When did the Federation first meet the Cardassians?

[Timo]

Cardassia and Bajor both seem to be relatively close to Earth--about a week away at maximum warp perhaps--but they could still be considered on the Federation's frontier if that particular border butted up against Cardassian space.

Similarly, Jouret in "BoBW" was claimed to be one of the UFP's outermost colonies, yet a mere week's flight away from Earth at most. Quite possibly Jouret in turn was butted up against Romulan space, defining another nearby frontier.

Picard mentioned reading about ancient Bajorans when he was much, much younger.

One wonders if this was "common knowledge", indicating the Bajorans had had an interstellar presence for a long time, or a tidbit known only to those of the archaeological persuasion...

Apparently, if we take Picard literally Bajor had a city culture half a million years before Earth had one. But Bajorans are also extremely conservative and seem to avoid expansion and exploration - even after those half a million years of "culture", there are still corners on their world they haven't bothered to explore, mountains they haven't surveyed. Perhaps Bajor never ventured to space nor made a name before Cardassia came and picked the ripe fruit? That way, there would have been relatively little interstellar outrage, because interstellar empires are probably annexing "primitive" cultures left and right all the time. The UFP supposedly does that, too; at least they tried to woo many apparent non-starflight cultures in TOS and TAS to some sort of an alliance.

For all we know, Bajor was well within the Cardassian sphere (or non-sphere) of influence back in the days of ENT already. It just wasn't conquered yet, merely englobed. We don't know how long Cardassia has been starfaring, but half a thousand years prior to Earth's entry to the warp club wouldn't sound out of place. After all, we already have to accept that Klingons and Vulcans preceded us to the stars by at least that much. And we further have to accept they didn't conquer or otherwise annex the primitive Earth at that time yet.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TerokNor]

Wasn´t it stated somewhere that the Cardassians had developed Warp-drive in 1935 or something like this?

TerokNor

 

[Gul Re'jal]

The Cardassians had to have warp earlier--at least 100 years earlier. Tret Akleen was born on a colony and he was considered the father of the modern Union (and according to Gul Dukat the Union in current form existed for 500 years, so it was established in 19th century). I assume that he didn't arrive to Cardassia from that colony on a sub-warp spaceship (even if that colony had been established by people who arrived there in a pre-warp time, and I don't think they did).

 

[Timo]

OTOH, Tret Akleen is a noncanonical detail of Cardassian history; perhaps the Union was "in reality" founded before Cardassia had interstellar holdings, with or without warp?

It's equally possible, though, that even the old Hebitians had warp drive, and simply didn't use it for evil, at least not much. Vulcan supposedly had to cut down on its interstellar ambitions after Surak's war distressed the planet; the same might have happened to Cardassia as the result of the events that impoverished the perhaps once mighty and interstellar Hebitian culture.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gul Re'jal]

It was in deleted scenes, so I'm not sure if it counts as a canon or not.

I don't recall seeing 1935 as the date of achieving warp by the Cardassians at all. Maybe it was in Treklit.

 

[Timo]

Unless the bit is restored for some future edition of "Tears of the Prophets", it shouldn't count as being part of the Trek universe. Many cuts are made because there's not enough time to feature them; others are made because the material is considered unwelcome. We don't know which would have applied in this case...

In any case, one might argue that the "father" of the Union could have lived centuries before the Union was created, and his writings or other such heritage might have inspired the later creation. But generally speaking, there aren't too many arguments against any specific, arbitrary date of warp discovery: we already have to accept that such discovery doesn't immediately or even within a century make a planet the king of the local hill, or send it in eternal conflict with more powerful neighbors, but we also have to accept that upstarts like humans can reach a prominent position very quickly after the discovery of warp. Cardassia could represent either end of that spectrum, or the happy middle.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Finn]

^ Just like Mendel is the father of Genetics, long before it was a formed science. Yeah

 

[Enderw]

I always thought of the Cardies as a small military power. They conquered small systems around its closest territory mainly because of striking distance and due to lack of resources and most likely used the new resources to shore up the center. I think of its over all territory as being equal or a little better than Bajoren and Ferengi territory put together.

As far as first contact, Ill thinking the Cardassians in a singular or as commerce moved throw Fed space as free as any merchant might, thus the Cardie on Vulcan. I seem to recall something about commerce planets or stations. But an official first contact was most likely a pissing contest between to star ships crossing in the night. Sizing each other up. And like a game of chess the once they were set in place the bloody Cardies made there move. Then got bitch slapped out of FED space.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Apparently, if we take Picard literally Bajor had a city culture half a million years before Earth had one. But Bajorans are also extremely conservative and seem to avoid expansion and exploration - even after those half a million years of "culture", there are still corners on their world they haven't bothered to explore, mountains they haven't surveyed. Perhaps Bajor never ventured to space nor made a name before Cardassia came and picked the ripe fruit?

According to Vedek Bareil in "In the Hands of the Prophets," Bajor did have an interstellar export: namely, its institutions of science and higher learning. Perhaps they weren't interested in exploration, but they were apparently advanced enough in other ways if they were drawing people to their world to study.

 

[Timo]

The interesting question goes, when did Bajor start exporting its culture that way? Back when "humans were not yet walking erect" already? Or 300,000 years after that? We haven't heard of too many cultures that would take hundreds of thousands of years to go from basic city culture to warp drive, so Bajorans would in any case represent a particularly shy or slow culture; either they took hundreds of millennia becoming interstellar, or then they gained interstellar abilities and did nothing with them for hundreds of millennia...

Or then Bajor went through major ups and downs, so that instead of being half a million years ahead of Cardassia in linear development, they were barely on par when the two finally met.

"Explorers" implies that Bajorans either had relatively little in the way of starflight capabilities as late as 800 years prior to the episode, or then had undergone such crises that all knowledge of those had been lost. The episode doesn't exactly force us to think that Bajor lacked warp capability at the time of those starsailing exploits, but it does heavily suggest this. Furthermore, the episode doesn't force us to think that Bajor lacked any and all interstellar means before the lightsails, but again this is at least suggested. If contact with the neighboring Cardassia was considered mythological, then contact with other worlds would appear unlikely (either through the Bajorans contacting them, or through them contacting Bajor).

The easiest "out" here would be to think that Bajor's ups and downs happened before their first-ever discovery of starflight - that a city culture hundreds of millennia ago reached early industrialism but then lost it, then reached it again but again lost it, on and on, for thousands and thousands of years, never quite ascending to interstellar prominence until those 800 years ago. And that's when Bajor first became a cultural capital for the region, despite its long history.

Perhaps Bajor is such a geologically or climatically unstable place that cultures get shaken apart by earthquakes, scorched by droughts or swept away by floods? Immediately after the Occupation, the culture seems quite "fractured", with dissimilar village-sized communities squabbling ("Storyteller", "If Wishes"), not unified like one might expect after thousands of years of cultural stability. Also, the various backstage maps of Bajor suggest an island planet further divided by mountain ridges - possibly suspect to piecemeal destruction of local culturelets by floods, vulcanism or other such instability.

Perhaps that's why Cardassians were so interested in the world: it's so geologically active that there are always fresh heavy minerals available near the surface...

Or perhaps the local star is the culprit, hiccuping every so often and raining divine fire on the hapless Bajorans? Bajor is one of the very few star systems where warp travel is sometimes considered risky; might be due to having an angry star. Another consequence of that might be the existence of the Denorios belt and the ion storms that sweep through it every so often. And all the astral instability might be fundamentally tied to the presence of the wormhole...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[FordSVT]

Or then Bajor went through major ups and downs, so that instead of being half a million years ahead of Cardassia in linear development, they were barely on par when the two finally met.

That would be my wager, they've probably been built up and torn down by (insert reason here) many times over the eons. Pretty common theme in sci-fi too, the future of humanity in B5 for example.

I know there is not much real evidence for it, and I'm not personally a believer, but some people say the same thing about our own species. Not going back a half million years, but some say that some humans may have lived in cities and had relatively advanced (compared to stone age) technology before the last Ice Age, but we got knocked back so many times by natural disaster that we're only partially aware of the last 5-10,000 years of history.

Like I said, there's no evidence for it, but it's an interesting concept to think about, and it's not completely impossible.

 

[USS Excelsior]

There was also a Cardassian on that ENT Repair Station episode.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I can't remember...was he/she seen, or just mentioned?

 

[Finn]

^Seen. I tried to view it frame by frame, but it was very quick, in the end when the camera scanned that room with all the bodies.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Oh, CREEPY.

 

[Sci]

Given that both Humans and cardassians had both been to the same planet (the one in Observer Effect, Enterprise), I'd say first contact with them came fairly early.

That's kinds odd, it would mean in TOS the Federation was in contact with an military dictatorship with an expansionist ideology and yet there was no mention of them in TOS era.

Europeans were aware of the existence of China and India for centuries before regular direct contact was established. Could not the same be true of the Federation and Cardassia?

 

[Timo]

From today's point of view, it is difficult to understand why any two cultures would choose to have close ties at all, across the interstellar gulf. Cultural exchange sounds too uninteresting when the cultures are so similar to begin with; the selling of booze and other curios transportable by the puny little freighters we witness would appear profoundly unprofitable. Unless there were a pressing military reason for the two entities to join their starfleets, I don't think species X would have too much to do with species Y especially if it already got alien-contact benefits from knowing species Z.

Even in Trek, serious state-level contact probably is something you do when you can afford to, not something you strive to do for profit. Private parties might do small-scale business like Quark's tulaberry wine thing - but in political terms, just knowing Cardassia would not be sufficient cause for admitting to knowing Cardassia.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BillJ]

Despite what Star Trek says, space is freaking huge. I could easily see isolated incidents of meeting Cardassians for decades or centuries prior to the 'official' first contact with the Cardassian Union.