How transportation technologies shaped empires • Hacker News Board

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#71

Post by masklinn » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #62

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.

You are right of course but I think Canada is a pretty unique case. Canada exists in huge part because of the american revolution. British-american loyalists have basically founded upper Canada, which is now Ontario, so it makes sense that they were particularly close to the throne and the British homeland and government. French-canada was also just recently conquered and placated by the Quebec Act, but still tried a…

> You are right of course but I think Canada is a pretty unique case.

As opposed to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa?

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#72

Post by tarentel » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #61

Portugal conquered Goa in 1510 -- that's more than a month of travel. The Netherlands conquering Java in 1619? A lot more than a month. And these conquests lasted for centuries.

I'm not sure capturing and holding an island would constitute an empire.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#73

Post by dalbasal » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

tarentel wrote: post #72

lkrubner wrote: post #61

Portugal conquered Goa in 1510 -- that's more than a month of travel. The Netherlands conquering Java in 1619? A lot more than a month. And these conquests lasted for centuries.

I'm not sure capturing and holding an island would constitute an empire.

what does and how do you measure its size, in a sense pertinent to this thread?

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#74

Post by masklinn » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #3

The logic seems sound to me, with a few obvious caveats: * The number of samples is small. There aren't a lot of empires throughout history. * The definition of "empire" is somewhat subjective, because empire sizes exhibit a Zipf distribution, and the cutoff is arbitrary. * Surely there have been other factors at play besides time to travel from the capital. One implication is that empires that span the globe are muc…

> The logic seems sound to me

It seems less than unsound. It's barely a just-so story.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#75

Post by krisoft » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

xrd wrote: post #46

Interesting how geography limited empires before the advent of instant communication. It would be fascinating to see a comparison of the impact on empires when instant communication is possible. What kind of regime change is possible when you can instantly spread propaganda and no longer need Paul Revere riding around telling everyone the British are coming.

> before the advent of instant communication.

But! Instant communication is not possible. :) This sounds like a nitpicking but this might become important if we spread out in space: We still have the light speed limit on communication.

Which of course means that our communication is practically instantaneous around all of earth. (at least when measured against human reaction times.) But if we would spread ourselves to let's say the Oort cloud you would see very serious lag in communication. Not just between Earth and the cloud, but between points on the Oort cloud.

Could the whole cloud ever be controlled by a single empire? Or would it break into a Voronoi diagram of "1 light month" large cells around points of interest?

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#76

Post by masklinn » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

Beltalowda wrote: post #59

082349872349872 wrote: post #2

My 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 goin…

> I expect the "law" is not as simple as "1 month travel time"

Aka the article is complete bullshit.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#77

Post by adolph » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

There are some interesting ideas in there that should be more fully worked out. Perhaps they have and folks could suggest further reading?

Travel is a suitcase word in that Pueyo doesn't distinguish among what is being moved: material, people, information. In the earliest days maybe there was less of a difference, except for the cases where there was a significant difference such as the Inca chasqui which operated as a relay race.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#78

Post by TheRealPomax » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 5:10 PM UTC

tarentel wrote: post #72

lkrubner wrote: post #61

Portugal conquered Goa in 1510 -- that's more than a month of travel. The Netherlands conquering Java in 1619? A lot more than a month. And these conquests lasted for centuries.

I'm not sure capturing and holding an island would constitute an empire.

History is though. That's empire. But hey, France took a whole bunch of islands that to this day still speak french and are literally "more France, outside of Europe", not "colonies".

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#79

Post by beebmam » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

tarentel wrote: post #72

lkrubner wrote: post #61

Portugal conquered Goa in 1510 -- that's more than a month of travel. The Netherlands conquering Java in 1619? A lot more than a month. And these conquests lasted for centuries.

I'm not sure capturing and holding an island would constitute an empire.

Just want to be clear here: Are you claiming that Portugal and the Netherlands were not empires during those time periods?

Here's the definition of empire used by Wikipedia: 'An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries'

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#80

Post by alephnerd » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #61

Portugal conquered Goa in 1510 -- that's more than a month of travel. The Netherlands conquering Java in 1619? A lot more than a month. And these conquests lasted for centuries.

To be fair, Dutch control of Java was more on paper than it was in reality. Most governance was devolved to local Rajahs who paid tribute to the VOC. Actual guns on the ground control across Java and most of what became Indonesia didn't really happen until the late 19th century

Also, Goa's existence was because it was so marginal. The Mughals, Marathas, and various regional kingdoms didn't care enough about the Portuguese, and also it was de facto treated as a factory (a free trade zone) - just like Surat was for the English