The Antares Crisis of -1776 would not have happened if the political institutions surrounding it had been capable of deliberating with the authority with which they had been originally set up to do. The event was less a trigger than a signpost -- the proof that interregional frictions within the old Ziru Sirka/RoM had taken local interstellar culture beyond the event horizon.
Very well put. In the life of the RoM/2E -1776 is as much a signpost as 476 AD is in the life of the Western Roman Empire. Both are dates picked by historians millennia later to mark tipping points, nothing more.
The Old Order had been in steady decline for a millennium or more before the official date given for the collapse. It was the buildup of sand in the political gears that propelled the concomitant economic decline...
Agreed. I'll stress again that the Ziru Sirka used it's interstellar economy as a tool for political control. Great care was taken to ensure that very few worlds manufactured every piece of the TL12 puzzle and to ensure that even fewer worlds understood how those pieces had been developed. Many Minor Races were pre-industrial and pre-scientific when contacted, many more Minor Races were hammered back to that level during the Consolidation Wars. The imposition of Vilani cultural norms, complete with a Researcher caste, was only one of many methods the ZS used to enforce it's "peace".
Most worlds, including Vilani colonies, participated in the interstellar economy at a "black box" and "cargo cult" level of understanding. They made certain widgets in the way they'd been trained, received other widgets in trade, enjoyed whatever goodies a TL12 tech base allowed them, and took care not to ask too many questions.
... and also allowed the Terrans and Vargr (it was a joint effort, no matter what human histories say) to overthrow it.
Seeing as our histories of the ea are 3I histories, the fact that the role of the Vargr has been overlooked is understandable.
Terran social interference may have sped up the process of political disintegration, but it also revitalized many regions of space economically, perhaps allowing the Long Night to be less dark in some regions than others.
Exactly. For the most part, all those Minor Race found there was a much lighter boot on their neck. The Terran takeover of the ZS meant their cultures were no longer actively suppressed. They spent a good chunk of the Long Nightt not just relearning how to learn, but reinventing their native cultures.
...there's no reason to believe that some intransigent races weren't entirely exterminated.
Agreed. Why Earth wasn't nuked is one of my biggest problems with the entire ISW story. It's one of the reasons I believe that the Terrans didn't conquer the Ziru Sirka as much as they provided that polity with it's final imperial dynasty. (See the Manchus.)
The 'Terrans' never seemed too enthusiastic about the whole Rule of Man project to begin with; remember that the Second Imperium was founded as a 'Solomani' rebellion or coup against Terran authority.
I always found it rather odd that that rat bastard Estigarribia felt he needed to come up with a new label as part of his coup. I've always found it odd that the Confederation government, which displayed enough political savvy to first maintain the political balance act between Earth's major nations, then fight a centuries long war, then found and keep colonies on side, find and develop Minor Race allies, and turn captive Vilani colonies on the Rim into loyal members, would suddenly display such profound stupidity.
The original Terran plan was to rule the Vilani directly, as conquered subjects.
And we only have the word of the coup's participants for that.
