Imperial History - Pre-War

Most historians accept the traditional view of human origins as being at least largely correct. This states that humans evolved on 26B:2DA:18-117, known traditionally as Terra or Earth, in the system Sol. Alternative theories place human origins in many other places, and many historians believe that humans were seeded across the galaxy by another, older race. While these theories all have evidence to support them, none has proven compelling. In any event, it is as certain as anything in history that the current Imperial Government has its historical roots on Earth.

Origins

The history of ancient Earth is fraught with problems of interpretation. While records from this period are actually quite good, verifying them as authentic can be extremely difficult since there have been many politically-motivated attempts to alter history. Archaeology is an unsatisfying alternative to the conflicting histories, because of the scale of destruction on Earth during the Great War.

Nevertheless, all accounts agree that humans first expanded beyond Earth in Imperial Years -7637 to -7582. Earth at this time was divided between many small powers, who had organized themselves into two major blocs for purposes of space exploration: a western bloc, led by two countries named Europe and the American Union, and an eastern bloc led by another called China. Each bloc established separate colonies, and in general there was little interaction between the two. As well, various smaller powers and private corporations managed to establish a few small colonies, mostly in larger asteroids. Two exceptions to this individualism were the Martian colony of New Mecca, and the Mercury colony of Prometheus. These established themselves as free and open ports, and were driven by trade. Other colonies justified themselves as scientific bases, penal settlements, mining outposts, tourist resorts and ideological ventures. Many were driven more by political concerns than practical, and many failed.

Early Space Travel

At this early date, space travel consisted of simple rocket-driven ships, most of which could only accelerate directly for brief periods and then would coast on freefall trajectories from point to point. Journeys between settlements took months or years and all formal colonies strove to become self-sufficient as quickly as possible, since outside intervention in a crisis was difficult to impossible. Because of the political and technological climate, some early adventurers and colonists took to piracy. The pirates were a varied group, many from smaller powers and some from colonies. They were very difficult to identify, executing hit-and-run raids against easy targets for equipment and supplies, and in several cases they wiped out entire settlements leaving no withesses. Colonists became concerned with self-defence and started arming themselves, and their supporting governments on Earth tried to act against the pirates, but direct action proved difficult and counter-productive. The blocs grew suspicious of each other and commissioned privateers to hunt out and destroy pirate bases. These were rarely successful, and when the blocs raised colonial taxes to pay for them the colonies rebelled and declared independence.

The Unification War

The independence movement was not originally violent but probably destined to become so. Many of the colonies were simply not yet capable of supporting themselves, and so not capable of real independence. They would inevitably have had to trade or fight with the other colonies. Reaction on Earth fuelled the drive to war, also. Originally both the eastern and western blocs united against the independents, but since the pirates and privateers tended to be from particular Earth groups, friction arose within the blocs. The western bloc found itself incapable of taking action because of internal splits, and the eastern bloc turned against the western, taking the war into its own hands. At first the war was a very low-key affair with little damage or loss of life. Marines attacked and occupied some of the more prominent colonies, hoping to frighten the rest into capitulation. However, since the pirates and privateers operated from bases beyond these colonies, no problems were solved and the independents had little reason to back down. Another complicating aspect of this war was the involvement of private corporations, who operated both directly and indirectly to support and oppose various colonial groups and earth powers, effectively fighting wars among themselves by proxy. This led to a major turn in the course of human history when one such consortium bribed its way to take near-total control of the government of Australia - for all practical purposes buying the country. This gave some of the pirates an established physical base and drove home the realization that this war could not be won in space. From here the course of the war became very difficult to follow. Corporations allied, jostled and betrayed each other and the national powers. Allegiances became blurred and the blocs dissolved. The physical war spread to earth with devastating consequences. Australia suffered the most, its cities and space facilities being destroyed by repeated nuclear bombing from competing corporations and the eastern bloc. Western powers retaliated, driven by cultural and corporate ties, and the list of destroyed cities quickly grew: Shanghai, Lhasa, Diego Garcia, Denver, Miami, Nairobi and more.

The Unification War ground on for 12 years, costing hundreds of millions of lives. It finally ended when the major corporations made a series of deals between themselves and forced peace upon the national powers. The final form of the peace settlement came in the historic Treaty of New Mecca. Among hundreds of lesser protocols it specified several major principles which dictated the shape of all human society since:

• All colonies are autonomous, and no government controlled more than one world
• The government of Earth would be unified
• Interplanetary corporations exist independently of planetary governments and outside their control
• An umbrella organization, the Terran Union, would bring together leaders of governments and corporations to decide common matters, and all would contribute to a common collective force to enforce those decisions

The major result of the Treaty of New Mecca was the rise to power of corporations. While they had always exerted significant power behind the scenes, they now wielded it openly on their own account. The treaty also created (or perhaps formalized) the split in power and function between planetary and interplanetary government, which has existed ever since.

Expansion of the Terran Union

Once reorganized, the new Terran Union proved to be considerably more flexible and adaptable than the old national governments, and the pace of human expansion exploded. The corporations eagerly encouraged all space exploration efforts, since the one invariable result of them was an increase in business. With no more wars to fight amongst themselves, the old nations of Earth had to find new ways to divert the energies of their peoples, and they had more money to do so. Colonizing space often came to be seen as the only way to preserve their identities, and so many nations established colonization ventures.

Once the major planets and planetoids of Sol had been colonized, pressure grew to continue onwards. The first effort at interstellar travel consisted of building "generation ships" which were essentially larger versions of the primitive inter-planetary transports known then. They would accelerate at low rates for relatively short intervals, then drift to their destination systems over the course of many dozens or even hundreds of years. Fourteen of these were known to have been built, but only two are known to have arrived. Real progress at interstellar travel came only when engineering advances allowed the creation of ultra-high-impulse efficient rockets. These allowed starships to drive under direct acceleration halfway towards their target, at which point they would flip and decelerate for the remainder of the distance. Voyages now took years instead of generations, and the major limit on how far a ship would travel was its fuel capacity. The first few such ships reached Sol's neighbours easily, and later versions grew to have reaches of up to twenty or thirty light years. The structure of this expanded Terran Union remained essentially the same as that of the earlier Union. It was necessarily a very loose organization, with cooperation and trade only on practical matters and that driven by the corporations. Defence across star systems was not merely impractical but nearly impossible, and the politics of the Union altered subtly to become somewhat feudal. Every system would necessarily maintain its own fleet and resources, while contributing to a greater whole. An entire new class of humanity developed; the crew of the starships and their families, who spent their whole lives travelling at relativistic speeds between planets without ever calling any home. These inter-related clans ultimately became the Spacers, but in their early days they were much more fragmented and had yet to develop a common culture.

The Human Federation

This pattern of expansion continued largely uninterrupted and without significant historical events until the discovery of collapsar travel. Collapsars, or "black holes" had been known since ancient days but were first encountered close up at (somewhere). After generations of study and technical advance, scientists first managed to send robot probes through them in IY -7308, and the first successful human transit came in -7304. Early attempts at collapsar travel were only slightly better than suicide, but with improved knowledge and technology they gradually became only slightly dangerous. Death rates in the first days of c-tunnel travel averaged 87%. Centuries later, at the peak of c-tunnel travel, they averaged around 14%. While never a remotely safe way to travel, they did tremendously expand the range of settlement possibilities. The technical advances which made it possible to transit c-tunnels also made possible faster and better direct-drive ships. The settled volume of human space gradually expanded, and new spheres of settlement expanded around the endpoints of known traversible c-tunnels.

The discovery of c-tnnels also forced another change in the way humans governed themselves. While the essential organization of the Terran Union was sound and could be extended to stars beyond c-tunnels, a majority of the corporations and governments making up the Union simply refused to have anything to do with it because of the risks. Newer and bolder groups seized the possibilities and gained the rewards. Within a hundred years, the Terran Union had dissolved, yielding to the new Human Federation. The essential political structure of the Federation was the same as that of the Union. It remained a somewhat feudal organization, divided at a level above planetary governments into blocs which roughly corresponded to areas of direct-drive travel. The old Terran Union became one such bloc, the Terran Sphere. There were two known c-tunnels in the Terran Sphere, leading to the Newlands and Far Eyries. C-tunnels led on further from Newlands.

First Contact

Humans first discovered alien life in the early days of the Human Federation, while exploring Newlands. These alien species were mostly immobile and plant-like although a few planets had animals. As more such species were discovered, humans came to expect all future contact would be as risk-free and peaceful. The Crucians were first contacted in IY -7099 in the Frontier Zone, and immediately dispelled this impression. While relations at first were peaceful, they were never friendly and from the beginning the Crucians aggressively marked and defended territory they considered their own, and since they had the same physical requirements as humans their territory would inevitably overlap with ours. In their first two encounters at Iliad and Blast Mountain, humans and Crucians negotiated settlements where one side abandoned the planet to the other. However, one particular group of colonists decided not to avoid the Crucian presence on their destination world and established themselves, calling their new colony "Five Canal". The reaction of the Crucians hardly needs repeating; they shortly attacked, starting the Great War.