A planet like Satan or Mirkheim has a
physical environment with
industrial potential and therefore also
political implications. An sf novelist has to present every such aspect from dissolving cryosphere on Satan and supermetal-coated surface on Mirkheim to the wars for possession of both planets. Satan's transit of Beta Crucis could have occurred unobserved. There would then have been no consequences in the experience or actions of conscious beings. It matters, first, whether there is an interstellar civilization and, secondly, what kind of civilization it is. The discoverers of Satan had only a scientific interest in its environmental transformation but, when human beings and the Shenna became involved, Satan mattered.
On that planet, heat not only rains down from the approaching blue giant star but also emerges when released from the still molten core. Glaciers melt into torrents which boil into stormwinds. Thousands of volcanoes and geysers erupt. Natural violence outweighs intelligent violence.
11 comments:
Note that wars prompted by things like mineral resources aren't actually about money as such.
They're about -power-.
Eg., the Boer War.
Contra Hobson, the actual -investors- in South African gold mines weren't behind the war.
In the abstract they'd mostly prefer the British running the Transvaal, but they were also afraid of the disruption and had reached a modus vivendi with the Boer government. Witness their refusal, mostly, to back the attempted coup d'etat that Rhodes tried to stage in 1896. The Transvaal government kept their black work-force in line and had secured rail communications to the coast; these were their minimal demands.
The Transvaal government was also mildly hostile to them, incompetent and very corrupt, which meant they didn't actually -like- it. But they were making money hand over fist and didn't want to risk upsetting the applecart.
No, the actual driving force behind the British push to bring the Transvaal (and Orange Free State) into line was by politicians in London (egged on by Cecil Rhodes, equally politically motivated), and it was because the gold mines gave the Transvaal government more -power-.
In 1881, Gladstone's government had been willing to retreat from the Transvaal when the Boers won a single small battle at Majuba, because the Transvaal was an impoverished backwater and internationally isolated.
The British government sent an expeditionary force in 1884-5, at Rhodes' prompting, to secure British Bechuanaland (now Botswana) in order to make sure that the Germans, then expanding into German South-West Africa (now Namibia).
But they -didn't- support Rhodes' attempted invasion/rebellion coup against Kruger.
What changed by 1899 was that it was becoming obvious that the gold mines were going to provide the Transvaal government with huge revenues -on a long-term basis-.
That made it possible to import enormous quantities of very modern arms, which the Transvaal's armed forces could actually use effectively, and to supply the Orange Free State with them too.
And it made it worthwhile for the German government to cultivate the Transvaal; they were the ones selling the arms, mostly, and they were using it to undermine the British position in Southern Africa.
And the Cape was utterly indispensable to British imperial strategy because who controlled it controlled the only sea passage to India that wasn't threatened overland.
The Suez Canal -was- vulnerable to overland attack, in the event of a European war, and was in fact attacked by a German-commanded Turkish force in 1914. And Turkey was the nominal suzerain of Egypt, despite its occupation by British troops after 1885.
Even Gladstone had been unwilling to withdraw from Egypt, you will note, after ordering the troops in in the first place, albeit rather reluctantly.
This comes back to the instances mentioned by Poul with respect to Satan's World and Mirkheim.
Money on that scale affects -strategy-. It confers political/military power and governments have to keep a keen, jealous eye on it.
Wow.
I suppose Dune is in the same category as Satan and Mirkheim.
Paul: yes, only more so.
It's got a monopoly of the 'spice' that allows FTL communications in the interstellar Empire. Like controlling the only oil on Planet Earth, but on steroids.
I'd expect the Imperial government to try to control it directly, rather than indirectly, even in a feudal setup like that of the universe Herbert created.
Note what happens when Paul unites the Fremen under his leadership, which gives him a big army and (via the spice) the logistics to support and transport it!
He supplants Shaddam, the Padishah!
Note how as strategic rivalry between China and the US grows, the Taiwanese monopoly over the manufacture (but not design) of certain strategically important microchips becomes more and more a counter on the global game of Risk.
Hence the current (and any probable future) US government's crash program to get microchip factories sufficient to replace the Taiwanese supply up and running in the US.
Economics and strategy are deeply intertwined but in ways that aren't always obvious.
This tends to get forgotten in periods of more-or-less peace but abruptly remembered when existential risk re-enters the picture, as it always does eventually.
Eg., in 1914, the British government realized to its horror that some militarily crucial chemicals were almost all imported from Germany.
And the German government realized, to its equal horror, that only the (recent and expensive) discovery of synthetic nitrogen-fixing technology prevented the British Navy from ending manufacture of explosives in Germany by cutting off supplies of mined nitrogen-rich minerals from Chile.
(Fossilized guano, essentially.)
There had been proposals in Germany by the military to stockpile this, but the financial ministries had always vetoed it, basically because they were dogmatically committed to free-market economics.
This sort of thing was one major reason nearly every military force in Europe prior to 1914 was also committed to an all-out offensive strategy to end the war quickly, Germany almost as much as France.
That turned out to be impossible. All the General Staffs had known a 'quick war' offensive was very risky, but they'd also calculated that national economies would collapse in hunger and revolution if the war was prolonged -- and they were basicall right, though they overestimated how quickly that would happen.
The Germans -nearly- brought it off, but 'nearly' buys no yams, as the saying goes.
Oh, and an amusing side-branch of this: in France, there was tremendous controversy pre-1914 over the (very colorful) French army uniforms, which made French soldiers conspicuous on the battlefield.
There were repeated efforts to adopt something more camouflaged -- like the British khaki or the German field-grey or the Russian green -- but all of them failed, which was one reason among many they suffered 250,000 deaths in the first full month of the war, the highest total between 1914 and 1918.
The French uniform was basically unchanged since the reign of Napoleon III, and included bright red pants and a blue overcoat, with a brightly-colored kepi (field cap) too. And a brightly -polished- mess tin strapped on top of the field pack, so on a sunny day you could see them coming from miles away.
In reaction to a proposal for something less conspicuous, one of the members of the French Assembly proclaimed: "The red pants, they ARE France!"
The amusing part, beyond the purblind stupidity?
The red pants had originally been adopted to support the French dye growers and manufacturers -- the dye had been from a plant, madder, that was widely grown by French farmers.
But by 1914, the dye used was a manufactured synthetic imported from... Germany! Which dominated that branch of the chemical industry too!
The red pants were France, but were dyed with German chemicals!
I read once that, when Napoleon was blockading Britain, his soldiers were wearing British made boots. Economics triumphs over politics.
Paul: only when it doesn't -contradict- politics.
In particular, Napoleon wanted to -financially- undercut the British government.
But he had a rather primitive understanding of economics (he confused money with precious metals, for example) and he also had to consider his -own- government's revenue streams.
The British, working from a weaker position (Napoleon controlled nearly the whole of Europe when he tried to fiscally blockade Britain) among other things understood government finance better.
Eg., Napoleon thought of government debts as a serious weakness -- because financially primitive France had a bad history of official repudiations causing fiscal chaos and undermining support for the government's war efforts.
In Britain, with the Bank of England, the government understood how to manipulate the bond markets to -sustain- support for the war effort.
Essentially, nearly the whole of the politically powerful classes in Britain were deeply invested in government bonds and debentures via the Bank of England.
(They were the most reliable investments for people who had savings but not much sophistication on how to invest; in any case, the stock markets even in Britain were fairly embryonic just then.)
That made them conscious that if Britain lost the war, they'd be financially ruined by a collapse of government credit, just for starters.
(Incidentally Cobden made about the same financial primitivist errors that Napoleon did.)
Napoleon just couldn't understand how a non-convertible currency like the British pound (which suspended specie payments in the 1790's and didn't resume them until well after Napoleon went to Elba) could maintain its value for years and years.
Britain won the Napoleonic Wars with fiat money. People who still fetishized gold were gobsmacked.
"Note how as strategic rivalry between China and the US grows"
See also these on the Chinese dominance of the Rare Earth (Lanthanide) elements supply is a problem for the rest of the world.
https://robertbryce.com/episode/james-kennedy-president-of-threeconsulting/
https://threeconsulting.com/
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Many thanks for these fascinating mini essays. I don't really have much to say except a couple of points.
Besides being crucial for FTL navigation in Herbert's DUNE universe, the "spice" also extended lifespans for those consuming it. Another reason for controlling "melange."
Besides manipulating its public debt to ensure support for the wars against Revolutionary/Napoleonic France, the UK gov't also needed to make sure Britain could export manufactured goods as widely as possibly.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yes, exports were crucial and Napoleon (usually) tried to block them. But they weren't -as- crucial as Napoleon thought, because specie flows weren't as immediately important as he thought. _He_ thought that hoarding gold made him stronger.
In 1914, the Prussian government had a tower filled with sacks of gold and silver coins, a tradition dating back to Frederick the Great. Needless to say, this was not as important as... say, the Haber-Bosch synthetic nitrogen factories, or Krupp's artillery plants!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, but I have read of how Boney's Continental Blockade contributed hugely to the hatred many peoples had for French domination of Europe west of Russia. They resented Napoleon's attempts to stop them from buying British exports.
I think the Russian refusal to obey the Continental Blockade was one reason Napoleon made the fatal mistake of invading Russia in 1812.
As for the Germans one thing hindsight tells us is that they should have focused on building lots more submarines in the years before WW I. They could not really catch up with the UK and France in building a surface navy. But a fleet of, say, 500 subs might have inflicted truly shattering blows on the UK in 1914-15.
Ad astra! Sean
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