When did Cardassia make first contact with the Federation?

They of course didn't appear onscreen until TNG's "The Wounded" but they'd go on to be mentioned in Trek history as early as in Enterprise and referenced (by way of Cardassian voles and Cardassian Sunrises) in Discovery and Star Trek 09. I understand that, in canon, Cardassia fought a war with the Federation around the mid-24th century, but is it known when exactly they made first contact?

If not, what's your own headcanon version of the event?

 

Cardassian poet Iloja of Prim was living on Vulcan in the early 23rd century, so presumable sometime before that.

 

What is first contact, exactly? Is that any contact between members of different species? In that case the Iloja of Prim milestone would count (unless of course someone finds a still earlier example). Or is it the first (official) contact, acknowledged by both governments in retrospect? In that case, it could be at a later point in time than Prim's era (Prim could have been an alien of unknown origin, refusing to tell anything about his past, and it became apparent he had been a Cardassian only when proper first contact was made).

 

In my own version of things, I placed first contact between the Federation and the Cardassians somewhere between 2210-2230, and that it was initially very friendly but soured later on.

 

There's a dead Cardassian in Dead Stop, but it seems like a pretty big stretch to count that.

 

23rd century sounds about right.

At some point in the early 24th century, their economy crashed and the military took over (when Gul Madred was a boy), and began an expansionist phase that took a once-peaceful people into conflict with the Federation.

 

I'd like to see the peaceful Cardassian Republic in Discovery.

 

Depends on what you mean by "The Federation."

If the Cardassians had a formal/official relationship (trade/diplomacy) with a species that would become a Federation member centuries in the future, how would that fit?

The Federation members in-between the Cardassians and the "core" of the Federation likely met the Cardassian prior to the Federation formally doing so.

And the (then) new member could have brought their existing relationship with them when they joined the Federation.

So the first contact with "The Federation" could easily predate the creation of the Federation.

 

What if the Federation established contact with them, but the Cardies were not interested and told the Federation to mind their own business?

 

In Rise of the Federation: Uncertain Logic, I portrayed Iloja as an exile who'd travelled far from his home territory, so he was the only Cardassian known to the Federation at that point. They knew about his civilization, but hadn't yet made formal contact with its government. Other books and comics have established that formal political/diplomatic interaction between the nations began sometime in the early 24th century.

 

I'm not sure there really is a canon answer to this, we simply have to accept "at least some time before TNG"

 

Captain Lorca had a Cardassian vole on his dissection table in Discovery (2256), but he had a number of remains of creatures the Federation isn't supposed to have encountered yet, including a Gorn skeleton and some tribbles. It's been suggested in interviews that maybe he procures such things from alien traders and doesn't necessarily know where they come from.

 

In Star Trek 11 NuUhura ordered a Cardassian drink, implying canonically they and their beverages were known at least since then. Unless one thinks that because that takes place in the Abramsverse it may not be the case in the Prime Universe even though it’s just 22 years into the Abramsverse.

 

Good catch.

Yeah, I think it is pretty safe to assume the first contact happened somewhere in the late 22nd or early 23rd century. Considering that TOS Federation is probably quite a bit smaller than TNG one, Cardassia probably was a pretty distant (and peaceful) regional power, so it is not weird it is never mentioned in TOS or the original films.

 

Bajoran Occupation happened sometime around 2319 (2369 - 50) and Bajor is the closest inhabited planet to Cardassia, so it's likely that marks their militaristic expansion phase.

It's possible that their proximity to the Klingons also made it difficult to have peaceful missions in their region of space until the Khitomer accords.

 

It's possible that the Kelvin incident caused the Federation to make contact with groups like the Cardassians earlier than they otherwise would have. They apparently made contact with the Romulans, which would explain how Uhura could know their language, and how Starfleet was aware of the Vulcan-Romulan connection.

And we do know from the salt shakers in the bar that the incident left one hell of a mark on Starfleet's collective psyche.

 

Except, again, it's already canonical fact that there was a Cardassian exile on Vulcan in the 22nd century. So at the time of the first Kelvin movie, the Federation would've been aware of Cardassians as a species and culture for nearly a century, even if it didn't have regular or formal interactions with the Cardassian state.

Also, cultural exchange can be indirect. Maybe the Federation got Cardassian beverages from a third civilization that traded with both.

"Balance of Terror" established that the peace treaty a century before was negotiated over subspace radio. Therefore, at least one side must have known the other's language -- probably both, so they could verify the accuracy of the treaty's translation. Even without face-to-face contact, they probably would've intercepted and decrypted each other's transmissions, salvaged data banks from destroyed ships, etc. and learned each other's languages that way.

As for the Vulcan-Romulan connection, the Kelvin crew themselves presumably discovered that when the Narada attacked them. Or maybe the attack prompted renewed scrutiny toward the Romulan Empire (since the UFP wouldn't have known the ship was from the future) and the Romulans came out of isolation to deny being culpable.

 

I really wanted to see one of the fan productions do a TOS style Cardiassian episode, just to see what the ships and make up could have looked like.... heheh.

 

Let's see...Dye hair black. Comb in full tube of Brill Cream. Full gray makeup and then glue gray spoon to forehead.

 

Huh, I didn't know that. Makes sense.