Making Connections

("The Chapter Ends" was published in Dynamic Science Fiction. Some other post images have similarly obscure explanations.)

Poul Anderson's Technic History features a Terran Empire ruled from Archopolis whereas both his "The Star Plunderer" and his "The Chapter Ends" refer to a First Empire ruled from Sol City. However, "The Star Plunderer" became a pivotal story in the Technic History whereas "The Chapter Ends" became the culmination of the Psychotechnic History.
-copied from here but see also the combox discussion.

"'Read your history sometime. When the Commonwealth broke up in civil wars two hundred years ago it was hell between the stars. Half savage peoples who never should have left their planets had learned how to build spaceships and were going out to raid and conquer. A dozen would-be overlords scorched whole worlds with their battles.'"
-"Sargasso of Lost Starships," p. 384.

This fits with unscrupulous Polesotechnic League merchants selling spaceships and nuclear weapons to barbarians. See Polesotechnic Problems.

"'You can't have anarchy on an interstellar scale. Too many people suffer. Old Manuel I had the guts to proclaim himself Emperor of Sol - no pretty euphemisms for him, an empire was needed and an empire was what he built. He kicked the barbarians out of the Solar System and went on to conquer their home territories and civilize them.'" (ibid.)

That is exactly what Manuel Argos said that he would do in "The Star Plunderer."

"That meant he had to subjugate stars closer to home, to protect his lines of communication. This led to further trouble elsewhere. Oh, yes, a lot of it was greed, but the planets which were conquered for their wealth would have been sucked in anyway by sheer economics. The second Argolid carried on, and now his son, Manuel II, is finishing the job. We've very nearly attained what we must have - an empire large enough to be socio-economically self-sufficient and defend itself against all comers, of which there are many, without being too large for control.'" (pp. 384-385)

That paves the way for the Terran Empire as we see it in The People Of The Wind and in the Dominic Flandry series. In Flandry's time, the Empire is no longer growing but is reluctantly resisting the Merseian Roidhunate which is.

"'You should visit the inner Empire sometime, Donovan, and see how many social evils it's been possible to wipe out because of security and central power.'" (p. 385)

I would like to read a novel set in the inner Empire. A series about a man going outside the Empire to defend it does not tell us much about conditions inside the Empire itself.

"'But we need this sector to defend our Sagittarian flank so we're taking it. Fifty years from now you'll be glad we did.'" (ibid.)

This sounds like the Empire waging war with Ythri to readjust the border in The People Of The Wind.

The speaker derides the defeated rulers of Ansa:

"'What did your precious Families do but hunt and loaf and throw big parties? Maybe they did fulfill a magisterial function - so what? Any elected yut could do the same in that simple a society.'" (p. 384)

The families who had founded the domains on Hermes in Mirkheim were more productive.

"'But rights and wrongs aside, the Empire had to annex Ansa, and when you wouldn't come in peaceably you had to be dragged in.'" (ibid.)

Other forcibly annexed planets were Aeneas and Brae.