Unified Solar Republic

"A Republic which cannot change its President is not a Republic."President Elliot O'Neil, address to the Chamber of Representatives, 12 March 2344

The Unified Solar Republic (USR) is the federal government of humanity. It was formed on 1 January 2341, when the Republic Act renamed the United Nations of Earth, whose name, the Chamber's constitutional committee had reported, described a body that no longer existed. On its first day it governed twenty-one worlds and three Voor systems. It is a federation of states, areas and territories under a President, a Chamber of Representatives and a Senate.

Its histories divide it in two. The First Republic, from 2341 to 2460, was a century of consolidation and then isolation, in which a Solarite majority governed for the Sun's worlds and cut the fleet that had won the Voor War. It ended in the war of the Red Khanate, which burned Bounty, Landfall, Dauntless and Talandra, struck the Sun itself in 2446, and cost the Republic 2.4 billion dead. The Second Republic dates from the Fejantris Peace of 1 January 2460. It has a new constitution, the Fevarian Accords of 2466 and the Reconstruction, and its central quarrel is the apportionment of the Chamber between Earth and the worlds beyond it, which the census of 2510 settled.

Name

The committee chose the name in 2340 to mark the federation's change from a union of Earth's nations into a single government of every world its people lived on. The Navy kept its own name, the Unified Solar Navy, and became the Republic's military arm. The Republic kept its name in 2460, and its histories date the Second Republic from the Fejantris Peace's first hour.

Government

Members

The Republic kept the three classes of member the constitution of 2283 had created: states, areas and territories. Every member has five senators and a delegation in the Chamber. The Voor Territories Act of 2343 made Haedus, Kastaba and Myrum territories, and Haedus became the first non-human member of a human state. The Chartered Worlds Act of 2351 let companies and consortia found worlds under charter. The Worlds Amendment of 2424 converted the chartered worlds to member areas on a population test of 5 million. The Inari of Binami have held four representatives in the Chamber since 14 January 2470.

The President

Until 2460 the President served four-year terms with a limit of two, under the fifth article of 2283. The Chamber could declare the office vacant for loss of confidence, and did so twice: Aurelio Benavides in 2328 and Pieter Laurens in 2423. The Third Term Amendment of 2328 let a President elected after such a recall serve on for as long as the Chamber voted the emergency each January. Elliot O'Neil held office under it until 2345 and Céline Toussaint-Baptiste from 2423 to 2446. The constitution of 2460 repealed it. It gave the President an eight-year term with a limit of two, and its O'Neil clause bars any emergency from extending a term.

The legislature

The Chamber of Representatives is apportioned by population. The Sectorites asked from 2352 for seats by worlds as well as by people. The Solarite bloc refused for seventy years, then conceded it in the Worlds Amendment of 2424 as the price of rearmament. From the election of 2428 every member held four seats as a member and the rest by population, and the fifty-five worlds beyond Earth had a majority in the Chamber for the first time.

The recalculation of seats by population was suspended by the emergency of 2423 and not resumed. The Chamber of 2460 sat on the census of 2420, and the constitution of 2460 deferred the census to the end of the occupation of Khanate space. The Apportionists of Mardak Vol, Serenity and the northern worlds forced it in the 2500s. The census was published on 1 January 2510 and the seats recalculated. The Senate moved to Nkrumah on Mardak Vol on 1 January 2505. The Chamber stays at New Luxor, after the Capital Motion to move it failed on 4 October 2497 by 396 to 404.

Parties

Two blocs dominated the First Republic. The Solarites held that a Republic of many worlds owed its first duty to the seven that paid for the rest. The Sectorites, the Gulf's worlds and the core worlds, held that the frontier had to be defended and the worlds beyond the Sun given a voice. The Solarites held the presidency for most of the century. The Second Republic's politics were shaped by the Apportionists, founded on 14 March 2466 under Adaeze Okonkwo-Lindahl of Nkrumah.

History

Founding, 2341 to 2345

The Republic began in the month the Voor War ended. The Treaty of Ximpok was signed on 21 January 2341, and the Chamber voted O'Neil's emergency for the thirteenth time on 15 January. His last term covered the treaty, the Voor Territories Act, the transfer of the captured Voor Aegis's technology into the fleet and the first worlds of the Second Wave. He lost the fight to renew the Exploration and Settlement Fund, which expired in 2342. On 12 March 2344 he told the Chamber he would not stand again, and he left office on 15 January 2345.

The First Republic

Dario Okonkwo, born in Lagos and a colonist of Mardak Vol, won the election of 2344, the first in which a candidate from beyond the Sun could win. The Chamber declined to declare the emergency in the month he took office, and he failed three times to renew the Fund. O'Neil's death in 2348 broke the Pledge majority. Marek Novak of the European Federation won the election of November 2348 on the war debt of 41 trillion credits, carrying Earth and the Sun's worlds.

Novak's presidency began the Solarite century. The Naval Reduction Act of 2350 cut the fleet from 410 hulls to 200 by 2355 and 150 by 2360, and mothballed the forts at Nomotar and Saolea. The Chartered Worlds Act of 2351 let companies settle worlds under charter, and the Third Wave of colonisation was theirs. The Navy withdrew its frontier to Aethos in 2352 and to the treaty line in 2361, and its stealth pickets in 2365. By 2399 the Republic's frontier was Cirban's three forts, a Gulf patrol of forty corvettes and the treaty line, and beyond the line it had no observation of any kind.

The Sectorites won the presidency once, with Ana Ruiz-Moorthi of Theia, elected in November 2372. Her Inari Contact Commission of 2375 recommended in 2379 a single valley, a single station and one generation of contact with the Inari. Hendrik Bosch answered the Sectors' councils, who met at Toussaint in 2378, with the Sector Autonomy Act of 2380.

The Fevarian Crisis, 2405 to 2428

The Red Khan Thurva united the Fevarian clans in 2405 and came out of the Veil. He conquered the Dwaii and the Ka-Dur, fought the Maweer from 2413, and entered the Voor Confederacy in 2415. The Confederacy asked for the Republic's aid. Under President Konstantin Averin the Chamber passed the Mutual Aid Act on 14 March 2416, which sold the Voor fields, projectors and platforms and sent no fleet. Vur Duri fell on 14 June 2422 with 700 million dead, and the Republic's citizens saw it burn.

The Chamber recalled President Laurens on 6 March 2423, by 560 to 240. Céline Toussaint-Baptiste of Bounty, President of the Sector Council, won the special election of 14 May 2423 with 56 percent. The Rearmament Acts of June 2423 and the Corporate Consolidation Scheme rebuilt the fleet and its industry, and the Worlds Amendment of 2424 paid for them. The Vindication-class heavy battleship and the Ciriban-class carrier came out of the Republic's yards. Hiverion fell in August 2427, and the Confederacy ended. The Khan sent the Republic a demand of submission, and the Chamber refused it on 20 May 2428.

The war with the Red Khanate, 2428 to 2449

The war went against the Republic for eighteen years. The Khan took Myrum in July 2428 and Haedius after the First and Second Battles of Haedius in August and September. He burned Indata Mog's towers in November 2428, and the Siege of Bounty ended with Toussaint's burning in May 2430. In the Sector War of 2430 to 2440 the Republic fought only from its forts and withdrew before the Khan's mass. It won its first victory at Saolea in March 2434 and lost Theia in 2436. At the First Battle of Talandra in May 2441 the Home Fleet was destroyed, and the routes to the core lay open.

In the Darkest Decade the Khan burned Landfall and Dauntless, took Circumstance, and in 2446 came to the Sun. Vice Admiral Irene Zheng, the Black Maiden, drew him into Jupiter's well in April 2446 and rammed his monolith over Earth on 6 December 2446. He left the Sun in January 2447 with 53 monoliths. The Republic's counter-offensive retook Alpha Centauri, Yildun, Procyon and Circumstance in 2447 and 2448, and the Khan was killed at the Second Battle of Talandra on 19 June 2449.

The Scouring, 2449 to 2460

The Chamber's Scouring Resolution of 2 February 2450 ordered the destruction of every monolith that did not withdraw beyond the Veil. The Retribution Fleet under Zheng retook the Sectors and the Haedus Territory through 2450 and 2451. The Voor Confederacy was restored on 1 January 2453, and its worlds were fought for siege by siege until the Fejantris Peace. In 2454 the Chamber ordered the destruction of the northern Fevarian freeholds. Zheng resigned over it in February 2455. The Resolution was suspended on 4 January 2459. The Conference at Fejantris, a Maweer system, from September 2459 brought together six peoples, the Veil Clans among them, and its Great Promise, that no species would be made tributary again, took effect on 1 January 2460.

The Second Republic

The Second Republic was proclaimed with the Fejantris Peace on 1 January 2460. The Chamber ended the emergency, wound the Consolidation Scheme into the Treasury and passed the Constitution Act. Its founding works were three:

• The occupation and repatriation. The Corps governed Khanate space from 2460 to 2468. The Repatriation Authority at Nomotar carried 3 billion people home between 2460 and 2476.
• The Fevarian Accords of 2466, a mutual defence treaty of the Republic, the Voor Confederacy, the Dwaii, the Ka-Dur and four far peoples, with a Joint Command at Haedius.
• The Reconstruction. The Reconstruction Act of 12 March 2460 and its Levy rebuilt the Sun, and the Burned Worlds Act of 2463 rebuilt the burned worlds, by their people, by commission or by charter. Talandra was left as a memorial world.

The Second Republic's politics turned on apportionment. The Levy was assessed on the census of 2460, while the Chamber's seats were still apportioned on the census of 2420. The worlds of the north, Mardak Vol, Serenity and their neighbours, were underrepresented on both counts. A Mardak Vol President, Kwame Adeyinka-Rousseau, was elected in the 2490s and could not command the Chamber. The northern worlds withheld the Levy from 1 January 2499 to April 2500, and the Census Act followed. The census of 2510 counted 15.4 billion people. Its recalculation gave Earth 390 seats, Mardak Vol 46, Serenity 50, the north 85 and the Sectors 32.

Territory

On 1 January 2341 the Republic's twenty-one worlds were the seven of the Sun; the four core worlds, Landfall, Circumstance, Dauntless and Serenity; Mardak Vol, Theia, Bounty and Hualapai; Phoenicia, settled in 2334; and Utsukushi, Tribute and Ruaumoko at Epsilon Eridani, Bengal at Vanniko and Uplift at Torrom, all founded in 2338. The Voor systems of Haedus, Kastaba and Myrum were annexed by the surrender of December 2340 and the Treaty of Ximpok.

The Second Wave of the 2340s clustered on the Grand Armada's old courier lines, at Epsilon Eridani, Brink, Derellis and Alpha Centauri, and left the Gulf's far systems to the companies. The Third Wave, under the Chartered Worlds Act, was the companies'. By 2424 the Republic held fifty-five worlds beyond Earth. The war burned or made tributary every world of the Binami and Saolea sectors, Landfall, Dauntless and Talandra, and in 2460 the Republic counted forty worlds. Since 2470 the Veil Edge Concessions have carried the Republic's mining stations to the Veil's edge.

Foreign relations

The Republic's first neighbour was the Voor Confederacy. Under the Treaty of Ximpok the Republic held an inspectorate over the Legion and a hearth cap until the Chamber released the Confederacy on 1 February 2453. The Mutual Aid Act of 2416 was the First Republic's only answer to the Khan's war on the Voor before 2428. The Voor Reconstruction Agreement of 4 March 2462 committed the Republic to rebuild the Confederacy's yards, orbitals and towers over twenty years, and opened free trade.

The Maweer, whom the Voor call the Caretakers, received no embassies in the First Republic and traded through Myrum under the Treaty of Ximpok's transit clause. They reopened their frontier in March 2447 and fought the Khanate. A Maweer and Republic agreement was signed at Nomotar in March 2455, and the Maweer sold the Republic their 20-light-year drive in 2474.

The Fevarian Accords of 2466 bound the Republic, the Confederacy, the Dwaii, the Ka-Dur and the four far peoples to treat an attack on any of them by a Fevarian khanate as an attack on all, and placed their Joint Command at Haedius. The Veil Protocol of 2 September 2466 settled the return of the Veil Clans' people to the Veil.

Economy

The First Republic inherited a war debt of 41 trillion credits, with 11 trillion for the Manifest Pledge's fifty years and 6 trillion for the Voor occupation. The Solarite presidencies retired it, and the Navy's budget paid for it. The Cirban Exchange reopened on 1 March 2341, and by 2360 it handled more trade than in 2327. The Gulf's mining, Theia's rare earths and the Sectors' trade made the frontier rich while the Sun's worlds voted against defending it.

The Corporate Consolidation Scheme of the 2420s merged the war industries into working groups. The Second Republic wound it into the Treasury in 2460 and split its working groups into public corporations by 2470. The Reconstruction Levy, at 4 percent and then 5, was assessed on the census of 2460 and paid for rebuilding the Sun and the burned worlds.

Presidents

Population

Armed forces

The Unified Solar Navy and the Unified Solar Marine Corps are the Republic's armed forces. The Grand Armada had 410 jump-capable hulls in 2341 and 150 by 2360. The Rearmament Acts rebuilt it to 620 hulls by January 2428, with the Vindication and Ciriban classes. The war destroyed it twice. In January 2447 the Republic had 50 hulls at the Sun and the 400 of the Triumph Mutiny. The Retribution class of 2,600 metres, built from 2447, carried the Scouring. Since 2466 the Navy has contributed to the Accords' Joint Command at Haedius.

BOOK SOURCES

1. Solar Eternal, Part IX, §9.7 "Solar Ascendant: The Voor Surrender"
2. Solar Eternal, Part X, "End of a Dynasty", "Republican Stagnation" and "The Birth of the Sectorites and Solarites"
3. Solar Eternal, Part XI, "The Fevarian Acolytes and the Red Khan" to "Thurva at the Gates"
4. Solar Eternal, Parts XII to XIV
5. Solar Eternal, Part XV, "The Constitution of 2460 and the Presidents of Reconstruction" and "Earth - Mardak Vol Tensions"