Stormlands Economic Development Plan

Ok, so I’m the new lord of the Stormlands. I’ve got a kickass castle, bad weather, and a very dysfunctional family – how can I improve on this?

Goal 1: Timber and Trade

The two basic natural advantages of the Stormlands are that it’s really close to Essos and that it has an enormous amount of timber (the amber is nice, but it’s not particularly useful) – but it’s not really making any good use of these advantages. 

So the first step is to begin making use of the Rainwood and the Kingswood (altho the king has sole hunting rights over the kingswood, he doesn’t seem to have sole cutting rights, as there are settlements in the kingswood. If necessary, bribe the king). Set up sawmills on the Slayne, Wendwater, etc. to build up a lumber industry and clear land for farming – while being careful to practice good forestry management. Encourage carpentry and woodworking in a big way – tax benefits, free land, guild charters, industrial espionage against House Forrester, etc. – to begin moving up the value-added chain and have something to export.  

Once I have that infrastructure, engage in sufficient bribery and/or industrial espionage in Braavos and the Summer Isles to begin building up a shipbuilding industry second to none – which in turn should support a huge navy and merchant marine. This in turn, requires port cities – which means charters for any decently-sized and minimally-stormy harbor, and given that I’ve got some pretty hefty competition with King’s Landing means I’m going to have to heavily undercut my competition in terms of tariffs, harbor fees, warehouse fees, etc. Need to be careful to stay in the black, at least to start, and hope that my home-grown merchant marine can compensate. 

In the early stages, this will have to be concentrated on Cape Wrath between Stonehelm and Weeping Town (which seem to be a bit more protected by the Rainwood), but once you’ve got revenue up, I’m going to need a massive system of breakwaters, lighthouses, and beacons to make Shipbreaker Bay a productive marine economy, as right now it’s at least a third of my territory and it’s not good for much. 

Goal 2: Immigration

One of my major problems as the Lord of the Stormlands is that “the realms of the Durrandons and their successors have always been thinly peopled when compared to the Reach, the Riverlands, and the west.” A thin population means a low tax base, small labor force (which in a predominantly agricultural society means some hard limits on food supply, and thus population growth) and a small army. 

So my second main goal is to attract immigrants – especially skilled craftsmen and sailors, but also lumberjacks, saw mill workers, longshoremen and warehouse workers, and farmers. And my main strategy here is going to be quite similar to a lot of German Princes after the Thirty Years War which depopulated much of the HRE – offer free land and tax exemption for a limited number of years to entice people to immigrate.

Given that primogeniture seems to be the rule, it shouldn’t be too hard to lure supernumerary sons from the Reach and the Riverlands. However, given my need for expert shipbuilders, sailors, merchants, and artisans, I’m going to need to look abroad too – the Summer Isles, Myr, Braavos, etc. Which is no doubt going to cause some social disruption, but that’s the cost of progress, and I am an ambitious early modern state-builder after all. 

Goal 3: Administrative Reform

At this point, I have to recognize, even with a stronger economy and a larger population, there are hard geographical limits to the Stormlands, at least as long as the Iron Throne is operative. I’m not going to be able to grow as much food or field as many troops as the Reach, so I’m going to have to be more efficient, so that the extra ships, the extra farmland, the extra tax revenue is used to best advantage.

So that means I need my own version of the Small Council and a small army of clerks to push the Stormlands into something more like the Tudor state, although my ultimate aim is something like the Prussian Reforms. 

————————————————————————-

Up Next: Dorne