I argue that Poul Anderson intends us to see Ekrem Saracoglu, Imperial Governor of Sector Pacis, not as honorable but as oily and self-serving.
When he entertains the Admiral's daughter, Luisa:
"Inwardly, he grinned at his own performance... acting the role of a boy who acted the role of a homme du monde!" (III, p. 472)
He has designs on Luisa and his entire performance is dishonest, the exact opposite of Nicholas van Rijn's straightforward exuberance.
In Chapter XII, when he again entertains Luisa, he has dismissed two expensive mistresses from his palace and hopes that Luisa has heard and realized that this is on her account. When he says that the Admiral's job is done:
"He sighed, trusting it wasn't too theatrically. 'Mine, of course, will get rougher.'" (XII, p. 578)
Van Rijn's theatricality is an entertaining performance whereas Saracoglu's is a calculated deception.
When Luisa points out that, as a result of the war, Sector Pacis will expand and its governor will probably be elevated, eventually even becoming a Lord Advisor, he responds:
"'One is permitted to daydream.'" (p. 579)
In other words, yes, he has been aiming at that all along. Then she accuses him of promoting the war to further his career. He claims that knowing that the war would be good for him made it harder to support war!
"'I thought I thought this border rectification would be for the best... Ought I to lay down this work in order that my conscience may feel smug? Am I wicked to enjoy the work?'" (p. 580)
So diplomats, and traders like van Rijn, who find ways to avoid war are making their consciences feel smug? OK. That is enough from smug Saracoglu.
Luisa tells us that her fiancee was killed in:
"'Preventive action, it was called - putting down some tribes that had refused to follow the 'advice' of an Imperial resident...'" (ibid.)
So that kind of action was going on long before Brae.
12 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't entirely agree with your comments about Governor Saracoglu. I never got that nearly totally negative of him from the times I've read THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND.
As for the "preventive action" in which Luisa's fiancee was killed, I don't think all such actions would be unjustifiable. I would need to know more about the facts of that case and what exactly was the "advice" of the Imperial resident.
ALL expanding powers had had blood on their hands, some vastly more so than others: Rome, the US, the UK, France, China, Russia/USSR, etc. Nor do I expect that to change in the future. About the best that can be done is to limit the bloodletting.
Sean
Sean,
We have disagreed about Saracoglu before which is why I tried to state my case more carefully here but, if you reread those passages and still think otherwise, then there is little more to be said!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I also recall Governor Saracoglu agreeing that, yes, evil had been done by the Empire, but that he would work for reforms and corrections of such abuses.
I also thought of the opening pages of Stirling's THE PESHAWAR LANCERS, in which we see an army of the Angrezi Raj returning from a punitive expedition to Afghanistan. That "preventive action" had been provoked by Afghan raids over the borders into the Raj. Was the Delhi gov't supposed to do nothing to prevent such raids because men would inevitably die fighting the wild tribes?
So, what I see are men like Saracoglu having MIXED motives, some good, some bad, for what they do. And I don't think all "preventive actions" will be unjustifiable.
Sean
Government necessarily involves violence and war; these are always regrettable, but sometimes necessary -- quite often, in fact. As Poul points out, the State is the entity which claims a monopoly on violence; the alternative to that is the -lex talonis-, blood-feuds, and a situation in which you have to be realistically afraid of being shot in the back on the way to the outhouse.
A government that allows itself to be defied on its own territory is inviting civil war and secessionism; it would be irresponsible not to punish such actions. That means death.
If Scaragoglu genuinely believes the action against Ythri is necessary, then the fact that his career will benefit from it is irrelevant; he'd be a bad man if he was pushing it simply to advance his own position and -didn't- believe it was necessary, but why shouldn't he be rewarded for being right?
2 issues here:
the rights and wrongs of the war;
Saracoglu.
I do think that Anderson intends us to see Saracoglu as unpleasant but, of course, other readers may see this differently.
I agree that any state must use force against anyone else using violence within its territory.
There have been problem families in Lancaster -
Magistrate: Smith, did you deliberately damage Jones' car?
Smith: Yes, because he smashed my window!
Paul.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: Yet again you have admirably and thoroughly elucidated what I had been trying to say! I agree with your comments. Yes, the state, any state, HAS to claim that monopoly on force, the only other alternatives being anarchy, civil wars, blood feuds, etc.
And I never thought Governor Saracoglu an unpleasant man in my previous readings of THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND. And I do believe he honestly thought the war against the Domain was necessary.
Paul: and unless quarrels of the kind Smith and Jones were having are somehow mediated and judged by a third party, it WILL escalate to vendettas and blood feuds.
Sean
Paul: it certainly must use force to suppress violence, but that's not all. The State has the right to use force to -compel obedience- and to punish those who defy it.
Eg., if you refuse to pay taxes, eventually armed men will come and cart you off and lock you in an iron cage. Ditto if you obstruct a public thoroughfare or persist in dumping sewage in a waterway. If you resist them they'll beat or kill you.
This is fairly universal, once you get to the State level of organization.
What's not very usual is the modern Western concept that the State has to respect the borders of other States, which are equally legitimate.
Most States are universal by aspiration. The Roman empire didn't have "borders" in our sense; it had lines where its authority faded off into hegemony and the -barbariucum- beyond that. But it recognized no equals (Persia partially excepted) and no rightful limits to its territorial authority.
Likewise, the emperor China was he who "swayed all under heaven"; when Mongol Kha-Khans sent out their armies it was to "subdue rebels".
And Muslim rulers of any pretension never called themselves Sultan or Caliph of this or that patch of territory -- they called themselves Successors of the Prophet and "commanders of the faithful", whose duty it was to unite all Muslims and to subdue all 'kufr'. This is still the position under sharia.
And the Draka describe free Americans as feral serfs! (A nightmare idea that a whole society could live and bring up its children on that assumption.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree with your explanation of how the state, any state, has the RIGHT to use force, when necessary.
I think the Western notion of recognizing as legitimate the borders of other states was one of the results of the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia. The signatories of that treaty, Catholic and Protestant, wearily agreed they would have to live with one another and recognize each other's right to exist.
And many millions of Muslims STILL believe the "successors" of the so called "Prophet" should unite all Muslims and conquer all non-Muslims. And that threat will always remain as long as Islam exists.
Sean
Sean: it's basically a feudal concept, born of the profound localization and decentralization that followed the failure of the Carolingian attempt to reunify the Western Roman Empire.
Western civilization was haunted by the ghost of Rome for a long time, not least because the Catholic Church retained an organization based on that of the late-Roman government, but the actual political culture that emerged in Western Europe after the 9th century grew up from the bottom, and evolved in a situation where neighboring warlords had to respect each other's borders, even if they fought a lot.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I think that makes sense, that the Western notion of even quarrelsome states respecting each other's borders arose after the collapse of the Carolingian Empire. I think it was the idea of the NATION STATE which emerged after the Peace of Westphalia.
Sean
Sean: it was generalized then, although multinational states like Austria-Hungary fought against it for a long time. England was a nation-state from an early period -- the English were acutely nationally conscious in the medieval period, possibly earlier because of the long bitter struggle between the English incomers and the Celts. France was by the end of the Hundred Years War, though it took a long time to sink down below the elite level. The Dutch acquired their national consciousness in the 80 Years War against the Spanish Hapsburgs, though that started off as a religious/autonomist struggle.
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