"ONCE WE HAD AN EMPIRE. NOW WE HAVE A SLUM."
Would you like to live in an Empire? I wouldn't, although the country in which I do live retains imperial trappings like an annual honor called "Order of the British Empire."
However, a civilization of any kind is preferable to savagery or cannibalism. A franchise limited to male property owners is preferable to no franchise for anyone, especially since it immediately raises the issues of extending the franchise and votes for women. Medicine so expensive that the majority cannot afford it is preferable to no medicine, especially since...etc. An empire can be founded by imposing an order that is preferable to the preceding chaos.
Thus, in Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, Manuel I founded the Terran Empire in order to end the barbarism of the Time of Troubles. Thus also, in SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers, Victoria I founded the Second British Empire in response to the physical devastation caused by the Fall. Both Empires are influenced by the populations that they control.
Because the Terran Empire is interstellar, many extrasolar planets are incorporated into Greater Terra and many individual nonhuman beings gain full citizenship. Because the Second British Empire is in India and ruled from Delhi:
in 2025, the eldest son and daughter of the King-Emperor and Queen-Empress are called Charles and Sita;
the Raj celebrates Hindu festivals;
"...the modern upper-caste Angrezi belief [is] that God had ten thousand faces, all true, and that any road truly followed led to the Unknowable at last..."
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), p. 132.
Thus, Hindu philosophy has supplanted Christian theology. (Krishna in the Gita: "...bow to the countless gods that are only my million faces." 9.23)
The Second British Empire deserves to be the setting of a future history, not just a single novel.
7 comments:
Hi, Paul!
I'm not as "hung up" on mere forms of government as some people are. To me, what matters is that the state, whatever form it has, respects the rights of the people and accepts limitations on its powers and what it can wisely do. And since we see both the Angrezi Raj and the Terran Empire doing so, then I would have no hesitation accepting them. Being merely human, alas, I also know they will be imperfect and be marred by cases of abuse.
And we see a prominent character from France Outre Mer refusing or rejecting the belief of the Angrezi upper caste "... that God had ten fhousand faces, all true, and that any road truly followed led to the Uknowable at last..." But that is because Catholic Christianity rejects syncretism and polytheism of any kind.
I agree, I wish S.M. Stirling had written one or two more books set in the timeline of THE PESHAWAR LANCERS. I think I remember reading of him saying he had not done this because he had said everything he had wanted to say in that book. However, he did write a short story set earlier in that milieu called "Shikari in Galveston."
Sean
"matters is that the state, whatever form it has, respects the rights of the people"
& if some subset of the people lacks the right to vote, how long will the state respect any other rights of that subset?
Why else would the white supremacists in the southern US have gone to such lengths for so long to suppress the right of black people to vote?
I don't expect non-democracies to respect the rights of people living under those governments.
Kaor, Jim!
And I disagree with you, as I think Anderson would, as this bit from "Brave To Be A King" shows:
"I boned up on the facts before hopping here," said Everard through
clenched jaws. "Stop kidding yourself." We're prejudiced against the
Persians because at one time they were the enemies of the Greeks, and we
happen to get some of the more conspicuous features of our culture from
Hellenic sources. But the Persians are at least as important!"
"You've watched it happen. Sure, they're pretty brutal by your
standards: the whole era is, including the Greeks. And they're not
democratic, but you can't blame them for not making a European
invention outside their whole mental horizon. What counts is this:
"Persia was the first conquering power which made an effort to
respect and conciliate the people it took over; which obeyed its own
laws; which pacified enough territory to open steady contact with the
Far East; which created a viable world religion, Zoroastrianism, not
limited to any one race or locality" [pages 83-84 of THE TIME PATROL].
Or I could cite late Tsarist Russia, after the October Manifest and Constitution of 1905-06, which set Russia on the path to becoming a constitutional monarchy with most of the democratic trappings you could wish for. Given time, a little luck AND no WW I or Lenin, that might have happened!
So, I still refuse to get hung up on mere forms, nor do I think abuses at one time or place inevitably and forever discredits a nation. After all, the segregationalism of the southern US was dismantled, however slowly and awkwardly.
Ad astra! Sean
Yes, non-democracies can vary greatly in how well they treat the lower classes. I would certainly prefer to live under the Persian Empire than under the Assyrian. Still living in a democracy in which I have a vote is better than any other governmental form yet tried.
Kaor, Jim!
MY view is there will never be a perfect gov't, in whatever form. Democracy works only if the laws, customs, institutions, ideas, etc., necessary for it to work EXISTS. And that usually takes generations or centuries to come about.
Don't make the "better" the enemy of the "perfect."
Ad astra! Sean
Did I imply democracy is perfect?
I tend to agree with Churchill's quip
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for everything else that has been tried from time to time"
As I have noted in earlier comments most (all?) countries that are now reasonably stable democracies went through at least one bloody failed attempt before getting it reasonably right.
Kaor, Jim!
No, not you, but I do have in mind how so many SEEM to think democracy is easy to set up.
Ad astra! Sean
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