"David Drake - The Hammers Slammers Handbook" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

- Kipling



The theoretical scientific principles behind faster-than-light travel were discovered in the late second
millennium but practical experiments demonstrating theirutility were nor undertaken until the early third
millennium. Star probes were successfully launched by the middle of the millennium and increasingly they
actually made it home with live crews who reported the discovery of many Earth-like planets. This period
was sometimes known as the Second Age of Exploration after the mid-second millennium on Old Earth.
The Second Age of Exploration was followed by the Second Age ofColonisation , as interstellar travel
became cheaper and more reliable.

A new land grab developed amongst the stars. Initially, the richer terrestrial states and corporations
planted most of the colonies, usually for economic purposes, commonly to exploit some key mineral or
biochemical resource. These were mostly well financed but rigidly controlled by the parent body. Poorer
nations bankrupted themselves tocolonise for reasons of political prestige, the same motivation that led
dictators of second millennium starving nations to build battleships, international airports and six lane
motorways through the bush. Included in this second, poverty-stricken wave were political and religious
fanatics who left Earth to build paradise among the stars. Second wavecolonisation was under-capitalised
and the failure rate was enormous. The result was invariably impoverished, class-ridden rural societies
clinging by their fingertips to existence. Finally, there was a thirdcolonisation wave funded by the richer,
more successful colonies themselves. These enterprises were often multicultural adding ethnicity to the
potential for conflict.

It's a commonplace observation that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. Many a
postgraduate thesis has been hung on the assertion that galactic and terrestrialcolonisationdo or do not
resemble each other. If one considers the ancient Spanish and English Empires it is clear that there were
two quite separate types of colonies. The first was where a rich but militarily andorganisationally weaker
civilised state was conquered and looted, as inMexico orIndia . No convenient alien race has yet been
discovered to fill this role.

The second form ofcolonisation was the occupation and expansion into an empty land as largely
happened with the English expansion into North America and the Spanish into South andCentral America
. Such colonies have always been a financially losing proposition. They absorb massive resources from
the host nation and promptly rebel as soon as they become economically profitable. A sole imperial
power might with great effort have hung on to its colonies but in human space there were always rivals for
power and so the scene was set for conflict.

And the galaxy burned.


Extract fromThe First Galactic Empire , Theodore Bose.



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