141–150 of 313 posts
This will significantly limit humanity's ambitions to colonize outer space.
Unless the settlers form a democratic and self-governing society, not an authoritarian empire
It seems to me that distance would just be a correlation to the real variable. If a government could keep a people 5,000 miles, or even 50 million miles, away content enough to not undermine them, then obviously that government could continue to rule this group of people indefinitely. So it seems that the real variable here is contentedness, which distance correlates strongly against. The further someone is away from…
Discontent seems (to me) implicit in foreign rule though, the degree just being a matter of with what and for how much the local population is being bought off. Are there any examples where an empire doesn't treat it's outer reaches as second-class citizens and survives?
“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…
Isn’t the point of the month rule that it’s hard to maintain a loyal population at that distance? So this amounts to saying ‘well the rule doesn’t apply to Canada because the rule doesn’t account for Canada’.
Right. So it’s a bit of a rubbish rule then?
“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.
Secondly, Canada is something of an imperial power unto itself. There are countless stories of armies marching under the crown violently clashing with nations that existed on the continent prior to European colonization. Likewise, even other European descended colonist as well as the Métis were subjugated by British rule as the Anglophone powers expanded across the continent (e.g. Queen Anne's War, Red River Rebellion, and Fenian raids). Gaining the ability to exploit the natural resources that these other nations and colonies held.
The crown was a convenient way to gain both legitimacy from the British loyalists who settled in Canadian territory and a reliable trading partner to receive resources from in the British Canadian bids for expansion. Compared to the US, who used democratic rule to gain its own legitimacy; and who's natural resources were abundant enough to be a valuable trading partner.
That's not true, as evidenced by many, many empires, past and present (Spanish, British, Roman, American) that spanned more than a month of travel. What they're trying to say is that the span of control is limited by the ability to project power/information to the extremities of the empire. That makes sense, but the way they measure the limits is wrong. The way the empires get around this problem is by putting people…
I always understood the aphorism as taking delegation of power into account — it's "one month of travel" not because of the needs of top-down command-and-control, but rather because delegated power that's more than a month away falls past some threshold of latency required to "keep them in hand."
The aphorism might make more sense flipped in perspective and inverted: as a magistrate/governor, if you see your colonists suffering under the tyranny of a remote power, you'd better be at least a month away from that power to be able to quietly rebel under the nose of that remote power. Otherwise a quiet rebellion will never work — any closer, and they'll be constantly watching/auditing you. At a closer distance, if you want to rebel, the only option is an active, bloody rebellion — and if that's unpalatable to you, then you'd better just not rebel!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I didn't say that. It holds up for most of history, except for a fairly small window of ~50 years where communication was faster than travel (after that travel was fast enough that almost anywhere was less than 1 month away).
I agree. Imagine a future where we find a way to send messages at/near the speed of light intergalactically but can still only travel at some fraction of it.
“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…
A century is a pretty long time for your argument about the beliefs of some individuals to stay valid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
So… empires can’t retain territory over a month away from its capital, unless it’s populated by people loyal to the empire? Isn’t the point of the month rule that it’s hard to maintain a loyal population at that distance? So this amounts to saying ‘well the rule doesn’t apply to Canada because the rule doesn’t account for Canada’. Right. So it’s a bit of a rubbish rule then?