[HN Gopher] How transportation technologies shaped empires
___________________________________________________________________
How transportation technologies shaped empires
Author : agomez314
Score : 279 points
Date : 2023-01-06 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com)
| shae wrote:
| This is why you need more mass transit where you live.
| micro_charm wrote:
| 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
| drbeast wrote:
| Ghengis Khan, Queen Victoria, and Alexander the Great have
| entered the chat.
| gadtfly wrote:
| The Macedonian and Mongolian Empires shattered into more
| manageable bits almost immediately.
|
| For Victorian Britain:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Isochron...
| sayrer wrote:
| 1914 and 2016: https://www.rome2rio.com/labs/isochronic-
| travel-times/
| quartesixte wrote:
| Eventually collapsed.
|
| Collapsed eventually.
|
| Collapsed immediately upon his death.
| sorokod wrote:
| Pretty much anything happens eventually.
|
| Dinosaurs lasted 179 mil. years. The Roman state, between one
| and two thousand (depends on how you count).
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| 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.)
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| 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.
| zopa wrote:
| All empires collapse eventually.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Past performance isn't a guarantee of future results. With
| modern technology, the next empire will never collapse.
| csomar wrote:
| The heat death will guarantee the collapse of all and any
| empire.
| gsich wrote:
| Until it does.
| meatyloafy wrote:
| All except the last.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Alexander the Great and the Mongol empire are specifically
| addressed in the article. Maybe read before "entering the
| chat"?
| drbeast wrote:
| RTFA and not write commentary off the cuff?
|
| Hahahahahahahaha! You're funny.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| he addressed all those didn't he?
|
| "Queen Victoria, Chinese Gordon is on line one. Shall I tell
| him to hold?"
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Alexander the Great wouldn't count as his empire fractured upon
| his death almost immediately after his conquests
| [deleted]
| kybernetyk wrote:
| So no Mars province?
| kcb wrote:
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| 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.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| 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.
| manv1 wrote:
| That's not true, as evidenced by many, many empires, past and
| present (Spanish, British, Roman, American) that spanned more
| than a month of travel.
|
| What they're trying to say is that the span of control is limited
| by the ability to project power/information to the extremities of
| the empire. That makes sense, but the way they measure the limits
| is wrong.
|
| The way the empires get around this problem is by putting people
| who have drunk the kool-aid in positions of power. While this can
| lead to abuse (ie: the Spanish), it can also lead to surprising
| amounts of consistency (all of the above).
|
| Empires that fail are empires that require centralized decision
| making...and that's due to the communication limits posited and
| the generally poor quality of the staff in those types of
| organizations.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| Empires that expand beyond the 30 day travel limit tend to
| fizzle out and crumble.
|
| Today, of course, we travel the whole planet roughly 30 times
| in that time frame. So it's not a limit on Earth anymore. But
| it was definitely a problem for all previous empires. The ones
| you listed prove the point. They all crumbled when they
| expanded too far.
|
| The reason is kinda obvious: If it takes 30 days to travel, it
| takes 60 days to travel there and back. Which means there is,
| at minimum, a 60 day delay between the start of a rebellion or
| war and your ability to respond to it. That's assuming you were
| ready for the news the moment you got it. Good luck with that.
|
| It's just one of many reasons why wars are won more by
| logistics than bullets.
|
| So I think it raises two really interesting questions:
|
| (1) Here on Earth, the elimination of this limit is pretty
| recent. Should we anticipate an empire that spans the globe
| truly taking over? (No need to sarcastically comment about
| America today.)
|
| (2) How does this impact space travel? Based on current and
| foreseeable technology, there's no planet we can regularly
| reach in that amount of time, because at any given time, the
| other planet could be on the other side of the solar system.
| Can we really colonize new areas if we can't reach them faster
| than 30 days? Maybe we can. Communication is nearly instant
| (relatively speaking), and there are no enemy combatants to
| deal with. But they'll still be stuck on their own if any
| unforeseen emergencies arise. Those never happen, right? Would
| we most likely see the formation of a new nation on each planet
| we colonize?
| [deleted]
| mcguire wrote:
| Can I introduce you to the British Empire, pre-steamships:
| https://www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/sailingtimes.htm
|
| Or in 1914:
| https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter1/the-
| setting... (post-steamships)
|
| The Spanish Empire was probably worse at its height.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Bouncingsoul1 wrote:
| It is for the Romans though,
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2609654 as
| for the others I'm a bit sceptical but haven't to knowlegde
| about them either
| derefr wrote:
| > The way the empires get around this problem is by putting
| people who have drunk the kool-aid in positions of power.
|
| I always understood the aphorism as taking delegation of power
| into account -- it's "one month of travel" not because of the
| needs of top-down command-and-control, but rather because
| delegated power that's more than a month away falls past some
| threshold of latency required to "keep them in hand."
|
| The aphorism might make more sense flipped in perspective and
| inverted: as a magistrate/governor, if you see your colonists
| suffering under the tyranny of a remote power, you'd better be
| at least a month away from that power to be able to quietly
| rebel under the nose of that remote power. Otherwise a quiet
| rebellion will never work -- any closer, and they'll be
| constantly watching/auditing you. At a closer distance, if you
| want to rebel, the only option is an active, bloody rebellion
| -- and if that's unpalatable to you, then you'd better just not
| rebel!
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There's an old Chinese proverb for this that's pretty
| succinct:
|
| "The mountains are tall and the emperor is far away."
| jimmytidey wrote:
| "Drunk the cool aid..." In the UK case I've heard the idea that
| the Publc School system emerged for exactly this reason.
| ('Public' schools being the most elite schools in the UK).
|
| A relatively small number of schools shaped a class of people
| who all thought in exactly the same way, so they would behave
| predictably even when far away and in a new context.
|
| Public schools, are not coincidentally noted for a focus on
| 'playing by the rules' and 'fair play', as inculcated through
| sport. Not to mention never breaking your word. All handy
| traits if your goal is breeding administrators you can trust
| without supervision.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Not to mention never breaking your word.
|
| You surely jest. A substantial proportion of British
| politicians, on the right mostly, were educated at public
| schools. They don't all have a shining record when it comes
| to integrity and honesty.
|
| Twenty one (I think) of Britain's prime ministers went to
| Eton including Johnson and Cameron. Are we to believe that
| those two scoundrels are exceptions?
| flerchin wrote:
| Johnson and Cameron hardly led the Empire.
| scotty79 wrote:
| You can't give word to the public. It simply doesn't count.
| But you can give word to people that made the public vote
| for you and that's rarely broken.
| im3w1l wrote:
| There is lack of integrity and then there is _lack of
| integrity_. Like imagine a minister only hiring relatives,
| embezzling billions, taking bribes, extorting for bribes,
| selling information and influence to foreign adversaries.
| Imagine people that don 't even pretend to care about their
| duties, to the point that are indifferent to their people
| starving (what's it to me, if they riot we can always shoot
| em dead?).
| notch656c wrote:
| I think they meant trustworthy to superiors and possibly
| peers. British populace are the subjects of their
| politicians, and thus no trust need be proffered.
| newsclues wrote:
| Just because some public school graduates go on to become
| dishonest politicians, does not mean that the school itself
| isn't there to educate and select honest administrators of
| the state/etc.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Sometimes its i.protant to understand the culture
| correctly- perhaps the institution has degraded now. Or
| perhaps your word only matters if it was goben to an equal,
| and Joe the public doesn't count? I dont know
| jimmytidey wrote:
| The system doesn't work anymore. I don't think There is a
| country-specific elite culture now.
| ikrenji wrote:
| playing by the rules and fair play is good for society at
| large, not just prospective administrators lol
| Balgair wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSGWoXDFM64
| jfk13 wrote:
| For another awesome rendition, try the Simon Gallagher
| production, with Derek Metzger as the Major-General; the
| entire show is (in my opinion) utterly fantastic.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DJaNbD6R2s&list=PLXRhW-
| jVlF... (shame about the video quality, but it's still well
| worth watching)
| jimmytidey wrote:
| Amazing reference!
| unsui wrote:
| I've never seen the source, but was reminded of this
| excellent homage: - https://youtu.be/BQXbbWVJ4sA?t=133
| notch656c wrote:
| Being trustworthy seems like an important trait in the older
| agrarian societies that depended on long-term planning and
| exchange, whether you were a farmer or an administrator.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It seems very important if you are talking to me today. Why
| should I listen to you?
| jimmytidey wrote:
| Yes, although I'm not sure they had the capacity to
| institutionalise eduction to that end.
| notch656c wrote:
| >centralized decision making
|
| Which bodes poorly for increasing federal power in the US.
| malfist wrote:
| What part of the US is more than a month's travel from
| Washington DC?
| prottog wrote:
| The GP already pointed out that the "month's travel" rule
| doesn't apply in all cases. The poster you're replying to
| does have a point about increasing amounts of decisions
| being made at the federal level in this country, as opposed
| to state or local levels closer to the people affected.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| 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.
| notch656c wrote:
| Can you explain why more local decision making must be the
| worst thing to do?
| bilbo0s wrote:
| The thing is, sometimes, centralized decision makers take
| decisions that are bad because they are too far removed
| from the consequences of the decisions. For instance,
| decisions on, say, water rights, made by the federal
| government in the US. The federal and state governments
| have effectively collaborated to create a slow rolling
| disaster across the entire west.
|
| (Of course, now I think about it, local and state
| governments also take terrible decisions. Slavery and Jim
| Crow spring to mind. So there really is no "good" way to
| solve the "decision making" problem. I guess you're
| basically screwed if you have to allow other people to make
| decisions for you.)
| prottog wrote:
| > So there really is no "good" way to solve the "decision
| making" problem.
|
| Insofar as humanity hasn't yet figured out how to make
| good decisions all the time ;-) that's true. However, I
| posit that keeping decisions at as low a level as
| possible lets mistakes be more easily undone by higher
| levels in the hierarchy; hence Justice Brandeis's
| laboratories of democracy.
| prottog wrote:
| > the only bottleneck is the human processing said
| communication
|
| You said it yourself. I don't care if the ansible lets you
| communicate faster than the speed of light; the capacity of
| leaders at the top to understand lower-level facts and
| needs has not changed much from 1542 to 2023.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The local decision-makers know much better the local needs:
| Local people can communicate with local decision-makers,
| they have far more experience with local needs (lifetimes
| worth), and human cognitive capacity is limited - nobody
| single federal decision maker can learn and know what all
| the local mayors know. Nobody a thousand miles away can
| know my neighborhood the way I do.
|
| That's a reason decision-making in business is often pushed
| to the lowest level - the central people can't know as
| much.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| History of Empire, History of Travel Technology, and History of
| Communications Technology are _huuuuge_ fields with tons of
| professionals working today. I 'm a little concerned about huge
| claims being made about empire by a Stanford MBA and a
| community of people mostly experienced in software and tech.
|
| The historians would love for you to read their books! AHA is
| literally happening _right now_! Go to bars in Philly and talk
| to them!
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| You don't even need to talk to someone. Pick up any book on
| European colonialism, the Roman Empire, Japanese imperialism,
| Chinese Imperial dynasties, medieval South Asia, pre-Islamic
| Persian empires, etc etc. Reddit's r/askhistorians is a great
| reference for sources on the more popular topics.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, but software engineers are better at many things than
| professionals in their fields. The classic example is Jeff
| Bezos and gang stopping their companies from flying people
| to/from China a month before US authorities reacted to
| COVID-19. They also cancelled conferences two weeks before
| shelter-in-place and asked people to work from home.
|
| Tech professionals said that masks would help in the early
| stages while the US Surgeon General said "Masks don't work!"
| and Dr. Fauci said that you shouldn't be wearing any.
|
| This is the magic of tech: the people there are there for
| comparative advantage. They would be better than
| epidemiologists at epidemiology and better than public health
| experts at public health. But they're _much_ better at tech
| than epidemiologists and public health experts are at tech,
| and so they go to tech.
|
| In a similar vein, I would be unsurprised to find that new
| insights about history come from technologists. Of course, I
| don't think this is one.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I....
|
| Software Engineers are not better at making accurate
| historical claims than historians. I'd be fucking _baffled_
| if "new insights about history come from technologists" in
| any meaningful quantity. Like, it'd be among the most
| surprising thing involving human behavior I could imagine.
| Like, what software engineers do you know that have spent
| even a _minute_ working in an archive?
|
| I see no way that this comment could be made without just a
| complete ignorance of the profession of history.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I was assuming satire, but it really is hard to tell on
| the Internet...
| kcartlidge wrote:
| I couldn't decide whether/how to vote as I couldn't work
| out if it was sarcasm. It seems like it _must_ be, but it
| 's written so earnestly.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I always look first for the reason I should trust them (how
| frustrating to look after reading a long article!). Don't
| forget they are also a highly trained engineer in SV, and
| made products used by lots of people today. Why not
| collaborate with a historian?
|
| > Go to bars in Philly and talk to them!
|
| ? What happens in bars in Philly? Nobody does it elsewhere?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The American Historical Association Annual Conference
| (colloquially, AHA) is happening in Philly this weekend.
| Academics like to go out to drink after a day of talks.
|
| Mostly tongue-in-cheek. I don't actually think the best way
| to meet historians is to go to random bars in the cities
| hosting major conferences.
| dcow wrote:
| https://www.historians.org/annual-meeting
| onion2k wrote:
| This will significantly limit humanity's ambitions to colonize
| outer space.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Depends on the velocity. 1 light month is pretty big.
| onion2k wrote:
| _1 light month is pretty big._
|
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Within one light month of earth, there is only one solar
| system - the one containing Earth, obviously.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Unless the settlers form a democratic and self-governing
| society, not an authoritarian empire
| PeterisP wrote:
| A society can easily be democratic and self-governing within
| itself but do authoritarian subjugation of other societies,
| or be subject to such.
| jerf wrote:
| 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.)
| glitchc wrote:
| Those colonies would simply become independent in a relatively
| short period of time.
| zopa wrote:
| 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.
| stakhanov wrote:
| 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.
| asah wrote:
| Travel? or communication?
|
| (in the ancient world, they were the same but in the modern world
| they're obviously different for example if we colonize Mars)
| FredPret wrote:
| So... the moon, or even Venus?
| shagie wrote:
| Not sure Venus is within 1 month travel time.
|
| Granted this is with Apollo era technology... but we're still
| talking Saturn V
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_flyby
|
| > The proposed mission would have used a Saturn V to send three
| astronauts on a flight past Venus, which would have lasted
| approximately one year.
|
| > ...
|
| > Phase C would be the actual manned flyby, using a Block IV
| CSM and an updated version of the Venus flyby S-IVB which would
| carry a large radio antenna for communication with Earth.
|
| > ...
|
| > The Phase C mission was planned for a launch in late October
| or early November 1973, when the velocity requirements to reach
| Venus and the duration of the resulting mission would be at
| their lowest. After a brief stay in Earth parking orbit to
| check out the spacecraft, the crew would have headed for Venus.
| ... After a successful S-IVB burn, the spacecraft would have
| passed approximately 3000 miles from the surface of Venus about
| four months later.
|
| Of note https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/traj_browser.php is
| fun to play with. - Custom list (Venus), one way rendezvous,
| minimize duration, all trajectories.
|
| The shortest one is an 80 day one "burn straight there"
| approach.
|
| I'm not sure that NASA has that updated for more recent years
| (its a search - not a compute) - still gives you an idea of
| what is doable and the inner solar system opportunities are
| fairly consistent (compared to the Grand Tour
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_program which is once
| every 175 years). See also
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Netwo...
| and if that sounds like fun, then High Frontier board game
| might be up your alley ( current edition
| https://iongamedesign.com/products/high-frontier-4-all
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/281655/high-frontier-4-a...
| ).
| shagie wrote:
| The Venus missions...
|
| One way rendezvous - 80 days is the minimal - https://trajbro
| wser.arc.nasa.gov/traj_browser.php?NEAs=on&NE...
|
| If you're just doing a flyby and letting the ship then get
| lost, it can get down to 48 days https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa
| .gov/traj_browser.php?NEAs=on&NE...
|
| The one way flyby is not likely one that would be good for
| human travelers as you aren't really stopping (or even
| slowing down enough to get captured).
|
| The shortest round trips are just over a year long. https://t
| rajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/traj_browser.php?NEAs=on&NE...
|
| The trip _there_ is only 90 days, but the return leg is one
| of the least optimal options with a 280 day "climb back out"
| trip. You could do a 96 day there, and 80 day back, but to
| get the right orbital arrangement it then means that you'd
| need to stay at Venus for 1.3 years.
|
| It is a neat thing to play with and see what options exist.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Never knew those cataracts were are thing
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataracts_of_the_Nile
| [deleted]
| scythe wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| BurningFrog wrote:
| By this logic, the Mars colonies _will_ be independent.
| idontpost wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| 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.
| aj7 wrote:
| Somebody calculate a light month.
| PeterisP wrote:
| 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.
| carapace wrote:
| 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.
| shagie wrote:
| 30x distance to Voyager
|
| 1/50th the distance to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri).
| awb wrote:
| 1 light year = ~0.3 parsecs
|
| 1 light month = ~0.025 parsecs
| [deleted]
| xwdv wrote:
| 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.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> 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.
| krisoft wrote:
| > 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.
| xwdv wrote:
| 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.
| Someone wrote:
| 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)
| jameshart wrote:
| "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.
| SoftAnnaLee wrote:
| 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 Metis 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.
| [deleted]
| macspoofing wrote:
| >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.
| cma wrote:
| They lost it to home rule only after it took less than a
| month to travel there with steam ships, right?
| dsr_ wrote:
| And also after communication time dropped from 2 weeks to 2
| minutes (telegraph, 1866).
| macspoofing wrote:
| 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.
| jameshart wrote:
| 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.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| 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.
| jameshart wrote:
| Aha. So the rule is: empires can only hold territory that
| they are able to hold. Got it. Useful predictive
| principle.
| jameshart wrote:
| 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
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| Canada was essentially independent since WWI.
| bee_rider wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| i_love_cookies wrote:
| wasn't the war of 1812 partly/mostly driven by a US desire to
| annex canada?
| macspoofing wrote:
| 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.
| meatyloafy wrote:
| There is quite a difference between conquering (and thereby
| assimilating) versus killing almost all natives and then
| populating the place with your own settlers..
| macspoofing wrote:
| >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.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| 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.
| jameshart wrote:
| That's a funny definition of 'not killed' you're using.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| 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.
| klibertp wrote:
| 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)
| meatyloafy wrote:
| 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.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >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
|
| That's a caricature.
| ldh0011 wrote:
| 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.
| 8note wrote:
| 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
| bbarnett wrote:
| And even more so, re: distance, Australia.
| macspoofing wrote:
| 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.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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.
| jameshart wrote:
| So... empires can't retain territory over a month away from
| its capital, unless it's populated by people loyal to the
| empire?
|
| Isn't the point of the month rule that it's hard to maintain
| a loyal population at that distance? So this amounts to
| saying 'well the rule doesn't apply to Canada because the
| rule doesn't account for Canada'.
|
| Right. So it's a bit of a rubbish rule then?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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 :)
| [deleted]
| masklinn wrote:
| > You are right of course but I think Canada is a pretty
| unique case.
|
| As opposed to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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.
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| 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.
| bregma wrote:
| 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.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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.
| tgv wrote:
| Or Spain and South America?
| frr149 wrote:
| Evwn better, Spain and the Philipines
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| Russia to Far East?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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!
| idontpost wrote:
| [dead]
| adolph wrote:
| 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.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Civilization the game needs to re-add travel along rivers. If I
| remember correctly you could do it in Civ II because rivers were
| tiles.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| If the hypothesis includes the stipulation "from the capital," it
| would have been useful to see some commentary on what the author
| thought about the Roman Empire moving its capital (or having
| multiple emperors each with a capital).
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Travel time is more important in wartime. It's quite hard to
| conquer a place if your supply lines are too long. But if you do
| conquer, you can hold it for a long time with much less effort.
|
| I found this part of the article to be nonsense:
| Alexander the Great conquered most of the "known world" of his
| day. But his conquests took them 10 years, and after his
| death, the empire was split in six. Which further proves
| that a strong army, without proper transportation technologies,
| can't hold an empire together.
|
| Uhhh..... first of all dude, only taking 10 years to conquer the
| entire known world (when the conqueror is _20 years old_ ) is
| pretty fucking insane, let's give the kid some credit. But yeah,
| his empire was split in six when he died. Why? He had no heir, he
| was the king of the entire known world, and he died suddenly.
| Conflict was bound to happen. This in no way provides any
| evidence to this point that transportation is critical to keeping
| an empire.
| [deleted]
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| Excellent article generally but I don't think the point about
| Napoleon was very strong and rather diminished the article as it
| conflates the concept of military supply with Imperial
| administration and I think the two subjects differ in practice.
|
| (i.e. in another reality where Napoleon had superior temporarily
| military supply in Russian held territories then he could have
| conquered Russia. If that happened; whether he could hold the
| territory for the years that follow would however be an argument
| for this article).
| golemotron wrote:
| Our last planet, Neptune, fits neatly within one light-month. The
| rest of the heliosphere does too, but not the Oort cloud.
|
| Looks like empires are purely solar system affairs. Sci-fi
| authors take note.
| cactacea wrote:
| Article is a little light on details with regards to why the
| author believes this effect exists. I have to imagine that
| their thinking is that application of force is limited to the
| distance you can travel one month instead of anything that
| would relate to the application of soft power (e.g.
| communication).
|
| Supplying a ground based force follows more of a square-cube
| law. You need to feed your horses to transport your food to
| feed your soldiers. Going further means more food for the
| horses to carry the food for the horses to carry the food for
| the soldiers. There is an excellent post here that explains
| this far better than I ever could:
| https://maximumeffort.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-wago...
|
| Any limitations on space based empires, while similar, are
| going to follow somewhat different rules depending on the tech
| involved. Unlike horses, once you launch you don't really have
| an opportunity to resupply a space based force going a long
| distance without inordinate energy expenditure. I'm not
| convinced force projection over a galaxy would be a problem for
| a civilization capable of travel at a significant fraction of
| the speed of light. Solving one problem (travel) necessarily
| solves the other (distribution of force).
|
| I think the bigger question is more, why bother? What possible
| reason could a civilization have to go to war at that scale?
| Human civilization would need to change so much to get to that
| point that I'm not certain these are questions are explorable
| at our place in the timeline. We'd be like Romans dreaming
| about a better abacus.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| My understanding is that the British Raj was several months away
| from London?
| Beltalowda wrote:
| 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).
| masklinn wrote:
| > I expect the "law" is not as simple as "1 month travel
| time"
|
| Aka the article is complete bullshit.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| 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).
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| 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.
| danenania wrote:
| 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).
| notahacker wrote:
| 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.
| eesmith wrote:
| 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.)
|
| 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.
| shagmin wrote:
| One could argue the British augmented that by creating better
| local institutions in the far away places.
| karatinversion wrote:
| Let alone that the Portuguese were in Brazil, and the Spanish
| in the _Philippines_, for some 300 years
| jollyllama wrote:
| There's so many exceptions. Does the article address any of
| these?
| jameshart wrote:
| The Philippines is a great example of how to break this rule;
| it was almost more a colony of New Spain than of Spain.
|
| Basically 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.
| notch656c wrote:
| 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.
| ekam wrote:
| 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.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| were they ruling it or plundering it for most of that time, and
| after they started ruling, how long did it last?
| imbnwa wrote:
| >This also helps explain for example why feudalism was so
| prevalent in Europe during the Middle Ages. Without well-
| maintained Roman roads, the time needed to go from one place to
| another extended, which made it that much harder to control big
| empires. Small, local warlords emerged. They were the ones with
| enough money to afford a horse and armor
|
| This point is another reminder for me that Game of Thrones'
| Westeros, the Seven Kingdoms, should've collapsed the minute all
| the dragons were lost in the Dance of Dragons, particularly the
| North, where it takes months to get to Winterfell from King's
| Landing. This writer[0] also noted how impossible Westeros as a
| united entity should be along with other issues with GRRM's world
| design.
|
| Nevermind that the size of Westeros should have a _significant_
| impact on its anthropology. This is a needlessly nerdy analysis,
| and most are aware of GRRM 's well-known disclaimer about his
| faults, but no one even comments on anyone having an accent in
| Westeros, except for that of the Dornish (which is kinda sketch
| IMO).
|
| * The relative isolation of the North and the Iron Islands
| would've seen them continue to speak and evolve the First Men's
| language, though with far more Andalic influence than the
| language spoken north of the Wall.
|
| * Dorne would speak a spectrum that goes from the Andalic of the
| Marches to the Andalic/Rhoynish patois most people would speak in
| Sunspear
|
| * The Sea Lords, much like the Channel Islands IRL, would've
| continued to speak a dialect of High Valyrian that would've had a
| strong Andalic influence and the Targaryens would've spoken this
| dialect. Its a bit strange that the Targaryens basically just
| stopped speaking Valyrian though where IRL it took the Normans,
| also a dominant political minority, almost 400 years to start
| speaking English conversationally. The royal court and the high
| lords would all have learned to speak it.
|
| * The Riverlands' dialect would be most related to the
| Stormlands' dialect since the Storm King ruled there for 300
| years.
|
| * The Vale, also relatively isolated since its accessible over
| land through a scant few mountain passes, like Portugal and Spain
| IRL where Portuguese has more in common with vulgar Latin, would
| speak the 'purest' dialect of Andalic that has more in common
| with the Andalic that was spoken in Essos.
|
| [0]https://medium.com/migration-issues/westeros-is-poorly-
| desig...
| nostrademons wrote:
| Also the stability of the Kingdoms of Westeros is ridiculous
| given their ages. Supposedly they were divided into the
| Kingdoms of the North/Vale/Iron
| Islands/Reach/Rock/Stormlands/Dorne in the Age of Heroes -
| 10,000 years before the Targaryen conquest. 10,000 years is
| twice as long as all of recorded human history. In that time on
| earth, dozens of empires have risen and fallen. The center of
| civilization moved from the Middle East to Egypt to Greece to
| Rome to Byzantium & Arabia to western Europe to Britain to
| North America. Independent civilizations with equal claims to
| greatness sprung up elsewhere on the globe. Civilizations got
| conquered, technology advanced, genocides and plagues and
| famines happened, languages changed, and dynasties typically
| lasted a couple hundred years, if that.
|
| Meanwhile, over in Westeros, the same 7 kingdoms have been
| ruled over the same geographic extent by the same 7 families at
| roughly the same level of technological development for 10,000
| years. It took outsiders with dragons to conquer them. No
| explanation is given over how you could maintain what appear to
| be feudal structures over a 3000+ mile continent with bronze
| age technology.
| ozim wrote:
| It is something I read before in a book:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_and_Communications
| jfzoid wrote:
| Chinese saying: "the mountains are high, and the Emperor is far
| away" (Shan Gao Di Yuan )
| thriftwy wrote:
| Russian saying: be further from higher ups, closer to the
| kitchen (podal'she ot nachal'stva, poblizhe k kukhne)
| lkrubner wrote:
| Portugal conquered Goa in 1510 -- that's more than a month of
| travel.
|
| The Netherlands conquering Java in 1619? A lot more than a month.
|
| And these conquests lasted for centuries.
| [deleted]
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| 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.
| tarentel wrote:
| I'm not sure capturing and holding an island would constitute
| an empire.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Java is a pretty big island just saying.
| dalbasal wrote:
| what does and how do you measure its size, in a sense
| pertinent to this thread?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| 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".
| beebmam wrote:
| 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'
| hammock wrote:
| Britain? Sardinia?
|
| Java is the world's most populous island, by the way, and was
| roughly as populated as England in the 1600's
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Fine. How about New Spain? And the Philippines?
| alephnerd wrote:
| 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
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| > 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 Bacaim (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.
| [deleted]
| rsynnott wrote:
| > 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.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| > 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.
| somenameforme wrote:
| 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 their government, the less likely they are to feel that it's
| "their" government or have any sort of shared "camaraderie" for
| lack of a better word.
|
| There are plenty of examples of empires having at least tentacles
| stretched well beyond 3000 miles sustainably, even at the
| beckoning of the colonies, as in the case of e.g. Anguilla with
| the Brits. Yet no empire can maintain stability, regardless of
| their size, in the face of rising discontent.
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| 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?
| somenameforme wrote:
| I'd say that discontent is implicit in _any_ sort of rule.
| The smallest of villages will have discontent, and at
| extremes may even splinter - a collapse of an "empire" on
| the micro scale. It's all a matter of _how_ discontent people
| become. Basically I 'm arguing a tautology: when people
| become discontent enough to fight against their rulers, they
| will do so.
| complex_exp wrote:
| Russia. All the asian russians are very much treated as
| second class citizens, from the top (deciding where to draft
| mobiks from) to the bottom (a much worse case of what
| americans today would call police brutality / bias). We have
| to see if it survives though.
| cs702 wrote:
| 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.
| masklinn wrote:
| > The logic seems sound to me
|
| It seems less than unsound. It's barely a just-so story.
| notahacker wrote:
| 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.
| humanistbot wrote:
| 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.
| tgv wrote:
| 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.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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.
| brians wrote:
| 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.
| kqr wrote:
| 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.
| meatyloafy wrote:
| 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.
| shaoonb wrote:
| Have you read much Le Guin by any chance? This is a theme
| I've seen in her work.
| nindalf wrote:
| Could you mention some books?
| lantry wrote:
| 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.
| ldh0011 wrote:
| > anarchist movement > set up their own government
|
| I'm pretty sure I get what you mean but I found that
| funny.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| 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.
| pifm_guy wrote:
| > 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.
| arthurofbabylon wrote:
| I'm wondering how to apply this in my life.
|
| People -> Should the contracted teams I work with have more
| frequent or deeper touch points? Can I make it even easier for
| customers and strangers to contact me? Do I generally signal that
| I'm open and willing to listen to the people in my life?
|
| Places -> Is there a convenient way to get around town that I'm
| neglecting?
|
| Ideas -> How can I create rapid channels of info from more
| distant communities or corners of the internet? What newsletters
| should I subscribe to?
|
| The idea here is that we need to manage our space - geographic,
| social, conceptual - and that it may serve us to expand our zone
| of access.
| [deleted]
| logifail wrote:
| This is another click-baity title submission which doesn't
| remotely match the title of the source ("How Transportation
| Technologies Shaped Empires") :(
| [deleted]
| xrd wrote:
| 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.
| rcarr wrote:
| 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.
| krisoft wrote:
| > before the advent of instant communication.
|
| 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?
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Is there enough matter for a serious political faction to
| subsist off of?
|
| 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.
| irrational wrote:
| What about the sun never setting on the British Empire? Wouldn't
| that mean the British empire was larger than 1 month of travel
| from the capital?
| jameshart wrote:
| 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.
| JustLurking2022 wrote:
| 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.
| PeterisP wrote:
| 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.
| jameshart wrote:
| 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.
| GalenErso wrote:
| "The regional governors now have direct control over their
| territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line."
|
| Delegation of authority seems to partially help solve the
| problem.
| soundmasterj wrote:
| They're saying we can have the moon.
| belter wrote:
| Let me introduce the Treaty of Tordesillas...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| 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 entity.
| kgeist wrote:
| 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.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Canada de facto owns a huge amount of territory. Nobody else
| wants it.
|
| Vladivostok is desireable to many powers in the region, but
| it's also changed hands many times in recent history.
| notch656c wrote:
| What lands are de facto Canada but not de jure Canada's?
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Siberia is kind of its own exception, though. I'd say they
| managed to keep Siberia - for reasons solely to do with
| Siberia - despite how bad they were at keeping the empire
| together, relatively speaking.
| thriftwy wrote:
| It's just that Siberia is predominantly populated by ethnic
| Russians and USSR did not succeed in growing any regional
| identity there.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| This neatly explains Afghanistan, i think. Fundamentally
| unnavigable for the entirety of written history!
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| The interior of Africa, too.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| 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.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Babur was probably the last man to hold the mountains with
| any seriousness, and he only held on for about a generation.
|
| My general feeling is that "We control Afghanistan" is more
| honestly something closer to "I am the mayor of Kabul!"
| charliea0 wrote:
| 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.
| paxys wrote:
| The rise and fall of empires is a _way_ more complex topic than
| the author paints it to be in this post. Yes distance to the
| outer reaches is an important factor, but so are a hundred
| others. Economics, religion, trade, climate, technological
| progress, and above all leadership - all play an important role
| in the shaping of civilization.
| badrabbit wrote:
| This was true before the 20th century but my opinion is that
| instant communication, payment and relatively fast weapons
| delivery meant for over a century now this rule is no longer
| valid. Your empire can be as big as you want it to, even expand
| to the moon but probably not beyond. The limiting factor now is
| the appetite for war and conquest by a population that can
| communicate and organize efficiently to overthrow or change
| rulers as well as interference from global nuclear powers.
| miovoid wrote:
| Does this rule works for information signal speed in general?
| Does empire in space cannot be large than 1 month light in
| radius?
| drexlspivey wrote:
| You can get around that by turning the empire into a federation
| which is the case in most sci-fi novels
| perihelions wrote:
| 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.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| I don't see this as a case of 'information speed'.
|
| It's more like, who wants to wait more than 30 days for a package
| to get delivered. Each yearly task takes specific tools and
| ingredients, that you can't wait for.
|
| There is a certain yearly rhythm, so people are on 30 day
| schedules. 1 month of harvest in the fall (October) 1 month of
| processing the food (November) 1 month of swapping and trading
| food (December) 1 month of keeping animals alive in winter
| (January) 1 month of animal husbandry (February) 1 month of
| winter planting (March) 1 month of birthing new animals (April) 1
| month of spring plating (May) 1 month of early harvests (June) 1
| month of tending to planted crops (July) 1 month of travel
| (August) 1 month of making clothing and other things (September)
| dalbasal wrote:
| I feel like there's some cherry picking going on. I mean, issues
| with germanic tribes and inland conquests did play a role but...
| what about upper egypt, paetrea, britannia, etc. The edge of the
| empire was the edge of the empire... with frontier problems. Why
| did germania fail, but not those other ones.
|
| I mean size is an issue. Travel & messaging are issues. Empires
| are very much defined by these things, etc. I just don't see
| where the clear watershed is.
|
| Early modern european empires colonized the americas, SE Asia,
| the african coast... Those were months of treacherous sailing.
| "Empire" in those cases meant something totally different than
| for Rome. Rome marched in with troops and took political control.
| Portugal & the Dutch, England and such established small colonies
| that grew in power until they were hegemons. Sometimes just a
| small port or town.
|
| Anyway... I think Rome's limiting factor in germania and the
| european frontier was barbarism. NW europeans didn't have
| civilization: states, monarchies, temples, senates, roads,
| nations. The germans didn't even know they were germans until
| Romans told them. Rome's empire was based on assuming political
| control over existing political institutions. It's economy was
| dependant on this approach. Rome's African and Asian territories
| had been civilized for Millenia. Jerusalem, Carthage, Luxor, etc.
| Europe had no cities. How do you tax?
|
| In northern europe, arabia and such Rome's empire looked like the
| early days of early modern colonialism. Slave export & frontier
| plantations supporting a Roman villa lifestyle for a small number
| of colonists. Most of the natives didn't pay tax, or participate
| in Roman life.
|
| Egypt, under rome, shipped grain to the capital and enriched
| Roman officials. In "the colonies," it worked in reverse. Rome
| had to ship _them_ soldiers and money to keep the colony going.
| [deleted]
| vondur wrote:
| Barbarism is certainly a factor in the Roman expansion into
| Germania, but if you look at how the Romans were able to
| colonize Gaul completely. I think originally they thought they
| could follow the same playbook into both Germania and Britain.
| Britain was never full pacified and required a large occupation
| force to keep the province under control. After the defeat of
| Varus during the reign of Augustus, I think Roman leadership
| looked at the area using a cost/benefit analysis and decided it
| wasn't worth the amount of money that would be needed to fully
| pacifiy the region. The Romans should have pulled out of
| Britain after Claudius, the invasion was a vanity project and
| had no real value as a province.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Idk...
|
| Lots of conquests were hard, but time did them. Then they put
| down rebellions as necessary.
|
| I think the difference was that there was no way for time to
| "win" as they we used to. No palace to install governors in.
| No temple to place Roman statues in.
|
| How do twin? What do you win when you win? Rome wasn't after
| a tax base or plantations for cash crops. They were after a
| tax base. Most of their empire consisted of territories that
| had all these things for yonks. They had been conquered by
| many empires and knew the drill. Britannia and Germania did
| not.
| mjcohen wrote:
| This is not written in English. Maybe AI?
| btilly wrote:
| "Pacified" is a bloodless word to hide a bloody reality.
|
| According to Julius Caesar's own figures, when he conquered
| Gaul he killed roughly a third, enslaved a third, and left
| the last third under Roman rule. Thus did the future dictator
| create the power base with which he overthrew the Republic.
| (Though it took his nephew Octavian, better known as
| Augustus, to make that stick.)
|
| Even in modern times, autocrats seek to glorify their power
| with titles that derive from his name. Titles like "king",
| "kaiser" and "tsar".
|
| Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, purportedly said of the Roman
| Empire, "They make a desert, and call it peace." The
| authenticity of the quote is questioned, but the description
| is historical fact. And so I prefer calling a spade a spade,
| and replacing "pacification" with the more accurate",
| "conquest, genocide and oppression".
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| you are all wrong people,
|
| Roman legions were co posed of Roman citizens, they had to
| procure their own sword and shield, and could be called up to
| serve.
|
| As the Roman empire grew, they captured many slaves and
| territory. Wealthy romans could buy up slaves and land. They
| accumulated large holsings farmed by slaves and could
| outcompete ordinary romans in agricultural production.
|
| This was a problem because they were bacrupting the very same
| people who formed the legions. All the legionairs would recoeve
| for their military success, was increasing poverty.
|
| This led to decreasing quality of troops and political
| instability
| notahacker wrote:
| > Anyway... I think Rome's limiting factor in germania and the
| european frontier was barbarism. NW europeans didn't have
| civilization: states, monarchies, temples, senates, roads,
| nations. The germans didn't even know they were germans until
| Romans told them. Rome's empire was based on assuming political
| control over existing political institutions.
|
| I think you could get a job writing excuses for Roman emperors
| ;)
|
| The Romans might have assimilated _some_ sophisticated
| civilizations like Greece and Carthage, but outposts like
| Britannia were nothing like that, and Romans built their own
| roads and cities and villas to extract wealth from the land and
| set up their own institutions everywhere they went. Germany had
| no shortage of potential as a source of agricultural produce
| and slaves, but what made it uneconomical compared with other
| fringe parts is the pesky Germans kept fighting back, and in
| particular wiped out the three remaining legions in Germania
| after eight others sent there to pacify it had been withdrawn
| to stave off rebellions elsewhere. (They lost a legion to
| Boudica in Britain too, but they 'd built roads and cities
| there by that time and had a different emperor calling the
| shots).
| amelius wrote:
| Human travel? Or information travel?
| sbaiddn wrote:
| 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.
| kcb wrote:
| 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.
| AntiRemoteWork wrote:
| [dead]
| hammock wrote:
| The article's conclusion is validated by the deployment times of
| US aircraft carrier groups around the world... To deploy from the
| Pacific to the Persian Gulf is approximately one month.
|
| Historical data backing that up:
| https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7633a527c8e2a2228fcdd...
| ErikCorry wrote:
| Interesting, but almost all the examples are from before the
| invention of the telegraph.
| blululu wrote:
| This is taken from Caesar Marchetti's work on the invariance of
| certain parameter, related is his work on city size:
|
| http://www.cesaremarchetti.org/archive/electronic/basic_inst...
| diordiderot wrote:
| Very entertaining read
| haunter wrote:
| Case in point: Crusader Kings 2/3. Both games are insane and if
| you say start with the Holy Roman Empire you can see how things
| can fall apart quickly when you want to extend beyond the already
| enourmous territory.
| nathias wrote:
| it probably depends on the tickrate of the governance
| maw wrote:
| 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!
| uwagar wrote:
| who wants to know this? and why?
| jonplackett wrote:
| There goes intergalactic empires then...
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