The Philippines has never been easy to grasp though. Even now the government maintains poor control of many of their thousands of islands. Colonization efforts there can be profitable but are also weak. To the extent the Philippines has been colonized they must generally satisfy themselves to control of major ports and trade routes and naval bases.
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.
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 going on during the period, but for a substantial part of the British Raj's existence you could get there in a month or less.
I expect the "law" is not as simple as "1 month travel time", but rather a calculation that factors in both travel time + communication time. For much of history these two value were mostly identical, but this changed with the adoption of the telegraph (and later, radio).
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.
We can already send messages at the speed of light. The problem is that's still way too slow for intergalactic communication (the nearest galaxy is 2.5 million light years away).
Here's a data point for you - Galton's Isochronic Passage Chart, showing the time in days to travel from London to the rest of the world, in 1881. (12 years after the Suez opened, and the map shows how useful that canal was.)
Eastern Indian is 20-30 days. Batavia is about 30 days. Perth and Hong Kong are in the 30-40 day range. Sydney and most of the interior of Australia is in the 40+ day range, as is New Zealand's South Island.
"It assumes that there are favourable travel conditions and that travel arrangements over land have been made in advance. It assumes travelling methods of the day within a reasonable cost."
"The distance from London to Calcutta, by the Cape of Good Hope, is 15,000 miles requiring 150 days. With steam say 70 days." ["150 days" agrees with your "about half a year."]
"The distance from London to Calcutta, by Cape Horn, is 21,500 miles requiring 215 days. With steam say 90 days."
"From Liverpool to Calcutta, by Isthmus of Panama, 14,00 miles requiring 140 days. Steam, say 60 days."
"London to Calcutta, overland route, five trans-shipments, 6,000 miles, 58 days"
"Liverpool, New York, and Railway to San Francisco, two transhipments, 12,000 miles, 35 days."
It's from a piece arguing for the usefulness of building a railway across the US (New York to San Francisco), to shorten the London/Calcutta route. That last route didn't exist until 1869, the same year the Suez Canal opened.
EDIT #2: https://archive.org/details/sim_the-lancet_january-3-june-26... has someone leaving London June 1817 and arriving Calcutta 2 December 1817, so about 5 1/2 months. (The Lancet January 3-June 26, 1852, p384, "Biographical Sketch of James Ranald Martin, Esq., F.R.S.")
EDIT #3: The clipper ship Jane Pirie, built 1847, could do the round-trip in "eight months and a half ... the ordinary time occupied over the voyage being ten to eleven months." https://archive.org/details/sim_illustrated-london-news_1851... /mode/2up?q=%22London+to+Calcutta%22 ("Illustrated London News 1851-04-05: Vol 18 Iss 477"). As I understand it, clipper travel would have been fast and expensive.
The British Raj succeeded the East India Company, a London-headquartered enterprise that had effectively ruled most of India for the previous 100 years, and fought numerous wars - usually successfully - in India in the century before that. The Raj was actually a reaction to Indian rebels failing to achieve independence and more power being transferred to the British Crown as a result.
British Raj is a great argument for the article, started in 1858 and lasted less than a century, a blip in the historical context, as power projection was a recurring problem.
I didn't write the article so I don't care either way, but I think the British Empire was a thing totally on its own. Probably (probably, I'm not a historian) because its technology (both physical and organizational) was so much more superior to the lands they invaded that the normal "laws of empire physics" didn't apply.
In Australia (and NZ, and Canada, and the US, and probably in South Africa to a certain degree) their mode of operation seemed: reduce the locals to nothing (even worse than Spain), then build a fully Western-like society. Clean slate, mostly self-governed by white people who are not inclined to fight with Europe (with notable exceptions, obviously)
In India - although I don't doubt for a second they killed many many people - they seemed to operate more like the Golden Horde in Russia: as long as you pay the taxes (and occasionally provide more stuff when we run out), you can keep your culture and be governed by your local warlords, because it's just too tedious to kill all of you at once. The British did seem to have a bit more sway though, for example when they kicked off the partitioning, millions of people started moving. However, largely it seems like a brutal but mostly hands-off rule (based on mutual benefit with the local elite?)
What they did in Africa was something else, I've read books about insanely remote places like South Sudan or Zambia, and what were they doing there is hard for me to understand at all. But again, the gap in technology between the local people and them was so vast that they could do whatever they wanted without much coordination with the capital.
The Romans and other empires of the past were different because they didn't have such a huge technology gap. In case of Romans, you still fight it out with spears, swords and bare hands, and they tended to take over the lands completely, and impose their own gods, order and culture, which is much harder to do with a similar level of technology and does require coordination with the capital.
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 much more feasible today, thanks to modern travel, communications, and surveillance technologies.
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.
It's a big part of "the word for world is forest". A colony on one planet has essentially become self governing, until one day a ship delivers an instantaneous communication device, at which point the planet is back under imperial control. There's more to the story than that ofc
There's also "The Dispossessed", where an anarchist movement travels to a distant planet in order to set up their own government.
The Dispossessed describes an anarchist society on the impoverished moon of a verdant planet, and a scientist's struggle to reconcile his anarchism with his wish to further his research, which requires more resources than the anarchist society can provide. It is one of my favourite books.
I also don't remember distant communication being relevant for The Word for World is Forest. That's far more about the conflict between the natives and the colonizers, and passive vs. aggressive societies.
Distant communication is what establishes the setting in "Forest". At the very beginning, it is stated that the colony is 27 light years away - a frontier - and as the story progresses, there are hints that this is one of the reasons why the colonists can get away with brutalizing the local population, going far beyond the mandate that they have.
And then when they get the ansible midway through the story along with an inspection party that promptly reports their findings back to Earth, they start getting a steady stream of orders banning their various practices - slavery, violent reprisals etc. And when the local administration tries to implement some of those bans, the more hard-minded colonists deliberately provoke the natives into an open uprising by massacring their village. So it's a major plot driver, too.
Anybody dreaming of Mars colonies should keep that in mind. As long as the Mars colony will be dependent on supplies from Earth, they will do what Earth wants. Once they are self sufficient, this will change.
C.f. the immigration-friendly early U.S. and its "close borders" and PR lottery approaches of today.
> 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.
Well, yes. There are plenty of takes on this. The "Traveller" RPG has a nice one: distributed feudal confederation. There's a nominal emperor, but it's hugely important that he never do almost anything, because "his" empire is a lifetime across.
Nearly the only law is that you don't impede the mail system, and that you pay a small tax to support the fleet that will hammer you into the ground if you impede the mail.
>> 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.
> Just make most of your economy based on mass manufacturing weapons and vehicles, problem solved
That feels like "solution" that you spent little more time thinking through than it took you to write it. Those kind of things both unconvincing and have a very high probability of being wrong. I mean, you don't even mention trade-offs and there are obvious historical parallels that call your solution into question. Isn't one of the (many) reasons the Soviet Union collapsed is that is allocated too much of its economic capacity to military expenditures?
> > 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.
>> 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.
The rebellion would have to distribute its resources amongst an army large enough to hold a planet. At that scale, teams of dozens of people would be sufficiently motivated to kill whoever, if their reward is still some fraction of that.
Blackmail is a wonderful thing if you know how to use it. For example if would be assassin doesn't fullfil his duty a little bird can whisper his name to people who would very violently frown at would be assassin. Or have things that for his wellbeing should be left in shadows. Things that you would prefer not to see in the planetary governor or a general. It's good to have some disposable pawns to do some dirty work. Even better if they can't be connected to you.
The logic is fine, it's just massively overstated with the clickbait headline, and travel time in a region is an endogenous factor which depends on where the boundaries of the empire are drawn, because empires build roads, chop down forests, drain swamps and make rivers navigable.
As the article acknowledges, travel times within the Roman Empire tended to be less than a month. But they conquered land regions (where possible) before they built the roads that let them supply them that fast. Certainly there's nothing about lowland Germany that should make it more difficult to reach than Hadrian's Wall, but they effectively subdued the British tribes and built roads all over that particular faraway island, and didn't have as much success against the Germanic tribes who inhabited desirable land closer to their capital that could have been reached in a shorter time with a nice lowland road from Gaul, if they'd ever been able to build it.
> empires that span the globe are much more feasible today
A lot of people would argue that ~half the world is part of the US empire today...
In that the US has power to strongly influence/make decisions in about half the world, extradite people from about half the world, and enforce IP/anti drug/monetary controls in about half the world.
And by some definitions, it might be 80% of the world.
The "logic" or lack thereof is in trying to find a universal "hidden rule" in large-scale human behavior across literally all of recorded history. This is pure physics envy, and it never ends well.
It's really about trading routes. Today different regions of the world specialize in different industries. You get competition between people vying in the same industry and between trading partners. Communication really doesn't help when it comes to corporate/national power struggles. This is also why so many 'brother' countries tend to fight; Ukraine and Russia, Yeman and Saudi Arabia, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Why, I’d wager that, with modern Victorian transportation, a man could travel all the way around the world in less than eighty days. Meet me on the steps of the Reform club!
Phileas Fogg’s example Suggests that at the height of the ‘sun never sets’ era, nowhere should have been more than 40 days away from London. And with a significant chunk of that time stuck transiting the pacific, brings the majority of the world into the 30 day window for a single month.
No, it suggests that there was an optimal path around the world in 80 days. The geography of many regions would have made them more remote than the optimal path.
In seriousness, the article’s final thesis is literally that steamships and trains and telegraphs broke the ‘month’ rule by bringing essentially the whole world inside the one month range, which is what enabled a ‘sun never sets’ empire and then broke empires in general.
Around the World in 80 days is set almost exactly at that inflection point.
The geography of those many remote regions (e.g. the interior of Africa or Australia or parts of Asia) meant that they were not really governed by the empires - it's just that they were linked to the wider world through various port cities, and those were generally governed by some empire and within a month of its capital, so the value of their trade was captured tehre.
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.
Afghanistan was part of large empires like Kushans, Graeco-Bactrians, Achaemeniens, Mauryas, Mughals, etc for long periods. It was also a part of the Silk Route to India through Khyber pass and was the epicenter of Graeco-Buddhist art centers like Bamyan and Mes Aynak. It was not un-navigable.
The article mentions but doesn't discuss Mesoamerican empires. I think those should have some interesting idiosyncracies. There was a total absence of horses/oxes/draft animals before the Columbian exchange, so transportation and notions of geographic distance might have been very different.
OK, but England maintained Australia for centuries. Spain maintained the New World for centuries. I'm not sure "eventually collapsed" is proof that "it didn't work".
I mean, the Soviet Union eventually collapsed, and that wasn't because of communication delays. Everything eventually collapses. But "stood for centuries, despite the communication delays" kind of disproves the hypothesis. (Or if it doesn't, given the things that collapse after centuries without the communication delays, it means the hypothesis has no predictive power.)
The same argument could be made for Great Britain and the United States as well since the colonies were a part of GB for centuries.
I think the same argument for Canada applies to Australia: there must be a critical mass of well weaponed insurgents before the time delay makes too much of a difference.
Or increase them? Presumably some portion of humanity might be motivated by trying to get away from existing empires (maybe creating new ones, maybe not), rather than expanding existing empires.
So is the universe. In fact, 1 light month gets you across 0.00000000061% of it. If your empire on Earth was the same size it'd be 300 square meters. About the size of a big house with a nice garden.
Fortunately, while this study may exist, imperial ambitions know no bounds, so we'll colonize just fine. Sure, decades later, they may break away, but that's decades later's problem.
Plus, this analysis is implicitly in the context of a world where the regions have the ability to be self-sustaining on at least the basics of life, so breaking away is a viable option. If the "empire" is also "your supply of oxygen", breaking away will be a lot trickier. For a space colony or set of colonies to be able to break away, they first have to be truly 100% self-sufficient, and that's a tall bar for the forseeable future. They then have to be able to militarily match what the empire is willing to throw at them to retain them, and that's a very complicated analysis, made all the more complicated by not knowing what the exact technologies will be at the time.
(Plus, not all empires are complete buffoons. They at least begin being competently run. The empire will know that to break away the colonies must be self-sufficient, so they will take steps to ensure they won't be self-sufficient. And the colonies will take steps to become secretly self-sufficient. Long before open rebellions occur, there will have been a clandestine war of self-sufficiency.)
Why? Settling new places doesn’t have to mean expanding the existing polity: the settlements can be self-governing. See the Polynesian expansion through the Pacific, which to me is a closer (and more hopeful) analogy to space colonization than anything nineteenth-century Europeans or ancient empires did.
And so long as we’re just thinking of this solar system, there’s also the question of whether what’s important is transit time or communication time. Historically those were identical; now very much not.
The article contends that the reason why the 'month rule' is in play is because of the logistics of ruling over a local population which will attempt to rebel.
So I think a mitigating factor for US, Canada, Australia was that the local native population was wiped out by old-world diseases, so there was minimal capability for local population to rebel. This is also the major factor of why those nations' population is largely made-up of the descendent of the colonists. Contrast that with Africa, which suffered from similar attempts at colonialism, was much closer to Europe, but because its native population was not susceptible to European diseases (and in fact, the colonists were decimated by native diseases like malaria), Africa today has a tiny number of colonial descendants (around 5 million European descendants out of a population of ~1 billion)
The population of pre-colonized North America was on the order of 60 million (European population was on the order of ~70 million). Had that population been maintained (i.e. not wiped out by old-world diseases), there was zero chance of European powers being able to establish large colonial populations. In that scenario, once the technological advantage was removed (due to trade, for example), I think you would have seen successful native rebellions.
I would say South America also follows this pattern. No chance of the Spanish being able to establish large colonial populations or maintain hold over native South American populations had they been not wiped out by old-world diseases.
>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.
Canada was still subject to the legal authority of the UK parliament until 1982, and was certainly considered fully part of the British Empire until WWI
I think the article was discussing actual facts-on-the-ground empires, rather than polite legal fictions invented to spare the UK from having to face their loss of global status.
The point was they couldn't hold the Canadian colony. Britain didn't give home-rule to Canada because of their good-will. American belligerence towards European presence in the New World, and their rise as a major military and economic power, made holding Canada practically impossible by the mid 1800s (for example, it was untannable for Britain to maintain a large military presence in Canada anymore). Britain fully expected Canada to be annexed. Without the civil war and reconstruction preoccupying Americans during the critical early and fledgling years of the Canadian Dominion, I don't think Canada would have survived as a nation.
In another thread, I also made an argument for another major mitigating factor with respect to Americas, namely, the native populations were wiped out by old-world diseases which prevented local rebellions from succeeding and allowed Europeans to establish large population centers.
But the article literally argues that the British loss of the American colonies in 1776 is an example of how an empire can’t retain territory at a month’s remove.
To which the existence of British colonies in Canada after 1776 is kind of a direct rejoinder, right? The eventual loss of those colonies is irrelevant to the point that you can’t explain the American revolution as being an inevitable consequence of remoteness.
An empire can't retain hostile and unpacified territory beyond a certain limit - which may be set by time, communications, access to local resources and imported logistics, other factors, and all of the above.
If the territory is fully pacified with no significant resistance and/or it's run by dedicated loyalists with plentiful local resources the limit doesn't apply.
Basically an empire can only retain territory against an active threat or resistance within certain limits. If there is no active threat, or the threat is too minor to be a concern, the territory can be considered stable and fully colonised.
The American state by the mid-1800s was not that same as the one in the early 1800s. America grew into a major economic and military power by then, the point where it was untenable for Britain to maintain direct control over Canada, or to even maintain a major military presence there. The British were ostensibly kicked out of North America by America.
Almost lost it during the russo-japanese war because it was way too far and very hard to deploy troops to, even with the fledgling trans siberian line. Though I agree that it's a good example!
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 couple of uprisings during the Patriot wars of 1837-38.
I don't think Canada would've stayed british without the loyalist escaping here, since they made it an inherent part of their identity to not revolt against the british as opposed to the americans they left behind. But agreed, there are too many exceptions in general to the article's point.
Yes, if you read the rest of my comment I explained why. Canada has had a very big (relatively speaking) influx of deeply loyal british-american refugees that often directly fought the revolutionaries down south.
That meant that the early history of english canada was very deeply influenced by an almost identity defining loyalism to britain, because those refugees often left everything behind in the US to stay loyal the crown. In a way, being british was the entire point of early anglocanadian identity.
I think that makes it pretty different from Australia, a penal colony and South Africa which was conquered more than colonized (and was very hard to hold on for the british). I was more trying to explain why Canada was an outlier in the Americas, and how Britain managed to hold it very easily for so long, even with a free population and little direct military occupation.
I'm a 10th+ generation Canadian of German ancestry, whose relatives had both an affinity for the British Empire (initially fleeing persecution to England) and a practical one: rich farmland in exchange for fighting with the loyalists against the upstart colonists. It's hard to determine which had the bigger impact.
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’.
I agree that the rule is basically worthless, but my point was more that Canada had an exceptionally loyal population, and disproportionately so compared to what we coule expect from a "normal distribution"! It can, in part, explain the rift between the US and Canada :)
The influx of loyalists was a couple of generations before the 1837 rebellions in both Upper and Lower Canada. Yet another generation elapsed before home rule with responsible government was devolved from Westminster and a few more before Canada was considered "independent" from the centralized Empire by the Statute of Westminster in 1931.
A century is a pretty long time for your argument about the beliefs of some individuals to stay valid.
Yes that's my point though. The patriot wars happened after the loyalists were well settled, and at a point when upper canada in general was almost as established as lower canada. French-canada was barely loyal, and would've probably been a huge torn in the backside of Britain if it wasn't balanced by a super loyal anglo population that counterbalanced the animosity of french canada.
The loyalists shaped the relationship Canada had with britain, and while I'd guess even their descendants were a minority (relative to immigrants) by the mid 19th century, it still defined Canadian identity even to this day. If Canada hadn't seen that initial influx of usually rich, upper class loyalists that became the founding stock of upper canadian politics/elite, we might have had a very, very different outcome. One that is more in line with most other colonies in the New World.
There is quite a difference between conquering (and thereby assimilating) versus killing almost all natives and then populating the place with your own settlers..
>versus killing almost all natives and then populating the place with your own settlers..
The native population was not killed but rather decimated by disease. Pre-colonial population of North America was on the order of 60 million - there was zero chance European powers being able to hold that size of population over a period of time. Contrast that to Africa, which today has a minimal population of European descendants ... because that native population had immunity.
They died, but they were indeed not killed. You may say something flowery like "the diseases killed them", or "the arrival of the Brits killed them", but the British empire or its subjects did not kill the vast, vast majority of Native North Americans who died as a consequence of their arrival.
They were killed by what the settlers brought with them. No, it was not deliberate (#), but nevertheless, their arrival is what killed most of the natives.
(#) Obviously the settlers would have preferred to keep the natives alive since then they would not have needed to ship vast quantities of Africans across the ocean to enslave, but could have just done that with the locals.
>They were killed by what the settlers brought with them. No, it was not deliberate (#), but nevertheless, their arrival is what killed most of the natives.
That's all I meant to clarify. You'd be surprised how many people today actually think that the native population was wiped out through deliberate and intentional action. Your wording made it seem you believed that as well, but that seemed to not be the case.
>Obviously the settlers would have preferred to keep the natives alive since then they would not have needed to ship vast quantities
It was intentional though. The bison didn't disappear because of western disease, they were hunted out to break up the natives ability to resist, so they could be killed and corralled, and the land be granted to settlers.
Canada intentionally withheld food it owed to natives as part of treaty agreements, with the understanding that if a bunch of people starved to death, Canada wouldn't need to send as much food.
Similarly, disease was spread intentionally through small pox blankets, with the intention listed
It may not be the case that deliberate and intentional actions alone could have wiped out the natives but it seems pretty clear that there were a lot of deliberate and intentional actions both to kill them and take their land (Trail of Tears, Spanish conquests in South America). Those actions just wouldn't have been as successful without the diseases.
Well, news outlets are perfectly comfortable with saying that this or that COVID policy "killed" millions and will kill even more... If only the British instituted lockdowns, quarantine, and mass testing for diseases, the Native Americans could have lived!
(Not saying this is the right perspective, but I understand why people would argue for it, especially when using ahistorical lens of today's diseases handling)
However the natives where still wiped out by European diseases nonetheless, a direct result of Europeans coming here, I'm sure the Europeans of the time were grateful for that even if it wasn't a result of direct action on their part, they would have been fine with it happening.
I would say that Canada managed to stay loyal to the crown because for two major reasons. The first being the founding "myth" of Canada being the British loyalist colonists of the US migrating as a result of the US' revolution. Them fleeing north to a major seat of political power likely had a strengthening effect on being a willing subject to the crown than most colonies.
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.
ps: as a sidenote, I remember someone saying that the invention of fridges is a factor in the evolution of cities/transporation too. Never found solid work on this but it makes sense, you keep things closer if you can't conserve food.
With better propulsion, trips to mars could be shorter. There are times where Mars is on the opposite side of the sun, and times when Earth and Mars are close.
Only if they are self-sufficient with respect to the basics. It's hard to rebel when the other side can just cut off your food supply until you starve into compliance.
See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant
IMO there is a clear analogue for this with organizational size and the extent of your product offering, the further off from your core offering you extend the worse your entire offering becomes
Another relevant factor is self-sufficiency regarding basic needs. But yes, if/when a Mars colony becomes self-sufficient, secession probably isn’t far off.
Put another way, a mars colony that is not mostly self-sufficient is a death trap, because the lead time on any supply shipments or rescue attempts is monumental even if funding is unlimited. There will be ever-present pressure to increase self-sufficiency. If complete self-sufficiency is technologically achieved (and there aren't inherent, unavoidable issues with propagating humans on mars or obtaining resources/energy), earth-based corporations and governments have virtually zero leverage over mars, so independence follows naturally.
You can travel to Mars in 5 minutes so I don’t think so. It’s clear even in todays world you don’t need “boots on the ground” to exert social or military influence.
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.
Communication obviously plays a big part but I think time to action is probably the better metric. You need to be able to act quicker than your opponent, and if you can't, you need to be able to absorb the damage they can inflict in the mean time whilst still having enough resources to inflict more damage than you sustained when you can eventually act.
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?
We only use a small fraction of matter on the Earth, so maybe a good sized comet can host habitation. But the solid planets and moons are where humanity could thrive. The gas giants have too a gravity well, we'd need some seriously advanced propulsion to make it off, but there's 317x more matter on Jupiter than Earth.
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)
I think you’re right. There must be some more variables to a formula that determines max empire size.
Beings that live twice as long as humans would feel that the trip to Alpha Centauri is only half as long as what a standard human of equivalent age would perceive it. This could potentially mean their empires could also be double in size at max even if they have the same disposition as humans.
Therefore, as an advisor to an emperor of an interstellar empire, I would strongly encourage lengthening lifespans as the key to increasing the reach of government. The longer the people can live, the more tolerant they will be of long voyages and high latencies.
> 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.
Kind of a tangent, but uh, this is my personal favorite argument for why Bitcoin et. al. aren't needed (yet): the diameter of the Earth is small compared to the speed of light. Maybe when we colonize interstellar space we will need blockchain.
In essence, one star system. Planet orbits are generally much less than a light month, and distance between closest stars is generally much larger than a light month.
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".
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'
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
> 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.
sure but I imagine the argument here is that the grip on power of provinces so far away was considerably weak and likely to an extent devolved to the local agents of the crown. And likely as long as the ships with goods sailed limited questions were asked and limited checks occurred.
I imagine that those who worked on the colonial extents of the Empire were given the largest freedoms to be monstrous as long as it benefitted the crown. I would even argue that the cultural descendants of these agents are the same forces that encourage ideas such as Brexit; hoping to return to times of significantly less oversight from the home nation. As an example of this internal discord between territories of European empires and home states I think the abolition of slavery in the 19th century was a scenario where the electorate didn't align with these colonial interests to create an internal discord. Agents then shifted to an evil interpretation of contract law to replace slaves with indentured servants. I appreciate that this might not seem immediately irrelevant but I hope it might show how a discord between the competing interests of the society at "home" and the society "abroad" might slowly result in the "transport time" fractures this article discusses as the interests of the two populations diverge.
> 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.
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.
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...
Unrelated to the article's thesis: the use of both colors and numbers in the static map of the Roman Empire is very clever and I wish this technique were used more often.
I don't in general have trouble distinguishing colored areas when they're adjacent to each other. But when they're separated from each other -- as is often the case with a map and its legend -- it becomes a lot more difficult.
Using colors to show extent and numbers to match up with the legend is a great solution to this problem. Take note!
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.
I think there’s an xkcd on modeling complex systems with a single parameter: https://xkcd.com/793/.
More seriously, I think the predictive power of this hypothesis is low. Clearly travel time is important to maintaining a connected empire but it’s probably not the limiting factor.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 277 ms ] threadBasically converting the empire into a franchise operation? Or maybe a pyramid scheme? To enable it to scale out beyond that range?
The VOC played a similar role in extending the Dutch empire’s reach.
So it really depends a bit on which period you're talking about as there were lots of things going on during the period, but for a substantial part of the British Raj's existence you could get there in a month or less.
I expect the "law" is not as simple as "1 month travel time", but rather a calculation that factors in both travel time + communication time. For much of history these two value were mostly identical, but this changed with the adoption of the telegraph (and later, radio).
Aka the article is complete bullshit.
Map at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map linking to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map#/media/File:Isoc... .
Eastern Indian is 20-30 days. Batavia is about 30 days. Perth and Hong Kong are in the 30-40 day range. Sydney and most of the interior of Australia is in the 40+ day range, as is New Zealand's South Island.
"It assumes that there are favourable travel conditions and that travel arrangements over land have been made in advance. It assumes travelling methods of the day within a reasonable cost."
EDIT: https://archive.org/details/friendsreviewrel06lewi/page/702/... from 1853 lists routes from London to Calcutta ("Friends' review; a religious, literary and miscellaneous journal", p702):
"The distance from London to Calcutta, by the Cape of Good Hope, is 15,000 miles requiring 150 days. With steam say 70 days." ["150 days" agrees with your "about half a year."]
"The distance from London to Calcutta, by Cape Horn, is 21,500 miles requiring 215 days. With steam say 90 days."
"From Liverpool to Calcutta, by Isthmus of Panama, 14,00 miles requiring 140 days. Steam, say 60 days."
"London to Calcutta, overland route, five trans-shipments, 6,000 miles, 58 days"
"Liverpool, New York, and Railway to San Francisco, two transhipments, 12,000 miles, 35 days."
It's from a piece arguing for the usefulness of building a railway across the US (New York to San Francisco), to shorten the London/Calcutta route. That last route didn't exist until 1869, the same year the Suez Canal opened.
EDIT #2: https://archive.org/details/sim_the-lancet_january-3-june-26... has someone leaving London June 1817 and arriving Calcutta 2 December 1817, so about 5 1/2 months. (The Lancet January 3-June 26, 1852, p384, "Biographical Sketch of James Ranald Martin, Esq., F.R.S.")
EDIT #3: The clipper ship Jane Pirie, built 1847, could do the round-trip in "eight months and a half ... the ordinary time occupied over the voyage being ten to eleven months." https://archive.org/details/sim_illustrated-london-news_1851... /mode/2up?q=%22London+to+Calcutta%22 ("Illustrated London News 1851-04-05: Vol 18 Iss 477"). As I understand it, clipper travel would have been fast and expensive.
In Australia (and NZ, and Canada, and the US, and probably in South Africa to a certain degree) their mode of operation seemed: reduce the locals to nothing (even worse than Spain), then build a fully Western-like society. Clean slate, mostly self-governed by white people who are not inclined to fight with Europe (with notable exceptions, obviously)
In India - although I don't doubt for a second they killed many many people - they seemed to operate more like the Golden Horde in Russia: as long as you pay the taxes (and occasionally provide more stuff when we run out), you can keep your culture and be governed by your local warlords, because it's just too tedious to kill all of you at once. The British did seem to have a bit more sway though, for example when they kicked off the partitioning, millions of people started moving. However, largely it seems like a brutal but mostly hands-off rule (based on mutual benefit with the local elite?)
What they did in Africa was something else, I've read books about insanely remote places like South Sudan or Zambia, and what were they doing there is hard for me to understand at all. But again, the gap in technology between the local people and them was so vast that they could do whatever they wanted without much coordination with the capital.
The Romans and other empires of the past were different because they didn't have such a huge technology gap. In case of Romans, you still fight it out with spears, swords and bare hands, and they tended to take over the lands completely, and impose their own gods, order and culture, which is much harder to do with a similar level of technology and does require coordination with the capital.
* 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 much more feasible today, thanks to modern travel, communications, and surveillance technologies.
There's also "The Dispossessed", where an anarchist movement travels to a distant planet in order to set up their own government.
I'm pretty sure I get what you mean but I found that funny.
The Dispossessed describes an anarchist society on the impoverished moon of a verdant planet, and a scientist's struggle to reconcile his anarchism with his wish to further his research, which requires more resources than the anarchist society can provide. It is one of my favourite books.
I also don't remember distant communication being relevant for The Word for World is Forest. That's far more about the conflict between the natives and the colonizers, and passive vs. aggressive societies.
And then when they get the ansible midway through the story along with an inspection party that promptly reports their findings back to Earth, they start getting a steady stream of orders banning their various practices - slavery, violent reprisals etc. And when the local administration tries to implement some of those bans, the more hard-minded colonists deliberately provoke the natives into an open uprising by massacring their village. So it's a major plot driver, too.
C.f. the immigration-friendly early U.S. and its "close borders" and PR lottery approaches of today.
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.
Nearly the only law is that you don't impede the mail system, and that you pay a small tax to support the fleet that will hammer you into the ground if you impede the mail.
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.
> Just make most of your economy based on mass manufacturing weapons and vehicles, problem solved
That feels like "solution" that you spent little more time thinking through than it took you to write it. Those kind of things both unconvincing and have a very high probability of being wrong. I mean, you don't even mention trade-offs and there are obvious historical parallels that call your solution into question. Isn't one of the (many) reasons the Soviet Union collapsed is that is allocated too much of its economic capacity to military expenditures?
A 50 year trip isn’t such a big deal if people are living 100,000 years and have near perfect memory.
> 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.
> 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.
It seems less than unsound. It's barely a just-so story.
As the article acknowledges, travel times within the Roman Empire tended to be less than a month. But they conquered land regions (where possible) before they built the roads that let them supply them that fast. Certainly there's nothing about lowland Germany that should make it more difficult to reach than Hadrian's Wall, but they effectively subdued the British tribes and built roads all over that particular faraway island, and didn't have as much success against the Germanic tribes who inhabited desirable land closer to their capital that could have been reached in a shorter time with a nice lowland road from Gaul, if they'd ever been able to build it.
A lot of people would argue that ~half the world is part of the US empire today...
In that the US has power to strongly influence/make decisions in about half the world, extradite people from about half the world, and enforce IP/anti drug/monetary controls in about half the world.
And by some definitions, it might be 80% of the world.
Delegation of authority seems to partially help solve the problem.
Phileas Fogg’s example Suggests that at the height of the ‘sun never sets’ era, nowhere should have been more than 40 days away from London. And with a significant chunk of that time stuck transiting the pacific, brings the majority of the world into the 30 day window for a single month.
Around the World in 80 days is set almost exactly at that inflection point.
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.
My general feeling is that "We control Afghanistan" said more honestly is something closer to "I am the mayor of Kabul!"
Collapsed eventually.
Collapsed immediately upon his death.
I mean, the Soviet Union eventually collapsed, and that wasn't because of communication delays. Everything eventually collapses. But "stood for centuries, despite the communication delays" kind of disproves the hypothesis. (Or if it doesn't, given the things that collapse after centuries without the communication delays, it means the hypothesis has no predictive power.)
I think the same argument for Canada applies to Australia: there must be a critical mass of well weaponed insurgents before the time delay makes too much of a difference.
Dinosaurs lasted 179 mil. years. The Roman state, between one and two thousand (depends on how you count).
"Queen Victoria, Chinese Gordon is on line one. Shall I tell him to hold?"
For Victorian Britain: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Isochron...
Hahahahahahahaha! You're funny, if not naive.
So is the universe. In fact, 1 light month gets you across 0.00000000061% of it. If your empire on Earth was the same size it'd be 300 square meters. About the size of a big house with a nice garden.
Plus, this analysis is implicitly in the context of a world where the regions have the ability to be self-sustaining on at least the basics of life, so breaking away is a viable option. If the "empire" is also "your supply of oxygen", breaking away will be a lot trickier. For a space colony or set of colonies to be able to break away, they first have to be truly 100% self-sufficient, and that's a tall bar for the forseeable future. They then have to be able to militarily match what the empire is willing to throw at them to retain them, and that's a very complicated analysis, made all the more complicated by not knowing what the exact technologies will be at the time.
(Plus, not all empires are complete buffoons. They at least begin being competently run. The empire will know that to break away the colonies must be self-sufficient, so they will take steps to ensure they won't be self-sufficient. And the colonies will take steps to become secretly self-sufficient. Long before open rebellions occur, there will have been a clandestine war of self-sufficiency.)
And so long as we’re just thinking of this solar system, there’s also the question of whether what’s important is transit time or communication time. Historically those were identical; now very much not.
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.
So I think a mitigating factor for US, Canada, Australia was that the local native population was wiped out by old-world diseases, so there was minimal capability for local population to rebel. This is also the major factor of why those nations' population is largely made-up of the descendent of the colonists. Contrast that with Africa, which suffered from similar attempts at colonialism, was much closer to Europe, but because its native population was not susceptible to European diseases (and in fact, the colonists were decimated by native diseases like malaria), Africa today has a tiny number of colonial descendants (around 5 million European descendants out of a population of ~1 billion)
The population of pre-colonized North America was on the order of 60 million (European population was on the order of ~70 million). Had that population been maintained (i.e. not wiped out by old-world diseases), there was zero chance of European powers being able to establish large colonial populations. In that scenario, once the technological advantage was removed (due to trade, for example), I think you would have seen successful native rebellions.
I would say South America also follows this pattern. No chance of the Spanish being able to establish large colonial populations or maintain hold over native South American populations had they been not wiped out by old-world diseases.
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.
In another thread, I also made an argument for another major mitigating factor with respect to Americas, namely, the native populations were wiped out by old-world diseases which prevented local rebellions from succeeding and allowed Europeans to establish large population centers.
To which the existence of British colonies in Canada after 1776 is kind of a direct rejoinder, right? The eventual loss of those colonies is irrelevant to the point that you can’t explain the American revolution as being an inevitable consequence of remoteness.
If the territory is fully pacified with no significant resistance and/or it's run by dedicated loyalists with plentiful local resources the limit doesn't apply.
Basically an empire can only retain territory against an active threat or resistance within certain limits. If there is no active threat, or the threat is too minor to be a concern, the territory can be considered stable and fully colonised.
I don't think Canada would've stayed british without the loyalist escaping here, since they made it an inherent part of their identity to not revolt against the british as opposed to the americans they left behind. But agreed, there are too many exceptions in general to the article's point.
As opposed to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa?
That meant that the early history of english canada was very deeply influenced by an almost identity defining loyalism to britain, because those refugees often left everything behind in the US to stay loyal the crown. In a way, being british was the entire point of early anglocanadian identity.
I think that makes it pretty different from Australia, a penal colony and South Africa which was conquered more than colonized (and was very hard to hold on for the british). I was more trying to explain why Canada was an outlier in the Americas, and how Britain managed to hold it very easily for so long, even with a free population and little direct military occupation.
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?
A century is a pretty long time for your argument about the beliefs of some individuals to stay valid.
The loyalists shaped the relationship Canada had with britain, and while I'd guess even their descendants were a minority (relative to immigrants) by the mid 19th century, it still defined Canadian identity even to this day. If Canada hadn't seen that initial influx of usually rich, upper class loyalists that became the founding stock of upper canadian politics/elite, we might have had a very, very different outcome. One that is more in line with most other colonies in the New World.
The native population was not killed but rather decimated by disease. Pre-colonial population of North America was on the order of 60 million - there was zero chance European powers being able to hold that size of population over a period of time. Contrast that to Africa, which today has a minimal population of European descendants ... because that native population had immunity.
(#) Obviously the settlers would have preferred to keep the natives alive since then they would not have needed to ship vast quantities of Africans across the ocean to enslave, but could have just done that with the locals.
That's all I meant to clarify. You'd be surprised how many people today actually think that the native population was wiped out through deliberate and intentional action. Your wording made it seem you believed that as well, but that seemed to not be the case.
>Obviously the settlers would have preferred to keep the natives alive since then they would not have needed to ship vast quantities
That's a caricature.
Canada intentionally withheld food it owed to natives as part of treaty agreements, with the understanding that if a bunch of people starved to death, Canada wouldn't need to send as much food.
Similarly, disease was spread intentionally through small pox blankets, with the intention listed
(Not saying this is the right perspective, but I understand why people would argue for it, especially when using ahistorical lens of today's diseases handling)
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.
http://www.cesaremarchetti.org/archive/electronic/basic_inst...
(hope it's not a problem for the author)
ps: as a sidenote, I remember someone saying that the invention of fridges is a factor in the evolution of cities/transporation too. Never found solid work on this but it makes sense, you keep things closer if you can't conserve food.
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.
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?
The total mass of the asteroid belt is calculated to be 3% that of the Moon [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt
We only use a small fraction of matter on the Earth, so maybe a good sized comet can host habitation. But the solid planets and moons are where humanity could thrive. The gas giants have too a gravity well, we'd need some seriously advanced propulsion to make it off, but there's 317x more matter on Jupiter than Earth.
1/50th the distance to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri).
1 light month = ~0.025 parsecs
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.
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.
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)
Beings that live twice as long as humans would feel that the trip to Alpha Centauri is only half as long as what a standard human of equivalent age would perceive it. This could potentially mean their empires could also be double in size at max even if they have the same disposition as humans.
Therefore, as an advisor to an emperor of an interstellar empire, I would strongly encourage lengthening lifespans as the key to increasing the reach of government. The longer the people can live, the more tolerant they will be of long voyages and high latencies.
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.
The Netherlands conquering Java in 1619? A lot more than a month.
And these conquests lasted for centuries.
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'
Java is the world's most populous island, by the way, and was roughly as populated as England in the 1600's
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
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.
I imagine that those who worked on the colonial extents of the Empire were given the largest freedoms to be monstrous as long as it benefitted the crown. I would even argue that the cultural descendants of these agents are the same forces that encourage ideas such as Brexit; hoping to return to times of significantly less oversight from the home nation. As an example of this internal discord between territories of European empires and home states I think the abolition of slavery in the 19th century was a scenario where the electorate didn't align with these colonial interests to create an internal discord. Agents then shifted to an evil interpretation of contract law to replace slaves with indentured servants. I appreciate that this might not seem immediately irrelevant but I hope it might show how a discord between the competing interests of the society at "home" and the society "abroad" might slowly result in the "transport time" fractures this article discusses as the interests of the two populations diverge.
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.
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.
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...
I don't in general have trouble distinguishing colored areas when they're adjacent to each other. But when they're separated from each other -- as is often the case with a map and its legend -- it becomes a lot more difficult.
Using colors to show extent and numbers to match up with the legend is a great solution to this problem. Take note!
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.
More seriously, I think the predictive power of this hypothesis is low. Clearly travel time is important to maintaining a connected empire but it’s probably not the limiting factor.