"The Polesotechnic League exists merely because - given hyperdrive and gravity control - interstellar freight costs less for numberless planetary products than manufacture at home would cost." (p. 278)
This is a succinct summary of the premise of the Polesotechnic League series. Obviously, endless stories could have been set against that background. I suggest some slight revisions to The Technic Civilization Saga, Volumes I and II.
(i) Re-entitle them Rise Of The Polesotechnic League and Decline Of The Polesotechnic League. This would fit with the existing title of Volume III which is Rise Of The Terran Empire.
(ii) The introduction to "Hiding Place," signed "Le Matelot," was first published not with that story in Analog but in Trader To The Stars where it introduced the entire collection, not just the opening story. "Le Matelot" really introduces the entire Polesotechnic League period of the Technic History and therefore should be moved forward in Volume I to before "Margin of Profit," before Hloch's introduction to that story.
(iii) Hloch's introduction to "Esau" states that, at the time of the story, League philosophy and practice were becoming archaic or even obsolete. Therefore, maybe move the last two stories in Volume I, "Esau" and "Hiding Place," to Volume II? In fact, I think, only the last three installments in Volume II show problems within the League. They are preceded by Satan's World which shows an external threat to Technic civilization.
10 comments:
One of the few problems I have with the Technic future history is that the League's deterioration seems implausibly swift.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
As regards your point (1), I would point out we don't actually have any stories set in the early Polesotechnic League, say around AD 2200. The stories we have were all set during the lifespan of Nicholas van Rijn, at a time when the League began to decay during his sixties.
Mr. Stirling: The difficulty you pointed out might be explained by recalling the League was not a state, as was the Solar Commonwealth or the Grand Duchy of Hermes. So it would lacked the strengths a state can have. It began simply as a mutual assistance consortium of private companies.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: so did the Hanseatic League. There are plenty of planetary governments -run- by the League by the time we see it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I can see, by the late League period, some worlds becoming banana planets de facto controlled by some of the more powerful member companies, esp. the Seven in Space. But that's still not the same as a company claiming outright sovereignty and becoming an actual state. Even the East India Company, which conquered or dominated India, was still ultimately subordinate to the British Crown and parliament.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: though the Directors in London were continually apprehensive about being shoved out of the way by the men on the spot. And there were careful policies to prevent Company servants, however much pelf they piled up for themselves personally, from buying up landed property in India.
The Directors were afraid that if they did that, eventually they'd put down roots and just write a final SOD YOU to the said Directors, and declare themselves Maharajas and such.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That I had not known, about the East India Company directors working hard to prevent their agents from buying land in India. And I can see how, if they had become landowners, they might soon start getting ambitions of becoming rajahs and maharajahs!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the Mughal Empire had started with an invasion from the northwest, beginning in what's now Central Asia.
Babur the Conqueror came from the Fergana Valley and if you read his autobiography you'll see he hated India -- too hot, too muggy, no decent grapes or apples, meat rotting overnight, bugs, diseases. Very much like many English people's reaction to the place.
Over generations, his descendants and his followers' and the many who followed them became Indianized. The Mughal Empire's formal administrative language was Persian, for instance, but by the 18th century it's elite actually spoke Urdu, a form of Hindi.
Much of the social life of the British Raj was a conscious or unconscious attempt to avoid Indianization.
The ironclad custom of sending children "home" to be educated from an early age (usually 6-8) for instance -- Kipling wrote movingly of his sense of alienation, exile and unhappiness when his parents did this.
Formally, it was a health measure, but there are plenty of places in India that have healthy climates for Europeans.
There was nothing preventing the British in India from setting up good schools in Simla and Darjeeling and the Nigrili Hills.
If you look at it carefully, what they were really doing was trying to prevent their children from catching "India", not cholera.
Three waves of invasion of India:
Aryans brought Vedism;
Muslims brought Islam;
Brits brought Christianity -
- except that Christianity was already from Jesuit missionaries and, before that, in Apostolic succession from St. Thomas.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: From what I read about the climate of India, at least in the hot parts of the year, I can sure see why Babur hated it! Nearly intolerable for people from the cooler, northerly temperate zone of Earth.
It might have been better if the British had not resisted some small degree of "Indianization" by founding schools and colleges in those parts of India, such as the places you listed, that they found comfortable. Doing so might have enabled the Raj to last longer.
Paul: And there were also the Parsees, Zoroastrians in India descended from exiles and refugees fleeing the Muslim conquest of Iran.
Ad astra! Sean
Yes, I recall those autobiographical stories Kipling wrote of how he had been sent "home," far too soon, IMO. Age 14 would have been a better time for British in India to send children home for education. Older, stronger, better able to adapt to separation from all they had previously known. Many would have probably have found it an adventure, not an ordeal!
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