The Fall of the Second Imperium/Rule of Man

[warellis]

Why is it that the Third Imperium has been able to last as long as it has while the Second Imperium/Rule of Man was not able to last 400 years?

Was it due to incompatible cultures? Were the Terrans to heavy-handed on the nascent Second Imperium, inherited from the Vilani's First Imperium?

Was it due to poor jump drives?

The Vilani were able to make their First Imperium last due to cultural stasis but I don't think the Third Imperium for example has that issue.

[Flaco76]

Basically the Second Imperium was the Terran Confederation stapled together with the Vilani Imperium. The Second Imperium was set up by a naval admiral in order to save the Vilani from being exploited by Terra. However, by this time the carefully orchestrated and managed system the Viliani had been disrupted by disease, economics, border incursions and population movement. The problem was that Terra had too few officers to manage all the planets.

What makes the Third Imperium more stable is that planets are left to their own rule as long as they don't break the three rules. Trade links everyone together.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by Flaco76

Basically the Second Imperium was the Terran Confederation stapled together with the Vilani Imperium. The Second Imperium was set up by a naval admiral in order to save the Vilani from being exploited by Terra. However, by this time the carefully orchestrated and managed system the Viliani had been disrupted by disease, economics, border incursions and population movement. The problem was that Terra had too few officers to manage all the planets.

What makes the Third Imperium more stable is that planets are left to their own rule as long as they don't break the three rules. Trade links everyone together.

So did the Second Imperium try anything like what the Third Imperium did?

And how come the Vilani never tried what the Third Imperium did? Were they just too controlling to allow such a thing?

[Mike Wightman]

By the time the Terrans won the nth ISW the Vilani Imperium was on its last legs.

Vargr were raiding the coreward regions of the empire, subject races were rising against the Vilani oppression spurred on by the success of the Terrans - I wouldn't be surprised if Terran agents had been sent throughout the Imperium to foment such unrest.

Trouble is once the Vilani lost the Terrans lacked the government apparatus to take over - I can think of some real world examples of winning a war and losing the peace due to lack of a plan for post conflict.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by warellis

The Vilani were able to make their First Imperium last due to cultural stasis but I don't think the Third Imperium for example has that issue.

Are you sure? There's a lot of stasis in the setting.

That's largely unavoidable, it's hard to set something in the far future and have the people there still be human enough for a modern audience to relate to them if there isn't. There's frankly quite a lot of anachronistic similarity to modern culture in historical fiction or gaming too.

But honestly the difference between 400 and 1100 years is not remarkably striking. As human states go they're both rather durable, but not unprecedentedly so. It's not so clear the Third Imperium is actually more continuous than the (Holy) Roman Empire, or "China" or "Egypt" - like all of those it's certainly had periods of civil wars and changes of dynasties, and at least in some canon is rather loosely organized in the first place.

[SteveS]

Originally Posted by malloyd

But honestly the difference between 400 and 1100 years is not remarkably striking. As human states go they're both rather durable, but not unprecedentedly so. It's not so clear the Third Imperium is actually more continuous than the (Holy) Roman Empire, or "China" or "Egypt" - like all of those it's certainly had periods of civil wars and changes of dynasties, and at least in some canon is rather loosely organized in the first place.

There's one definite interruption in Third Imperium canon: the Barracks Emperor period. There were presumably periods of ineffectual emperors (or worse, Cleon the Mad) during which the Imperium largely reverted to regional self-rule with only nominal allegiance to the emperor, even if allegiance to the general idea of the Imperium continued.

Also, the same vast extent that makes the Imperium impossible to rule with a tight grip also makes it difficult for powers at the edges of the Imperium to tell whether a gentle grip on power is continuation of customary policy or a drop-off in the ability of the center to maintain even its light grip on power.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by warellis

So did the Second Imperium try anything like what the Third Imperium did?

And how come the Vilani never tried what the Third Imperium did? Were they just too controlling to allow such a thing?

A lot of the Third Imperium is recognizably Vilanicized. While Euroterran aristocratic titles are used, they are primarily used to make a Vilani concept of a managerial aristocracy rather then a landed-warrior class. In the meantime a lot of Solomani concepts are implied, notably Smithian capitalism(in practice cartels are fairly common but they haven't nearly the overwhelming influence of the Bureaux) but also apparently, some Terran political theories and practices.

Reinstituting Vilani style government would have been odious to the Second Imperium and probably adapting what was worth learning from it was as well. The result was something of a piecemeal . Moreover the Terran military probably did not have enough personal who could be adapted to ruling a conquered country. The Terran military system seems to have been very operationally inclined(like the nineteenth century German one), and while there were designated units for "procurator" style missions it is likely that there weren't enough. Certainly it is striking the difference between successes like Nusku and the later Empire.

Another possibility is simply that Terra simply did not "want" to rule. This needs explaining. It is not really credible that any polity would not want power. However they may not have wanted the difficulties that went with it. Citizenry would have been tired of taxes, and politicians tired of military expense. Oddly enough the military would not have gotten tired of campaigning; after so many generations they would be a warrior caste. However they would have been reluctant to take administrative jobs for a government with no enemy. The downsizing crises would have been horrific. Some comparison could be made to the Crusader army that had not enough to hold their conquests because most were more interested in fiefs back home then fighting for a share of the scarce newly acquired fiefs in strange climes. But that would not have been an exact comparison. What is true is that the heavy Terran military would be hard to downsize and it would have a lot of people who knew no trade but war. This would contribute to destabilization. Many would become mercenaries and some warlords would have an eye to semi-sovereignity, or perhaps to setting up beyond the recognized borders and acquiring absolute sovereignity. It might for instance be common to seize a poorly defended world and in essence become Space Sforzas.

In the meantime, the local worlds would be very eager to increase their power at the expense of a Confederation whose reason for being was obsolete. This would create another tendency toward division.

It is not clear that the third imperium had a magic secret. Almost certainly the second used many of it's policies as indeed the first did. In a word the second imperium conquered to much to soon and got indigestion.

[Hero of Canton]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

...In a word the second imperium conquered to much to soon and got indigestion.

So the victorious Terrans very severely overextended themselves and crashed as a result? That makes a lot of sense IMHO and fits with what I've read that the Second Imperium was actually larger than either the ZS or 3I. Hmm...Historic examples of this would include:

The Huns once Attila was gone (5th Century)
The Byzantine Emperor Justinian's attempted reconquest of the Empire's lost western provinces (6th Century)
The Caliphate invading France (8th Century)
Napoleon invading Russia (19th Century)
Hitler invading the USSR (20th Century)

As overextended as they seemed to be it is somewhat surprising the Second Imperium lasted as long as it did.

Hero of Canton

[SteveS]

Originally Posted by Hero of Canton

. . .
As overextended as they seemed to be it is somewhat surprising the Second Imperium lasted as long as it did.

Not necessarily.

When newly established, the Second Imperium ran on enthusiasm for a long time. Plenty of former subjects of the Ziru Sirka were pleased to be part of something new, either because they didn't really like being ruled by the Vilani, because they were enthusiastic about the Terrans, they liked the light handed rule that came with the thin spread of the Second Imperium, they liked things that arrived when the Second Imperium arrived (such as Jump-3), they liked change for change's sake after Vilani stagnation, or that they were simply indifferent to who ruled the empire as long as they could keep doing things their way planetside.

Darker, there were the contact plagues that arrived with Terran conquerors, business people, and tourists depopulated almost every world that didn't both anticipate the risk and take effective steps to protect against it. Maybe some worlds were depopulated completely, to the point where their economies became dependent on external rule, to the point where they couldn't effectively resist external rule, or that the relief from overpopulation created room for a new economic order like post-plague medieval Europe.

Another factor in the longevity of the Second Imperium -- short though it was relative to the Third Imperium, the Ziru Sirka, and the Long Night -- is that slow communication would have made it slow to get the message that it wasn't really governing much, until the financial crisis abruptly revealed its fragility.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by warellis

So did the Second Imperium try anything like what the Third Imperium did?

And how come the Vilani never tried what the Third Imperium did? Were they just too controlling to allow such a thing?

Much of this may have been self-serving hyperbole for the 3rd Imperium naturally enough. But there was some truth to it as always.

I am guessing the Second Imperium did try to something like what the Third Imperium did. However many of the policies had prototype syndrome. The only other example of ruling humans on such a scale would have been the Ziru Sirka and Terrans would have found much of it odious.

The Vilani seem to have been extremely controlling socially insofar as that is possible on such a scale which is rather a hubristic project. If ISW is a guide, they had just as many centrifugal tendencies in the political sense though(they would notably, not have drawn the distinction but the 3I would as would the 2I) as the Third Imperium. In fact one of the reasons for their obsession with control was a well-founded fear of chaos when there was no more pieces of the pie to be found on the outside of an empire which had expanded as far as it was going to. The disadvantage is that this was counterproductive as the Villani attempt to have a command economy on an interstellar scale produced constant nonproductive competition in the bureacracy at best and minor civil wars at worse. The real difference of the Third Imperium was a distinction between the Imperial State, the substates, the private organizations, and all the other paths for ambition. That does not make the 3rd Imperium immune to chaos but does make things easier.