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How transportation technologies shaped empires

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#261

Post by sobkas »

tablespoon wrote: post #213
tgv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for future interplanetary colonization, the rule would become one light month. Not very far. But imagine any form of communication taking years to bounce back and forth. That could not be centrally governed. It might not just be travel time, but it probably does correlate.

> But for future interplanetary colonization, the rule would become one light month. Not very far. But imagine any form of communication taking years to bounce back and forth. That could not be centrally governed. It might not just be travel time, but it probably does correlate. The rule seems too simplistic. What's so special about 1 month? Is the significant value time to communicate, time to move military forces,…

> > But for future interplanetary colonization, the rule would become one light month. Not very far. But imagine any form of communication taking years to bounce back and forth. That could not be centrally governed. It might not just be travel time, but it probably does correlate.

> The rule seems too simplistic. What's so special about 1 month? Is the significant value time to communicate, time to move military forces, or something else?

> For instance, for your hypothetical interplanetary empire: How could a capital, with a military that can move at 1% light speed, effectively rule over a colony one light month away if the worst it could do for ten years is send a nasty letters over radio? Having local forces isn't a good answer, because one of the easier paths to rebellion is for the leader(s) those forces to declare independence and make themselves kings.

Have assassins embedded in their chain of command, so poison or dagger is always just few metres away. And they know how short their rein as a king will be.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#262

Post by tablespoon »

sobkas wrote: post #261
tablespoon wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But for future interplanetary colonization, the rule would become one light month. Not very far. But imagine any form of communication taking years to bounce back and forth. That could not be centrally governed. It might not just be travel time, but it probably does correlate. The rule seems too simplistic. What's so special about 1 month? Is the significant value time to communicate, time to move military forces,…

> > But for future interplanetary colonization, the rule would become one light month. Not very far. But imagine any form of communication taking years to bounce back and forth. That could not be centrally governed. It might not just be travel time, but it probably does correlate. > The rule seems too simplistic. What's so special about 1 month? Is the significant value time to communicate, time to move military forc…

>> Having local forces isn't a good answer, because one of the easier paths to rebellion is for the leader(s) those forces to declare independence and make themselves kings.

> Have assassins embedded in their chain of command, so poison or dagger is always just few metres away. And they know how short their rein as a king will be.

I don't think that would be as effective as you think it would be. Why would your assassin be any more loyal than the other garrison forces? Especially when he's ten years away from any help or evacuation.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#263

Post by tablespoon »

kqr wrote: post #256
tablespoon wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But for future interplanetary colonization, the rule would become one light month. Not very far. But imagine any form of communication taking years to bounce back and forth. That could not be centrally governed. It might not just be travel time, but it probably does correlate. The rule seems too simplistic. What's so special about 1 month? Is the significant value time to communicate, time to move military forces,…

You can hypothetically keep 120 military ships en route to the colony at all times so that a forceful response is always at most one month away.

> You can hypothetically keep 120 military ships en route to the colony at all times so that a forceful response is always at most one month away.

One problem with that idea is that either the king's forces would be spread very thin or they would be massively (and expensively) oversized.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#264

Post by xapata »

wintogreen74 wrote: post #107

A lot of counter-cases are conflating specific conquests with the the overall empire. There will be exceptions (in both directions of closer & further) but I think what the author is trying to do is set the radius of the empire, relative to a one or a few epicenters. I don't think the exact value is that important vs. the logistical impacts of distance and their influence on all aspects of controlling a geopolitical…

Sounds like the "No True Scotsman" defense. "Oh, that was just an outlier. The real parts of the empire were ..."

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#265

Post by inawarminister »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #55
hprotagonist wrote: post #6

This neatly explains Afghanistan, i think. Fundamentally unnavigable for the entirety of written history!

The interior of Africa, too.

That is also correlated with the multiple of tropical diseases wiping out traders and settlers until the 1800s or so.

Tsetse flies in East Africa killing cattles and horses... Allowing local hunter-gatherers to survive herders and farmers expansions until recently enough. And empires don't really spawn in non-food-producing cultures.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#266

Post by inawarminister »

kcb wrote: post #190
sbaiddn wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fascinating question. I guess the answer is both. Fast info gives you extra time since you don't suffer the latency to send the shock troops.

I think it’s further than that. If the drones, satellites and if necessary the humans with guns that get their paycheck wired from earth are already prepositioned then the latency becomes minutes.

I believe this is sufficiently exhibited by 18th-19th century imperial powers that have telegraphs and able to have the centre dictate unit movements and campaigns to the peripheries.

Compared to previous eras where the local potentate is the ultimate source of order - at least for short and medium terms (see also: Spanish Viceroy of Netherlands, 1540-1600s)

Then again, you can see the difference between, say, the 1880s and 1920s, when airplanes became mature. Dictate by message compared to centre agents coming in to intervene directly...

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#267

Post by ssnistfajen »

notch656c wrote: post #206
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.

Can you explain why more local decision making must be the worst thing to do?

Humans are the biggest bottleneck in orgs. More devolved power = more orgs = more humans = more gridlock.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#268

Post by PeterCorless »

Counterargument: Manila galleons plied the seas for 250 years.

• First trade ships would stop in Ming China then take their cargoes to Manila. It took months to get there and back to Manila.

• The leg from Manila to Monterey, California, took about three months.

• The next leg, from Monterey to Acapulco, was another month. In total, it could be five or six months travel.

• Cargo was unloaded in Acapulco to be sent overland via on the Camino de los Virreyes, first to Mexico City then to Veracruz. This overland trip could take over a month depending on the progress of the baggage train. These were called the Galleon Caravans.

• In Veracruz, the trade goods were loaded onto the annual heavily guarded treasure (plate or plata) fleets back to Spain. They did this rather than trying to risk passage through the Straights of Magellan or shipping back around the Cape of Good Hope (the southern tip of Africa).

• The ships left Veracruz (alternatively spelled Vera Cruz) to meet up with the South American treasure fleet in Havana, Cuba. These trips often took a long northerly trip, nearly to the coast of Louisiana. These trips were highly variable and could take as short as two weeks or as long as three months. Three weeks seems to be about average.

• The transit time from Havana back to the Casa de Contratación in Seville Spain was nearly two months.

• Of course, Seville was just the port of entry. Goods then needed to be transported on to Madrid. The raw silver used to fund these expensive trips was eventually taken by the bankers backing Spain directly to the Italian port city of Genoa.

So in total, one way, it was about a year for cargo to go from Ming China to Madrid.

This system of imperial trade continued for, again, TWO AND A HALF CENTURIES. Long before the advent of the steam engine or the telegraph.

• (Every segment mentioned above also has a return trip component. For the Manilla Galleons that got to Acapulco it was at least three months to travel back from Mexico to the Philippines. That was the "easy" passage.)

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_galleon

https://www.guampedia.com/stops-along-the-manila-galleon-tra...

https://brewminate.com/spanish-treasure-fleets-from-the-16th...

https://www.mexconnect.com/articles/248-the-pacific-route-to...

https://uair.library.arizona.edu/item/294297

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_treasure_fleet

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/teachingwithhistoricplaces/uplo...

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/35458/how-long-d...

https://www.dailysabah.com/columns/ekrem-bugra-ekinci/2015/0...

https://www.academia.edu/7744406/Analysis_of_the_Gulf_of_Mex...

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#269

Post by PeterCorless »

karatinversion wrote: post #5
082349872349872 wrote: post #2

My understanding is that the British Raj was several months away from London?

Let alone that the Portuguese were in Brazil, and the Spanish in the _Philippines_, for some 300 years

Exactly. See my post elsewhere in this discussion where I give the transit times for goods from Madrid China via the Manila Galleons and the Mexican caravan routes back to Madrid.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#270

Post by Hithredin »

miovoid wrote: post #156

Does this rule works for information signal speed in general? Does empire in space cannot be large than 1 month light in radius?

I guess the distance is also proportional to the strenght of the remote part and the brutality of a vengeance from the capital.

England, Fance, Spain, Portugal keeping colonies for a while until they technologically matched and that enlightened europe would be less tolerant of a bloody revenge.

Russia, China still controlling their colonies because there is no local comparable strenght in those moutain/toundra/desert parts.

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