05-16-2022, 09:53 AM | #31 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa
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Colonies [might] pay off if you have a large labor surplus that you can't figure out anything worthwhile to do with at home, or there is a particularly rich resource that the locals can't figure out how to exploit well enough to sell it to you in the volumes you'd be able to extract, but mostly it isn't all that useful. You'll note that few Western nations have taken a horrible hit from handing off their colonies to local control. Almost anything the colony did for them works just fine with more or less free trade and capital flows via "neocolonial" corporations and maybe some immigration policy juggling to skim off the cream of the underdeveloped world's labor pool at discount prices.
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05-16-2022, 10:58 AM | #32 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa
Ultra-Tech is sort of all over the place in terms of how much improvement over TL8 armor is assumed. +50% is right for the assault vests, but in other cases the edge is much larger. The full-body reflex suits are pretty implausible—the only justification I can think of for them is to cite the example of the TL8 concealable vest in High-Tech, but I think the real-life armor the concealable vest is based on doesn't cover anything like the full torso. The DR values for combat hardsuits and battlesuits are even harder to justify—at best, you have to assume much of their weight is made from ballistic fiber and the fact that this means they ought to have lower DR vs. any attack that isn't cutting or piercing was ignored for the sake of simplicity.
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Handle is a character from the Star*Drive setting (a.k.a. d20 Future), not my real name. |
05-17-2022, 02:33 PM | #33 | ||||
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa
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I'm pretty sure that the jury is still out on a lot of exoplanet questions... the primary reason I'm excited for the James Webb Telescope! Hopefully soon we'll know just how bad stars are or aren't for atmospheres. Quote:
I suspect that in most cases acquiring a new colony was temporarily lucrative, but that actually running the colony was difficult to do profitably. Which sets up horrible incentives. I'd say that the global power of at least the UK took a bad hit from losing its colonies. However, you're right that economically it hasn't been too bad for their society, but the political power they've been able to wield is much less. Which says something about colonialism: though much of it was done in the name of money, the old drive for conquest and power is at the core of it all. The desire to change the societies of others, to destroy personal inconveniences, and to be paid obeisance. Quote:
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05-17-2022, 02:56 PM | #34 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa
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Handle is a character from the Star*Drive setting (a.k.a. d20 Future), not my real name. |
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05-18-2022, 06:25 PM | #35 | |
Join Date: May 2022
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Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa
The thing about Africa and Europe is it wasn't just Britain starting trading posts along the coasts.
Portugal came around first, and the Dutch East India Company established a couple colonies on the Cape back in 1657. You could have multiple Starfarer empires fighting each other and trying to recruit the planet-siders into their wars while also playing the planet-siders against one another. Quote:
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05-18-2022, 06:58 PM | #36 | |
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: The Athens of America
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Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa
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In the Mediterranean...the works of Homer In Central Asia...The Great Game In Space... But using force and guile to grab markets, resources, and colonies goes back further than writing.
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My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack.-Foch America is not perfect, but I will hold her hand until she gets well.-unk Tuskegee Airman |
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05-18-2022, 06:58 PM | #37 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa
It didn't specify. But it's not a major issue anyway; dividing the number of neurons by 3 will reduce it by less than an order of magnitude, or maybe one step of Complexity.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
05-19-2022, 02:39 PM | #38 | |
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa
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Consider the Roman Republic vs. Gaul. Both the Romans and Gauls were were at approximately the same TL, but the Romans had a huge edge in military organization, logistics, and wealth. To a lesser extent, the Greeks did the same thing in the Black Sea. They were nearly identical in TL to the local Scythians and other horse tribes, but the Greeks had wealth and organized shipping routes on their side. As a result, they were able to build a number of small trading settlements around the perimeter of the Black Sea. The Venetians did something similar 2000 years later. In Asia, the Chinese became a dominant maritime power due to their superior ships, manpower, and wealth. As a result, they were able to found (or take control of) a number of settlements throughout the Malay Archipelago and Indochina. By the Middle Ages, there were small Chinese settlements as far west as the Persian Gulf. |
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05-19-2022, 02:48 PM | #39 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa
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05-20-2022, 05:43 PM | #40 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Charlotte, North Caroline, United States of America, Earth?
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Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa
If I were an interstellar empire and came across the Sol System? I don't know why I would want to go past Saturn, to be honest. Maybe a small outpost in the asteroid belts to get at heavier elements, but most of what my ships need is available in the outer system.
So long as they didn't act up, I wouldn't drop any rocks on inhabitants of the inner system.
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