(ii) Purchase.
(iii) Exchange.
(iv) Conquest of primitives or of weaker powers.
The Empire controls a sphere 400 light-years across and has contact with several thousand systems whereas the Domain of Ythri is about 80 light-years across and has contact with just 250. This makes the Domain more compact and a worthy opponent of Greater Terra, Tabitha thinks.
Hasty breakfast post. Unfortunately, I must go out to participate in a conflict local to these islands.
Fair winds forever.
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And the future Founder of the Empire, Manuel Argos, said in "The Star Plunderer" that he wanted the Empire to expand only far enough that it could defend itself against all comers. And that was eventually fixed as a sphere 400 light years in extent. There was no desire to nurse impossible ambitions of conquering the entire galaxy (that was to be Merseia's hope).
And there was no desire by the Empire in THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND to conquer the entire Domain of Ythri. When Empire and Domain eventually bumped up against each other, there were disputes and clashes. Terra eventually decided that if the Domain would not willingly make concessions to the Empire, it would be forced to do so. But, again, only to a limited degree, to adjust the border in Terra's favor.
Ad astra! Sean
Empires can be vast and have enormous resources; but often they have trouble mobilizing as large a -proportion- of their resources as smaller, tighter-knit polities. Most of their population is less committed to it and its institutions than the core supporters, and are going along because it offers stability and order and doesn't demand too much of them.
The strength of the Western nation-state as a political form is that it can combine large size and population with the tight-knit loyalties of tribes and city-states: its mythology makes it the 'family writ large', and its citizens will work and fight for it accordingly.
Rome because a universal empire, but the reason it was the winner in the post-Alexandrian bunfight was that it started off as a nation -- it had city-state institutions originally, but they could be and were expanded to incorporate larger and larger groups, eventually nearly everyone in Italy -- a population of millions that identified very strongly indeed with the Roman state.
This gave it a resilience, a depth of support, that no rival could match.
After Hannibal won the battle of Cannae, when 50,000 Roman soldiers lay dead on the field (probably at least 5% of the adult male Roman citizens and quite possibly over 10%) it didn't even occur to the Romans to give up or ask for terms.
They just raised more men -- and could find fresh legions who believed in Rome and were willing to fight to the death for it.
Carthage couldn't match that; nor could any of the Hellenistic kingdoms.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I don't object to your argument here. I agree Rome had a strength and resilience its great rival Carthage lacked. Abd which none of the Hellenistic kingdoms could muster.
But, I don't think the Domain of Ythri could fairly be described as tightly knit. The very fact the Ythrians were a FLYING race militates against any of their societies generating the kind of deep loyalty Rome had.
Oddly enough, I think it took the foundation of Avalon as a BIRACIAL colony before that kind of fierce loyalty to anything bigger than the family or choth could be truly grasped by Ythrians. Because of the presence of HUMANS on the same planet, because humans, sometimes anyway, could feel strong loyalty to things bigger than the family, clan, tribe, choth, etc. Ideas which would eventually leave their marks on Avalonian Ythrians. That would explain why both kinds of Avalonians fought so hard to remain a part of the Domain.
Ad astra! Sean
Now we need global unity. We need to help each other against floods, fires and droughts. What religions have said, politics needs to do.
Kaor, Paul!
And that's not going to happen. NO one is going to feel a fierce, deep hostility to merely a flood, fire, or drought! Those are merely accidents of nature, to be coped with either wisely or foolishly.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think that they are being caused by human activity.
Paul.
Paul: that's irrelevant to the emotional dynamic.
People in an immediate area may cooperate strongly to fight a natural disaster, but that requires a preexisting system of mutual commitment; the way New Orleans reacted to the great hurricane is an example of what can happen when you -don't- have that sort of bond.
What mainly prompts human social solidarity is a sense of shared identity -versus- some other group of humans. This is natural because we evolved full intelligence to deal with other human beings, not our natural environment.
We're far more intelligent than we need to be to grub roots and hunt antelope.
But the main threat to the reproductive success of a human band was its other human neighbors, and this circumstance endured for hundreds of thousands of years, beside which all the history of the world since the invention of agriculture is an eyeblink, and that of civilization even less.
Note human tribal naming customs, which are startlingly uniform. Tribes call themselves "the people" (as opposed to "you human-looking animals"), or "the friends/allies" (as opposed to "you enemies").
Hence Cymry and Lakota meaning exactly the same thing -- friends/allies. Conversely, other people's names for the same group mean things like "the slaves" (which is what "Welsh" originally meant) or "the snakes" (which is what "Sioux" originally meant.)
Kaor, Paul!
And Mr. Stirling has ably explained why I cannot agree with you on this point. As the catastrophe in New Orleans showed, people who lack a strong sense of shared identity and mutual commitment simply WON'T cope well when a disaster strikes.
Ad astra! Sean
Both,
But there is a movement to get us to see humanity as our tribe and Earth as our common home. Won't necessarily succeed, of course. Some religious moralities were a first step. Good Samaritan etc.
Paul.
Paul: you need an enemy to have a tribe; the "other" is essential to the formation of "us".
And while humans -can- see nonhuman things as enemies in that sense, it's a stretch -- unnatural, and hence unstable and weak.
Note that climate campaigners actually direct most of their animosity -towards human enemies-.
That's what really gets the juices flowing.
If you form an anti-tribal group, pretty soon they're defining themselves as the Good Righteous Anti-Tribal tribe... as opposed to those evil stinking BADWRONG TRIBALS!
It's like trying to outrun your own sweat.
Mr Stirling,
I see your point. I still think One World is possible but there are current conflicts to end first. For example, Chinese workers have the power, I believe, to challenge the Chinese government. But, right now, we are in the middle of all these conflicts, not anywhere near to ending them. But it looks like a matter of survival to change global priorities somehow as a matter of urgency. (it would be good if I was wrong about that.)
Paul.
Paul: in a fight between human nature and urgent necessity, my money would be on human nature... 8-).
A universal state might address those problems, but a universal state is impossible without war and conquest.
And probably that type of war is no longer technically possible because of nuclear weapons, which make the game "not worth the candle" -- probably since about the time I was born, in the 1950's, or at most as late as 1962. If WW3 had occurred then or earlier, we might well be living in a global state or at least a global hegemony by now.
After that, it became too demonstrably dangerous even for a very aggressive state to risk, even for the greatest of prizes.
That's why there hasn't been a general war between Great Powers in the last 75 years, an unprecedented length of time.
-Other- forms of war, yes; not that one. MAD paralyzes the process of Great Power competition for dominance; it demonstrates how technology can change the basic parameters of human interaction.
Kaor, Paul!
And Mr. Stirling has ably why I still disagree with you. Nuclear weapons has PREVENTED some would be Napoleon from conquering and unifying the world. The most you or we can hope for is some kind of Solar Commonwealth arising as it had in Anderson's Technic series, around AD 2100.
Rogue nations like Iran, North Korea, or terrorists might still use nukes, but not for anything as rational as global conquest. Because they can't!
Ad astra! Sean
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