About a hundred planetary systems;
most pay tribute in raw materials, manufactured goods or specialized labour;
client states start industrialization and planetary unification;
war on the Terran Empire is planned;
plunder yields wealth more quickly and easily than colonization;
Scothan society needs external glory.
Flandry reflects on:
"...that darker longing for submergence of self which humankind had also known, too often, too well." (p. 254)
Self can be submerged or transcended. On Earth, the word "Aryan" (Noble) is used in both contexts.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
REAL people, whether or not human, being what they are or likely to be, submergence is more plausible than "transcendence."
Ad astra! Sean
In fact, Aryan originally meant both "noble" and "free".
As opposed to you base, inferior slave types... 8-).
Oddly enough, and somewhat ironically, in historical context, the original Indo-Iranians, the ur-Aryans, do turn out to be closely related to the Germans.
The Sintashta archaeological culture, and its Androvonovo successor, arose just east of the southern Urals and eventually people from there moved into Iran, Central Asia, and India, taking their languages with them, and then back westward through the steppe zone.
And the Sintashta, ancient DNA analysis shows, were the product of a back-migration from northern Europe through the forest-steppe -- from the (extremely expansionary) Corded Ware culture that arose when Yamnaya Proto-Indo-European speakers moved from the Ukraine, via the Danube Valley, into Germany/Poland and mixed with the Neolithic population there.
The same Corded Ware (or Battle Axe) people colonized Scandinavia and were the forefathers of the Germanics, via the Jastdorf Nordic Bronze Age culture.
Of course, also somewhat ironically, this shows that the Germans and the Slavs are very, very closely related, and both to the Balts.
Note: included in the mishmash of historical and linguistic stuff the Nazis picked up was a belief that the Indo-European expansion started in the North European Plain.
This was why, for a long time, German historical linguists tended to use "Indo-Germanic" rather than "Indo-European".
That mistake wasn't just nationalist back-projection. A lot of the Indo-European expansion -did- result from the expansion of the Corded Ware culture, and it -did- start out in Poland/Germany. Including the Indo-Iranian/Indo-Aryans, ultimately.
However, that was an offshoot of the Yamnaya from the Pontic steppe zone, and even more expansionist than they were, which is saying something.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Interesting, fascinating, AND ironic! Esp. considering the babbling nonsense of the Nazis abot the so-called subhuman Slavs!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Yes. In fact, the Slavs have a higher share of the original Yamnaya genes than the Germans or Scandinavians. And the Balts higher than either, since the Baltic area was pre-Neolithic when the Corded Ware arrived. Lithuanians and Belorussians are probably the closest in physical appearance and genetics to the original "Aryans".
NB: one advantage of aDNA is that you can get physically grounded glimpses of what ancient peoples actually -looked like-, which is a blessing for an author writing in remote antiquity.
Some results are not surprising. The ancient Marcomanni looked pretty much like Austrians and Czechs, for example... 8-).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
More drolly amusing ironies!
Ad astra! Sean
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