This is why you need more mass transit where you live.
How transportation technologies shaped empires
51–60 of 313 posts
Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires
#52“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?
Almost lost it during the russo-japanese war because it was way too far and very hard to deploy troops to, even with the fledgling trans siberian line. Though I agree that it's a good example!
Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires
#53Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires
#54This will significantly limit humanity's ambitions to colonize outer space.
Unless the settlers form a democratic and self-governing society, not an authoritarian empire
Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires
#55This neatly explains Afghanistan, i think. Fundamentally unnavigable for the entirety of written history!
The interior of Africa, too.
Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires
#56Somebody calculate a light month.
Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires
#57Ghengis Khan, Queen Victoria, and Alexander the Great have entered the chat.
Eventually collapsed. Collapsed eventually. Collapsed immediately upon his death.
Pretty much anything happens eventually.
Dinosaurs lasted 179 mil. years. The Roman state, between one and two thousand (depends on how you count).
Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires
#58So no Mars province?
Another relevant factor is self-sufficiency regarding basic needs. But yes, if/when a Mars colony becomes self-sufficient, secession probably isn’t far off.
Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires
#59My understanding is that the British Raj was several months away from London?
From what I can find: In 1858 – when the British Raj was established – it took about half a year since you had to go around cape the good hope. After the Suez canal opened in 1869 it took only ~2 months. In the following two decades expansion of the train network and faster steamboats further reduced it to about 2 weeks.
So it really depends a bit on which period you're talking about as there were lots of things going on during the period, but for a substantial part of the British Raj's existence you could get there in a month or less.
I expect the "law" is not as simple as "1 month travel time", but rather a calculation that factors in both travel time + communication time. For much of history these two value were mostly identical, but this changed with the adoption of the telegraph (and later, radio).
Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires
#60“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.
Or Spain and South America?
Evwn better, Spain and the Philipines