Heinlein's Future History;
Heinlein's Between Planets;
Anderson's Psychotechnic History;
James Blish and Robert Lowndes' The Duplicated Man.
The Martian colony declares independence in:
Heinlein's Future History;
Heinlein's Red Planet;
maybe in Anderson's "War-Maid of Mars"? (I don't remember exactly);
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy.
The lunar colony declares independence in Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.
The Asteroid Belt declares independence in Larry Niven's Known Space future history.
Comparative future historical studies could become a major sub-discipline in sf scholarship.
6 comments:
There's a rule of thumb that if a round trip takes six months or more, political ties are hard to maintain.
Neat.
The Spanish Empire was a fairly extreme example -- the Philippines, for example, were almost exactly on the other side of the world from Spain (though they were actually governed more from New Spain, ie., Mexico) and many parts of Latin America were so remote that it was only possible to "govern" them by keeping things rather theoretical and leaving the local hacendados to run affairs as they pleased, while they in turn gravely paid formal obeisance to Madrid.
There was a Spanish-American saying of orders from Europe: "This decree must of course be obeyed... but do not carry it out."
An order took months to arrive, then you waited a year and asked for clarification, then that took months to get to Spain and more months to wend its way through the bureaucracy, then the clarification arrived and you waited a year and requested a clarification of the clarification...
I'm writing this in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was so remote that the local Spanish-Mexican settlers actually hunted buffalo with lances and traded the skins -to Indian tribes- in return for things like firearms and gunpowder (which the Commanche and others got from the French traders far to the east).
Fighting with the local tribes was as likely to be done with lances by horsemen dressed in boiled-leather armor as it was with guns. The agricultural pueblo tribes put up with the Spanish (usually) for the sake of protection against raiding nomads like the Apache(*).
The "palace" of the local provincial governor is an adobe (mud-brick) building, fairly large but one-story; it had the only glass windows in the territory for a long time, but the "chandelier" in the parlor was two pieces of stick tied together with rawhide, and the doors were 4ft tall, the better to defend against Apache raiders.
An archaeologist friend of mine remarked to me once that knapped stone tools are quite commonly found on Spanish Colonial sites here -- metal was so expensive that chipped flint or obsidian was often substituted for ordinary day-to-day purposes. There was supposed to be a trade caravan from further south in Mexico annually, but due to disturbances and nomad raiders gaps of 2 or 3 years were common.
This was the sort of place you sent "embarrassing Cousin Diego" after that scandal with the nun...
The Spanish Empire lasted as long as it did more because the local criollo (American-born Spanish) elites wanted it to do so than because of anything Spain could do.
When the Bourbon centralizing reforms of the late 18th century alienated the local bigwigs, and then the Napoleonic invasion of Spain removed the legitimate King, the bonds snapped and Spain was helpless to coerce obedience.
(*) the Apache call themselves 'Dinneh', which means "The People" (as opposed to all you other non-people). Apache is a Zuni (Pueblo) word, and it means "The Enemy".
Dear Mr. Stirling,
Very interesting comments! The only caveat I would make being that it still took years of civil war between those who wanted independence and Loyalists remaining faithful to the Crown before the former won. Loyalty to Spain was not ENTIRELY nominal or fictional.
Sean
"There's a rule of thumb that if a round trip takes six months or more, political ties are hard to maintain."
Any guesses on what will happen to that rule of thumb when travel takes months but communication takes hours at most? Which is the situation for settlements on different planets. That will be a new situation in human experience.
Kaor, Jim!
I don't know, but it would be interesting to find out. I think communicating with a Mars colony via radio would be a lot quicker than traveling in person to or from "Barsoom." That would give more time for both places to argue about laws and decrees from Earth.
Ad astra! Sean
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