Star Wars and History

by Nancy Reagin

  “The Oppression of the Trade Federation”: Commercial Empires at Their Height

  Just as many comparisons can be made between the Trade Federation and the Dutch East India Company, so are many similarities apparent between the Trade Federation and the English East India Company. Founded in 1600 with a charter from Queen Elizabeth I, the English company sent out its first fleet in 1601 and began to trade in several locations across Asia, although relatively soon the English East India Company focused its activities on the Indian subcontinent. In 1612, the English concluded a treaty with the emperor of the Mughal Empire, the Islamic government that ruled most of the subcontinent at the time, which allowed the English exclusive access to a port called Surat on the Indian coast in exchange for providing the emperor with European luxury goods.25

  A seventeenth-century engraving of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, who fought against the East India Company. His successors were ultimately forced to accept British “protection” in 1803.

  The company continued to enjoy the favor of subsequent Mughal emperors, resulting in 1712 in a treaty that allowed the English to trade in India completely free of the duties that applied to other foreign merchants. This increasing favor, combined with British victories over their European rivals during the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, made the East India Company the preeminent European presence in India. A turning point in the role of the company came as early as the 1670s, when King Charles II allowed the company to make war against its enemies and to gain control over territories in Asia. In this way, the British resembled its Dutch counterpart, in that the English East India Company also became a “state within a state,” far from the European “center.”

  Just as the Trade Federation and the Corporate Alliance have seats in the Senate, the East India Company was a political force. The East India Company maintained a powerful “lobby” within the Parliament in London that allowed its wealthy merchant directors to gain a tremendous amount of influence and to persuade Parliament to continue to support its monopoly over trade with India, similar to the monopoly over interstellar commerce held by the Trade Federation. During the eighteenth century, the company gradually moved from being a commercial organization that traded by leave of the Mughal emperors to being a territorial power in its own right in India, possessing its own private armies, large enough to defeat and overthrow local Indian rulers. This process began in earnest with the Battle of Plassey of 1757, which saw the entirety of Bengal placed under East India Company jurisdiction, and served to essentially destroy any vestige of cordial relations between the British and the Mughal state. Thereafter, the British continued to gain power and territory in India until almost the entirety of the subcontinent, similar to the planets under the Trade Federation’s domination, came under either direct or indirect control of the company.

  Queen Amidala has to face similar challenges from the Trade Federation. She is as successful as Aurangzeb in resisting them, although in the long run her realm succumbs to Imperial control, as well. (The Phantom Menace)

  Commercial empire building wasn’t a long-lasting endeavor. A big company became a big target or, as Qui-Gon Jinn would have understood: “There’s always a bigger fish.” In this case, the biggest fish was the government back home in Europe. In 1773, Parliament passed the East India Company Act, which asserted the government’s supremacy over any territories that the company acquired. This led to the appointment of a governor general in territories controlled in India. Reforms continued well into the nineteenth century, until the Indian Rebellion of 1857 caused Parliament to finally strip the company of all administrative control in India.26 The company was nationalized, and control of India passed to the Crown, although the East India Company continued to survive and supervise the tea trade with China. This “absorption” of the East India Company in India parallels nicely Palpatine’s manipulation and eventual destruction of the Trade Federation leadership.

  The VOC’s rule over the areas it controlled became equally iron-clad. Perhaps the most strategic port for controlling the bulk of inter-regional trade in Asia was the port city of Malacca and the narrow Straits of Malacca, through which most trade from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean must pass. The Dutch took control of Malacca from the Portuguese in 1641. The VOC established factories, the early modern term for trading posts, at Batavia, Ayutthaya (near present-day Bangkok in Thailand), Taiwan, and Nagasaki in western Japan. In the west, the Dutch established factories in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) and Cochin, on the southwest coast of India.27 This network of trading hubs allowed the Dutch to both maximize their profits by shipping a variety of goods across Asia and to partly control native shipping in the region. To get a sense of the brilliant profits and power that accrued to the company through its control of these strategic points, we need only read an inscription on a clavichord created during the Dutch “Golden Age” titled “Allegory of Amsterdam as center of world trade:” “Did you think that, barred from the Spanish west, I would be lost? Wrong: Because with God’s help I opened the way to Africa and India, to where exotic China stretches out, and to a part of the world that even the ancients did not know. Continue to favor us, God, and pray that they learn of Christ.”28

  Even then, Dutch control was not entirely complete: we know from contemporary journals that a fair amount of smuggling was a matter of course, as other Western nations tried to break the Dutch monopolies and local rulers eagerly played one power off against another.29 Monopolies always invite a black market, and smugglers similar to Han Solo operated under the radar throughout the region.

  The Trade Federation follows a similar strategy for establishing economic dominance in the galaxy. We are told, for example, that the Trade Federation monopolizes many of the trade routes in the galaxy and presumably many of the hubs of production, although that must remain speculation. Similarly, we know that even though it is not a planetary power along the lines of Naboo or Alderaan, the Trade Federation nonetheless obtains a seat in the Senate by dint of the tremendous influence it wields in the galaxy. This means that the Federation is not simply a commercial organization, but is also a major political force: at least, as long as it serves the Sith’s purposes. Similar to the two East India companies, the Federation makes fabulous profits out of doing so.

  Clearly, the Trade Federation is not averse to entering into deals, however nefarious, to further its own interests. On several occasions, the viceroy and the Sith Lord are seen in consultation, although it is clear that the viceroy is very much in the inferior position. Nevertheless, one can imagine a certain casual disregard for morality (and transparency) as the viceroy makes his deals with the likes of the Sith—all, of course, in the service of the company. The lack of ethical concerns in corporate/government partnerships is not unique to the Trade Federation, of course—we see it today, as well—but the VOC offers one of the earliest historical examples.

  The greed of the Trade Federation results in an uneasy alliance with the Dark Lords of the Sith. (The Phantom Menace)

  Both the VOC and the British East India Company were intimately connected to their respective governments. They inserted themselves into local rivalries and commercial networks, making allies and fighting against enemies. Both eventually became the rulers of Asian territory: the subcontinent, in the case of the English, and the islands of the Indonesian archipelago, in the case of the Dutch. Just as the Trade Federation and its Separatist allies blur the lines between war, politics, and commerce, so the East India companies used an entire arsenal of strategies, including the use of violence against the peoples they ruled, to further their aims.

  Similar to the Dutch and the English East India companies, the Trade Federation routinely concludes agreements with various rulers, and of course, we know very well that in the first installments of the Star Wars saga, the Trade Federation is in league with a Sith Lord, for its own profit and advantage. We can see in the Trade Federation the same blurred lines between commercial, political, and
military functions.

  The Trade Federation’s power doesn’t lie in formal control of planets or systems, so much as in its monopoly on trade-route information and its heavy-handed use of political clout. Although the Trade Federation will stop at almost nothing to ensure its own success, it seems to resort to outright invasion and conquest only to obtain limited goals. This is clearly demonstrated in the case of Naboo, which the Trade Federation invades in order to remove a stubborn obstacle to its untaxed monopoly of trade routes in the Senate, although the omniscient viewer knows, of course, that the Trade Federation is being manipulated the entire time by the Sith. Aside from these ulterior designs of the dark side, however, it appears that both the Trade Federation and the Dutch East India Company pursued not a blanket policy of conquest, but rather the establishment of a commercial empire consisting of control over strategic trade hubs and corridors of commerce.

  One of the signal symptoms of a decaying state is the rise of corruption, both at the top, among the political and economic elites, and throughout the whole structure, to the point where the state exists more or less for the personal and corporate profit of those who are in a position to exploit the resources at hand. This dismal state of affairs describes perfectly the systemic rot that characterizes the last years of the Republic and was endemic in the Dutch East India Company from the eighteenth century onward. In the case of the company, this pervasive corruption was evident not only in the Netherlands, but in the various offices throughout Asia.

  A tight-knit group of top civil servants in Amsterdam, many of whom were related in a network of kinship, distributed the most important positions in the VOC among themselves and to their clients, who would then proceed to amass large personal fortunes.30 The similarity between this situation and Palpatine’s calculated rise to power in the Republic is staggering.

  In Asia, accusations of corruption usually took a different form, that of company servants who spent their limited time in Asia amassing enormous personal fortunes at the expense of the company. Donald Keene painted a grim picture of VOC merchants as men whose “sole purpose was to make money, and to this end they devoted themselves with unbounded energy and complete ruthlessness. Even when measured by the eighteenth century yardstick of economic exploitation, the activities of the Dutch company in the Indies cannot fail to horrify us.”31

  This culture of corruption was certainly not limited to the Dutch, but these cases of corruption stand out in stark contrast to that earlier era of general prosperity. Just as the leaders of the Trade Federation and the Corporate Alliance put their interests above their companies’ in the rise up to the Clone Wars, so did the officers of the East India Companies in their last centuries of operation and the international banking corporations of the twenty-first century.

  “Make Them Suffer”: Cruelty and Greed under the Rule of Commercial Monopolies

  The ultimate goal of the Trade Federation and similar corporate entities in league with the Separatists, as with the Dutch and English East India companies, was monopoly: of both trade routes and products. We learn from The Phantom Menace that the Trade Federation fiercely protects the secret hyperspace trade routes, holding a sizable monopoly on interstellar trade. A similar policy was actively pursued by the Dutch East India Company in its dealings—particularly with smaller islands that produced the various spices that were so valuable on the European market.

  In the blockade of Naboo, the Trade Federation is clearly trying to isolate the planet and its troublesome, if fabulously dressed, Queen from contact with the outside world. This is perhaps all the more effective a strategy because Naboo is a rather distant planet, far from the corridors of power and influence. Similarly, the natives of Naboo, certainly in the case of the Gungans, are perceived to be rather primitive in the face of superior technology. In the end, of course, that technology is not quite enough to secure a decisive victory for the Trade Federation. Combined with the fact that the Trade Federation is protesting the taxation of trade routes by the Senate—routes over which presumably the Trade Federation holds at least a partial monopoly—this reveals strong similarities to both the English and the Dutch East India companies.

  The VOC pursued ruthless policies in what is today Indonesia, aimed at controlling the export of spices to the outside world, as well as the price of spices on the market.32 One ingenious, if not inhumane, way of concentrating spice production in company hands was to eliminate any other type of agriculture—particularly, food crops—from the small Spice Islands, except for the production of products such as cloves, nutmeg, and mace. This allowed the VOC to manipulate the islanders in two ways: first, it maximized spice production, and second, it gave the VOC leverage in terms of providing the essentials of survival. The islanders were wholly at the mercy of the VOC for the provision of basic foodstuffs and clothing, and if they rose up against company rule, they could simply be starved. It is no wonder, then, that various native strongmen in the Spice Islands sought to play the Dutch off against their other European enemies, in order to get out from under the thumb of the VOC.

  The English also used similar tactics of exclusion when it came to their increasingly monopolistic trade in India. They used the threat of violence and other coercive measures to prevent local rulers from coordinated action, the result being that by the eighteenth century, the British were able to effectively “divide and conquer” the subcontinent. Sometimes their schemes backfired, however, such as with the recruitment of local soldiers, who became known as sepoys. In 1857, the sepoys staged the rebellion that ended company rule in India, showing that local military forces, such as the Gungans, should never be underestimated.

  Indian generals in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 deployed elephants and countless troops seeking to overthrow the British East India Company.

  The Trade Federation’s invasion of Naboo in order to further its economic goals also resembles the British East India Company’s attacks on various port cities of China in the Opium Wars of the 1840s and the 1850s. The East India Company marshaled the power of the Royal Navy to destroy the defenses of the city of Canton and to sail up the Yangtze River toward Nanjing, forcing the Chinese government to sign the first of what would come to be known as the “unequal treaties,” which included the payment of reparations, the abolishment of the Chinese system of trade that the English saw as an impediment to their profits, and the surrender of the island of Hong Kong to the British. This wanton act of destruction and economic/military dominance was simply the first in a long line of foreign engagements with China that would result, by the early years of the twentieth century, in Chinese sovereignty being severely compromised and the Qing dynasty becoming essentially a pale shadow of its former grandeur. The parallel is not exact, of course, because in the films, the Trade Federation is defeated in the invasion of Naboo, whereas the East India Company was eminently and decisively victorious over the forces of the Chinese. Yet in terms of economic policy and a ruthless pursuit of profit at the expense of any tenuous notions of justice, the parallel can be instructive: in each case, corporate barons did not hesitate to use military force to protect their monopolies and profits.

  Trying to save their home world, the Gungan Army utilizes large beasts to fight against the Trade Federation’s battle droids. (The Phantom Menace)

  “Lord Sidious Promised Us Peace”: The End of Commercial Empires

  The Trade Federation, as depicted in the Star Wars galaxy, resembles both the Dutch and the British East India companies in their organization, in their economic and military policies, and, ultimately, in their respective demises. All three organizations, for example, came about out from a union of disparate commercial groups seeking to combine their aggregate might into a “super-company” better able to exploit trade (and natives along the way). All of them, though primarily commercial, also resorted to arms quite readily to obtain their goals. All three organizations were able, through the control of strategic hubs and trade routes, to establish monopolies on trade that r
esulted, at least for a while, in increased profits and greater regional power and influence. As Qui-Gon Jinn noted in The Phantom Menace, “greed can be a powerful ally.” Yet greed could also lead to disaster. As with the Dutch and British East India companies’ overambitious expansion, the Trade Federation’s greed leads to ruin as Viceroy Gunray and the Federation’s droid army become unknowing pawns in Palpatine’s rise to imperial power.

  A final parallel between the Trade Federation and the two East India companies can be found in the manner in which they met their ends. The Trade Federation and the other economic bodies that drive so much of the Separatist cause are dissolved shortly after the formation of the Empire, and their assets are incorporated into the new government. Similarly, as a result of corruption and prolonged unprofitability, the Dutch East India Company was dissolved in 1800 by the Batavian Republic, a Dutch government that was a “client state” of France, and the VOC’s overseas assets were then reorganized as colonies by the French. The British East India Company was dissolved by the British imperial government in 1874, after the large-scale native uprising in India had fatally weakened the company’s image and authority in Britain. Similar to the Trade Federation, the British East India Company was discarded once it no longer seemed useful to the imperial government. All of these commercial organizations thus met their end with the drastic reorganization of the political scene after long and eventful histories, some aspects of which were clearly violent or morally questionable.