Quote:
Originally Posted by hal
During a time period in which there are no seeming "empires" in evidence (during the Long Night), what happens to the trade?
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Trade probably still existed — just at a lesser scale, given the poorer prospects and lesser security of the period. On-planet trade obviously continued, though to a smaller degree in a population with fewer people and less leisure. And it's not hard to imagine a few gypsy-like free traders continuing to ply the routes between worlds, though probably on small routes constrained by safety and familiarity.
We know there
were pocket empires: The Sylean Federation, the Chanestin Kingdom, the Terran Mercantile Community / Old Earth Union, the Dingir League, the worlds of the Vilani Main, the Geonee Confederation, the Suerrat Republic, the Lancian League, the Vegan Polity, the Darmine Corporate, the Luriani Protectorate, the Sydymic Empire, the Zeda Alignment, and perhaps the Dynchia Comitia. And, no doubt, others as yet uninvented and uninserted into canon.
Why did none of them burst forth and establish a grand empire as did Vland and then Sylea? Most simply, because the story requires that it be so. Or perhaps, for the same reason that the "First Reich" of the Romans, "Second Reich" of the Holy Roman Empire, and "Third Reich" of the Nazis, or the Napoleonic Empire, were oddities rather than common occurrences among all European countries. Europe has never been dominated by Romanians, or Serbs, or Walloons. Why not, we might ask? Simply because, through accidents of location, resources, history, and culture, they never became imperial powers. Why shouldn't it be the same in the imaginary history of
Traveller?