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How transportation technologies shaped empires

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#111

Post by wintogreen74 »

somenameforme wrote: post #99

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?

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#112

Post by i_love_cookies »

macspoofing wrote: post #27
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.

>we forget about the existence of the control case: Canada. Is it though? England did lose Canada to home-rule. In fact, I contend that a major reason why a newly independent (but also broke and fledgling) Canada was not annexed by the US was mainly because of the American preoccupation with civil war and Reconstruction, and the diplomatic efforts of John A. Macdonald.

wasn't the war of 1812 partly/mostly driven by a US desire to annex canada?

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#114

Post by randomdata »

xwdv wrote: post #68
aj7 wrote: post #56

Somebody calculate a light month.

It’s about 5000 AU. That means an Earth based space empire could encompass the entire solar system, but the limit of its reach would only extend part way into the Oort Cloud. Beyond this would be a lawless frontier. Since this is based on the speed of light, it could be the maximum size for any empire in the universe without the use of some kind of FTL technology.

> it could be the maximum size for any empire in the universe without the use of some kind of FTL technology.

But perhaps communication with the capital isn't even necessary if you could clone the function of the capital? Imagine, for example, a cluster of AI agents, that are programmed to think just like the capital compromised of humans would, spread out throughout the universe. Each clone site may be limited to a solar month of reach, but the system as a whole would theoretically remain a single empire.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#115

Post by dsr_ »

cma wrote: post #81
macspoofing wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we forget about the existence of the control case: Canada. Is it though? England did lose Canada to home-rule. In fact, I contend that a major reason why a newly independent (but also broke and fledgling) Canada was not annexed by the US was mainly because of the American preoccupation with civil war and Reconstruction, and the diplomatic efforts of John A. Macdonald.

They lost it to home rule only after it took less than a month to travel there with steam ships, right?

And also after communication time dropped from 2 weeks to 2 minutes (telegraph, 1866).

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#117

Post by scythe »

I'm tempted to dispute whether the Carolignian Empire was too big per se. If you put the capital at Lyon (or Geneva), everything is fully reachable in a month on this graph. The problem, rather, was that Lyon was never made the capital (rather Metz in the far north), or at least not in time to prevent fragmentation.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#118

Post by kgeist »

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…

If you take Russian Empire/USSR for example, most of the territories which have been lost are much closer to Moscow (Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Belarus, Georgia etc.) than the territories still under Moscow control (Siberia), so at least in the Russia's case, it's not about transportation at all.

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#119

Post by Beltalowda »

masklinn wrote: post #76
Beltalowda wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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).

Re: How transportation technologies shaped empires

#120

Post by Someone »

krisoft wrote: post #87
xwdv wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s about 5000 AU. That means an Earth based space empire could encompass the entire solar system, but the limit of its reach would only extend part way into the Oort Cloud. Beyond this would be a lawless frontier. Since this is based on the speed of light, it could be the maximum size for any empire in the universe without the use of some kind of FTL technology.

> Since this is based on the speed of light, it could be the maximum size for any empire in the universe without the use of some kind of FTL technology. That assumes that the "1 month from capital" is universal. Maybe humans are just quarrelsome, and if uplifted capybaras would rule an empire they could keep it together even if their empire has a 2 year radius. Who knows.

Also, aliens could live a lot slower (say if they evolved in a relatively cold corner of the universe where there’s less energy to burn per second) and/or longer.

Looking at some ‘aliens’, I don’t think ant colonies can cover an area equal to a month’s travel.

⇒ I would guess “1 month” isn’t the limiting factor. “1/p of the life expectancy of a grownup” makes more sense to me. p then would be around 500 (500 months is about 42 years)

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