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How transportation technologies shaped empires

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#31

Post by jerf »

onion2k wrote: post #11

This will significantly limit humanity's ambitions to colonize outer space.

Fortunately, while this study may exist, imperial ambitions know no bounds, so we'll colonize just fine. Sure, decades later, they may break away, but that's decades later's problem.

Plus, this analysis is implicitly in the context of a world where the regions have the ability to be self-sustaining on at least the basics of life, so breaking away is a viable option. If the "empire" is also "your supply of oxygen", breaking away will be a lot trickier. For a space colony or set of colonies to be able to break away, they first have to be truly 100% self-sufficient, and that's a tall bar for the forseeable future. They then have to be able to militarily match what the empire is willing to throw at them to retain them, and that's a very complicated analysis, made all the more complicated by not knowing what the exact technologies will be at the time.

(Plus, not all empires are complete buffoons. They at least begin being competently run. The empire will know that to break away the colonies must be self-sufficient, so they will take steps to ensure they won't be self-sufficient. And the colonies will take steps to become secretly self-sufficient. Long before open rebellions occur, there will have been a clandestine war of self-sufficiency.)

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#32

Post by AnimalMuppet »

kranke155 wrote: post #25
onion2k wrote: post #11

This will significantly limit humanity's ambitions to colonize outer space.

Depends on the velocity. 1 light month is pretty big.

Within one light month of earth, there is only one solar system - the one containing Earth, obviously.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#35

Post by jameshart »

macspoofing wrote: post #27
jameshart wrote: post #12

“England with its American colonies” as an example of overstretching this limit? Once again, when explaining a historic trend or event in terms of what happened in the US, we forget about the existence of the control case: Canada.

>we forget about the existence of the control case: Canada. Is it though? England did lose Canada to home-rule. In fact, I contend that a major reason why a newly independent (but also broke and fledgling) Canada was not annexed by the US was mainly because of the American preoccupation with civil war and Reconstruction, and the diplomatic efforts of John A. Macdonald.

Canada was still subject to the legal authority of the UK parliament until 1982, and was certainly considered fully part of the British Empire until WWI

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#36

Post by charlieyu1 »

jameshart wrote: post #12

“England with its American colonies” as an example of overstretching this limit? Once again, when explaining a historic trend or event in terms of what happened in the US, we forget about the existence of the control case: Canada.

Russia to Far East?

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#38

Post by zopa »

onion2k wrote: post #11

This will significantly limit humanity's ambitions to colonize outer space.

Why? Settling new places doesn’t have to mean expanding the existing polity: the settlements can be self-governing. See the Polynesian expansion through the Pacific, which to me is a closer (and more hopeful) analogy to space colonization than anything nineteenth-century Europeans or ancient empires did.

And so long as we’re just thinking of this solar system, there’s also the question of whether what’s important is transit time or communication time. Historically those were identical; now very much not.

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