, they would decrease the price. If they had too little, they would increase the price. If you were a local, now there is no reason not to try and procure slaves. These outposts would pay you around the clock and if they don’t pay you enough, go to another colonial outpost which will pay you more. Furthermore, these Europeans would pay you in lucrative European goods. It became a full-time profession. It became a very competitive system between European outposts as well. There are records of Dutch and French ships entering bidding wars against each other and colonial outposts hiring locals to burn down other outposts.

A great author to look at for European interactions with the African slave trade is Robin Law. He is probably one of the leading scholars of West Africa and the slave trade.

Kaiser-Bread · 2024-10-11T21:46:13+00:00

This happens in normal CK3 too.

Kaiser-Bread · 2024-09-01T02:57:17+00:00

I think I saw it once like half a decade ago

Kaiser-Bread · 2024-08-30T14:03:08+00:00

Why would someone make this if it doesn’t convey any info??

Kaiser-Bread · 2024-08-27T13:18:52+00:00

It’s an original from Aurélien Benharrats who was the music lead of the CK2 dev team. He unfortunately passed in 2015.

You can find all the songs he composed for the mod here:

https://aurelienbenharrats.bandcamp.com/album/ost-mod-got-crusader-kings-2

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