Leon Trotsky wrote about uneven but combined development. When a technological advance has been made, e. g., in Europe, then it spreads to other continents whose inhabitants are thereby freed from repeating all the stages of development that were necessary for the Europeans. Thus, Europeans put rifles directly into the hands of Native Americans and industrialized a few cities in the otherwise still feudal Russian Empire.
In "Tiger by the Tail," Poul Anderson shows uneven but combined development between many entire rational species on an interstellar scale:
"The gap between, say, a preindustrial Iron Age and an assembly of modern machines was enormous."
- Captain Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), p. 245.
There is the unevenness. However:
"It was not uncrossable." (ibid.)
There is the combination.
A preindustrial species can buy basic equipment with the wealth of its planet's natural resources. Enough natives can be educated to become a class of engineers and scientists whose industrial base can spread across their entire planet and planetary system with automatic machines doing most of the work while peasants are kept uneducated so that they can be socially controlled. Some such societies need permanent war for plunder and glory but, with the hyperdrive, it is easy to export it...
2 comments:
One crucial point here is that the new technology can spread to societies which haven't undergone the intervening steps of -social- evolution. They get the high tech, but their motivations and attitudes remain primitive.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
And as Anderson shows us in "Tiger By The Tail," that can be disastrous for societies trying to IMMEDIATELY jump from barbarism to a high tech level.
Sean
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