They wouldn’t need to, then. They’d force you to have multiple children, take those children from you while they continued to impregnate you, and raise those children to believe what they want them to believe.
Well, that’s maybe true. Only (1) it’s likely any children I have here will be Amarr anyway without creating a big issue and (2) your people managed to keep their identities despite what you just said.
Also, hi, Arrendis.
What do you think of Samira’s counterfactual where the Empire goes around conquering people without enslaving anyone? … It seems … well. Like if she wants it to be effective it ends in something like slavery anyway?
Military conquest only holds if the conquered and the conquerors forge a common culture afterward. This can be the conquered being assimilated, or the conquerors growing to adopt the culture of their new territories[1]. But without it, the conquered will throw off the yoke, if they are not forcibly prevented from doing so. And if they are… then yes, that’s still slavery in all but name.
1. A small force of conquerors defeating local rulers and installing themselves, for example. In the case of a large power conquering a lesser neighbor, either the smaller neighbor’s culture will be ‘modified’ to fit the conqueror’s sensibilities, such as with the Khanid or Ni-Kunni, or there may be a schism between the newly-powerful conquering leaders, and their overlords, which essentially puts them back in the position of ‘a small force of conquerors’.
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Also, as for this part…
Yes, well, if I were your paramour, I might be concerned by your statement that you’re not loyal to him, as he’s not the Directrix. As for (2)… I think, Aria, you might find that that’s a function of saturation and density. You’re one person, not surrounded by millions of others of your culture. Your children wouldn’t have the same chance of being raised among their own kin, where whispers and rumors of the old ways could persist, in half-understood and oft-misremembered form. And even then… plenty of our people have had exactly that happen.
The first is a private matter between me and someone. The second … hm. Maybe. I feel like it’d cost them kind of a lot, though. The main practical problem with Reclaiming by the sword is that it’s not clear the Empire has enough swords, and a while back they learned to their chagrin that they’re not invincible.
They can lose.
As things stand, as far as some people are concerned I’m apparently a puppet as it is. For the Amarr to harm an ally in the way you describe would basically prove your point. It’s hard to look at such things with equanimity even when they’re being practiced on enemies.
I agree. A better thought exercise might be what the cluster would be like if the Empire had gone about gaining influence via trade and markets and cultural exchange, instead.
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That’s true only so long as people like us are willing to keep buying bullets.
It might be. But they didn’t, and so that’s neither the cluster nor the Empire we have to deal with. Instead, we have to deal with an Empire that continues to prove that whenever words stop getting them what they want, they’re going to choose the sword. And they’re going to dispatch their mewling little meatpuppets to try to obfuscate and cloud the issue by claiming forces caught in the act of slave-raiding are the real victims, just a poor bunch of misunderstood loyal servants, framed for crimes that never ever occurred, against people who never ever went missing in the first place.
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I think you’ve heard me say “balance of power” probably a hundred times by now.
I’ve also heard you say that my insistence that we need to keep buying more bullets is empty warmongering at least as many times.
That’s because you usually couch it in terms of eventually setting everything on fire.
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Everything is on fire, Aria. You just close your eyes to it.
Rising turmoil and total war aren’t the same thing.
Are we really going to rehash this ground again?
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There is a considerable leap from conquering and encouraging the assimilation of our culture, and slavery. Saying it’s ‘slavery in all but name’ is ignoring the things that make slavery what it is – namely, the lack of protections for the slaves, and the carte blanche for the Holders to abuse as they will.
Of course assimilation without slavery would cause plenty of problems on its own, but equating it with slavery is misunderstanding the main issues of slavery.
I’ve discussed this topic in the ‘A Beacon, Not a Scourge’ section of CAVTT’s manifesto.
Assimilation and convincing people without conquest, I can see as distinct. Conquest and a forced assimilation? Sorry, that’s still a form of slavery.
This is the ideal. War should be a last resort, not the first one. But it may not always be possible to avoid it. In some cases, the sins of a nation may be too great to overlook – as in the case of the pirate nations, for example.
It is holding conquered peoples accountable to Amarrian law. Amarrian law requires following the faith, among other religious doctrines.
And this is also ignoring the idea of soft assimilation, which, as I discussed in the manifesto: permitting a level of independence while limiting full participation in society until people willingly choose to take up the faith and follow all Amarrian doctrine. This is a means of putting a nation under the control and influence of your own, while also giving them time to adjust.
None of these things are slavery. The issue with slavery is not demanding the elimination of a target culture. It is the treating of people as not people, exploiting them for their labor and goods, the potential for abuse and cruelty and rape. It is the oversight, the state of being property, being implanted with tracking chips at birth, having your occupation and travels and even your name all controlled directly by your lord. It is the potential for you or your other family members to be separated and sold off. And this is for everyone in the society, combatants and non-combatants alike.
There is conquest and assimilation without these things. There is the possibility for righteous war, that respects the target people even as the goal is their defeat and Reclaiming. Slavery, as it stands, does not respect the target people. It violates Amash-Akura’s laws forbidding the mistreatment and looting of enemies and non-combatants.
And that—dictating what people must think, what they must believe—is a form of slavery.
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Then you’re doing that ■■■■■■■■ thing that a lot of people like to do and watering it down so that anything can be called slavery.
By that metric, every empire – including the Republic – practices forms of slavery.
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That may not strictly be slavery, Samira, but it does render those who don’t believe second-class subjects on their own homeworlds. Most people don’t take all that well to being conquered. There’ll be fierce resistance. Speaking for myself, I would fight to the death and consider my death a small price. Probably many Caldari and even client peoples would, maybe even most.
If the resistance fails, what follows will probably differ a little from what you described. Don’t expect to be seen as less an oppressor simply because you try not to treat people as property. If my identity were forced to disappear from the world, I would want to leave a scar on the hand that forced it-- and force that hand to show its talons, to inspire my kin to fight as well.
I have only a little trepidation over an onslaught of Amarrian books and missions-- and really, if Amarr conquers New Eden by such means, I’d have to applaud, because at that point it would be apparent that it’s a victory well earned.
But if you try to take it by force, you may learn the lesson of Vak’Atioth all over again: you can lose, God won’t rescue you from folly, and you don’t have enough swords for us all.
I’m not exactly encouraging it. Like I said, that kind of thing is ideally a last resort.