Historical Descriptions

Descriptions of historical periods or events are bound to differ historically. The Great War had to become the First World War after there had been a Second and it becomes Terran Planetary War Phase One later in Robert Heinlein's Future History - although, having said that, I do not accept Time Enough For Love as an authentic volume of the Future History.

The event that SM Stirling's Montivallans (Americans) call "the Change," his Capricornians (Australians) call "the Blackout" and his temporally displaced Nantucketers call "the Event." These three populations are too widely separated in space and time for them to have developed a common terminology.

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, Daven Laure of the Commonalty refers in a single sentence to no less than four earlier periods:

"'Sir, the League, the troubles, the Empire, its fall, the Long Night...every such thing - behind us. In space and time alike. The people of the Commonalty don't get into wars.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 709-794 at p. 722.

"In space and time alike." The Commonalty is not even in the same place as those earlier societies but in another spiral arm. In fact, as Laure speaks, he is on the planet Serieve near the northern verge of its spiral arm. The periods to which Laure refers can be described in greater detail as follows:

the Polesotechnic League was an economic organization whereas the corresponding political organization was the Solar Commonwealth but perhaps the League is better remembered because it transcended planetary governments and operated on an interstellar scale;

the Time of Troubles followed the dissolution of the League and the fall of the Commonwealth;

the Terran Empire emerged from the Troubles;

"The Long Night follows the Fall of the Terran Empire. War, piracy, economic collapse, and isolation devastate countless worlds."
-Sandra Miesel, "Chronology of Technic Civilization" IN Flandry's Legacy, pp. 795-804 AT p. 803.

In Laure's time, there are human civilizations in two or three spiral arms and the Commonalty is an interstellar service organization in one of the arms. I do not think that Laure would summarize previous periods as League, troubles, Empire and Long Night but this is a convenient shorthand for Anderson to inform his readers as to which future history "Starfog" is set in.

A phrase is repeated almost word for word by several Anderson characters, even the alien Rax:

"'So many, many stars...a hundred billion in this one lost lonely dust-mote of a galaxy...and we on the edge, remote in a spiral arm where they thin toward emptiness...what do we know, what can we master?'"
-Poul Anderson, A Circus Of Hells IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 193-365 AT Chapter Three, p. 217.

In "Starfog," this has become:

"...so vast is the galaxy - these two or three spiral arms, a part of which our race has to date thinly occupied..." (p. 718)