"The footprint of a people and not the average of all of them."President Elliot O'Neil, to the Chamber, on the founding-region rule, 2292
The Manifest Pledge was the founding instrument of the Expansion Era of the United Nations of Earth. It was two things at once. It was a declaration, signed at New Luxor on 12 October 2292, that humanity's future lay beyond Earth and that every people, whatever its origin, would be part of the journey. And it was a funding act, the Exploration and Settlement Act of the same date, which the declaration was written to carry. It was President Elliot O'Neil's first act in office.
The Act committed 4 percent of the federal budget for fifty years to colonisation and exploration, created the Office of Settlement as the federation's sole authority over worlds beyond the solar system, and set the rule that every colony would be founded from one designated region of the federation. Under it the federation built four survey ships, surveyed 800 stars and founded its four core worlds by 2317.
Background
The Pillai hyperdrive was first tested on 14 August 2289. Elliot O'Neil, the Chamber's representative for Queensland North, had cast the single vote on the Scientific Research committee that carried its budget. He argued through 2289 and 2290 that the drive was the answer to the question the constitution of 2283 had not asked, which was what the federation was for. He ran for President against the Treasury minister, Senator Ingrid Halvorsen, who stood on consolidation, on a platform of one word: expansion. The election of 12 November 2291 gave him 54 percent of the vote across four worlds and 71 percent on Mars and the moons. He took office on 15 January 2292, at thirty-seven, with Vinak Pillai beside him.
O'Neil was born in Townsville to Martian parents moved to Earth in the population transfers of 2247, and grew up in a resettlement estate of 4,000 Martians on the Queensland coast. He took from it a conviction he stated in every speech he made for sixty years: that the human race had spent two centuries fighting over four worlds because it had only four.
The declaration
The declaration was signed on 12 October 2292 by the representatives of the twelve states of Earth, the four Martian areas, Luna, the four Jovian territories and the Belt, in the chamber where the federation had been founded nine years before. It declared that humanity's future lay beyond Earth and that every people, whatever its origin, would be part of the journey. Its text, of 312 words, is read in the Chamber at the opening of every session that falls on its anniversary.
The Exploration and Settlement Act
The Act passed the Chamber by 412 votes to 298 and the Senate by 58 to 47. It did four things.
- The Fund. It committed 4 percent of the federal budget for fifty years to an Exploration and Settlement Fund, ring-fenced against every other claim. In 2292 that meant 1.1 trillion credits a year.
- The Office. It established the Office of Settlement, under the Ministry of Member Affairs, as the federation's sole authority for the survey, claim and settlement of worlds beyond the solar system, so that no member, company or person could claim a star.
- The founding-region rule. It provided that every colony would be settled by the federation, with its founding population drawn by quota from a designated region of the federation. Each new world would carry, in O'Neil's words to the Chamber, "the footprint of a people and not the average of all of them". The Office's planners believed that a colony of 100,000 needed a common language, a common food and a common set of grandparents to survive its first winter.
- Exploration Command. It reserved to the federation, and not its members, the fleet that would carry the colonists: the Unified Solar Navy's Exploration Command, established on 1 January 2293.
The Act's ninth section gave the companies the right to bid for resource concessions in any system the Office had surveyed and not settled.
Opposition
The Pledge's opponents were of two kinds, and both lost.
The first were the states of Earth that stood to lose their young. China's and India's delegations, which held 3 billion of the federation's 14 billion people, argued that a regional quota would empty the regions with the most people. The Chinese delegation's amendment to cap any member's contribution at a tenth of a colony failed by twelve votes. The compromise that passed was the founding-region rule itself, which guaranteed that a colony drawn from Guangdong would be Cantonese. The Chinese delegation, unable to stop the emigration, chose to shape it, and Landfall is the result.
The second were the companies. Exxon Space, Bharat, Xi and Reliance proposed a Chartered Worlds Bill, under which a company that surveyed a system would hold its charter, settle it with contract labour and pay the federation a royalty. O'Neil answered in the Chamber on 3 September 2292 that the Jovian moons had been built that way and that the federation had fought a thirty-year war over the result. The bill died in committee by 14 votes to 9. The companies got the ninth section instead, which in 2292 looked like a consolation and in 2320 looked like the Ciriban Gulf.
Cost
The Fund's first decade spent 11 trillion credits. It built the second-generation drive, the four Voyager-class explorers, their escorts, the courier network, the four founding colonies and the survey of 800 stars. The federation's members paid for expansion in the coin of consolidation: Tharsis's mirror programme slowed by two years, the Belt's accession terms were cut, and the Navy's replacement of its Solar War hulls was deferred to 2305. Halvorsen told the Senate in October 2292 that the federation was "spending the roof to buy a telescope".
Results
The four Voyager-class ships left Europa in January 2300 and by 2317 had surveyed 800 stars, claimed 60 systems, found life on eleven worlds and sentient life on one, found the Mardak Vol and found the Voor. The Office founded the four core worlds under the founding-region rule: Landfall in 2305, Circumstance in 2305, Dauntless in 2314 and Serenity in 2317. Mardak Vol followed in 2323. The Emergency Naval Act of 2328 took the colony money for the war, and the Fund expired on 12 October 2342, after the Office had spent its last on the Second Wave of colonisation. The Chartered Worlds Act of 2351 revived the companies' bill of 2292, and the founding-region rule applied to a chartered world only if its charter holder chose it. None did.
Legacy
The Pledge gave the Expansion Era its character. Each of the core worlds was founded from one region and kept that region's language, food and calendar: Landfall Cantonese, Dauntless Venezuelan and Colombian, Serenity Martian, Mardak Vol Central African. The worlds' days of founding are still kept as public holidays, and 12 October is kept across the Republic as Pledge Day.
BOOK SOURCES
- Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.1 "The Pillai Hyperdrive and the Manifest Pledge"
- Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.2 "On the Solar Wind: The Four Explorers" and §7.4 "La Recalada: The Founding of the Core Worlds"
- Solar Eternal, Part X, §10.2 "The Second Wave of Colonisation" and §10.4 "The Third Wave of Colonisation"