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rita-rae-siller · 4 months ago

Text

The Letter

The winds shifted ever so slightly to the south, carrying with them the scent of the forges in the foundry district in the north—metallic and acrid clouds pumping high into the night sky Mara dove down, following the thermals as she circled above the Garmoran embassy building. In the owl form she currently used, her view of the whole city of Minos and the river canyon it occupied was uninterrupted

The giant, stark white marble building stood out like a sore thumb in the night against the red sandstone of the great river canyon that rose up around it. Blue water swirled lazily around the island the embassy sat upon as the Niobe River cut her way through the canyon to the Carythean Sea to the south. From her vantage point, the river glinted with a silver cast as far as the eye could see. But she wasn’t circling above enemy territory to enjoy a pretty sight.

She was looking for someone. A very special, very easy to see someone.

As Mara dove down further, a faint glow from one of the balconies caught her eye. But the source was no candle or torch. Though her beak could form no smile, a sense of satisfaction and amusement filled her. Her friend was already waiting for her, and looked dreadfully empty of any emotion as she looked skyward. Mara could see Alura’s foot tapping impatiently on the ground, golden eyes focused upwards. Her many tattoos glowed softly in the dark, shimmering with an amber hue.

Lazily, Mara continued her descent. She knew Alura could see her now, but there was little need to rush down there. It could draw unwanted attention from the scouts that patrolled the embassy grounds below. Many were White Cloak soldiers. She could tell by the lack of torches and the silvery glow of their eyes in the darkness. If she moved too quickly, she risked being shot down, for sport or out of caution. They knew a changeling was loose in the city somewhere. Luckily, Mara knew how to blend in with the local wildlife.

“You’re late, Sparrow,” Alura tutted as Mara landed on the railing before her. She regarded Mara with the same old halfhearted scowl as she crossed her arms, awaiting an explanation. Her entire upper body was still wrapped in white linen bandages, as was her left arm. The sight made Mara’s chest tighten. Three weeks had passed since Alura had been whipped for disobeying her emperor’s orders, yet she was still bound up tight like a Garmoran mummy.

“I have to be cautious,” Mara replied innocently as she hopped from the railing to the ground, taking her normal form once more. She rolled her shoulders and stretched side to side, glad to finally be on solid ground. As fun as it was to fly, real birds made it look far easier than it actually was. “Can’t risk getting caught now, can I, Goldie?”

Alura’s scowl eased as Mara smiled at her cheekily. “I am starting to wonder if that would really be such a bad thing.”

“Please. You’d miss me too much.” Mara reached into the bag at her hip and proudly presented the bottle of Vråtta she had brought with her—potato liquor strong enough to knock even a giant like Alura on her ass. “A gift, as promised.”

Alura took the clear glass bottle, tilting her head as she scrutinized the clear liquid within. “You brought me… water?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what that is,” Mara teased as she invited herself into the bedroom to find a glass to drink from. She paused in the doorway and looked over her shoulder at Alura. “You going to stand there holding your ‘water’ or are we going to crack it open? I’m parched after the flight here.”

Alura followed her inside, shaking her head the whole way. Her mock displeasure couldn’t hide the smile twitching at her lips. Mara crossed the room to the cabinet where she knew Alura kept the rest of her liquor. Her hands fumbled clumsily through the dark, but she managed to find two small shot glasses inside.

Alura sat herself in one of the armchairs by the empty fireplace and propped her heavy armored boots on the plush red velveteen ottoman before her. Mara found her endless paranoia and preparedness for catastrophe endearing in a way. In her current condition, Alura would be doing no fighting any time soon.

Cautiously, Mara shuffled over to the other chair and sat beside her. The only light in the room came from a few candles on the mantel. It drove her crazy that Alura still couldn’t be bothered to provide Mara with a little more light to see by at night. Not everyone had magic glowing eyes that could see in the dark. Mara had to change forms for such a luxury.

“Gods, this stuff smells awful,” Alura said, wrinkling up her nose as she pulled the cork stopper from the bottle. She took a quick swig and grimaced. “This tastes like dirt, Sparrow.”

“And? We’ve shared worse drinks together.” Mara gestured for the bottle and poured it into the two shot glasses. “Sorry I couldn’t get my hands on something more refined for you, Your Grace.”

“What are we drinking to this evening, hm?” Alura asked as she took her glass and held it up to her.

Mara’s heart fluttered nervously. The letter tucked into her bag suddenly weighed heavily on her. This conversation was about to go very well, or very badly. She held up her glass, putting on her best smile. But it was clear Alura saw her apprehension.

“To your continued recovery,” Mara replied, tapping their glasses together before downing her shot and pouring another. “How is your back today?”

“Still sore, but the worst of the lashes have healed,” Alura took her shot and set her glass back down on the stone table between them. She looked Mara up and down, clearly suspicious. “What is it?”

“Promise me you won’t get mad?” Mara asked, grimacing this time as she took her second shot. She had to speak her mind now or Alura’s life would be put at risk. The whole plan had been eating her alive for almost three days now. It could cost her their friendship and the trust she’d worked so hard to build.

“Depends. What did you do?” Alura asked, leaning against the arm of her chair to get closer as she fixed Mara with a serious frown.

“I’ve… done something on your behalf. I know you won’t approve, but it had to be done.”

“Sparrow, don’t talk circles around me. What did you do?” There was a pleading tone in Alura’s voice, and a fear in her eyes Mara had never seen before. They were friends, sure, but Alura had never expressed concern for anything except her soldiers and the civilians under her care before. Not even her own wellbeing seemed matter much.

Mara reached over and took her hand, though she was barely able to fit three of Alura’s fingers in her own. “You know I’m a Shadow. And you know I was sent here to assassinate you. Obviously that plan has been off the table for a long time. But you deserve to know that I’ve been working to remove the bounty on your name. Keeping the others off of you hasn’t been easy, but I’ve finally gotten what I wanted….”

Cautiously, she pulled the letter out of her bag and presented it to Alura. “You’ve been given a choice: defect to Morvaara and live, or stay with Dioclaetus and die. If you don’t agree to their terms, I’m being recalled from the front lines entirely. I won’t be able to help protect you anymore.”

Alura withdrew her hand from Mara’s grip, clutching the letter with two hands. As she read, her hands began to tremble, and any hint of emotion left her face. After a long while of silence, she tossed the letter aside, rose to her feet, and walked very stiffly toward the door to the hallway.

“Get out,” Alura said quietly, one hand on the doorknob.

Mara stood up and took a few steps forward. This had been exactly what she’d been afraid of. “Alura, please—”

“I need time to think. Leave.”

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jeanjauthor · 3 years ago

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In mediveal times how long did a noble family have to exist for to be considered noble and not new money? 10 year, 50 years (son/grandson), 100 years (great, or great-great-grandson), or something so big like 200 years?

I'm going to be bluntly honest.

I have no frikkin' idea.

But we can think it through logically, at least a little bit, as well as draw parallels to modern or recent-era situations that are similar.

(This post ended up rather long, so I’m inserting a Keep Reading cut for the rest of y’all...)

We have a lot more writings on the Georgian/Regency eras (1700s onward) regarding the newly rich versus old money...but that's because there were more opportunities to garner new wealth, through the exploitation and colonization of explorers in the Americas, merchants traveling overseas over much longer distances due to better ship design and navigational charts, etc.

We have complaints about sea captains buying noble titles, giving money to their sovereigns who, for whatever reason, needed more income than they garnered from taxes, etc. People who were ennobled for enslaving foreign regions and extracting local resources for European consumption, so on and so forth.

Part of that was because prior to the boom in exploitative exploration & colonization, there was literally only so much land that could be parceled out to heirs or sold to the newly wealthy merchant classes, and land was still seen as the biggest economic stimulus point (the constant need for herds and crops to feed everyone, etc).

Even mining operations and foundries for smelting iron, etc, were still not advanced enough to be productive enough, because science and technology weren't far enough along for these things to provide enough metal to spark the Industrial Revolution until the turn of the 1800s and later.

We can conclude that the means to amass a lot of wealth was, therefore, difficult to acquire prior to colonization and industrialization. This was not to say that it didn't happen! There were always wars against one's neighbors, there was cross-country trade that could make one rich, someone could stumble across a gold mine (literally, a source of precious metals), so on and so forth. The Crusades were initially about Christian religious fervor...and the acquisition of the wealth of their supposed enemies, the Muslims (who weren't enemies to begin with, btw).

People in the Middle East were literally sitting at a crossroads of trade between Europe, Africa, and Asia, so yes, they had access to a lot more cross-continental commerce than anywhere else. And when the invading crusaders brought back some of that wealth--spices, silks, exotic jewels, dyes, decorative objects, and ideas (yes, those can be a source of wealth! Cross-pollination between different groups sharing ideas almost always leads to new innovations!)--it sparked avarice in the hearts of a lot of people who saw a potential opportunity for acquiring more wealth.

Those who came back with that wealth...possibly bribed their sovereigns, bought lands, became the newly rich...except back then there wasn't quite the same class divide barrier to break. Because those who could afford to go to the Holy Land to conquer & rob it of its wealth had to be able to not only walk themselves there, with enough funds to provision themselves along the way, but needed the equipment to be able to successfully capture rich targets. Horses, armor, weapons, so on and so forth.

They'd also have to attach themselves to some noble's entourage if they weren't noble themselves, and that meant they'd have to share their plunder, etc...or be counted a brigand at best. (Let's be blunt, the difference between sanctioned plundering and brigandry is having the approval of a big group of people regarding your actions.) This meant that most of those that made their wealth off of the Crusades often did so as second and third and fifthborn sons, who weren't going to inherit much anyway--or bastard sons, who by law couldn't inherit without their family jumping through legal and liturgical hoops.

The ones who profited the most off of these plunder campaigns were therefore most likely already a part of the ruling class--or at least the mounted warrior class, which was seen as close enough to being the same thing. Compared to the long-distance merchant classes, who rode or sailed long distances to trade items only produced locally (and thus rare elsewhere) for exotic ones they could bring back and trade at home, the bastards and fourth-born sons had an easier time getting to be acknowledged as "acceptable new money."

Most merchants who did get wealthy tended to do so in free cities, or in city-states that were already mostly democratic (albeit the kind confined to wealthy male citizens) in nature, such as Venice and Genoa, where they did not have kings, or did not have a strong kingly or nobility presence (unlike Paris or London, etc, which were the seats of monarchial power).

But there is one more factor to consider: The Black Death.

Prior to the first major sweep of bubonic plague through Europe in the 1340s, the vast majority of European medieval life was pastorally centered, with the vast majority of people being serfs legally obligated to work the farms for the local lords, a few freemen, the clergy (who were slowly focusing on attaining lots of wealth themselves), and the nobles who were supposed to watch over and protect everyone from outside marauders, etc (to various degrees of belief & efficacy; some were genuinely good leaders who wanted to protect and share the wealth, while others were exploitative SOBs, and most were at some stage in between those two extremes).

When a quarter to a third of everyone died, however...that left crops rotting in the fields, people were weakened and devastated, whole reams of knowledge were lost with the deaths of those who were the masters of their crafts, and...well, the wealthy staggered under the weight. IF they survived themselves, of course.

The vast shift in the availability of workers meant the surviving workers started demanding many of the freedoms they had been previously denied--they literally took their possessions and left their serf-bound homes to go work for anyone who was willing to pay them a lot more and give them more legal freedoms. (Modern folks really need to take notes!) And because all ranks and stations were being hit more or less just as hard as any other caste level, that meant those who could have enforced the peasants staying on their lord's demense-lands were unable to bring enough of them into play to herd the wayward serfs back to their quasi-slavery.

After all, if you had 100 warriors, 50 of which were needed to keep a watch out for brigands and guard the castle, you could afford to send out 20-30 of them to spread out, search for, and round up a stray serf who had run away, while keeping the remainder in reserve. (Remember, serfs who ran away to free cities and stayed there successfully for a year-and-a-day were considered free men and could not be dragged back to their farms...but that left 366 days in which they could be caught and dragged back.)

But if you lost 30 of your warrior-class, you'd still need 50 to guard the castle and its lands--possibly more in such restless times!--and you'd only have 20 to spare, period. Which meant in a practical sense that you'd only have 5-10 at most you could send out (needing to keep a reserve at your home base), which meant searches for runaways were far less efficient--either they'd have to search fewer areas with large enough groups to capture and return, or they'd have to split up, find the serf, run for help, and hope the serf was still in that same area when they got back with enough forces to capture the serf without risking injury to themselves or to the peasant in question.

Prior to the Black Death, upward mobility was a rare thing--you practically had to save the life of the king in battle, etc. This was of course easier to do in the 700s than in the 1200s, but still not an easy thing. And even then, you'd have to prove you were "noble enough" to be accepted by the upper classes. We know this upward mobility of the wealthy-but-not-noble was restricted because we do have increasingly stiff sumptuary laws--aka what non-nobles were allowed to wear.

Literally, wearing winter ermine--the white fur of the ermine mustelid with the black-tip tails--was reserved for royalty and very high ranked clergy and sometimes very high ranked nobility depending on timeperiod and culture. Indeed, a lot of furs became increasingly social-rank-dependent, to the point that only squirrel fur was considered "open for everyone." Yes, only squirrels, because even rabbits were considered to "belong" to the local lord, and poaching them for eating, never mind for wearing, became a punishable crime.

You had to have permission from your social betters to wear luxurious furs and other items....so we can conclude that upward mobility was not much of a thing...up until the devastation of the Black Death upended social order, and the vast majority of people seized back many of their natural rights and forced social status mobility upon those who held all the wealth and the power. (*ahem* Do Take Notes, People. *stares in Covid Pandemic* (Yes, I have no chill on this point, there are TOO MANY PARALLELS to what we're suffering today, socio-economically.))

Anyway! if you're thinking medieval pre-pandemic, there wasn't as much social mobility. Post-pandemic (and there were several waves of the Black Death and other plagues, btw, including a devastaing plague in 1655, not just the most famous one of the late 1340s/early 1350s), there was a lot more elbow room for jostling your way toward the top.

However, the best hope one could have for social mobility was to buy into a noble family. Usually via a marriage contract, wherein the non-noble brought in a great deal of wealth to a potentially impoverished noble family, with their offspring to be considered part of the noble family.

This was often done by someone with an ongoing source of wealth, such as merchant enterprises, or someone who could, say, create exceptional glassware, or whose family line held trade secrets in a lucrative profession, such as the thread-of-gold makers in London, ladies who were taught the secrets from an early age and whose skills were sought far and wide--or the lacemakers of certain regions in France, the Low Countries, southern England... Though to say it was "often" done isn't exactly an indication that it was done often, just that it was more likely a means to acquiring social status than saving the life of a king, etc.

So those are several of the possible ways to become wealthy and high in social status. As for "new rich vs old money"...that's a complex and lesser known subject. Most of the records we have from the medieval era were from legal documents and/or household ledgers, neither of which lend themselves to including personal annotations on things like, "A suckling pig and 2 pounds 16 shillings - Mercantile Atteborough paid this much to be included as an honored guest at the Feast of St. Barnabas in my southern manor keep."

Or maybe, "Goodwife Ashton paid 20 shillings to be able to wear a mantle lined with sable marten fur throughout the winter despite it being above her station, the rude hen" or "My son decided to give a length of silk to the village baker's daughter, even though I told him that she had no right to wear such things until after they were wed and elevated into the family fold..."

We do have a few sources mentioning such things from earlier eras, but writing was such a laborious process, the materials so costly (parchment is literally the inner shaved skin of an animal, often a goat or a sheep, and nowhere near as cheap as paper to produce...but paper breaks down so much faster than parchment over time), that most people tended to not meander about various subjects, but instead saved writing for "truly important" subjects--keeping monetary accounts, tallying things for tax-time, writing about God, and for those few scholars who had the wealth and support system, writing about the natural world, the dawning of science and reason, so on and so forth.

So we don't know how much these things were considered, only that they were considered to at least some small extent.

With all that said, we do know that the longer a family bloodline remains in power, the more determined they are to keep that power, which means concentrating it in the upper classes. (This is dangerous biologically, as inbreeding is...um...yeah. BAD.) In later years, those being allowed to join by marriage would be under heavy expectations to fit in, obey the head of the household/bloodline, and copy the manners and traditions of the class they were joining. But again, not many records of this.

Not all marriages were made for love. We see love as a marital concept among the higher classes only being developed after the rules of Courtly Love had been established for long enough that love as a possibility for high-ranked persons was considered possible. Prior to that, it had been as much or more a business transaction to increase familial power and wealth. But while for the common peasant a marriage was often made based on love and/or compatibility/mutual respect, there were still plenty of families in the in-between ranks who insisted on deliberately matchmaking or at least vetting "prospects" by how much wealth or social power each party or family held.

Again, we don't know how much the consideration of depth of a family's noble or wealthy lineage played into these calculations in the Middle Ages. We do know from the post-colonial era that many noble families back in Europe were scandalized by colonists & other overseas exploiters making loads of money and then not only trying to buy themselves a noble title, but in trying to act like they were the social equals ot the nobility.

"American heiresses" (or anyone from any overseas colony) would come to places like London to enjoy "high civilization." When they did so, their wealth would attract prospective grooms, but their breeding (aka, lack of it) would almost invariably scandalize the prospective groom's social peers and/or family members...until the Industrial Revolution created so many rich "commoners" that the nobles actually lost most of their social status power.

This nobility clout faded especially when America came to economic and cultural prominence on the world stage--a land that prided itself on having zero nobles...but that was not to say America didn't (and doesn't) have a ruling class. We just use different names, and we still have our own Old Money groups, who hoard the reigns of power for themselves and their heirs. Rockefeller is a family name known throughout the nation, as is any politician named Kennedy, for example--and now we have names like Gates and Bezos and Musk...though Gates is technically more old-money than the latter two. (Slightly.)

Unfortunately for the Old Money groups, it is now far too easy for "upstarts" to make billions, diminishing the Old Family names...but make no mistake: Most of these new billionaires still come from money, because they've leveraged their older family ties and associations to wedge themselves into these positions of visible economic power. (Musk bought himself into Tesla; he didn't actually found it. Gates, on the other hand, actually did found MicroSoft and did a lot of the actual programming work in his early days.)

...With all of that said, we only need to look at one more item to determine how long it would take Newly Rich to become Old Money: Time. Depending upon the region and the era...? About 3-4 generations would be my best guess.

Life was short and hard for many people in the Middle Ages, due to the lack of advanced healthcare, with a lot of people dying fairly early on from infections, illnesses, injuries, and the like. While the upper classes would have a lot more access to good food and be less likely to suffer from famines, giving them a better chance at a longer life due to having their nutritional needs met and their bodyfat being a little higher (it's a cushion against ilnesses and injuries, folks; stop being fatphobic!), they would still suffer, and often die much younger than a typical modern-day person might, even one living in modern-day poverty. (Wear your goddamn masks, people!! *ahem*)

When you live in a world where getting to live to be a grandparent or even a great-grandparent is a solid accomplishment, changes will be accepted much more quickly by each successive generation. Mostly because "that's the way it's always been" will have a shorter timeframe needed, due to the lack of grandparents raging on and on about "...that old upstart Timothy bought himself land and the funs to put up a keep on it! He's no more a lord than George the Goose Boy!"

The longer something goes unchallenged in the day-to-day lives of the people experiencing it, the more it seems like it should exist that way. (*STARES HARD AT THE LAST 40 YEARS OF ECONOMIC SUPPRESSIONS.*) And by that metric, given the average shorter lifespans even if you don't count early childhood deaths in mortality statistics across the broad span of medieval times in Europe...it wouldn't take more than 60 or so years for everyone locally to accept that New Money is now Old Money.

...Or that acceptance could happen even faster, if the New Money is clever enough to "share the wealthy" by investing their time, money, and effort in building good relations with their wealthy/high-class "neighbors." This would include publicly deferring to "their betters" and copying the social mannerisms of the upper class without mockery and without overstepping the bounds of what they could reasonably be allowed to do with their newfound status. Truly savy social climbers would be cautious and smart about flaunting their new power, planning for the long term haul rather than reveling too much in the moment.

Note that this statement is building good relations, not spending absurd amounts of money on lavish parties, ostentatious clothing, etc...which brings us to the Old Money side of the equation. Again, this is based in my observations on various peripheral socio-economic factors, and not on direct evidence.

The one thing that would irk the Old Money types pretty much every single time is newcomers being overly flamboyant with their wealth. Especially since the flamboyantly wealthy often end up the stupidly impoverished within a short span of time--to be accepted, the newly rich would have to understand the balance between claiming their wealth and status, and investing it to maintain that power. Wasting it wouldn't be viewed well by those who were raised generation after generation with lessons of how to maintain, expand, and increase their family's wealth and power.

It would be far better for a rising family to absorb and adopt higher-ranking privileges slowly and steadily, rather than greedily grabbing at all of it, all at once. And if they reach out to a neighboring Old Money family "for advice" and show some humility, moderate amounts of flattery (again, not in excess), asking to be treated like a nephew or niece in need of a mentorship, the Old Money family might actually take a proprietary interest in this upcoming family, giving them lessons, helping them get better access to things that were reserved for the upper classes.

Flattery is only good in the long term if there is some genuine sincerety behind it (or the one you are flattering is a narcissist, but they rarely hold onto power for long without serious help from outsiders). Instruction can be obtained with flattery, but also by in being respectfully attentive. And making sure you're not a rival to the Old Money neighbors around you can go a long way toward gaining their acceptance, too. By handling one's rise to power with these things in mind, it could actually allow the Newly Rich to be accepted that much faster, to within a matter of years or decades (with a great deal of luck), if not by one or two generations sooner than usual.

As mentioned above, sometimes Old Money doesn't actually still have the wealth that everyone assumes they have, and they need to accept New Money into their family--aka via an economically advantageous marriage. Sometimes they do have that money, but the sources of reliable wealth and political power are shifting, and the Old Family wishes to diversify its portfolio (so to speak). And sometimes they just want to diversify their power structure. This can include gaining access to up-and-coming industries, being able to have a say in how and where they're used (iron smelting, for example).

Just be aware of the fact that most of the time, if anyone accepted Newly Rich into their Old Money family, it was often an established male accepting a rich but socially-lesser female--aka the "American heiress" syndrome mentioned earlier. While the heiress wives would be...tolerated...if they toed the line, only their children would be considered "much more socially acceptable" because it would be presumed their fathers were raising the children in the Old Money Ways.

(Keep in mind that this is a worldwide trait for patriarchal cultures, not just European in nature. For far too many years, India's caste system allowed women from a lower caste to marry into an upper caste rank, but men were not supposed to marry a woman from a higher caste. This was a method used by the upper casts to deliberately focus familial power higher and higher on the social ladder. And, of course, it allowed high-caste males the social access/right to marry gorgeous low-caste women.)

Most females in a patriarchal society would not get the chance to marry into New Money unless they genuinely had a choice. Most often, they did not, because their families would want to continue concentrating their influence (including matrilineal! revisit this video I posted a while back on just how much influence a matrilineal family line could have on European politics: https://youtu.be/sl4WtajjMks ) into known avenues of power and influence.

...One last caveat: prior to the invasion of the British Isles by the Normans, who treated the local Anglo-Saxons, Celts, etc, as conquered peoples, replacing their nobility with incoming Normans who fight alongside William the Conqueror, many of whom were literally ennobled and given titles and lands etc, practically on the spot just for being a fellow Norman fighter...social mobility into the ranks of the nobility was easier.

If you had the money, the resources, the horses, etc...boom, you were a part of the local power structure. Afterward, there was a stronger incentive to diminish local power & wealth in favor of emphasizing incoming invaders' power and wealth, to be able to subjugate away those who were the original locals. This led to a lot of suppression of social mobility in order to retain power. Not just in the British Isles but elsewhere, as other regions heard of what the Normans were doing, and decided to do it themselves to their own people.

Prior to the 1066 invasion, it was possible for a warrior of commoner birth to go off raiding and looting, bring home a lot of wealth, and be lauded for his (or her!) rise in socio-economic standing. (Whether or not they were Northmen who went a-viking, since plenty of peoples did go raiding for wealth, etc; Scandinavians were just really good at it, far more so than most of the peoples they raided.)

Post-invasion, those in power started to choke down on who could do what, when, how, where, and with whomever else in order to consolidate their socio-economic power. (Seriously, sumptuary laws are mostly a post-1066 thing, along with strict laws of serfdom, up until the Black Death turned everything upside-down.)

So if you're writing a story set prior to the 1000s, there'll be much more opportunity for wealth-based social mobility and its acceptance. But afterwards, much less. But this exists on a continuum/spectrum that varies not only depending on what timeframe the story would exist in, but also where in terms of location, and what kind of social rise-to-power avenue is taken.

After all, someone gaining a lot of money in Genoa or Venice through trade would be heavily lauded by their home society, whereas someone doing the same in, say, Krakow (deep-continent) would be viewed far less companionably by the upper-classes, because trade was not as huge a part of their local culture--trade existed, but it wasn't central to how the locals & their rulers viewed themselves.

Like I said, I don't frikkin know for sure; there isn't enough hands-on documentation in common circulation. But humans have been humaning since before written records began, and we can make some reasonable guesses to help fill in the gaps.

(And if anyone claims you got it wrong, just cry "--IT'S FICTION!! It doesn't HAVE to be that accurate!!")

#answers #medieval moneybags #medieval new rich versus old money

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jillmckenzie1 · 5 years ago

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Zabiti

Immersive theater is having a moment. I attended a “summit” on immersives just last week. I actually had no idea what “immersives” were and just went because I was invited by someone who thought I should be there. The MC of the event informed the audience that the genre is defined by the audience being an active and interactive part of the theater experience. It’s a broad genre that includes everything from dinner detective shows to escape rooms to live action role-playing games (LARPing). Turns out I’ve been writing about immersives for months and didn’t even know it. I intend to keep writing about them because I just saw the preview for another one and it looks freakin’ awesome.

You all know that I have a serious case of circus envy and a lot of stage crushes on circus-y people. Some of my favorites are joining forces to create an immersive experience in a derelict warehouse in RiNo. It’s called Zabiti, and they’re doing something amazing.

First off, although it has nothing to do with the immersive experience, I want to talk about their mobile unit. The Rainbow Militia troupe members have welded together a modern-day traveling circus wagon that includes a stage set and a crane-like aerial-rigging extension protruding from the top. They haul this vehicle around to neighborhoods and bring the art and athletics of circus to folks who might never get the chance to buy a ticket or see the performing arts in person. How cool is that?!

Second, I want to talk about the immersive that’s coming up at the end of August and in the first half of September. It’s based on Russian folk tales and takes place on the ground and in the air inside the old Denver Rock Drill, which used to be just that—a heavy-industry plant. It’s slated to be redeveloped into a multi-use-zoned structure, which, although it’s intended that it will keep much of its original profile and accoutrements, is so damn cool as an underground venue that I’m a bit sad to see it changed at all.

Members of the Circus Foundry and the Rainbow Militia, along with a number of local artists and artisans, have built life-size, interactive sets including a ten-foot tulip and a phoenix-shaped witch’s house that reaches the rafters. Other areas are minimalist implications of what your imagination fills in to be complete scenes. Each section has its own charm, including the bar, where you can order a beer from a man-owl in a man-sized birdcage.

The story begins outdoors in the courtyard, with the narrator informing the audience of the story: something terrible has happened, a curse has fallen upon the forest, and we, the audience, need to witness and assist the characters as they try to restore the forest to rightness. Then we are ushered into the space to watch and help the story unfold.

The cast uses a broad scope of circus skills to tell the story; aerial rigs hang throughout the space, dancers zip around, acrobats do back flips over the concrete floors, live music serenades the performance, and the narrator himself speaks from a cherry-picker suspended above the heads of the crowd. It’s a wonderful use of all planes of the geometry of a space. I also want to call out the costuming. In correlation to the built sets, which vary between elaborate and detailed and spare and suggestive, the costumes are a mix of minimalist and gorgeous. The masks that some characters wear, in particular, are brilliantly detailed and practically alive. I love masks; these are truly lovely examples. The performers also wear a variety of costumes that harken to Victorian military coats and bouncing burlesque outfits. The contrast between these two attitudes is quite charming.

So, I’ve said a lot of really positive things so far, all of which are true and emphatic, but I would be amiss to ignore any flaws. Disclaimer: the production experience that I attended was a viewing for the press and was still in development, so take that into consideration. I didn’t really understand all of the story. I understood that there was a curse, and something needed to happen…but what that thing *was* wasn’t totally clear from the set-up. There was also some muddiness around which character was playing on which team and why the teams were in opposition to each other at all. The cast was still actively developing the performance during the sneak-peek for the press, and so it’s possible that some of these points will be resolved by the time the public sees it. There’s also a brief mention to be made that the circus performers sometimes come across as acrobats and athletes before actors; some parts of their performance shine brighter than others.

I won’t spoil the show by describing the high point of the show for me, except to say that in involves the first NERF-ball-snowball-fight that I’ve had since I was a kid and I enjoyed it immensely and immersively. If you want to unpack your inner kid, you can, too! Zabiti runs this immersive experience through the first week of September. I’d get tickets as soon as possible—not only is this immersive experience worth taking in, the Rock Drill is going to be developed in 2020 and this is the last event series that will run there before they install office space and a cafeteria. If I had my druthers, the leaded glass panes would spend many more years looking down on independent art productions. Alas.

from Blog https://ondenver.com/zabiti/

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caveartfair · 7 years ago

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The Shanghai Art Factory That’s Constructing Massive Public Artworks

Ai Weiwei, Arch, 2017, New York. On view as part of the citywide exhibition“Good Fences Make Good Neighbors,” presented by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of UAP.

One of the jewels of Ai Weiwei’s “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors”—the sprawling Public Art Fund project the Chinese artist mounted across New York City last fall—was a gleaming steel cage that sat within the arch at Washington Square Park. The work quickly became a destination for droves of locals and tourists alike, but few likely knew that the work itself was made in a factory on the other side of the globe, in a suburb of Shanghai, China.

Ai’s piece was the first partnership between the New York-based nonprofit and the global design studio, Urban Art Projects (UAP). Specializing in commissioning, building, and installing large-scale public artworks, UAP now operates out of China, New York, and Australia.

The company’s wide swathe of international clients includes prominent artists, art galleries, architects, designers, art fairs, governments, and property developers. Past collaborators include Frank Gehry, Shop Architects, Sean Kelly Gallery, and Sullivan+Strumpf, plus artists like Leo Villareal, Sopheap Pich, and Richard Sweeney. To date, UAP’s 200-person-strong team has worked on projects in over 50 cities, with more than 2,600 collaborators.

Lawrence Argent’s Beyond Reflection being made at the UAP workshop in Shanghai. Courtesy of UAP.

UAP’s beginnings trace back to Australia in 1993, when brothers Daniel and Matthew Tobin were recent art school graduates living in Brisbane. They opened a 400-square-meter metal foundry in an outer suburb of the city, where they and fellow creatives could produce large works.

“I’d always been interested in public art,” Daniel told me with a laugh, recalling his undergraduate thesis show at the Queensland University of Technology. He had installed a figurative, fiberglass sculpture in a bathtub at a local mall. “It wasn’t amazing,” he admitted, but the project fulfilled his desire to bring art outside of white-cube galleries—an ambition that has become essential to all of the projects that UAP puts its name on.

Slowly, the Tobins built up a network of artists, curators, and architects, with whom they produced projects in the foundry, and helped foster a dialogue among these collaborators. In the original foundry, they cast their first public work, a piece by the Aboriginal artist Judy Watson. And while early site-specific installations like this one were heavily rooted in celebrating and visualizing Australian identity, UAP soon expanded its reach and repertoire. The Tobins moved their Brisbane operations to a 5,000-square-meter space, formerly used for train fabrication, where they continue to operate and have a foundry, paint shop, pattern shop, and metal shop.

Lindy Lee, The Life of Stars, 2015, Shanghai, China. Courtesy of UAP.

It wasn’t until 15 years into their practice, in 2009, that they opened a new factory in Asia. They chose to set up shop in China in hopes of breaking into what was then an untapped market—a growing upper class, expanding cities, and a rapidly developing property industry.

At the time, UAP had already established a global presence through works commissioned from the United States and the Middle East. For example, they worked with HOK Architects at King Abdullah University of Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, to install public works by Carsten Höller and Richard Deacon, among others; and they collaborated with artists Jeff Kopp, Chris Doyle, and David Trubridge on works for the Los Angeles mall Westfield Culver City. But working with Chinese clients had proved challenging.

UAP had run into logistical nightmares when it came to shipping works into China. Import taxes in the People’s Republic of China are known for being high (though this has fluctuated over the years), but other factors, too, made the endeavors extremely costly. The necessary paperwork must be reviewed meticulously in multiple languages, ensuring that all questions are answered correctly and meet bureaucratic standards. If any errors do occur, large works could easily get stuck in customs.

Florentijn Hofman visiting the UAP workshop in Shanghai, as his work, Kraken, was being made. Courtesy of UAP.

When working under deadlines, the Tobins explained, if a piece did get stuck, it would cost less to simply remake the work, and “file again under due process,” as it could take months to refile. In order to effectively work within the country’s borders, it became clear that artwork needed to be produced locally.

Since opening a workshop in China, UAP solidified design and construction contracts, established partnerships with artists, and has been able to ensure high-quality production that meets international standards. The Chinese workshop is of a similar scale to the Brisbane headquarters, and has facilities for pattern-making and metal fabrication. (UAP also has a mill-workshop in Long Island City, New York.)

Over the years, UAP has built up a global supply chain of fabricators who specialize in materials like hand-blown glass, ceramics, and stone. Additionally, the crew has been working with the Australian universities Queensland University of Technology and RMIT to incorporate innovative technologies into manufacturing, including robots that can build massive artworks.

Projects executed through the Shanghai factory evidence UAP’s versatility and deft ability to actualize a wide range of artworks.

Lawrence Argent, Beyond Reflection, 2017, in Shenzen, China. Courtesy of UAP.

In 2015, for example, Chinese-Australian artist Lindy Lee worked with UAP’s curatorial team to complete a six-meter-tall piece made from hand-beaten panel and mirror-polished stainless steel for Taiwanese property developer Ting Hsin. The resulting piece is a gleaming silver oval, titled The Life of Stars, which glows, thanks to an internal lighting system that sends luminous beams through perforations on the sculpture’s surface.

Another notable project, from 2016, was a collaboration with New York’s Sean Kelly Gallery to realize British artist Idris Khan’s 90-meter-long monument for Abu Dhabi’s Memorial Park, Wahat Al Karama. Comprised of 31 leaning panels, made from recycled aluminum sourced from decommissioned armored vehicles, the fabrication of the structure was split between the Australian and Chinese factories.

Recently, in 2017, UAP worked with Chinese master Song Dong to install neon, LED strip lights onto the heritage facade of Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum for his most recent retrospective, and later in the year, UAP’s design team helped Lawrence Argent create a 16-meter-tall, faceted dragon sculpture that sprawls over two levels of a sunken mall plaza in the southern city of Shenzhen, one of the fastest growing economic zones in the country. “Some of our most adventurous commissions are in China, in malls and the like,” Tobin explained.

Artwork by Idris Khan at the Wahat Al Karama memorial park in Abu Dhabi. Courtesy of UAP.

Another example of this is a massive interactive playscape by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman (best known for his massive, floating rubber duck sculpture), which was commissioned for a waterfront park and mixed-use development also in Shenzhen. This site-specific piece, titled Kraken (2017), is inspired by its namesake, a mythological sea monster, but is decidedly less threatening, taking shape as a friendly, giant red octopus with a hat. A massive jungle gym made from colorful woven rope and metal armatures, it’s become a local landmark and photo-friendly destination, frequented by families with small children and school groups.

With a growing capacity and a respected practice, the Shanghai UAP studio has become ideal not just for local distribution, but for exports as well. Within the past few years, UAP has even been approached by major international art galleries seeking out potential manufacturing partnerships, hoping to create opportunities for their artists while minimizing unnecessary expenses.

China’s rapid urban development and a maturing cultural interest in the arts paved the way for UAP to make its mark on the industry and the country, through what managing director Steven Shen refers to as catching the right wave.

Florentijn Hofman, Kraken, 2017, Shenzen, China. Courtesy of UAP.

Back in 2008, “the business was so unique compared to the majority of what we were seeing,” Shen said of his first encounter with the Tobins, back when he was working at the Queensland Government China Trade Office. “When Matt Tobin came to my office to discuss how they could expand into China, after half an hour I still couldn’t figure out how we could help him. He talked a lot about art, artists, and urban development…it was so rare, 10 years ago.”

Since then, it’s become essential to the development of the market. “The integration of art into a broader business strategy is going to be really important going forward,” Shen elaborated, reflecting on the growth UAP has seen in its business, and in its clients’ approaches to a wide range of projects. With the availability of selfie-consultants these days, and a growing interest in technology like augmented reality, it’s clear to Shen and his team that the future of urban development, especially in China, lies in the arts. And UAP might be in just the right place to drive that conversation.

The way the company has developed within the PRC speaks not only to its business acumen, but to the notion that “Made in China” can be a testament to quality, and not simply affordable manufacturing.

New York’s Public Art Fund chose to develop a continuing partnership with UAP after it offered to cover the initial cost of Ai Weiwei’s work, and due to its proven commitment to high-quality production.

It’s become clear that UAP is investing not only in its collaborators, but in the future of public art.

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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raystart · 7 years ago

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A Business Built to Last as Long as Bronze Sculpture

There’s a DNA, an origin story, that bridges the Iwo Jima Monument, the crucifix Pope John Paul II leant on during mass, the coiled muscles of Arturo Di Modica’s Bull of Wall Street, the folds of Lynda Benglis’ sculpture, and the figures who march behind Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s funeral carriage at his Washington monument. These bronze pieces, along with countless other monuments, adornments, and portraits scattered across the globe, were all made with the same tools and cast in the same furnace in Brooklyn. Bedi-Makky Art Foundry has lasted as long as the sculptures, a company passed down from partner to friend, father to son, producing bronze art work for over a hundred years.

The bronze business has changed dramatically since the golden age of foundries in New York City, however, and the demand for public sculpture, the bread and butter of the industry, has shifted. But Bedi-Makky’s current owner, Bill Makky, still carries on the tradition, filling commissions designed to become iconic public symbols. The foundry’s most recent project? A bronze hockey glove as big as a sea turtle, designed for Madison Square Garden as a good luck symbol for Rangers fans.

Bill Makky wearing his fireproof apron.

Bill’s foundry, where the liquid bronze for the sculpture is poured, is one of several businesses that emit a cacophony on Greenpoint’s India Street. Auto repair shops line the street, with gleaming classic Lincolns hiked up on the pavement. The gritty whine of sanding and the pop of an air compressor blend with the roar of the furnace in the foundry workshop.

The noise is intense, but the space feels sacred. “More than one sculptor has come in here and called this place ‘the Cathedral’,” Bill says. The outer room of the workshop is a luminous nave under a peaked skylight. A layer of fine dust silts the floor. It captures the details of shoeprints that cross from the tool bench, to the man-high ovens, to waiting plaster molds that Bill will cover in more sand to make a cast. In the room next door, the furnace Bill uses to melt down bronze for castings is so hot it makes the bronze inside glow green.

On a pouring day, usually a Monday, two assistants help Bill tip a crane away from the furnace to drain hypnotic gold rivulets into molds. “No running,” Bill orders to anyone skipping out of the way, like he’s a lifeguard overseeing the deep end of a pool. Drops of liquid splash onto the sandy floor. The bronze gurgles like a stew. “Sounds good.” Bill can tell the temperature of the molten bronze by the sound. One of the assistants leaning close to the heat waves simmering off the equipment wears a mask. Bill wears only an FDNY baseball cap.

The foundry itself is both functional and beautiful. Tools hang like a museum display on the wall. A Colonial figurine glares down from a top shelf, as does a bird with wings spread like a rising phoenix. Beside them are rolls of duct tape, repurposed Chock full o’ Nuts cans, tubs of oozing rubber, hanging ladles. Nudes are stacked on filing cabinets. An extension cord coils around the legs of a knee-high bronze girl. A crucifix staff leaning in a corner is a cast of the one Bill made for the Pope.

The models and bronzes aren’t aesthetic and they aren’t clutter. They are core to the long-term business models of Bill’s industry. Business-savvy artists request that Bill make multiple castings of one sculpture. The first is the commissioned work. The rest are an investment in the hope that later buyers will want replicas. Bronze is a big commitment – to make, to buy, and to display – a lifetime commitment at least. “We have customers for fifty or sixty years,” Bill says of his artists. “They’ll sell one bronze edition, then maybe twenty years later, they’ll sell the second. So, we have everything in storage.” Even when an artist passes away they’re still Bill’s clients. He keeps their casts for the estate, in case they can get a buyer. “It’s an old-fashioned business, like life insurance,” he says. The Bedi-Makky foundry is itself a product of old school models of intergenerational business planning. Bill is the fourth generation of owners – the last one being his father, István – that stretches back to the foundry’s start at the turn of the century.

Bronze art foundries mushroomed in New York at the end of the 19th century under the umbrella of a nationwide financial boom. Capital from railroads and factory network poured in. The time was called the Gilded Age, and in celebration of its namesake and the extra cash flow, burnished ornamentation became the new craze. Sculptors like Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Frederic Remington led the trend, setting out to create a particularly American sculptural identity. Marble spoke to a European tradition, so Gilded Age sculptors chose bronze as their medium – setting a gleaming Diana atop Madison Square Garden to catch the light and a somber President Lincoln in Chicago to contemplate the state of the nation. The labor that went into bronze work – lost wax and French sand casting, mold making, the application of patinas – required new expertise and new labor. Leaping into the emerging space, a new industry of bronze casting art foundries blossomed in New York.

A Hungarian immigrant named Kunst was one of many entrepreneurially minded founders who launched with the new era. Before arriving in New York, Kunst had labored in the foundries of France. There, he had learned a technique called French sand casting that he hoped would differentiate him from his New York competitors. For it, he needed one ingredient, unobtainable in New York City – French sand. Kunst made his way to the docks where French ships were offloading goods onto the piers. He tore into the ballast bags that stabilized ships on the rolling crossing from Europe. A fine dust was packed inside. When the sand was moistened, it took on a dark, earthy quality that could almost keep the shape of a fingerprint – perfect for building a mold. Kunst gathered several five gallon buckets worth, and hauled it back to his foundry on York Avenue. He was now uniquely able to offer the process of French sand casting as a product – at no capital outlay cost to the business.

Seventy years later, another Hungarian immigrant disembarked in New York. István Makky had escaped the Soviet workhouses of Communist Hungary at the age of eighteen. Had he stayed a few more months, he would have witnessed the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, when citizens revolted against Soviet influence on elections and troops in their cities, demolishing statues of Stalin, and ripping the hammer and sickle emblem from the Hungarian flag. Soviet tanks hammered the revolution into submission in just five days, sending waves of Hungarian emigres to the United States.

István joined two other Hungarian immigrants – Bedi and Raccy – who had worked under Kunst and bought the business from his widow. The foundry moved to a sunny side of Brooklyn in 1940, where it is today. István eventually bought out the two second-generation owners in 1970 and re-christened it the Bedi-Makky Art Foundry. His son, Bill, worked alongside him for decades. Now Bill runs the business on his own.

With his vast knowledge of foundry history and granular familiarity of the artists he casts for, Bill might feel like an embodiment of all four generations of owners, but he is not running a museum. He is as conversant in his foundry’s competitive space as he is in the history of the business. Corporate foundries have spread from upstate New York to Kentucky and dramatically changed the landscape of New York local manufacturing. In the old days, Kunst employed a fireman to monitor the temperature of the coals overnight to ready it for pouring.

Now foundries employ heat technologies like the same ceramic shells used to cast spaceships. Then an even newer technology emerged. “When the computer first came out, I couldn’t compete,” Bill admits. “But now,” he grins, “They’re getting wise guys.” Bill says “wise guys” like he’s in a James Cagney film. “There are generations now where people don’t know how it’s done the old-fashioned way.” Bill’s point? An experienced manufacturer with a new technology is a formidable competitor. A technician who knows the technology but is untrained in the medium or the craft is not.

But Bill has been shouldered out of the big public art contracts – like the Iwo Jima Monument renovation last year -that used to go this father. Those go mainly to corporate bids now. When pressed on why the foundry didn’t try to integrate new technologies, he smiles like he’s answered the question a hundred times. “We said, ‘we’ve been doing it for so many years, we’re making money, why switch it?’” Bill doesn’t want to compete at the scale of corporate foundries. In a fireproof apron and work gloves, he’s a hands-on CEO and he loves working directly with his clients. “I’m just an extension of the artist,” he says. “That’s the way we want to keep it.” He loves artists who are as hands-on as he is, the ones who Bill saw working alongside his father back when István ran the workshop. Dealing with artists in this capacity requires wearing a variety of hats: craftsman, manufacturer, artist, alchemist, engineer, businessman – and when interacting with New York creatives – a psychologist. “I do everything,” Bill says.

Just as it was at the onslaught of computers, the Bedi-Makky Foundry is currently at an inflection point. István died unexpectedly in a car crash last year. In December, Bill was hit by a car and broke his back. “I was on the ground with a broken back,” Bill recalls, “And I wasn’t thinking ‘I almost died.’ I was thinking, ‘I have to earn a living.’” The foundry didn’t do a pouring for three months. Under his purple, sweat-soaked shirt, Bill’s wrapped up in a back brace. It’s covered in plaster dust. “It gives you a new outlook,” he says. “It used to be that just doing the job was hard. Now, I say, ‘thank God I’m doing it.’”

For his first pouring after the accident, Bill and his assistant create a set of pieces called A Cry for Freedom. The sculptures are representations of the Hungarian flag from the 1956 Revolution – the flag with a hole in the center where the Russian hammer and sickle were torn out by demonstrators. These are presented at a ceremony at the Hungarian Consulate on the Upper East Side, the old Gilded Age territory of Saint-Gaudens and Remington. The Cry of Freedom statue recipients are allies of the spirit of the 1956 revolution. At the consulate, Bill examines the final products resting on a grand piano. Glasses of champagne clink in the background as ambassadors from the Philippines, Australia, and Denmark arrive.

“I had no idea Bill was Hungarian,” the Hungarian ambassador, Katalin Bogyay says of her first visit to the foundry to commission the piece. “I was in the car, looking out the window at the mechanics, and I think: Where am I?” During the ceremony, she reads a quote from Bill, which she has included in her book on the revolution: “My job memorializes events into bronze, a medium made to last many lifetimes. A Cry for Freedom deserves to be remembered.” Bill stands up and smiles to the applause and fingernails tapping on champagne glasses. He’s as at home surrounded by ambassadors as he is with his foundry-workers.

Working with bronze, like the medium itself, is a longer-than-lifetime commitment. It is an exercise in centennial thinking and legacy planning – from the artists who leave unsold editions to their estate, to Kunst, Bedi, Raccy and both Makkys who passed their warehouse and clientele down through the generations. Bronze sculptures will last even longer – centuries of weathering atop spires and in public parks. The oldest bronze sculpture is dated to 2,500 BCE.

Bill’s business may not be designed to last quite so long, but hints of its foundations in multi-generational longevity are everywhere in his workshop. There’s no sign of planned obsolescence in any of the equipment. The tools scattered on benches are heavy – totally unlike today’s lightweight tools. “Tools made past the 1960s go bad,” says Bill. The foundry furnace and ovens are similarly maintained through the years. Bill repairs them himself. “If something goes wrong with the furnace,” he points to the flaming green roar. “I can’t really call an oil guy or a home heating guy.” Like the sand that sits cooling under a tarp, everything is used over again ad infinitum. The recycling of materials leads to an ontological legacy that attracts artists to Bill. “This sand made the Iwo Jima Monument,” Bill explains, showing his fingerprints in a dark handful – the same sand, he says, that Kunst brought up in pails from the docks. “It made the Bull on Wall Street. It’s making statues today.”

The next sculpture the sand will make is the hockey glove for Madison Square Garden, which once supported Augustus Saint Gaudens’ statue of Diana. The commissioners hope that generations of fans will rub it for good luck, constantly burnishing a new gleam into the piece so that it shines for many years to come.

#startups #text #startup #advice #busieness #howto #news #tech #love

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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Jasvinder Sanghera: I ran away to escape a forced marriage – BBC News

Image copyright Jasvinder Sanghera

Image caption Jasvinder (R) aged 15, with her sister Robina

Jasvinder Sanghera was locked in a room by her parents when she was 16, when she refused to marry the man they had chosen for her. Here she describes how she escaped with the help of a secret boyfriend – but lost all contact with her family as a result.

Growing up we had no freedom whatsoever. Everything was watched, monitored and controlled. We understood that we had to be careful how we behaved so as not to shame the family.

I’m one of seven sisters and there’s only one younger than me so I’d watched my sisters having to be married at very young ages – as young as 15.

They would disappear to become a wife and go to India, come back, not go back to school and then go into these marriages and be physically and psychologically abused. And my impression of marriage was that this is what happens to you – you get married, you get beaten up, and then you’re told to stay there.

My parents were Sikh and Sikhism was born on the foundation of compassion and equality of men and women, and yet here we have women who were treated very differently. My brother was allowed total freedom of expression. He was also allowed to choose who he wanted to marry. But the women were treated differently and that was reinforced within the communities. It’s gone unchallenged and it’s deeply ingrained.

I don’t think I was smarter. I just don’t know what it was within me. My mother used to say: “You were born upside down, you were different from birth.”

Maybe she helped me out by saying that, because it made me question a number of things, and then when I was shown the photograph of this man, as a 14-year-old, knowing that I’d been promised to him from the age of eight and being expected to contemplate marriage, I looked at this picture thinking: “Well he’s shorter than me and he’s very much older than me and I don’t want this.”

And it was as simple as that.

But within our family dynamic we were taught to be silent.

Saying no to the marriage meant my family took me out of education and they held me a prisoner in my own home.

I was 15 and I was locked in this room and literally I was not allowed to leave the room until I agreed to the marriage. It was padlocked on the outside and I had to knock on the door to go the toilet and they brought food to the door.

My mother was the very person who enforced the rules. People don’t think of women as the gatekeepers to an honour system.

So in the end I said yes, purely to plan my escape. And it was as simple as that, because then I had freedom of movement.

The only friends we were allowed had to be from an Indian community as well. And my best friend, who was Indian, it was her brother who helped me in the end.

He became my secret boyfriend. He saved some money and said, “I want to be with you and I’ll help you to escape.” He would come to the house at night and stand in the garden and we would secretly mouth things to each other through the window.

One day he dressed up as a woman and went into a shoe shop and pretended he was shopping. He handed me a note which said, “I’ll be at the back of the house at this time – look out of the window.” So I did, and he mouthed for me to pack my wardrobe and I lowered two cases down using sheets tied together, and flushed the toilets so my mother wouldn’t hear.

And then one day I was at home with my dad, who was at home because he worked nights, and the front door was open, and I just ran out.

I ran all the way, a good three-and-a-half miles, to where my boyfriend worked and hid behind a wall and waited for him to come out. He went and got my cases and then picked me up in his Ford Escort and got me to close my eyes and put my finger on a map, and it landed on Newcastle.

Image copyright Milan Svanderlik

Image caption Jasvinder, now 51, helps others who are in the same situation as she was

I sat in the footwell of the car all the way so no-one would see me and then when I saw the Tyne bridge I was absolutely amazed by it because I had never been anywhere outside Derby.

My parents reported me missing to the police and it was the police officer who told me I had to ring home to let them know I was safe and well.

My mother answered the phone and I said: “Mom, it’s me. You know, I want to come home but I don’t want to marry that stranger.”

Her response has stayed with me for the rest of my life. She said: “You either come back and marry who we say, or from this day forward you are now dead in our eyes.”

It was only later on when things settled down that I begin to think, “I’ve done it but where’s my family? I want my family.” I was missing them terribly. You feel like a dead person walking.

My boyfriend used to drive me to my hometown at 3am just so I could see my dad walking home from the foundry.

What changed how I felt was the death of my sister, Robina. She was taken out of school at 15 for nine months, married to a man in India, and then came back and put in the same year as me and nobody questioned this at all. But he treated her terribly and when her son was around six months old she severed the relationship.

She then married for love and my parents agreed to it because he was Indian – Sikh and from the same caste as us. She again suffered domestic abuse but my parents made it clear that because she had chosen him she had a duty, doubly, to make it work.

She went to see a local community leader – they have a lot of power, my parents would have seen his word as the word of God – and he told her: “You need to think of your husband’s temper like a pan of milk – when it boils it rises to the top and a woman’s role is to blow it to cool it down.”

When she was 25 she set herself on fire and she died. When she was – I say – driven to commit suicide, that was the turning point for me.

What is 100 women?

BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year. We create documentaries, features and interviews about their lives, giving more space for stories that put women at the centre.