Hackathons on festivals and feastdays: What Medieval England can Teach us about Software Development
Too often rulers fear the ruled. Consequently governments tend to thwart technology adoption in their population in order to protect a ruling elite even when it is not in the national interest to do so. However, sometimes rulers do chose to technologically empower the general population, and in doing so improve conditions for everyone, including themselves. In the late middle ages England was alone in investing in a technology that threatened the interests of the nobility, yet allowed the country to defend its borders from invaders, and enter a period of relative prosperity. Parallels can be drawn with today’s need to invest in software creation skills, and the degree to which governments are willing to do so.
Crossbows versus longbows
On July 19, 1333, amid the Second War of Scottish Independence, Scotland’s Sir Archibald Douglas led a massive force of some 15,000 men up Halidon Hill to face England’s King Edward III and his army of only 8,000. It was a slaughter — not of the English, but of the Scots.
Edward had spread his men-at-arms in three divisions across the hilltop, flanked by archers armed with longbows. As the Scots proceeded to the hill’s bottom to begin their ascent, English longbow arrows rained down “as thickly as the rays in sunlight, hitting the Scots in such a way that they struck them down in hordes, and thinning them to the point of defeat” ¹
Medieval rulers in Europe knew that longbows won battles, yet chose overwhelmingly to invest in the crossbow- a bow that had a lower rate of fire, was less powerful, and was 6 times more expensive. Why was this?
When choosing between missile technologies medieval rulers were confronted by a trade-off with respect to internal and external security. Since crossbows could not be manufactured by the general population, encouraging proficiency in their use ensured that the nobility always had a monopoly on firepower. It would therefore be much harder for a rebellion under a “crossbow state” to raise and equip an effective militia yet similarly hard for a crossbow state’s army to suddenly switch to the longbow when dealing with external threats.
The thick storm of arrows required for the longbow’s successful military use required a large number of archers proficient in its use. The longbow took years of continuous training to master. Not only was there the matter of the physical strength necessary to draw 120-plus pounds with one arm over and over again, but because the longbow arrow was drawn to the ear, aim was largely a matter intuition rather than sight. us, if war erupted, it was not possible to recruit a company of men untrained on the longbow and train them to use the weapon quickly. A stock of proficient archers had to already be in place, prepared to serve.¹
In order to have the best army, you had to have the best longbow companies which in turn required a readily available pool of highly-skilled longbowmen. However, outside of hunting (which citizens didn’t necessarily have time, need, or permission to do), proficiency in the longbow was not that useful. The crown therefore had to invest in a range of incentives and legislation to compel, or strongly encourage its subjects to practice with the longbow:
The first such law was the Assize of Arms of 1242, which made bow ownership compulsory for men who owned land worth more than 40 shillings, a status that encompassed the yeoman class. In 1363 Edward III went much further. He made universal, weekly archery practice compulsory and made alternative sporting activities, which might compete with time spent practicing the bow, illegal (Loades 2013, p. 26): “[E]very able bodied man on feast days [including Sundays] when he has leisure shall in his sports use bows and arrows . . . and shall learn and practise the art of shooting, forbidding all and singular on pain of imprisonment to attend or meddle with hurling of stones, loggats, or quoits, handball, football, club ball, cambuc, cockfighting or other vain games of no value.” ¹
Later on English legislation banned crossbows and set price ceilings for longbows whilst the crown organised longbow shooting competitions at festivals and feasts- it wasn’t just necessary to permit longbow use, a significant effort had to be made to enable and encourage it.
The result was an empowerment of the general population in longbow archery: a strategically vital skill that required little capital, but a lot of time; that allowed England to dominate in the middle ages, and that gave rise to a period of relative peace and prosperity.
Longbows and open source software
It is easy to draw parallels between the utility of longbows in the late middle ages and that of software in the present day- the ability to create and use software is arguably the most important strategic skill for a nation state to currently possess, yet relatively few nations are willing to go “all in” in support of training.
Although every country would like to have a cadre of highly skilled software engineers at their disposal, many are unwilling to take the steps necessary for their citizens to become to proficient in the field, and actively fear the consequences of doing so. In North Korea for example internet access is generally unavailable, thereby rendering the development of software engineering skills impractical- this is almost certainly intentional. The US on the other hand, despite recent revelations about internet surveillance, places very few barriers on internet access and so also happens to be the world leader in software engineering.
However, on its own, enshrining freedom of speech and removing unreasonable censorship is not enough to develop a national capability in software engineering. A quick look at the top projects on Github, the leading open source development platform, reveals that the US dominates here too. Perhaps not surprising when the US government itself is compelled to use open source, and agencies such as the United States Digital Service and Code for America, have been put in place to nurture and reward open source development.
Governments must nurture hackers
Most countries could take a leaf out of present day USA’s and late-medieval England’s book when it comes to encouraging the skill of software creation. Governments that nurture hackers further the interests of their populations by indirectly creating cheaper, more effective and more powerful digital societies.
By training and rewarding those who choose to make software on their own initiative, you encourage a society to do so, which in turn benefits all who participate in that society. If you then require those software creators to get a haircut and ply their trade as part of an organisation they will be much better equipped to do so.
In Europe, we like to think of our governments as being more involved in training and education than in America, but when it comes to software engineering it is the US that is providing centralised, merit-based support for open source software engineers, and that is what elevates the general standard of the craft and benefits society as a whole.
If England’s Tudor kings found themselves in power today they would secure their position by making sure that all the young people of the kingdom could knock together an app, website or database. Hackathons on festivals and feastdays would make life better for the people.
[1] Allen and Leeson (2015) Constrained Technology Adoption: Resolving the Longbow Puzzle. Journal of Law and Economics, Volume 58 (mirror)
