See:
Why Should An Interstellar Civilization Be Unstable?
We receive some answers.
The Shar of Barjaz-Kaui on Davenigo/Ettalume IV has started to tax traders. The Nomads cannot overthrow him by force because the Coordination Service knows of Davenigo. (Otherwise, the Nomads would have overthrown the Shar by force...?) Next best thing, the Nomad ship, Adventurer, and maybe also Bedouin, will try to subvert the Shar's government and to replace him with someone friendlier. If that is what some Nomads get up to, then no wonder the Cordies have to work overtime. And some Nomads have strayed a long way from their original "...undying voyage..." (CHAPTER II, p. 7)
Even more blatantly, the Stroller has sold guns to a race deemed unready for such technology and the Cordies have found out. Other Nomads do not condemn the Stroller but learn to watch their step with the Cordies for a while. Nomads are indeed disruptive.
More generally, Trevelyan Micah explains to Braganza Diane that:
human beings have visited a million stars and this number continually increases;
many visited stars have one or even more planets inhabited by intelligent beings with alien psychologies;
these beings' responses to an interstellar civilization are unpredictable and could be catastrophic.
The Cordies, unlike the Nomads, are concerned about the interests of all intelligent species.
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But recall how Stirling commented in another combox how hard it would be for the authorities to control or restrain frontiersmen, citing the failure of the UK's effort to do so after the Seven Years War as one example. And it would be even harder to do that on an interstellar scale with FTL.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
We see another buccaneering frontiersman in "Teucan," albeit he came to an ironic end in that story.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yup. We remember -successful- conquistadors like Cortez or to use an English-speaking example, Robert Clive. There were lots of failed ones too.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Or your own John Rolfe VI in CONQUISTADOR. All this said, some effort should be made to police frontiersmen.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yeah, but that can backfire bigtime. One of the most underestimated causes of the American revolution was the Proclamation Line of 1763. The British were trying to prevent expensive Indian wars, which the American colonists refused to help pay for... but it was a big factor in 1776.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It was! And I recalled how many colonial land speculators had invested big money in land claims over the Appalachians, which that Proclamation Line threatened them with losing. That, as well as the wrangling over how far Parliament could legislate for the colonies led to 1775-76.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the irony was that Americans ended up paying far, far more in taxes than the British ever demanded.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
The Whisky Rebellion of 1791 being an early example of that for the US.
But it can't be denied British policy vis a vis the Colonies in the 1760's and '70's was clumsy, badly thought out, and ham-handed. With a few exceptions, like the Quebec Act and the Catholic Relief Act.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yeah. The American Revolution was Clever Paranoids (early 18th-century Whigs, old-fashioned by British standards) vs. well-meaning but clumsy and ignorant dimwits.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
James II, of all people, may have had glimmerings of a better idea when he set up the short-lived Dominion of New England, unifying what became the six northeastern most states of the later US into a single entity. If he had not been overthrown and the Dominion survived, that might have evolved into a larger Dominion like that of Canada: an independent nation retaining a dynastic union with the British Crown.
Ad astra! Sean
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