Can you have a mixed settled population and nomads?

Question

I'm specifically thinking of having my country's population be around 90% agricultural and 10% nomadic. The nomads would play a substantial role, trading resources and goods from different areas. They also bring exchange of knowledge and information between areas. The younger generations have little reason to stop being nomadic, when they can get access to all the same fruits and vegetables as the agricultural people by trading. The settled population can focus more acutely on crops, when meat is often available through trade.

To clarify, by nomads I mean hunter-gatherers. They may still practice some level of agriculture, but they're not an agricultural people. Think certain Native Americans before colonization.

There are large swaths of uncultivated land, due to a medieval population density, so the nomads generally do not compete for usage of the same areas.

Lastly the world is not feudal, it's a bit more egalitarian. People are allowed to move around more freely in general. The system is closer to the more market-oriented economy during the Renaissance.

How viable is this situation?

Answer 1

The ratio isn't quite the same as the historical model but you're actually describing something surprisingly similar to parts of medieval Europe. As I recall at one point only about 8% of the population of, I think France in particular, had the right to travel in the execution of their work or due to their social status. The rest of the population were serfs, landbonded labours who often never left the fief on which they were born. This was a major driver for the fervent competition for trade and church positions, they were a way to see the world and a chance to escape the bond. Europe during this period, and many others, also had large farming districts on the richest lands separated by huge areas of wilderness or wasteland that had either never been cultivated or had fallen out of use for want of labour or a market for the goods due to transport costs, or some other resource.

A nomadic trading culture would fit in alongside a settled farming culture making most of their living moving profitable cargoes. They'll not transport food, or basic construction materials; but rare/decorative woods, spices, metal ores, (they may even be the primary metal workers of this world, it is possible to have sophisticated metal working while remaining nomadic), imported cloth, possibly tools, some other finished goods, those are worth taking on the road; rather than settlements needing to be self-sufficient in their production. The nomads may also hunt and forage wild animals and plants that are unavailable in the settled zones.

Answer 2

It is very viable if the land has mountains rising above the tree line. In that environment a small but significant part of the population would naturally practice transhumance, moving their herds between lower pastures in winter and mountain pastures in summer. In this way the high mountains, where agriculture is not possible, can still be put to use, while at the same time there is less pressure on the prime agricultural lands at lower elevations, so it tends to be a very stable arrangement for everyone involved. The transhumant population would typically spend most of its time in the lowland village, mixed together with a settled majority that does not participate in yearly migrations. The summer pastures may well be tens or even a few hundred kilometers away from the village, allowing the nomads to spread information over a wide area, and their animals make excellent trade goods which can very conveniently walk themselves to market.

Answer 3

As I understand the question, you have two cultures in your population, one settled and one nomadic, with frequent trade but no rapid mixing of the populations.

This differs e.g. from the American 'Wild West' where some people lived in cities and farms and others herded cattle from the pastures to the slaughterhouses (or railheads, once those existed). The cowboys were culturally part of the settled population, just opting for a profession which required them to travel. They did not take their families to follow the herds.

So the question becomes, why do people who are required to travel (merchants, hunters, herders, administration officials, soldiers) taking their families along, and form a different culture? Leaving the young and the elderly at a fixed home sounds so self-evidently sane that there needs to be a good explanation for taking them along ...

• Brief round trips are not practical. Once someone departs a place, it will take years or decades to come back.
  Build your geography to "encourage" trips around a continent, or even around the planet. This might involve conveniently placed rivers, with rafts built upriver and one-way trips to the river mouth, or ocean currents making one direction easy and the other all but impossible, or perhaps a big desert in the middle of the continent and all travel going around -- the last option would allow people to make it to the next city, and back, but anyone who wants to go to the other side of the continent has to take the long way around. Sure, mounted messengers can cross the country, but trade caravans take years.
• Give one culture a religion which requires any member to (a) marry only believers and (b) visit certain holy sites after key life events (get carried there as a toddler, go there as a young adult, marry there, bring any children there). Families of this culture would be constantly moving to check the next box on their salvation scorecard.
• Give one culture a comparative advantage which is maintained by a nomad lifestyle. For instance, to become a really good light cavalryman, one should be raised in a nomad camp. A bit like the quip ascribed to the medieval English, "to train a longbowman, start by training his grandfather." To become a really good heavy cavalryman, on the other hand, one starts by being able to afford heavy armor and heavy warhorses. Cities are better placed to do that. If a country wants both light and heavy cavalry, they need farmers and nomads.

Answer 4

How realistic do you want to be?

We have nomadic people in the world today such as the Sámi of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, and the Romani, who are sometimes known as Gypsies. But, while nomadic people were once a large demographic in the world (even creating empires), they inevitably diminish as knowledge makes stability more efficient.

Offhand I know of no nomadic minority that hasn't been treated as second-class by the dominant civilization(s). The nature of their society makes them untracable, untaxable, and very easy to blame for every crime imaginable — all of which makes them hated (or easy to hate). And they could be enslaved without anyone seeking redress.

Using humanity as the guide and generalizing something awful, the egalitarian society you're talking about can't practically exist without communication, record-keeping, and both legal and political representation. And despite having all that, we're having trouble working all the kinks in that out today. History has proven that, from the perspective of a society, it's difficult to give up the habit of hatred and dislike. Humanity evolved competitively, and we often find oursleves going back to our deepest roots, looking for "us" vs. "them."

Add to this a civilization with sufficient agricultural knowledge to allow stable fixed-location societies and we have very little reason to trade with the nomads. Cattle, horses, meat... All are a part of agriculture. Unless you're talking about artificially stagnating innovation, animal husbandry goes hand-in-hand with agriculture. So, the only value the nomads would really bring is as traveling merchants and they'd be supplanted by trade organizations (see the American West which started with both the indiginous populations and trappers both eventually giving way to expanding populations and transport technology).

So... viable?

No. And now you know why I'm not a fan of questions that ask if something is viable, feasible, possible, realistic, plausible, or anything similar. The only two references we have is Real Life where the answer is 99.9% of the time "no" and your imaginary world where the answer is 100% of the time "yes."

So, don't let this stop you from writing a good story.

Answer 5

Steppe Peoples

Large tracks of Eurasia were basically not farm-able until modern times, when we could use massive public works to irrigate the steppe.

But starting ~3,500 BC when the horse was domesticated, these steppe lands became very productive. The populations along the Dnieper, Don, and North Caucasus left the river valleys and conquered the steppe.

Their society was based on herding cattle, sheep, and horses, and they only converted to farming when their relentless expansion took them to areas better suited for agriculture.

Multiple cultures emerged with virtually identical economies including the Yamnaya (3,500BC) the Scythians (700 BC) the Saka (400 BC) the Huns (400 AD) and the Mongols (1300 AD), just to name a few.

Location, Location, Location

The key here is that the steppe is generally too dry for agriculture, but not to dry for grasslands that support the herds.

To integrate this kind of economy into a settled agricultural society you would need to have many locations that were easily farm-able very near to many other locations that were not, and for some reason it is too hard to irrigate the steppe portions.

So maybe think of the Grand Canyon but with a bigger river - the settled agriculturalists can farm in the canyon, but pumping the river up to the top of the cliffs is a complete non-starter without modern technology. The canyon tops only support a herding economy.

But because the river is the only consistent source of water, the steppe people very frequently return to the river to water the animals, and get wagon loads of water to take into the badlands. This contact helps to keep them a part of the larger society.

To adjust the proportion of herders to farmers, just adjust the proportion of steppe to river valley. It's fundamentally a geography question which economy makes more sense until close to modern times.