The Klingon Empire
- Thread starter JoeZhang
- Start date
The former, no, the latter, yes. An empire is a sociopolitical entity in which one state rules over other subject peoples and draws on their wealth, resources, and labor to increase its own prosperity. There's certainly no need for an empire to practice slavery; indeed, the British Empire was a leading force in abolishing slavery long before the non-imperial United States finally got around to doing the same. But a monocultural state with no subject peoples cannot validly be called an empire.
This is one of the perennial problems with Star Trek "empires" that seem to consist entirely of a single species. One could pretend that their military is only manned by members of the imperial society, but that doesn't reflect the historical pattern; empires have always drawn on their subject peoples for manpower in their armies, since the subject peoples were more numerous and expendable.
Some books have dealt with Klingon subject peoples, notably The Final Reflection by John M. Ford, and more recently the IKS Gorkon novels by Keith R.A. DeCandido (including their "backdoor pilot" Diplomatic Implausibility).
^The term used in the modern fiction that's equivalent to Ford's "kuve" is jeghpu'wI'. The Klingon lexicon in the GKN novels defines it as "Conquered peoples: more than slaves, less than citizens." Although an empire would have subjects rather than citizens.
And yes, using subject peoples as ground troops is a good idea, but it's a shame we've never seen it. One of the smart things about Nemesis was establishing the Remans as the Romulans' ground troops, their cannon fodder. And of course the Dominion had the Jem'Hadar. The Dominion is Trek's best effort at portraying an interstellar empire plausibly. But there's no parallel for the Klingons.
Well, The Final Reflection did suggest that the smooth-headed TOS Klingons were Klingon-human genetic fusions bred by the Imperial race to fight on the Federation front, sort of following the Imperial Chinese principle of "use barbarians to deal with barbarians." And some of the recent novels and short fiction involving Klingons have at least implicitly suggested the same about the quch'Ha (smooth-headed Klingons created by the Augment virus), portraying them as a disadvantaged minority. It's a short leap from there to assuming that the reason we only saw "smoothies" in TOS is because the minority race was being used as cannon fodder.
And yes, using subject peoples as ground troops is a good idea, but it's a shame we've never seen it. One of the smart things about Nemesis was establishing the Remans as the Romulans' ground troops, their cannon fodder. And of course the Dominion had the Jem'Hadar. The Dominion is Trek's best effort at portraying an interstellar empire plausibly. But there's no parallel for the Klingons.
Well, The Final Reflection did suggest that the smooth-headed TOS Klingons were Klingon-human genetic fusions bred by the Imperial race to fight on the Federation front, sort of following the Imperial Chinese principle of "use barbarians to deal with barbarians." And some of the recent novels and short fiction involving Klingons have at least implicitly suggested the same about the quch'Ha (smooth-headed Klingons created by the Augment virus), portraying them as a disadvantaged minority. It's a short leap from there to assuming that the reason we only saw "smoothies" in TOS is because the minority race was being used as cannon fodder.
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
It would make sense for the Romulans to do something similar with the Remans occupying a slightly higher position that the captive races. The Remans did manage to build a ship right under the Romulans noses. Romulans may use the captured races for construction of materials to be used by the Remans for insustrial or military purposes.
Why do people think that? Nemesis made it clear that Shinzon's coup had the support of hardliners in the Romulan military and government. After all, it was a Romulan senator, Tal'aura, who did the dirty work of assassinating the sitting Praetor and Senate. True, the Scimitar did have Reman-language consoles and markings, but it was most likely built with the cooperation of Shinzon's military allies.
And NEM also made it clear that the Remans, at least those working in the dilithium mines, are actual slaves. Although, granted, there are historical examples of nominal slaves gaining high status in society, particularly in Islamic empires.
You're missing my point. The ship may have been built for the use of the Remans, but it's logical to assume that it was built by the Romulan military. Perhaps it's something that was intended to be the next generation of warbird but which Shinzon's Romulan co-conspirators repurposed for Reman use as part of their partnership.
Remember, Shinzon conquered the Romulan Empire. He was its Praetor, and unlike his predecessors in that role, he was an absolute monarch with no Senate to answer to. That means that, regardless of his species or personal allegiance, he controlled every military asset the Romulans had. So there's no "handing over" of anything to be expected here. The Remans and Romulans were both Shinzon's subjects, regardless of his personal affinities. And the Scimitar was his personal flagship.
As for knowing its capabilities, Tal'aura used a small thalaron weapon to assassinate the Senate, so it follows that she and her fellow conspirators knew that the Scimitar was built around a larger version of the same weapon. What they didn't know was Shinzon's true intentions. The reason the Romulan hardliners backed his coup was because he convinced them that he intended to support their policy of imperialist expansion by conquest. They assumed the Scimitar would be a weapon toward that end. They weren't aware of his personal agendas.
Or Shinzon and the other Remans found some of it in a Dominion base they captured and with a few allies in the Romulan military and then revealed it after his coup worked.
In the second appearance of the Klingons on Star Trek, Captain Kirk says this about them: "Their empire is made up of conquered worlds. They take what they want by arms and force."
Yeah, but they never showed us the conquered worlds, never showed us the Klingon equivalent of Janissaries or sepoys. They told us the Klingons were an empire but they never actually showed us.
That would be true if it actually existed, but since it's fictional, it could simply be that the writers who depicted it misused the term "empire," applying it simply because it sounded villainous, but not thinking through the details of what it would realistically mean. Writers of fiction could easily apply the term "Empire" to something that wasn't an empire, just as multiple TOS episodes such as "The Empath" and "All Our Yesterdays" mistakenly applied the term "nova" to what would more properly be a supernova.
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
Well, if you're going to approach it that way then you can write off pretty much anything. Call it a writer's error and there you go.
Unless there's evidence to show that the Klingons or the Romulans didn't have an actual empire then I'm willing to go with the assumption that an empire is what the writers wanted them to have.
We encountered a Klingon subject world in "The Mind's Eye".
Yes, I was just about to suggest that myself. If the Roman (not Romulan) Empire had conquered Earth, rather than fallen, and then achieved FTL space travel and moved into the stars, they may still have been calling themselves the Roman Empire, despite being a single species that had no conquered planets to their name.
Except the Roman Empire didn't normally call itself that -- it called itself the Senatus Populusque Romanus ("Senate and People of Rome") or the Res publica Romana ("Roman Republic" or "Roman Commonwealth" -- literally the "Roman public thing").
That's a very good point. There's nothing to prevent an interstellar power from being both single-species and an empire in the manner of ancient Rome. They may have just continued subjugating their own people rather than subjugating other species.
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