A somewhat belated response:
--- Nathan Hook nhook@bemail.org wrote:
Somebody mentioned corporate america and connecting it with a regime similar to B7's Federation...I think, I now can't find the quote...which is nice. Nevertheless I had heard that comparisons had been made with corporate companies and western european Feudalism and given the references earlier to fascism, i wonder if feudal systems were applicable to the Federation. It seems reasonable when you consider as an example, the Moloch episode and section leader Grosse building up resources sufficient to be a threat to the destabilised post galactic war Feration. the whole galaxy was a series of loose economic and military alliances based on territory and resources.
As I understand it feudalism was a system where the King owned everything and then delegated land down to the nobles who in turn delegated it to the knights who delegated it to the peasants, in return for service and fealty. So under feudalism King X delegates the county of Y to the Count of Y. In exchange the Count swears allegiance and agrees to fight for the king in all his wars. This later evolved/ degenerated into Bastard Feudalism whereby the grants of land became hereditary. This led to a loss of royal power - (If the Count of Y misbehaves you can't take the land back) - which I think counts among the causes of the Wars of the Roses.
My own view is that a form of Warlordism (for want of a better term) evolved after the intergalactic war. I suspect, given the fact that the Federation's borders contracted after the war, those Warlords we see in the episode of that name may well have been ex-Federation generals who reinvented themselves to seize control of planets in the chaos. Something analogous happened after the death of Alexander and the consequent break up of his empire. Generals grabbed what they could and hung onto it - mutating in the process from Macedonian generals to Egyptian Pharoahs and Asiatic Monarchs. There were also, I think, a number of democratic revolts by City States which had been incorporated under Macedonian control - analagous, to the rebellion on Helotrix for example. That would be my own personal interpretation of what happened.
Stephen.
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