FoolishOwl@foolishowl@social.coop
Maybe a dumb question: so Robin Hood and friends were robbing tax collectors to give money back to the poor, but how did that work?
As I understand it, in pre-modern economies, particularly in medieval Europe, currency wasn't used much. And in general the idea with currency was that taxes had to be paid with coins to force peasants to sell food to armies who paid with coins.
So that would suggest that robbing tax collectors was more about disrupting power relations than easing poverty, per se.
sidereal@sidereal@kolektiva.social
@foolishowl@social.coop Back in medieval England, "Robin Hood" was sort of a generic stock alias for bandits. Like if there was a crime committed, and no one knew who did it, they would enter it into the court record as "done by Robin Hood" which is where most historical records of the name come from.
So basically, if the tax collector came to town and everyone had less grain than expected... they might explain it away by saying "Robin Hood stole it." Kinda like a precursor to Ned Ludd.