Noble Militaries

[DangerousThing]

Princesses. And the sons are princes. The heir to the throne adds a 'Grand' in front.

That's what I thought.

Yes, but it wouldn't be an Imperial title.

Princess wouldn't be an Imperial title (unless the Emperor's daughter), but a Duke might have a spare Barony around. I know that English nobility often had multiple titles. And could give them away like that (or in some cases sell them).

A close member of the Emperor's family is quite likely to carry an Imperial Warrant (unless the Emperor doesn't trust him or her with one). In which case said prince or princess has enormous authority and access to lots and lots of funds. And hopefully the discretion not to to use it for inappropriate purposes.

Would you give your ditzy daughter an Imperial Warrent? Perhaps a *very* trusted bodyguard. But what if Princess Jane ran away? Or being such an idiot, accidentally recycled the warrent. Perhaps the local Duke is just waiting for the special squad of Imperial Marines to come and take this royal pain-in-the-postier lunitic away.

 

[rancke]

Princess wouldn't be an Imperial title (unless the Emperor's daughter), but a Duke might have a spare Barony around.

It doesn't work like that. Imperial nobles do have multiple titles. Norris, for example, has four (Duke of Regina, Count Aledon, Marquis of Regina, and Baron of Yori). But (unless the Imperial rules are radically different from those of the European nobility) he can't give them away or sell them. Nor does he get four votes in the Moot, just one. His oldest child will use one of them, so Seldrian will be addressed as 'Countess Aledon' as a courtesy, but she won't have a vote in the moot. The next in line might use 'Marquis of Regina' and the next in line again might use 'Baron of Yori' (or not, depending on how close the relationship was), but none of them would have a vote in the Moot; they wouldn't be peers.

I know that English nobility often had multiple titles. And could give them away like that (or in some cases sell them).

First part is true, second part isn't. There are some Scottish titles that can be bought and sold because they're linked to ownership of a particular piece of land, so what is actually slod is the land. But generally titles can't be bought or traded (well, unless the sovereign himself is selling them).

Would you give your ditzy daughter an Imperial Warrent? Perhaps a *very* trusted bodyguard. But what if Princess Jane ran away? Or being such an idiot, accidentally recycled the warrent. Perhaps the local Duke is just waiting for the special squad of Imperial Marines to come and take this royal pain-in-the-postier lunitic away.

As I said, if the Emperor doesn't trust the relative he won't furnish him with a warrant; if he does, he will. So it's only a problem if the Emperor's judgement is faulty.


Hans

 

[Rigel Stardin]

If wikipedia is correct then the title for the emperor's daughter is Grand Duchess/Grand Princess.

 

[Blue Ghost]

But, back to the heart of the example, Princess Jane's pull is dependent on her families' status within the Imperium, otherwise she's just another privileged young lady who happens to have some body guards.

I've heard about the multiple title thing, but I've never been able to fathom what it all means. In some films and books where some high faluten VIP is introduced, they're always given a string of titles after their initial title; i.e. "Presenting, Princess Jane, countess of so-and-so, daughter to you-know-who, marquessa of you-know-where, and some-other-title." Where she's a princess for her own lineage, I guess her other titles denote her social rank in the grander scheme of things.

If her guards squared off with an equal number of other guards, I wonder if the local military commander would put his nose in and arrest both with his numerically superior regiment.

Idle thoughts to pass the time.

 

[Gray Pennell]

Well I am pulling this out of my rimward but lets look at Romeo and Juliet. Both came from minor noble/major merchant families and the families would openly dual in the streets (probably like 30 guys I have seen this at a ren fair its cool to see) so the city passed a band on Duals.

So I would think that if the local officials had the muscle yea they would move in and try stoping the fight. Again I believe most nobles would have small retinues forces. I dont see them mustarding more than a regiment.

This is an interesting article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_feudalism

 

[Blue Ghost]

Well I am pulling this out of my rimward but lets look at Romeo and Juliet. Both came from minor noble/major merchant families and the families would openly dual in the streets (probably like 30 guys I have seen this at a ren fair its cool to see) so the city passed a band on Duals.

So I would think that if the local officials had the muscle yea they would move in and try stoping the fight. Again I believe most nobles would have small retinues forces. I dont see them mustarding more than a regiment.

This is an interesting article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_feudalism

That's very interesting. I think either 76 Patrons or one of the patrons in the back of the big black book, there's a seed listed as a young couple fleeing from two wealthy rival families. I can imagine their private security forces potentially squaring off with one another as the adventurers try to spirit them away to ... someplace where there's a lot of Imperial military and security presence.

Another interesting aspect; a noble military unit on maneuvers. Say Prince Ralph, a minor noble with lots of wealth, has a shipping company that's being harassed by Vargr corsairs. But the Imperial Navy has its hands full with some other crisis at the moment, and the local navy doesn't have the legs to strike deep at the Vargr base. I think Prince Ralph, if he had the finances to spare, might assemble a battle group to take out those corsairs. What would be even more interesting would be if either or both local and Imperial navies saw the advantage of having Ralph's squadron as a permanent fixture for security against an empty flank exposed to Vargr incursions. Hence Prince Ralph suddenly has a private fleet, and probably marines as well sanctioned and possibly now partially funded by the Imperium, or at the very least given a huge tax incentive. Otherwise, he might disband the force once the mission is over.

 

[Gray Pennell]

Here you are getting into umm Blackwater territory once the noble gets official Imperium funding its no longer a private force its just an arm of the Imperium

 

[Blue Ghost]

I did notice that the visiting noblewoman was called "Princess' Jane. What are the daughters of the Emperor called?

Because I thought that was the only "Princess" position around other than local nobles. But again, I could be easily mistaken.

I do agree that her title *may* be a curtesy title, but it could also be a real title if the father is also "Prince" of something and he choose to give that title to his daughter.

And if she *is* the daughter of the Emperor, this becomes a much more thorny issue. Maybe she should't intervine but she might have enough clought to do so. Though putting the poor man in the fresher with *that* type of readig material for a couple of weeks might be going too far. :-0

Well, it was either that or ... a stack of "Dentistry Today" magazines.

I think the magic of noble titles is that, to me at least, it allows someone to flex their muscle without any merit for it. Imagine if Princess Jane visited some pure hick backwater farm world, where every other male had a piece of straw coming out of his mouth. I mean, there she could essentially be the virtual ruler. Of course the fresh scent of fertilizer and the rendering plant a half mile away might get to her, but ...

The Imperium strikes me as a place where you can do nearly anything you want within limits. And the higher your social rank, the more you're able to buck the trend. Imagine Princess Jane interacting with a weak spined baron, and cajoles and intimidates him with her connections on how she'll get so-and-so to back her on some position if Baron Weak-Spine doesn't let her command a detachment of one-thousand huscarles (lift infantry) for some "mercy mission" (to borrow from Star Wars) a jump or two over on some world.

Admittedly I'm probably one of the worst candidates to be talking about this kind of thing, but it's something that's kind of ticked away in the back of my mind. As a royal member, or just a regular noble, how much can you push an actual officer into your camp, or pull his strings?

Just some more of my speculation at work here.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Here you are getting into umm Blackwater territory once the noble gets official Imperium funding its no longer a private force its just an arm of the Imperium

By definition though, wouldn't a military unit belonging to a noble be a private security force?

 

[Gray Pennell]

I am hinging my statement on the Imperium Funding. Once the noble accepts the 100Mcr to put his forces on the line where the Imperium says instead of where he wants he is no longer private but an Imperium lap dog. Its just a matter of how much is done for the Imperium.

 

[aramis]

By definition though, wouldn't a military unit belonging to a noble be a private security force?

Not exactly.

IIRC, currently, real world a nobleman's personally sworn troops, if allowed such by his ennobling government, are counted as troops of the nation. Goes back to feudalism, where there were no "Government troops" per se, just the assembled troops of the various noblemen (often including a small contingent of the King's own vassals). Keeping in mind that this was relevant outside the micronations right up to the 1950's, and is still relevant to the micronations in Europe to present....

... most especially the troops of the Vatican, who are actually sworn to the Pope and his successors, not to the church as a whole, and not to the Vatican as a state. Still, these men are considered to be the Vatican's military presence.

Likewise, the Monagasque Prince's Caribiners (a bodyguard unit) are part of the military... and Monaco has 515 police for 35,000 people (1 per 70 people, roughly... about 6 times the average police rate, and its military is about 250 strong... again, about 6 times what is normal.)

(Most US and Canadian cities have roughly 1 per 1000 persons. Many also have a system of county police with about 1:2000, and state police in similar numbers divided into 1 or more forces, esp common being a highway patrol and a state police. Likewise, most nations I've checked run around 1:1000 for the military.)

 

[Blue Ghost]

But is it really that much of an absolute? Would the troops be loyal to the person issuing the paycheque, or to the leader of the unit?

 

[aramis]

But is it really that much of an absolute? Would the troops be loyal to the person issuing the paycheque, or to the leader of the unit?

It really doesn't matter for purposes of outside agencies - they'll attribute the behaviors where they see fit in accordance with treaty, custom, and law as allowed.

If the Carabiners' Sergeant Major orders a prisoner tortured, the Monagasque government, headed by the prince, has to take notice and action, or accept responsibility for the war crimes.

 

[Ishmael]

I don't know why it is called 'captive', but I do know what the defintion of a type 6 government is. I just quoted it in my previous post. I can't help it if you think it ought to be different. It isn't different. So, no, 'captive' would be when the government is answerable to an outside group; a colony or conquered area.

The problem is that the game definition totally ignores the actual definition of "captive". You could have your same position if you substituted any word in place of the word "captive" as the game meaning for gov-6 would not change. You could call gov-6 a "stinky" government or a "marxist" government and it would not change anything. I invite you to look up the deifintion of "captive" and see that a colony may be captive or it may not be captive. The difference is that the captive colony's population is not agreeable to being ruled by others, whereas a non-captive colony is.
Frankly, the best solution would be to simply replace the word "Captive" with the word "colonial" and let the world builder decide if it is captive, like India during the British Raj, or not, such as present day Guam or Falkland Islands.

Bottom line, some worlds being owned by other worlds is not evidence that the Imperium has stood idly by while the owning world conquered the owned world.

Bottom line. the Imperium has stood idly by while the owning world conquered the owned world is evidence that the Imperium has stood idly by while the owning world conquered the owned world. DonM's integrated timeline has a number of examples where the Imperium did nothing while natives of a world were enslaved and their world taken from them. In 'modern' CT times, the description of the world Craw/Glisten from the JTAS #10 and #11 was very direct in stating how the native minor race were not even counted by the IISS for population, and how this minor race was a "...native, intelligent life form which is used by human settlers as slave labor, or found wandering the outback as nomadic tribesmen."
I can even recall that some, pressed into a militia, were even described as wearing ill-fitting uniforms like the sepoy.

Sounds like the the first 500-600 years of the Third Imperium to me too. So what? That was 500 years before the Classic Era. Sure, the Imperium used to be imperialistic, but it has not been imperialistic for 500 years now. You might as well accuse present-day Britain of being imperialistic based on its action in India centuries ago.

So the Imperium is not imperialistic any more, and hasn't been for centuries. It follows that its present-day policies are not shaped by imperialistic tendencies.

The only mention of any major change in policy that I could find was in 660, when the Third Imperium reached its present size ( due, no coubt, to running up against the borders of other powerful empires ) it stopped agressive expansion and turned inward to consolidate its gains. Of course, expansionism is not a requirement of imperialism.
If you claim that the Imperium is no longer imperialistic, I'm going to have to ask for some evidence of it.

present-day Britain....India centuries ago??? lolololol
Ghandi wasn't that long ago.

Thanks to the mess-up with First Survey, we have very little reliable information about the population levels of Milieu 0. If TPTB ever revisits Milieu 0, I sincerely hope they won't just use the vanilla world generation system to generate worlds but will take the time to regress the Classic Era UWPs in some reasonable way. But until and unless that happens, we really don't know.

Actually, I thought that the book First Survey looked brilliant in that it allowed for actual exploration and discovery. Physical stats of worlds wouldn't change much, if at all, after only a millenium, yet it would be very odd if the social stats did not change. But we really do know what the Sylean Expansion faced from Pocket Empires. Its described briefly on page 7 in the section titled "After the Long Night". I'm going to refrain from retyping it because I'm lazy, but its all there about running into other pocket empires, etc., several of which could have been a serious threat to Sylea. The expansion actually bypassed the stronger systems and returned to them later when the fledgling Third Imperium became more powerful.

Since we don't really know how it is possible for a world to remain at a medium tech level when it has access to TL15 knowledge, it's impossible to say anything definite on that subject. It's certainly impossible to draw any solid inferences from it.

Sure we do. Unequal trade.
In Hard Times, the thing that brought about the biggest drop in tech levels is the loss of interstellar trade. That this would happen indicates that worlds were discouraged from becoming 100% self-sufficient. When outside trade stopped, the worlds dropped back to whatever tech level they could support locally. As the Imperium had THE monopoly on interstellar trade, it must have been the entity that brought about such trade imbalances.
This is supported by the accounts of the Ilelish Revolt. The Ilelish petitioned the Imperium to relax trade regulations to bolster the local economies against reccession. Did they revolt because Imperial trade regulations were too fair?? too non-restrictive??
The Imperium, not wishing to give up a single crumb of their monopoly on commerce and trade regulation, refused....Ilelich and others seceded. They were brought back in line by the Imperium...Ilelish was punished for its actions by having large, swaths of its world's lush surface sterilized such that it remains scarred and barren 700 years later. ( from DonM's timeline and other online sources.)

That would be a lot more convincing if you had any direct evidence of that domination and subordination.

The mind boggles.....

--------------------------------

I stand by my position concerning the real primary mission of an Imperial Army; keeping peace and enforcing Imperial policy within the borders of the Imperium.

I'm done.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Ishmael; yeah, you're right on all your points. But the question remains as to how a noble is going to tackle a military conflict or social upheaval.

I think there's a mode of thought from some posters and players that the game system assumes a purely unified culture; like customs, similar music and social graces and gene pools. It's simply not the case, therefore the rules that help define Imperium are there not as a hard set of examples as to how things operate on a day to day basis, but rather a framework of how the Imperium continues to thrive.

We read about starports, ship finances, mercenary units, the scout service and what not, but we don't get things like Boughne's racial and socio-economic breakdown, and what people are like in various parts of the world, and cities. We don't get particulars about A, B and C, but I think a lot of people like their games with well defined parameters. So you're going to run into other players who operate their Imperuim's differently.

Me, I'm just curious as to how a noble handles his or her personal values when confronted like, oh heck, I don't know, looting after a disaster, or something like the financial riots in Greece or the uphevals in the Middle East. Do they see the Imperial and local forces not doing their job and say "It's time for me to act!" or do they say "It's time for me to GET OUT OF HERE!"

Remember, YMMV for your Traveller scheme of things

 

[rancke]

The problem is that the game definition totally ignores the actual definition of "captive".

It uses a different defintion of 'captive' than the one you evidently believe to be the only one. Many words have more than one meaning. 'Captive' is one of them. Rather than the defintion that means 'having been captured by violence', it uses the definition 'held under control of another' (as in 'a captive mine'). Arguably, a third definition 'being held involuntarily because of a situation that makes free choice or departure difficult' (as in 'a captive audience') may also apply, but I'd go with the other.

I invite you to look up the deifintion of "captive" and see that a colony may be captive or it may not be captive. The difference is that the captive colony's population is not agreeable to being ruled by others, whereas a non-captive colony is.

Not in any of the definitions that I googled.

Bottom line. the Imperium has stood idly by while the owning world conquered the owned world is evidence that the Imperium has stood idly by while the owning world conquered the owned world.

Well, obviously. Pardon me for assuming you would understand that I was talking about Imperial member worlds attacing and conquering other Imperial member worlds. My mistake.

DonM's integrated timeline has a number of examples where the Imperium did nothing while natives of a world were enslaved and their world taken from them.

Natives whose countries/worlds were Imperial member states?

In 'modern' CT times, the description of the world Craw/Glisten from the JTAS #10 and #11 was very direct in stating how the native minor race were not even counted by the IISS for population, and how this minor race was a "...native, intelligent life form which is used by human settlers as slave labor, or found wandering the outback as nomadic tribesmen."

Yes, indeed. Now quote me the bit where it said that the natives were members of the Imperium before being invaded.

If you claim that the Imperium is no longer imperialistic, I'm going to have to ask for some evidence of it.

Looks like I was wrong there. According to Wikipedia, Imperialism as defined by the Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination."

The Imperium certainly seems to doing its level best to maintain an unequal economic relationship between itself and its member worlds. So it it fits the definition. I was thinking in terms of the creation of such relationships rather than the maintenance of existing ones, that is, 'expansionistic' rather than 'imperialistic'.

However, the Imperium being imperialistic in connection with its own relationships with member worlds has nothing to do with allowing the member worlds to be imperialistic themselves. As far as I know there is little or no evidence for that.

Actually, I thought that the book First Survey looked brilliant in that it allowed for actual exploration and discovery.

The point is that the social part of its UWPs were flawed and thus can't be used to show the population distributions of Milieu 0. Which I, for one, is quite grateful for, since I'm pretty sure no one who worked on FS thought in terms of the changes 1100 years of population growth would imply; I believe they simply rolled up populations using the vanilla world generation system.

Since we don't really know how it is possible for a world to remain at a medium tech level when it has access to TL15 knowledge, it's impossible to say anything definite on that subject. It's certainly impossible to draw any solid inferences from it.

Sure we do. Unequal trade.

That explains why a primitive world isn't contacted one day and buys all it needs to upgrade its infrastructure the next. It doesn't explain why a world goes on for century after century without bootstrapping itself.

In Hard Times, the thing that brought about the biggest drop in tech levels is the loss of interstellar trade.

And this is relevant how? In the Classic Era the worlds had interstellar trade.

That this would happen indicates that worlds were discouraged from becoming 100% self-sufficient. When outside trade stopped, the worlds dropped back to whatever tech level they could support locally. As the Imperium had THE monopoly on interstellar trade, it must have been the entity that brought about such trade imbalances.

Not necessarily. The phenomenon of comparative advantage is all that's needed to create that sort of ecenomic interdependence.

This is supported by the accounts of the Ilelish Revolt. The Ilelish petitioned the Imperium to relax trade regulations to bolster the local economies against reccession. Did they revolt because Imperial trade regulations were too fair?? too non-restrictive??

It was caused because the Imperial trade regulations didn't favor the high-population worlds. They may, indeed, have been too fair, preventing the powerful worlds from screwing over the less powerful worlds. They must certainly have been too restrictive for those high-population worlds.

Be that as it may, restrictive trade regulations does not seem to have a whole lot to do with policy towards would-be imperialistic member worlds.


Hans

 

[Whipsnade]

I think there's a mode of thought from some posters and players that the game system assumes a purely unified culture; like customs, similar music and social graces and gene pools.

It's beyond their ability to comprehend, beyond their ability to grok, because it's beyond their everyday experiences and those experiences have done nothing aid in any real comprehension. Thus the Third Imperium of the 57th Century becomes little more than a liberal Western nation-state of the 21st Century wearing a funny hat because they quite literally cannot imagine anything else.

The Third Imperium of the 57th Century also becomes little more than a liberal Western nation-state of the 21st Century wearing a funny hat because that makes the 3I easier to describe and easier for others who are similarly handicapped by a lack of experience to comprehend.

It's simply not the case, therefore the rules that help define Imperium are there not as a hard set of examples as to how things operate on a day to day basis, but rather a framework of how the Imperium continues to thrive.

Very well put and, sadly, not very likely to be understood.

We read about starports, ship finances, mercenary units, the scout service and what not, but we don't get things like Boughne's racial and socio-economic breakdown, and what people are like in various parts of the world, and cities.

Even if Boughne's racial, socio-economic, and other squishy bits were all laid out, the inability to comprehend something outside of the everyday would still be in play. Bertrand Russell explained the problem by explaining there is knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. You can have other cultures merely described to you or you can direct personal experience with other cultures. Obviously the latter would allow you to more readily understand just how "other" other cultures can be. It's sort of like the difference between being punched in the nose and simply reading about being punched in the nose.

Me, I'm just curious as to how a noble handles his or her personal values when confronted like, oh heck, I don't know, looting after a disaster, or something like the financial riots in Greece or the uphevals in the Middle East. Do they see the Imperial and local forces not doing their job and say "It's time for me to act!" or do they say "It's time for me to GET OUT OF HERE!"

The noble's decisions are going to depend on any number of things such as his official role in the region, his unofficial role in the region, tradition, precedent, his own beliefs, what he thinks his superiors would want him to do, what he thinks his superiors wouldn't let him do, what he thinks he can get away with, what he thinks he shouldn't risk, and hundreds of other variables.

Putting it another way, if you do the prep work, you can justify nearly any action at all.

 

[Carlobrand]

Book 6: "Captive Government. Government by a leadership answerable to an outside group; a colony or conquered area."

There are 39 examples of captive governments in the Marches, including 23 Imperial worlds, 3 Imperial "client states", 5 Zhodani worlds, 1 Darrian world and 2 worlds controlled by the folks over in Arden. Populations range from a couple thousand souls on Youghal to TL-14 Palique's 3 billion. I'm not sure how you'd accomplish that one by force, since the Imperial government and Sector colonial government are the only ones with the troop strength and transport to be able to accomplish that. Five of the worlds have populations in the hundreds of millions, 4 in the 10s of millions, 10 in the millions, each therefore with native batallions ranging from division strength to field army strength, most likely beyond the ability of a neighboring planet to conquer by force without the use of heavy (and expensive) transports.

Have we considered the possibility, with respect to the Imperial and Zhodani captive worlds at least, that they are captive by reason of having done something to attract the attention of the Imperial/Zhodani or Sector governments? These are the only governments with the transport resources - and in the case of Pallique and three of the five hundred-millions worlds, the Naval warship resources - to pull off that kind of thing. There's nothing in canon to suggest individual planetary governments are fielding jump-capable warships in numbers able to take on a full squadron of SDBs; I'm guessing the Imperial government might take interest if they started playing on the Navy's turf.

It is possible for a government to become captive without the active resistance of its planetary forces, especially if the force making it captive is someone with broad authority and considerable force at hand, like the Imperial or Colonial governments. A planetary government facing takeover by the Sector government for, say, the discovery that the planetary government was riddled with psionics, might decide to keep its troops in barracks and gamble on cooperation as the key to individual survival when the transports showed up in orbit and the demands were sent down - or the planetary military authorities might decide this particular government wasn't worth dying for. Similarly, the discovery that opposing governments on a balkanized world were secretly manufacturing nukes or biologicals might prompt an Imperial intervention and imposition of oversight measures, with the locals faced with either accepting oversight or seeing their forces face a far more powerful opponent than they'd planned.

It is also possible to make a government captive by means other than violence - Greece for example, forced to make unpopular policy decisions at the behest of the Euro government in exchange for help with its debt crisis, is about a half-step from being a captive government. In the Traveller setting, all it would take for a world in those straits to become captive is Imperial approval for the creditors to move in and appoint an overseer with authority to approve or disapprove government decisions. Such a move might prompt popular unrest, but the official government would be faced with accepting the inevitable or seeing their troops face Imperial or Colonial forces. On the other hand, if things are bad enough and intervention is accompanied by aid for the beleagured population, such a move might be welcomed by the locals.

 

[Whipsnade]

There are 39 examples of captive governments in the Marches...

Good list and good analysis.

If I may suggest, we don't need to place most of our emphasis on the "conquered" part of the "Captive Government" description. The description uses the term "control" and control doesn't necessarily mean "planetary invasion". Remember, the description uses the term "colony" too.

Look at Garda-Vilis. It started out as a colony named Tanoose which then began to fail for unknown reasons. Vilis stepped in, took care of whatever was going wrong, began shipping in it's own people, changed the name of the place, and centuries later Garda-Vilis is still a colony of Vilis. Sure, there's a Tanoosian independence movement but Vilis still controls the world (at least during the Classic Era) and established that control without divisions of jump troopers falling from orbit.

Look at Burtson. Squanine colonized the system centuries ago and the world is still run as if it is the Marquis' personal property. The population of Burtson far outweighs that of Squanine now and, aside from TL, Burtson is a nicer place to live. Squanine is doing such a good job as colonial master, the population of Burtson actually fought and defeated an outside attempt by mercenaries to "liberate" the planet. Again no grav armor divisions patrolling the streets.

Look at the Zhodani worlds in Querion and Cronor. They were originally Imperial colonies but, after losing the first two Frontier Was, the Imperium withdrew and the Consulate moved in. There most likely was the occasional invasion or raid during the wars but the Imperium ceded control of the system in question as part of the treaties which ended those wars. The Consulate was simply handed the keys to both subsectors as the price for peace and has spent the last several centuries oh so slowly employing "soft" power to mold the societies they now controlled towards the Zhodani norm. No multiple replays of Invasion:Earth took place, just a change in the address of where to send the taxes.

As for Pallique and the other large captive worlds, I see more of a Raj-type "conquest" than a D-Day version. Like you, I believe Pallique's colonial master is the Imperium itself and that the Imperium gained control by absorbing at various time the various polities of that previously balkanized world. Like the Raj, I believe the Imperium controls Pallique with troops raised on Pallique. Like the Raj, I believe the Imperium controls Pallique by playing what remains of the various polities against each other.

Mao was a genocidal moron and power flows from many more places than the mouth of a gun. As you pointed out by referring to the current euro crisis, there are many more ways to be "controlled" and "captive" than having soldiers in the streets.

Thanks again for your post.

 

[Ishmael]

Ishmael; yeah, you're right on all your points. But the question remains as to how a noble is going to tackle a military conflict or social upheaval.

A noble will tackle those issues in accordance to the code of conduct appropriate to the noble's home culture. The noble's code of conduct/ethics/behaviour may be quite different from the culture(s) of the world on which his finds himself.

That said, It appears to me that the Imperium engages in cultural imperialism. It does this through control of trade where each starport is run by the Imperium's SPA or, if privately owned, run in accordance to Imperial rules and regulations. Interstellar trade supported by megacorps affiliated with Imperium's rule further this spread of social uniformity by promoting common products across several worlds.

Worlds that do not fit within this hegemony are 'punished' through trade restrictions, diplomatic pressure and perhaps military action, or threat of action.

I think there's a mode of thought from some posters and players that the game system assumes a purely unified culture; like customs, similar music and social graces and gene pools. It's simply not the case, therefore the rules that help define Imperium are there not as a hard set of examples as to how things operate on a day to day basis, but rather a framework of how the Imperium continues to thrive.

=============

Cultural hegemony is the philosophic and sociological theory, by the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, which proposes that a culturally diverse society can be dominated (ruled) by one social class, whose dominance is achieved by manipulating the societal culture (beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, mores) so that its ruling-class worldview (Weltanschauung) is imposed as the societal norm, which every social class then perceives as a universally valid ideology that justifies the social, political, and economic status quo — as natural, inevitable, and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.

The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social and political policies is "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda.

Well...the Imperium has a monopoly of interstellar trade/commerce regulations, which they jealously guard. This may also include the flow of information as well as goods making propaganda even easier as described by Chompsky and Herman.

The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social and political policies is "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda.

Besides, codes of conduct from a wide range of cultures share some common standards of behaviour. I think this would have to do with social behaviours that evolved to further the needs of a social grouping, regardless of species or culture.

So, what a noble wants to do, what the locals want him to do and what he actually does do may be 3 different things. And he'll be judged, by several differing cultures that may or may not be similar to each other, based on the actions the noble did take.