Approaching the sector capitol, Asieneuve receives the news:
"Fleet Admiral McCormac had escaped to the Virgilian System. There he had raised the standard of rebellion and proclaimed himself Emperor. An unspecified number of planets had declared for him. So had an unspecified proportion of the ships and men he formerly commanded. Armed clashes had taken place and full civil war looked inevitable." (p. 399)
The sense of living in troubled times is palpable as in some other works but I have said this more than once before. See here. The setting is fantastic and futuristic but the issues are contemporary. Some sf, including some by Poul Anderson, envisages future transcendence of social conflicts but meanwhile our historical present remains dominated by power and war. Anderson's writing seems fresh and relevant.
18 comments:
Except in feudal conditions (for reasons I won't go into here) civil war always involves a collapse of institutional legitimacy.
Which is why Flandry opposes McCormac and defends Josip.
Speaking of civil war, there have been more than a few pastiches of the ACW (although very few that provide an honest analogy to the fundamental cause; usually it's "tariffs" or something equally ridiculous); not so much the SCW - which is interesting, because the "ragtag crew" trope that seems so prevalent in SF in recent years could certainly find plenty of historical equivalents, from true mercenaries to ideological volunteers to the Great Power-provided elements like the Condor Legion.
The stories of Frank Tinker and A.J. Baumler could easily have the serial numbers "filed off," for example.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I appreciated Anderson's experiments in futuristic "transcendence," and I'm glad he wrote them. But, as PA himself made plain, I agree with the skepticism he had for that transcendence ever becoming an actuality.
Anderson's writing about how humans behave remains relevant because men are still quarrelsome and competitive.
Mr. Stirling: I agree, it was a breakdown in institutional legitimacy which allowed the US Civil War to start in 1861. My fear is we may be approaching another such crisis!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: democratic systems can only handle -peripheral- disagreements between large segments of the populace. They depend on an 'unspoken consensus'.
-Fundamental- disagreements of value are always settled by force -- either the threat or the reality of it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree! And ever since 1912-13 that "unspoken consensus" has been fraying, wearing thin.
Ad astra! Sean
For some reason, however, even if the "unspoken consensus" had a reason to start fraying in 1912-13 (whatever could that be? ;)), seems like the hawser has withheld a lot of fraying over the past century and decade.
Unlike the previous go-round, which only took six-seven decades -and, of course, ended in the "fundamental disagree-ers" in the US getting utterly crushed. ;)
Awful lot of alarums and excursions in some people's imaginations, apparently.
Kaor, Dave!
Disagree, what I meant that around 1912 left wing ideologues miscalled "Progressives" started becoming increasingly prominent in the US. And, after failing to take over the Republicans, they switched to gradually taking over the Democrats.
Since then the Democrats have become more and more the party pushing for an ever more centralized, autocratic, and socialistic gov't. They have also become the chief advocates and defenders of monstrosities like "legalized" abortion. All of which, including plenty of citations from leftist writings, has been described in massive detail in books like Rusell Kirk's THE CONSERVATIVE MIND and Jonah Goldberg's LIBERAL FASCISM.
And in recent years extreme leftist, woke, and insane "liberals" have been advocating lunacies like the "transgender" madness, never mind the appalling harm that has been doing to many boys and girls. And infuriating many parents outraged at what these creatures are doing to their children!
You cannot forever have increasingly radical and fanatical leftists attacking and undermining the basic principles underlying the US political system without that "unspoken consensus" becoming frayed. To say nothing of how these leftists are stirring up more and more opposition to them. If these quarrels goes too far and become increasingly intransigent, then, alas, civil war is no longer unthinkable.
Ad astra! Sean
The United States withstood about 20% of the population trying to a) rebel against the rest, or b) keep about 10% in human bondage, treated no better than draft animals (despite the reality of how many sons and daughters of the "chivalry" classes were born into said bondage), and it lasted all of four years and the rebels were utterly crushed.
So, yeah, no.
Kaor, Dave!
Then we are not going to agree. Moreover that earlier civil war was devastating to the US. It would have been vastly better if slavery could have been as peacefully abolished in the US as the British Empire and Tsarist Russia managed to do with slavery/serfdom.
And I still have anxiety for the future!
Ad astra! Sean
DS: the ACW was a close-run thing and in a population of 31 million resulted in somewhere well over two million casualties and around 750,000 dead -- the equivalent today would be ten million dead, millions maimed, a third of the country impoverished for generations.
It's good that it ended with reunion and abolition, but the cost was horrendous, almost inconceivably bad.
If it had been known -in advance-, support for the war in the North would have collapsed, I think. Only gradual no-turning-back immersion made it possible, with both sides being grotesquely over-optimistic at the start.
The ACW is also a demonstration of how minor accidents have major consequences.
Eg., in 1862, Britain and France had more or less decided on a -demarche- to force the Union to accept secession -- and no, the US couldn't have resisted both them and the Confederacy, that's jerk-off fantasy. Gladstone had even written the speech announcing the new policy and picked a time and place to deliver it. (Edinburgh, of all places.)
But General Order 191 fell out of a courier's pocket, and got handed up the chain of command -and believed-, which resulted in Antietam.
McClellan -should- have been able to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia with that information, but being his usual self-paralyzing slowcoach self only managed a bloody draw that forced Lee to fall back into Virginia.
That was enough to delay Anglo-French action -- permanently, as it turned out. And gave Lincoln the cover he needed for the Emancipation Proclamtion.
All because three cigars fell out of a man's pocket and he didn't notice in time. And because someone picked it up and -read- the wrapper the three cigars were in... and a whole series of unlikely coincidences after that.
-Without- that, the most probable result is a Confederate victory somewhere in Pennsylvania, followed by a British ultimatum which the US would have had no possibility of resisting successfully.
Three cigars that settled the fate of a nation.
Note also that if -Seward- had been President (and he was the most likely alternative), he fulling intended to -deliberately- provoke war with Britain because he thought there would be a massive wave of Unionism in the South against the 'traditional enemy'.
Which was of course grotesquely stupid. All the Republican leaders overestimated Unionist sentiment in the South (even Lincoln, though not as much) but that was absolutely jaw-dropping.
Or, on the historical accident theme, note that Churchill was very nearly killed in a traffic accident in New York city in 1930 -- he looked the wrong way stepping into the street, and got several broken bones and a head contusion.
Three inches more and he'd have been dead, a failed politician rating only a footnote about Gallipoli.
And in 1940, with Chamberlain dying, Lord Halifax would most likely have become PM after the Fall of France.
At which point Hitler wanted to make peace with Britain (on fairly generous terms) and Halifax was all for it -- he brought it up in Cabinet meetings, proposing using Mussolini as a go-between.
Only Churchill's demented optimism kept the Brits in the war. Which means that if that car had been 4 inches further in, there wouldn't have -been- a World War Two; just a European War of 1939-40, which is what Hitler wanted, followed by his (probably successful) attack on the USSR next year.
Note, "fully" not "fulling" one step up. Autocorrect is our enema.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
While I agree it would have been better if McClellan had followed up Antietam with pursuing and destroying's Lee's army, could he have done so? The Union army's casualties at Antietam were so horrendous that McClellan could have honestly decided it was in no shape for another major battle so soon.
How contingent history is! Both in the US Civil War and what might have happened in WW II if Churchill had died in 1930.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: McClellan bungled the tactical conduct of the battle and (as usual) didn't get all his forces into action.
He was -slow-. Against very nimble opponents. He constantly overestimated Confederate numbers (helped along by Pinkerton) and backed off when he got a good punch in the nose.
Note the contrast with Grant... who -did- get his forces into a fight, and also just kept attacking even in circumstances where other commanders would have backed off.
He suffered heavy casualties in the Wilderness. But he knew he could stand them better than Lee, and acted accordingly.
It wasn't elegant, but elegance buys no yams.
He told his subordinate commanders to stop worrying that Lee would "turn a double somersault in the air and come down on our flanks and rear at the same time" and just -fight-.
Lot of warmed-over Dunning School here ... Pass.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I did some reading up on McClellan and I have to agree. He was frustratingly slow in fighting Lee. And McClellan kept two entire corps in reserve, unused, at Antietam, despite being times in the battle when they could have been used to deadly effect against Lee!
Yes, Grant was different. He accepted that the Confederacy could only be relentlessly ground down, that horrendous casualties could not be avoided.
Ad astra! Sean
DS: what on earth did anything I said have to do with a political analysis of Reconstruction?
The ACW was extremely costly, far more so than any other war the US has ever fought. Do you dispute that?
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