Do you see the Maquis differently today?
- Thread starter Sisko_is_my_captain
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I don't remember any discussion about popular opinion regarding the resettlements or the Maquis in either TNG or DS9, only discussions of policy.
The Maquis were a response to Federation arrogance. The Federation handled the situation badly by giving those worlds away without consulting the people who lived on these planets, and then showing up with an ultimatum. The Federation just assumed the colonists would follow the core worlds group think and give up the homes and lives they had built for the greater good. It was a very imperialist thing to do and I think it showed how out of touch the Federation was with it's colonists living on the frontier.
The colonists were given the options of relocating or staying on those worlds with a full understanding of what that would entail, and they chose the latter. The Feds didn't just say "Congrats, you're Cardassian citizens now," and portraying the situation in a way that makes it seem as though the colonists had no choice seems a bit disingenuous to me.
The Feds chose the treaty because they felt it was preferable to a war that would have likely claimed far more lives and might have ended up with one or both powers in an even worse scenario. No points for guessing that the colonies probably would have been a flashpoint for attacks as well.
It's easy to criticize the Federation for the path they chose, but I haven't seen many instances of people proposing better options.
The Feds chose the treaty because they felt it was preferable to a war that would have likely claimed far more lives and might have ended up with one or both powers in an even worse scenario. No points for guessing that the colonies probably would have been a flashpoint for attacks as well.
It's easy to criticize the Federation for the path they chose, but I haven't seen many instances of people proposing better options.
Nothing in current events has really changed my perception of them. They started off being sympathetic, but then being aggressive and unsympathetic.
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I'm curious about how colonists in the DMZ who refused to join the Maquis were treated.
Revolutionary groups like ths rarely take kindly to those who won't join The Struggle.
Revolutionary groups like ths rarely take kindly to those who won't join The Struggle.
Interesting quedtion. I don't think this was ever even mentioned.
It would certainly be interesting to get a sense for how many of the colonists left, how many became Maquis, and how many managed to make the best of the situation.
I also think it was a bit of a missed opportunity that we never saw the Cardassian side of the situation.
I also think it was a bit of a missed opportunity that we never saw the Cardassian side of the situation.
I'm curious about how colonists in the DMZ who refused to join the Maquis were treated.
Revolutionary groups like ths rarely take kindly to those who won't join The Struggle.
I'm sure. According to my family's oral history, some of them were Loyalists to the British during the 1770s war. Remaining in Massachusetts would have been unhealthy, whether they were actually fighting or not, and they were relocated to New Brunswick. There were quite a few of them, possibly as many as 1/3 of the population were loyalists and went to either Britain or what is now Canada.
But that new planet simply wouldn't have been home.If the government expropriated my home which my family had lived on and worked on for three generations and all my memories had been made there, even if they gave me a finer property in return, I would still utterly resent it. So I can understand their emotions very well, though I just don't think going into aggressive resistance was a very constructive path for them to take as the end result we saw was inevitable anyway.
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A lot of people are very happy to say the Maquis had a choice to leave as if that means they should just sit back and accept oppression (or leave after all to get away from it).
I think the Federation's 'need' to make such an uncaring treaty is never properly established and there's a ton of (seeming) disinterest in the actual colonists being affected by the treaty. It's not a good look for the Federation that they seem to automatically assume the colonists should happily leave their entire world behind without even being consulted first.
I also think the maquis were obviously a bad idea from a practical standpoint and probably always doomed, one way or another.
Regardless of all of that, though, the actual facts of the story are that the colonists were given a choice and they made that choice based on both reasons important to them personally and official promises that they'd be allowed to live their lives normally. As a result of that choice, they *became Cardassian citizens* and then the Cardassian government began systematically harassing and oppressing them. So they rebelled against their own government because it was oppressing them. They may have liked to see the Federation go back on the treaty and reclaim the territory, but they weren't Federation citizens fighting to remain in the Federation. They were Cardassian citizens fighting to remain - unmolested- in their homes (in Cardassian space). (Plus some Federation ex-pats who came in to help fight for a good cause.)
Could they have moved away after all and given the Cardassians what they obviously wanted? Sure. But I'm pretty sure, even in Star Trek, that when the Bajoran govt. started collaborating with Cardassian occupiers, or when our heroes found evidence of Starfleet officers trying to fundamentally destroy freedom and/or democracy in the Federation, or when the Dominion seized control of Federation territory, that nobody had any problem with people defending their homes against oppression and tyranny even though they ALSO could theoretically have just gone somewhere else and started over again.
I think the Federation's 'need' to make such an uncaring treaty is never properly established and there's a ton of (seeming) disinterest in the actual colonists being affected by the treaty. It's not a good look for the Federation that they seem to automatically assume the colonists should happily leave their entire world behind without even being consulted first.
I also think the maquis were obviously a bad idea from a practical standpoint and probably always doomed, one way or another.
Regardless of all of that, though, the actual facts of the story are that the colonists were given a choice and they made that choice based on both reasons important to them personally and official promises that they'd be allowed to live their lives normally. As a result of that choice, they *became Cardassian citizens* and then the Cardassian government began systematically harassing and oppressing them. So they rebelled against their own government because it was oppressing them. They may have liked to see the Federation go back on the treaty and reclaim the territory, but they weren't Federation citizens fighting to remain in the Federation. They were Cardassian citizens fighting to remain - unmolested- in their homes (in Cardassian space). (Plus some Federation ex-pats who came in to help fight for a good cause.)
Could they have moved away after all and given the Cardassians what they obviously wanted? Sure. But I'm pretty sure, even in Star Trek, that when the Bajoran govt. started collaborating with Cardassian occupiers, or when our heroes found evidence of Starfleet officers trying to fundamentally destroy freedom and/or democracy in the Federation, or when the Dominion seized control of Federation territory, that nobody had any problem with people defending their homes against oppression and tyranny even though they ALSO could theoretically have just gone somewhere else and started over again.
Yes! Give the militaristic nature of Cardassia, I imagine they were forced to return to Cardassian space.
With regards to the "these are their homes!" argument, I think we may be looking at a point of cognitive dissonance for which there really is no easy answer.
As an example...I have a friend whose dog passed away over a year ago. She's still in grieving sometimes, and part of me wonders whether she's making things harder on herself than she needs to (often posting pics of said dog, for instance), but I have no idea how I could broach such a subject, and I'm not sure I even should.
On the other hand, there's my parents, who've had three dogs, and each time one passed away, they had a new dog within three to six months. It's not that they didn't miss the old dogs, it's just that they moved on quickly.
My point being that I think there were probably a lot of colonists who, when the treaty was signed, shrugged and moved back to Federation space because to them, their homes were just "stuff" that they could easily replace (N.B. I'm certainly not arguing that dogs are "stuff"). OTOH, there were colonists who felt a strong emotional connection to the colony and who couldn't bring themselves to leave. A subset of those colonists would subsequently join the Maquis, but it's just as likely that some of the former colonists joined the Maquis as well on principle.
I'm academically curious as to how the percentages worked out.
The main reason why I personally have issues with the latter, barring any other arguments, is because I can't reconcile the idea of being so attached to my home that I would be willing to risk and possibly instigate a war that would harm other people via my refusal to leave. At the risk of getting "too real", it's why I wear a mask when I go grocery shopping these days, less because I'm worried about myself than because on the off chance that I am sick and asymptomatic, I don't want to be responsible for harming others.
And that last part is why I can't condone the Maquis, or at least Eddington's radical branch of the Maquis...because defending your homes is one thing, but if it causes a war that will kill thousands of people and likely destroy your home in the process anyway...to me, that shows a real disregard for other peoples' welfare.
As an example...I have a friend whose dog passed away over a year ago. She's still in grieving sometimes, and part of me wonders whether she's making things harder on herself than she needs to (often posting pics of said dog, for instance), but I have no idea how I could broach such a subject, and I'm not sure I even should.
On the other hand, there's my parents, who've had three dogs, and each time one passed away, they had a new dog within three to six months. It's not that they didn't miss the old dogs, it's just that they moved on quickly.
My point being that I think there were probably a lot of colonists who, when the treaty was signed, shrugged and moved back to Federation space because to them, their homes were just "stuff" that they could easily replace (N.B. I'm certainly not arguing that dogs are "stuff"). OTOH, there were colonists who felt a strong emotional connection to the colony and who couldn't bring themselves to leave. A subset of those colonists would subsequently join the Maquis, but it's just as likely that some of the former colonists joined the Maquis as well on principle.
I'm academically curious as to how the percentages worked out.
The main reason why I personally have issues with the latter, barring any other arguments, is because I can't reconcile the idea of being so attached to my home that I would be willing to risk and possibly instigate a war that would harm other people via my refusal to leave. At the risk of getting "too real", it's why I wear a mask when I go grocery shopping these days, less because I'm worried about myself than because on the off chance that I am sick and asymptomatic, I don't want to be responsible for harming others.
And that last part is why I can't condone the Maquis, or at least Eddington's radical branch of the Maquis...because defending your homes is one thing, but if it causes a war that will kill thousands of people and likely destroy your home in the process anyway...to me, that shows a real disregard for other peoples' welfare.
I think it's important to bear in mind that the Maquis's goals changed over time. Initially, they were essentially a civilian militia whose only goal was to protect Federation colonists from Cardassian civilian militia groups that had already formed and were launching attacks on Federation colonists with the unofficial backing of the Cardassian Central Command. They were, let's recall, formed in part because they had a legitimate need for self-protection; their conflicts with the rest of the Federation stemmed from Starfleet's unwillingness to play the part of the Central Command's UFP counterpart by unofficially arming them.
I also think we have to be realistic: Absent the Klingon invasion of Cardassia, had Starfleet continued to enforce the peace treaty on the Federation colonists while refusing to acknowledge Cardassian Central Command treaty violations on the other side and refusing to retaliate when Cardassian militia members attacked Federation colonists? Over time, this policy would inevitably have led to the depopulation of the Federation colonies that were supposed to be protected by the treaty, and to Cardassian hegemony over the Demilitarized Zone. It would have turned into a de facto surrender of all Federation colonies that the Cardassians had nominally agreed to accept under the treaty.
Over time, the Maquis's goals evolved beyond protecting Federation colonists, to driving Cardassian settlers off of the worlds their colonists had claimed and declaring independence from the Federation to form their own interstellar state. That development, IIRC, was a reaction to the Cardassian Guard being weakened by the Klingon invasion of 2372. Their new state -- let's call it the "Republic of Maquisia" with our tongues planted in our cheeks for a moment
-- would have been wedged between the Federation and Cardassian Union, and would only have survived on the basis of continued Klingon/Cardassian and Klingon/Federation conflict. I imagine the Republic of Maquisia would have ended up seeking the protection of the Klingon Empire to prop itself up against the Cardassians and Federation, had the Dominion not annexed the Cardassian Union and invaded the Alpha Quadrant. It probably would have become a Klingon client state or vassal state, though I doubt it would have been formally annexed by Qo'noS.
I also think we have to be realistic: Absent the Klingon invasion of Cardassia, had Starfleet continued to enforce the peace treaty on the Federation colonists while refusing to acknowledge Cardassian Central Command treaty violations on the other side and refusing to retaliate when Cardassian militia members attacked Federation colonists? Over time, this policy would inevitably have led to the depopulation of the Federation colonies that were supposed to be protected by the treaty, and to Cardassian hegemony over the Demilitarized Zone. It would have turned into a de facto surrender of all Federation colonies that the Cardassians had nominally agreed to accept under the treaty.
Over time, the Maquis's goals evolved beyond protecting Federation colonists, to driving Cardassian settlers off of the worlds their colonists had claimed and declaring independence from the Federation to form their own interstellar state. That development, IIRC, was a reaction to the Cardassian Guard being weakened by the Klingon invasion of 2372. Their new state -- let's call it the "Republic of Maquisia" with our tongues planted in our cheeks for a moment
-- would have been wedged between the Federation and Cardassian Union, and would only have survived on the basis of continued Klingon/Cardassian and Klingon/Federation conflict. I imagine the Republic of Maquisia would have ended up seeking the protection of the Klingon Empire to prop itself up against the Cardassians and Federation, had the Dominion not annexed the Cardassian Union and invaded the Alpha Quadrant. It probably would have become a Klingon client state or vassal state, though I doubt it would have been formally annexed by Qo'noS.
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One mistake.
In TNG Journies End all the Federation colonists who decided to stay in Cardassian space, became Cardassian citizens. If the Federation stepped into Cardassian space to stand between two groups of squabbling Cardassians, even if some of them are human, that there is an act of war.
In TNG Journies End all the Federation colonists who decided to stay in Cardassian space, became Cardassian citizens. If the Federation stepped into Cardassian space to stand between two groups of squabbling Cardassians, even if some of them are human, that there is an act of war.
Indeed so. This is the problem with the “post scarcity” world which is inconsistently portrayed.
I am to believe that Earth is paradise with all problems solved and nigh infinite supply, and yet still these men pack up their belongings to live on remote worlds with hunger and starvation for no apparent reason?
There was a dialog between Joseph, and Benjamin Sisko that illustrates this problem well:
Indeed, it does not work that way, because the writers need to create suspense. Why would Cardassia ever bother to invade specifically Bajor — what coincidence, that the only nearby planet with resources for them to strip was inhabited, rather than just going for an uninhabited planet.
Space is vast, and only a minimal number of planets hosts intelligent life. The idea that there is conflict about real estate and resources is an unrealistic one, but necessary for dramatic delivery.
On earth, energy is infinite. Space is not. They are raising a new fricking continent from the sea floor. TNG family.
On a colony world space is relatively infinite, 100s of square miles per colonist, but energy is not. They show up with a lot of deturium, and then have to figure out how to "find" more (deturium is heavy water) before their original stock piles run out.
Less fact based, I don't think a lot of humans are allowed to live on earth, since as the seat of the Federation you need a very high security clearance to stay there like the original conditions of washington dc. Land gifted by other states, and a population of mostly clerks and politicians. Earth's deed was given to the Federation. The continuing human claim to this planet is tolerated.
If your clearance is low, and you suck, and no one will vouch for you, you and 20 thousand other similar degenerates might be asked to abandon mother earth for the frontier because the air you are breathing could be used more wisely for more bolian clerks or andorian politicians.
Joe Sisko and Rene Picard were curators for historical/heritage land marks. They are not simple small business men, because there is no money or private property on Earth.
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Agreed, one of the things that makes some of the colonists look foolish, is that before they settled there, they were warned that the area was already hotly disputed and they would be caught in the middle. They chose to settle there anyway. After the treaty was signed, they decided to voluntarily give up their rights to live under Cardassian rule. Their rights. Under Cardassians.
It's really hard to see their point of view if you're talking about these particular colonists. And when you throw in the society where they came from, where there is no poverty, and there is plenty for all thanks to the replicator, their thinking simply makes no sense.
Which may fall under the 'what type of government is the Federation is running' question.
On the other hand, maybe some other colonists were already living in the DMV. The Federation knows this. They voluntary give up those territories to the Cardassians. Despite objections from the those colonists. And about 2 or 3 treaty violations by the Cardassians, before, during and after the treaty was signed. .
And it was implied that the Federation was looking after the Cardassians more than they did the former Federation colonists. They seem to ignore when Cardassians used intimidation tactics to drive them away.
Not only that but at one point the Maquis are still Federation citizens, the next they gave up their citizenship--which one is true? It goes back and forth.
It's a really interesting issue I think Trek barely scratched the surface on.
Indeed, it is the dissonance between Star Trek's supposed “utopia”, but also a need for conflict to move the drama of the story.
If there would truly be a post-scarcity world that is used to explain the idealized future where a man be willing to work for no financial compensation, then many of the problems they face would be easily solvable. “utopia” and “post-scarcity” is hard to unify with any degree of conflict, which is generally required to keep the suspense of a fictional story alive.
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