In my childhood, I read a comic strip about the Cavalier hero, Claude Duval, fighting evil Roundheads whereas, in my teens, I read a series of novels about the Roundhead hero, Nicholas Pym, fighting evil Cavaliers. The film, Dancing With Wolves, shows Native Americans as good and "white men" as bad. Such reversals are liberating. The reader must mentally turn through 180 degrees.
In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, Dominic Flandry defends the Terran Empire against the Merseian Roidhunate but:
there is a thoroughly evil Terrestrial Governor;
Dennitzan Merseians do not want the Roidhun;
we support the Avalonians, Freeholders and Braeans against the Empire although not the Nyanzan rebels because they are Merseian dupes;
Flandry opposes usurpation but winds up working for a successful usurper (what else can he do?).
Such is history.
(Some books are out of print and not available second hand. I want to reread Without Trumpet Or Drum for its quotation from Cromwell's Articles of War. From memory: "Whosoever shall come from the enemy without trumpet or drum, in a camp or a citadel...after the customs of war, shall be hanged up as a spy." These books have an element of sf: repeating rifles are invented and electricity is discovered in the seventeenth century but these secrets are lost...)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
The case of Freehold in "Outpost of Empire" is more ambiguous because I don't consider either side in the conflict on the planet, the Seven Cities, or the Outbackers, to have more right or justice on their side than the other.
I agree the Cities erred in applying for Freehold to be annexed by the Empire without taking proper heed of the Outbackers. I also that, as a PLANET, Freehold was not really suitable for the kind of urbanized, industrial oriented culture and economy the Cities represented. But, the Outbackers also erred in being for centuries so indifferent to the Cities that the latter knew little about the former. Permanent ongoing contact between the two cultures would have affected both, leading perhaps to a kind of compromise wherein both could have co-existed on Freehold. That would have been much more preferable to what the Outbackers did in violently destroying the Cities.
At least Hans Molitor was a reluctant usurper who accepted being unlawfully being proclaimed Emperor only after the legitimate order or succession had irretrievably collapsed soon after Josip died. I'm sure both he and Flandry would have preferred that the Wang dynasty had not fallen. Also, Dominic Flandry came to LIKE old Hans, who was at least able and well meaning.
The quote from Cromwell's "Articles of War" interested me as an example of how the laws and customs of war were gelling and taking shape. Here, it referred to how messengers and envoys from opposing armies should make contact with each other. What Cromwell wrote about was apparently the custom with European armies.
And these laws and customs of war reached their most advanced and widely accepted form in real history with the Geneva Conventions. And, in Anderson's Technic history these laws/customs were adopted by civilized interstellar powers in the Covenant of Alfzar (along with the Vienna Convention on the laws and customs of diplomacy). With suitable modifications due to changes in technology, of course.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment