"'I have no plans to ever return to the U.S. I'm seriously considering renouncing my citizenship and becoming a full-fledged Antiguan, and if I never set foot on U.S. soil again, I'll die a happy man...
"'The Feds nailed me once and almost ruined my life; it's not going to happen again. I'm lucky in that I'm getting a second chance, and for some strange reason I'm a bit hesitant to subject myself to your jurisdiction again.'"
-John Grisham, The Racketeer (London, 2018), CHAPTER 42, p. 364.
Different though the genres are, Grisham's hero reminds me of Anderson's Rinnaldir saying that the Oort Cloud is too close and Blish's former Okies congratulating themselves that their newly colonized Greater Magellanic Cloud is receding from the Milky Way.
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I can't agree with Grisham's scenario because Antigua is a very small, very weak nation. If someone settles or takes refuge there from a powerful nation whose leaders were his enemies, my view is his chances would be poor. That powerful nation, whichever it was, could put heavy pressure and sanctions (including behind the scene threats or even offers of bribes) on Antigua to turn over or expel that refugee. The refugee's enemies might even order a commando raid to seize or kill him if Antigua was too slow to yield.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
So what he really needs is for Antigua to be receding from the US at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Either that, or more prosaically, if this had been 100 years ago, such a person could still find places on Earth where, if he wished, he could still disappear.
Ad astra! Sean
You can still disappear, it's just harder and more expensive.
Or you could go live somewhere like Nicaragua, which is hostile to the US -- but governments change, and anyway Nicaragua... living there is its own punishment.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It's harder and more expensive to disappear because it's so much more difficult to escape the notice of the Bureaucratic State.
Ha!!! Living in a despotism like that of Nicaragua would indeed be punishment! Your enemies would probably WANT you to stay there.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: there have always been despotisms, but as Poul pointed out vs. a vs. the Roman Empire, its capacities to track and control people were rather limited compared to a modern state in many respects.
The Empire, even at its height, never had more than about 40,000 full-time civil servants, and about 500,000 soldiers, in a population of around 100-120 million (current estimates for the Empire's population are higher than older ones).
That was 40K bureaucrats for a realm that encompassed over 1/4 of the entire human race.
Just getting accurate reports from the provinces was a continual pain in the arse for the central government -- detecting whether intermediate layers were slanting them deliberately was always a severe risk, just to name one major problem.
That's why good emperors moved around a lot when they had the time; it was the best way to get some sort of real idea of what was going on.
And they didn't have paper, or printing, or good filing systems, or double-entry bookkeeping, or identity documents as we understand it, or statistical surveys, or anything like accurate maps.
Note that I haven't listed anything really modern, like telegraphs or mechanical transport -- just stuff the Romans -could- have done if they'd thought of it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I remember that, about Poul Anderson commenting on the limited means available to the Roman Empire for controlling and tracking people. In the fourth volume of THE KING OF YS: THE DOG AND THE WOLF, as Gratillonius fretted about how oppressive the Empire was. I think I remember thinking to myself: "If you want REAL tyranny, Tribune, just try living in Nazi Germany, the USSR, or Maoist China!"
Biased and slanted reports from one's subordinates has always been a problem for every gov't. And I have read of how widely some Emperors, such as Hadrian, traveled around the Empire.
Given all the difficulties you listed on how hard it was for the Romans to administer their Empire, it's amazing how well they still managed doing that. If more of their archives had survived we would have a better idea of how they governed.
Ad astra! Sean
A kind of paper was available to the Romans, papyrus. I think that was a big export from Egypt. But I see what you mean. And parchment was far too costly for anything but the most cherished books.
Sean: the Empire, even in its later phases, was generally very decentralized. It's been described as a federation of city-states with a monarchy plastered on top, and that's fairly accurate.
Note that when they conquered a non-urban culture like Britannia, the first thing they did was divided it into city-territories, with a large town/small city in Roman style in the center, where the tribal elites and Roman settlers would come together in Roman/Classical style, with a basilica and courts and schools and so forth. Villa-style country houses closely linked to roads, towns and markets followed.
Recent survey and environmental archaeology (using things like fieldwalking and ice-core samples) show that incorporation into the Roman Empire in backward areas meant a massive increase in population, and an even more massive one in urbanization (from a very low to 'zero' base, admittedly), in large-scale, long-distance trade, monetization, and in the absorption of Classical literary culture.
Often the level of development wasn't equalled until over a thousand years later -- Britain probably hit the same population as Britannia in the 1500's, parts of Europe in the 1600's, and many areas not until the 19th century or later.
One remarkable thing about the Empire was how -uniform- it became, particularly on the upper side of the social scale. You could go from what's now Yorkshire to what's now Iraq, and all the gentlefolk you meant would be dressing pretty much the same, using the same two official languages, reading the same books, making the same cultural allusions in their conversations and letters, and living in the same sort of houses (with underfloor heating in the colder places).
There's been nothing like it since.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, however harsh the initial conquests were, Roman rule brought enormous advances in many, many ways to the peoples of the Empire. Including the phenomenon you described above of a vastly widespread common culture and way of life.
Some people think the US, and before that, the British Empire, spread an analogously widespread global culture. What some call disparagingly the Coco Colaization of the world!
Ad astra! Sean
Yes, and one of the benefits is that it lets people communicate and deal with each other on the basis of shared assumptions, which smooths things out no end.
Poul deals with this rather well in THE YEAR OF THE RANSOM.
When the rogue Conquistador steals a time machine, he naturally enough tries to get advanced weapons from the future -- he's a soldier, after all.
But note that he doesn't just aim at wealth and power for himself, though he's got no objection to that!
He's afire to liberate the Holy Sepulcher from the Saracens and crush heresy, too.
To an early 16th century Spanish hidalgo, that's entirely natural. That's the sort of cultural gap that often makes it difficult to deal with people (except by the "universal language" of killing them, of course).
Nowadays, Europeans see Japanese not as heathens to be converted or as infidels to be fought but as economic competitors. What will come next?
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I agree with what you said about how a common world wide Anglo/American culture tends to make it much easier for people to deal with each other. From things like the widespread use of English and the popularity of Tolkien's Middle Earth and the Harry Potter books.
Some of the things I remember about "The Year of the Ransom" was of how deeply impressed Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly were by Don Luis Castelar wits and abilities. With Manse thinking seriously of offering Castelar a job with the Patrol!
Quite frankly, I have zero use for Islam, and like the download of Guthrie in one of the HARVEST OF STARS books, I consider Mohammed one of the worst disasters to happen to the human race.
Paul: What has become LESS unlikely is how, because of "Josip's" catastrophic bungling, Kim Jong Un will be more tempted than not to fire nukes at Japan or South Korea!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I meant what will be the next longer term change of perspectives, not what is a likely upcoming event!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Understood. But this has been a very bad year in many ways. And the never ending bungling of the current leaders in Washington, DC increases my fears for the future. Bungling which the enemies of the US are EAGERLY noting.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment