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How transportation technologies shaped empires

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#221

Post by arthurofbabylon »

I'm wondering how to apply this in my life.

People -> Should the contracted teams I work with have more frequent or deeper touch points? Can I make it even easier for customers and strangers to contact me? Do I generally signal that I'm open and willing to listen to the people in my life?

Places -> Is there a convenient way to get around town that I'm neglecting?

Ideas -> How can I create rapid channels of info from more distant communities or corners of the internet? What newsletters should I subscribe to?

The idea here is that we need to manage our space – geographic, social, conceptual – and that it may serve us to expand our zone of access.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#222

Post by bilbo0s »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #202
notch656c wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>centralized decision making Which bodes poorly for increasing federal power in the US.

Hello? This is year 2023, not 1542. Communication happens at the speed of light and the only bottleneck is the human processing said communication. Obsessively devolving power to nesting lower levels of decision making bodies is just about the worst thing to do when technology has increasingly enabled organizations that are slim at the top to effectively manage complex systems at scale instead.

The thing is, sometimes, centralized decision makers take decisions that are bad because they are too far removed from the consequences of the decisions. For instance, decisions on, say, water rights, made by the federal government in the US. The federal and state governments have effectively collaborated to create a slow rolling disaster across the entire west.

(Of course, now I think about it, local and state governments also take terrible decisions. Slavery and Jim Crow spring to mind. So there really is no "good" way to solve the "decision making" problem. I guess you're basically screwed if you have to allow other people to make decisions for you.)

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#223

Post by prottog »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #202
notch656c wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>centralized decision making Which bodes poorly for increasing federal power in the US.

Hello? This is year 2023, not 1542. Communication happens at the speed of light and the only bottleneck is the human processing said communication. Obsessively devolving power to nesting lower levels of decision making bodies is just about the worst thing to do when technology has increasingly enabled organizations that are slim at the top to effectively manage complex systems at scale instead.

> the only bottleneck is the human processing said communication

You said it yourself. I don't care if the ansible lets you communicate faster than the speed of light; the capacity of leaders at the top to understand lower-level facts and needs has not changed much from 1542 to 2023.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#224

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Travel time is more important in wartime. It's quite hard to conquer a place if your supply lines are too long. But if you do conquer, you can hold it for a long time with much less effort.

I found this part of the article to be nonsense:

  Alexander the Great conquered most of the “known world” of his day.
  But his conquests took them 10 years, and after his death, the empire was split in six.
  Which further proves that a strong army, without proper transportation technologies, can’t hold an empire together.
Uhhh..... first of all dude, only taking 10 years to conquer the entire known world (when the conqueror is 20 years old) is pretty fucking insane, let's give the kid some credit. But yeah, his empire was split in six when he died. Why? He had no heir, he was the king of the entire known world, and he died suddenly. Conflict was bound to happen. This in no way provides any evidence to this point that transportation is critical to keeping an empire.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#226

Post by prottog »

bilbo0s wrote: post #222
ssnistfajen wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello? This is year 2023, not 1542. Communication happens at the speed of light and the only bottleneck is the human processing said communication. Obsessively devolving power to nesting lower levels of decision making bodies is just about the worst thing to do when technology has increasingly enabled organizations that are slim at the top to effectively manage complex systems at scale instead.

The thing is, sometimes, centralized decision makers take decisions that are bad because they are too far removed from the consequences of the decisions. For instance, decisions on, say, water rights, made by the federal government in the US. The federal and state governments have effectively collaborated to create a slow rolling disaster across the entire west. (Of course, now I think about it, local and state gover…

> So there really is no "good" way to solve the "decision making" problem.

Insofar as humanity hasn't yet figured out how to make good decisions all the time ;-) that's true. However, I posit that keeping decisions at as low a level as possible lets mistakes be more easily undone by higher levels in the hierarchy; hence Justice Brandeis's laboratories of democracy.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#227

Post by FlyingSnake »

alephnerd wrote: post #80
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 Portu…

> The Mughals, Marathas, and various regional kingdoms didn't care enough about the Portuguese

Sorry to be that guy, but Marathas cared deeply about Goa and they constantly waged wars against them and liberated most of the territory by 1739. Except tiny enclaves like Daman, Diu and Velha Goa most of the Provincia do Norte including the crown jewel of Baçaim (Vasai) was lost. Velha Goa, Anjidiva etc were saved by a stroke of luck due to the arrival of fresh Portuguese Armada with a new Viceroy.

The current boundaries of Goa were only extended later when the Rajas agreed to merge with Portuguese during Maratha civil war period on 1790s, however the Hindu elites retained most of the autonomy like the Visconde of Pernem.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#228

Post by FlyingSnake »

rsynnott wrote: post #103
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.

> The Netherlands conquering Java in 1619? A lot more than a month. For practical purposes this was more the VOC than the Netherlands. Similar situation with British India until they killed off the British East India Company; before that, well, you could call it an empire, but it was really more a separate country ruled by a _company_. Goa is probably a better counterexample, granted.

> Goa is probably a better counterexample, granted.

Velha Goa, the territory that was with Portuguese was really tiny and just contained Salsette, Tiswadi and Bardez concelhos. It is not a big feat to hold on to these coastal holdings given the total domination of Armadas.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#229

Post by [deleted] »

manv1 wrote: post #132

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…

[deleted]

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#230

Post by [deleted] »

dalbasal wrote: post #109

I feel like there's some cherry picking going on. I mean, issues with germanic tribes and inland conquests did play a role but... what about upper egypt, paetrea, britannia, etc. The edge of the empire was the edge of the empire... with frontier problems. Why did germania fail, but not those other ones. I mean size is an issue. Travel & messaging are issues. Empires are very much defined by these things, etc. I just…

[deleted]
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