Quote:
Originally Posted by RGTraynor
You should look at history more closely, because there are numerous examples of brutal empires thoroughly squashing subject peoples, very quickly into the bargain, and in some cases succeeding for centuries.
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Name one. OK, there are probably a couple here and there, but for the most part it's an early modern obsession (comes along with the concept of the nation-state) and even then didn't apply to most modern colonial empires.
By and large empires didn't even [care] about squashing the local peculiarities of their subject peoples, and were perfectly willing to let them retain their own cultures, faiths and significant parts of their customary laws and local governing traditions, as long as they coughed up the expected tribute, taxes and/or troop levies. Indeed it is one of the [definitional features] of an empire - a collection of nations ruled by a metropol - that the subject peoples [aren't] integrated into the ruling people.
And anyway I think you can forget about the possibility of anybody staging a war of global conquest in the modern world that wouldn't blast the planet into ruins for quite a few generations, which is probably a bad idea if you are trying for unity specifically to resist an expected near term alien threat.