CONTENTS

Introduction: The Forces of History and Histories of the

Force

Part I: Only Imperial Stormtroopers Are So

Precise
Chapter 1: Why Rebels Triumph
Keys to Rebel Success: A Trilogy of Wars
Peoples War: A Trilogy of Phases
Why Empires Lose: A Trilogy of Reasons
Evil Incarnate?: The Emperor, Vader, and the Rebel
Cause
A Coda: The United States in Iraq and Afghanistan

Chapter 2: Part of the Rebel Alliance and a Traitor

A Symbol of Hope
The Maid, the Countess, and the Padawan
Keep Mum. Shes Not So Dumb!
The Princess and the Partisanes
Armed and Dangerous
Resistance: Something Old and Something New

Chapter 3: Elegant Weapons for Civilized Ages

Ancient Weapons and Hokey Religions: The
 Origin of the Jedi Order
It Binds the Galaxy Together: Qi, the Force, and
the Shaolin Monks
Let Go Your Conscious Self: Samurai and the Zen
Art of Lightsaber Maintenance
Some Damned-Fool Idealistic Crusade: The Jedi
and the Knights Templar
No Such Thing as Luck

Chapter 4: A House Divided

Separatists, Revolutionaries, and Those Loyal to the
Empire
Have You Come to Free Us?: The Roots of Civil
Wars
Begun the Clone War Has: How Wars Divide
Republics and Empires
Plans and People
You Were My Brother: Border States and Uncivil
Divisions
No Time for Sorrows: Costs and Consequences of
Civil Wars

Part II: Join Me, and Together We Can Rule the

Galaxy as Father and Son
Chapter 5: I, Sidious
 The Roman Republic, Augustus, and the Sith Lord
Emperor
Sounds an Awful Lot Like a Dictatorship to Me:
Palpatines Subversion of the Galactic
A Tale of Two Emperors: Palpatine and Napoleon
Today Coruscant, Tomorrow the Galaxy!: Nazi
Germany and Palpatine
The Last Remnants of the Old Republic Have Been
Swept Away

Chapter 6: Teen Queen

You Think a Princess and a Guy Like Me . . . ?
The Queen Will Not Approve
Shes a Politician, and Theyre Not to Be Trusted
I Was Not Elected to Watch My People Suffer and
Die
Are You an Angel?
Look, I Aint in This for Your Revolution, and Im
Not in It for You, Princess.

Chapter 7: Theres Always a Bigger Fish

Longer Ago, Farther Away
Tyrants: Light or Dark?
For a Safe and Secure Society . . .
The Dark Side Clouds Everything
A Pathway to Many Abilities Some Consider to Be
 Unnatural
And Yet . . .

Chapter 8: Fear Is the Path to the Dark Side

This Station Is Now the Ultimate Power in the
Universe. I Suggest We Use It.
Fear Will Keep the Local Systems in Line. Fear of
This Battle Station.
Remember Back to Your Early Teachings. All
Who Gain Power Are Afraid to Lose It.

Part III: Excuse Me, Sir, but That Artoo Unit Is

in Prime Condition, a Real Bargain
Chapter 9: From Slavery to Freedom in a Galaxy Far, Far
Away
The Universality of Human Bondage
There Is Still Slavery in the Galaxy: Star Wars
and Slavery
Anakin Skywalker, Slave
Slavery and Luke Skywalker
Youll Soon Learn to Appreciate Me: Sex,
Slavery, and Star Wars
We Dont Serve Their Kind Here: Beyond Chattel
Slavery
Chapter 10: Greed Can Be a Powerful Ally
You Old Pirate: Merchant Bandits on the Edge of
Empire
Business Is Business: From Independent Traders
to Multinationals
A Blockade of Deadly Battleships: Tactics of
Isolation and Intimidation
The Oppression of the Trade Federation:
Commercial Empires at Their Height
Make Them Suffer: Cruelty and Greed under the
Rule of Commercial Monopolies
Lord Sidious Promised Us Peace: The End of
Commercial Empires

Chapter 11: Coruscant, the Great Cities of Earth, and

Beyond
Going to Town
Reaching for the Sky: Cities Go High
London and Coruscant: Cities at the Center of It All
New York: The Empire City
The City of Tomorrow

The Jedi Council

Acknowledgments

Illustration Credits
Index

Supplemental Images
 To all our friends in fandom: you share the love.
Copyright 2013 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All rights reserved. Used Under
Authorization
2013 Year of first publication of the Works.
Cover Image: Pyramids iStockphoto_000016560757; Night Sky
iStockphoto_000008574407; Princess Amidala and Coruscant cityscape
Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All rights reserved.
Cover Design: C. Wallace
Text design and composition by Forty-five Degree Design, LLC
Illustration credits begin on page 324 and constitute an extension of the
copyright page.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108
of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written
permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate
per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers,
MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at
www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be
addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River
Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at
http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author
have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations
or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this
book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or
fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales
representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained
herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a
professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be
liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not
 limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information about our other products and services, please contact our
Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside
the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content
that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more
information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Star wars and history / edited by Nancy R. Reagin and Janice Leidl.1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-60200-3 (cloth : alk. paper); ISBN 978-1-118-28188-8 (ebk);
ISBN 978-1-118-28373-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-28525-1 (ebk)
1. Star Wars filmsHistory and criticism. 2. Motion pictures and history. I.
Reagin, Nancy Ruth, 1960 II. Liedl, Janice.
PN1995.9.S695S74 2012
791.4375dc23
2012028584
 Introduction

The Forces of History and Histories of the

Force
Janice Liedl
The Force surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, A New Hope
History is like the Force. It surrounds us, sometimes literally, when we walk
through old cities and tour ruins or re-creations from decades or centuries past.
Historical memories saturate our cultures, sometimes producing shocking and
unsettling reinterpretations of the past and its heroes and villains. History also
binds us together, if not at the galactic level, still on a broad scale, crisscrossing
the globe with stories that bring us closer together in shared wonder and
fascination. If you are cut off from knowledge of your own history (and that of
your family) you can be misled or even taken badly by surprise, as Luke
Skywalker discovers. History even makes for a powerful ally, as Yoda might
have observed: because knowing something of the past can help you avoid at
least those mistakes.
Its good to keep Han Solos skepticism in mind, however, when comparing
history and the Force. No historian would suggest that theres a mystical energy
field controlling our destiny or that of the societies we study. Instead, historians
emphasize how people are the true key to unlocking the mysteries of the past.
Empires dont rise and fall by themselves, slavery isnt inherent in human nature,
and even corporations are made up of many different individuals. Some people
held more power in history than others by virtue of their birth, profession, or
fortune, rather like Padm Amidala experienced as queen and later senator. But
such prominence isnt enough to shield a person from the all-too-human realities
of heartbreak and despair, as Padm found when her husband turned to the dark
side. Its the repetition of these familiar themes in historyvictory and defeat,
joy and sorrow, the urge to possess and control, exploration and lossthat has
inspired claims that history repeats itself. In reality, history is made up of
millions, even billions, of unique stories waiting to be explored and shared.
 Some people will say that laying out these stories is easy, that history is
nothing more than establishing the facts and handing them to readers.
Following the great nineteenth-century scholar Leopold von Ranke, historians
have sometimes claimed that their job is simply to show how it really was, as
if history was a single, marvelous painting you could understand in one viewing.
The truth is that history is messy, complicated, and always changing with the
discovery of new information and new interpretations. Thats what Luke realizes
after Darth Vaders shocking claim that he is Lukes father. His entire personal
history had been up-ended by this revelation that he knows to be true, even as he
struggles to accept it.
This wasnt the first time that Luke saw his personal history rewritten around
him. In his childhood, his guardians, Owen and Beru Lars, assure Luke that his
father had been an ordinary navigator on a spice freighter. Obi-Wan destroys that
history in a short order when he hands Luke his fathers lightsaber and explains
that Anakin Skywalker was a skilled pilot and brave Jedi warrior, who was
murdered by Darth Vader. That revelation powers much of Lukes determination
to fight the Empire and Vaders evil until he learns to his great distress that Vader
isnt Anakins murderer but Lukes father. In Return of the Jedi, when Luke
confronts Obi-Wans ghost in the swamps of Dagobah, Luke isnt only
expressing his hurt and confusion; hes also challenging his former mentors use
and abuse of history:
Luke: Ben! Why didnt you tell me? You told me that Darth Vader betrayed
and murdered my father.
Obi-Wan: Your father was seduced by the dark side of the Force. He ceased to
be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the
good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true . . .
from a certain point of view.
Luke: A certain point of view?
Obi-Wan: Luke, youre going to find that many of the truths we cling to
depend greatly on our own point of view.
Changing your point of view about the past isnt easy. Luke eventually comes
to terms with the good and bad in his fathers past. He writes a new conclusion
to Anakins tragic history with a surprising offer of redemption. In the end, Luke
grows enough as a person and as a Jedi to see his father and his own history
from a more understanding and forgiving point of view. That ability literally
rewrites the history of his galaxy.
 The history of the Star Wars galaxy goes far beyond the adventures of the
Skywalker family, although Anakins own rise and fall also reveals much about
the cultures and traditions active in the galaxy during the time of the Republics
decline. There are grand themes of state-building and destruction set against
humble stories of traders, tamers, and farmers. Star Wars unfolds personal
histories, like the one linking Han Solo to the former owner of the Millennium
Falcon, Lando Calrissian, or the long-standing friendship between frequent
political allies Princess Leia and Obi-Wan Kenobi. We see hints at lost
civilizations glimpsed in the ruins of Yavin 4 where Princess Leia and the Rebel
Alliance make their last stand against the Death Star. There are venerable
institutions such as the Jedi Order, with an intriguing history all its own. Their
histories tie into the broader galactic history, sometimes in vital ways, as when
tampering with the Jedi Archives led to Yoda chiding Master Kenobi for having
lost a planet (a feat earthly historians can never equal). Other groups in the Star
Wars galaxy have a less savory past, such as the Hutts criminal enterprises on
the fringes of first the Republic and then the Empire. Altogether, these historical
elements within Star Wars provide depth and color that brings that distant galaxy
to vivid life.
The histories we see in Star Wars are reflections or expressions of historical
dynamics and individuals from Earths own histories. George Lucas drew upon
both myth and his understanding of real history in crafting the stories of the Star
Wars galaxy, as the essays in this collection illustrate. Each chapter takes one set
of individuals or institutions from Star Wars and compares it with the real
historical counterparts that Lucas had in mind when he created his own heroes,
villains, and galactic-spanning organizations and struggles. Lucas provided the
scholars who worked on these essays with information about the historical
models that were his inspiration for many facets of the Star Wars galaxy and
characters, reading and commenting on each of these essays as their authors
developed them.
This bookthe product of our collaboration with Star Wars creatorreveals
how historical cultures and people provided the inspiration for the far-away
galaxys characters, societies, and politics in ways ranging from the soldaderas
of the Mexican Revolution as models for Princess Leias hairstyle choices and
gung-ho attitude, to the more sinister parallels between the fate of the Roman
Republic and its far-distant counterpart, which Palpatine undermined in order to
create his Empire. Countless reflections of our history and cultures can be seen
in the Star Wars galaxy, from medieval knightly traditions that can also be found
in the Jedi Order to the fear of super-weapons that galvanized the world during
the Cold War, which provided the impetus for the terrifying Death Star. Setting
our histories against those of Star Wars sheds new light on both: many details
are freshly illuminated, and some of these revelations are surprising.
Drawing on histories from our own past increases our enjoyment and
understanding of the cultures and traditions that gave us Padm, Leia, Anakin,
Luke, Yoda, Obi-Wan, Han, Chewbacca, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, the
Sith, and all of the other enthralling figures of the Star Wars galaxy. Open your
mind to the invisible forces of history and youll gain a greater appreciation of
how that Force is a part of Star Wars: a rich and rewarding galaxy that combines
history and myth with creative magic.
We will use the following abbreviations in this book:
Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace = The Phantom Menace
Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones = Attack of the Clones
Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith = Revenge of the Sith
Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope = A New Hope
Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back = The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi = Return of the Jedi
Star Wars: The Clones Wars = The Clone Wars
 Part I

Only Imperial Stormtroopers Are So

Precise

THE WARS IN STAR WARS

 Chapter 1

Why Rebels Triumph

How Insignificant Rebellions Can Change

History
William J. Astore
The more you tighten your grip,
Tarkin, the more star systems will slip
through your fingers.
Princess Leia Organa, A New Hope

In the climactic battle scene of Return of the Jedi, an openly contemptuous

Emperor boasts to Luke Skywalker that he is about to witness the end of his
insignificant rebellion. Such was not the case, as the Rebels end up triumphing
against the longest of odds. Interestingly, in 2003, Lieutenant General Ricardo
Sanchez, the U.S. commanding general in Iraq after Operation Iraqi Freedom,
dismissed the growing insurgency in that country as strategically and
operationally insignificant, an assessment that was proved very much wrong by
subsequent events.1 Rebellions are indeed often very significant and very
difficult to defeat, especially when they are driven by powerful ideologies and
sustained by committed believers willing to sacrifice all.
Whether in real life or in the Star Wars galaxy, history is not always on the
side of the bigger battalions. Consider the American Revolutionary War. The
British Empire had a larger and more professional army than the American
rebels, a far larger and more powerful navy, and a wealth of recent military
experience, yet the upstart rebels prevailed. To cite just one year, in 1776
Britains General William Howe landed thirty-two thousand troops at Staten
Island supported by ten ships-of-the-line and twenty frigates manned by ten
thousand sailors. Clearly outclassed, George Washington and his Continental
Army suffered serious setbacks in New York and New Jersey but still managed
to keep a viable presence in the field. Sustaining them throughout these defeats
was a shared belief in the cause of freedom, as made manifest by that years
Declaration of Independence.
B-52 dropping bombs over Vietnam; (inset) Imperial Star Destroyer and TIE
fighters pursuing the Millennium Falcon. (The Empire Strikes Back)
 Next, consider the Vietnam War. In the 1960s, the American Empire was a
global superpower with enormous firepower and space-age technology, yet
pajama-clad Vietnamese insurgents armed with relatively primitive AK-47s
prevailed. Indeed, the Vietnamese had nothing remotely comparable to American
military might. A caption stamped on the back of an official U.S. Air Force
photo of a B-52 Stratofortress dropping bombs on Vietnam illustrated the
Goliath versus David theme: The high-flying, heavy bomber delivers bomb
loads of more than 38,000 pounds in strikes against Viet Cong strong-holds in
the Republic of Vietnam. Yet as awesomely destructive as B-52 bombing raids
were, the enemy remained unbowed.2
Now, consider the Star Wars galaxy. An empire with enormous reach and
firepower, with a ruthlessness to match the planet-shattering abilities of its Death
Star wonder weapon, meets its demise at the hands of a precocious farm boy
from Tatooine wielding a primitive lightsaber and a Rebel Alliance that has little
more than a ragtag fleet and a fervent belief in the righteousness of their cause.
Princess Leia briefing the snowspeeder pilots on Hoth. (The Empire Strikes
Back)
 Beneath all of the thrills of lightsabers, Star Destroyers, and Death Stars, the
true audience attraction of Star Wars is the triumph of hope over oppression at
the longest of odds. Indeed, George Lucas titled Episode IV (the original Star
Wars movie released in 1977) A New Hope. That hope was based on the
compelling power of belief in freedom: freedom from the tyranny of a power-
mad Emperor and his murderous henchman, Darth Vader.
This belief is first manifested in the original trilogy by Princess Leia Organa.
Throughout the original Star Wars trilogy, a determined Leia never wavers in her
belief in political freedom, a belief that sustains her quest to restore the Old
Republic and its empowerment of individual autonomy. So strong is her belief
that it survives torture, administered at the orders of Vader (later revealed as her
father), as well as severe personal and organizational setbacks (the capture and
freezing of her beloved, Han Solo; the rapid retreat under fire of the Rebels from
the Hoth system at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back). It is Leias
backbone that stiffens the resolve of the young Luke Skywalker and that
provides a serious counterpoint to the scoundrel Han Solo, and it is she who
gives the pep talks to pilots before they set off into deadly combat against the
Empire. Leias belief in, and allegiance to, the cause of freedom and restoration
of the Old Republic is the force multiplier that proves decisive; such belief is the
sine qua non of successful rebellions, whether in the galactic wars of long ago in
Star Wars or in the real events of the American Revolutionary and Vietnam
wars.3

Keys to Rebel Success: A Trilogy of

Wars
Looking solely at the balance of forces in the American Revolutionary War, in
the Vietnam War, or in Star Wars, one would be excused from concluding that in
each case, the rebels had no chance of prevailing. The material odds
overwhelmingly favored the British in the 1770s, the Americans in the 1960s,
and the Empire after the collapse of the Jedi and the rise of the Sith Emperor.
The results of all three of these wars, factual and fictional, remind us that
might does not always make right. As Abraham Lincoln famously noted in
his Cooper Union address in 1860, being on the side of the right may also
make might.4 Belief in being in the right can sustain a rebellion even at its lowest
ebb, whether it be George Washington and the Continental Army at Valley Forge
in 1777, the North Vietnamese after the Tet Offensive of 1968, or the Rebel
Alliance after Darth Vaders capture of Han Solo and defeat of Luke Skywalker
at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.5
Rebels, in other words, can be vanquished only when their ideas and idealism
are extinguished, when their faith in the movement is destroyed. That said, even
with a just cause, it is hardly easy for rebels to defeat an enemy in possession of
superior material resources and seemingly overwhelming firepower. To borrow
an expression from Yoda, rebels must unlearn what they have learned; they must
believe they are capable of the impossible, a tall order but one they must sustain
through the most harrowing of events and the most trying of times. For although
one may not be able to kill an idea, one can kill enough adherents to discourage
the rest; such unbounded ruthlessness is not unknown, either in history or in the
Star Wars galaxy (consider here the annihilation of Leias home planet of
Alderaan by the Empires Death Star).
Put in concrete terms, rebel movements seek to advance an ideology and to
overthrow an existing order by following a strategy known to military theorists
as Peoples War. Often associated with Mao Zedong, who put its maxims to
work in his successful bid to gain control over China during and after World War
II, Peoples War is compelling in its boldness.6 Its goal: the overthrow of an
existing order and its replacement with a rebel-led new order.
Think here of the American Revolutionary War. Its rebels spoke of
inaugurating a Novus Ordo Seclorum, a new order of the ages, an idea they
enshrined in the Great Seal of the United States.7 As misguided and
megalomaniacal as he proved to be, Mao Zedong succeeded in inaugurating a
new, communist order in China. Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam sought
independence from colonial domination and the imposition of a communist
system in a united Vietnam. And in Star Wars Leia and her allies seek nothing
less than the overthrow of a totalitarian dictator and a recasting of galactic rule
along democratic, rather than autocratic, lines; a rule by republican consensus
rather than by imperial fear and fiat.
Mao Zedong, successful practitioner of Peoples War, with Richard Nixon in
1972.
 The rebels goal in Peoples War may be easy to state, but the means to achieve
a new order often prove incredibly complex. These means typically
encompass social, economic, psychological, military, and especially political
dimensions. As long as the rebels remain convinced of the rightness of their
cause, strength of will and endurance usually favor them. Because they are
fighting for a belief and an ideal, a quasi-religious calling, they often outlast
their opponents, who may be fighting strictly out of duty and for little more than
a paycheck.
Consider here the motivation of Hessian mercenaries in the American
Revolutionary War, of American draftees in Vietnam, or of the nameless and
faceless Imperial stormtroopers of Star Wars, and contrast this with the Give
me liberty or give me death! motivation of the American Sons of Liberty, of
revolutionary Viet Cong cadres, or of the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars.8 The latter
believe that the Force is with them, that their cause is just and that they are on
the right side of history. This force sustains them through the darkest of days
and is ultimately the difference between victory and defeat.

Peoples War: A Trilogy of Phases

Military theorists see Peoples War as passing through three phases.9 In Phase
One, the rebels (or insurgents, hence the term counterinsurgency) attempt to
build a political infrastructure, while seeking allies among the people, which
they do in part by spreading their ideas (or propaganda, depending on ones point
of view). Every insurgentevery rebelshould be a true believer and thus an
ambassador for the cause. At the same time, due to their comparative military
weakness vis--vis their opponent, they seek to establish safe havens, often on
the periphery of the state or the empire (or the galaxy), in inaccessible or
impoverished areas where they can draw sustenance from the misery or
alienation of the people. The more difficult the terrain for their enemy to
negotiate, the better for the rebels, whether it be the narrow streets and forested
trails of New England of the 1770s, the central highlands and triple canopy
jungles of Vietnam of the 1960s, or the blast furnace heat of Tatooine and the
freezing wastes of Hoth in the Star Wars galaxy of long ago.
U.S. soldiers confront the punishing terrain of Vietnam.
The inhospitable terrain of Hoth. (The Empire Strikes Back)
 In this political/cadre-building phase, intimidation may be necessary, to
include fending off rivals to the rebel cause. Serious arm-twisting may be needed
to convince fence-straddlers (such as an ambivalent Han Solo) to join the cause.
Once revolutionary cadres are formed, the rebels take action that is aimed both at
undermining the legitimacy of the established order and at rallying more recruits
and converts to the cause. Naturally, such actions will be labeled by the
prevailing powers as terroristic and treasonous. Thus, in the original Star Wars,
while operating under a thin veil of diplomatic immunity, Leia steals secret plans
to the Empires latest wonder weapon, the Death Star, an act of treason, as seen
from the perspective of the Empires leaders. Her mission to Tatooine is a classic
case of Phase One operations, for her goal is to recruit General Obi-Wan
Kenobi to join the Rebel Alliance in an attempt to destroy the Empires latest
terror weapon. By the Imperial definition, however, she herself is a weapon of
terror, a traitor plotting seditious acts against a legitimate government of which
she is a privileged representative.
Leia, of course, sees herself not as a terrorist but as a freedom-fighter. For her,
the Empire is a tyrannical monstrosity and is therefore illegitimate. In the view
of American revolutionaries, Britains King George III had similarly made
tyrannical demands and had therefore forfeited his divine right to their
allegiance. In the case of the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong and their North
Vietnamese allies saw Americans as foreign invaders and their South
Vietnamese allies as American stooges.
Yet it is not enough to organize against illegitimate power: one must act to
overthrow it. In all three cases, the rebels recognize that risky actsacts that
they know will be denounced as terroristic by the powers-that-be and punished
as suchare needed both to weaken the empire and persuade more people to
join the rebel cause.
Hence, when enough recruits are enlisted and enough arms are gathered, rebels
may then move on to Phase Two of Peoples War: larger-scale action (to include
military operations) to gain control over the political landscape, while further
weakening the legitimacy of the establishment. This is when so-called guerrilla
tactics come to the fore.10 Such tactics are typically of the small-unit, hit-and-run
variety and place a premium on surprise and political impact. They are designed
not so much to defeat an empire militarily but rather to wear it down, to erode its
political will, while perhaps provoking it as well into making further and harsher
reprisals that, in breeding resentment and accelerating recruitment among the
people, ultimately serve rebel ends.
Attack of the Rebel Alliance on the Death Star. (A New Hope)
 Thus, the main target of guerrilla operations is not the empires troops but
rather the will and legitimacy of its leaders, although striking at a high-profile
military target is often the best way to target that will and legitimacy. Consider
the original Star Wars movie. The attack against the Death Star is a classic case
of guerrilla tactics, of Phase Two of Peoples War. The rebels obviously have no
death star of their own to wield against the Imperial version. Their only hope
is a David versus Goliath scenario: a well-timed, well-aimed shot by an intrepid
fighter that somehow manages to fell a giant.
At the same time, Leias very act of stealing the plans to the Death Star
touches off a harsh Imperial reprisal that proves vital to the success of the attack
and, ultimately, to the Rebellion in general. Although unknown to Leia, Luke
Skywalker is key to the Rebellion, but he is at first reluctant to join Obi-Wan
Kenobi and leave his home. Yet on discovering the ruthless murder of his aunt
and uncle by a vindictive Empire, Luke willingly follows Kenobi into a new life
of training to become a Jedi to avenge these murders (and, ultimately, to avenge
his real fathers seduction to the dark side of the Force, as orchestrated by the
Sith Emperor).11
Whenever outnumbered and outgunned rebels stand and fight against a
militarily superior enemy, they take a gamble. In A New Hope, if the Rebel
Alliance had failed to destroy the Death Star, the Rebellion would have been
crushed. The Rebels resolute yet highly risky decision to stand and fight pays
off when Luke Skywalker is able to call on the Force to make a kill-shot against
the Death Star, seconds before this planet-pulverizing machine is able to deploy
its own kill-shot against the Rebel base. This stunning victory, achieved at the
longest of odds, demonstrates that the Rebels are a force to be reckoned with.
American Revolutionary forces accept the British surrender at Saratoga, a
surprising Phase Two rebel victory in 1777.
 Like the Battle of Saratoga in the American Revolutionary War or the Tet
Offensive in the Vietnam War, the Battle of Yavin that ends with the Death Stars
destruction is a key turning point: the end of the beginning of an incredibly
audacious but ultimately successful rebellion.12 Winning a major battle, after all,
is usually not enough to win a war; powerful empires do not give up their power
easily, and they do indeed strike back. When they do, rebel forces, obeying the
dictums of Peoples War, must be prepared to retreat when necessary, to fight
delaying actions, to ratchet back military operations, even to go into hiding,
licking wounds and marshaling reserves to fight when the timing and conditions
are again opportune.
In any rebellion, opportunism is key; so, too, is boldness, with the most
dangerous step for rebels to take occurring in Phase Three, the final phase of
Peoples War. In this phase, rebel forces risk it all in a major military assault
whose aim is to overthrow the existing order. In Star Wars, we witness Phase
Three operations in Return of the Jedi. In the climactic battle of the trilogy, the
Rebels marshal all of their forces in a conventional, all-out assault on the
Imperial fleet and its latest iteration of the Death Star. The assault proves to be a
trap, one that is sprung by an Empire in full confidence of its colossal power. Yet
in Luke the Rebels possess a secret weapon of their own: a leader who gains
access to the very core of the colossus but who refuses to betray the Alliance,
despite promises of unimaginable power.
In a sense, Luke is a Trojan Horse inserted into the command nexus of the
Empire. The Emperor (wrongly) sees him as Vaders natural successor, his new
henchman and future enforcer of Sith hegemony. For the Emperor to have turned
Luke to the dark side would have been like Britains King George III turning
George Washington back into a Loyalist, or Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger
convincing Ho Chi Minh to give up the fight and accept a divided Vietnam under
an American umbrella. Considered in these terms, the Emperors fervent desire
to turn Luke makes perfect sense, for he is the linchpin of the Rebellion. When
the Emperor fails in the attempt, however, his true evil blazes forth in a
murderous fury that is undeniable even to Vader, who is moved at long last to
break free from the Emperors powerful grip and save his son.
Luke as Trojan Horse confronts the Emperor Darth and Vader. (Return of the
Jedi)
 Interestingly, the powerful climax of Return of the Jedi represents a return to
Phase One of Peoples War. For in the end, Luke succeeds in turning his father,
Anakin Skywalker, back to the Rebel cause. His father ceases to be Darth Vader
and returns, if only for a brief moment, to his former place as Anakin Skywalker,
the chosen Jedi protector to the Old Republic. This turnabout, a true revolution,
marks the symbolic return of republican autonomy and a political process
enabled by free debate guided by a philosopher-warrior elite (the Jedi), of which
Luke is now the sole surviving member and Master.
This return to the old ways, this triumph of the Rebellion that ends in the
recruitment of Vader to the cause and the death of the Emperor, highlights a vital
reality of Peoples War: its flexible, often nonsequential, nature. For example,
while conducting guerrilla operations (Phase Two) against a prevailing power,
rebels also continue to build their infrastructure, conduct acts of terror to
delegitimize the state, and spread propaganda, all of which are associated with
Phase One of Peoples War. Even during Phase Threethe general offensive
rebels continue efforts associated with the previous two phases. If Phase Three
fails, as it did for the North Vietnamese in the Spring Offensive of 1972, the
rebels simply return to the previous two phases, biding their time until the next
opportunity presents itself for a general offensive, which it did for North
Vietnam in 1975.
The rebel American horse unseats its imperial master, King George III, in this
1779 satirical drawing.
 The complex and nonlinear nature of Peoples War was expressed by the
historian John M. Gates when describing the U.S. militarys difficulty in coming
to grips with the decisive North Vietnamese invasion of 1975. In his words:
American conventional war doctrine does not anticipate reliance upon
population within the enemys territory for logistical and combat support. It
does not rely upon guerrilla units to fix the enemy, establish clear lines of
communication, and maintain security in the rear. And it certainly does not
expect enemy morale to be undermined by political cadres within the very
heart of the enemys territory, cadres who will assume positions of political
power as the offensive progresses. Yet all of these things happened in South
Vietnam in 1975.13
Even in cases where the rebels overestimate the weakness of the enemy and lose
large-scale battles, they have the option, if managed correctly, to slip back into
the earlier two phases of Peoples War, striving to weaken the established order
before the next general offensive aimed at securing victory. What ultimately
sustains them through setbacks and dark times is belief: a belief that may
become a quasi-religion, a force (or the Force, if you will) that multiplies their
efforts, making them far more powerful than the sheer size of their army would
indicate on a bloodless balance sheet.
In Star Wars and in the two historical analogs (the American Revolutionary
and Vietnam wars) considered in this chapter, we witness the triumph of
Peoples War against seemingly long, if not impossible, odds.14 One can almost
hear the voice of Yoda intoning, Judge me by my size, do you? And well you
should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. A small,
seemingly insignificant, rebellion can grow to remarkable strength when the
proper strategy is followed, the right recruits are marshaled, and a compelling
belief provides a luminous, force-multiplying vision.
Yoda lifting Lukes X-Wing out of the swamp on Dagobah. (The Empire Strikes
Back)
 After Yoda lifts Lukes X-wing fighter out of the swamp in The Empire Strikes
Back, a chastened Luke gasps and then says, I dont believe it. That is why
you fail, the wizened Jedi Master replies. Princess Leia believes in the Rebel
cause of freedom; Luke Skywalker comes to believe; so, too, in the end does
Darth Vader; and that is why they do not fail.

Why Empires Lose: A Trilogy of

Reasons
Well, it is a little exaggerated. Were applying an $18,000,000-solution to a
$2-problem. But, still, one of the little mothers was firing at us.
U.S. pilot in Vietnam15
History, whether in a purely fictional-cinematic form as in Star Wars or in the
very real dramas of the American Revolution and Vietnam, is fascinating
precisely because one can imagine alternative events and endings.16 By
imagining how the Empire could have prevailed in Star Wars, how the British
could have put down the American rebellion, and how the United States could
have achieved its objectives in Vietnam, one can draw some suggestive lessons
and have some fun. Yet in all of these cases, three critical flaws hampered
imperial attempts to maintain their grip. In order of importance, these were
overconfidence that led to underestimation of the enemy, indiscriminate reprisals
that led to renewed rebel opposition, and an overreliance on technology and
firepower that led to civil and nonmaterial factors being undervalued to victory.
Peoples War, however, is no fail-safe strategy to victory; it is difficult but not
impossible for empires to counter. In the first two decades of the twentieth
century, the United States defeated a serious insurrection in the Philippines, and
after World War II, Great Britain put down a communist insurgency in Malaya.17
Rebels, in other words, do not always win. Yet key to any lasting imperial
triumph is never to underestimate the rebel enemy. As Luke Skywalker says to
the Emperor in Return of the Jedi, Your overconfidence is your weakness. The
Emperors riposte Your faith in your friends is yours proves untrue, but only
with help from a most unexpected quarter (more on the Ewoks in a moment).18
Consider the U.S. war in Vietnam. Until 1968, Americans were nothing but
confident that they would ultimately prevail in defeating the communist
insurgency, thereby preserving a (somewhat) independent South Vietnam.
Indeed, despite clear evidence to the contrary, such as the decisive North
Vietnamese victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, U.S. military
officers agreed with President Lyndon Johnson that North Vietnam was basically
a raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country, which had no hope of prevailing
against the worlds foremost superpower.19 That events soon proved otherwise
was due in large part to American overconfidence. Similarly, the British believed
in 1776 that a sufficient show of force would cow the American rabble into dour
acceptance of the established order, but ill-managed efforts to split New England
from the rest of the colonies succeeded only in driving more colonists from a
wider area into the ranks of the rebels.
When it comes to resisting rebel insurgencies, overconfidence often emerges
as a cardinal, even fatal, flaw of empires. As overconfident empires stumble,
dashed hopes for quick and easy victories often lead to internecine fighting and
savage reprisals that only exacerbate previous setbacks at rebel hands. In classic
Peoples War, both sides vie for the hearts and minds of the people, who are
much more than passive spectators. In a classic metaphor used by Mao Zedong,
the people are the sea in which the rebel fish swim. If an empire can make
the sea do its bidding, the fish cannot thrive and have nowhere to hide. Yet if the
rebels can wrest control of the sea from the empire, the latter will wither and
eventually die.
In the American Revolutionary War, as well as in Vietnam, enough of the
people turned against the empires involved to allow the rebels space in which to
swim and thrive. The people did so often because of heavy-handed, even
murderously violent, repression and reprisals by these empires that generated
resentment, recruitment, and rebel resurgence. Such a dynamic is captured in the
Star Wars trilogy. As mentioned earlier, Luke joins the Rebellion only after the
Empire murders his innocent aunt and uncle. Though left unsaid in the original
Star Wars, it is logical to assume that the Empires apocalyptic destruction of the
planet Alderaan generated as much sympathy for Leia and the rebellion as it
terrified wavering star systems into toeing the Imperial line. And in The Empire
Strikes Back, Lando Calrissian sells Han Solo to Vader, only to join the Rebel
cause when Vader ups the ante, insisting as well on the surrender of Leia and
Chewbacca, a demand he backs up with a threat of a permanent military
occupation of Landos profitable but less-than-entirely-legal gas mine.
Because unprincipled empires believe only in themselves and their own
prerogatives of power, they have a habit of acting imperiously, even viciously,
when they are frustrated in their (overconfident) designsa flaw that
opportunistic rebel troops exploit to their benefit. When not intimidating or
torturing or killing them, empires may also be oblivious to the little people
within them, another weakness that a crafty rebel force can readily exploit.
Consider events on the forest moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi. Its
indigenous civilization of Ewoks is literally beneath the Empires notice. The
Ewoks themselves are not so much persecuted as they are shoved aside or
flattened under the feet of Imperial Walkers. In the eyes of the Empire, a subject
society such as the Ewoks that relies on spears, rocks, booby traps, and similar
primitive weapons and techniques is a nonfactor.
It is not so much what the Empire does to the Ewoks as what it fails to do that
proves decisive to the Rebellion. On first encounter, the Rebels themselves are
not immune to dismissing the Ewoks as feckless primitives and therefore of
little use. Finding themselves snared in a booby trap, Luke and Han confront a
band of Ewok hunters whose small stature and cute furry faces initially amuse
more than they impress. Amusement turns to concern as Luke and Han are
trussed up and marched off. It quickly becomes apparent they are to become the
main course at a feast in honor of C-3PO, the translator-droid whose golden
sheen makes him something of a minor deity among the Ewoks.
Ewoks in action against Imperial stormtroopers, using rocks to disrupt their
mission. (Return of the Jedi)
 Yet it is not the Force that Luke employs to levitate C-3PO that wins the
Ewoks over to the Rebel cause. Rather, it is the respect the Rebels come to show
for the Ewoks, as they share with them their collective struggle against the
Empire. In a light-hearted and seemingly inconsequential moment, Ewok tribal
elders proudly proclaim that Luke, Han, Leia, and the rest of the Rebel team are
now members of the tribe, an event that has profound implications for the
victory to come.
George Lucas has said that he had the Viet Cong (VC) in mind when he
created the Ewoks, and one can see why.20 Like the VC in the Vietnam War, the
Ewoks are smaller in stature than their enemy and possess little in the way of
advanced weaponry (whereas the VC dug pits and employed bamboo Punji
sticks as weapons, the Ewoks have a hankering for logs, swinging, and rolling,
as well as nets). Like the VC, what the Ewoks do possess is superior knowledge
of the local terrain and an ability to blend into that terrain. Their eventual revolt
demonstrates that clever tactics aided by the element of surprise can prove
effective even against an enemy that possesses superior technology and
devastating firepower.
The torturous terrain of Vietnam was alien to U.S. soldiers, but not to members
of the Viet Cong, like this man.
 Despite their stature and low-tech weaponry, there are just enough Ewoks to
confuse an elite Imperial force at a crucial moment, a diversion that enables the
Rebel Alliance to disable the new Death Stars protective energy field. Without
this brave (and costly) diversionary assault by the humble Ewoks, the crucial
offensive would have failed, even if Luke had somehow still prevailed in his
personal duel with the Emperor.
The Millennium Falcon and other Rebel ships confront the Imperial fleet at the
Battle of Endor. (Return of the Jedi)
 Indeed, the Battle of Endor sequence in Return of the Jedi illustrates the Rebel
Alliances growing sophistication as they combine all three phases of Peoples
War to disrupt the Empires entire system of command and control
simultaneously. Whereas the Empire is straitjacketed by its dependence on the
Emperors personal attention and control, the Rebels rely on decentralized
execution and improvisation within a general strategic framework. At Endor, the
Rebels launch a combined arms assault by collected forces (the Rebel fleet and
the Ewoks) against the full span of Imperial conventional forces, while selected
elites of committed Rebel units (Rogue Squadron and Lando Calrissian against
the new Death Star; Han, Leia, and the commandos against the Imperial Legion
on Endor; even Luke against the Emperor and Vader) engage, disrupt, and
ultimately destroy crucial command nodes. With the Emperor fully engaged in
personal combat with Luke, Imperial forces are bereft of timely and authoritative
instruction to supplement the orders already in place. Thus, they fail to develop a
coherent and appropriate response that would allow them to bring their superior
strength to bear.21
However transitory it proved, the Ewoks success on Endor highlights another
key weakness of many materially driven empires: an overreliance on technology
and firepower as being decisive. Consider the U.S. military in Vietnam. It
employed every advanced (and terrifyingly destructive) technology it could
think of (short of nuclear weapons) to defeat the VC insurgency. B-52 strategic
bombers on Arc Light raids (incredibly, the U.S. military dropped 6.7 million
tons of bombs on Southeast Asia, the equivalent of more than four hundred
Hiroshimas in explosive power), defoliants such as Agent Orange, napalm and
cluster munitions, tanks and artillery, helicopter gunships, even electrified fences
and sensors.22 Virtually every high-tech weapon in the U.S. inventory was tested
in the Vietnam laboratory, and all came up wanting.
Even worse from an American perspective: the widespread devastation
wrought by these weapons convinced many Vietnamese to join the rebellion,
even as it persuaded many Americans of the immorality of their own military
and senior civilian leaders. An undeniable lesson emerged (that many Americans
still seek to deny): The U.S. military did not lose the war because the American
people lost patience on the home front or because antiwar protesters stabbed the
military in the back. Rather, military excesses and overly optimistic assessments
(We see the light [of victory] at the end of the tunnel, General William
Westmoreland, the U.S. commanding general in Vietnam, was saying in 1967),
driven by overconfidence, led a silent majority of Americans to lose faith in
their military and its leaders, so much so that a minority of Americans turned
against their own government to sympathize with the plight (and even the goals)
of the Vietnamese rebels.23 Thus, the U.S. military lost the Vietnam War not
because it was betrayed by the people but because its leaders betrayed the ideals
of the people.24 One of the key betrayers here was President Richard M. Nixon,
Lucass model for the Emperor (Palpatine/Darth Sidious), as discussed further
on.
The same is true of the Empire in Star Wars. Its approach to Rebel dissent is to
build ever-bigger and more powerful weapons to annihilate the dissenters. Rule
by fear, by shock and awe, is the method to its growing madness. As Grand Moff
Tarkin says to Leia in Star Wars, once the Empire demonstrates the power of its
Death Star vengeance weapon, dissent will be quashed forever.25 Only Vader
sees more clearly. In reply to Admiral Mottis boast that This station is now the
ultimate power in the universe, Vader tells him not to be too proud of this
technological terror youve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is
insignificant next to the power of the Force.
Putting a less mystical spin on Vaders dissenting insight, a clear lesson of
Vietnam is that destructive space-age technology is not enough to compel assent
to imperial demands, especially when rebel resistance is supported and sustained
by a powerful ideology. By highlighting the spiritual and nonmaterial factors that
sustain successful rebellions, Star Wars provides an invaluable reminder to
military theorists of all stripes.
Because of this trilogy of critical flawsthe Emperors overconfidence, his
belief in violent reprisals and rule by terror, and the Empires faith in Death
Star technologythe Emperor and his minions hardly bother with political
suasion and mobilizing popular support, a key tenet of counterinsurgency
(COIN) strategy. A less cocky, less power-mad Emperor would recognize that
the iron fist of murderous reprisals needs to be balanced by the velvet glove of
conciliatory rhetoric. Subject peoples can tolerate considerable oppression if it is
softened by reassurances of safety and security. Put differently, victory in COIN
is derived not so much from military action per se as it is from military action
that creates time and space for civil means (to include police action) that seek
both to marginalize the rebels and preserve the peoples support.26 Empires can
do this by focusing on the pro-establishment minority, rallying them to the cause
of neutralizing the rebels, while at the same time encouraging compliance (often
in the name of security and order) among the rest of the people.
Yet the Sith Emperor will have none of it. Instead of seeking inclusion and a
broader base of support, his actions are exclusive and narrow his base of support.
Indeed, his base rests on the jackbooted excesses of stormtroopers, the
intimidating power of Star Destroyers, and the sorcerer ways of the Sith. When
the former are neutralized and the latter (Darth Vader) is turned to the Rebel
cause, the Emperor is lost.

Evil Incarnate?: The Emperor, Vader,

and the Rebel Cause
At first glance, the Star Wars universe appears incredibly simple, a Manichean
realm in which the Rebels are the forces of good, and the Empire and especially
its leaders are the forces of evil. Certainly, the Emperor and Vader recall real-life
totalitarian analogs such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler (the head of the
notorious SS, or Schutzstaffel) in Nazi Germany or Josef Stalin and Lavrentiy
Beria (the head of the NKVD, or secret police) in the Soviet Union. Yet
interestingly, in portraying the ascent of Senator Palpatine, who becomes the evil
Sith Emperor, Darth Sidious, Lucas says he had Richard Nixon in mind as a
parallel, as well as other historical dictators who subverted democracies.
Surely, this is less than fair to Nixon, who, despite all of his faults, had positive
qualities to go along with his paranoia, his abuse of power, and his betrayal of
the U.S. Constitution.27 Yet Lucas is making a more subtle point here, one in
which we can view Nixon and even Senator Palpatine as fallen figures, talented
men who fell prey to their own overweening ambition and all-consuming
paranoia.
All of us have tendencies toward the dark side, Lucas suggests in Star Wars.
As Yoda confesses, the path to the dark side is easier, quicker, more seductive. It
grants to its followers the illusion of illimitless power. Palpatine, in his quest for
absolute power, gives himself up entirely to the dark side. He may cloak his
quest in polite, diplomatic language, coyly asking for emergency powers, so
that he might restore order and calm to an increasingly unruly galaxy. Yet his
true megalomania is revealed in Revenge of the Sith, when he baldly states, I
am the Senate, echoing the absolutist illusions of King Louis XIV of France,
who famously declared I am the State. Even worse, Palpatine seduces Anakin
Skywalker, Lukes father, by twisting Anakins honest, yet forbidden, love for
Padm into a fevered pursuit of boundless power whose goal it is to cheat death
for the sake of his beloved. Her death in childbirth completes Anakins tragic
descent into evil, his bottomless despair being exploited by the pitiless Sith
Emperor to complete Anakins transformation into Darth Vader.
Emperor Palpatine, also known as Darth Sidious. (Return of the Jedi)
President Richard Nixon flashes a V for victory on the campaign trail in
California in 1968.
 In detailing the psychodrama of the Emperor and Vader, we appear to have
traveled far from rebellions and Peoples War. Yet surely the Star Wars universe
is a reminder that power corrupts us all, and that absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Even Senator Palpatine emerges as something more than a wolf in
sheeps clothing. Like Nixon, perhaps, he is a man of considerable gifts who is
led down a dark path by an unquenchable thirst for power, a thirst unconstrained
by moral qualms due to Palpatines (and Nixons) mistrust of nearly everyone
around him.
As grim as that reading of human nature may be, Star Wars also serves as a
reminder that power, however dark or evil, will never fully extinguish hope, and
that its relentless exercise will always generate resistance. Hitler and Himmler,
after all, met their demise; so, too, did Stalin and Beria. Anger, fear, and
aggression may triumph in the short term, but goodness, if fought for with
conviction, courage, and faith, will triumph in the end. Or so the ending of
Return of the Jedi suggests.
Nevertheless, Lucass revelation that Nixon was an inspiration for Palpatine
casts the Star Wars passion play in a new light. Lucas, I believe, is affirming
here that there is a thin line between good and evil, love and hate. Put differently,
good and evil, love and hate, are dualities that are more labile than we care to
admit. Negative emotions and unrestrained compulsions for power and control
can channel the noblest of causeseven loveinto the darkest of avenues.
If Lucas ever returns to Star Wars and completes the final cinematic trilogy
that was to follow the events of Return of the Jedi, one hopes he will develop
this theme further. For there will be future perils for Luke, Leia, and Han: the
perils of victory, as they strive to adjust to their new status as leaders and power-
brokers of an inherently disputatious and disordered galaxy. In the unavoidable
reality of the messiness of life, the Sith desire for total dominance in the name of
order and security will never be extinguished, whether in a galaxy far, far
away or right here and right now on planet Earth.

A Coda: The United States in Iraq

and Afghanistan
In the aftermath of the attacks by al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, are
subsequent actions by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan more consistent
with an Old Republic advised by Jedi or with an Empire motivated by hatred
and revenge? Interestingly, U.S. troops have themselves adopted the Jedi label to
describe both their military skills and their noble intent. In the 1980s, field-grade
officers who graduated from the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, became known within the U.S. Army as Jedi Knights.28
These officers designed the invasion plans both for Desert Storm and the
liberation of Kuwait in 1991 and for Operation Iraqi Freedom and the toppling
of Saddam Husseins regime in 2003 (the apparently decisive success of the
latter leading to celebrations of their military and specifically their Jedi
prowess).29 Eight years later, Navy SEAL Team Sixs mission in Pakistan in
2011 that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden led the New York Times to
gush that the SEALs were Americas Jedi Knights.30
Yet the rapid collapse of Iraq into chaos and civil war from 2004 to 2008 and
the stalemate (as of 2012) of Afghanistan raise questions whether the American
military can accurately describe itself as being guided by an elite corps of Jedi-
like masters. Indeed, since 9/11, the American way of war has often seemed
more imperial than benevolent. Consider the U.S. military strategy of the
moment in Afghanistan. It is designed to put down Taliban rebels or insurgents,
hence the descriptive term counterinsurgency or COIN. Yet its goal is also to
win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people by protecting them from
violence, as well as by offering them hope, usually in the form of billions of
dollars in aid. It further involves moving heavily armed and armored troops into
close contact with the locals (who are not always pleased with what they see as a
foreign and potentially menacing presence in their midst) and of partnering with
them in ways that are intended to be attuned to local cultural concerns and
priorities.
Such an approach seems tailor-made for U.S. Special Operations forces, one of
those branches of Jedi Knights the U.S. military fancies it possesses. At the
same time, however, the United States has adopted a far more aggressive and
destructive approach to winning in Afghanistan. Call it the imperial or Death
Star approach. How else to describe the building of a colossal U.S. embassy in
Kabul and a sprawling network of steroidal military bases?31 These are arguably
American analogs to the Imperial Death Star and Star Destroyers of Star Wars.
The United States proceeds to garrison these bases with warriors and
mercenaries, while at the same time isolating them (in the name of force
protection) from the majority of the Afghan people.
Imperial stormtroopers; (inset) American forces in anonymizing body armor. (A
New Hope)
 Amazingly, few Americans sense the tensionindeed, the contradiction
inherent in these approaches. In places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, the United
States seems to believe it can be both Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, both
cunning and courteous Jedi Knight and kinetic Dark Lord of imperial power
projection. Whether the aggressive jackboot of imperial military action is
consistent with the knowledge and defense actions of skilled Jedi advisers
remains to be seen. Yet it is difficult to envision how a country can have it both
ways. Over time, the elite skills and good deeds of the U.S. militarys Jedi will
likely prove insufficient to erase the looming and darker presence of its
militarized embassy, its sprawling network of bases, and the destructive power of
its weapons among the Afghan people.
As the U.S. military engages in what is now euphemistically termed kinetic
operations (deadly combat, in plain speak) in Afghanistan, the Afghan rebels
have demonstrated a surprising ability to weather American firepower, while
employing indigenous knowledge and homegrown technology of their own.
American war-making relies heavily on high-tech weaponry and the profligate
expenditure of ammunition and munitions, from .50-caliber machine gun rounds
to grenades to 30-mm cannon and heavier mortar and artillery rounds to 2,000-
pound bombs dropped by B-1 bombers, all in support of platoon- and company-
level operations.
Pacification by massive firepower, however, inevitably leads to noncombatant
casualties and collateral damage that undermine the counterinsurgency strategy
of winning Afghan hearts and minds. In his book War, the celebrated journalist
Sebastian Junger recounts how, after one such instance of unintended civilian
casualties, the Afghan elders of Yaka Chine met to declare jihad against
American forces in the valley, despite apologies and appeals made by the U.S.
commander at the scene.32
In countering this massive use of firepower, Afghan rebels make do mainly
with rifles, even World War Ivintage bolt-action Lee-Enfields, the Afghan
equivalent to the Rebel lightsaber, together with rocket-propelled grenades
(RPGs) and a few machine guns. Like the Ewoks, however, the Afghan
primitives have force multipliers of their own, as Junger, who was
embedded with U.S. combat troops, recounts:
For every technological advantage held by the Americans, the Taliban
seemed to have an equivalent or a countermeasure. Apache helicopters have
thermal imaging that reveals body heat on the mountainside, so Taliban
 fighters disappear by covering themselves in a blanket on a warm rock. The
Americans use unmanned drones to pinpoint the enemy, but the Taliban can
do the same thing by watching the flocks of crows that circle American
soldiers, looking for scraps of food. The Americans have virtually unlimited
firepower, so the Taliban send only one guy to take on an entire firebase.
Whether or not he gets killed, he will have succeeded in gumming up the
machine for yet one more day.33
In the eyes of the Afghan people, one might imagine that U.S. troops, with all of
their heavy weaponry, ordnance, and armor, recall the heavy-handed presence
and trigger-happy cockiness of Imperial stormtroopers in Star Wars. For the self-
anointed American Jedi, such an image would naturally be difficult to perceive.
A menacing Tusken Raider. (A New Hope)
 I have also heard, from U.S. officers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, of a
tendency for U.S. troops to refer to Iraqis and Afghans as Sand People (the
violent and vicious desert nomads of Tatooine in Star Wars) and to comment
disparagingly about their dirty homes and disgusting habits.34 For troops hailing
from the material comforts and the antiseptic luxuries of twenty-first-century
America, such comments are predictable, if not exactly expedient. More
important, such comments (and there are far worse) reveal a certain contempt
that is more consistent with a high-handed and hegemonic empire than it is with
an enlightened corps of Jedi.
As U.S. troops deploy across the galaxy of planet Earth (and estimates
suggest that in 2011, U.S. Special Forces were deployed to an astonishing
seventy countries, with plans to expand to a further fifty), seeking ostensibly to
combat terror and to spread freedom and democracy, will they use their
considerable force for knowledge or defense, or will they forever be on the
attack?35 In the increasing production and use of robotic aerial drones (with such
nicknames as Predators and Reapers) on assassination missions, so eerily
reminiscent of the replicated clones of Star Wars, will they succumb to the
temptation of the dark side in a febrile quest for full spectrum dominance of
the globe, however it may be couched in benevolent terms?36 Or will they come
to recognize, in the wise words of Yoda, that wars not make one great?
Yoda tells Luke that wars not make one great. (The Empire Strikes Back)
 Such questions, stimulated by the richness of the Star Wars galaxy, are not
easily answered, even as they grow ever more vital by the day.

Notes
1. Sanchez, quoted in Andrew J. Bacevich, The Petraeus Doctrine, Atlantic
Monthly, October 2008, 1720.
2. Photo by 1352 Photo Group AAVS, Number 1274, Detachment 5,
Unclassified, dated 1965, in the authors possession.
3. The fictional wars of Star Wars and the real wars of the American
Revolution and Vietnam are not perfect analogs, of course. In the Star Wars
universe, both sides were fighting for keeps, whereas in the United States in the
1780s and in Vietnam in the 1970s, one side could choose to withdraw across
the ocean and go away. Thus, after Yorktown in 1781, the British decided that
the cost of defeating the American revolutionaries was simply too high; ditto
the United States in the early 1970s, whose leaders decided that the war in
Vietnam was no longer winnable at a reasonable cost.
4. Harold Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham
Lincoln President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004). Instrumental in his
selection as a presidential candidate, Lincolns brilliant speech, which further
decoupled slavery from federal authority and sanction, antagonized supporters
of slavery, sowing yet another seed for Southern secession and Civil War after
Lincoln won the election later that year.
5. Militarily, the Tet Offensive was a clear defeat for the North Vietnamese and
especially for the Viet Cong. The general uprising they sought to provoke did
not materialize, and VC cadres were mauled by superior American firepower.
Strategically, however, the extent and violence of the Tet Offensive shocked
Americans at home, who had been told by the military that the war had already
nearly been won. The U.S. media also tended to exaggerateif not
sensationalizethe effectiveness of the offensive. See Don Oberdorfer, Tet!:
The Turning Point in the Vietnam War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, [1971], 2001); and Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press
and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and
Washington, 2 vols. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977).
6. See Samuel B. Griffith II, Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare (Garden City,
NY: Anchor Press, 1978); and Vo Nguyen Giap, Peoples War, Peoples Army
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962).
7. Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the
Constitution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985).
8. As one American military adviser noted, Charlie [the Viet Cong] doesnt
need advisers when he conducts a sapper attack. He doesnt need Tac[tical] air
[support], or gunships or artillery. Hes hungry and hes got a cause and hes
motivated. Therein lies the difference. On our side [the South Vietnamese
army] nobody is hungry and few are motivated. Quoted in Guenter Lewy,
America in Vietnam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 172.
9. French general Jacques Hogard, who fought in Indochina and Algeria in the
1950s, spoke of five stages of peoples (or revolutionary) warfare: (1)
Reconnaissance of the population by propagandists and agitators; (2) the
creation of nodes and networks of sympathizers, while simultaneously
intimidating opponents and neutrals; (3) the deployment of armed cells to
commit acts of terror to weaken the governments legitimacy; (4) guerrilla
warfare to gain control over portions of the countryside, to include setting up a
parallel rebel government; and (5) a conventional offensive to overthrow the
government. Hogards stages 1 to 3 are commonly collapsed into Phase One
of Peoples War, with stages 4 and 5 becoming Phases Two and Three,
respectively. See Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to
Algeria (New York: Praeger, 1964).
10. Literature on guerrilla warfare is vast. One might start with Lawrence of
Arabias classic entry on guerrilla warfare, written for the fourteenth edition
of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1929), reprinted in Clifton Fadiman, ed., The
Treasury of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (New York: Viking, 1992). For an
extended treatment, see Robert B. Asprey, War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla
in History, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975).
11. Lucass original script for Star Wars includes an extended scene with
Lukes best friend and fellow pilot on Tatooine, Biggs Darklighter. Prior to
Lukes decision to follow Ben and join the Rebellion, Biggs entrusts Luke with
his own secret: that hes leaving the Imperial Academy to join the Rebels
because he wants to be on the right sidethe side I believe in. In the
extended canon of Star Wars, Biggss principled decision to join the Rebel
Alliance surely influences Luke at this pivotal moment in his life. Carol
Titelman, ed., The Art of Star Wars, including the Complete Script of the Film
by George Lucas (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979), 2829.
12. Richard M. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of Americas Revolutionary
War (New York: Henry Holt, 1997). In destroying the Empires ultimate
weapon and defeating its ultimate enforcer (Vader), the Rebels show they are
a force to be reckoned withand they show the Empires supporters there is no
place safe for them.
13. John M. Gates, Peoples War in Vietnam, Journal of Military History 54
(July 1990): 325344.
14. Certainly, the most powerful cinematic depiction of Peoples War remains
The Battle of Algiers, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, Rialto Pictures,
Italy/Algeria, 1966.
15. Cited in Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, War and Peace in the
Global Village (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), 97.
16. See, for example, Robert Cowley, ed., What If? The Worlds Foremost
Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (New York: Berkley
Books, 2000).
17. Brian McAllister Linn, The Philippine War, 18991902 (Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 2002); Robert Grainger Ker Thompson, Defeating
Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam (New York:
Praeger, 1966); Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya, 1948
60 (London: Frederick Muller, 1975). The insurgents in Malaya and the
Philippines were effectively isolated from external support, whereas the
American rebels of the 1770s had extensive help from France, and the North
Vietnamese had considerable support from China and the Soviet Union.
18. For the events that ended with the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, one might
say that both the United States and South Vietnam lost faith with each other.
Put differently: perhaps they never fully understood each other, a cultural and
communication gap that proved unbridgeable precisely because it was so
poorly perceived. See, for example, Stephen T. Hosmer et al., The Fall of South
Vietnam: Statements by Vietnamese Military and Civilian Leaders (New York:
Crane, Russak and Co., 1980), esp. 8283.
19. Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1967); and Johnson, quoted by George C.
Herring, Cold Blood: LBJs Conduct of Limited War in Vietnam, in Dennis
E. Showalter and John Albert, eds., An American Dilemma: Vietnam, 1964
1973 (Chicago: Imprint, 1993), 6385. Such overconfidence was seen in the
earliest days of American involvement in Indochina. In 1953, for example,
when the United States was aiding France in its long and debilitating war, a
U.S. Marine colonel boasted that two good American divisions with the
normal aggressive American spirit could clean up the situation in the Tonkin
Gulf in ten months. Cited in George C. Herring, The Legacy of the First
Indochina War, in John Schlight, ed., The Second Indochina War Symposium:
Papers and Commentary (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1986),
934.
20. Obviously, the Ewoks in their primitive innocence are nowhere near as
nasty as the real-life Viet Cong, who as insurgents were quite skilled at using
torture and terror to advance their cause. It is hard to imagine Ewoks
terrorizing villages to extort loyalty, for example, tactics that the VC employed
on a regular basis in the vicious war that was Vietnam.
21. I am indebted to Peter Carr for this analysis.
22. Southeast Asia includes the bombing of Laos and Cambodia, as well as
Vietnam. The Little Boy uranium bomb used at Hiroshima exploded with a
force of roughly 16 kilotons, or 16,000 tons of TNT. So many bombs were
dropped in so many rural areas that the death toll of Vietnamese, Cambodian,
and Laotian civilians remains impossible to measure accurately; reliable
sources suggest casualties from aerial bombing alone in the hundreds of
thousands. For example, citing U.S. military estimates, PBS records that
Operation Rolling Thunder, a graduated bombing campaign from 1965 to
1968, killed 182,000 North Vietnamese civilians. See Battlefield: Vietnam
Timeline, entry for November 1, 1968,
http://www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/timeline/index2.html. Together with the
dead and the wounded, of course, were all of the civilians who lost their homes
and livelihoods in the bombing.
23. See Stanley Karnow, Vietnam War Commander Westmoreland Dies at
91, NPR Morning Edition, July 19, 2005,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4760273.
24. Many would disagree with this conclusion, of course. For a range of
opinions on the Vietnam War and its meaning, see Gil Dorland, Legacy of
Discord: Voices of the Vietnam Era (Washington, DC: Brasseys, 2001); and
Norman A. Graebner, The Scholars View of Vietnam, 19641992, in Dennis
E. Showalter and John Albert, eds., An American Dilemma: Vietnam, 1964
1973 (Chicago: Imprint, 1993), 1352.
25. In some ways, the Death Star is reminiscent of the V1 and V2 vengeance
weapons of Adolf Hitler in World War II. In spreading terror through
destruction, they were meant to be decisive, war-winning weapons. In its sheer
destructiveness and massive expense, the Death Star also echoes the Manhattan
Project of World War II that led to the atomic bombs of 1945 and later to the
hydrogen (or thermonuclear) bombs that haunted the world during the Cold
War. For more on the Death Star, see chapter 8, Fear Is the Path to the Dark
Side.
26. On COIN strategy, see David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory
and Practice (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 1964, 2006); and
John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons
from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
27. A good summary of Nixons liberal social agenda is provided by Kurt
Andersen, The Madman Theory, New York Times, August 5, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/opinion/the-madman-theory.html.
28. See the U.S. Army official website at www.army.mil and the article
School of Advanced Military Studies Reflects and Looks Forward after 25
Years, May 26, 2009, http://www.army.mil/article/21643/school-of-advanced-
military-studies-reflects-and-looks-forward-after-25-years.
29. See Fred Kaplan, Force Majeure: What Lies behind the Militarys Victory
in Iraq, Slate, April 10, 2003, www.slate.com/id/2081388/.
30. Michiko Kakutani, The Training of Navy Seals Commandos, May 8,
2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/books/seal-team-six-and-the-heart-
and-the-fist-reviews.html.
31. Nick Turse, 2014 or Bust: The Pentagons Building Boom in Afghanistan
Indicates a Long War Ahead, www.tomdispatch.com, November 5, 2009,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175157. The United States also built a
colossal embassy in Baghdad and sprawling military bases in Iraq. In a
linguistic form of jiu-jitsu, the United States described these bases as
enduring facilities, rather than as permanent.
32. Sebastian Junger, War (New York: Twelve Books, 2010), 99100.
33. Ibid., 83.
34. This is reminiscent of the gook syndrome of the Vietnam War, as
discussed by Cecil Currey in Self-Destruction: The Disintegration and Decay
of the United States Army during the Vietnam Era (New York: W. W. Norton,
1981), 8491.
35. Nick Turse, A Secret War in 120 Countries: The Pentagons New Power
Elite, www.Tomdispatch.com, August 3, 2011,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175426/.
36. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of Americas Revolutionary War; and
William Astore, Freedom Fighters for a Fading Empire: What It Means When
We Say We Have the Worlds Finest Fighting Force, www.tomdispatch.com,
January 6, 2011, http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175337.
Chapter 2
 Part of the Rebel Alliance and a
Traitor

Women in War and Resistance

Janice Liedl and Nancy R. Reagin
Someone has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, flyboy!
Princess Leia, A New Hope

As the shuttle Tydirium approaches the forest moon of Endor in Return of the
Jedi, Princess Leia Organa, a key member of the Rebel strike force, is filled with
apprehension. Their mission is dangerous, maybe even suicidal. The Rebels are
relying on stolen codes obtained by their own spies to bypass tight Imperial
security. That will be only the start of the challenges she knows they face in the
vital mission to take down the massive generator protecting the second Death
Star. Most of the Rebels, Leia included, are dressed in forest camouflage, a time-
honored guerrilla warfare tactic, to increase their chances of moving undetected
once they close in on their objective. If captured, Leia and her comrades will be
treated as traitors by an implacable enemy that sees them not as worthy soldiers
but as Rebel scum. Leia is right to be worried about what fate they face as
resistance fighters: our history and her own galaxys past show that women were
not spared when they took part in the irregular warfare of the resistance fighter.
Yet the Empire should be worried, too, because it faces a resistance made all the
stronger by the women who lead and support the Rebel forces.
Leia is more than a figurehead; she is an active participant in bringing down the
Empire. (A New Hope)
 Princess Leia is a spy, a saboteur, and a guerrilla, as well as a leader in the
overthrow of Palpatines tyranny. She wasnt the first woman to fight those
battles. In the egalitarian societies of the Star Wars galaxy, many women engage
in battles against Palpatines plotting. From the Clone Wars heroics of Ahsoka
Tano, Anakin Skywalkers daring and resourceful Padawan, to Mon Mothmas
grave and measured guidance as the Alliances Chief of State, women fight for
liberty. Historical women, many of them drawn from French history, such as
Joan of Arc, Charlotte Corday, and the women of the French Resistance during
World War II, also battled overwhelming opponents as resistance fighters on the
battlefield and behind enemy lines.

A Symbol of Hope
Since the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century, a woman has led
France, at least when France was symbolized in the arts. An image of the
classical goddess of Liberty was used to urge on the commoners against the
oppressions of the king and his Ancien Regime. Dressed in Roman-style
clothing and wearing a hat known as a Phrygian cap, an ancient symbol of
freedom, this Revolutionary icon was known as Marianne as early as 1792. Even
after the Revolution came to a sputtering end with Napoleons seizure of power,
Mariannes image remained strongly connected to a French national culture.
During the July Revolution of 1830 and many times after that, Marianne was
employed in nationalistic art to represent the freedom-loving ideals of France,
particularly against oppression by reactionary or foreign occupiers.1
Marianne had come to symbolize the French ideal of liberty by 1830.
During World War I, Americans understood Joan of Arc as a symbol of
liberation from tyranny.
 Another feminine image of resistance to oppression that became popular in the
nineteenth century was that of Joan of Arc, the medieval warrior who had
inspired Frances leaders to reclaim French territory from English occupiers. She
was sometimes presented as leading the people in ways similar to Marianne and
was used even by the U.S. government (an ally of France) during World War I as
a symbol for French liberation from oppression.

The Maid, the Countess, and the

Padawan
Military command is often seen as a male preserve. Great generals in history
have almost always been men, but there have been rare occasions where women
have not only commanded resistance armies in name, as did Queen Zenobia in
antiquity, but actually led these forces on the battlefield. The medieval French
warrior Joan of Arc is among the most famous of women war leaders. Being a
young woman, she seemed doubly unfit to lead a warriors life. That was the
thought of many at the time, both among the French forces she rallied to win
back the kingdom for the French heir to the throne, Charles, and for the English
forces, desperately seeking to hold onto the French crown that the English king,
Henry V, had claimed in the Hundred Years War.
By her background and training, Joan was anything but a warrior. A farm girl
from the Burgundian village of Domrmy with a deep devotion to her religious
faith, teenage Joan believed that she was commanded by heavenly voices to go
into France and come to the aid of the dispossessed king Charles. Joan was
frightened; she pointed out that she was only a poor girl who did not know how
to ride or lead in war. Within a few months, however, she had taken up the
voices challenge and traveled to the court of the French ruler, where she proved
herself worthy of respect by the uncrowned king and his courtiers. Joan of Arc
learned to handle a horse and maneuver in heavy armor. She was eventually
given command of an army to raise the siege of Orlans. With this victory, the
French celebrated Joan as the Maid, whose rise to prominence demonstrated
Gods support of their cause. Wearing custom-made armor and wielding a sword
shed miraculously discovered behind the altar of a monastery church, Joan
became, as one contemporary noted, a captain, going to command in war, to
draw her pay and her equipment, and to serve according to the size of her large
heart.2
Joan of Arc led the resistance against the English occupation of France in the
1400s.
 Newly called to service as Anakins Padawan in her early teens, Ahsoka is
remarkably young for the position and somewhat unseasoned. Yet the Republics
battle against the Separatist forces requires the Jedi to muster all available
members, and the young Togruta is quickly thrust into the heart of the action,
joining Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi at the Battle of Christophsis. Within a short
while, Snips is commanding troops on her own with sometimes disastrous
results, as when her reckless pursuit of the enemy at the Battle of Ryloth leads to
the death of half of her squadron of pilots. The young Padawan is desolate at the
results of her recklessness but eventually finds a balance between personal
bravery and careful leadership.
Ahsoka bears the Jedi warriors burden of command. (The Clone Wars)
 These were lessons Joan of Arc didnt learn until after shed achieved her
greatest triumph, seeing Charles VII crowned as king of France in July 1429.
Her king played at politics, negotiating a truce with the Duke of Burgundy, who
had, until then, supported the English. Joan was irritated at King Charless
disinclination to aggressively pursue the retreating English. She pushed for
battle, following the English to Paris, where she experienced her first defeat and
a costly one, at that. By one account, five hundred were dead after the initial
assault, and a thousand more were wounded. Some of Joans contemporaries
believed that the failure to take Paris broke her will. In any case, it helped seal
her fate as she became increasingly sidelined in the French kings court and
council, while she sought to continue her campaign to drive the English out of
France. To the end, she posed a daunting figure who inspired fear in her enemies.
According to accounts of Joans final battle, even though her force was small,
her spirit was undaunted. She rode forward with her standard raised high as she
joined the melee: she held herself in her armor and with gestures just like a
captain leading a great army. This would be her last foray. In May 1430, Joan of
Arc was captured by the Burgundians at Compigne and was handed over to her
English enemies to be tried as a heretic and eventually burned at the stake. She
was not even twenty years old when she died.3
Centuries later, another inspirational woman leader rose up to help lead a
resistance movement. Countess Constance Markievicz was, despite her name, an
Anglo-Irish aristocrat and deeply resented the British rule over Ireland. A
womens rights activist, she married a Polish count, and the two settled in
Dublin, where she became involved in the Irish nationalist movement in 1908.
Markievicz founded a paramilitary nationalist group, Fianna ireann, for Irish
teens, male and female. She encountered hostility when she joined Sinn Fein but
persisted, despite the heckling her elite status earned her from other Irish
nationalists, rather worse than the teasing Princess Leia received from Han Solo.
After the death of Constance Markievicz in 1927, Ireland memorialized the
resistance fighter and politician.
 In 1916, everything changed for Markievicz and for Ireland. That was the year
of the Easter Rising, an armed insurgency designed to drive the British out of
Ireland. Lieutenant Markievicz held an officers rank in the Irish Citizen Army
and took her position seriously. She went into battle wearing her uniform and
wielding her revolver. The Rising failed, however, and Markievicz surrendered
to British authorities, along with the rest of her unit. She was the only one of
almost a hundred women prisoners kept in solitary confinement, rather like
Princess Leia on the Death Star.
Although Markieviczs conviction could have carried the death sentence, the
judge changed the penalty to life in prison. Markievicz was actually released as
part of a greater amnesty in 1917 but soon was back in prison for
antigovernment activism. In 1918, she was the first woman elected to the British
House of Commons, an honor she pointedly refused to take up, preferring
instead to sit in the new Irish parliament, Dil ireann, when it was first
convened. Today, Ireland celebrates Constance Markievicz as one of the nations
resistance heroines.4

Keep Mum. Shes Not So Dumb!

Joan of Arc, Constance Markievicz, and Ahsoka Tano fought their enemies with
weapons and sometimes in pitched battles. Many other women were rebels but
in much less visible ways. As spies, women were particularly capable of making
a contribution to a war effort. Because of prejudices about women as weak or
incapable, few historical women were considered to be military threats, even
when their nations were occupied by hostile powers. Loreta Velazquez boasted
of performing amazing exploits as a spy for the Confederacy during the
American Civil War. According to her, For certain kinds of secret service work
women are, out of all comparison, superior to men. One reason for this is that
women, when they undertake a secret service job, are quicker witted and more
wide awake than men, they more easily deceive other people, and were less
easily imposed upon.5
Leia was a spy and a courier on behalf of the Rebel Alliance to Restore the
Republic. (A New Hope)
 In the opening of A New Hope, Princess Leia relies more on the protections
due her as a senator than as a woman when she tries to bluff her way out of
Darth Vaders control. Even when captured, she is still a successful spy, sending
R2-D2 off to Tatooine with the Death Stars plans entrusted to her by other spies
for the Alliance. With her selfless drive and determination, Leia would have felt
at home with many of the other women who spied for their cause and their
country. Like Leia, countless other women spied in earnest and to great effect.
Among them was Rose Greenhow, who ran a spy network of almost fifty
Confederate sympathizers in the Civil War. After her father died, Roses aunt
and uncle took her in, and she spent several years at their Washington boarding
house, which served the likes of two-term vice president John Calhoun.
Widowed in 1854, Greenhow became a mover and a shaker in Washington
politics, supporting James Buchanan in his candidacy and during his term as
president. His successor, Abraham Lincoln, was as loathsome to Rose as
Palpatine became to Padm by the time of the Clone Wars: Greenhow sought to
oppose Lincoln as the Civil War began, since she saw him as a tyrant.
Rose Greenhow frustrated even President Lincoln with her spy network on
behalf the Confederacy.
 Guided by the belief that alls fair in love and war, Greenhow used her
connections with Washingtons elites, particularly its military men, to uncover
secrets she could pass on to Confederate leaders using a secret cipher. Many
members of Greenhows spy network were also women. One sixteen-year-old
she recruited, Bettie Duvall, smuggled important intelligence to General
Beauregard on papers tucked into her imposing crown of upswept hair, a trick
that might have worked for Princess Leia, as well. With that information
provided by Greenhows spy network, the South was able to handily counter the
Norths maneuvers at the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861.
Greenhows high profile and Southern sympathies made it impossible for the
Washington widow to escape notice for long. President Lincoln set Allan
Pinkerton, the head of the new Intelligence Service, to keep a special watch on
her, and that vigilance soon paid off. Uncovered as a key Confederate spy,
Greenhow was put under house arrest. Even that failed to stem the tide of secrets
she harvested and passed on. Exasperated, the Union leaders eventually exiled
her to the Confederacy, and she continued to do her best to support their cause
until her death by drowning in 1864.6
Blondes arent necessarily dumb: a 1942 British poster warning against female
spies.
Careless talk costs lives: The Empires slogan evokes World War II propaganda.
(Lucas Licensing artwork)
 The success of female spies such as Loreta Valazquez and Rose Greenhow and
the notoriety achieved even by failed spies such as Mata Hari during World War
Iwho was recruited by the Germans to spy on the French, but whose efforts
never amounted to muchcaused later wartime governments to blame women
for intelligence leaks. British authorities during World War II feared that men in
the armed services seemed particularly willing to disclose their rank and where
they were stationed to attractive women.
Yet the image of a lone seductive spy surrounded by gullible men is
misleading. One more truth that Greenhows story highlights is that spying was
rarely a solitary occupation. Greenhow had many acquaintances and accomplices
in and around Washington who helped her uncover and deliver news of the
Union plans. All of these women who were successful spies built on their
relationships to gather and transmit intelligence. Some paid with their lives, just
as Mon Mothma notes that many Bothans did in bringing the Alliance news of
the second Death Stars secret construction installation at Endor. Whether in
their galaxy or ours, spy networks such as these were crucial in helping
underdog powers such as the Rebel Alliance hold their own against their
opponents.
Mon Mothma notes that many suffered and died to help the Rebel Alliance in its
struggle against the Empire. (Return of the Jedi)
 The Princess and the Partisanes
Princess Leia embodies all of the traits we associate with a resistance fighter
when she takes up a blaster to strike back against the Imperial forces on Endor.
Many historical women fought against oppressors, although not all went so far
as to take up weapons. The Spanish Civil War began in 1936 after the military
leadership (supported by Spanish fascists) rose up against the democratic
government of the Spanish Republic, leading to three years of bloody civil war.
Women supported both sides in more traditional roles, but the militias defending
the Republic also welcomed women as combat volunteers in the initial stages of
the struggle. More than a thousand women served as milicianas defending the
Republican zones during 1936.
One journalist interviewed a miliciana named Carmen, who had been a
seamstress in Madrid before the war. She volunteered for the militia, initially
planning to do laundry and sewing for the male soldiers, but took a combat role
after seeing several comrades killed. A few months later, the same journalist ran
into her again and noted that Carmen herself was surprised at how much she had
changed, since she had become proficient with a rifle: Fancy me, a weak
woman, and now I can manage a gun with the ease that I used to wield a
needle.7
After the German invasion of France in 1940, thousands of loyal French
citizens joined various Resistance groups dedicated to defeating their Nazi
occupiers and those who collaborated with themamong the Resistance groups
were more than ten thousand women. Some contributed in very low-key ways:
providing food and shelter in safe houses, hosting meetings and passing on
vital intelligence, and using passwords and code names in order to protect the
network, even if they were caught and tortured. The very appearance of
normalitydoing laundry, minding childrenhelped disguise many womens
Resistance efforts. In the workplace, female secretaries or low-level civil
servants could conceal their contributions to the Resistance, forging identity
cards or other paperwork. One secretary made carbon copies of anything
interesting that she typed, allowing her to tip off the local Resistance if the
police were planning a raid.8 Women, in fact, often made up the backbone of
resistance movements in France, Italy, and elsewhere in occupied Europe,
providing much of the infrastructure for the resistance against the Germans.9
 Because French men were subject to a labor draft and were carefully watched
by the government, French women had relative freedom of movement that many
used to their advantage. As Brigitte Friang, a Resistance member, later
commented, In the 1940s, we still had the weakness of paying less attention to a
woman and a man meeting, in the road, in a restaurant, in trains, than two men
meeting. Young single women were particularly valued in Resistance recruiting
as having both the free time and the unassuming status to work for their cause in
a variety of roles: serving as couriers, even smuggling goods and people under
the authorities watch.10 Womens presence in markets, for example, was seen as
normal by the Germans. This meant that women could take on quite risky roles,
as one member of the Italian Resistance noted, Naturally the Germans didnt
think that a woman could have carried a bomb, so this became the womans
task.11
As we saw earlier in the United States during the Civil War, women could play
key roles in espionage networks, as well. Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, an
executive secretary whose boss was arrested by the Gestapo, used the
information her employer had gathered before the war to build up one of the
most important intelligence networks in occupied France. Her sex protected her
from suspicion for a long time; later, even the British authorities were surprised
to find out that their main French intelligence chief had been a woman.12
A group of maquis men and one woman in 1944. Women were a vital minority
in the French resistance to the Nazis in World War II.
 At the same time, French women were not expected or welcome in a direct
military role, although they were active in the armed forces of several of the
other Allies and filled combat roles in the Soviet Unions military. Charles de
Gaulle accepted women into the French military only in order to free up men for
combat roles. It was commonly accepted that war was mans work, and this
meant that few women were accepted in the maquis as partisanes, full-time,
gun-carrying female fighters.
Some women persisted against the attitudes and obstacles, among them
Georgette Grard, an athletic engineer who joined the Resistance in 1940 and
was one of only two women known to have led a maquis group. Under her
direction, they ambushed and sabotaged the Germans so effectively that the
Gestapo targeted her directly in the winter of 19431944. When she was
captured, she was imprisoned by the Germans in Limoges under horrible
conditions. The maquis leader survived, thanks to the timely appearance of
French liberation forces. Rather like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo breaking
into the detention area of the Death Star, French forces freed the prisoners,
narrowly averting a massacre of Grard and her fellow captives.13
Its clear that many women performed vital roles in the resistance to
oppression, even if they never fired a weapon. Some avoided violence in
principle, just as Duchess Satine of the New Mandalorians did during the Clone
Wars. At least a few were deliberately sidelined when it came to anything the
male leadership felt was unsuitable for women. Others were fully employed in
supporting roles. These jobs, often in communication, supply, and transport,
were not only key to the success of their resistance movements or rebellions, but,
despite being out of direct combat, were still very dangerous undertakings. The
Alliance is a perfect example of this: the countless ordinary mechanics,
technicians, medics, dispatchers, and other support staff who scramble to
evacuate Hoth in the face of an Imperial attack certainly dont get off easy.
Even command wasnt always safe: Leia and other support staff faced danger
evacuating Hoth. (The Empire Strikes Back)
 Consider the women of the SOE, Britains World War IIera Special
Operations Executive. Although many were employed on British soil in war-
support jobs as typists, drivers, and clerks, some fifty or so were recruited by
Vera Atkins to infiltrate on the continent ahead of the soldiers on D-Day. To
recruit and place women in such roles was unprecedented in the British military
tradition. There were protests, lawyers for the executive noting womens
particular vulnerability in such situations: Though all SOEs agents would be
without uniforms and therefore liable to be shot as spies, women agents would
have even less legal protection in the field than men. Nevertheless, dozens of
women drawn from various nationalities took up Atkinss call to form a core of
women radio operators and intelligence officers capable of coordinating the
Allied invasion with maquis groups on the ground in France.14
The risks were enormous, and many of the agents were compromised, some
immediately on landing in poorly managed parachute jumps. Others were
betrayed by double agents within the organizations or captured in Gestapo raids.
As the Allied Forces moved across France, making contact with their supporters
on the ground, few of these women were still in place with their Resistance
groups. Not knowing what happened to these women was too much for Atkins,
back in London. In early 1945, she crossed the channel to find out what had
happened to her many missing agents, particularly the women who had little to
no protection of rank. She worked on the war crimes tribunal and pursued these
matters in interrogations, investigations in the concentration camps, and through
sheer, dogged determination uncovered the truth. For many of her agents, the
trails led only to reports of their deaths.
Some SOE operatives made it through the war. One such was the Australian
Nancy Wake, who had moved to Paris in the 1930s, working as a journalist
before she married a Frenchman and joined him in Marseilles. Wake lived
through the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940 and soon became involved in the
resistance to the German occupation and the collaborationist Vichy government.
At first, her contributions seemed minor, at least according to her own memory.
She began by providing supplies to the local Resistance group and shelter for
Allied soldiers caught behind enemy lines and finally worked as a regular escape
courier, assisting people to cross the border into Spain. The Germans dubbed her
the White Mouse and began to close in on the young married woman. Wake
was forced to leave her husband and make the dangerous trek across the
Pyrenees into Spain in 1943. Her husband was captured, tortured, and killed by
the Germans in retribution.15
Nancy Wake was a spy, a courier, and a saboteur: one of the Gestapos most
wanted, due to her work in the French Resistance.
 Within a year, Wake was back in France, parachuted in to assist in running a
maquis group. She soon showed herself more than up to the challenge. Hearing a
report that thousands of German soldiers were targeting their group, the White
Mouse set out with twenty Resistance fighters to relieve their comrades. When
some of the teenage maquis fled after coming under fire, Wake turned into a
veritable fury, standing up in the middle of the woods and throwing every foul
insult she could muster at the cowards who fled. Shamefaced, most of her
soldiers returned, and they were able to save the day.16
Just as they had in Marseilles, the authorities pursued Wake and the other
members of the Resistance. They were always on the run, often evacuating a
temporary headquarters location while closely pursued by their enemies. Just as
Princess Leia escaped in the withdrawal from Hoth by the skin of her teeth (and
the skillful piloting of Han Solo), so, too, did Wake experience the terror of close
pursuit. At one point, she was chased out of a maquis headquarters under such a
close attack that from her speeding car pursued by a German Henschel, she
could clearly see the pilots goggles and helmet as he tried to shoot her. A few
days later, she carried out an act of everyday heroism none the less remarkable,
biking more than three hundred miles in three days to get a new radio and codes
for her group after a disastrous withdrawal.
Wakes drive and persistence were stunning. Just as the Alliance leaders did
with Yavin 4, Wake soon appropriated an old residence (the Chteau de Fragnes,
near Montluon) as new headquarters for her Resistance group. Where the Rebel
Alliance used that vantage point to take down the Death Star, the maquis attack
was almost as spectacular. They destroyed the nearby Gestapo headquarters in a
tightly organized operation where every member, including Wake herself, raced
in at midday to leave a hand grenade in each room, surprising the unaware staff
with their sudden arrival and shocking mission. The resulting explosions utterly
demolished the headquarters.17

Armed and Dangerous

Resistance fighting could get dirtyand not just literally, as when Princess Leia
takes a slide into a garbage masher in the Death Star. Sometimes, desperate
times called for desperate measures, up to and including assassination. In the
Bible, you can read of the daring Jewish widow Judith, who figuratively cut off
the head of the Assyrian army threatening her town when she killed the general,
Holofernes. Sometimes the assassinations were much more calculated and crass.
In Attack of the Clones, the Separatist leader, Count Dooku, puts a bounty on
Padm that is taken up by the bounty hunter Jango Fett, who in turn employs
Zam Wesell. In the guise of a human woman, Zam has established herself as a
formidable assassin. Her final target eludes her, however: Zam fails to kill the
senator. Instead, she is captured by Obi-Wan and Anakin. Before the bounty
hunter can reveal her secrets, she is silenced by Fett.
Not every assassin was in it for the money. Charlotte Corday was a principled
assassin during the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century. Originally a
true believer in revolution, Corday became disenchanted as the revolutionary
regime became increasingly radicalized and devoted to terror and oppression.
She determined to strike a blow against these policies by assassinating Jean-Paul
Marat, a journalist and a revolutionary leader. On July 13, 1793, Corday
succeeded in her plan, stabbing Marat while he was in his bath. Some considered
Corday a heroine, but few would publicly support her during the worst excesses
of the Revolutions radical phase. Corday expressed no remorse for her
assassination but faced her judges with a calm satisfaction that she had rescued
France from a force for evil.18 A speedy trial by the government resulted in her
execution: more legal than but just as lethal as Zam Wesells end outside a
seamy Coruscant dive.
Obi-Wan Kenobi frequently tangles with women who are as dangerous as
Corday, even if they sometimes fight on his side. The Zabrak bounty hunter Sugi
leads a band of mercenaries during the Clone Wars and reluctantly teams up with
the Jedi when they face a common enemy. Sugi is violent, especially fond of her
powerful rifle and vibroblade to settle conflicts, but also intensely honorable.
When offered more money to switch sides in a conflict, she instantly refuses,
considering the proposed deal an insult to her code of conduct.
Charlotte Corday believed Marats death would free France from revolutionary
terror in 1793.
Asajj Ventress versus Luminara Unduli and Ahsoka Tano: women warriors fight
for and against the Republic. (The Clone Wars)
 Zam Wesell isnt the only Separatist female assassin. In The Clone Wars, we
meet Asajj Ventress, who is apprenticed to Darth Tyranus, Count Dookus secret
Sith identity, during the Clone Wars and who frequently battles the Jedi in her
missions. Early in the wars, Dooku dispatches her to either free or permanently
silence the Trade Federation viceroy Nute Gunray after the Jedi captures the
Neimoidian. In the resulting battle, featured in Cloak of Darkness, she faces
down one of the most formidable Jedi fighters, Luminara Unduli, and only
Ahsoka Tanos timely intervention saves the day. Ventress is renowned as an
assassin but, unlike Corday, fails in her chief target: she repeatedly seeks to slay
Obi-Wan Kenobi, but the Jedi Master survives her attacks and schemes.
Disguise was another important tactic in a resistance fighters arsenal. Many
women resorted to the obvious disguise of dressing as a man. In fact, that was
one of the chief charges against Joan of Arc in her heresy trial. Dressing as a
man was illegal in many jurisdictions, right up to the twentieth century. When
Princess Leia infiltrates Jabbas palace on Tatooine disguised as Boushh, she is
unrecognizable. The unisex outfit and the muffling helmet make it impossible to
distinguish her real identity as she works to free Han Solo from his carbonite
bondage. Something must have given her away, of course, because when she
releases Han, Jabba and his court are waiting to confront them both. Relying on
disguise was risky business but a risk that was worth taking, just as much for
those seeking to free their comrades from Gestapo jailers as for Leia,
Chewbacca, Luke, and Lando working to rescue Han from Jabba.
Not every disguise was so inspiring. Many women working for a resistance
cause disguised themselves in humble ways: as servants, laborers, schoolgirls,
and occasionally prostitutes or mistresses. These disguises couldnt have always
been easy to bear, just as when Ahsoka Tano wears a slave collar in an
undercover operation during which Anakin and Obi-Wan pose as slavers.
Women of the French Resistance employed disguises to aid in their Resistance
work. Sometimes they needed to improvise even further when the disguise fell
through or didnt bring the desired results. That was the case for Lucie Aubrac,
one of the earliest organizers of the resistance against the Vichy regime. She
raised a family while editing a journal for the Resistance and founding a hit
squad devoted to rescuing captured comrades. In 1943, the mission became
personal. Her husband and coleader, Raymond, had been captured by the
authorities. Raymond was destined for cruel torture at the hands of the infamous
Klaus Barbie. Knowing that certain death awaited her husband, Aubrac sprang
into action. She scouted a nearby hospital, where she pretended to be a doctor. In
a smock and wearing a stethoscope, Aubrac was able to rescue several of their
agents and acquire a sample of live typhus bacteria. She planned to infect
Raymond with candies containing the typhus in order to prevent his torture and
execution, but that plan fell through, and Raymonds transfer to Germany
loomed. Forced to improvise, Aubrac and the rest of her hit squad intercepted
the prison van transporting her husband. Three German guards died, and thirteen
prisoners, including Raymond, were freed, due to their rescuers daring act of
disguise and cooperation.19
Leia employs a key resistance tactic when she infiltrates Jabbas palace in
disguise. (Return of the Jedi)
 Resistance: Something Old and
Something New
Women have contributed to resistance movements from ancient times to the
modern day and in increasing numbers. In the Mexican Revolution of 1910
1920, women supported the revolution with supplies, safe houses, and reporting,
and some, such as Dolores Jimnez y Muro, worked their way up to be at the
heart of the resistance fight.20 The numbers and the importance of women in
rebellion continue to grow. By some estimates, as many as two-thirds of the
Sandinistas fighting in Nicaragua in the 1970s were women, and this wasnt only
at the lowest level. Four of the seven military commanders at the fight for Len
in 1979 were female. Prominent in the Sandinista leadership was Commander
Two, Dora Mara Tllez, only twenty-three years of age when she became a
spokesperson of the revolution.21
When resisting an invading force or an oppressive regime, women often
practice subversive acts that are concealed within the performance of traditional
roles: providing food and safe houses for the maquis, typing up useful forgeries
and carbon copies of secret documents, or smuggling bombs in a marketing
basket. Yet war, revolution, and political upheaval also offer women an
opportunity to escape the constraints of tradition in support of their cause. Just as
Leia sheds the garb of a princess and disguises herself as a male bounty hunter,
so Joan of Arc was able to don armor and lead troops against the English. During
the Clone Wars, Sugi is a mercenary leader who ruthlessly executes a pirate who
threatens her crew. Ahsoka is assigned to Anakin as his Padawan, in hopes that
responsibility for her will temper Anakins impulsive and rash ways. Instead,
while fighting for the Jedi Order against the Separatists, Ahsoka is even more
reckless than her Master. Lucie Aubrac rescued her husband from the Gestapo,
and Charlotte Corday carried out a carefully planned assassination in order to
save innocent livesall unfeminine feats that could never have occurred in
peacetime. Sometimes women started in a more traditional expression of
resistance support and ended up in combat, such as Carmen the Spanish
seamstress who became a militiana. In both supporting and leading roles,
women are now integral to every modern revolution, something that Princess
Leia and other women of the Star Wars galaxy would have appreciated.
A female supporter in the Mexican Revolution. Her hairstyle, sometimes worn
by women during Mexicos Revolution, helped inspire Princess Leias. (A New
Hope)
Notes
1. Maurice Agulhon, Marianne, rflexions sur une histoire, Annales
historiques de la Rvolution franaise 289 (1992): 313318.
2. Kelly de Vries, Joan of Arc: A Military Leader (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), 38
53.
3. Larissa Juliet Taylor, The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 94118. See also Marina Warners
Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1999).
4. Joie Karnes, Constance Markievicz: To-Day Life Is Politics, Ph.D.
dissertation, Drew University, 2006, 57, 2937.
5. Quoted in Heidi Konkel, Female Spies and Soldiers of the Civil War: Being
a Woman Had Its Advantages, M.A. thesis, California State University
Dominguez Hills, 2005, 30.
6. H. Donald Winkler, Hidden Heroines of the Civil War (Naperville, IL:
Sourcebooks, 2010), 327.
7. Lisa Margaret Lines, Milicianas: Women in Combat in the Spanish Civil War
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), 8081. See also Mary Nash, Defying
Male Civilization: Women in the Spanish Civil War (Denver: Arden Press,
1995).
8. Hanna Diamond, Women in the Second World War in France 193948:
Choices and Constraints (New York: Longman, 1999), 104.
9. Bonnie Smith, Changing Lives. Women in European History since 1700
(Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1989), 487488.
10. Diamond, Women and the Second World War in France, 102108.
11. Smith, Changing Lives, 488.
12. Ibid., 489. See also Diamond, Women and the Second World War in France,
119.
13. Margaret Collins Weitz, Sisters in the Resistance: How Women Fought to
Free France, 19401945 (New York: Wiley, 1995), 147151.
14. Sarah Helm, A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII
(New York: Nan A. Talese, 2005), 927.
15. Nancy Wake, The Autobiography of the Woman the Gestapo Called the
White Mouse (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1985), 4375.
16. Russell Braddon, Nancy Wake: The Story of a Very Brave Woman (London:
Cassell, 1956), 192193.
17. Rosemary Lancaster, Je Suis Australienne: Remarkable Women in France,
18801945 (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2008), 171180.
18. Elizabeth R. Kindleberger, Charlotte Corday in Text and Image: A Case
Study in the French Revolution and Womens History, French Historical
Studies 18, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 974980.
19. Weitz, 258261. See also Lucie Aubracs own account, Outwitting the
Gestapo (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
20. Anna Macias, Women and the Mexican Revolution, 19101920,
Americas 37, no. 1 (July 1980): 5862.
21. Patricia Flynn, Women Challenge the Myth, in Revolution in Central
America, edited by John Altoff and the Stanford Central America Action
Network (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1983), 416422; Margaret Randall,
Sandinos Daughters Revisited: Feminism in Nicaragua (Piscataway: Rutgers
University Press, 2004), 230244.
 Chapter 3

Elegant Weapons for Civilized Ages

The Jedi and Warrior-Monks throughout

History
Terrance MacMullan
For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of
peace and justice in the Old Republic.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, A New Hope

The Star Wars galaxy brims with fascinating people, places, and things. Yet even
in a galaxy with suave Corellian smugglers, breathtaking Tatooine binary
sunsets, and awesome Death Stars, nothing rivals the allure of the Jedi. Millions
found their imaginations fired by the simple description of the Jedi given by an
old wandering knight who explains that for over a thousand generations, the
Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.1
While the Jediwith their sorcerers ways and elegant weaponsstand as a
unique vision from long ago in a galaxy far, far away, they also represent a
response to an eternal struggle to reconcile the ideal with the real, the spiritual
with the physical, the easy way with the right way. They are the realization of the
universal hope that power be placed in the hands of people wise enough to use it
justly. Once we recognize this, we can see the Jedi as another glorious chapter in
what Joseph Campbell called the one, shapeshifting yet marvelously constant
story that we find.2
A careful student of Star Wars and history discerns a recurring pattern, similar
to a musical theme that emerges and recedes throughout a symphony, which
harmonizes the tales of the Jedi and other spiritual warriors. These extraordinary
people combine the discipline necessary to manifest incredible physical power
with the wisdom to know that such strength must be used only in the service of a
higher purpose. They show that before there can be a cunning warrior in whom
the Force is strong, there must first be a monk wise enough to feel the Force.
This chapter examines the parallels between the Jedi Knights and three
renowned societies of warrior-monks from history: the Shaolin monks of China,
the samurai of feudal Japan, and the Knights Templar of the Crusades. Each of
these comparisons reveals different facets of the Jedi as warrior-monks. The
example of the Shaolin monks helps us understand their vision of the one energy
that unifies the entire universe. The samurai cast light on the Jedis unique mind-
set, especially their detachment even in the face of death. Finally, tracing
parallels with the Knights Templar illuminates the Jedis moral dualismthe
belief that the universe is a battleground in a cosmic struggle between good and
evilas well as the risks of virtue in a corrupt world.
A school for keepers of the peace: Jedi progress through ranks from Youngling
to Master, similar to many historical martial orders. (Attack of the Clones)
 This chapter demonstrates that the virtues that we so admire in the Jedi have
been manifested by flesh-and-blood people from a variety of past cultures and
organizations. Although it appears unlikely that any of us will ever be able to use
the Force to move objects telekinetically or trick guards, we can tap into a real
spiritual force that might help us forge lives of greater nobility and virtue.3

Ancient Weapons and Hokey

Religions: The Origin of the Jedi
Order
The Jedi origin stories highlight the unavoidable tension between the deadly
warrior and the serene monk that lies at the core of the Jedis being. According
to the world beyond the filmsthe Expanded Universe of Star Warsthousands
of years before the Battle of Yavin in A New Hope, there lived on Tython a group
of seers who felt both the serene and benevolent side of the Force, which they
called Ashla, and its destructive and malevolent aspect, called Bogan.4 These
people were not warriors but mystics and philosophers who were drawn to this
ever-present energy as a source of wisdom.
The members of the Jedi Order are bound by a number of proscriptions shared
by many other monastic communities throughout human history. Jedi adhere to a
very precise dress code that marks them not merely as Jedi but as Jedi of a
particular rank. Jedi normally enter the Order as Younglings and then strive to
progress through the ranks of Padawan, Knight, and Master. Every Jedi obeys
some appropriate authority within the Order, whether it is the Master who guides
each Padawans training or the members of the Jedi Council who hold ultimate
authority over all Jedi. Jedi fill many different roles of service to their Order and
the Republic, including generals, investigators, diplomats, and archivists.
Whether battle-hardened commander or quiet librarian, all Jedi are trained to
wield their signal weaponthe lightsaberonly as a measure of last resort. The
light side of the Force teaches the Jedi to be compassionate to all life, but their
knowledge of the dark side prohibits them from developing intimate
relationships. Celibacy prevents them from suffering divided loyalties or unfit
attachments that might cause them to be seduced by the dark side of the Force.5
Just as in earthly monastic societies, many Jedi struggle with this rule, and some
even violate it, with devastating consequences. Indeed, one of the most
cataclysmic chains of events in the Star Wars saga is triggered when Anakin
Skywalkers tender passion for his forbidden love, Padm Amidala, turns
obsessive and destructive.
The Jedi are a potent moral force when they successfully balance the humility
and obedience of the monk with the warriors pride and valor. They become
spiritual beings in the mundane world of matter, technology, politics, and
desires, who are not of this world. They feel the deeper truths of peace, calm,
and harmony but choose to engage with discord, scum, and villainy, in the hopes
their mastery of physical force and the spiritual Force might make things right.

It Binds the Galaxy Together: Qi,

the Force, and the Shaolin Monks
The earliest community of warrior-monks whose story parallels that of the Jedi
still prays and trains today in a monastery near the mountains of Henan Province
in China. Although their origins are shrouded by a veil of legend, we know that
from the Shaolin Monastery there arose a cadre of Seng Bing (monk soldiers)
who submitted to a rigid monastic code; shunned fame, wealth, power, and other
worldly desires; and studied a universal energy force that imbued them with
great vitality and physical power. During their long history, they cleared the
surrounding countryside of dangerous animals, protected their neighbors from
bandits and pirates, and served the government of their people. They suffered
persecution by a vengeful emperor and witnessed the destruction of their temple.
They even rescued a princess or two!
A more civilized age: pagodas decorate the site of the famed Shaolin Temple,
founded in 495.
 The story of the Shaolin monks begins with the founding of their temple in
495 by a Buddhist monk from India named Batuo.6 By decree of the emperor
Xiaowen, this temple was erected at a central location near the imperial capital
of Louyang, much as the Jedi Order built its longest-standing Temple on the
capital world of Coruscant in close proximity to the Senate chamber.7 The
Shaolin monks were originally tasked with the spiritual mission of studying and
promulgating Buddhism. In both cases, these spiritual beings became warriors
only when forced by fate, as in the seventh century when the monks of Shaolin
confronted bandits attacking the monastery and its neighbors.
Other Shaolin stories provide more evidence that the spiritual preceded the
martial. Perhaps the most significant is the tale of Bodhidharma, a legendary
early abbot who lamented that the monks were too feeble for the rigors of Chan
(or Zen) meditation. Having been raised in a warrior family in India,
Bodhidharma was trained in the vajramushti fighting system, which he taught
the monks for the sake of improving their vitality. Soon the monks became
known as the most formidable fighters in all of China. Supposedly, the system of
physical exercise developed by him was the basis of the well-known Shaolin
chuan-fa (Kung-fu) system.8
Although it is impossible to verify Bodhidharmas exact contributions, we
know that soon after his tenure, the Shaolin Temple became a center of
excellence for the fighting arts with martial artists from across China making a
pilgrimage to the temple to practice with the monk-soldiers.9 The monks
practiced martial arts primarily as a means of cultivating vitality; as Buddhists,
they fought only defensively and for the purpose of protecting innocents. This is
reminiscent of Yodas admonition to Luke that [a] Jedi uses the Force for
knowledge and defense, never for attack.10 Their earliest warrior training
focused on the staff: a sacred and defensive weapon that had long been the
symbol of the Buddhist monk.11 They studied a multitude of staff forms, just as
the Jedi learn the seven lightsaber forms.12 Later they developed unarmed martial
arts forms, such as the Nizong quan or Wild-Beast Fists, which were based on
the movements of animals.13 Similarly, Jedi lightsaber forms were patterned on
the behavior of animals and bore their names, such as Form IV Ataru: The Way
of the Hawk-Bat.14
For knowledge and defense: Shaolin monks were renowned for their daring
fighting styles and fearless military service.
 Many of the daring exploits of the warrior-monks of Shaolin closely mirror
those of the Jedi. Just as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker shield Senator
Padm Amidala against an assassination attempt in Attack of the Clones, in the
seventh century a Shaolin monk named Jue Wen died leading a detachment of
thirty Shaolin monk soldiers on a mission to save Princess Yong Tai from a
planned assassination.15 The Shaolin monks earned their reputation as fearsome
fighters while serving the imperial government of China during military
campaigns, just as the Jedi Guardians protect the Republic against its enemies.
Both groups performed two distinct military functions: they were leaders of
regular combatants, as well as elite front-line fighters capable of deciding entire
battles with their incredible abilities.16
The legendary figure Bodhidharma offers a wealth of comparisons with the
venerable Jedi Master Yoda. Both were skilled martial artists, as well as wise
spiritual teachers. They shared a mastery of cosmic energy that granted them
abilities that defied belief. Legends say that Bodhidharma meditated in a cave
for nine years so intently that he drilled holes through solid rock with his gaze.17
Other tales have him floating across the Yellow River on a single reed.18 These
wonders compare to how Luke Skywalker learns the power of the Force when
Yoda tells him to lift his X-wing fighter out of Dagobahs swamps. Skywalker,
shackled by doubt, tries but fails. The diminutive Master then uses the Force to
gracefully lift the fighter out of the swamp and onto firm ground. Most
remarkably, both Masters even achieved a kind of resurrection: Yodas spirit
appears to Luke after the Battle of Endor, and Bodhidharma was said to have
appeared to his student Song Yung three years after his death.19
True Masters: Bodhidharma and Yoda had both served their orders as teachers
and leaders. (Attack of the Clones)
 These stories of two great masters from two very different worlds underline
the most important similarity between the Shaolin monks and the Jedi Knights.
These spiritual warriors shared a common belief that the universe is not really
the mundane world of separate objects governed by luck and probability. Instead,
the universe is a single whole unified by an invisible, ever-present, and living
energy that the Jedi call the Force and the Shaolin monks called qi.
Obi-Wan describes the Force as an energy field created by all living things. It
surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.20 Jedi study a living
Force that grants them not only incredible physical and sensory abilities, but also
telekinesis, healing abilities, and mind control over the weak-willed. Yet they
also feel a deeperpossibly sentientside called the Unifying Force, which is
the energy felt at the cosmic level of galaxies, space, time, and even fate.
Temples as targets: Like the Jedi Temple, the Shaolin Temple was destroyed by
fearful government forces but eventually was rebuilt. (Revenge of the Sith)
 The monks of Shaolin were one of many communities in China who studied
the phenomenon they called qi (sometimes written chi).21 Qi is also a
ubiquitous, invisible energy that underlies all things. Master Waysun Liao
explains that [a]ccording to the legendary theory of Yin and Yang, chi
exercises its powers ceaselessly, moving in a balanced manner between the
positive (constructive) and the negative (destructive) powers.22 Dedicated study
and cultivation of qi affords vitality, sensitivity, and even enhanced physical
abilities. Early qi masters used internal energy circulation and acupuncture
techniques to heal, just as the Jedi use the art of Curato Salva.23 The Shaolin
monks first cultivated qi for its own sake and only later learned to move this
energy into their limbs and weapons to become terrifying warriors.
The power wielded by warrior-monks across these worlds led to persecution
by political figures who sought scapegoats to deflect public attention away from
their own thirst for domination. The second Jedi Temple on Coruscant is invaded
during the bloody Jedi Purge in 19 BBY and is eventually reduced to rubble (as
seen in Revenge of the Sith).24 Similarly, the Shaolin Temple was twice destroyed
first in 574 and again in 845as part of an imperial purge of Buddhism as a
supposedly traitorous cult.25 Both temples were rebuilt by their resilient monks:
Master Luke Skywalker returns his renewed Jedi Order to a new Temple on
Coruscant, and the rebuilt Shaolin Temple still houses a brotherhood of monks
who keep alive their ancient traditions of Chan Buddhism and martial arts.
 Let Go Your Conscious Self:
Samurai and the Zen Art of
Lightsaber Maintenance
The samurai might seem out of place in a chapter on warrior-monks, because the
samurai were not monks at all.26 Instead, the samurai were an elite caste of
warriors in feudal Japan who married, ran households, raised children, and
owned property. Nonetheless, the samurai belong in this chapter because they
share with the Jedi a number of traits, especially a similar philosophy regarding
death, fate, and purpose.
Masked knights: this samurai from the 1860s and Darth Vader both donned
fearsome face masks as part of their armor. (The Empire Strikes Back)
 The samurai (whose name derives from saburou, which means to serve)
came to prominence in eighth-century Japan as the armed servants of the
aristocratic government of Japan.27 Proficient in many weapons, they mastered
the sword and the bow, which they wielded in battle as the mounted officers of
the armies of Japan, just as the Jedi Guardians are field commanders of the
armies of the Republic.28 Later, the samurai became advisers, diplomats, and
administrators comparable to the Jedi Consulars. Like all Jedi, they donned
flowing robes, served their masters with single-minded devotion, and trained
diligently in the ways of war.29 The most important links between the groups
were their deep philosophical affinities, demonstrated in their detachment in the
face of difficulty and death.30 We can best explore the many parallels between
the Jedi and the samurai by examining how the latter group embodied three
ideals: Bunbu itchi, Bushido, and Zen Buddhism.
Riding high: both the Samurai and the Jedi were versatile fighters. (Attack of the
Clones)
 Bunbu itchi means the pen and the sword in equal measure. It summarized
the samurais obligation to balance their mastery of warfare with civilized
endeavors, such as classical literature, calligraphy, and Confucian philosophy.31
We see this philosophy in the life of Miyamoto Musashi: a ronin or masterless
samurai whose unparalleled swordsmanship helped him survive countless battles
and duels. After his only defeat, which came at the hands of a wandering monk
armed only with a pair of short staves, he retired to a mountaintop cave. There
he penned one of the classics of Zen philosophy and sword fighting, The Book of
Five Rings, and produced masterpieces of painting, calligraphy, and even
woodcarving.32 Although proficiency with the pen distinguished the samurai
from mercenaries and enabled them to perform their civic and administrative
duties, their mastery of the sword was even more crucial. The long sword did not
only protect the samurais life: it was the life, the symbol, and the soul of the
samurai. A graceful weapon steeped in spiritual significance, it was an
instrument of life and death, purity and honor, authority and even of divinity.33
We can compare this to the Jedis reverence for the lightsaber.
The pen and the sword in equal measures: seventeenth-century samurai
Miyamoto Musashi excelled at both fighting and philosophy.
 The Jedis elegant weapon for a more civilized day also resonates with
spiritual and symbolic significance.34 Materially, it consists of a hilt that ignites a
blade of pure energy that can slice through almost any substance and, in the
hands of a trained user, can reflect blaster fire. Practically, a lightsaber is often
the only thing protecting a Jedi from death. When Master Kenobi returns
Anakins lost lightsaber, he scolds his Padawan, saying, Anakin, this weapon is
your life (Attack of the Clones). Spiritually, the lightsaber is the Jedis soul. One
of the final tests facing a Padawan is to assemble his or her own lightsaber. Thus,
the lightsaber is not only a sign of the Padawans maturity, but is also a unique
and deeply personal mode of self-expression.
From their earliest days, the Jedi were mindful of the dangers of the dark side
of the Force. To help future adepts along the narrow path to the light side, the
Jedi live by the strictures of the Jedi Code. The classical expression of the Code
based on the writings of Jedi Master Odan-Urr reads,
There is no emotion; there is peace. There is no ignorance; there is
knowledge. There is no passion; there is serenity. There is no chaos; there is
harmony. There is no death; there is the Force. A Jedi does not act for
personal power or wealth but seeks knowledge and enlightenment. A true
Jedi never acts from hatred, anger, fear or aggression but acts when calm and
at peace with the Force.35
Just as the Jedi live by and meditate on the Jedi Code, so the samurai lived
according to their own arduous code of Bushido, the way of the warrior.36
Bushido was not so much a systematic system of ethics as it was a set of
guidelines pertaining to dress, deportment, and behavior on the battlefield.
Samurai retainers owed absolute obedience to their master, just as Jedi Padawans
implicitly obey their Masters and all Jedi are to obey the decrees of the Jedi
Council.37 Finally, although Bushido was not a monastic code, it mandated a
frugal, sober life marked by the cardinal virtues of loyalty and obedience.38
A later version of the same Zen philosophy taught by Bodhidharma at the
Shaolin Monastery guided a samurais spiritual life and is the single greatest
parallel between the ideals of the samurai and the Jedi. Zen, similar to the
teachings of the Jedi Order, teaches that in order to truly understand all things,
one must let go of the conscious mind that divides the world according to
categories and must cultivate mushin or no mind. Zen detachment helped the
samurai attend to their various obligations with focus but not anxiety. More
important, it enabled them to face death in battle without fear. On this point,
Tsunetomo teaches that [i]f by setting ones heart right every morning and
evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains
freedom in the Way.39 Similarly, all Padawans face the Trial of Courage, the
purpose of which is for a Padawan to persist in the face of fear.40
The most valuable effect of the Zen mushin practice was the deep, almost
mystical connection with the world that it imparted. The Zen master Takuan
Soho wrote a series of letters to the sword master Yagyu-Munenori detailing the
importance of mushin for samurai. He claimed that if a fighter both masters the
physical techniques of sword-fighting and also develops no mind, the
perceived separations between mind, body, sword, and opponent will all
disappear, and he will strike down his opponent with the speed of a flash of
lightning.41 In a memorable scene from A New Hope, Obi-Wan teaches the same
Zen no mind to Luke Skywalker during an early lesson on lightsaber combat.
After Luke is frustrated by his inability to defend himself against a practice
droid, Kenobi blocks his vision with a flight helmet and tells him to let go your
conscious self and act on instinct, after which Skywalker is able to defend
himself effortlessly.42 How similar this is to Takuan Sohos admonition
Completely forget about the mind and you will do all things well.43
Along with the sword, the samurai revered the bow as a holy armament that
banished evil spirits with just the sound of the bowstrings release. We find a
wonderful parallel between the samurais Zen practice of archery at the very
moment that serves as the cardinal point from which time is measured in the Star
Wars universe.44 Like a samurai galloping through a crowded battlefield, Luke
Skywalker pilots his X-wing fighter toward the one vulnerable point on the
Death Star during the Battle of Yavin. He engages his targeting computer,
thinking he needs its help to make his all-important shot. Luke then hears the
voice of his mentor telling him to use the Force and, most important, to let
go.45 The young pilot turns off his instruments and finds peace in the midst of
the chaotic battle. Like a samurai releasing his arrow, Luke clears his mind, fires
his weapon, and strikes his target. Lukes one-in-a-million shot is like the feats
of superhuman accuracy by the Zen practitioners of archery who achieve mushin
[b]y letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind you so
decisively that nothing more is left of you but purposeless tension.46
No mind: Zen philosophy accords well with Obi-Wans training advice for
Luke, who must stretch out with his feelings. (A New Hope)
 Some Damned-Fool Idealistic
Crusade: The Jedi and the Knights
Templar
Just as the chroniclers of the Clone Wars record the valiant deeds of Jedi leading
their outnumbered clone troopers against the vast droid armies of the Separatists
in a galactic war that stretches from the Core worlds to the Outer Rim, our own
historians preserve tales of remarkable warrior-monks who survived not only
battle, while perennially outnumbered, but also starvation, solitude, and
ultimately betrayal in a faraway realm they called Outremer. These were men
whose bodies were protected by iron and whose souls were clothed in the
breastplate of faith.47 They are still renowned in history, legend, and myth as the
Knights Templar.
These European Christian crusaders were powerful warrior-monks whose
aggression was restrained by social codes and spiritual doctrines. They were
esteemed above other knights for their austerity, devotion, and moral purity. Like
the Jedi, they practiced individual poverty within a military-monastic order that
commanded great material resources. Both knightly orders demanded celibacy
and obedience from their members, who in turn were revered as paragons of
honesty, wisdom, and bravery.
Mighty fortresses: headquarters for the Jedi and Templar orders were sites of
training, diplomacy, learning, and defense. (Attack of the Clones)
 Although there had been Christian monastic and military orders before the
Templars, it was only [i]n the warrior-brothers of the Temple [that] the
meekness and humility of the true monk were united with the courage and noble
intent of the virtuous knight.48 Just as the Jedi evolve out of a spiritual
community that originally has no martial aspirations, the French knights who
formed the Knights Templar had no interest in starting a military order. After
more than ten years of combat in the Holy Land, these war-weary knights
wanted to atone for their sins by forming a lay religious community or joining an
established monastery. Yet the Christian king of Jerusalem, Baldwin II,
persuaded Hugh of Payns and his companions to save their souls by protecting
pilgrims on the roads.49 On Christmas Day 1119, these warriors took vows of
poverty, chastity, and obediencejust the same as any Christian clericand
created one of the earliest orders of Christian warrior-monks.50 Their formal
name was the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ, but they became known as the
Knights Templar because their original headquarters, the al-Aqsa mosque of
Jerusalem, was believed to occupy the spot where Solomons Temple had been
built. The Temple served as headquarters, arsenal, fortress, and home for these
knights, just as the Jedi Temple does for the Jedi. In time, the Templars created
an intercontinental network of fortresses and temples, just as the Jedi archives,
academies, and temples span the galaxy.
Wise knights: both the Jedi and the Templars were governed by a council of
high-ranking members. (The Phantom Menace)
 The Templars quickly became the fighting arm of the Church, having
allegiance only to the pope and the grand master.51 Similarly, Jedi are the
peacekeepers of the Republic who obey the chancellor and the Jedi Council. The
Jedi are governed by a Jedi Council of twelve senior members, headed by a
Grand Master, just as all of the major decisions of the Templars were made by
the twelve members of the Grand Chapter headed by the grand master. As
membership in the Jedi Order requires strict adherence to their code, so the Rule
that governed the Templars stipulated attendance at services together with the
canons, communal meals, plain clothing, simple appearance and no contact with
women.52 Templars were to dress in white, symbolizing that they had put the
dark life behind them and had entered a state of perpetual chastity.53 Although
their white robes were emblazoned with a red cross after 1143, their hooded
mantles bore a great resemblance to Jedi attire.
Due to their exceptional training and zealous devotion, the Templars were both
commanders and elite combatants. This matches the Jedis dual capacity as
either front-line fighter or commander of a military unit. The most famous
instance of Templars serving as unit commanders was during the Second
Crusade in 1148, when the Christian army of King Louis was in danger of
disintegration after a harrowing passage through the Cadmus Mountains. Louis
couldnt lead his heavily armored knights through unfamiliar terrain, so he
turned over his command to the Templar master Everard des Barres. The army
survived the ordeal only because des Barres divided the force into units, each
under the command of a Templar knight whom they swore to obey absolutely.54
More important than their dual roles in war was that the Jedi and the Templars
fought simultaneous battles on two very different planes: the physical and the
spiritual. Both groups saw themselves as crusaders in an ancient war between the
forces of light and the armies of evil.55 The Templars believed that they were
sanctified warriors protecting Gods land and faithful flock against heretics in
league with Lucifer. Of course, the Muslim Seljuks and Mameluks with whom
they clashed also saw themselves as the faithful servants of God and his one true
faith: Islam. Consequently, the Muslim warriors waged battle with every bit as
much moral conviction and certitude as the Crusaders. History teaches that
there were heroes and villains on both sides (to quote the opening crawl from
Revenge of the Sith), and each army committed horrifying atrocities. Christians,
for their part, saw their armed crusade in Outremer as an echo of a deeper
spiritual struggle against the forces of evil, because they were called to a dual
vocation of battling physical enemies as well as spiritual ones.56 Their patron
Bernard of Clairvaux emphasized this dual struggle when he described the
Templars as a new kind of knight . . . who devotes all of his energies to the
struggle on both fronts, against flesh and blood and against the evil spirits in the
air.57 More deadly than the armed warriors beyond the walls of their fortresses
were the inner spiritual demons that threatened to damn their souls through
temptations of selfishness and sinful errors, greed born out of fear.
Where the Templars saw themselves as fighting evil on two fronts, the Jedi
undeniably fight evil in body and spirit. From the time of the Force Wars of
Tython, the Jedi are for millennia the final bulwark protecting the galaxy from
Sith domination. Their struggle against the Sith is such a defining feature of the
Jedi Order that the Jedi nearly slip into oblivion when they delude themselves
into thinking that the Sith have been extinguished at the Battle of Ruusan.
Without their evil opposites, the Jedi lapse into complacency and are caught
unawares by the Siths brilliant revenge under Darth Sidious in Revenge of the
Sith. Every Jedis soul is also a battlefield in the contest between passion and
compassion, anger and peace. As warriors, as well as monks, Jedi have to walk a
razors edge by being fierce enough to vanquish their foes without being pulled
to the dark side by anger.58 Many of the most gifted Jediincluding Count
Dooku and Anakin Skywalkerlose their balance and succumb to the allure of
the quick but corrosive path to the power of the dark side.
The power of the dark side: Lukes struggle with his fears mirrors medieval
admonitions to fight spiritual evils. (The Empire Strikes Back)
Compassion and killing: twelfth-century Bernard of Clairvaux excused the
Templars warlike ways, despite conflicts with Church ideals.
 These dualismswarrior and monk, good and evil, physical and spiritual
lead to a number of tensions and contradictions in the lives of these virtuous
warriors. The Knights Templars existence posed a theological paradox for the
Church. As Christians, they were required to obey the imperative to turn the
other cheek and love their neighbor and practice nonviolence. Yet as warriors,
their primary function was to kill any of their Muslim neighbors who opposed
Christian conquest of the Holy Land. This theological conundrum was resolved
by the venerable Bernard of Clairvaux, who announced the Templars as the
champions of a higher struggle in which homicide, which was evil in Christian
eyes, was really malecide, that is the killing of evil itself, which was good.59
Bernard thus offered the rationalization that the Templars were not violating
Jesuss clear edicts against violence because they were not actually killing
people. They were killing evil that just happened to be inside people.60
The Jedi also struggle to reconcile the ideals of the Jedi Code, which requires
that Jedi show compassion and use their powers only to defend, and the realistic
demands of their war against the Sith, which sometimes require that the Jedi
show no mercy. When Mace Windu confronts Supreme Chancellor Palpatine
after he learns that he is the Sith Lord Darth Sidious, Windu disarms his
opponent and has Sidious apparently at his mercy. Anakin urges Windu to follow
the Code by showing mercy and allowing Sidious to stand trial. Windu protests
that Sidious is too evil to let live, even though killing an unarmed combatant
violates the Jedi Code. Like Bernard, he sees his opponent less as a man who has
done evil than as evil itself residing within a man. Unfortunately, Windu has no
idea how right he is: Sidious has orchestrated the entire encounter so that his
apparently pathetic position beneath Windus lightsaber, combined with
Anakins fear of losing Padm, will overwhelm the young Jedi, causing him to
strike Mace Windu and turn against the Jedi.
No mercy: Mace Windus refusal to grant Chancellor Palpatine mercy is a
technical violation of the Jedi Code. (Revenge of the Sith)
 Jedi and Templars alike struggled to balance monastic virtues with martial
ones. As monks, they needed to humbly resign themselves to fate and renounce
the mundane world. Yet as warriors, they were called to change the world by
force of arms and proudly turn the tides of fate. Templars feared the sin of pride,
not only as Original Sin of Christian theology but as [t]he biggest stumbling
block on the path to this new religious knighthood [and] an attitude long
encouraged and reinforced within the military aristocracy.61 As warriors, the
Templars were required to develop exceptional physical abilities, which
sometimes led to knightly arrogance. The Templars eventually resolved this
problem through a kind of compromise: a Templar had to maintain the utmost
humility as an individual while feeling intense pride in belonging to the
Temple.62 They seemed to have learned this lesson too well, because it was the
Templars uncritical obedience to authorityand not their pridethat proved to
be their undoing.
The Jedi also struggle to balance the selflessness required of them as members
of a monastic Order with the fear, pride, and other passions that come naturally
to normal creatures. It is easy to recall a number of Jedi who show excessive
greed, arrogance, and fear: Anakin laughing as he plummets his airspeeder
through the skylanes of Coruscant, Obi-Wan confronting General Grievous and a
huge force of droids on Utapau by himself, Luke setting off to rescue his friends
from Vaders grasp before completing his training. Yet it is in the life of the Jedi
Master Qui-Gon Jinnthe tall, aloof, and curt paragon of compassionthat we
best see how the warriors virtue of fearlessness becomes his greatest weapon:
from his bravado in his rescue of Queen Amidala from Naboo, even though the
planet has been occupied by the massive Droid Army of the Trade Federation, to
the moment when he and his Padawan casually saunter into a hangar guarded by
dozens of droids and promptly reduce them to scrap. Moreover, his faith in the
Force and its prophecy is demonstrated in his response to the Jedi Councils
decision that Anakin is too old and fearful to be trained as a Jedi. He is tenacious
in his commitment to train the boy, with or without their assent. By placing
incredible power in the hands of a person whom he believes to be the one who
will bring balance to the Force, Qui-Gon Jinn sets in motion a chain of events
that ends with the destruction of the Sith Order and the return of balance
between good and evil in the galaxy under Luke Skywalker and the New
Republic.
Reckless he is: Jedi such as Obi-Wan find fearlessness one of their greatest
assets. (Revenge of the Sith)
Sacrificial knight: Jacques de Molay was arrested and executed on King Philip
IVs orders.
 The final pattern shared by the Templars and the Jedi concerns their
remarkably similar betrayal by trusted rulers. The Templars betrayal began in
1307 with King Philip IV of Frances plan to consolidate the Templars and the
Hospitallers (a smaller order of warrior-monks) into a single crusading force
under his command. His stated intention was to use this combined order to
recover Outremer territories lost to Muslim forces in 1291. After the grand
masters of both orders rejected the kings plan, Philip plotted to seize the
Templars considerable assets. The Templars had accumulated enormous wealth
since their foundation and represented an irresistible target to an impoverished
monarch such as Philip, who was already deeply in debt to the Order. The
Templars also made a monarch such as Philip uneasy, because they were an
independent military forceexempt from taxationthat could move freely
within his borders.
Knights to pawns: even the greatest warriors of the Templar and Jedi Order, such
as Ki-Adi-Mundi, were vulnerable to betrayal. (Revenge of the Sith)
 On Friday the 13th of October, 1307, Philips men executed a secret warrant to
arrest as heretics all of the Templars in France, including their grand master
Jacques de Molay, who had served the day before as a pall bearer at the funeral
of the kings sister Catherine.63 This treachery is reminiscent of Supreme
Chancellor Palpatines plan to destroy the Jedi Order through the issuance of
Order 66: one of the contingency plans that the clones have been trained to obey
during their conditioning on Kamino. This order commands the clone troopers to
destroy every member of the Jedi Order, even the Jedi who have served as their
comrades and commanders for the last four years.64
Both orders were also dishonored by slanderous propaganda campaigns. The
Templars were charged with crimes that were deemed deeply offensive to
medieval Christians: denying and spitting on the cross, homosexual acts, and
worshiping profane idols.65 For their part, the Jedi were painted as the real
traitors of the Clone Wars: imperial propaganda implicated the Jedi in the
creation of the clone troopers and the manipulation of the Senate.66 Very few
knights survived either massacre.
 We glean two important lessons from these stories of betrayal. The first is that
those who strive for virtue are especially imperiled in a world filled with deceit
and villainy. As powerful as these knights were, they were outwitted by
adversaries who relied on cunning, instead of courage. The second lesson is that
an excess of either greed or fear can prove fatal. The Templars perished in part
because of their power and wealth. They also naively trusted Pope Clement V
who initially absolved the Templars of their guilt in 1308 but then gave in to
Philips pressure and suppressed the Order in 1312when there was clear
evidence that the king had designs on their property and was circulating
scandalous rumors about them.67
Darth Sidious counts on the Jedis misplaced pride in their collective ability to
feel the Force when he unfurls his plan for galactic domination without their
notice. Only Yoda senses that the Jedi have become dangerously proud. He
warns Kenobi and Windu that the arrogance they lament in Anakin Skywalker is
a flaw all too common among Jedi. Even members of the Jedi Council as
venerable as Ki-Adi-Mundi and Mace Windu are blinded by their excessive
pride in the inherent moral purity of all Jedi. They refuse to accept evidence that
Count Dooku is behind the plot to assassinate Senator Amidala, saying that
Dooku is incapable of such treachery by virtue of having once been a Jedi.
A final meaningful parallel is that the epilogue of the Templars sad story reads
much like the prologue of the Siths rise to power: both tell of an evil and secret
brotherhood hell-bent on revenge. According to legend, a handful of Templars
survived the purge, thanks to their vast land holdings, secret dens, and global
web of contacts. As centuries passed, this cabal clung to the shadows and grew
into a powerful occult brotherhood driven by their lust for revenge against the
French Crown and the pope. An eighteenth-century account claims that the
Freemasons inherited and perverted the Templars mission, adding a vow of
vengeance against the kings and priests who destroyed their Order, and against
all religion.68

No Such Thing as Luck

Histories of the exceptional men who lived and died as Shaolin monks, samurai,
and Knights Templar remind us that the Jedi are not alone in seeing that we are
not really crude, material creatures who beg for good fortune and die for good
when our flesh goes cold. People from our histories formed similar societies
dedicated to preserving peace and fighting on behalf of innocents too weak to
defend themselves. All people, on whatever world they might live, need these
stories. These tales kindle the hope and courage we need to reject the corrupting
allure of greed, resist the seductive power of anger, and, above all, live in the
face of death and change. The Jedi are the first but not the last to look beyond
the desires bound to this world to live in the light of the brighter truth that we are
luminous beings, as Yoda instructs Luke, who partake of a common, unifying,
cosmic energy, whether we name it Ashla, qi, spiritus, or the Force.69

Notes
1. Laurent Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplay (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1997), 34.
2. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York: Princeton
University Press, [1949] 1968), 3.
3. Though that wont stop me from still trying after thirty-three years.
4. Daniel Wallace, The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force
(Bellevue, WA: Becker & Meyer, 2010), 8.
5. Celibacy is enforced during most of the Jedi Orders long history, though the
Order occasionally makes exemptions to this rule, as in the case of Ki-Adi-
Mundi, whose home world of Cerea is so depopulated by war that he is allowed
to have a family without renouncing his membership in the Jedi Order. Similar
exceptions to celibacy rules were made in the Shaolin Temple in 621 CE, when
the monks were allowed to marry as a reward for their courage in battle. Also,
the reformed Jedi Order under Luke Skywalker does not require celibacy.
6. Meir Shahar, The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese
Martial Arts (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008), 9.
7. Ashley Croft, The Shaolin Temple: A History and Evolution of Chinese
Martial Arts, Zen Buddhism and the Shaolin Warrior Monks (London, UK:
Martial Arts Publishing, 2010), 15.
8. Robin Reilly, Karate Training (Rutland, VT: Charles Tuttle, 1985), 30.
9. Croft, The Shaolin Temple, 19.
10. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplay, 180.
11. Shahar, The Shaolin Monastery, 102.
12. Croft, The Shaolin Temple, 17.
13. Shahar, The Shaolin Monastery, 122.
14. Wallace, The Jedi Path, 70
15. Croft, The Shaolin Temple, 31.
16. Ibid., 30.
17. David Chow and Richard Spangler, Kung Fu: History, Philosophy and
Technique (Burbank, CA: Unique Publications, 1982), 11.
18. Croft, The Shaolin Temple, 22.
19. Ibid., 26.
20. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplay, 35.
21. Thanks to Rebecca Kemnitz MacMullan for her clear and insightful lessons
on the nature of qi.
22. Waysun Liao, Tai Chi Classics (Boston: Shambala Publications, 1990), 17.
23. Wallace, The Jedi Path, 26.
24. The Jedi Temple, in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, 152.
25. Croft, The Shaolin Temple, 33.
26. Japan has a history of warrior monks called sohei or yamabushi. For more
on them, see Mikael Adolphson, The Teeth and the Claws of the Buddha:
Monastic Warriors and Sohei in Japanese History (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 2007).
27. Thomas Cleary, Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido
Shoshinsu (Rutland, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 1999), x.
28. Victor Harris, Translators Introduction, A Book of Five Rings
(Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1974), 2.
29. Even Darth Vaders helmet looks a great deal like the lacquered helmets of
the samurai.
30. An important point of divergence between these two communities is that
Jedi, by definition, do not fight other Jedi in combat, because all Jedi serve the
light side of the Force. Jedi who oppose others are called either Fallen or Dark
Jedi, or, if they cross over to the dark side, the Sith. Each individual samurai,
on the other hand, served his particular lord unto death and very frequently
crossed blades with other samurai.
31. Cleary, Code of the Samurai, 6.
32. Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings, Victor Harris, trans.
(Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1974).
33. Takuan Soho, The Unfettered Mind, William Scott Wilson, trans. (Tokyo:
Kodansha International, 2002), 15.
34. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplay, 34.
35. Stephen Sansweet, Pablo Hidalgo, et al., The Jedi Code, in The Complete
Star Wars Encyclopedia, vol. 2 (New York: Ballantine, 2008), 146.
36. Cleary, Code of the Samurai.
37. Although the samurai were formally abolished in the nineteenth century,
their spirit lives on in many of the Japanese martial arts. The samurais
devotion to his master continues in the close and formal relationship between a
master or senior student (sempai) and the student or junior (kohai).
38. Rielly, Karate Training, 61.
39. Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, William Scott
Wilson, trans. (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979), 18.
40. Wallace, The Jedi Path, 99.
41. Soho, The Unfettered Mind, 55.
42. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplay, 59.
43. Soho, The Unfettered Mind, 55.
44. All dates in the Star Wars universe are measured in years before the Battle
of Yavin (BBY) or after it (ABY).
45. Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplay, 115.
46. Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery, R. F. C. Hull, trans. (New York:
Vintage Books, 1971), 35.
47. Michael Haag, The Templars: The History and the Myth (New York:
Harper Collins, 2009), 145.
48. Barbara Frale, The Templars: The Secret History Revealed (Dunboyne,
Ireland: Maverick House, 2009), 62.
49. Haag, The Templars, 96.
50. The Order of Knights of the Hospital of St. John, or the Hospitallers, was
founded in 1099 and took up arms in 1118 under their master Raymond de Le
Puy.
51. Robert Payne, The Dream and the Tomb: A History of the Crusades (New
York: Stein and Day, 1984), 125.
52. Haag, The Templars, 101.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid., 121.
55. Interestingly, some of the Jedi who fight in the Mandalorian Wars are called
the Revanchists or the Jedi Crusaders.
56. Frale, The Templars, 58.
57. Ibid., 65.
58. We see an excellent example of this tension in Jedi Battlemaster Skarch
Vaunks caution regarding Form VII Lightsaber Combat: Juyo or the Ferocity
Form. Juyo is highly effective in the hands of a Master such as Mace Windu,
for it harnesses the power of the Jedis passion. Yet it is also a controversial
form that is taught only to select Jedi because it risks drawing the Jedi to the
dark side. See Wallace, The Jedi Path, 135136.
59. Haag, The Templars, 103.
60. As the wise Chancellor Palpatine would say, this hair-splitting logic might
be easier to swallow if you take a broader view.
61. Frale, The Templars, 67.
62. Ibid.
63. Haag, The Templars, 217.
64. Another fascinating historical parallel involves the clone troopers of Star
Wars and the Mamelukes: slaves primarily from Turkey, Russia, and Greece
who served as the elite core of the Egyptian army. The Mamelukes, similar to
the clones, were outsiders who were bred to fight for a society that denied them
freedom and whose rewards they could not enjoy.
65. Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 202.
66. Jedi Order, in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, vol. 2, 150.
67. Frale, The Templars, 186.
68. Abb Augustin Barruel, Memoirs (1797), as quoted in Haag, The Templars,
266.
69. I would like to thank my good friend Kevin Decker for his invaluable and
knowledgeable critiques that greatly improved the quality of this chapter.
 Chapter 4

A House Divided

The Causes and Costs of Civil War

Paul Horvath and Mark Higbee
I will not let this Republic that has stood for a thousand years be split in
two.
Chancellor Palpatine, Attack of the Clones

The Star Wars saga may appear to be just entertainmentgreat storytelling,

stunning visual effects, and terrific adventure on an epic scale. Yet the galaxy we
see there also reflects humanitys real history of conflict and economic
exploitation more than many fans may realize. The films center on two galactic
civil wars, just as American history pivots on the Civil War. Both plot lines turn
on the course of civil wars and their causes and consequences. Furthermore,
brutal economic exploitation and political division are imbedded in the Star
Wars galaxy, just as they exist in much of our history. Different civil wars have
had quite different causes: some were fought over political rivalry, religious
disputes, and economic conflict. Some resulted in the overthrow of oppressive
leaders. Others demonstrated deep divides on policy and politics. All were
devastating to the people who lived through them.
 Separatists, Revolutionaries, and
Those Loyal to the Empire
Take the wars that led to the creation of Imperial Rome. In the last decades of the
Roman Republic, powerful nobles vied to control the government and the wealth
that implied, going head-to-head in a series of costly civil wars. Julius Caesar
vied with Pompey the Great before emerging as the ruler of Rome. His nephew
Octavian tangled with Mark Antony and Cleopatra in another civil war that
spanned the Mediterranean and cost thousands of lives. When he emerged
victorious, Rome celebrated a Pax Romana with his assumption of absolute
rule that was just as hollow as the peace, freedom, justice, and security that
Anakin believes Palpatine will provide by eliminating the Republic.
In the seventeenth century, a different type of civil war broke out in Britain
between forces loyal to Englands Parliament and supporters of King Charles I.
This British Civil War had economic and political causes complicated by
religious disputes between Puritans and the kings traditional church. From 1642
to 1649, the war raged and the people suffered horribly, often at the hands of
their nearest and dearest, as neighbor turned against neighbor. When the king
was defeated, his execution didnt bring the democratic republic that some
parliamentary supporters had envisioned. Ironically, the victorious parliamentary
leader, Oliver Cromwell, wielded more absolute power than King Charles had
ever enjoyed: a feat that Palpatine would have applauded.
This 1643 woodcut made light of the real divide separating families and
neighbors during the British Civil War.
The Torys Day of Judgment: Patriots prepare to tar and feather a Loyalist during
the American Revolution.
 Political revolutions sometimes share the attributes of a civil war. The
American Revolution deeply divided communities in some of the thirteen
colonies, as pro-revolutionary Patriots struggled for local control with the so-
called Loyalists, who wanted to stay under the rule of the mother country.
Before the wars outbreak, Patriots tarred and feathered dozens of Loyalists,
pouring pitch-black liquid pine tar over their victims, then coating the tar with
feathers and parading them around the town in humiliation and disgrace. A
Virginia shoemaker was tarred and feathered just before the Revolution for
King-worship, while a Connecticut mother was threatened with tarring and
feathering in 1776 because she named her newborn son for a British general.1
Patriots forced Loyalists to sign loyalty oaths to the Revolution; if they
refused, the Loyalists were jailed and their property was confiscated. Loyalists
formed pro-British militias in areas where the British army was operating, often
engaging in pitched battles with pro-revolutionary forces, especially in the
South. When the Patriots won and the British were forced to withdraw, tens of
thousands of Loyalists left the new United States and emigrated to Canada so
that they could remain under the rule of the British Crown.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 began a multiparty civil war that lasted
almost six years. The ruling tsar was deposed by the leadership of the Russian
parliament, supported by a population that was weary of the losses inflicted by
Russias involvement in World War I. The provisional democratic government
that replaced the tsar was itself overthrown by the Bolsheviksled by Vladimir
Lenineight months later. This kicked off a bloody, multiparty civil war, as the
Bolshevik Red Army fought not only the anti-Bolshevik White Army, but also
regional and nationalist insurgent groups seeking to break away from what
became the Soviet Union, along with foreign armed forces that tried to intervene.
As in other civil wars, civilians paid the heaviest costs: both the Whites and the
Reds carried out massacres and summary executions of groups they suspected of
supporting the other side, and constant warfare combined with drought to
produce mass famines and epidemics. After the Whites lost, hundreds of
thousands of their supporters fled Russia, just as the American colonial Loyalists
had fled to Canada after their side lost the Revolution.2
The American Civil War is possibly the best parallel for the civil wars that
afflict the Star Wars galaxy. There is no mastermind to rival Palpatine, of course,
and his particular brand of political skullduggery was absent. Instead, the
American Civil War is understood by serious scholars and students of history to
have resulted, in complex ways, from slaveryand this was universally
understood by Americans during the Civil War but forgotten by later
generations. Nevertheless, the two plot lines of Star Wars and the U.S. Civil War
contain some striking parallels in the events leading up to the outbreak of war. In
both the Star Wars galaxy and Americas history, civil war sparked atrocities and
featured charismatic freedom fighters, even as it divided and destroyed families
and communities.
A street barricade in Moscow during the Russian Revolutionfighting filled the
streets of many Russian cities.
 Have You Come to Free Us?: The
Roots of Civil Wars
The Star Wars saga includes two different civil wars. The first of these involves
the Trade Federation, later included in the Confederacy of Independent Systems,
fighting to separate from the Galactic Republic. This struggle is shown in The
Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. In the
remaining three films, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the
Jedi, a different but equally relevant civil war takes place, as individuals and star
systems that are subjects of the Empire rebel. The Empire has ruled its subjects
with absolutist and arbitrary force. Both of these civil wars echo events that have
taken place in our own history, although in vastly different ways: It is a period
of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first
victory against the evil Galactic Empire . . . Pursued by the Empires sinister
agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen
plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy.3
As the opening text to A New Hope declares, the war between the Alliance to
Restore the Republic and the Empire is a civil war. From Princess Leia Organas
viewpoint, the Alliance represents the true political traditions of the galaxy that
were abandoned with Palpatines illegitimate seizure of power. Subverting and
corrupting the Republic from within, his Empire has become a force for evil and
oppression. For Darth Vader and his master, Leia is the illegitimate force: a spy,
a Rebel, and a traitor. This dispute seems purely about politics and ideology. The
Alliance to Restore the Republic, as its name suggests, seeks a return to the old
form of galactic government and the freedoms it protected. The Empire fights to
maintain its control over the galaxy and all within it. In many ways, this deep
divide over the ideals of legitimate government and how far centralized
governments should control regional rulers resembles the split seen between the
North and the South in the later stages of the American Civil War.
Compare this divide with the coming of an earlier civil war in the galaxy:
Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to
outlaying star systems is in dispute. Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade
of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the
small planet of Naboo.4
 The opening words of the Phantom Menace set the tone for the Clone Wars to
come. The conflict in the films begins with an economic motivation: in order to
overcome the Republics confiscatory taxation, force is necessary.5 This has
parallels in the complaints made by some colonists before the outbreak of the
American Revolution: No taxation without representation. Similarly, the
American Civil War resulted from attempts of the slaveholding class of the
South to avoid any risk that the democratically elected government of the United
States would confiscate the slaveholders property or endanger their political
power. When Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in 1860, the losers in a
national political election refused to accept the result of the election for the first
time in American history. The winners, the Republican Party, promised to both
halt slaverys expansion into new territories and to protect it in the states that had
slaverybut this was nonetheless a threat to the means by which slave states
maintained their wealth.
The American Civil War was thus caused by slavery and its course greatly
shaped by the wartime actions of the slaves themselvesbut it was not a war
sparked by moral concerns with ending slavery. As the war began, nobody in the
Lincoln administration professed a desire for a war that attacked slavery; instead,
Lincoln proclaimed that he would not touch the rights of slaveholders in the
existing slave states. Similarly, the Jedi and the Republic were willing to turn a
blind eye to the moral issue of slavery, at least in Anakins day, as demonstrated
in this exchange between Anakin and Qui-Gon Jin:
As a Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn has the Republic, not the abolition of slavery, as his first
priority. (The Phantom Menace)
Lincoln was reluctant to take up the antislavery cause, even when the Civil War
began.
 Anakin Skywalker: I had a dream I was a Jedi. I came back here and freed all
the slaves . . . have you come to free us?
Qui-Gon Jin: No, Im afraid not.
Of course, there were plenty of moral arguments against the continuation of
slavery before the Civil War voiced by a small Northern minority, the
Abolitionists. The Abolitionists were for the immediate emancipation of all
slaves in the United States and didnt want to reimburse slave owners for even a
penny of their lost property. In contrast, Southern leaders were devoted to
protecting slavery above all else: after the election of Abraham Lincoln as
president in November 1860, they declared their states independent of the United
States, in order, they said, to protect and perpetuate the slavery that was the
foundation of their wealth and property. The rest of the United States refused to
accept any act of secession, and civil war resulted. For the seceding states, it was
a war to protect and expand slavery, and for the North, it began as a war to
preserve the Union. Yet over time, the Norths war objectives changed, and it
became a war of liberation, a war to save the Union by destroying slavery. Thus
secession, meant to preserve slavery, produced a war that the North concluded
could not be won without destroying slavery.6
Slavery was deeply rooted in both the American political system and in the
economy of the Star Wars galaxy, however, and it was not easy to uproot.
Padm Amidala: I cant believe there is still slavery in the galaxy. The
Republics anti-slavery laws . . .
Shmi Skywalker: The Republic doesnt exist out here.
Leading up to the nineteenth century, the most extensive system of slavery in
historynow called Atlantic slaverydeveloped in the Western Hemisphere
under European colonialism. In Africa, countless wars were fought for the
purpose of enslaving people and selling them into the transatlantic commerce in
human beings. The trade in human beings was the most profitable and
strategically influential commerce in the worldmuch as petroleum is today.
People from Africa and goods produced by slave labor on New World
plantations, including sugar, indigo, rice, tobacco, and coffee, were the dominant
world commodities. Profits from slavery yielded about a third of the capital
formation of Britain in the 1770s, and slave-grown products contributed
immeasurably to the rising standard of living in the centers of the empire.7 In
large part, the capital that financed industrialization was produced from slave
labor and slave trading. Any proposal for the universal and immediate
emancipation of all slaves seemed foolish and irrational to many: abolitionists
seemed to be calling for a reduction in societys wealth, just as foolish as
Padms expectation that antislavery laws will be enforced across the Republic.
After the invention of the cotton gin (a simple machine that extracted the fiber
of the cotton plant from the burr mixed with seeds and thereby made the fiber
usable) in 1793, cotton plantations spread quickly across the South. The cotton
plantations were entirely dependent on slave labor, just as the vast Hutt empire
relies on cheap slave labor, and slavery grew fast in the United States: in terms
of territory, in its political and economic importance, and in the number of
slaves. Cotton quickly became the key product for the new industrial factories of
England and New England alike. Consequently, cotton rapidly became the
principal crop of the slave South and by far the most valuable product of the
entire U.S. economy.
Working a cotton gin.
 By the 1830s, cotton cultivation had spread, with slaveholders and slaves,
westward from the original states into the new Gulf states of Alabama,
Louisiana, and Mississippi, as well as into east Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri.
Cotton so dominated the economy and politics of the country that it was called
King Cotton. Senator James Hammond proclaimed the power of the South and
its master crop in 1858: The slaveholding South is now the controlling power of
the world and No power on earth dares . . . to make war on cotton. Cotton is
king.8 The Trade Federation and the Empire display similar levels of arrogance
in their own time.

Begun the Clone War Has: How

Wars Divide Republics and Empires
Civil wars dont always begin with major confrontations or pitched battles. The
Clone Wars might have opened at Geonosis, but the origins of the conflict date
back at least to the Blockade of Naboo and the taxation of trade routes before
that. The Shot Heard Round the World in Lexington, Massachusetts, where
American militia held their own against British troops, happened more than a
year before the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. Similarly, the
American Civil War started small, in one specific state. South Carolina was the
first of the slaveholding states to withdraw from the United States after Lincolns
election, passing its Ordinance of Secession on December 20, 1860. A few
days later, the states secession convention adopted the South Carolina
Declaration of the Causes of Secession, which depicted Lincolns election as an
abolitionist threat to slave owners continued right to possess slaves, the form
of property deemed indispensable to South Carolinas prosperity. With Lincolns
oath of office, proclaimed the Declaration, The guarantees of the Constitution
will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The
Slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-
protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Consequently, South Carolina declared it had dissolved its ties to the United
States and resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate
and independent state.
Other slave states followed South Carolinas lead, but the Northern states and
their elected officials did not willingly allow the United States of America to be
dissolved. Despite this, it wasnt until April 1861 that the war started with the
attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. The first pitched battle took place at
the First Battle of Bull Run, two months later. From this perspective, the long
gap between the isolated actions of the Trade Federation on Naboo and the
Battle of Geonosis makes perfect sense: it often takes a long time to turn from
civil dispute to civil war.
John Calhoun, the South Carolina senator who staunchly defended slavery and
who championed South Carolinas right to defy federal laws.
Count Dooku, leader of the Separatist Confederacy of Independent Systems.
(Attack of the Clones)
 In the Star Wars universe, the formation of the Separatist Confederacy and its
slow road to civil war happen in a very similar fashion to the rise of the
Confederate States of America. After the crisis on Naboo detailed in The
Phantom Menace, the Trade Federation becomes cynical about the Republic and
concludes that the corruption and bureaucracy in the Galactic Senate have
become too much to bear. When Count Dooku rallies to their cry of unjust
taxation, other systems begin to sympathize with their anti-Republic stance. As a
result, other groupsthe Corporate Alliance, the Commerce Guild, the
InterGalactic Banking Clan, and the Techno Unionjoin the movement. These
individual groups bring more than political support to the Confederacy: they are
also in the business of battle droid manufacture. The battle droid army of the
Confederacy is amassed to overwhelm the peacetime army of the Republic, as
well as the few Jedi who are entrusted with keeping the peace.
The Confederacy relies on a massive battle droid force to fight the Republic.
(The Phantom Menace)
 Both the U.S. federal government and the Star Wars Republic, on the other
hand, were vehemently opposed to secession. I will not let this Republic that
has stood for a thousand years be split in two, says Palpatine in Attack of the
Clones. Due to the growth of the Separatist Confederacy, in terms of both its
membership and its military force, the Galactic Senate confers emergency power
on the Supreme Chancellor, Palpatine. And as my first act with this new
authority, I will create a grand army of the Republic to counter the increasing
threats of the separatists, Palpatine declares in a later scene of Attack of the
Clones. It is at this point that the Clone Wars are inevitable.
Lincoln and the Republicans were elected in 1860 on a dual promise: first, to
leave slavery undisturbed in those states that permitted slavery; and second, to
stop slavery from expanding into any additional territories or states. Most voters
in the North supported this free soil position, but the slaveholders felt it was a
dire threat to slaverys perpetuation in the United States. It would ensure that
over time the slave states dominance of the U.S. Senate would decline. Since
the founding of the Republic, slaverys perpetuation had relied much on the
slaveholding classs disproportionate power in the federal government, as well as
on the slave systems ability to replicate itself in new territories. Southern elites
feared that halting the expansion of slavery into new states would ultimately
undermine slavery throughout the nation and thus destroy the source of their
wealth.
Lincoln won the 1860 election by securing an unprecedented majority of the
electoral college vote, without even being on the ballot in the Southern states.
That the Norths electoral votes alone could elect a president frightened the
slaveholding class: Lincoln won a fair and constitutional election, despite his
total lack of Southern support. This seemed to indicate that the Northern
majority could enact its will against the slave states, and they would have no
recourse.
We do not wish to suggest a parallel between Lincoln and Palpatine. We do
suggest that in both instances, a political change at the top of the respective
governments led to war. The granting of emergency powers to Palpatine is also
the motivation for the second war, pitting Rebels against the Empire. By not
ceding emergency power back to the Galactic Senate after the resolution of the
Clone War and then dissolving the Galactic Senate later, in A New Hope,
Emperor Palpatine dominates the galaxy with fear. Fear will keep the local
systems in line. Fear of this battle station, proclaims Tarkin in A New Hope
(with an arrogance comparable to Senator Hammonds boast about King
Cotton). This second war has parallels to the American Civil War in its later
stages.

Plans and People

Across the South, as U.S. forces invaded Confederate territory, oppression
weakened greatly. Wherever Union forces drew near, slaves challenged the order
of the plantations, and many slaves escaped to Union lines, obtaining freedom
and bringing military intelligence. The actions of heroic slaves who aided the
Union, such as Robert Smalls in the first two years of the Civil War, together
with Frederick Douglasss propaganda linking the Union cause with the defeat of
the slaveholding class, eventually convinced Lincolns administration and the
Northern public that emancipation was the strategic key to defeating the
Confederacy. Black communities across the North had organized militias and
sought to fight for the United States since the firing on Fort Sumter. Their
willingness to enlist, though rejected for the wars first eighteen months, became
compelling during the course of the war.
All of this laid the groundwork for Lincolns decision in the summer of 1862
that the war had to become a war of emancipation, as well as a war to save the
Union. Lincoln did not announce his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation
until after the battle of Antietam in September 1862, but he had concluded that
summer that emancipation was a military necessity. He waited to proclaim
emancipation as a war goal for the United States until after the United States had
a victory in battle, so that the move would not seem born of desperation.
In A New Hope, the Rebels destruction of the Death Star is a key military
victory, pivotal to the galaxys future. In the American Civil War, the shift of the
Norths war aims into a war to destroy slavery, as well as a war to save the
Union, was the epic turning point of the war. As Lincoln said when his
emancipation policy was criticized in the North, no human power can subdue
this rebellion without the use of the emancipation policy, and every other policy
calculated to weaken the moral and physical forces of the rebellion.9 In A New
Hope, the Rebels destroy the enemys most powerful weapon, the Death Star; in
the Civil War, emancipation destroyed the Confederates reason for war, as well
as the foundation of their economic system.
Lincoln recognized, along with many in the North by midway through the war,
that the black soldiers were indispensable to the hopes of victory by the United
States over the Confederates. By the wars end, blacks made up 10 percent of the
enlisted men in the U.S. Army and Navy. They proved to be an essential
strategic element in the cause of the Union.
One of the most infamous events of the Civil War was the massacre of
hundreds of black soldiers of the U.S. Army after their capture at Fort Pillow,
Tennessee, by Confederate troops, on April 12, 1864. This massacre occurred
after Fort Pillow was seized from U.S. forces by Confederate troops commanded
by Nathan Bedford Forrest (a plantation owner who in later years was a leader in
the creation of the Ku Klux Klan). These African American soldiers surrender
was not accepted, because the Confederate position was that blacks were not
eligible to serve in any army: the Confederates held that they were legally slaves
and inferior beings, who could not be granted the status of either a soldier or a
prisoner of war (much as the clones are in the Star Wars galaxy). W.E.B. Du
Bois, the great historian and civil rights activist, described the massacre, noting
that some black troops were burned alive, having been fastened inside the
buildings, while still others were nailed against the houses, tortured, and then
burned to a crisp.10
Although the pretext is different, the proclamation of Order 66 by Darth
Sidious in Revenge of the Sith and the great Jedi massacre that follows echo the
massacre of defenseless soldiers at Fort Pillow. After the Emperor issues the
order, clone troopers turn on their Jedi generals and attack them mercilessly. Just
as the surrendering soldiers at Fort Pillow were betrayed by their captors, given
that the soldiers expected that their surrender would stop the fighting but would
not lead to their own deaths, so, too, are the Jedi betrayed by their clone
troopers. In leading their troops against the Droid Army, the Jedi are essentially
defenseless against the forces that have been under their command just minutes
earlier. Shortly thereafter, Anakin Skywalker, now under the sway of the dark
side, enters the Jedi temple and slaughters all individuals inside: the Padawans,
staff, and Younglings all meet their end by his lightsaber. In both massacres,
defenseless lives were lost; people who had no expectation of being massacred
were killed in cold blood.
After turning to the dark side, Darth Vader massacres Jedi Younglings and turns
on his former friends. (Revenge of the Sith)
 Their murders were a violation of the laws of war. Lincoln, in 1863, had
codified wartime law and then distributed it not only to the U.S. troops but to the
Confederacy. Some of these provisions included maintaining communication
between enemy forces, truce, prohibiting torture, prohibiting assassination, and
protection of prisoners. Certainly, Forrest, as well as the Sith Sidious, but
especially Vader, forsook these codes of conduct and perpetrated what are
thought of as the most callous of acts thus far in either war. Both the Jedi code
and the code of war understood by nineteenth-century Americans were thus
violated by leaders who had professed to support these codes.
Nathan Bedford Forrest led the massacre of hundreds of African American
soldiers at Fort Pillow. After the war, he led the creation of the Ku Klux Klan.
 You Were My Brother: Border
States and Uncivil Divisions
The Civil War is often referred to today as a time that pitted brother against
brother. Sometimes this division was literal, as in the case of brothers
Alexander and James Campbell, who fought for the North and the South,
respectively, at the Battle of Secessionville in 1862.11 Divided households were
not as common as often supposed today, but families in the border statessuch
as Kentucky, Missouri, and especially the Bleeding Kansas territorywere
often divided in their loyalties and military service, even as Anakin and Padm
ultimately choose different sides in the Clone Wars and the newly turned Sith
apprentice, Darth Vader, turns his lightsaber on his onetime Master and mentor,
Obi-Wan Kenobi, who mourns his Padawan as a brother.
Kansas was so bitterly torn between pro- and antislavery supporters that the
Civil War in effect started several years early there: after the Kansas-Nebraska
Act of 1854 had opened the state to white settlement, supporters of both sides
had poured in, seeking to dominate and control the territorial government.
Territorial elections were marked by widespread fraud, and the pro-slavery local
government that resulted soon faced competition from a second, shadow
antislavery government based in Lawrence, Kansas. After several violent
skirmishes, supporters of both sides took to arming themselves and mounted
guerrilla attacks on communities on the other side. By 1856, the territory was in
a state of constant low-level warfare, which led it to be called Bleeding
Kansas. The war there essentially persisted through 1865, with communities
regularly mounting attacks on neighboring settlements. The border state of
Missouri was similarly divided, and by 1861, Missouri had two competing (pro-
and antislavery) governors and state legislatures, as federal troops battled against
a pro-Confederate state militia. The Mandalorians of the Star Wars galaxy
exhibit a similar division, with Jango Fetts cloned troopers forming the corps of
the Grand Republican Army in the Clone Wars, even while his homeworld of
Mandalore defects to the Confederacys cause.
You were my brother: On volcanic Mustafar, Anakin and Obi-Wan are torn
apart by their divided loyalties. (Revenge of the Sith)
Kentucky senator John Crittenden tried to stay neutral at the start of the Civil
War, but ultimately his sons served in different armies.
 Kentucky, which occupied a central location between the Union North and the
Deep South, is another example of how communities could be torn apart through
civil warfare. The state contained both pro-Union and pro-Confederate
supporters, and the state legislature, its governor, and Kentucky senator John
Crittenden initially attempted to maintain a neutral position between the U.S.
federal government and the Confederacy when the war began. The state
legislature passed a formal declaration of neutrality in May 1861, but the states
location was too strategically crucial for either side to ignore it. President
Lincoln famously commented that I hope to have God on my side, but I have to
have Kentucky. Union forces took up positions just north of the state, in
Illinois; Confederate troops constructed forts just across from Kentuckys
southern border in Tennessee; and Ketuckys citizens formed two competing
state militias, one pro-Union and the other pro-Confederate.12
General Ulysses Grant, commander of the Union Army, married into a family
that was strongly pro-Confederate.
 The stalemate ended in the summer of 1861, when Confederate forces invaded
the western corner of Kentucky, and then General Ulysses S. Grant led an
invasion of Union forces from the north. Pro-Confederate supporters fled to the
southern part of the state to establish a second, shadow state legislature in late
1861, and the state became a battlefield for the next two years. Senator
Crittendens own family was torn apart, as his oldest son, George, became a
Confederate Army general, while his younger son, Thomas, served as a general
on the Union side.
Another prominent Kentucky familythat of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln
was similarly divided. While Mrs. Lincoln lived in the White House, five of her
brothers or brothers-in-law fought for the Confederacy. Three of them died.13
Like Abraham Lincolns, General Grants in-laws were also pro-Confederacy.
Ulysses Grants wife, Julia, came from a Missouri slaveholding family; they
were married at her fathers plantation, and Grants parents did not attend the
wedding because they disapproved of his marrying into a slave-owning family.
Unsurprisingly, when the Civil War began, Julias childhood friends and her
family supported the Confederates.14 Although not a blood family, even the Jedi
are divided by the Clone Wars: Dookus defection is matched by many of his
peers during the course of the conflict, including the assassin Asajj Ventress and
eventually his replacement, Darth Vader.

No Time for Sorrows: Costs and

Consequences of Civil Wars
The American Civil War took a huge toll in life, blood, and treasure. Out of a
total population of 31 million people, North and South, 620,000 died. Of these,
360,000 served in the U.S. military, and 260,000 served the Confederacy.
Furthermore, The number of southern civilians who died as a direct or indirect
result of the war, as historian James McPherson has noted, cannot be known;
what can be said is that the Civil Wars cost in American lives was as great in all
of the nations other wars combined through Vietnam.15 The Civil War battle of
Antietam, September 17, 1862, was the single bloodiest day in American
history: 6,000 Americans were killed.16 Other battles caused even greater loss of
life, but over multiple days. Overall, roughly one in four Southern white men of
military age was killed, for a ghastly toll of 5 percent of all Southern whites.17
An even bloodier toll is suffered in the civil wars of the Star Wars galaxy, in
which the entire planet of Alderaan is destroyed, and vast populations
obliterated. Those wars are depicted as involving more destructive weapons than
even the new repeating rifles of the Civil War era. The point here is not to
compare actual historical casualties to those in the Star Wars civil wars, but
rather to stress that the high cost in life and suffering of the American Civil War
was analogous to the costs of the epic struggles of the Clone Wars and later the
Rebels versus the Empire, which is why both have so much dramatic appeal
today.
The American Civil War resulted not only in the destruction of slavery in the
United States, but in a process of Reconstruction that included the granting of
citizenship to the former slaves. This promise of equality, embedded in the 14th
and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, was more violated than practiced in
the century after the Civil War, but the existence of this promise became a
powerful weapon for the Civil Rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.
Similarly, the Empire regularly discriminated against nonhumans, while their
enemies in the Alliance built their coalition on interspecies cooperation and
respect that fully incorporated all sorts of life forms, including Wookiees,
Bothans, Mon Calamari, Ewoks, and others.
The economic consequences of the American Civil War varied by region: If
economic devastation stalked the South, for the North the Civil War was a time
of unprecedented prosperity.18 The outcome was probably the same in the Star
Wars galaxy: certainly, the droid foundries of Geonosis are profitable, as must be
the production of every Star Destroyer or measly TIE fighter. In war, the people
lose and the corporations win, regardless of ones galaxy.
In Star Wars, one civil division, the Clone Wars, is directly followed by
another conflict in which the Galactic Empire has become an oppressive force.
The second Star Wars civil war resembles an Abolitionist view of the American
Civil War: both in the United States and in the Star Wars galaxy they are wars of
liberation. In these films, the Empire has oppressed every free society into
submission, with the exception of the Rebel Alliance. The Rebels call for
freedom strongly echoes the moral arguments put forth by Abolitionists. Some
Abolitionists appealed to slave owners to repent of the sin of owning slaves by
immediately freeing their slaves. This resembles the rallying cry of the Alliance,
which calls for personal freedoms that were unjustly kept from them under the
yoke of the Empire.
Darth Vader redeems himself and reunites the galaxy when he kills his Sith
Master, Darth Sidious. (Return of the Jedi)
 In the final battle scene of Return of the Jedi, the murderous Darth Vader, loyal
servant to the dark side, is transformed and redeemed by the long-suppressed
love for his son: Darth Vader ultimately cannot stand to see Luke Skywalker
defeated and killed by the Sith Emperor. Deep inside, he retains the capacity to
love, and that love inspires him to rebel at the last moment. Darth Vader turns
against the Emperor and kills him, thus ending the second civil war. In doing so,
he saves his son, reclaims his humanity, and becomes a free man, just before
dying. He is, in the end, redeemed and the galaxy is reunited, ending the divide
that split families and cost billions of lives.
During the Civil War, Frederick Douglass held that the horrible loss of life was
the price the country had to pay for the sin of slaveryand that the sacrifice was
redemptive. In Lincolns Second Inaugural Address, he expressed much the
same idea that Douglass had proclaimed since the war started:
Frederick Douglass, former slave and Abolitionist leader.
 If God wills that [the war] continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-
mans two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until
every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with
the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said the
judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.19
The experience of the American Civil War made the United States into a
nation that could evolve into the country we know today. The people of the Star
Wars galaxy also pay a terrible price to end oppression and restore freedom. The
joyous celebrations that span the galaxy from Endor to Coruscant at the end of
Return of the Jedi, however, show that the terrible cost is justified to restore
freedom to all.

Notes
1. Benjamin Irvin, Tar, Feather, and the Enemies of American Liberties,
17681776, New England Quarterly 76, no. 2 (June 2003): 237.
2. Orlando Figes, A Peoples Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 18911924
(New York: Penguin, 1996), 773793.
3. From the opening crawl of A New Hope.
4. From the opening crawl of The Phantom Menace.
5. Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1982) masterfully describes the rise of global empires that
came to control and monopolize the surplus production of local societies, often
through extracting taxes. Wolfs work is a useful lens with which to view the
Star Wars story.
6. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (New York: Harcourt,
Brace, and Co.,1935), 61, for a quotation from Frederick Douglass in 1865 on
how the war started with both sides fighting for slaverythe Confederates for
its survival out of the United States, the North fighting for its survival in the
United States.
7. Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to
the Modern 14921800 (London, New York: Verso, 1997).
8. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 100.
9. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 100.
10. Ibid., 115.
11. J. Tracy Power, Brother against Brother: Alexander and James
Campbells Civil War, South Carolina History 95, no. 2 (April 1994): 130
132.
12. For an overview of the divisions and conflicts in Bleeding Kansas and in
the border states of Missouri and Kentucky, see McPherson, Battle Cry, 145
169, 290297. For Kansas, see Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested
Liberty in the Civil War Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004).
13. See McPherson, Battle Cry, 297; see also Lowell Harrison, The Civil War
in Kentucky (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1975).
14. Carol Berkin, Civil War Wives: The Lives and Times of Angelina Grimke
Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant (New York: Knopf, 2009),
227260. See also the official White House biography online at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/first-ladies/juliagrant.
15. McPherson, Battle Cry, 854.
16. James McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002).
17. McPherson, Battle Cry, 818, 856.
18. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: Americas Unfinished Revolution 18631877
(New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 18.
19. Lincolns Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865, in William E.
Gienapp, This Fiery Trial: The Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 221.
 Part II

Join Me, and Together We Can Rule

the Galaxy as Father and Son

POLITICAL HISTORIES IN STAR WARS

 Chapter 5

I, Sidious

Historical Dictators and Senator Palpatines

Rise to Power
Tony Keen
Sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me.
Senator Amidala, Attack of the Clones

This idea of a democracy being given upand in many cases being given up
in a time of crisisyou see it throughout history, whether its Julius Caesar
or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. You see these democracies under a lot of
pressure, in a crisis situation, who end up giving away a lot of the freedoms
they have and a lot of the checks and balances to somebody with a strong
authority to help get them through the crisis.
George Lucas, audio commentary, Attack of the Clones DVD
George Lucass Star Wars saga is, at heart, an adventure story. The political
narrative within the movies serves the purposes of that story: the tale of the
overthrow of the benign but weak Galactic Republic, replaced by the oppressive
Empire, before the Empire is itself destroyed by the heroes. The story represents
the triumph of good over evil.
Nevertheless, as is demonstrated elsewhere in this volume, Lucas clearly used
elements taken from actual human history to inform the course of events a long
time ago in a galaxy far, far away. This chapter looks at three instances in the
past when a democratic state was overthrown by a dictator, how they parallel
Lucass future (or past) history, and specifically the coup dtat that is carried out
by Senator Palpatine from Episodes I to III.
The three historical examples that best parallel Palpatines rise are found in the
lives of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus, Napoleon Bonaparte, and
Adolf Hitler. As in Star Wars, in each of these cases a republican form of
government was replaced by a dictator who received crucial support from many
of the republics own representatives: republican forms of governmentin
Rome, in Paris, in Berlin, and on Coruscantthus subverted themselves.

The Roman Republic, Augustus, and

the Sith Lord Emperor
The man who has become recognized as the first Roman emperor, Caesar
Augustus, was born Gaius Octavius in 63 BC.1 His great-uncle was the Roman
politician Gaius Julius Caesar, who was on his way to the ascendancy within the
Roman state. Julius Caesars impressive military victories and political skills
culminated in his appointment in 48 BC to the post of dictator and his
assassination four years later.
What is now described as the Roman Republic had emerged in the late sixth
century BC, after the city of Rome threw out the kings who had ruled it before.
By the first century BC, it was in name a democracy, in which every adult male
citizen had the vote, and power derived ultimately from the people; hence the
use of the phrase Senatus Populusque Romanus, known by its abbreviation
SPQR, meaning that decisions were made in the Roman state by the People, with
the Senate, the body composed of ex-magistrates, acting as the peoples leaders.
In practice, however, the political mechanisms were biased toward the wealthy.
Marble statue of Augustus in military garb (the Prima Porta Augustus), a copy
of a lost bronze original, first century BC.
 The system was also becoming badly strained. The Roman state had acquired
an overseas empire that stretched from one end of the Mediterranean to the other.
The political structures that developed to rule a small city-state were not
properly equipped for ruling a large empire. The empire had, moreover, brought
in a great deal of wealth, which was being monopolized by the elite; this was
causing serious social tensions and creating a dissatisfied urban poor, who could
be exploited by ambitious politicians.
Furthermore, Roman culture associated political and military leadership, which
meant that politicians generally needed to demonstrate their military prowess to
achieve high office. This problem was compounded by reforms of the army that
had been introduced in the early first century BC to address a problem that the
Roman Republic had faced. Originally, men would be recruited into the Roman
army only if they owned a certain amount of property. By the second century
BC, this pool of citizen farmers from which the infantry had been drawn was
diminishing. Rural families were increasingly driven off their farms (and into the
cities) by the already rich, who replaced them with slave labor; as a result, there
were not enough men from farming households to fill the armys ranks.
Abolishing the property requirement for service in the army and recruiting men
who had no property addressed the military manpower shortage but left the
rewards to be given to Roman troops (who at this point were not yet receiving
regular payment) to the generals in commandeffectively, this gave Roman
generals their own private armies.
Octaviuss great-uncle Julius Caesar exploited this to become the most
important man in Rome. In 49 BC, he invaded Italy with an army and was made
dictator for a year.2 Caesar was able to get this motion through the Roman
Senate because most of the members who opposed him had fled with Caesars
main rival, Pompey. In late 48 BC, the Senate renewed Caesars dictatorship for
a year, and in 46 BC, he was appointed dictator for the next decade. Caesar made
himself perpetual dictator in 44 BC. Caesar had enough support in the Roman
Senate to ensure that it supported these moves and enacted appropriate
legislation; those who opposed Caesar had either fled or were too frightened to
oppose him in any numbers. Assuming the powers of the Roman censorship,
Caesar appointed new members to the Senate and increased their numbers to
nine hundred men (from the three hundred the Senate had been before). All of
these men would be Caesars partisans. Moreover, Caesar had acquired for
himself the power to veto the Senate.
Jean-Lon Grme, La Mort de Csar (The Death of Caesar, 1867). This depicts
the moment in 44 BC just after the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Portico
of Pompey. Caesars corpse lies in the foreground, as his assassins go forth to
proclaim their deed.
 Caesars dictatorship was seen by some (with some reason) as being
tantamount to reestablishing a monarchy in Rome. And so a group of
conspirators brought about the assassination of Caesar on the Ides (15th) of
March in 44 BC.
The eighteen-year-old Octavius, to the surprise of many, was named in
Caesars will as his heir and became by adoption Gaius Julius Caesar
Octavianus. Modern scholars call him Octavian from this point on, and so shall
I, though in fact he hardly ever used that part of his name, preferring to stick
with Gaius Julius Caesar, for the associations it gave him with his great-uncle.
Portrait bust of Julius Caesars right-hand man and later Octavians rival, Mark
Antony, first century BC.
 Octavian moved quickly to secure his recognition as Caesars heir and
establish himself as a major political force in the Roman state. He had to contend
with Caesars right-hand man, Mark Antony, with whom he at first cooperated
and then fought. By 31 BC, Octavian had eliminated Antony.
Octavian then set about reforming the Roman state in such a way as to leave
himself in control but give the appearance of a restoration of the constitutional
norms. In 27 BC, the Senate granted him the title Augustus (the revered
one). It is by this title that we know him from this point on, and we call the
Roman state after this point the Roman Empire, as opposed to the Roman
Republicthough this distinct division was not recognized at the time.

Sounds an Awful Lot Like a

Dictatorship to Me: Palpatines
Subversion of the Galactic
Galactic empires in science fiction have been modeled on the Roman Empire
since the Foundation stories of Isaac Asimov, first published in the 1940s.
George Lucas follows in that tradition, and much of the political terminology of
the Star Wars galaxy (e.g., Republic, Empire, and Senate) are also found
in the Roman Empire and could be said to derive from that source.3 It is plain
that the basic structure of Lucass history derives from the fall of the Roman
Republic and the subsequent establishment of a monarchy.
The Senate of the Galactic Republic on Coruscant. Though it is much larger, it
shares with the Roman Senate a central location from which the Senate is
addressed, and the circular arrangement of the Senators reflects the semicircular
arrangement in Maccaris painting. (The Phantom Menace)
 The Galactic Republic, as we see in The Phantom Menace, is democratic and
governed by a Senate, just as Romes was. Senator Palpatine has a pseudo-Latin
name that is reminiscent of those of later Roman emperors, such as Constantine,
who ruled from 306 to 337. There are also echoes in his name of Palatine, the
name of a hill that stands at the center of the Seven Hills of Rome and is the
location of several ancient imperial Roman palaces. This is one of a number of
pseudo-Latin names in the Star Wars universe; Valorum, the name of Palpatines
predecessor as chancellor, is another. Beyond Coruscant, the architecture of
Naboo resembles that of imperial Rome, and the victory parade at the end of The
Phantom Menace is very like a Roman Triumph.
Senator Palpatine manipulates the Senate in the way at which Octavian proved
most adept. He recognizes the problems faced by the Republicin this case,
corruption within the Senate and an excessively influential bureaucracy that
hampers his making effective decisions in governmentand Palpatine exploits
them, as Octavian and his predecessors did. He gets himself made chancellor, as
Octavian demanded that the Roman Senate make him consul, and before him,
Caesar had himself made dictator. Palpatine then (in Attack of the Clones)
further manipulates the Senate into granting him exceptional powers in order to
face the emergency of the impending war with the Trade Federation. This may
be compared to the appointment of Octavian, Mark Antony, and another of
Caesars allies, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, as triumviri rei publicae
constituendae (triumvirs for the restoration of the Republic), and the
subsequent granting of special powers to Octavian. Palpatine promises (falsely)
that he will give up those powers once the emergency has passed; similarly,
Augustus claimed in his propaganda that he had given up his special powers
(though, in practical terms, he retained real control).
The triumphal procession on Naboo. (The Phantom Menace)
 As with the fall of the Roman Republic, it is important to remember that
control of the Galactic Empire is highly dependent on the control of military
force. Octavian became the dominant figure in Rome because he commanded the
personal loyalty of Roman legions that had once been Julius Caesars. He
subsequently maintained control by ensuring that the provinces where legions
were to be stationed were (for the most part) under his command (as the
ostensible representative of the Senate). Palpatines plot succeeds because he
creates a private army of clones over which he has direct control; this army
enables him to murder the Jedi Knights, the only force capable of opposing him.
A religious element also provides a further connection between Palpatine and
Augustus. Religion was extremely important to the Romans, if conceived of
somewhat differently from how we understand it now.4 One of the ways in which
Octavian secured his power was to acquire the post of chief priest, pontifex
maximus (the title survives as pontiff, one of the official titles of the pope in
Rome). In Star Wars, Palpatine is assisted in carrying out his coup by his
position as Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith, and the powers he gains from
his knowledge of the dark side of the Force. Of course, Palpatines powers are of
a different and more immediate nature, compared with the propaganda benefits
that being pontifex maximus conferred on Augustus. Yet we should remember
that several characters in A New Hope (including Admiral Motti, Han Solo, and
Grand Moff Tarkin) describe the knowledge of the Force held by the Jedi and the
Sith Lords as a religion.
There are, of course, a number of differencesStar Wars is far from being a
slavish presentation of the history of Rome as a space fantasy story. Most clearly,
Star Wars differs in the overt nature of Palpatines Imperial project, once it is
brought out in the open. In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine stands in front of the
Senate and proclaims the Galactic Empire: In order to ensure the security and
continuing stability the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic
Empire! For a safe and secure society.
The enthusiasm of the Galactic Senate for Palpatines proclamation of the
Galactic Empire, which is greeted with loud applause, is paralleled by the
Roman Senates enthusiasm for Julius Caesar. Lucas may well have had this in
mind. Padm Amidala and Bail Organa watch on, powerless, as the orator
Marcus Tullius Cicero did in Rome.
Chancellor Palpatine proclaims the First Galactic Empire. (Revenge of the Sith)
 By A New Hope, Palpatine has even gone as far as dissolving the Senate,
leaving fear of the Imperial forces (especially of the Death Star) to keep the
provinces in line. In a similar way, it can be argued that the presence of Roman
legions throughout the provinces of the empire was as much about keeping the
conquered territories under control as it was about defending the empire from
foreign powers.
Augustus never went as far as dissolving the Roman Senate. Augustus kept the
Senate going as a body, and in theory, it retained executive power, with Augustus
merely its representative. Augustus is referred to by modern historians as an
emperor, but the title he took for himself was princeps, first man.5 Subsequent
Roman emperors maintained the pretense, though it rapidly became obvious that
the actual scope for independent action by the Roman Senate was minimal.
Rather than proclaim a new form of state, Augustus went out of his way to
give the impression that he had restored the old form, and that things had
returned to how they were. That sort of rhetoric only occasionally appears in
Star Wars. One instance is the moment in Revenge of the Sith where Palpatine
congratulates his new acolyte Darth Vader on restoring peace and justice to the
Galaxy, after Vader has murdered the Separatist leaders.
The Senate of the Galactic Republic is in many ways different from the Roman
Senate. To start with, it is largerthere are 1,024 delegates to the Galactic
Senate, whereas the Roman Senate had (for most of its existence in the
Republic) only 300 members. Nor was the Republican Roman Senate
geographically representativeit consisted of magistrates and ex-magistrates
who belonged to the leading Roman families, drawn from the city of Rome itself
and gradually from those areas and families in Italy that had been granted
Roman citizenship. Only well after the empire was established were senators
admitted who came from outside Italy. In the Galactic Senate, in contrast, each
Senator represents a planet, a group of systems, or, in some cases, economic
organizations (e.g., the Trade Federation). In this, it more closely resembles the
U.S. Senate.
The causes of the wars that wrack Lucass Republic in the last years of its
existence are also dissimilar to those that affected the Roman Republic. In
Rome, the civil wars of the last century BC were primarily struggles between
individuals vying for supreme power within the Roman state. There were some
ideological elements to the struggle, as people fought to preserve the authority of
the Senate or for the rich or for the poor, but much of this was cover for personal
ambition.6 The internecine dimension to the fall of the Galactic Republic
emerges into the open only in Revenge of the Sith, when the last of the Jedi fight
for the Republic against the new Empire (though Palpatine has them painted as
traitors to the Republic).
The wars that are seen in The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and
most of Revenge of the Sith are different. We first see fighting between bodies
that are represented within the Republic but have their own armed forces (Naboo
and the Trade Federation). In possessing their own militaries, these planets are
unlike the actual provinces over which Rome ruled directly and more like
Romes so-called client kingdoms: states that maintained an appearance of
independence, though they had to follow Romes lead (and were considered by
the Romans to be as much a part of the empire they ruled as the provinces were).
In Attack of the Clones, this has developed into Separatist insurrections within
the Republic. These do have similarities to the Social War of 9188 BC, in
which many of Romes Italian allies seceded because Rome was unwilling to
share more widely the privileges of Roman citizenship. Yet the Social War was
over long before Octavian made his bid for power, and the Social War was not
secretly being manipulated by any of the Roman leaders whose careers profited
from their actions in it. There is in Lucass history a Galactic Civil War, but that
term is applied to the later conflict between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance
and is a reaction to Palpatines coup, not a precursor to it.
Palpatine is unlike Augustus in a number of respects. For one thing, he is a lot
older. Octavian was eighteen when he began his political career, and although he
lived to be seventy-six, he was already sole master of the Roman world by the
time he was thirty-two. Palpatine is in his fifties when he first becomes
chancellor and in his sixties when he assumes Imperial control (actor Ian
McDiarmid was fifty-four on the release of The Phantom Menace and sixty
when Revenge of the Sith was released).7
Palpatine is also much less favorably treated in the stories Lucas tells of him
than Augustus is often treated in historical accounts. Palpatine is obviously the
main villain of the Star Wars series, appearing in all but one of the movies and
mentioned in the one (A New Hope) in which he is not seen. Palpatine is evil,
and his actions cannot be seen as having any justification beyond his personal
lust for power. He is also ruthless, quite willing to sacrifice his ally Count Dooku
in order to draw Anakin Skywalker further toward the dark side.
Augustus was also ruthless when he needed to be. He ordered the execution of
seventeen-year-old Caesarion, the child of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.
Cleopatra had been Mark Antonys ally and lover, but her younger children were
allowed to live. Caesarion died because he was allegedly Julius Caesars
biological son and so a threat to Augustuss claim to be Caesars rightful heir.
Anakin Skywalker, having just executed Count Dooku at the encouragement of
Chancellor Palpatine. (Revenge of the Sith)
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra, 41 BC
(1885). This depicts the first encounter of Antony (the seated man in a helmet)
and the Egyptian queen.
 The orator Cicero had been Octavians supporter in the latters early career,
promoting him against Mark Antony, whom Cicero hated, but when Octavian
needed to make an alliance with Mark Antony, he was quite happy to allow
Ciceros name to be added to the list of those to be proscribed, in other words,
listed as public enemies who could be killed with impunity. Palpatine takes
similar actions against his opponents: he declares the Jedi enemies of the
Republic.
Ciceros head was hacked off by a centurion who caught up with him a short
time after the proscription. Supposedly, Augustus regretted that in later life, but
he still did it and continued to show little mercy to those who crossed him. He
also undoubtedly suspended the normal organs of the democratic state and
presided over a military dictatorship. Yet he is often seen as a great man, who
did what needed to be done in order to save what could be saved of the Roman
state. He is the classic benevolent dictator, a strong leader of the type that
Anakin Skywalker advocates to Senator Padm Amidala in Attack of the Clones.
As Cicero did with Julius Caesar, she rejects the idea as antithetical to the ideals
of a republic.
The final way in which Palpatine differs from Augustus is, of course, that the
Roman was successful. He established a system of rule for the Roman Empire
that, despite many crises, lasted for centuries. It even survived the loss of its
western territories and the original capital city; the line of Augustuss successors
can be said, with some justification, to stretch to Constantine XI Palaeologus, of
Byzantium, who died defending his people against the Turkish storming of
Constantinople in 1453. Palpatines Empire, in contrast, lasts for only twenty-
three years before the forces of the Rebel Alliance destroy it.

A Tale of Two Emperors: Palpatine

and Napoleon
The English literature scholar Anne Lancashire has observed that the references
to the Senate and the Republic in The Phantom Menace conjure up Roman
history and emphasize the idea of the cyclical nature of history.8 The notion of
repeating cycles of history, in which the Star Wars narrative is grounded, perhaps
reflects the influence of Joseph Campbell and Campbells ideas of the cyclical
nature of myth. Yet references to the Senate, the Republic, and the Empire do not
exclusively conjure up Rome.
For our second historical parallel, we must go forward almost two thousand
years in time. Yet many of the terms that are found in the Roman Empire, such
as Senate, or consul, recur in this example. This is because, like many European
states of the Early Modern Period, Revolutionary France viewed itself as the heir
to Roman culture.
France had been a monarchy until the Revolution of 1789, which led to the
establishment of the First Republic in 1792 (as in Rome, replacing a monarchy).
As did the new American nation across the Atlantic, the French legislature
proceeded to create a constitution for a French Republic in 1791. Like its Roman
predecessor, however, the French legislature was hampered by ideological
divisions and power struggles from the very outset. Into this situation came a
young military officer. Napoleon Bonaparte was in his twenties at the time of the
Revolution. From 1792 onward, he was involved in the wars of France, and in
1799, as one of Frances few militarily successful generals, he managed to
become one of three consuls who were to rule France jointly for ten years, a
similar arrangement to the Triumvirate of Octavian, Mark Antony, and Lepidus.
Like Octavian in that Triumvirate, Napoleon exploited his position within the
Consulate, getting himself made First Consul and then emperor in 1804. Like the
other dictatorships discussed in this chapter, there are clearly elements from the
history of Napoleon and Napoleonic France that can be compared with the rise
of Palpatine.9
The French had declared themselves a Republic in 1792, but this First
Republic lasted for only twelve years. The Galactic Republic is a much more
venerable organization and therefore carries more resonances of the Roman
Republic, which lasted for nearly five hundred years before Octavian took sole
control. Yet even this period is dwarfed by the twenty-five thousand years of the
Galactic Republics existence.
A Senate was established by Napoleons 1799 reform of the constitution (the
Snat conservateur), and the Senate vested the republic in an emperor, thus
turning over power to Napoleon; his elevation to the position of emperor was
also approved by a large majority of French citizens in a referendum vote. As
Padm Amidala says in Revenge of the Sith, So this is how liberty dies . . . with
thunderous applause.
Unlike Rome, where the transition from Republic to Empire was not at the
time formally acknowledged, in Napoleonic France the birth of an empire was
clearly signaled by Napoleons coronation in 1804. In his coronation oath,
Napoleon claimed that he was taking power as emperor to maintain the
integrity of the territory of the Republic, an assertion that reminds us of
Palpatines pronouncement in Revenge of the Sith that the Republic must be
reorganized into an Empire in order to insure the security and continued
stability.
Jacques-Louis David, The Coronation of Napoleon (18051808). Napoleon
(standing in the center of the painting) is wearing a garland meant to remind the
viewer of a Roman victors garland, and he is about to crown himself emperor.
Empress Josphine is kneeling in front of him.
 As with Augustus, Napoleon came to power on the back of military might. Yet
Napoleon was himself an extremely successful military commander, whereas
Augustus relied on others, such as his friend Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, to carry
out direct military command. In this respect, Palpatine, who tends to operate
through subordinates such as General Grievous or Darth Vader or, when
directing the forces of the Republic, Jedi Knights such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, is
closer to Augustus than to Napoleon. Napoleon also created an Imperial Guard
(Garde Impriale). A parallel can be seen in Star Wars, where Palpatine also has
a body of troops that is sometimes described as the Imperial Guard, who appear
in Return of the Jedi, though the troops official name is the Emperors Royal
Guard.
The wars that made Napoleons name were largely fought against foreign
powers. There were internal rebellions in the First Republic, but Napoleon
himself refused to take part in the War in the Vende, a Royalist rebellion against
the French Republic in western France that lasted from 1793 to 1796. He did,
however, defend the National Convention (the Republican legislature) against
Royalist rebels in 1795, in the incident that gave rise to Thomas Carlyles
comment about Napoleons use of a whiff of grapeshot. This could be
compared to the Galactic Republics wars against the Separatists, though, again,
Napoleon was not secretly in charge of the enemies he was fighting.
The Emperors Royal Guard accompanying Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader.
(Return of the Jedi)
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Portrait de Napolon Bonaparte en premier
consul (Bonaparte, First Consul, 18031804).
 The fact that Napoleon spent some years as First Consul before declaring
himself emperor could be seen as similar to Palpatines thirteen years as
chancellor, before he declared the Empire. Most notably, unlike Augustus, but
like Palpatine, Napoleon was eventually defeated. Yet that defeat came about
through the actions of external enemies, rather than internal onesthe armies
and the population of France remained substantially loyal, and Napoleon
remains a respected figure in France today. Unlike Palpatine, Napoleon was not
killed at the point of his deposition but was forced to abdicate.

Today Coruscant, Tomorrow the

Galaxy!: Nazi Germany and
Palpatine
Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, manipulated a democratic republic to gain
control over the government, using extra-constitutional means. As with Rome
and France, the democratic republic followed the dissolution of a monarchyin
this case, the Weimar Republic was established following the abdication of the
German emperor Wilhelm II in 1918, after the defeat of World War I. It should
be noted, however, that Weimar Republic is, like Roman Republic and
Roman Empire, a modern historians term; the official name for the state
remained the Deutsches Reich, or the German Empire.
As in the Roman Senate and the republican French government, the Weimar
Republics legislature, the Reichstag, was deeply divided between ideological
extremes from the very beginning, and a large faction within the republic never
did accept democratic forms of government. During periods when the economic
outlook was good, this system functioned, but the coming of the Depression in
1929 threw the political system into gridlock, which offered Hitlers National
Socialist German Workers Party (the NSDAP) its opportunity.
Adolf Hitler at a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg, c. 1928.
 During the Depression, the Nazi Party gained more seats in every election. By
the early 1930s, no party or coalition of parties in the Weimar legislature was
able to gain an overall majority in elections. Through the influence of
conservative politicians, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January
30, 1933. He then used political intimidation to give his Nazi Party sole power in
the German state. A mysterious fire burned down the Reichstag building on the
evening of February 27, and the Nazis claimed that the German Communists
were responsible, and that the national government was in danger. The parallel to
the final meeting of the Galactic Senate in Revenge of the Sithwhere Palpatine
demands absolute control in order to respond to a plot of the Jedi to overthrow
the Senateis a striking one.
After a final set of elections marked by violence and the suspension of
constitutionally guaranteed civil rights in March 1933, Nazi storm troopers
surrounded the German parliamentary building and refused to allow left-wing
representatives to enter. In a chamber thus dominated by Nazi legislators and
their allies (much like Caesars Senate), the Nazis proposed and passed an
Enabling Act, which essentially ended democratic rule and proclaimed Hitler the
dictator of Germany. In 1934, Hitler proclaimed himself Fhrer (leader). As in
Rome (and on Coruscant), democratically elected representatives had voted for a
dictator. People began to refer to the new German state as the Third Reich,
though this term was never the official name of the state.
German Panzer officers during World War II.
 The impact of the iconography of Nazi Germany on Star Wars is obvious. It is
seen in the military of the Galactic Empire, most particularly in the uniforms
worn by the Imperial forces, which resemble the uniforms worn by the
Wehrmacht, the German armed forces, in World War II.
Darth Vader and Imperial officers wearing uniforms with a very similar cut to
the Panzer uniform. (A New Hope)
 The Galactic Empire uses the term stormtrooper for its shock assault forces.
The first storm troopers (Sturmtruppen) had been elite assault troops of the
German army in World War I, and the name was later employed for the
paramilitaries organized by the Nazi Party (known in German as the
Sturmabteilung).
Imperial stormtroopers on the Death Star. (A New Hope)
German storm troopers, 1918.
 Hitler is also, in some ways, the most like Palpatine of the three dictators
discussed in this chapter. He is the closest in age to the mature galactic
politician, being forty-three when he became chancellor (Napoleon was thirty
when he became consul and thirty-four when he became emperor). More
significantly, Hitler is popularly seen as evil and indeed as a symbol of evil. This
makes him an appropriate model for Palpatine.
Palpatine even uses some of Hitlers rhetoric. In his address to the Senate
inaugurating the Galactic Empire, Palpatine says, I assure you [the Empire] will
last for ten thousand years (Revenge of the Sith). Such rhetoric can only make
the viewer think of the Thousand-Year Reich, the term used by Nazis to
predict their domination of the world. Both Hitler and Palpatine were to be
proved very wrong, their empires lasting for only a few decades. Again,
however, it should be noted that it was external wars that brought Nazi Germany
down, not internal rebellion (there were German resistance movements, but they
were small and largely ineffective).
Palpatine also uses a similar rhetorical style to Hitler. Hitler was a master of
rabble-rousing rhetoric, as he demonstrated, for example, when addressing the
Nazi rallies at Nuremberg. Hitler had massive party rally grounds constructed
there and used them for the annual Nazi Party Congresses from 1933 to 1938.
Hitler spoke to masses of Nazi Party members, troops, and other Germans.
These mass addresses were often filmed, most famously by Leni Riefenstahl for
her 1934 documentary Triumph of the Will. Hitler was very concerned about the
opportunities for exploiting media, such as the cinema, television, and
newspapers, for propaganda purposes. The 1936 Berlin Olympics were turned
into a spectacle that would endorse Germany, the Nazis, and Aryan supremacy
(though the victories of the African American Jesse Owens proved to be an
embarrassment to that ambition). Palpatines address to the Galactic Senate will
make many viewers think of the familiar footage of Hitler delivering speeches to
his supporters.
Once again, one can see a connection between the importance of the military
to Hitler and its importance to Palpatine. Unlike Augustus and Napoleon, Hitler
did not use a preexisting military force to bring him to powerthe German
armed forces had been significantly restricted under the treaty of Versailles,
limited to a hundred thousand men, and denied heavy guns, armored vehicles,
submarines, and capital ships. Hitler rebuilt these forces and rearmed Germany, a
significant factor in the consolidation of his power. Similarly, Palpatine has to
build his military forces up from scratch. By the time of The Phantom Menace,
the Galactic Republic has no military of its own and depends on the Jedi Knights
to keep peace. These forces are inadequate in the face of the Separatists, so
Palpatine is able to persuade the Senate to accept the creation of clone troopers
to serve in the Army of the Republic. As noted previously, he subsequently uses
that army to destroy the Jedi Knights.
The 1934 Nuremberg Rally. Adolf Hitler is the central of the three figures at the
bottom center of the photograph.
 Other similarities between the rise of Palpatine and the rise of Hitler suggest
themselves, too. As in Germany, the leader of the Galactic Senate is given the
title of chancellor. And just as Hitlers rise to power was facilitated by other
politicians who thought that he could be controlled and who did not understand
the full extent of his plans, so Palpatine was able to persuade politicians such as
Queen Amidala and Jar Jar Binks to support proposals that would resolve
immediate dangers, but that also served to advance his own interests. Finally,
like Palpatine (but unlike Augustus), Hitler eventually dispensed with his
parliamentary body, the Reichstag, removing all legislative power and, after
1942, postponing its reconstitution (though he did not formally dissolve it).
Palpatines Clone army. Compare the massed ranks of soldiers to those seen in
the photo of the 1934 Nuremberg rally. (Attack of the Clones)
 The Last Remnants of the Old
Republic Have Been Swept Away
This chapter has discussed some of the ways in which Lucass Star Wars galaxy
reflects the historical precedents set by past dictators and their overthrowing of
democracies. Some of this use is obviouselements lifted from Nazi Germany
and Rome can be easily identified in the history of the Republic and the Galactic
Empire. Other elements are less obvious, although there are clear similarities
between Napoleon and Palpatine. As on Coruscant and in Rome, France, and
Germany, a republic was succeeded by an empire, and in all of these cases, the
new emperor could rely on the support of many (or even most) of the republics
elected representatives.
The reason that these exemplars are not always obvious is, of course, that
Lucas is not simply repeating real history in space. Rather, the Star Wars galaxy
uses elements taken from various periods of history, which Lucas selected and
modified to fit. The result is a rich and believable Galactic history that can be
adapted to the requirements of a saga without destroying its credibility. This
richness has been welcoming visitors since 1977 and will continue to do so for
many years to come.

Notes
1. The career of Augustus is covered in a volume in The Routledge History of
the Ancient World, Martin Goodman, The Roman World, 44 BCAD 180
(London: Routledge, 1997). The equivalent volume for the end of the Republic,
Edward Bispham, The Roman Republic 26444 BC (Abingdon: Routledge,
forthcoming), will be published in May 2012. Sir Ronald Symes account in
The Roman Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939) remains worth
reading.
2. The position of dictator in the early Republic gave the holder sole executive
power, which was usually split between two consuls, but did so for a strictly
limited period, usually for six months. The dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius
Sulla (8281 BC) had not been limited, but Sulla had resigned after a year.
3. Lucass use of Rome is covered in Peter Bonadella, The Eternal City: Roman
Images in the Modern World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1987), 227237, and in Martin M. Winkler, Star Wars and the Roman
Empire, in Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema, edited by Martin M.
Winkler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 272290.
4. For a good introduction to Roman religion, see James Rives, Religion in the
Roman World, in Experiencing Rome: Culture, Identity and Power in the
Roman Empire, edited by Janet Huskinson (London: Routledge, 2000), 245
275.
5. He did also have the title imperator, from which the modern word emperor
derives, but this was a title indicating that the holder had been celebrated as a
successful military commander.
6. There was also the Social War of 9188 BC, fought by allies of Rome in
Italy who wanted access to Roman citizenship, a servile war or slave revolt
(that of Spartacus in 7371 BC), and numerous wars of overseas conquest.
7. According to Lucasfilm reference materials, Palpatine is born in 82 BBY
(Before the Battle of Yavin), so this would make him forty-nine to fifty when
he is made chancellor and sixty-two to sixty-three when he assumes the
imperial throne in Revenge of the Sith.
8. Anne Lancashire, The Phantom Menace: Repetition, Variation,
Integration, Film Criticism 24, no. 3 (2000): 2728.
9. For Napoleon, see Frank McLynn, Napoleon: A Biography (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1997).
 Chapter 6

Teen Queen

Padm Amidala and the Power of Royal

Women
Janice Liedl

I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die.

Padm Amidala, The Phantom Menace
Long ago, a young woman asserted her right to rule a prosperous paradise
against a stiff opposition that temporarily prevented her from ruling. The
youthful queen benefited from the support of powerful military men, however,
who helped restore her to power. She disastrously pursued a romantic
relationship with one of these fabled fighters, an intense man who was not free
to marry her. The queen died tragically, never to see her children grow up.
 This sad story parallels the rise and fall of Padm Amidala, but its actually the
story of Cleopatra. That Egyptian queens life demonstrates how much power
and peril royal crowns brought to the women who dared seize them. Padms
problems are also mirrored in the lives of other historical queens, from Maria
Theresa of Austria and Hungary to Catherine the Great of Russia, and even the
doomed British Boudicca. From ancient times up to the recent past, history
abounds with examples of extraordinary royal women whose public and personal
lives encompassed a range of triumph and disaster, just as Padm experiences.
The irony is that although many women were queens, few actually ruled. Law
and tradition meant that the queen who held the title only because she was the
wife of a king was rarely in a position to assert equal power. These queen
consorts might even be royalty by birtha princess from another country who
married a fellow rulerbut that foreign birthright didnt translate into their new
realm. Only rarely did such a woman make a leap to wielding power
independently, as happened when German-born Catherine, the wife of Tsar Peter
II, engineered a coup against her own husband and took over the rule of the
Russian Empire in the eighteenth century. Sometimes, even when a woman was
in the direct line of succession, she couldnt receive the crown, due to traditions
that either gave preference to a younger boy or ruled out women altogether.1
In other cases, women inherited royal or noble titles independently: ruling by
themselves (as did Elizabeth I and Victoria, both in England) or jointly with a
spouse, as did Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, who created the new
kingdom of Spain through their marriage. These queens still didnt have an easy
time of it, because custom, if not law, made it difficult for women to wield
political powersomething that Rebel Alliance figures such as Mon Mothma
and Princess Leia never face in Star Wars more egalitarian galactic culture. In
times of war, queens rallied troops and inspired nations, just as Boudicca did
against the Romans.2 When medieval popes were hounded by the Holy Roman
emperors in the eleventh century, it was a noblewoman, Matilda of Tuscany,
whose troops and strategies saved the day. Our history and the history of the Star
Wars universe preserve many stories of strong women rulers who, against great
odds, fought for their people, their nation, and their right to rule.

You Think a Princess and a Guy

 Like Me . . . ?
Queens were both political leaders and women. Their private emotions and
personal relationships often became part of their public lives in ways that few
kings ever had to justify. Han Solo and Princess Leia show that love can cross
boundaries of rank. A generation earlier, Padm and Anakins star-crossed love
stretches across an even broader gulf of social class, when the one-time slave
boy from Tatooine marries the former Queen of Naboo. Love and relationships
complicated the lives of historical women sometimes even more so than they did
in the time of the Republic and the Empire.
Consider the case of Cleopatra VII, who was born long ago but not in a galaxy
far, far away. This powerful woman came into the world sometime during the
winter of 69 BC. Cleopatra was part of the Ptolemaic dynasty, descendants of the
general who accompanied Alexander the Great in his 332 BC conquest of Egypt.
The country had been frequently torn by vicious battles for power between
husbands and wives, brothers and sisters (sometimes one and the same, because
Egyptian rulers tended to marry their own siblings in order to keep the
bloodlines pure). When Cleopatras father, Ptolemy XII, died in 51 BC,
Cleopatra was only eighteen and the coruler of Egypt with her oldest brother and
husband, ten-year-old Ptolemy XIII. Their new-won realm was bitterly divided,
drowning in debt, and a tempting target for the powerful mercantile and
militaristic state Rome.3 Unlike Padms confrontational relationship with the
Trade Federation, young Cleopatra welcomed Romes intervention, which
supported her as a ruler of Egypt against her annoying younger brother.
Padm Amidala is already an experienced politician by the time she becomes
Queen of Naboo. (The Phantom Menace)
Cleopatra was only eighteen when she claimed her throne and not even forty
when she committed suicide.
 Cleopatras greatest problem at that time was her brother and his courtiers.
Ptolemy XIII wanted to eliminate his sister and coruler, and in the cutthroat
politics of Ptolemaic Egypt, this meant having her killed. At least when Leia
fights her own father while seeking to destroy the Empire, neither knows they
are related! Ptolemy was supported by the great Roman general Pompey, who
declared the youngster sole ruler of Egypt. In early 48 BC, Cleopatra therefore
fled Alexandria, the royal residence, and sought refuge farther up the Nile River,
near the historic heartland of Egyptian royal tradition, Thebes. Similarly, Queen
Amidala flees her capital city of Theed, winding up in the Outer Rim world of
Tatooine when the Trade Federations guns damage her escaping starship. Her
goal, however, was Coruscant, seat of the Galactic Senate, where she hoped to
find support for her planet against the invaders.
When Cleopatra left Alexandria, the queen was only twenty-one and in a
desperate situation. She moved on to rally an army in Syria, but an even more
significant battle loomed across the Mediterranean in Greece. Pompey was at
war with another Roman and his former ally Julius Caesar. After Caesars
victory at the Battle of Pharsalos, in August 48 BC, Pompey fled to Egypt.
Instead of Pompeys finding refuge at Ptolemy XIIIs court, the Egyptian
courtiers killed him out of hand, while the young king watched. This move
didnt endear Ptolemy XIII and his government to the victorious Caesar, as the
Egyptian child-king had hoped. Instead, the Roman decreed that the brother and
the sister should settle their differences before him. This invitation was all that
Cleopatra needed to turn Caesar to her cause.
It doesnt matter whether Cleopatra had herself rolled up in a bed-sack (not a
carpet!) and smuggled into Caesars residence, as Plutarch described, or if she
simply asked to speak to Caesar. Either way, the young queen presented her case
with the charm and skill for which she would be renowned. What is important is
that Cleopatra allied herself with the man who was rising to power, not only in
Rome but wherever that state had influence. Caesar fought a war to defend
Cleopatras right to rule. When it was over, a year later, her siblings were dead or
captured and Cleopatra gave birth to a son by Caesar, Caesarion, whom she
would eventually adopt as her coruler.4
Its interesting that despite not having a son by his Roman marriage, Julius
Caesar never acknowledged Caesarion, instead willing his fortune to his grand-
nephew Octavian. Many Romans doubted Cleopatras claim that Caesar was the
boys father, and rumors about the boys parentage dogged the queen, rather as
the secret of Padm and Anakins marriage helps shroud Luke and Leias
parentage in mystery. In both cases, pregnancy did not prevent these women
from wielding political power. Padm Amidala, even though she is pregnant and
no longer the Queen of Naboo, still works as a Senator with Bail Organa and
others to resist Palpatines destruction of the Republic. Cleopatras pregnancy
was celebrated in Egypt, if not in Rome, and helped her retain her throne, even
while Caesar brought her valuable state more securely under Roman control.
In 44 BC, Caesar was brutally assassinated by a number of high-ranking
conspirators. Cleopatra commanded her own fleet to assist in avenging Caesars
death the following year. After the conspirators were routed, Cleopatra made a
successful play for the most powerful of the trio of Roman rulers: Mark Antony.
The two soon became lovers and enjoyed a scandalously lavish lifestyle together
in Alexandria. Antony was Romes greatest military leader, and Cleopatras
Egypt grew in wealth and influence under his protection. The ancient historian
Plutarch confidently asserted that Cleopatra cold-bloodedly seduced and
corrupted the Roman general, but he was just one of many to try to discredit the
Egyptian queen as Romes enemy. The reality of their relationship was likely
more complicated: Cleopatra welcomed Antonys protection and the generous
provisions he made for their children, who were given sizable kingdoms of
Roman territory in the eastern Mediterranean; Antony probably preferred
Alexandrias freedom of action over Romes more restraining political system.
Antonys standing in Rome declined, however, due to rumors of his slavish
devotion to a foreign queen, and he was soon defeated by his former coruler,
Octavian, Caesars grand-nephew and a cunning politician who likely managed
the propaganda campaign that discredited Antony.5 Just as Chancellor Palpatine
orchestrates the downfall of the Republic, Octavian brought down the Roman
Republic from within: Antony and Cleopatra were two of the casualties,
although both chose suicide, rather than the humiliation of being paraded as
captives before a Roman crowd. Their children were carried off by the
triumphant Octavian to be paraded in Rome in their parents place, including the
twins, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene.6
For all that Cleopatra is considered a figure of romantic tragedy, this queen
was very careful in her love life. Cleopatras relationships with Julius Caesar and
Mark Antony appear more calculated than Padms desperate love for Anakin,
and, unlike Padm, Cleopatra never married her lovers. She was married, in
name only, to her corulers: first her brother, and then her son. Both Caesar and
Mark Antony were married to women from powerful Roman families, while
they were involved with the Egyptian queen. This may have been to Cleopatras
advantage. She ruled for twenty-two years without having to hand over control
to any man in her life. This degree of freedom was almost unimaginable for
women in the classical world; few other queens ruled in the ancient
Mediterranean world, and none of them enjoyed Cleopatras independence,
wealth, and power.7 All of that came to nothing with Cleopatras death. Egypts
riches were absorbed into Octavians new empire, just as Naboo is folded into
Palpatines Imperial Empire.

The Queen Will Not Approve

In disguise as a handmaid and on the run with Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan
Kenobi, Padm can hardly issue a royal decree when the Senate does not help
her in her plight. At least, no one thinks it inappropriate that the queen will have
opinions or wield some sort of power. The Calvinist preacher John Knox
complained about European women rulers in a sixteenth-century book. Faced
with three Catholic women in power, he argued that womens rule was
unnatural: a monstrous regiment of women.8 His language may have been
extreme, but his attitudes were hardly unusual. Historically, many kingdoms
barred women entirely from ruling, while others practiced primogeniture, giving
lands, power, and the royal title only to the oldest male child of the previous king
even if that heir had one or many older sisters.
Refreshingly, the Star Wars galaxy exhibits no prejudice against women rulers
or leaders, whether during the Republic, when women serve as leaders in all
levels of government, or in the fraught years of the Clone Wars. Although being
young and female might have been two strikes against a candidate for the throne
in ancient and medieval history, on Naboo, those qualities are positively
celebrated. There, public service is mandated for youngsters. Citizens as young
as eight years of age even contribute to the planets government, apprenticing in
the legislature. One such civic-minded and serious citizen is Padm Naberrie,
who can boast of six years political experience when she is elected queen at
fourteen years of age. Young Padm takes a new name, Amidala, when she
accepts the crown, but that doesnt mean she distances herself from her family.
Indeed, Padm keeps a close relationship with her parents and her older sister
throughout her career as first Queen of Naboo and then, when her term as
monarch is over, as that planets Senator.9
If acceptable on Naboo, elective monarchy was exceedingly rare in Earths
history, especially for women. The Holy Roman Empire of medieval Europe
might be the most famous example, and, even then, it was far from a free choice.
Candidates needed to be leading landholders, as well as male. The tradition of
primogeniture sidelined many women over the centuries, although, in some rare
cases, a woman made for a useful compromise candidate. This was the case for
Catherine of Brandenburg, who was elected Prince of Transylvania in 1629 on
the death of her husband, who had previously held the title. Her power as prince,
however, was severely limited, and charges that she was both extravagant and
immoral helped push her out of office. These attacks were as politically
motivated as those that Palpatine engineers to bring down Chancellor Valorum.
The following year, Catherine was forced to abdicate in favor of the Hungarian
nobleman Georg Rakoczi, a favorite of many of the Transylvanian courtiers.10
This avoidance of women rulers sometimes destabilized dynasties, as
daughters (or their sons) might seek the throne despite the rule, which could lead
to war with their male cousins (who often stood to inherit if the kings daughters
were barred from the throne). This sort of conflict between cousins ignited the
Hundred Years War between England and France, for example.11
Women also couldnt succeed to rule in the Holy Roman Empire, which
included much of central and Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages and
beyond. The empire was an elective monarchy where bishops, dukes, and other
nobles, known as prince-electors, chose the heir to the imperial throne. After the
fifteenth century, the imperial title was almost exclusively a privilege of the
Hapsburg family. When Charles VI died in 1740, there was a crisis. The only
Hapsburg heirs were women: Charless daughter Maria Theresa and her older
cousins, daughters of the previous emperor. Yet women couldnt be elected to
become emperor, and this situation led to a political crisis.
That wouldnt stop Maria Theresa from eventually taking power, although she
had to work hard to earn her place. Her father spent his fortune bribing other
kings and the electors to agree that Maria Theresa and her husband should
inherit his position. These agreements, known as the Pragmatic Sanction of
1713, achieved little for Maria Theresa and Francis because most of the other
kings and princes ignored their promises. In some respects, this resembles the
promises of Chancellor Palpatine to use his Emergency Powers only temporarily
to fight the Clone Wars.
Unlike Padm, who is both well-educated and experienced in politics, Maria
was untrained to lead the state she ruled. Even more worrisome, she was almost
without resources. As she later noted, her father had exhausted the empires
wealth in his attempt to secure her position as his successor: the new queen was
without money, without credit, without army.12 Her Austrians had something
in common with those who defended Naboo in the Star Wars galaxy against the
endless wave of Trade Federation droids: those soldiers she could afford to pay
had to make do with old and outdated materials, while facing a much more
sophisticated opponent, the king of Prussia, who had relatively unlimited
resources.
Maria Theresa rallied the Austrian people for her rule and against the Prussians
in 1740.
Princess Leia presides over the celebrations and the awards ceremony after the
Battle of Yavin. (A New Hope)
 In some ways, Maria Theresas first months on the throne were as perilous as
those of newly crowned Padm Amidala facing down the Trade Federation or
Princess Leia smuggling battle plans for the Death Star out from under the
Emperors nose. Austria may have been a great state, but it was no match for the
Prussians in 1740, just as Naboo is no match for the might of the Trade
Federation at first. Prussia declared war on Maria Theresas Austrians and won
Silesia in the War of the Austrian Succession. In this conflict, the young queen
was forced to defend herself against an opponent almost as crafty and cunning as
Palpatine: Frederick the Great.
Maria Theresa had to work hard to fight off further conquests eating up her
weakened realm. Although she was immediately crowned archduchess of
Austria on her fathers death and confirmed as queen of Hungary the following
year, she never became Holy Roman empress in her own right. After Maria
Theresa spent years building up the position of her husband, Francis, the electors
finally chose him as the emperor in 1745. He held the title, but Maria Theresa
exercised the real power as empress during his lifetime and later, when she
shared power with her son, Joseph.13
Make no mistake: although she never held the imperial title on her own, Maria
Theresa was the true power in the empire. She fought fiercely to gain and
maintain her empire against some of the greatest powers of her age, including
fearsome Frederick the Great of Prussia, whom she utterly despised. The
Austrian empress also reformed the tax system to collect revenues from nobles
and churchmen, as well as peasants, and significantly revised the law code that
finally brought the witch-hunts to an end within the empire.14 Despite all of these
achievements, the Holy Roman Empires traditions meant that Maria Theresa
issued these decrees only in concert with a man, first her husband and then her
son.
In England, women could inherit the throne, but that still didnt make it easy
for them to rule. A civil war broke out in the twelfth century between supporters
of King Henry Is only surviving heir, Matilda, and her cousin Stephen, in part
because many English noblemen doubted a womans fitness to rule. The
nineteen years of conflict between the two sides that followed were so bad that
people called it the Anarchy, a time when Christ and his saints slept. Henry
VIII felt the same way about female rulers, which is part of the reason he tried so
desperately for a son, setting aside his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and
executing his second, Anne Boleyn. The principle of primogeniture meant that
Edward, a younger son by Henrys third wife, became the next ruler of England.
 Only Edwards untimely death at sixteen years of age made his sisters
succession to the English throne possible. Mary, Henrys older daughter,
followed after Edward, but her troubled reign lasted only five years. After
Marys death, her half-sister Elizabeth ruled for almost a century as an
unmarried woman. Remaining single may have solved the concerns about
sharing power with her husband (as Maria Theresa had to do), but it raised
another problem that elective monarchs such as Padm never face: the question
of who would follow the queen on the throne. Until her death, Elizabeth avoided
naming a successor from among her many distant relatives and instead played all
of the possibilities, as any good politician would.

Shes a Politician, and Theyre Not

to Be Trusted
Obi-Wan wants Anakin, as a Jedi, to be wary of Senator Padm Amidala: not
because of romance, but because of her political interests. Politics might have
been thought a mans game before the last century, but almost every queen in
history had to play the game simply to survive. Many queens had to be ruthless
and cunning in identifying and resisting their rivals. Padm might be a strong
supporter of the Jedi while she is Queen and during the period when she serves
as Naboos Senator, but that doesnt mean she is above the subtle work of
politics. She out-maneuvers the Trade Federation through a combination of
political appeals and military resistance. The same can be said of many historical
queens who needed all of their wits to survive and thrive in the cutthroat world
of court politics.
Consider the Russian Empire, where a series of women ruled for most of the
eighteenth century. Anna was a Romanov tsarina who ruled the vast country
from 1730 to 1740, but there were many who felt she was too much under the
direction of her advisers. Her cousin Elizabeth seized the throne in 1742 and
ruled for a further twenty years. Like Englands Elizabeth, she never married and
so could provide no legitimate heir to the throne. Tsarina Elizabeth worked hard
to secure the royal succession. She adopted her nephew Peter as her heir, raised
him, and arranged his marriage to a German princess, Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst.
The young bride was rebaptized in the Orthodox Church as Catherine: later she
was known as Catherine the Great.
Catherine the Great seized power from her husband in 1762 and ruled Russia
until her death in 1796.
 Catherines transformation from young German princess to autocratic Russian
ruler is a tribute to her political skills. Although her husband was heir to the
throne, when his aunt died in 1762, the state was divided. Peter was impulsive
and impractical, wildly unpopular at his own court. Catherine gathered support
from the Russian army with the help of her lover, Grigory Orlov, and his brother,
both officers, who drove Peter out of office. At thirty-three years of age,
Catherine was proclaimed empress and ruled Russia until her death in 1796.
Rather than ruling in her son Pauls name, Catherine governed Russia without
any male figurehead. She seemed quite comfortable with wielding power in her
own right. Well-read, Catherine reformed laws and the educational system, while
also leading Russia in successful wars against Poland and the Ottoman Empire.
As empress, she promoted religious toleration, going so far as to endow two
mosques for the Muslim minorities in her state. Catherine wrote that one should
do good and avoid doing evil as much as one reasonably can, out of love of
humanity.15
Catherine loved humanity and not only in the abstract. Twelve men were
openly recognized as her lovers during her sixty-seven years of life. She had at
least two illegitimate children from her relationship with Count Orlov. In her
memoir, Catherine indicated that an earlier lover was the father of her official
son and heir, Paul. To be so open about her sexuality made Catherine a figure of
scandal. Rumors about her sexual habits circulated after her death, suggesting all
sorts of depravity.16
Here is another way in which the Star Wars galaxys culture differs
dramatically from those in Earths history. Padms relationship with Anakin is
forbidden only because he, as a Jedi Knight, is expected to avoid personal
attachment. For a Jedi to profess romantic love or to seek to be in a relationship
is shocking. During the Clone Wars, Mandalorian duchess Satine Kryze uses this
knowledge about the Orders traditions and her friendship with Master Obi-Wan
Kenobi to her advantage. When Senator Tal Merrik holds the duchess hostage,
she distracts her captor by professing her love for Obi-Wan, who gamely plays
along when he understands her objective. Merrik is surprised enough by their
words of love to allow Duchess Satine to disarm him and break free.

I Was Not Elected to Watch My

 People Suffer and Die
A good queen had to be brave. Queen Amidala defies Chancellor Valorum and
the bureaucratic mind-set of the Senate when Naboo is besieged by the forces of
the Trade Federation. She then returns to Naboo to fight for freedom alongside
her people. Princess Leia smuggles the schematics of the Death Star out from
under Imperial control and faces down stormtroopers many times as she seeks to
take down the Empire. Royal women in the Star Wars galaxy play key roles in
stirring resistance to invasion and tyranny.
So, too, did many women in our history. From Cleopatra to her near
contemporary Zenobia of Palmyra, who launched a brief but shocking rebellion
against the Roman Empire, queens in antiquity didnt shy away from war. This
link between women and war sharpens in the story of Boudicca, a queen of the
Iceni tribe, allied with the Roman conquerors of Britain, who rebelled and led a
devastating campaign against the might of Rome about a century after
Cleopatras reign.
According to the classical historians Tacitus and Dio, women often ruled in
ancient Britain. Even more interesting, some were elected by leading members
of the tribe.17 In this way, the Celtic tribes of pre-Roman Britain were more in
tune with the populist ideals of Naboo and other planets in the Star Wars galaxy,
choosing leaders through election and even opening that option to women. Yet it
appears that Boudicca didnt inherit power on her own: she took over rule of the
Iceni after her husband, Prasutagus, died. According to the chronicles, the
Romans were dissatisfied with receiving half of the kings goods on his death.
They took their anger out on the Iceni, beating the queen and raping her
daughters. Demanding vengeance, Boudicca rallied a force of almost a quarter of
a million Britons, women and men, against their Roman overlords. Her army
sacked London and other great Roman settlements before the Britons were
defeated and the queen ended her own life.18
Princess Leia is a hands-on leader in the Rebellion. (The Empire Strikes Back)
 About a thousand years later, a resolute Italian noblewoman roused her
subjects to war against the might of Emperor Henry IV. Countess Matilda of
Tuscany defended the churchs independence against the empire during the
Investiture Controversy of the eleventh century. She left her husband and cut off
his access to her land and power, in order to provide support to the church leader.
Her support was so successful that she was ultimately able to broker a
reconciliation between the emperor and the pope at her stronghold of Canossa.
Sadly, that peace lasted for only a short time, but Matilda continued to defend
the church against the imperial army. As one of her chroniclers wrote, Truly she
acted nobly and magnificently, in a manner to which women are not accustomed;
more I say, than manfully, she feared almost no danger. For whoever led her
powerful army as she did?19
Although Matilda may have provided the troops to defend the church, she
never took up arms herself. Her military contributions were more akin to those
of Mon Mothma, a politically skillful leader organizing the Rebellion against a
powerful and entrenched force. The same could be said of Queen Melisende of
Jerusalem. This twelfth-century queen battled indirectly against her husband and
coruler, Fulk. The king attempted to rule without her and smeared her reputation
by suggesting she had an affair with her cousin, the noble leader Hugh of Le
Puiset. Melisende reportedly made life in the palace so dangerous for Fulk that
he was forced to retract the charges and concede her right to rule in 1134.20
Royal women often rallied their supporters when danger threatened, as did
Elizabeth I during the Armada crisis of 1588. She addressed the troops at Tilbury
wearing a warriors breastplate and vowed that she had the heart and stomach
of a king to lead them against the enemy.21 Sometimes such service was less
public and more practical, as when the future Elizabeth II served as 2nd
Lieutenant Elizabeth Windsor, a driver in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during
World War II.22 Princess Leias hands-on role in the evacuation of Hoth or the
assault on the Imperial bunker on Endor would have been entirely in character
for any of these royal women, who were used to taking charge in times of war or
crisis.
Queen Elizabeths greatest achievement was defending England against a
planned Spanish invasion in 1588.
 Are You an Angel?
A queen had an image to maintain, though perhaps not as high a standard of
beauty as the angels of Iego, whom Anakin mentions to Padm. Yet the image of
a queen is bound up with the ceremony and the regalia of rule. Queen Amidala,
burdened with heavy robes of state and pale under formal court makeup, appears
a very different person from Padm Naberrie, the royal attendant who escapes
Naboo with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. In truth, the two women are the same
person. Stories abound of kings and princes escaping notice and palace life,
dressed as ordinary subjects. Sometimes these disguises failed utterly, as in the
case of King Louis XVI of France, fleeing the French Revolution. His profiles
clear resemblance to that stamped on his coins gave the fugitive king away.23
How much easier would it have been for a queen whose rare public appearances
were so marked by ceremony and heavy, formal styles to adopt a different
identity away from hers at court?
In the fifteenth century, European queens and noblewomen wore torturous
court fashions: headdresses of wire mesh molded into unnatural shapes and
stiffened gowns lined with fur made them seem almost inhuman. Under that
formal finery, a very different person could be found. Just as Padm makes her
escape from the Trade Federations confinement in the guise of an ordinary
handmaiden, Jacqueline or Jacoba, Duchess of Bavaria and Countess of Holland,
literally threw off formal fashion to win her freedom during the Netherlands
Hook and Cod War. Jacqueline was only a teenager in 1418 when her uncle
forced her to marry a spoiled and boorish younger cousin, John of Brabant.
Jacqueline fled to England, where she repudiated the marriage. At only a little
more than twenty years of age, the young duchess married King Henry Vs
younger brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who briefly championed
Jacquelines cause. Tiring of the campaign against John of Brabant and his ally,
Philip, Duke of Burgundy, Humphrey abandoned Jacqueline and renounced their
marriage.
Padm Amidala escapes the Trade Federations blockade only after abandoning
her formal court dress and makeup.
Countess Jacqueline of Hainault disguised herself as a man and escaped
imprisonment in 1426 with the help of two brave knights.
 Jacqueline refused to despair, even when Philip captured her and put her under
house arrest in the castle of Ghent. Rather like Padm fleeing Naboo in disguise,
Jacqueline made her second escape in 1426 with the help of two loyal knights, as
daring as Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. The nobles smuggled mens clothing in for
their duchess to wear, in order to slip past her unsuspecting guards.
Unfortunately for Jacqueline, her good fortune ended two years later, and she
was forced to sign an agreement granting the Duke of Burgundy all power over
her territories.24
For all that most of these historical cultures agreed that women didnt truly
belong in the public world of politics, royal women were expected to be part of
the public ceremonies of monarchy. In the sixteenth century, Hapsburg
empresses and princesses in Spain and the Holy Roman Empire lived lives
defined by public ceremonies. They accompanied their fathers, husbands, and
brothers in grand processions and sometimes carried out these public events on
their own. Most common and significant were weddings, but queens were also
celebrated with grand entry pageants and parades when they visited subject cities
or on occasions when their great service to the church resulted in an award of the
Golden Rose from a grateful pope.25
Ceremony and grandeur may have been useful for political power plays, but
ceremonies also helped people cope with loss. Royal women were often given
elaborate funerals that were as much a comfort to their subjects as to their
immediate family. Consider the death of the seventeenth-century Thai princess
Krom Luang Yothathep, who was seized by one of her fathers rivals and taken
as a wife, in hopes of providing legitimacy to his rule. After her husbands death,
Yothathep retired to a monastery, where she stayed until her death in the
eighteenth century.
Even though she no longer held power, Yothathep was widely mourned. Her
passing was marked by a dramatic display of what a study of Renaissance
England calls the theater of death. Borne in a gold palanquin, the urn
containing her ashes was carried up a gold tower built in the shape of the sacred
Mount Meru. As many as ten thousand monks officiated in the rituals, which
lasted for three days.26 Many other royal womens deaths were marked with
great public mourning. Liliuokalani was the last queen of Hawaii, who fought
helplessly against powerful settlers in the late nineteenth century. Deposed in
1893, she was tried for treason by the new government in 1895 and spent much
of the rest of her life under watchful guard, for fear other Hawaiians would rise
up in her cause.27 When she died in 1917, a state funeral featuring endless
processions and stately Hawaiian decorations made a grand, if belated, tribute to
the former queen. Padm Amidalas magnificent state funeral on her home world
of Naboo also involves thousands of mourners who knew her as queen, Senator,
and fellow-citizen, including her successor, Queen Apailana. Although Padm is
no longer there to inspire her people, her image continues to exert a powerful
influence on those in the galaxy who believe in the ideals of the Republic, just as
Liliuokalanis memory was celebrated, particularly through the popular song that
she composed: Aloha Oe (Farewell to Thee).
When former queen Liliuokalani died in 1917, Hawaiians mourned her death
with a grand funeral.
When Padm Amidala dies of a broken heart, her former subjects on Naboo
mark her passing with a solemn ceremony. (Revenge of the Sith)
 Look, I Aint in This for Your
Revolution, and Im Not in It for You,
Princess.
Although history is filled with stories of men as rulers and leaders, occasionally
women filled these roles. Many women fought for power as fiercely as any men:
Cleopatra used her troops and treasury, as much as her feminine allure and her
wits, to seize and hold power in the ancient world. While law and custom
severely limited womens right to rule in many countries, even when an heiress
such as Marie Theresa couldnt hold the imperial power in her own name, she
still ruled effectively. Catherine the Greats life demonstrates that even when a
woman wasnt born into a ruling family, if she was ambitious and driven, she
could rise to great heights and rule a great nation. Others, such as Boudicca,
driven by the desire for vengeance, rallied their people into war against great
empires and their armies.
The royal women of the Star Wars universe arent in it for the power, let alone
the money that Han Solo suggests is his motivation in A New Hope. He correctly
identifies Leias interests as revolutionary. Padm Amidala and her daughter are
both driven by dreams of improving their peoples lives and saving the galaxy
from tyranny. Queens in our history may not have faced the challenge of a Sith
Lord, but they battled formidable opponents in war and diplomacy, often against
overwhelming odds, much in the same way that their counterparts did, long ago
in that far-away galaxy.

Notes
1. Great Britain abolished the law of primogeniture only when it came to the
royal succession in 2011. Now, if a daughter is the firstborn, she will inherit
before a younger brother. See Christa Case Bryant, Kate Middleton: New
Succession Rules Could Make Her Mother of Britains Next Queen, Christian
Science Monitor, October 28, 2011.
2. Daniel Wallace with Kevin J. Anderson, Star Wars: The New Essential
Chronology (New York: Del Rey, 2005), 9.
3. Joyce Tyldesley, Cleopatra: Last Daughter of Egypt (New York: Basic
Books, 2008), 2840.
4. Duane W. Roller, Cleopatra: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2010), 5864.
5. Tyldesley, Cleopatra, 142191.
6. Roller, Cleopatra, 153154.
7. Ibid., 8082.
8. Natalie Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 223224.
9. See the entries for Amidala, Padm, and Naberrie, Padm, in The Complete
Star Wars Encyclopedia (New York: Del Rey, 2009), vol. 1, 2728, and vol. 2,
352.
10. va Dek, Princeps non Principissa: Catherine of Brandenburg, Elected
Prince of Transylvania (16291630), in The Rule of Women in Early Modern
Europe, edited by Anna J. Cruz and Mihoko Suzuki (Champaign: University of
Illinois Press, 2009), 8088.
11. Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 102107.
12. P. G. M. Dickson, Finance and Government under Maria Theresia, 1740
1780, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 3.
13. Derek Beales, Joseph II: In the Shadow of Maria Theresa, 17411780, vol.
1(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 2426.
14. Margaret R. Hunt, Women in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Harlow, UK:
Pearson, 2010), 327328.
15. Isabel de Madariaga, Catherine the Great: A Short History (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 4.
16. Hunt, 329330.
17. Richard Hingley and Christina Unwin, Boudica: Iron Age Warrior Queen
(London: Hambledon, 2005), 8.
18. Hingley and Unwin, 5669. Also Natalie B. Kampen, Boudicca, in The
Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), http://www.oxford-womenworldhistory.com/entry?
entry=t248.e124.
19. David J. Hay, The Military Leadership of Matilda of Canossa, 10461115
(Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2008), 7090.
20. Bernard Hamilton, Women in the Crusader States: The Queens of
Jerusalem (11001190), in Medieval Women, edited by Derek Baker (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1978), 149156.
21. Maria Perry, The Word of a Prince: A Life of Elizabeth I (London: Boydell,
1990), 286.
22. Robert Lacey, Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2003), 141142.
23. David P. Jordan, The Kings Trial: Louis XVI vs. the French Revolution
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 26.
24. Martyn Atkins, Jacqueline, suo jure countess of Hainault, suo jure
countess of Holland, and suo jure countess of Zeeland (14011436), in Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),
http://oxforddnb.com/view/article/58930. Also Vronique Flammang, Partis
en Hainaut? La place de la noblesse hainuyre dans la lutte entre Jacqueline de
Bavire et Jean IV de Brabant (14241428), Bijdragen en mededelingen
betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 123, no. 4 (2008): 546549.
25. Joseph F. Patrouch, Queens Apprentice: Archduchess Elizabeth, Empress
Maria, the Habsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire, 15541569 (Leiden: Brill,
2010), 29.
26. Barbara Watson Andaya, Women and the Performance of Power in Early
Modern Southeast Asia, in Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World
History, edited by Anne Walthall (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2008), 40.
27. Neil Thomas Proto, The Rights of My People: Liliuokalanis Enduring
Battle with the United States, 18931917 (New York: Algora, 2009), 93107.
 Chapter 7

Theres Always a Bigger Fish

Power, Politics, and the Rule of the Ruthless

Kevin S. Decker
You have restored peace and justice to the galaxy.
Emperor Palpatine to Darth Vader, Revenge of the Sith

Just when science fiction movies were deader than dead, Star Wars succeeded
in reinvigorating space opera by using cultural themes from the past, but within a
fantastic setting.1 When it comes to politics, history, and Star Wars, a number of
puzzles present themselves: Why did the venerable Republic crumble? What
roles did behind-the-scenes manipulations, war, corruption, and a lack of public
feeling play in its demise? Does political success require wise and virtuous
leaders?
Our own historys tyrannical regimes have been elevated not only through
consolidation of power, but also by playing on the fears of the public and the
desire of elites for glory and honor. Yet tyrants and dictators are elevated to
authority because of special virtues the populace believes they possess.
Imbalanced political authorities such as these often emerge from two political
forms that contrast strongly with absolute rule, democracy, and republicanism.
Although absolute power is by no means a Western invention, all four of these
types of governancetyranny, dictatorship, democracy, and republicanismare
legacies of the Greek and Roman heritage of Western civilization.
Palpatines inspiration? A portrait of Niccol Machiavelli.
 Similarly, Palpatines christening of a new Galactic Empire set up a political
system that was not entirely unique in the history of the Star Wars universe.
Power in Lucass cosmos typically fluctuates between participatory republics
and iron-fisted empires, where shifts in influence are often determined by court
intrigues or military superiority. These large power shifts were also characteristic
of Renaissance and Reformation Europe. A new way of thinking about politics
emerged from the factionalism and incessant warring of the small northern
Italian republics in the Renaissance and from the ideas of a man who puts a
name to this pain, Niccol Machiavelli of Florence (14691527). Is Palpatine
genuinely Machiavellian? Is it possible for a supreme political authority to
escape the power of the dark side? The answers are complex and require our
careful attention.

Longer Ago, Farther Away

The meaning of republic, one form of governance, originates from the Latin
phrase res publica, or public thing. So, whatever is publicthe resources of a
state, its judicial and legislative institutions, its system of education, among
othersis not only the property or jurisdiction of a single monarch. The
public can also be contrasted with the private good of citizens. A republican
form of government is supposed to balance public and private goods, erring on
the side of protecting the masses for the happiness of alloverseeing security,
education, and labor practices, for example. When a republic falls, it is as much
due to the inability of its supposed defenders to distinguish between the public
and the private good as it is to the desires of a tyrant to wield singular power.
Historys actual republican governments have been built on the idea that
liberty cant be secured without each citizen taking a vital part in government.
The active political life, as a civic or moral duty for every citizen, is taken very
seriously. Self-government requires not only time and commitment, but also the
civic virtue of its citizens.2 One interpretation of Socratess downfall in ancient
Athens is that he lacked civic virtue. By contrast, the Renaissance political
genius Leonardo Bruni believed that the citizen is he who can develop as many
forms of human excellence as possible and develop them all in the service of the
city. Versatility and patriotism were, for Bruni, virtues chief constituents.3 The
ideal of the virtuous citizen is wound throughout the strands of political thought
in Western history.4
 Tyranny and dictatorship, on the other hand, have always been seen as
aberrations from normal government. In its oldest Greek use, tyrannos simply
indicates the sovereign power of a wealthy monarch. Aristotle (384322 bc) was
a stolid critic of tyranny. Prizing as he did common good of the political
community, he called tyranny the arbitrary power of an individual which is
responsible to no one, associating it with the abuse of legitimate power.5
Ancient political practices allowed concentration of ultimate power in the hands
of one citizen, but only temporarily, perhaps in the case of a military emergency.
Aristotle once said, Man is a political animal.
 The Roman position of dictator, voted to Julius Caesar by the Senate five
times within four years, was also a legitimate political tool, limited in its
exercise during emergency circumstances by allotted time, specified task, and
the fact that the dictator had to restore the previously standing political-legal
order that had authorized the dictatorship.6 Yet what might be called
sovereign dictatorship seeks to perpetuate itself and construct an entirely new
political order. It results from abuse of the powers of legitimate dictatorship, and
its precisely the slide from the first type to the next that we see occur in the
events of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. In the former, Palpatine
seems to grudgingly accept radical emergency powers to combat Count
Dookus Separatist movement. To do so, he embraces the Military Creation Act,
calling into action the Grand Army of the Republic. About three years after the
battle on Geonosis that begins the Clone Wars, the situation has intensified
enough for Force-lightning-scarred Palpatine (now ugly enough that even other
Sith Lords might avoid him!) to declare himself supreme leader with precious
little opposition.

Tyrants: Light or Dark?

It seems that Sith who openly practice the rites of the dark side make bad tyrants.
Heres why. The first historian, Herodotus, spoke of one of the earliest tyrants,
Kypselus of Corinth (who ruled from 655 to 625 BC).7 His rise to tyranny set the
precedent for gaining power by appealing to the politically marginalized, the
same folk who ended up suffering banishment and seizure of their property by
Kypselus. Aristotle warned, History shows that almost all tyrants have been
demagogues who gained the favor of the people by their accusation of the
notables.8
Later Athenian tyrants had to reckon with the legacy of Solon (ca. 630ca. 560
BC), who assumed the responsibilities of virtual dictator in order to respond to
widespread crises in Athens and the surrounding regions. Called the savior of
his country and the ideal lawgiver by Aristotle, Solon freed poor farmers and
landless men who had been turned into debt-slaves, as well as turning food
production and trade to favor local need, rather than profit.9 Most important,
Solon was responsible for breaking down ancient tribal affiliations, a crucial
element in the movement toward democracy.
Solon brought law to a polis long ago and far away.
 The role of Solon is comparable to the Republics Chancellor Tarsus Valorum,
who around 1000 bby completely renovated the shattered confederations
government, dismantling its standing army, giving greater control to planetary
systems and sectors over even his own authority, and even bringing the Jedi into
the judicial wing of the government. Yet Valorums Ruusan Reformations
saved the Republic at the cost of paving the way for the slow creep of corruption
and bureaucracy that was to lead to the Republics end.
Rivalry in the Galactic Senate would presage this end, just as aristocratic
rivalries led to a breakdown of Solons Athenian constitution. The most dramatic
story of one-man rule in Athens centers on Pisistratus, who first seized control in
561 BC. He took power by cunningly exiling some aristocrats and taking the
sons of others hostage. Pisistratus may also be historys first master of
propaganda: he convinced the people to give him a bodyguard after stabbing
himself and casting blame elsewhere. He also pulled a fast one with the help of
the goddess Athena:
[Pisistratuss ally Megacles] first spread abroad a rumor that Athena was
bringing back Pisistratus, and then, having found a woman of great stature
and beauty, named Phy . . . he dressed her in a garb resembling that of the
goddess and brought her into the city with Pisistratus. The latter drove in on
a chariot with the woman beside him, and the inhabitants of the city, struck
with awe, received him with adoration.10
Monument to Pisistratus.
 In the rise of Pisistratus and his sons, those who really benefited were the
dems (people, or, literally, the inhabitants of tribal units called demes). As the
machinery of the state stepped into the power vacuum left by exiled aristocrats,
bread and circuses ensued: religion and culture were encouraged as arenas for
patriotic unity; elaborate public festivals and readings of Homers poetry were
staged; peace was pursued with nearby city-states.11
Yet the dems is fickle. Young and rash sons of aristocrats, having assassinated
the fun-loving son of Pisistratus, Hipparchus, pushed his formerly sober and
statesmanlike brother Hippias toward the dark side. Now the Pisistratids power
transformed into something like what we call tyranny today: Aristotle told us
that after Hipparchuss death, Hippias took vengeance on his brothers killers
and ordered the execution and banishment of a large number of persons.12
Popular support faded away. It took the troops of King Kleomenes of Sparta to
clear Hippias and his supporters out of Athens for good and a further fifty years
to cement the demes as a genuine dems-kratia, or democracy.
Count Dooku, aka Darth Tyranus: The name isnt accidental. (Attack of the
Clones)
 The need for popular support, both to gain and to keep office, is the reason
why Sith Lords, in general, would make poor tyrants. Count Dooku is the
exception, though. While Palpatine certainly is a master of duplicity, the
appropriately named Darth Tyranus stands as a better candidate for the job of
tyrant. Heir to the ruling family of Serenno, Tyranus/Count Dooku is an
aristocrat, similar to Kypselus and Pisistratus. Dooku gains his fame by leading a
Jedi peacekeeping force to the planet Galidraan to crush the Mandalorians; it is
also these events that cause him to lose his faith in both the Jedi and the
Republic.13 As the leader of the Separatists, the count seems to gain his power
not only through his apprenticeship to Sidious, but also through his charisma and
powers of persuasion. In Attack of the Clones, Dooku uses these powers to forge
an alliance of powerful and rapacious corporate powers, taking advantage of
their indignation at the facts that star systems are starving under heavy
taxation[,] pirates plague the spacelanes, corporations consume worlds,
bureaucracy stifles justiceand yet the Senate can do little.14 Even insightful
Jedi such as Mace Windu and Ki-Adi-Mundi are fooled into believing he is a
political idealist, not a murderer. In the long run, a force far darker than mere
tyranny betrays Dooku.

For a Safe and Secure Society . . .

Some have claimed that the idea of Rome and the idea of power are
inextricably linked.15 To back up this claim, historians point to the Roman
creation of a military machine that was unparalleled in the ancient world.16
While the Greeks were ready to elevate to the status of political hero leaders
who would reorganize society in their own image, Romans were proud of the
political institutions of both the Roman Republic and their military and wanted
leadership to conform to their established conventions and settled
expectations.17 Their experience offers us two different senses of what political
power consists of.
The monopoly over power in Roman society was typically divided between
two distinctive kinds of institutions. Potestas was the power of executives, such
as consuls, magistrates, and military leaders. It represents the coercive power not
only to wage wars but also to impose sanctions against lawbreakers. The other
type of power was auctoritas, vested in Roman jurists and in the Senate. It was a
subtle thing, more than advice and less than command, an advice which one
may not safely ignore.18 These two types of power correspond to two types of
coercion, or political violence. The coercion of potestas is used in the foundation
of a legitimate order and, in Romes case, the expansion of its empire; the
conservation of that order is auctoritas.19
The Roman Senate clearly invites comparisons with the Senate of the
Republic, which meets in its vast, lavender, bowl-shaped Senate chamber at the
center of Coruscant. The ruling body of the galaxy is, in many ways, less
powerful: it can only issue constitutional conventions, which some systems
treated as nonbinding. This Senate was also less exclusive in its membership
than its Roman counterpart. Leaders of member worlds had the right to vote and
introduce legislation, as Queen Amidala does in The Phantom Menace when she
calls for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Finis Valorum. The Rights of
Sentience, perhaps the most radical clause in the original Galactic Constitution,
protect the society and customs of nonhumans from encroaching
humanocentrism. This is an important contrast with the later Empire, which is
unabashedly speciesist in excluding all but human species from service, whether
stormtroopers or officers.20
Queen Amidala calls for a vote of no confidence. (The Phantom Menace)
Chancellor Palpatine addressing the Galactic Senate. (The Phantom Menace)
 Patriotism was a key virtue gaining popularity and swaying public opinion
among the Romans. Stemming from the Latin root patria, or fatherland,
patriotism for the Romans channeled the original power of loyalty to close kin
for political survival. Patriotism is hard to find in a galaxy far, far away, where
the galactic representatives have become distanced from their people and now
the entire system is degenerating. Not only is there no common agreement on
the good that the res publica represents, but Republican politics have devolved
into a tool for personal or planetary gain. There is no better example of this than
the Neimoidians, who ignore both law and ethics in an effort to turn politics to
their own profit.
Yet patriotism still retains the ability to persuade in the Republic. With the
perfect vision of hindsight, we can appreciate the irony of Supreme Chancellor
Palpatines words to the Senate in Attack of the Clones: It is with great
reluctance that I have agreed to this calling. I love democracy. I love the
Republic. The power you give me I will lay down when this crisis has abated.
And as my first act with this new authority, I will create a Grand Army of the
Republic to counter the increasing threats of the Separatists.
Yet why do the Republics Senators applaud this turn of events, when so many
of them were previously opposed to the Military Creation Act? Perhaps they
agree with Anakin in his exchange with Padm from the same film:
Anakin: I dont think the system works. We need a system where the
politicians sit down and discuss the problem, agree to whats in the best
interest of all the people, and then do it.
Padm: Thats exactly what we do. The problem is that people dont always
agree.
Anakin: Then they should be made to.
Padm: By whom? Whos going to make them?
Anakin: Someone . . .
Padm: You?
Anakin: No, not me.
Padm: But someone . . . ?
Anakin: (nods) Someone wise.
Padm: I dont know. Sounds an awful lot like dictatorship to me.
Anakin: (after a long pause) Well, if it works . . . ?
In turn, perhaps the script is alluding to someone such as Julius Caesar, elected
to Roman dictatorship after dictatorship and showered with honors far beyond
any sense of proportion. Caesar had been voted forty days of thanksgiving after
stunning military victories in Gaul, Egypt, Asia, and Africa. Traditionally, a
consul such as Caesar would be elected dictator for only six months, but for him,
the Senate had ratified a ten-year position; the next year, he would be voted
dictator perpetuo. Caesar won these votes because he had packed the Senate
with supporters and co-opted many potential opponents, but the reasons for his
rise extended beyond his enormous political gifts:
The conventional view is that a large empire from time to time necessitated
huge military commands, which had the effect of putting strong, personally
loyal armies into the hands of men such as Sulla and Caesar who could not
resist the temptation to use them. Empire undoubtedly had two effects of
huge political significance: it necessitated the recruitment of impoverished
soldiers who had little reason to support the political status quo; and it
created an enormous (by ancient standards) capital cityincomparably
wealthy and grand, and also well endowed with slumsthat by the 60s [BC]
. . . was no longer willing to acquiesce in conservative aristocratic control.
One-man rule was the logical outcome.21
In a familiar refrain, the Roman Republics model allows a model citizen to be
named a temporary dictator, acting out of virtue to restore equilibrium. Yet when
Caesar gained the post of censor for lifewith direct control over the naming of
senators, he was literally flirting with godhood. The people addressed him
outright as Julian Jupiter and ordered a temple to be consecrated to him and to
his Clemency, claimed Cassius Dio.22
While Caesar dreamed of divinity, Senator Marcus Tullius Cicero (10643
BC) argued against this concentration of power. His reasoning would not be
easily reconciled with our own democratic aversion to tyranny today, for Roman
senators stood for the essentially aristocratic values of their own personal
freedom from the dominance of others and their own liberty to exercise
authority and dignity, while retaining equality among their own peer group.23
Its the loss of this type of freedom, and not the peril posed to the liberties of
ordinary Romans, that was Ciceros greatest worry in 49 BC as Caesar crossed
the Rubicon. As the Empire replaces the Republic in Revenge of the Sith, Padm
Amidalas own woes would not have seemed out of place in Rome. So this is
how liberty dies, to thunderous applause, she grimly declares.
Ciceros political oratory was unequalled.
 Cicero was also right to be concerned in his own case: despite Caesars
assassination on the Ides of March, 44 BC, his adoptive heir, Octavian, became
the first proper emperor of Rome in 27 BC and began the 180-year Pax
Romana.24 The constitutional balance of power shifted from the Senates
auctoritas to the emperors potestas, and the control of the former by the latter
was absolute. In spite of this, Ciceros vision lived on at the heart of
republicanism, an ideal that survived the waning of the Roman Republic.
The beginning of the end for the Republic. (Revenge of the Sith)
 The Dark Side Clouds Everything
Although republican government was to remain submerged in European society
for more than a thousand years, the Middle Ages were still intimately shaped by
the legacy of the Roman Empire. A new layer was added to medieval kingship
and the feudal economy by the application of Christianity and its distinctive
morality. Rulers and the ruled became more concerned about the legitimacy of
regimes than ever before, and Christian virtues overtook secular ones in defining
the public good. St. Augustine believed that just civic arrangements followed
two rules: do no harm to anyone and help everyone whenever possible.25
From St. Augustines point of view, the overweening desire for secular political
power could be traced back to the Fall, which starkly contrasted with the
peacefulness of Augustines City of God.
In the medieval era, the devious ins and outs of court culture defined much of
the constellation of politics orbiting kings, queens, and princes. The picture is of
a coterie of officials, clerics, and nobles who attended the king more or less
regularly in both informal and formal capacities, pusillanimously seeking
patronage or access to the head of state.26 In response, the twelfth-century
Englishman John of Salisbury spent hundreds of pages in his book Policratius
decrying flattery. Success, implacable foe of virtue, applauds its devotees only
to harm them, and with its ill-starred prosperity escorts them on their joyous way
to bring about their ultimate fall, he wrote.27 John was echoing the views of
Aristotle and Cicero. For him, courtier culture inevitably inspired avarice, pride,
vanity, competitiveness, envy, and hatred, in both rulers and the ruled. In such a
situation, the Sith Code would dictate that we should be a manipulative courtier,
rather than the self-deceived monarch. Indeed, this is one possible interpretation
of how Darth Sidious ingratiates himself with so many different forcesthe
Neimodians, Count Dooku, Anakin Skywalker. Each is powerful in his own
right, but also flawed in a way that Sidious is clever enough to exploit. One
wonders whether his own pasty-faced lackeys in Return of the Jedi were trying
to turn the same trick on him.
Machiavelli, breaking away from this tradition in the Renaissance, would have
us be neither of these. If anyone has followed the dictates of the man whom
Shakespeare has Richard III admiringly refer to as the murderous Machiavel,
it must be Darth Sidious. Sidious is a true Sith pioneer, avoiding direct
confrontations, yet working to destroy the Republic from within. Palpatines bid
for power is a wedge between a manufactured external threatDookus
Separatist Confederacy, backed by the Trade Federations Droid Armyand
internal corruption and loss of a common center in the galactic polity. His
strategy shrewdly exploits the rational self-interest of the Senators and their
constituents, promising protection from the Separatists, but not until the situation
is at its most dire. By actively engineering a formidable threat to the Republic
(as Sidious) and slowly but surely taking the reins of military and political
control (as Supreme Chancellor), Palpatine embraces the ominous dictum that
the ends justify the means.
Machiavelli immortalized this dictum in his book The Prince (published in
1532). In its pages, he famously claimed that since men love at their own will
and fear at the will of the prince, it is far safer to be feared than loved.28
Machiavelli demonstrates here the acute understanding of human psychology
and its application to effective ruling that has earned him his place in history as
one of the inventors of modern political theory. His political science was, in
many ways, ahead of its time.
Does it really make sense to make deals with Sith? (The Phantom Menace)
Machiavelli was an adviser to the powerful who died in poverty.
 Yet Machiavelli is also a man of his time, in his interest in using the models of
classical Greece and Rome as guides: Renaissance humanism of Machiavellis
age used historical cultures and actors as sources of inspiration for the present. If
it seems odd that The Prince is a book that emerges from humanism, consider
that its genesis also lies in an Italy torn apart by the European powers, its former
republics rent by the antagonism of factions, while the liberties of the people
withered in the face of the growth of private wealth.29 In 1494, Charles VIII of
France forced Florence and Rome into submission and pillaged the countryside.
His successor, Louis XII, mounted three more invasions, generating endemic
warfare throughout Italy.30 Not to be outdone, the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V invaded as well, turning Italy into a bloody battle-ground for thirty
years.
The Prince confronts this kind of political violence as a new fact of life. The
charismatic and ruthless Cesare Borgia (1476?1507), the bastard son of Pope
Alexander VI and gonfaloniere of the papal states, was one of Machiavellis
inspirations. It was not merely Borgias means, but his ends that attracted
Machiavelli: Borgia put an end to the cruel and ineffective governance of the
petty lords of the region of the Romagna, thus lifting a long-standing burden
from the shoulders of its people.31 Machiavelli admired Borgiaas he did the
classical leader Hannibaland concluded that both rulers inhuman cruelty
was the key to their glorious success. Machiavelli insisted that we must accept
that if a ruler is genuinely concerned to maintain his state, he will have to
shake off the demands of Christian virtue, wholeheartedly embracing the very
different morality which his situation dictates.32
Cesare Borgia takes a break from poisoning old allies.
 Its not surprising, then, that Machiavelli didnt dare to publish The Prince
during his lifetime, and when it was printed after his death, The Prince was put
on the Churchs Index Librorum Prohibitorum, its list of officially prohibited
books in 1559. The book, first printed in 1532, found very few discerning
readers who understood its value. At the same time, it found a host of enemies
who saw it as an evil work, inspired directly by the devil, in which a malevolent
author teaches a prince how to win and keep power through avarice, cruelty, and
falseness, making cynical use of religion as a tool to keep the populace docile,
wrote a recent biographer of Machiavelli.33
Yet as much as readers of The Prince focus on its callous demand to choose
fear over love, it also has many illustrations of entirely moral principles, such as
the one that rulers should temper their worst impulses in dealing with their
subjects. This advice would have been quite acceptable to the ancient Romans
whom Machiavelli admired so much. With it, he is recommending that princes
consider putting aside the indiscriminate use of coercive potestas in favor of
well-thought-out auctoritas, that is, the soft power that relies on understanding
of, and respect from, ones subjects. As well see, Palpatine relies on the mastery
of the first of these, but only the semblance of the second.

A Pathway to Many Abilities Some

Consider to Be Unnatural
We have already seen the parallels between two histories: one of Greek tyranny
and Roman dictatorship, the other of the rise and fall of the Galactic Republic.
How much blame for the demise of a great civilization can we lay at the feet of
its primary architect, Darth Sidious? Ornot quite the same questionhow
Machiavellian was Palpatine? Machiavelli might have admired Palpatine more
for his highly organized, long game of seizing power than for what Palpatine
does once he has power.
On the one hand, the Emperor recognizes that the successful Machiavellian
ruler must commit his regime to constant war. Heeding Machiavellis often-
repeated advice, Palpatine puts no trust in mercenary armies, even hardwiring
into the program of an entire clone army various orders.34 Despite this, he has
often had use for bounty hunters, particularly Cad Bane, whom he employs in a
number of episodes of The Clone Wars. Machiavelli warns the Prince that
because mercenaries have no fealty to those who employ them, their devotion to
protecting property and persons should always be suspect. Despite her ruthless
devotion to fulfilling her contracts, Aurra Sings intense hatred of the Jedi
threatens to distract her from her work for her employers. We see evidence of
this when she teams up with the young Boba Fett to assassinate Mace Windu in
The Clone Wars Death Trap.
Learning from the best: Aurra Sing and Boba Fett. (The Clone Wars)
 Throughout history, these Machiavellian lessons have been taught well outside
of Renaissance Italy. Similar to early Chinas brutal First Emperor, Qin Shi
Huangdi (246210 BC), Emperor Palpatine enforces a strict resistance is futile
policy through the construction of a totalitarian New Order in the galaxy.35
Imperial industries produce deadly engines of battle, such as the colossal Star
Destroyers and the nimble TIE fighters. This New Order encourages the growth
of a new type of rapacious individual. One of these, the Grand Moff Tarkin, is
put in charge of the Death Star, a crystallization of the Empires technological
terror. Like Palpatine, Tarkin is someone whom impetuous young Anakin
Skywalker looks up to for his criticisms of the inefficiency of the Jedi during
times of war. In The Clone Wars Counterattack, Tarkin mirrors Machiavellis
disdain for conventional morality and religion when he tells Anakin, I find [the
Jedis] tactics ineffective. The Jedi Code prevents them from going far enough to
achieve victory, to do whatever it takes to win, the very reason why
peacekeepers should not be leading a war.
On the other hand, as a Sith Lord, Sidious violates Machiavellis principle that
cruelty must not be used indiscriminately. We see his cold-blooded nature
onscreen, commanding Trade Federation troops on Naboo to wipe them out. All
of them. He proves theres no honor among Dark Lords when he sacrifices
Darth Tyranus to his desire for a more powerful apprentice in Revenge of the
Sith, compelling Anakin to execute his former apprentice. Off-screen, his crimes
are even more remarkable: he murders his Master, Darth Plagueisrequired by
the Sith Rule of Two, but nonetheless a reminder to an aspiring Sith Lord to
put off taking an apprentice until the last possible moment!
Darth Sidious, despite his immense power, still doesnt want to reveal his hand
until absolutely necessary. Yet for Machiavelli, part of the virtue of the
successful prince was that he was publicly seen to be possessed of great mercy
and great cruelty, of both magnificence and ruthlessness. In his role as a
politician, Palpatine employs the publicly acceptable force of auctoritas to get
things done, and here he is an ideal Machiavellian, using his grasp of
psychology and bureaucracy to stifle justice and bringing about successive
crises for the Republic, each of which helps build his political and military
powers.36 Against the background of an increasingly corrupt Senate, Palpatine
has both unethical, manipulative means and legitimate institutional channels to
achieve his unscrupulous ends. He has learned the central Machiavellian lesson
well:
I will even be so bold as to say that it actually does a prince harm to have
 those good qualities and always observe them. But appearing to have them
will benefit him. Of course, it is best to both seem and be merciful, loyal,
humane, upright, and scrupulous. And yet ones spirit should be calculated in
such a way that one can, if need be, turn ones back on these qualities and
become the opposite. . . . He must have a spirit that can change depending on
the winds and variation of Fortune, and as I have said above, he must not, if
he is able, distance himself from what is good, but must also, when
necessary, know how to prefer what is bad.37
Yet not until he becomes Emperor does Palpatine seem to be able to employ
wholesale the central Machiavellian tool of direct application of fear, held in
place by a dread of punishment, which one can always rely on.38 The
asymmetry in the Sith Rule of Two between Master and Apprentice means that
Vader is used as a blunt instrument of Palpatines policy, often being kept in
the dark himself about the Emperors ultimate goals. Former allies such as the
Trade Federation are simply absorbed into the Empire, dissidents are sent to the
spice mines of Kessel, and the only programming available on the HoloNet is
Imperial propaganda. Palpatine does away with the Senate in A New Hope,
working most effectively with the governors of planetary systems who are
willing to use the same terror tactics and ultimately using the Death Star to instill
fear throughout the galaxy.
Power play: Supreme Chancellor Palpatine tricks Anakin Skywalker into
becoming his new apprentice. (Revenge of the Sith)
 And Yet . . .
Overheard in the Mos Eisley Cantina: Say what you will about Palpatine, at
least he made the Corellian freighters run on time.39 Its hard to believe that
there are some who will actually miss his totalitarian rule after his death, but
history has demonstrated this does happen in the cases of dictators such as Stalin
and Mao Zedong. Therefore, its important to keep in mind that the rule of the
ruthless, in our galaxy or any other, cant be credited merely to the scheming of
one man. Conditions of cultural decadence, political amoralism, and
unrestrained, all-consuming commerce and industry paved the way for the
Empire. As Padm observes, liberty died not with a whimper, but to thunderous
applause.
Although Machiavelli told us how to manipulate the public in The Prince, he
conceded in his Discourses (1531) that absolute power should not be
concentrated in the hands of one corruptible individual. Instead, the willingness
to do what is necessary to advance the common good, and thereby acquire glory
for the city, is virtue (virt), which for Machiavelli explains why monarchies
cannot compete with republics.40 The Discourses imagined government along
the lines of the Roman Republic, not the absolute dictatorship of the Empire. It
returned to the examples of Aristotle, Cicero, and John of Salisbury in extolling
the ideal of the virtuous citizen supporting a free republic. Machiavellis ideal
republic in the Discourses maintain[s] a free constitution under which every
citizen is able to enjoy an equal opportunity of involving himself actively in the
business of government.41 So although the onscreen work of the Rebellion
against the Empire is shown mainly in the hands of X-wing pilots and forest-
moon commandos, we should not forget the serious, if less flashy, roles of Bail
Organa, Mon Mothma, and Leia Organa in preparing for a new and, it is hoped,
more virtuous estate after the Empires fall.
Luke and Anakin, face to face. (Return of the Jedi)
 Similar to the Star Wars universe, Machiavellis world of warring Renaissance
Italian city-stateslike the Roman Empirewas a political universe inhabited
at its very center by magic.42 For Sidious, this magic is the Force; for the
Romans, the emperor himself was divine; for Machiavelli, the power of Fortuna
(fortune), often symbolized as an inconstant woman or an ever-turning wheel.
The need to outguess and outmaneuver fortune is one of the important lessons in
political history and the hardest to master. Its test is one that Emperor Palpatine
ultimately fails, because of an unexpected, yet highly fortunate bond: that
between a father and his son.

Notes
1. Stephen J. Sansweet and Peter Vilmur, The Star Wars Vault: Thirty Years of
Treasures from the Lucasfilm Archives (New York: Harper/Lucasfilm, 2007),
22.
2. Civic virtue includes the responsibility not only to hold office, but also to
deliberate on important affairs, pay fair taxes, and maintain respect for fellow
citizens, even in times of intense disagreement. So you can see how
contemporary America is not a republic!
3. Bruni, as interpreted by J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment:
Florentine Political Theory and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 88.
4. A parallel development occurs in ancient China, as the virtue- and duty-
based philosophy of Confucius (551479 BC) becomes the standard by which
the vast Chinese bureaucratic structure of the Mandarins would judge
themselves; see John Keay, China: A History (New York: Basic Books, 2009),
chap. 2.
5. Aristotle, Politics, 1295a 2023, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2,
edited by Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984),
2056.
6. McCormick, From Constitutional Technique to Caesarist Ploy, in Baehr
and Richter, Dictatorship in History and Theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and
Totalitarianism (Washington, DC, and New York: German Historical Institute
and Cambridge University Press, 2004), 198.
7. Herodotus, Tyranny in Corinth, in Donald Kagan, ed., Problems in Ancient
History, Volume One: The Ancient Near East and Greece (New York:
Macmillan, 1966), 205.
8. Aristotle, Politics 1310b, 1516, 2070.
9. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol.
2, edited by Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984),
2056.
10. Ibid., 2349.
11. Chester Starr, A History of the Ancient World, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1974), 254.
12. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 2352.
13. Daniel Wallace with Kevin J. Anderson, Star Wars: The New Essential
Chronology (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005), 35.
14. Reynolds, Mack, James Luceno, and Ryder Windham, Star Wars: The
Complete Visual Dictionary (New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2006), 78.
15. William V. Harris, Power, in Alessandro Barchiesi and Walter Scheidel,
eds., The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies (New York: Oxford, 2010), 564.
16. Starr, A History of the Ancient World, 468.
17. Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western
Political Thought, expanded ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2004), 76.
18. Quoted in Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin,
1977), 123.
19. Arno J. Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian
Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 100.
20. Daniel Wallace and Jason Fry, Star Wars: The Essential Atlas (New York:
Ballantine Books, 2009), 158.
21. Harris, Power, 570.
22. The Account of Dio Cassius, in Donald Kagan, ed., Problems in Ancient
History, Volume Two: The Roman World (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 269.
23. Robin Lane Fox, The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to
Hadrian (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 358359.
24. Starr, A History of the Ancient World, 552.
25. Jean Bethke Elshtain, St. Augustine, in David Boucher and Paul Kelly,
eds., Political Thinkers, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009),
126.
26. Scott L. Waugh, The Court, Politics, and Rhetoric in England, in David
R. Knechtges and Eugene Vance, eds., Rhetoric and the Discourses of Power in
Court Culture: China, Europe, and Japan (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 2005), 38.
27. Joseph B. Pike, ed. and trans., Frivolities of Courtiers and Footprints of
Philosophers: Being a Translation of the First, Second, and Third Books and
Selections from the Seventh and Eighth Books of the Policratus of John
Salisbury (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1938), 11.
28. Niccol Machiavelli, The Prince, in Peter Constantine, ed. and trans., The
Essential Writings of Machiavelli (New York: Modern Library, 2007), 65, 67.
29. Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 73.
30. Ibid., 113.
31. Paul Strathern, The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior (New York:
Bantam Books, 2009), 5961.
32. Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1, 134135
33. Maurizio Viroli, Niccols Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli, translated by
Antony Shugaar (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000), 155156.
34. Its unlikely that Machiavelli would have approved of the forced
conscription of human stormtroopers, but the Imperial Academy for the
training of officerswhere Han trained and Luke aspired to go as wellwas a
stroke of genius; Wallace, Star Wars: The Essential Chronology, 87, 92.
35. Keay, China: A History, 94
36. Reynolds, Luceno, and Windham, Star Wars: The Complete Visual
Dictionary, 12.
37. Machiavelli, The Prince, in The Essential Machiavelli, 69.
38. Ibid., 65.
39. Theres a myth that Mussolini, the Fascist leader of Italy from 1922 to
1943, made the trains run on time. The clich is often used (sometimes
ironically) to demonstrate that even dictatorial regimes have some practical
good to them. Overall, the Italian railway system was no more efficient under
Mussolini than under his liberal predecessors; see R. J. B. Bosworth,
Mussolinis Italy (New York: Penguin, 2007), 439.
40. Eric Nelson, The Problem of the Prince, in James Hankins, ed., The
Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2007).
41. Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1, 78.
42. Wolin, Politics and Vision, 189.
 Chapter 8

Fear Is the Path to the Dark Side

Nuclear Weapons and the Death Star

Lori Maguire
This station is now the ultimate power in the universe.
Admiral Motti, A New Hope

The Administrations START [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] proposal

for reductions would . . . permit the unrestrained pursuit of their Star Wars
scheme for outer spacewhich would open another trip wire for nuclear
war. This really is a very strange idea. We cannot found national policy on
fond memories of radio serials, dreams of the Old West, and the thrilling
days of yesteryear. We must reject the preposterous notion of a Lone Ranger
in the sky, firing silver laser bullets and shooting missiles out of the hands of
 Soviet outlaws.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy1
On May 25, 1983, Return of the Jedi, the highly anticipated final installment of
the original Star Wars trilogy, premiered in the United States. Anticipation had
been building for months, and, not coincidentally, 1983 was also the year of Star
Wars imagery in U.S. politics. On March 8, President Ronald Reagan gave a
speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, in whichobviously
referring to the USSRhe talked of the aggressive impulses of an evil
empire.2 Two weeks later, Reagan publicly proposed the Strategic Defense
Initiative (SDI), which aimed at creating a space-based missile defense system.
The very next day, Senator Kennedy mocked it as Star Wars. The Washington
Post quoted him, Time magazine did a cover story using the term, and SDI soon
had a very popular nickname. It was perhaps inevitable that the pet project of a
former movie actor president would spawn a film analogy.3 These speeches show
how much Star Wars had already become a part of American culture, but they
also tell us how the American viewers of the time directly linked what they had
seen in Star Wars to their countrys experience of the Cold War.4
Senator Edward Kennedy, who first christened SDI Star Wars.
President Ronald Reagan denouncing the evil empire of the Soviet Union.
 In particular, we should note how Kennedy immediately connects Star Wars
with the idea of military technology. Certainly, military technology (its
limitations and its morality) is a major theme of the original Star Wars trilogy,
with the Death Staror, rather, the two Death Starsserving as the most
important example. Named that way because of its ability to obliterate an entire
planet, this space station is the supreme weapon of mass destruction and one
whose objective is to maintain the Galactic Empires dominance of even the
most far-flung outposts. In the original Star Wars film from 1977 (now known as
A New Hope), it is described as the ultimate power in the universe. Grand
Moff Tarkin uses it to annihilate the planet Alderaanvery clearly establishing
its terrifying capacity and its deadly threat, as well as the utter ruthlessness and
evil of the Empire.
Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader force Princess Leia to watch the destruction
of Alderaan, her home planet. (A New Hope).
American servicemen watch a mushroom cloud blossoming in the distance as
the United States tests thermonuclear weapons in the South Pacific during the
1950s.
 Much of the plot of the first Star Wars revolves around the Rebel Alliances
attempts to destroy the Death Star. Indeed, by the end the Rebels have managed
to find a weakness that enables Luke Skywalker to do just thatalthough he is
finally able to succeed because he turns off his computer and uses the Force. A
second Death Star appears in Return of the Jedi, only to meet the same fate in an
even more dramatic fashion. This time, it is the primitive Ewoks, attacking with
spears and logs, who help bring down the protective shield, making its
destruction possible. The strength of people power and the ultimate
inadequacy of purely military and technological power are thus graphically
shown.
For obvious reasons, the Death Star does not have the same central position in
the prequel trilogy. Its plans, however, are shown in Attack of the Clones, while
it actually appears in an early stage of construction at the end of Revenge of the
Sith. The Death Star and the Galactic Empire are thus associated from the very
start.
As Kennedys and Reagans speeches show, Star Wars is a product of its time
(or times) and so reflects many of its hopes and anxieties.5 Undoubtedly, the
greatest worry during the Cold War was that of nuclear annihilation. The Death
Star provides an obvious manifestation of this fear, but it is also one example of
more general worries about the evolution of the arms race and the fragility of
democracy.
This chapter examines the influence that the very real atomic bomb had on the
creation of a fictional super-weapon, the Death Star, and the parallels between
them. The development of such a weapon required an enormous expenditure of
resources and expertise, as the historical Manhattan Projectthe secret World
War II research project that developed the first atomic bombsdemonstrates.
The twentieth century saw the emergence of other super-weapons used to
intimidate whole populations, such as the neutron bomb or biological and
chemical weapons. In comparing these real weapons of mass destruction with
the Death Star, we should consider the fear generated by such arms and how they
can become a focus for espionage and paranoia. How do super-weapons change
the balance of power in each case, and how does fear of the ultimate weapon
affect populations threatened with them? Finally, we should examine the
military-industrial complex that grew out of and further promoted the creation of
new super-weapons. A close analysis of Star Wars films shows how much they
have been affected by the very real events of George Lucass lifetime, which find
a reflection there. Star Wars is not an isolated fantasy world but one heavily
influenced by the major issues of its timeand, indeed, influencing them.
The Death Star explodes. (A New Hope)
A nuclear explosion, conducted as a test by the United States in Nevada, April
1953.
 This Station Is Now the Ultimate
Power in the Universe. I Suggest We
Use It.
Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb. . . . That bomb
had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand
times the blast power of the British Grand Slam which is the largest bomb
ever yet used in the history of warfare. . . . It is an atomic bomb. It is a
harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun
draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far
East.
Harry Truman6
Clearly, the Death Star is a military arm but one that has a predominantly
political function. In a certain sense, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) exist,
paradoxically, so as not to be usedor used only once, to provide an example.
As we have already noted, Tarkin talks of the need to make an effective
demonstration of the new weapon.7
Admiral Motti in a Death Star conference room. (A New Hope)
 Of course, the search for the ultimate weapon has played a role in very real
conflicts far from the universe of Star Wars. More than one commentator has
noticed the resemblance between the Death Star and the atomic bomb.8 A great
deal of time and expense were put into the fabrication of the first atomic bomb
by British, Canadian, American, and other scientists working on the Manhattan
Project. Though the bomb was used only against Japan at the end of World War
II, its destructiveness terrified the very men who had ordered its detonation. For
President Harry Truman, the atomic bomb was an apocalyptic weaponone that
inspired fear and terrorand to be employed only as a last resort.9 Yet he
refused to officially rule out its use, as this excerpt from a press conference
during the Korean War shows:
Question: Mr. President, I wonder if we could retrace that reference to the
atom bomb? Did we understand you clearly that the use of the atomic bomb is
under active consideration?
Truman: Always has been. It is one of our weapons.10
This became, of course, official U.S. and NATO policy, which refused to rule out
the possibility of striking first.11
President Harry Truman saw the atomic bomb as an apocalyptic weapon but
refused to rule out a future use.
 President Dwight Eisenhower, who had been a military man and therefore
knew a great deal more about the subject, had a somewhat different attitude.12 In
October 1953, Eisenhower signed National Security Council document NSC-
162/2, which became the governments basic document on American security
policy: it insisted that the nation must be able to inflict massive retaliation
against any attack.13 Deterrencethe theory that the threat of overwhelming
military retaliation by one country would prevent another from attacking it
became the foundation of U.S. and NATO policy. During the next years, a new
field of study developedthat of nuclear strategy. Interestingly enough, though,
it was not the military but civilian academics who developed some of the most
controversial theories associated with it. In particular, Herman Kahn of the Rand
Corporation and later one of the founders of the Hudson Institute and Henry
Kissinger of Harvard wrote books with provocative titles such as On
Thermonuclear War (Kahn, 1960), Thinking the Unthinkable (Kahn, 1962, the
same year as the Cuban Missile Crisis), and Nuclear Weapons and Foreign
Policy (Kissinger, 1957).14 Even more worrying, government officials talked in a
similar way: John Foster Dulles, Eisenhowers secretary of state, spoke of the
further deterrent of massive retaliatory power and developed the idea of
brinkmanship.15 Robert McNamara, in 1967, while secretary of defense, went
so far as to affirm,
It is important to understand that assured destruction is the very essence of
the whole deterrence concept. We must possess an actual assured-destruction
capability, and that capability also must be credible. The point is that a
potential aggressor must believe that our assured-destruction capability is in
fact actual, and that our will to use it in retaliation to an attack is in fact
unwavering. The conclusion, then, is clear: if the United States is to deter a
nuclear attack in itself or its allies, it must possess an actual and a credible
assured-destruction capability.16
This idea became known as mutual assured destruction or, more simply, MAD.
Although the U.S. government played down the threat from nuclear weapons
in the early 1950s with programs such as the duck and cover campaign (which
taught schoolchildren that they could protect themselves from nuclear attack by
ducking down and getting under some kind of cover, such as a desk or even a
tablecloth), by the end of the decade, anxieties about nuclear warfare were being
freely expressed in popular culture. Novels such as Nevil Shutes On the Beach
(1957) and Peter Georges Red Alert (1958) were imagining atomic disaster.
End-of-world fears reached their high point in the dark parody of Dr.
Strangelove or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb (Stanley
Kubrick, 1964, based on Red Alert), where we see mushroom clouds exploding
across the Earth at the conclusion. Not coincidentally, perhaps, the greatest crisis
of the Cold War occurred during this period. The Cuban Missile Crisis of
October 1962, the greatest example of brinkmanship, brought the world right to
the edge of mutual assured destruction.
The debate about super-weapons was now in the open, which meant that new
developments were bound to cause heated debate. One of the most controversial
of the later super-weapons was the neutron bomb, technically known as an
enhanced radiation bomb: it is a thermonuclear device that emits large quantities
of lethal radiation but only reduced levels of heat and blast. In theory, these
bombs would kill human and animal life, while allowing some structures to
survive.
The news that the United States had developed a neutron bomb set off a
massive debate around the time the first Star Wars film opened, with its Death
Star. On June 6, 1977, the Washington Post published an article titled Neutron
Killer Warhead Buried in ERDA Budget, which revealed that the Carter
administration was planning to install neutron warheads. Its author wrote, The
United States is about to begin production of its first nuclear battlefield weapon
specifically designed to kill people through the release of neutrons rather than to
destroy military installations through heat and blast.17 In other words, people
would be killed while buildings would be left standing. The article strongly but
not entirely accurately implied that this was a new and particularly frightful
development, and these charges quickly spilled across the pages of the worlds
press. The Soviet propaganda machine soon weighed in with a massive
campaign in Europe against this ultimate capitalist weapon.18 The controversy
that resulted led to Carters decision to cancel the deployment of neutron bombs,
although President Reagan reversed this decision in 1981.19
Biological and chemical weapons have been a more immediate concern in
recent years, especially after the still-mysterious anthrax attacks in the United
States in 2001. Certainly, they have a long and tragic history, notably with the
use of mustard gas in World War I. A number of nations have used them since
then. Saddam Hussein employed them in the Iran-Iraq war of 19801988
(having first obtained them from Western countries), notably against the Kurds
in the Halabja attack of 1988. This fact, combined with his often belligerent
attitude to UN inspections, provided the justification for the 2003 invasion of
Iraq. Leading figures in both the U.S. and British governments drew terrifying
pictures. Tony Blair, for example, told Parliament,
When the inspectors left in 1998, they left unaccounted for 10,000 litres of
anthrax; a far-reaching VX nerve agent programme; up to 6,500 chemical
munitions; at least 80 tonnes of mustard gas, and possibly more than 10
times that amount; unquantifiable amounts of sarin, botulinum toxin and a
host of other biological poisons; and an entire Scud missile programme. We
are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few yearscontrary to all
history, contrary to all intelligenceSaddam decided unilaterally to destroy
those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.20
Note how Blair plays up fears by his use of words such as toxin and poisons and
how he lists anthrax first, in order to play on memories of the earlier attacks in
the United States. Yet, of course, no WMD were found once Iraq had been
conquered and thoroughly searched.
The so-called Star Wars SDI plan proposed by Ronald Reagan, and in a very
modified form continued by later U.S. administrations, as a defense against
attack can also be seen as a super-weapon: if successful (which is far from
certain), it would destroy the entire premise of mutual assured destruction, which
had prevented war between the superpowers for decades. The nation that
possessed it would not have to worry about being annihilated and could
presumably launch nuclear attacks without fear of retaliationwhich is
precisely what the Russians have repeatedly objected to. Its nickname of Star
Wars undoubtedly came about due to the highly complicated descriptions of
SDIs lasers presented in the press, which in some ways do resemble the Death
Stars laser. And so we see how the mirrored parallels between real history and
the Star Wars universe came to be: the Star Wars films were so strongly
influenced by an awareness of the threat posed by nuclear weapons that their
name actually became associated with one of the new super-weapons.
An artists conception of the SDI, 1984.
The Death Star fires on Alderaan. (A New Hope)
 These highly controversial weapons and projects all received immense
attention in the worlds press. The original trilogy of Star Wars also offers a
devastating criticism of WMDs. As we have already observed, the Rebel
Alliance, the heroes of the first films, seek simply to destroy the Death Star,
rather than build their own. The ways in which they destroy itand other
weapons such as the AT-AT Walkers of The Empire Strikes Backare often very
basic.21 Of course, the Rebel Alliance is not a group of pacifiststhey do use
ordinary weapons to win their victory. Yet the Rebels clearly reject a never-
ending arms race: the moral high ground belongs to those who refuse to use such
weapons.
R2-D2 saves the day with his ability to interface with technologyyet again. (A
New Hope)
 Star Wars also demonstrates the advantages of technology. The droids C-3PO
and R2-D2 appear in every single film and certainly figure among the heroes. In
particular, R2-D2s expertise and abilities repeatedly save the human heroes.22 In
the first trilogy, the rebels use technology, as do the Jedi in the prequel films.
The good guys are not antitechnological Luddites who want to return to nature
(even if the presence or absence of natural scenery on a planet does reveal
something about its inhabitants).23 Star Wars history only warns us against
destructive technologyand most particularly focuses on the super-weapon of
the Death Star. Built with the sole purpose of keeping the Emperors regime
eternally in power by intimidating any dissent, it fails dramatically both times.

Fear Will Keep the Local Systems in

Line. Fear of This Battle Station.
Of primary military concern will be the bombs potentiality to break the will
of nations and of peoples by the stimulation of mans primordial fears, those
of the unknown, the invisible, the mysterious. We may deduce from a wide
variety of established facts that the effective exploitation of the bombs
psychological implications will take precedence over the application of its
destructive and lethal effects in deciding the issue of war.
1947 report by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Evaluation Board24
In the universe of Star Wars, the Tarkin Doctrine, expressed in a message from
the future grand moff to Palpatine, states that the most effective way of
maintaining order in the Empire is through fear and that this requires the creation
of a super-weapon possessing massive destructive capability: the Death Star. In
Star Wars, Tarkin explains its purpose: Fear will keep the local systems in line.
Fear of this battle station. He threatens Alderaan, Princess Leias home planet,
with annihilation unless she reveals the secret Rebel base. When she (falsely)
identifies it as Dantooine, however, Tarkin proceeds with the attack on Alderaan
anyway, explaining that Dantooine is too remote to make an effective
demonstration. His fundamental goal is clearly to provide an example that will
so terrify the galactic population that the rebellion will end of itself. As he says
afterward, No star system will dare oppose the Emperor now.
Grand Moff Tarkin, a champion of fear. (A New Hope)
 Fear has played a major role in many conflicts and, although it may seem
paradoxical, has often been stronger before a war than during it. For example,
fear undeniably influenced public opinion in Europe between the warsin
particular, because of the infant weapon of air power. Introduced at the end of
World War I, many military experts believed that air power would be decisive in
a future conflict. Certainly, fear of devastating aerial bombing played a major
role in the peace and disarmament initiatives of the 1920s and the 1930s.25 Later,
the terror bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War had a profound
influence on public opinion (in that war, the German and Italian air forces
experimented with massive aerial bombing, causing many civilian casualties).26
One can get a good idea of the terror engendered by air power from a speech by
then British prime minister Stanley Baldwin to the House of Commons in 1932:
The speed of air attack, compared with the attack of an army, is as the speed
of a motor car to that of a four-in-hand [a carriage pulled by horses] and in
the next war you will find that any town which is within reach of an
aerodrome [airfield] can be bombed within the first five minutes of war from
the air, to an extent which was inconceivable in the last war, and the question
will be, whose morale will be shattered quickest by that preliminary
bombing? I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there
is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever
people may tell him, the bomber will always get through.27
The French were possibly even more afraid than the British, and a number of
historians have cited this as a reason for Frances defeat by the Germans in
1940.28
A London aircraft spotter watches for German bombers during the Battle of
Britain in 1940. St. Pauls Cathedral can be seen in the background.
 Obviously, fear was also a major weapon used by the Nazis, whether in
Hitlers speeches, in violent attacks such as Kristallnacht or the Night of the
Long Knives or by the deliberate targeting of the civilian population in
bombing campaigns such as the Blitz of British cities. The Soviet Union also
relied on fear to maintain order, both within the USSR and in Eastern Europe.
The list of examples is endless, and, certainly, Western countries, including the
United States, have not been immune from using this tactic. As the opening
quote to this section shows, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were very much aware of
the terror potential in the atomic bomb.
Interestingly enough, it was the United States that experienced a massive panic
after the Soviet Union exploded its own bomb in 1949. No longer the only
nuclear power, the nation discovered that the Soviets new weapons, combined
with the development of rocket technology, left it vulnerable. The creation of the
Iron Curtain in parts of Eastern Europe and the communist victory in China in
1949 reinforced this disquiet. American anxieties intensified the following year
with the revelation that the German scientist Klaus Fuchs, who had worked on
the Manhattan Project, had given atomic secrets to the USSR. Many worried that
there were other, still hidden, spies. A little-known senator from Wisconsin,
Joseph McCarthy, immediately picked up on this widely shared fear:
The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because
our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores . . . but
rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so
well by this Nation. It has not been the less fortunate, or members of
minority groups who have been traitorous to this Nation, but rather those
who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest Nation on earth has had to
offer . . . the finest homes, the finest college education and the finest jobs in
government we can give.29
McCarthys right-wing populism accused the federal government and the elites
of the nation of espionage and betrayal. Because the Korean War began only a
few months later, the panic that ensued is perhaps understandable. Many people
argued that danger threatened from within, as well as from without, and that
anyone, even the nations leaders, could be a communist.30
These fears found their expression in the popular culture of the time.31 George
Lucas himself grew up in the shadow of the bomb and remembers the drills
where children had to hide under their desks at school. Certainly, in his own
lifetime he saw an explosion of panic that led to often appalling overreactions.
Perhaps we can see this behind Yodas statement in The Phantom Menace: Fear
is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate; hate leads to
suffering. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition

Remember Back to Your Early

Teachings. All Who Gain Power Are
Afraid to Lose It.
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-
industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist.
Dwight D. Eisenhower32
Why did a great Sith Lord such as Emperor Palpatine need the Death Star? The
simplest answer is that one person aloneeven someone so powerfulcannot
control an entire galaxy. For that, a strong military force is necessary, and army
leaders want the latest and best weapons. In a technological age, this means the
existence of industries that supply the weapons and other necessary tools. These
industrial groups, in turn, seek to maintain their position and continue receiving
government contracts (and so a second Death Star is built, even though a first
one has failed) and solidify their political power. In this, Star Wars reflects one
of the chief debates of the Cold War, which revolved around what then president
Eisenhower termed in his farewell address the military-industrial complex.
The expression is defined by Merriam-Webster as an informal alliance of the
military and related government departments with defense industries that is held
to influence government policy.33
In the United States, the military-industrial complex began to grow in earnest
with World War II. A noticeable sign of this was the construction of the
Pentagonone of the largest office buildings in the worldwhich was opened
in 1943. The advent of the Cold War entrenched both the military and its civilian
suppliers. During the next decades, the two superpowers tried to outdo each
other in military technology, building ever more powerful and accurate nuclear
weapons. The United States generally had the lead, but the USSR scored some
important triumphs, such as the launching of the worlds first satellite, Sputnik,
in October 1957. Sputnik provoked something of a panic in the United States and
started both the Space Age and the Space Race.34
Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. (Revenge of the Sith)
 On one hand, however, the 1970s were a time of dtente, a policy that sought
to reduce international tension. A series of events and agreements showed that
the friction between the United States and the USSR and China was gradually
easing. First, there was the winding down and the disastrous conclusion to the
Vietnam War, as well as Nixons visit to China in 1972. The Strategic Arms
Limitation Talks the same year resulted in the SALT I agreements (including the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty), which controlled and limited armaments in both
the superpowers. So the original Star Wars film came out during a period of
dtente. Indeed, the very year of its appearance saw the signing of a nuclear
nonproliferation pact by fifteen countries (including the United States and the
Soviet Union).
On the other hand, the 1970s saw something of a low point in confidence in
the executive branchs honesty. In June 1971, the New York Times began
publication of what are known as the Pentagon Papersa secret history of
U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War prepared by the Department of Defense,
leaked to the Times by military analyst Daniel Ellsberg. The newspaper later
wrote, They demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration
had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a
subject of transcendent national interest and significance.35 The Watergate
scandal followed, which would ultimately bring down the Nixon government, as
did revelations about the U.S. governments continuing lies regarding its
interventions in Indochina, such as the so-called secret bombing of Cambodia.
Indeed, Lucas apparently based the Emperor on Richard Nixon.36 Corruption in
the highest places within the United States and the power of the military-
industrial complex seemed all too obvious to many at the time.
In the prequel trilogy, naturally, we see only the origins of the Death Star. It
seems that a dictatorship, once established, feels it must resort to fear and
intimidation in order to maintain its hold on power. Yet if the earlier trilogy can
be seen as a reflection of and about the Cold War, so the later trilogy reflects the
worries of more recent history. At the end of Revenge of the Sith, the Death Star
looks surprisingly near completionin fact, its hard to imagine why it took
another twenty years to make it fully operational. Perhaps this is beside the
point, though, and the real purpose is to show parallels with more current events
such as the September 11, 2001, attacks and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Certainly, a massive panic seized America after the 9/11 attacks, and this fear
was exploited to justify the invasion of Iraq. The threat of terrorists armed with
super-weapons has cropped up continually. Revenge of the Sith was made while
much of this debate was occurring. It makes the point of showing the Galactic
Republic being destroyed from within and with popular support. Indeed, Padm
Amidala comments, So this is how liberty dies . . . with thunderous applause.
Will Brooker has commented that
The Emperor and Darth Vader view the Death Star, still under construction.
(Revenge of the Sith)
 this is the pattern suggested by Lucas saga as a wholenot a straight clash
between good and evil, or even the character arc of Anakin Skywalkers rise,
corruption and salvation, but a cycle between apparently oppositional but in
fact worryingly similar social structures, the Empire and Republic.
Corruption, within Lucass model, does not appear from outside, but festers
within, emerging when a complacent society allows it to flourish; it can rise
again if it is not checked and controlled, as Luke does with his urges towards
hatred and revenge, or it can be exorcised, as Luke does, by saving his father
and destroying the Emperor.
Indeed, the only super-weapon in Star Wars belongs to the government. The
vision of the Death Star at the end may be a warning to us all about the dangers
to our own liberty of a new military-industrial complex.37
What had been the city of Nagasaki, Japan, after the United States dropped a
nuclear weapon in August 1945. A Roman Catholic cathedral can be seen in the
distance. A Japanese report described Nagasaki as like a graveyard with not a
tombstone standing.
 Appearing in four of the Star Wars films and central to two of them, the two
Death Stars, the ultimate weapon of the Galactic Empire, are examples of the
evil of absolute power, which inevitably seeks to preserve itself at all costs.
Defeated by the simplest of weapons, the Death Star shows the futility of any
regime seeking to perpetuate its power eternally. In this sense, it is a highly
critical and yet optimistic commentary on the ultimate futility of the arms race,
of much of the Cold War, and, indeed, of much recent history. It is also a
reflection of the terror engendered by atomic power. Ultimately, Star Wars
message here is that we should be focused on controlling ourselves and our own
base desires (looking within for the source of our troubles), rather than on
controlling others, and this is true for nations, as much as for individuals. Or, as
Yoda tells Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, Control, control, you must learn
control!

Notes
1. Speech at Brown University, June 4, 1983,
http://tedkennedy.org/ownwords/event/cold_war. Kennedy first called SDI
Star Wars just after Reagans speech. He is quoted by Lou Cannon in the
Washington Post, March 24, 1983, A1, as saying, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy
(D-Mass.) characterized the speech as misleading Red-scare tactics and
reckless Star Wars schemes. This extract is obviously taken from a later
speech, where he reused the image.
2. Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Association of
Evangelicals, Orlando, Florida, March 8, 1983,
http://www.hbci.com/~tgort/empire.htm. Will Kaufman, American Culture in
the 1970s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 93, talks of
Reagans transformation of the ironic rhetoric and vision of Star Wars into a
serious mode of political discourse. He also observes, There was something
very serious in his appropriation of the cartoon or comic-book phrase, the Evil
Empire, for a statement on the direction of United States foreign policy, as
though the departments of Defense and State could be guided by the ethics of a
Saturday afternoon sci-fi adventure.
3. Juan Williams of the Washington Post wrote an article on March 29, 1983,
A10, titled Writers of Speeches for President Claim Force Is with Him,
mocking the bellicose tone of his recent speeches.
4. Although it contains a number of mistakes, David Meyer discusses this in
Star Wars, Star Wars and American Political Culture, Journal of Popular
Culture 26, no. 2 (Fall 1992): 99115. Lincoln Geraghty has commented,
Right wing Cold War politics were indelibly etched onto the characters and
back story that informed the Star Wars universe: heroic rebels versus the evil
empire became America against the Soviet Union. Intriguingly, for those
opposed to the SDI, the rebellion in Star Wars could be seen as a metaphor for
the lefts struggle against Reaganism and the politics of big business. See
Lincoln Geraghty, ed., American Science Fiction Film and Television (Oxford:
Berg, 2009), 59.
5. Laurent Jullier in his book Star Wars: Anatomie dune saga (Paris: Armand
Colin, 2005), 17, wrote of how the prequel trilogy shows our world and our
anxieties.
6. Press release by the White House, August 6, 1945,
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/pdfs/59.p
7. Brian Cameron, What Is Thy Bidding, My Master?: Star Wars and the
Hegelian Struggle for Recognition, in Kevin Decker and Jason Eberl, eds.,
Star Wars and Philosophy (Chicago: Open Press, 2005), 164, notes that like
all weapons of mass destruction, the Death Stars military function cannot be
easily separated from its political and policing functionsits purpose as a
method of domestic control. Its objective power lies not in its actual use, but in
the threat of its use, and herein lays the secret of the political function of
justifying the exercise of power.
8. Mary Henderson, in Star Wars: The Magic of Myth (New York: Bantam,
1997), 149, for example, comments, The ultimate weapon of the Empire was
also similar to that which played such a prominent role in the Cold War. In real
life this was the atom bomb, and in Star Wars it was the Death Star. The goals
of these weapons were identical: to render the enemy incapable of making
war.
9. David Allen Rosenberg, The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and
American Strategy, 19451960, International Security 7, no. 4 (Spring 1983):
1112. For more on Truman, see Richard F. Haynes, The Awesome Power:
Harry S Truman as Commander in Chief (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1973). For more on the decision to use the bomb at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction:
Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2004); Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the
Atomic Bomb (New York: Knopf, 1995); Barton J. Bernstein, The Atomic
Bombings Reconsidered, Foreign Affairs (JanuaryFebruary 1995): 135152;
and Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and the Origins of the Arm
Race (New York: Vintage Books, 1987).
10. The Presidents News Conference, November 30, 1950,
http://trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/viewpapers.php?pid=985.
11. See, for example, Rosenberg, The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons
and American Strategy, 19451960, or Beatrice Heuser, Victory in a Nuclear
War? A Comparison of NATO and WTO War Aims and Strategies, in
Contemporary European History 7, no. 3 (November 1998): 311327.
12. Rosenberg, The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American
Strategy, 19451960, 2732. See also Douglas Kinnard, President Eisenhower
and Strategy Management: A Study in Defense Politics (Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 1977).
13. The entire text of NSC-162/2 is available online at
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-162-2.pdf.
14. For a general overview of U.S. nuclear strategy, see Fred Kaplan, The
Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983). Also
important is Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 3rd ed.
(New York: Palgrave, 2003). For more on Kahn, see Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi,
The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). The literature on Kissinger
is immense (and much of it written by the man himself). Most of it obviously
concerns his time as national security adviser and secretary of state. A few
books that consider earlier periods are Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the
American Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), and
Stephen Graubard, Kissinger: Portrait of a Mind (New York: Norton, 1974).
15. Speech on January 12, 1954 (Department of State Bulletin, vol. 30, 107
110),
http://wadsworth.com/history_d/special_features/ilrn_legacy/waah2c01c/content/amh2/readi
For background information, see Samuel F. Wells Jr., The Origins of Massive
Retaliation, Political Science Quarterly 96, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 3152;
Richard Immermann, John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); or Frederick Marks, Power
and Peace: The Diplomacy of John Foster Dulles (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1993).
16. Speech given in San Francisco, September 18, 1967,
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Deterrence/Deterrence.shtml. For more
on this, see Henry Sokolski, Getting MAD: Nuclear Mutual Assured
Destruction, Its Origins and Practice (Washington, DC: Strategic Studies
Institute, 2004),
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB585.pdf.
17. Walter Pincus, Neutron Killer Warhead Buried in ERDA Budget,
Washington Post, June 6, 1977, A1. See also his subsequent articles in the Post,
such as Senate Pressed for Killer Warhead on June 21, 1977, A2, or
Pentagon Wanted Secrecy on Neutron Bomb Production, June 25, 1977, A1.
18. For more on this, see Clive Rose, Campaigns against Western Defense:
NATOs Adversaries and Critics, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1986),
Brezhnev Offer on the Neutron Bomb Accompanied by Threat, The Times
(London), December 24, 1977. The Soviet propaganda on the subject and much
of the Western press reporting on the neutron bomb were exaggerated.
Scientific American came to the conclusion that the enhanced-radiation
warhead promises to be neither the collateral-damage-free weapon that its
supporters see nor the ultimate capitalist weapon (destroying only people not
property) that many people in peace groups fear. Fred Kaplan, Enhanced
Radiation Weapons, in Arms Control and the Arms Race: Readings from
Scientific American (New York: Freeman, 1985). The original article was
published in the Scientific American for May 1978.
19. For more on the controversy, see Vincent Auger, The Dynamics of Foreign
Policy Analysis: The Carter Administration and the Neutron Bomb (London:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), and Robert Strong and Marshal Zeringue, The
Carter Administration and the Neutron Bomb, Southeastern Political Review
16, no. 1 (March 1988): 147174.
20. Tony Blair, speech on Iraq, House of Commons, March 18, 2003, House of
Commons Debates, vol. 401, col. 762,
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmhansrd/vo030318/debtext/30318-
06.htm.
21. As Meyer points out, on page 113: In stark contrast with the technological
escalations that drive the arms race, Lukes battles are fought with
progressively less sophisticated weapons.
22. There are a number of websites that support the idea that Artoo is the real
hero of Star Wars. See, for example, http://kevinforsyth.net/weblog/?p=103, or
http://boards.theforce.net/the_star_wars_saga/b10456/19722655/r19724406/.
There is even a Facebook page titled R2D2 Is the REAL hero of Star Wars.
23. For more on this, see Elizabeth Cook, Be Mindful of the Living Force:
Environmental Ethics in Star Wars, in Decker and Eberle, eds., Star Wars and
Philosophy.
24. The Evaluation of the Atomic Bomb as a Military Weapon, June 30,
1947. Presidents Secretarys File, Truman Papers, 36,
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/pdfs/81.p
25. The Italian general Giulio Douhet was one of the first to recognize the
importance of air power for warfare in his book Command of the Air (Rome:
Stabilimento poligrafico per lamministrazione della Guerra, 1921, republished
in English in the United States by the Government Printing Office, 1983). He
warned that to get an idea of the nature of future wars, one need only imagine
what power of destruction that nation would possess whose bacteriologists
should discover the means of spreading epidemics in the enemys country and
at the same time immunize its own people. Air power makes it possible not
only to make high-explosive bombing raids over any sector of the enemys
territory, but also to ravage his whole country by chemical and biological
warfare. For the impact on Britain, see Uri Bialer, The Shadow of the Bomber:
The Fear of Air Attack on British Politics, 19321939 (London: Royal
Historical Society, 1980). See also Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in
Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic
Bombing, 19141945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Lee
Kennett, The First Air War, 19141918 (New York: Free Press, 1991); and
Raymond H. Fredette, The Sky on Fire: The First Battle of Britain, 19171918
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991).
26. For more on this, see H. R. Southworth, Guernica! Guernica! A Study of
Journalism, Diplomacy, Propaganda and History (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1977); Ian Patterson, Guernica and Total War (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Tom Buchanan, Britain and the Spanish
Civil War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
27. Stanley Baldwin, November 10, 1932 (Parliamentary Debates, Series 5,
vol. 270, col. 632),
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1932/nov/10/international-
affairs.
28. See, for example, Alastair Horne, To Lose a Battle. France 1940, rev. ed.
(London: Penguin, 1990), and Julian Jackson, The Fall of France: The Nazi
Invasion of 1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
29. Speech of Joseph McCarthy, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950, at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6456.
30. For more on McCarthy, see David Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense:
The World of Joe McCarthy (New York: Free Press, 1983); Robert Griffith, The
Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1970). There has been a recent attempt on the American
right, led by Anne Coulter, to rehabilitate McCarthy, and a number of books
with this aim have appeared. For HUAC, see John Joseph Gladchuk,
Hollywood and Anticommunism: HUAC and the Evolution of the Red Menace,
19351950 (London: Routledge, 2006).
31. Susan Sontag, The Imagination of Disaster, in Against Interpretation
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966). See also Brian Murphy, Monster
Movies: They Came from beneath the Fifties, Journal of Popular Film 1, no.
1 (Winter 1972): 3144; Lori Maguire, The Destruction of New York City: A
Recurrent Nightmare of American Cold War Cinema, Cold War History 9, no.
4 (November 2009): 513524; Joyce Evans, Celluloid Mushroom Clouds:
Hollywood and the Atomic Bomb (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998); Toni
Perrine, Film and the Nuclear Age: Representing Cultural Anxiety (New York:
Garland, 1998); and Paul Boyer, By the Bombs Early Light: American Thought
and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon Books,
1985).
32. January 17, 1961. The text of it can be found at
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html.
33. See http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/military-
industrial%20complex.
34. For a detailed presentation of popular reactions to Sputnik, see The Impact
of Sputnik I: Case Study of American Public Opinion at the Break of the Space
Age, compiled by Martha Wheeler George (Washington, DC: NASA, 1963),
http://history.spacebusiness.com/sputnik/files/sputnik65.pdf. See also Robert
A. Divine, The Sputnik Challenge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993),
and Barbara Barksdale Clowse, Brainpower for the Cold War: The Sputnik
Crisis and National Defense Education Act of 1958 (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1981).
35. R. W. Apple Jr., June 23, 1996,
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/pentagon_papers/index.html?
scp=1-spot&sq=pentagon%20papers&st=cse. In June 2011, the complete text
of the Pentagon Papers became available online at
http://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers/.
36. Laurent Bouzereau, Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1997). James Curtis in From American Graffiti to Star
Wars, Journal of Popular Culture 13, no. 4 (Spring 1980): 600, relates the
film to Watergate. Stephen Paul Miller, in The 1970s Now: Culture as
Surveillance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), sees Star Wars as a
reflection of the decades preoccupation with surveillance, noting that like
Watergate, Star Wars involves a struggle for tapes. He also places it in
relation to Vietnam: After the Vietnam War, a credible war can only occur in
the outer space of a distant future or past. . . . However, there is an ideological
need for such a fantastic war.
37. Will Brooker, Star Wars (London: British Film Institute, 2009), 81.
 Part III

Excuse Me, Sir, but That Artoo Unit Is

in Prime Condition, a Real Bargain

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY IN A GALAXY

LONG, LONG AGO
 Chapter 9

From Slavery to Freedom in a Galaxy

Far, Far Away

Paul Finkelman
I cant believe there is still slavery in the galaxy.
Padm Amidala, The Phantom Menace

Slavery is both a condition and an institutional arrangement.1 This was true in

the ancient world, in the New World, and in the galaxy where Star Wars takes
place. In the Star Wars movies, we find the public institutional operation of
slavery, individual bondage, people in slavelike conditions, and examples of the
modern state slavery similar to those created by totalitarian regimes in the
middle third of the twentieth century. To the extent that Star Wars is a metaphor
about human history and society, as well as a philosophical musing about
humanity, it is not surprising that we find slavery in the galaxy, just as we find it
in human history and in our time.
Although the substance of slavery has varied from place to place and over
time, systems of slavery include most, or all, of the following conditions: people
are owned by others and can be sold, traded, or given away; the status of slave is
inheritable, usually through the mother; formal legal structures or informal
agreements regulate the capture and return of fugitive slaves; slaves have limited
(or no) legal rights or protections; and slaves may be punished by slave owners
(or their agents) with minimal or no legal limitations, and masters may treat or
mistreat slaves as they wish. Although some societies banned the premeditated
murder of slaves and certain extreme or barbaric forms of punishment and
torture, Rome, Greece, and other ancient cultures considered slaves to be
socially dead, and thus it was not a crime to kill them.2 Masters also have
unlimited rights to sexual activity with their slaves. Slaves have very limited or
no appeal to formal legal institutions, they are not allowed to give testimony
against their masters or (usually) other free people, and in general their
testimony is not given the same weight as a free persons. The mobility of slaves
is limited by owners and often by the state, as well. Owners are able to make
slaves into free persons through a formal legal process (manumission), but often
these freed persons are not given full legal rights after manumission. Finally,
slave ownership is supported by laws, regulations, administrative activities,
courts, and legislatures, including provisions for special courts and punishments
for slaves, provisions for the capture and return of fugitive slaves, and provisions
and rules for regulating the sale of slaves.
A slave in ancient Rome combing the hair of her mistress.
 In addition to formal systems of slavery, in the twentieth century massive
systems of state slavery developed in the Soviet Union, Germany, and Japan. In
the 1930s and the 1940s, millions of people were forced into unpaid labor, not as
chattels to be bought and sold, but as workers to be controlled by the state,
working either for state enterprises or assigned to private work places by the
state. In our own time, slavelike conditions have emerged for millions of people,
usually migrants or refugees, who are exploited (often illegally). Most of this
type of exploitation is found in the nonindustrialized world, but some people are
also held against their will in modern, developed democracies, as they try to
migrate to Western nations.
In Star Wars, we see many of these elements played out, including the buying
and selling of slaves; the sexual exploitation of slave women; the torture and
killing of slaves; the manumission of some slaves; and even free people
accepting bondage as a way of moving or improving their lives, often with
disastrous results.

The Universality of Human Bondage

At the American Constitutional Convention in 1787, the delegates had heated
debates over the power of Congress to abolish the African slave trade. The
debate was not over whether Congress could actually end slaveryno one
imagined that possibility. Rather, the debate was over the power of Congress to
regulate international commerce in general and this specific form of commerce
in particular. Not surprisingly, the debate led to arguments about the morality of
slavery itself. In responses to attacks on the slave trade and slavery, Charles
Pinckney of South Carolina offered a spirited defense: If slavery be wrong, it is
justified by the example of all the world. Citing the case of Greece Rome &
other antient [sic] States; the sanction given by France, England, Holland &
other modern States, Pinckney declared that in all ages one half of mankind
have been slaves.3
Pinckney was mostly right. As sociologist Orlando Patterson observed, There
is nothing notably peculiar about the institution of slavery. It has existed from
before the dawn of human history right down to the twentieth century, in the
most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized. Patterson found
slavery in every region on earth and probably there is no group of people
whose ancestors were not at one time slaves or slaveholders.4 Many people are
in fact the descendants of both slaves and slave-owners.
Charles Pinckney, governor and senator of South Carolina and defender of
slavery, ca. 1800.
 Indeed, while slavery in the United States is often called the peculiar
institution, world history suggests that universal freedomthat is, an absence
of slaveryis far more unusual. Slavery is one of the oldest known human
institutions. Evidence of slavery is found in archaeological sites and in ancient
legal records. With a few minor exceptions, slavery has existed throughout the
world, in all cultures and societies. Slavery was one of the first legally defined
statuses of human relationships and was justified in virtually all ancient legal
codes, including the Mesopotamian, biblical, Babylonian, and Roman. An
unsuccessful appeal for freedom by twelve Mesopotamian slaves more than
4,000 years ago is the oldest known freedom suit. Contract disputes over slaves
and records of manumission date from around 2,500 years ago. Before the late
seventeenth century, there were almost no visible opponents of slavery. Plato
assumed there would be slaves in his Republic; Sir Thomas More provided for
slaves in his Utopia, and John Locke saw no inconsistency between opposing
inherited royalty and supporting a system where slaves inherited their status. To
the extent that the Star Wars galaxy tracks human history, it would be hard to
imagine that slavery would not appear on various worlds and even have the tacit
support of those who proclaimed their belief in freedom. The first Star Wars
movieA New Hopebegins by telling us that there is a civil war to restore
freedom to the galaxy, but as we learn in subsequent movies, slavery was
always present in the galaxy and even in the Republic. This mirrors human
history, where slavery has often existed in free societies.
Slavery is one of the oldest known human institutions. Only in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuriesafter more than four millennia of human historydid
slavery come under significant political and cultural attack. The late eighteenth-
century opposition to slavery, which became the international abolitionist
movement, was not immediately successful. On the eve of the American
Revolution, slavery was legal everywhere in the New World, everywhere in
Africa, in most of Asia, and throughout the Mediterranean basin. Only in
Northern Europe had slavery disappeared. Slavery as a system did not exist in
France, but slaves from Haiti and other French colonies were regularly brought
to the metropolis and held there.5 There was no system of slavery in Great
Britain, and by the time of the Revolution, it was no longer legal for colonial
residents or absentee British planters to bring their slaves into Britain. In 1772,
in the case of Somerset v. Stewart, the Court of Kings Bench ruled that slaves
could not be kept in Great Britain against their will.6 Lord Chief Justice
Mansfield held that the state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of
being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only positive law, which
preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence
it was created, is erased from memory, its so odious, that nothing can be
suffered to support it, but positive law.7
Although slavery would not be allowed in Britain, Mansfield had no interest in
interfering with the lucrative African slave trade or the vast fortunes being made
in the American colonieswhere slave labor produced sugar in the Caribbean
and tobacco, rice, and indigo on the mainland colonies. Thus, Lord Mansfield
also declared that contract for sale of a slave is good here; the sale is a matter to
which the law properly and readily attaches, and will maintain the price
according to the agreement.8 Thus, the British were heavily involved in the
African slave trade, and thousands of wealthy Britons owned slaves in the
Caribbean, as absentee sugar planters, even if they could not bring their slaves
home to London or Liverpool. During and immediately after the American
Revolution, the New England and Middle Atlantic states either ended slavery
directly or set it on the road to extinction in those states through gradual
emancipation laws. Still, the institution remained firmly established in the new
American Republic, just as it could be found in the galactic republic of Star
Wars on Outer Rim worlds such as Tatooine and other planets under Hutt
control.9
An etching showing the stowage of slaves on the British slave ship Brookes, c.
1788.
 After the Revolution, slavery remained secure in the American South. The new
American nation, the worlds first successful republic and the first place to
provide political rights for substantial numbers of citizens, was a slaveholders
republic. The irony of American slave-owners such as Washington, Jefferson,
Patrick Henry, and George Mason fighting to gain their liberty was not lost on
British Tories, who mocked the American revolutionaries: not a few Englishmen
read the Declaration of Independence, mostly written by Thomas Jefferson (who
famously owned about 150 slaves at the time), and wondered, as did Samuel
Johnson, How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers
of negroes?10 The irony, of course, is that political liberty, democratic elections,
and a republican form of government are not necessarily incompatible with
slavery.
Nineteenth-century England and France had limited suffrage and were hardly
democratic in any meaningful way. Perhaps because the power of the voters was
limited, these nations were able to abolish slavery in their New World colonies.
In the American republic, however, the vast majority of free men could vote. The
Americans created a written constitution that supported civil liberties, due
process of law, private property, and peaceful political change. Yet this
constitution made it impossible to end slavery through the political process.11
Indeed, the end to American slavery came through a Civil War and the loss of
some 630,000 lives (the equivalent of about 6.5 million people today).
The abolition of slavery in the United States (1865) and the end of serfdom in
Russia (1861) set the stage for the final abolition of slavery in the New World.
Not until 1890with the adoption of the Brussels Actwas there a
comprehensive multilateral treaty directed specifically against the African slave
trade. This international agreement really only affected Europe and the Western
Hemisphere, however. It did not end slavery in Africa, the Middle East, or the
rest of Asia, where slavery continued openly and vigorously well into the
twentieth century. Moreover, slavelike conditions continued, especially in the
African colonies controlled by the civilized nations of Western Europe.
Dozens of captives rescued from a slave ship in 1884.
 At the end of the nineteenth century, European nations hurried to colonize
most of Africa, in what was called the scramble for Africa. These Europeans
agreed that colonization was necessary to bring civilization to what they called
the Dark Continent, and that one clear mark of civilization was the abolition of
slavery. In their rush to control vast chunks of Africa, European imperialists
agreed that slavery should be abolished under their tutelage and rule, but they all
understood that beyond the line of Western society, slavery and other forms of
forced labor would be eliminated slowly and only as far as possible. The
nations signing the Brussels Act pledged to bring civilization to Africa, but this
did not preclude violent conquest of additional territories in pursuit of ending the
slave trade. Nor did the act either discourage or prevent, within the colonized
areas, massive use of coerced native labor that resembled slavery.12
After World War I, the League of Nations organized a new international effort
to finally abolish slavery. The Slavery Convention of 1926 was designed to
pursue slavery and the slave trade into every corner of what Europeans
considered to be the uncivilized world. The convention also committed the
signatories to attack slavery in all its forms, including child trafficking,
concubinage, debt-bondage, and forced labor.13 Slavery was now defined as the
status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to
the right of ownership are exercised. The world community thought that slavery
was on its last legs, but in fact it was not.
Less than a decade after the leading nations of the world pledged to end
slavery in all its forms, the institution reemerged in new forms: Soviet gulags,
German concentration camps and slave labor battalions, and Japanese POW
camps and brothels run by the imperial army, where comfort women from all
over Asia, as well as captured Australian nurses, were turned into sex slaves for
the benefit of Japanese soldiers. In the six years between 1939 and 1945,
Germany imported nearly as many slaves from other European nations as the
New World plantation regimes imported from Africa in the nearly four hundred
years between the discovery of the New World in 1492 and the final end of the
African slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century. After World War II,
German and Japanese leaders were tried and executed for crimes against
humanity that included enslavement. Not surprisingly, enslavement was the first
violation of human rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
1948.
In the modern world, slavery has been formally abolished in almost every
country. Yet real slaverythe buying and selling of peopleexists in many
places outside the Western world. Slavelike conditionsincluding forced labor,
forced prostitution, and illegal working conditionscan be found throughout the
world.

There Is Still Slavery in the

Galaxy: Star Wars and Slavery
To some extent, the Star Wars movies replicate the history of human bondage.
The Star Wars galaxy is dominated by a modern, civilized Republic, yet it also
has vestiges of the ancient and medieval worlds. Clothing often resembles
modern notions of Roman garb; democracy exists, but there are still noble titles
and royal families. Slavery should have been thoroughly abolished in the
futuristic Republic that we enter at the beginning of The Phantom Menace, yet
bondage is found in a variety of ways.14 On the Outer Rim of the galaxy,
slavery flourishesjust as it did beyond the line of civilization in the
European conquest of America and Africa. The planet Kashyyyk, home to the
Wookiees, is a hunting ground for slavers.15 Han Solos Wookiee partner,
Chewbacca, was a slave he rescued. In some ways, this resembled the behavior
of English adventurers (the Spanish would have called them pirates), like Francis
Drake and John Hawkins, who liberated Spanish slaves in the sixteenth century
Caribbean and then incorporated the former slaves into their crews. Drake and
Hawkins, who sailed the Spanish Main seeking plunder and liberating slaves,
might be seen as models for Han Solo, the smuggler, pirate, but ultimately the
liberator.
On other planets in the world of Star Wars, people are bought and sold, and
enslavement is open and unchallenged. We encounter a young Anakin
Skywalker as a slave, and yet almost no one is dismayed by his bondage. It is a
fact of life on the Outer Rim of the galaxy, beyond the line of true civilization.
However, the naive Padm Amidala, in Attack of the Clones, encountering the
unambiguous slavery on Tatooine, declares, I cant believe there is still slavery
in the galaxy.
Yet forms of slavery also appear in the more civilized portions of the galaxy.
This is not surprising, because, as art imitates life, even where slavery is banned,
bondage often appears. Although slavery was not legal in England in the late
eighteenth century, more than ten thousand slaves were probably in the realm on
the eve of the American Revolution, serving mostly as household servants, as
coachmen, and occasionally as cabin boys on ships. In the galaxy of Star Wars,
slavery was similarly possible, even if not legally sanctioned.
Working our way through the six movies, we find slavery in the Republic and
in the Empire. We find it on the rim of the galaxy, on small out-of-the-way
planets, and in the heart of the galaxy.

Anakin Skywalker, Slave

In The Phantom Menace, we encounter obvious and familiar forms of slavery.
Slavery is illegal in the Republic, but it exists in the Outer Rim, where the
Republic has influence but no direct power. This is much like the world in the
late nineteenth century. At the Berlin Conference of 1884 and the Brussels
Convention of 1889, the major powers of Europe, as well as the United States,
agreed to a complete end to the African slave trade and to end human bondage
wherever these Western powers had influence. Yet in reality, slavery, bondage,
and slavelike conditions proliferated in the European colonies of Africa,
because the colonizing powers tacitly agreed that there would be little
investigation of actual conditions beyond the line of civilization. At meetings
in Europe, the representatives of republics and constitutional monarchies could
agree to bring civilization to Africa, but on the ground, human freedom was
fragile and often nonexistent.
Such is the case on Tatooine, where Shmi Skywalker and her young son,
Anakin, are slaves. Shmi had been born free but was captured by pirates (along
with her family) and sold into slavery; she and her son are eventually acquired
by Gardulla the Hutt.16
Just as slavery on the periphery of civilization resembles the world of the
nineteenth century, Shmis own story is familiar to all scholars of slavery. At
various times in human history, capture by pirates or slave hunters was common
and accepted. The very word slave comes from the word Slav, a reference to the
Slavic peoples of the Baltic region, who were so commonly captured and
enslaved by the Vikings that being a Slav became synonymous with lifetime
servitudeslavery. Thus, Shmi was similar to the tens of thousands of Slavs
who were seized by pirates, Viking raiders, and others and carried off to the
Mediterranean basin, where they were sold into a lifetime of bondage. When
these Slavs arrived in medieval Italy, France, or Greece, no one questioned their
status; no one wondered or asked how they became slaves. Their status was
simply taken for granted.
The same process also applied to Africans, kidnapped from their homes by
other Africans who operated as slave catchers. The captives were marched to the
coast and sold to European traders, who then brought them to the Americas,
where they were sold and often resold. No one in Brazil, the Caribbean, or the
American South questioned the provenance of slaves who were brought from
Africa. As with medieval Slavs, their chains were proof enough of their status.
So, too, with Shmi. She appears on the planet Tatooine as a slave available for
purchase, so Gardulla the Hutt buys Shmi and her son, as she apparently buys
other slaves brought to the planet.17
Gardulla later loses Shmi and her son, Anakin, to Watto the Toydarian in a bet
over a Podrace. This is typical of the nature of slavery. Slaves in the ancient
world, the medieval world, and the American South were property, to be bought,
sold, given away, and used as collateral for debt or even to settle a wager.
When Qui-Gon Jinn, a Jedi Master, lands on Tatooine to repair his ship, he
comes to the junkyard of Watto, looking for spare parts. There Jinn meets the
young Anakin and, later, his mother, who are Wattos slaves. Anakin has
dreamed of becoming a Jedi, and in one of his dreams he came back to
Tatooine as a Jedi and freed all the slaves. On meeting a real Jedi, the child
Anakin thinks his dream will come true. He will be emancipated by Jinn, and
then he can become a Jedi and return to free the slaves. Thus, the seemingly
naive Anakin asks Jinn if he has come liberate him. Jinn honestly replies, I
didnt actually come here to free slaves. This is surely beyond the powers of a
Jedi Knight, even though the Jedi are dedicated to justice. Slavery might be
wrong and in violation of the laws of the Republic, but in a remote place such as
Tatooine, it is a reality.
Yet on this trip to Tatooine, Jinn does free Anakin. Almost immediately after
he encounters Anakin, Jinn realizes that this is an unusual child, with power and
a connection to the Force. Jinn tests Anakin, discovering that he has an
extraordinary high level of midi-chlorians, indicating that he has the potential to
be a great Jedi. Yet Anakin is a slave, and Jinn does not have the money to buy
him. Instead, he makes a wager with Watto that Anakin will win the Boonta Eve
Podrace. If Anakin wins, then Jinn will become his owner. If Anakin loses, then
Watto will take possession of Jinns ship. Jinn also tries to gain Anakins mother,
Shmi, as part of the bet, but Watto has no interest in losing her. He can afford to
lose a small boy in a bet over a race. Slave children are potentially valuable, but
in the harsh world of Tatooine where life is fragile, a young child might never
become a valuable adult slave. Shmi is pretty, however, young enough to bear
children, and valuable. Watto will not risk losing her.
Qui-Gon wagers with Watto to win Anakins freedom. (The Phantom Menace)
 Anakin, of course, wins the race. The Force is with him. His victory is also his
ticket to freedom, just as many slaves, such as the Charleston, South Carolina,
bondsman Denmark Vesey, gained freedom by winning lotteries. But Anakins
freedom comes at a great cost. Anakin has to choose between freedomand the
chance to become a Jediand living with his mother. It is a cruel choice. In
many ways, it reminds us of one of the great horrors of slavery in the United
States, where families were often disrupted and broken apart by the whims of the
masters. It was common to give small children as gifts for weddings or other
special occasions. Children and parents were thus often separated by sale or
movement. For example, the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass saw his
mother for the last time when he was seven, about the same age Anakin is when
forced to choose between freedom and family. For most slaves who escaped
bondage, the same choice was before them. They might escape on their own, but
they could not take family members with them.
Shmi encourages her son to choose freedom. When he wins the Podrace and
thus the chance to escape his bondage, his mother tells him, You have given
hope to those who have none. She then urges him to leave, even though he must
leave her. Now you are free, your dreams can come true she tells him. So,
Anakin leaves with Jinn and his Padawan (apprentice), Obi-Wan Kenobi. He is
no longer a slave but a free person, soon to be an apprentice himself, learning to
become a Jedi.
One might argue that Anakin is simply compelled to exchange one form of
slaveryas the property of anotherfor a different kind of bondage, the ever-
obedient apprentice in a strict monastic order, where selfishness and greed are
submerged and, as much as possible, eliminated. Anakin will resist the
obedience, break rules, and, of course, ultimately be seduced by the dark side of
the Force. One key to this obedience is the elimination of anger and hatred. Yet
for an ex-slave forced to abandon his mother, this might never be possible. He is
free, but his mother remains in bondage. He can grow and excel, but only at a
huge cost. The cost leads to both anger and guilt. Anakin must feel pangs of
conscience that he gained freedom but his mother could not.
Anakin preparing to leave his mother, Shmi, on Tatooine. (The Phantom
Menace)
 The theme of Star Wars is ultimately the struggle between good and evilthe
struggle between the light side of the Force and the dark side. The crisis of the
galaxy is exacerbated by the transformation of Anakin Skywalker from an agent
of good into Darth Vader, the embodiment of evil. Ultimately, Anakin can be
seduced by the dark side because of his enormous pent-up anger. The slave boy,
free himself, can never forget that his mother is still in bondage. Eventually, he
returns to Tatooine to find his mother. By now, he is a Jedi, powerful and skilled.
He goes to Watto, only to find that once more his mother has been sold, this
time to Cliegg Lars, a rural farmer. Lars is not a typical purchaser of slaves. He
fell in love with Shmi, therefore bought and manumitted her, then married her.
This was not uncommon in slave societies. Even in the American South, where
manumission was difficult, because laws on race made marriage between a
master and a former slave illegal, the most likely person to be manumitted was a
slave mistress. Some masters lived openly with their slave mistresses,
proclaiming their love for them.18 Shmi and Cliegg married for love. This happy
ending does not last. Tusken Raiders capture Shmi, subjecting her to ritual
torture. This is not dissimilar to the use of slaves for ritual killings in some
cultures, such as the Aztec. Anakin returns to Tatooine about a month after his
mother was kidnapped. He goes out to find her and rescues her, only to have her
die in his arms. In anger and in violation of the rules of the Jedi, he slaughters
the entire clan of Tuskens. This is his first big step toward the dark side of the
Force and will lead to his transformation into Darth Vader.
The story of Anakin Skywalker is, in the end, a story about the corrosive
nature of human bondage. Anakins potential as a great manas perhaps the
Chosen One of Jedi prophesyis undermined by his slave past. He is never
able to overcome his anger over his bondage, his disrupted childhood, and the
separation from his mother and ultimately her death at the hands of yet another
band of kidnappers. A Jedi must be dedicated to the Order and to the rules of the
Jedi, but Anakin, a former slave, can never control his emotions or separate
himself from them. Emotionally scarred by slavery, he cannot in the end be a
true Jedi.
Anakin finds his mother at the Tusken Raiders camp too late to save her life.
(Attack of the Clones)
 Throughout human history, slaves faced the hardships of bondage, separation,
and not knowing their roots. We never know who Anakins father was. Like so
many slaves in human history, he can never fully know his lineage; like many
slaves he is forced to choose between family and freedom. His anger and,
ultimately, the disruption of the galaxy emerge from his bondage.

Slavery and Luke Skywalker

Luke Skywalker grows up on Tatooine, a world where slavery is legal and
common. He is not a slave, but in important ways he experiences many things
associated with bondage. He is raised by his uncle Owen Lars, never knowing
that Owen is the step-brother of his father, Anakin Skywalker, and that there is
no blood relation. Owen keeps from Luke the true nature of his lineage. In this
way, Luke is like his father, Anakin, never knowing who his father is. More
important, the young Luke, like the young Anakin, is prevented from seeking his
destiny by those who control him. At the beginning of A New Hope, Luke is
stuck on Tatooine, working on his uncles moisture farm. He desperately wants
to continue his education by entering the Academy, where he can become an
officer and a starship pilot. His best friend, Biggs Darklighter, goes to the
academy to become a fighter pilot, but Owen will not let Luke leave. It is not
clear whether Luke can legally leave his guardian, but even if he could, he is
trapped on the farm by Owens persistent demand that he needs Luke for just
one more season. Luke is free to leave only after Owen and his wife, Beru, are
killed by stormtroopers.
Luke Skywalker on his uncles Tatooine moisture farm. (A New Hope)
 In the context of labor and education, the early life of Luke, who is the
emancipator of the galaxy, resembles the early life of the great emancipator of
the United States, Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln was a child, he loved books
and thirsted for an education, but his father refused to allow him to get more than
the most basic schooling. As a teenager, Lincoln read in his spare time, which
angered his father. By age eighteen, he was more than ready to go out on his
own, but he could not. Lincoln could not leave home until he turned twenty-one,
and he was required to turn over all of his wages to his father until he reached
the age of majority. On the day he turned twenty-one, Lincoln left home, never
to return. Later in life, he would express sympathy with slaves because he knew
he had been treated like a slave by his father. For years, he was forced to labor
for free, unable to seek his destiny elsewhere.
Lukes guardian is not so harsh. As a youth, Luke learns to pilot skyhoppers
and drive landspeeders, develops close friendships, and gains a basic education.
Yet he cannot leave home, cannot go out on his own, and cannot achieve self-
determination, even though, like the young Lincoln, he is old enough and skilled
enough to make it on his own. Not quite slaves, Abraham Lincoln and Luke
Skywalker were bondsmen, working for others and denied the most basic
essential element of freedom: to go where they wished, learn what they wanted
to learn, and make something of themselves beyond the narrow confines of their
frontier homes. Age, for Lincoln, and the tragic murder of his guardians for
Luke, allowed their emancipation and thus enabled them to achieve a destiny of
emancipating others. Growing up, both men knew bondage firsthand; as adults,
they hated slavery.
Abraham Lincoln, c. 1857.
 Youll Soon Learn to Appreciate
Me: Sex, Slavery, and Star Wars
Throughout history masters have sexually exploited their slaves. In almost every
slave society, masters have had sex with their slaves. Indeed, in some cultures
sex has been a prime motive for enslavement. The biblical Abraham had
children with his slave Hagar, while his wife, Sarah, was apparently unable to
bear children. Later of course he had a child with Sarah as well. Abrahams
grandson, Jacob, had a flock of children with his two wives and their
handmaidensslaves in the household. On the African coast, some slave
traders refused to sell certain women to the European purchasers, preferring to
keep them for their own slaves and concubines. In the colonial period, lonely
planters isolated in New World colonies bought slaves to be their sex partners. In
antebellum New Orleans, there was a thriving commerce in slave women who
were sold to houses of prostitution.19
Cassandra of Troy, kidnapped and raped by Ajax after her city fell, became an
enslaved concubine.
 On Tatooine in Return of the Jedi, Oola is given to Jabba the Hutt, who chains
her to his throne, where she is an ornament of his power, a diversion, an
entertainer, and, when he wishes, a vehicle for his sexual pleasure. Stripped of
her dancers costume, she is dressed in flimsy netting, barely clothed, and on
display for all.20 She is eye candy for all who have an audience in Jabbas throne
room. The room itselfindeed, his whole enterpriseis like that of a Mafia don
removed to some oriental setting, with harems, dancers, prostitutes, and a
constant mixture of business, corruption, pleasure, sexual exploitation, violence,
pain, and death. It could be a fort on the African coast, set up for slave trading; a
decadent pashas palace in some far-off corner of the Ottoman Empire; or a
similarly exotic palace, somewhere between Timbuktu and the Taj Mahal.
When Oola refuses his demands, Jabba the Hutt pulls her by her chain until
she is over a trap door, which leads to his rancor monster. Jabba releases the trap
door and Oola drops to the bottom, to be eaten alive. Her resistancepointless,
senseless, and without any chance of successis motivated by fear, anger, and a
sense of hopelessness. Life as Jabbas slave, chained to his throne, to be his
plaything, is not worth living. It is better to die resisting bondage than to be
slowly destroyed and then die. Examples of resistance such as Oolas can be
found throughout the history of slavery, in every society, in every culture.
Africans sometimes threw themselves overboard rather than endure the
transatlantic crossing; slaves physically attacked masters, knowing they would
be punished and even executed; in German slave labor camps, some inmates,
facing death in any event, threw themselves at guards or barbed wire, knowing
their acts would end their lives.
It is not clear that Oola knew her resistance to Jabba would lead to her death.
She might have assumed he would not kill such a talented dancer and so
beautiful a slave. Yet her resistance to his demands would, at the least, surely
lead to painful punishment. Instead, she died, her chain still around her neck.
Shortly after the demise of Oola, Jabba obtains an even better slave as a
replacement for Oola: Princess Leia. Captured while trying to rescue Han Solo,
Leia is Jabbas new throne ornament, barely dressed, vulnerable to his sexual
demands, displayed for all to gawk at, and chained like a small animal to the
immense throne of the gigantic Jabba. Jabba, however, never has time to enjoy
Leia or to violate her. She is soon rescued by Luke Skywalker. During this
chaotic battle, Leia is still chained to Jabbas throne, but she becomes the hero of
all slavesespecially slave womenas she strangles Jabba with the very chain
that holds her in bondage. The slave becomes the agent of her own liberation,
and Jabba in turn becomes a victim of his own horrid greed, corruption, and lust.
Like the slaves in Haiti who savagely took revenge on their masters in the 1790s,
Leia takes revenge on Jabba, ironically killing him with his own tool of
enslavement.
Although chained, Oola fights against Jabba the Hutt in his throne room. (Return
of the Jedi)
Leia choking Jabba on his barge. (Return of the Jedi).
 We Dont Serve Their Kind Here:
Beyond Chattel Slavery
So far, this essay has focused on slavery as a form of ownership of human
beings. This has been the dominant form of slavery in world history and dates
from ancient times. Yet there have also been public slaves: galley slaves in
ancient navies, or the Hebrews dragooned to build ancient cities in Egypt,
described in the book of Exodus. In the modern world, new versions of public
slavery emerged in the mid-twentieth century: Korean comfort women and
captured Western nurses, dragooned to provide sexual services for Japanese
soldiers; political prisoners and captured German prisoners of war sent to Soviet
gulags; millions of European civilians and captured Soviet prisoners of war, sent
to German factories and concentration camps. In these modern slave regimes,
those in bondage were often worked to death because they were expendable
subhumans who had no true market value. They were indeed less than
slaves.
In the Star Wars galaxy, this form of bondage is found in a variety of ways.
Clone armies are essentially slavespersons bred to give their bodies and their
lives to the authority that controls and paid for them. At a key juncture, the clone
troopers are used by their Sith Master to slaughter the Jedi under the
programming of Order 66. The Empires elite forces, the stormtroopers, are
neither volunteers nor conscripts, but are brainwashed members of an Imperial
cult. Then there are the droid armiesmachinesthe ultimate slaves,
unquestioning in the devotion to their task. The Empire relies on mindless
droids, clones, and stormtroopers to obey commands without thought, in order to
force everyone in the galaxy into a kind of universal bondage.
That is where the Star Wars movies begin in A New Hope. There is a Civil War
in the galaxy. The Rebels seek to restore freedom to the galaxy. Freedom has
multiple meanings. On one hand, freedom is the opposite of tyranny. Destroying
the Empire and restoring a Republic will bring political freedom to the galaxy
and get rid of the political slavery of the Emperor. Freedom is also the
opposite of individual slavery. Emancipation brings freedom to those held in
bondage. Yet on the other hand, freedom is the opposite of personal dedication
(or enslavement) to an idea, a cause, a set of beliefs. A Jedi Knight is not free
to choose his own direction but is constricted by a monklike obedience to the
Order and the Force; a stormtrooper in service of the Emperor lacks freedom to
choose on which side to fight; Darth Vader is, in effect, a slave to the dark side
of the Force. Freedom and its oppositestyranny, slavery, and selfless
obedienceare in constant tension throughout the Star Wars movies.
Free papers for former slave Henry London, signed by Major General David
Hunter, Royal South Carolina, 1862.
 All of these forms of slavery, or unfreedom, are present in the faraway worlds
of the Star Wars galaxy. This makes sense because the movies are metaphors for
human history. For most of human history, slavery and unfreedom have been the
rule, not the exception. Star Wars reminds us of the profound evil of slavery and
the huge social costs that come with a denial of freedom. It is true at the personal
level of Anakin Skywalker, scarred for life by the utter unfairness of bondage,
and Oola, who sought adventure and excitement, only to be enslaved, defiled,
and destroyed. It is also true at the political level. The dark side of the Force is,
in the end, the desire to have total control, even life-and-death control, over
others. This, ultimately, is what slavery was always about.

Notes
1. See, generally, John Hope Franklin and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, From
Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 9th ed. (New York:
McGraw Hill, 2011). I thank Avery Edison, Abigail Finkelman, and Mike
Pusatere for their helpful comments on this essay. Their insights from the next
generation were particularly useful. I finished this chapter at Nanzan University
in Nagoya, Japan, while on a fellowship from the Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science. I thank the JSPS for its support of my scholarship. I
finished the final work on this essay while visiting at Duke Law School, where
I was the John Hope Franklin Professor of American Legal History. I thank
Duke Law School for itrs support as well. Portions of this essay dealing with
international law are taken from Seymour Drescher and Paul Finkelman,
Slavery, in Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, eds. The Oxford Handbook of
the History of International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012),
chap. 37.
2. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
3. Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, rev. ed.
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), vol. 2, 371. On the issue of
slavery in the Convention, see Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders:
Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson, 2nd ed. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe,
2001).
4. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, vii.
5. See Sue Peabody There Are No Slaves in France: The Political Culture of
Race and Slavery in the Ancien Rgime (New York: Oxford University Press,
1996).
6. Somerset v. Stewart, 98 Eng. Rep. 499 (1772).
7. Ibid., at 510.
8. Ibid., at 509.
9. Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism and Comity
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981).
10. Quoted in Donald Robinson, Slavery in the Structure of American Politics
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 80. See also Finkelman,
Slavery and the Founders, for a discussion of slaveholding by Jefferson and
other Founders.
11. Ratification of a constitutional amendment requires the support of three-
fourths of the states. To this day, in 2012, it would be impossible to amend the
Constitution if the fifteen slave states that existed in 1860 still had slavery and
still opposed emancipation. The ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment
ending slavery was possible only because the secession of eleven slave states
allowed for constitutional change, which they were forced to accept as a cost of
military defeat.
12. Suzanne Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century (New York: Altamira
Press, 2003), 2025.
13. Renee C. Redman, The League of Nations and the Right to Be Free from
Enslavement: The First Human Right to Be Recognized as Customary
International Law, Chicago-Kent Law Review 70 (1994): 759802.
14. Although Star Wars is clearly futuristic, with its technology and space
travel, the movie is set A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
15. Stephen J. Sansweet and Pablo Hidalgo, The Complete Star Wars
Encyclopedia, 3 vols. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2008), vol 1, 122.
16. Ibid., 166167.
17. Gardulla is described as having a large slave trading operation, The
Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, 322323.
18. See, for example, the cases discussed in Bernie Jones, Fathers of
Conscience: Mixed-Race Inheritance in the Antebellum South (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 2009).
19. See Judith Kelleher Schafer, Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women:
Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 2009).
20. Ibid.
 Chapter 10

Greed Can Be a Powerful Ally

The Trade Federation, the East India

Companies, and Chaotic Worlds of Trade
Michael Laver
Beware, Viceroy. The Federation is going too far this time.
Padm Amidala, The Phantom Menace

Without justice, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are
robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of
men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of
the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the
admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it
holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it
assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom.
Augustine of Hippo1
Fiction rarely springs from the head of its creator without being influenced by
the events, characters, and often stranger-than-fiction narratives that make up
what we collectively call history. Certainly, this is true in the case of Star
Wars: its pirates, merchants, and company officials had their counterparts in our
history, as well. This chapter explores the parallels between the political and
economic situation of the Republic and the Empire and the rather chaotic and
fluid situation in the South China Sea region beginning in the sixteenth century.
The actions of the Dutch East India Company and the British East India
Companymultinational mega-corporations with trading bases throughout the
Asian maritime worldshowed striking similarities to the role played by the
Trade Federation and other members of the Separatist Council in the transition
from Republic to Empire, as illustrated in Episodes I through III of the movies.2
The regions history also featured various eccentric figures, both Asian and
European, who were at times pirates, legitimate merchants, company servants, or
something wildly in between; some are oddly reminiscent of such shady or
opportunistic figures as Jabba the Hutt, Lando Calrissian, Nute Gunray, Count
Dooku, and indeed Han Solo himself. In other words, the question of where
legitimate trade ends and piracy begins is one that depends very much on the
circumstances and the economic situation. One persons pirate, it seems, can be
another persons patriot. As Augustine observed in the fifth century, the line
between a band of rapacious merchants and a sovereign government can also
become blurred.

You Old Pirate: Merchant Bandits

on the Edge of Empire
One of the first scenes in which we are introduced to Luke Skywalker in A New
Hope depicts him lamenting that his home planet Tatooine is, for lack of a better
term, remote: Well, if theres a bright center to the universe, youre on the
planet that its farthest from. This is a common lament of many young men and
women, who long to be a part of something bigger than what their relatively
isolated and sheltered youth has offered them. The quotation also demonstrates
something more significant (and more literal), however, about the planets place
in the galaxy. Tatooine is very much on the edge of the galaxy spatially, but also
politically and economically. It is on the edge of territory controlled by the
Republic and later the Empire, so its location is ideal for activities of
questionable legitimacy. We know that the planet is a haven for pirates,
gangsters, and a mafia-like organization run by Jabba the Hutt. This is nowhere
better illustrated than in the description of Mos Eisley spaceport, as well as its
famous Cantina.
Overlooking Mos Eisley, Obi-Wan Kenobi states rather dramatically, Mos
Eisley spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and
villainy. He then ends with the somewhat gratuitous warning that We must be
cautious. Although the various ports along the South China Sea in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries were not quite this dangerous, the region was
nonetheless filled with piracy, naval battles, and characters whothrough sheer
charisma and business acumenbuilt up illicit commercial empires of trade.
Although Lynn Pan was writing specifically about early modern trade in Asia,
her words could also be applied to Tatooine: It was difficult to know where
piracy ended and contraband trading began. Indeed foreign trade was simply one
vast smuggling operation.3 Other parallels are found in the various ports of
southeastern China, such as Xiamen and Guandong, which were far removed
from the center of Chinese imperial power in Beijing. At times, when the
dynasty was experiencing turbulence and existential threats from corruption and
foreign pressure, these ports were almost entirely outside of official control and
became centers of illicit activity in an entirely extra-legal seaborne economy.4 In
the Star Wars galaxy, Outer Rim worlds such as Tatooine and the mining outpost
of Cloud City resemble these early modern Asian ports, thriving on the fringes
of established states.
Just as the Republic and the Empire exercise little real power over remote
planets, so the Ming dynasty, which ruled China from 1368 to 1644, struggled to
maintain control over peripheral areas such as the southeastern coastal ports.
This was especially true in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. To be
sure, the dynasty tried its best to enforce trading bans against groups such as the
Japanese, who were viewed as lawless pirates. These bans simply drove trade
into the arms of merchant bandits, who used remote coastal ports as centers of
international trade that spanned the entire region from the Indonesian
archipelago in the west to the port cities of Japan in the east.5 Although the Ming
dynasty was occasionally able to crack down on piracy by defeating a fleet of
pirate ships, this was a temporary victory. There was a seemingly endless supply
of other merchants eager to take over the lucrative trading opportunities that
these networks represented, just as Lando Calrissian quietly takes over the
lucrative mining outpost of Cloud City two years after the Battle of Yavin.6
In the sixteenth century, China and Japan, the traditional powers in East Asia,
were struggling for political and economic stability. Although the Republic
falters due to internal threats, Chinas Ming dynasty entered a terminal state of
decline as China suffered attacks from Mongol tribes to the northwest, pirate
bands from the sea, and a large-scale Japanese invasion of Korea from 1592 to
1597: all of which were events that drained the treasury of funds and stretched
military resources thin.7 Corruption within the ruling elite, along with other
factors, caused a popular rebellion that ultimately led to the fall of the Ming
dynasty in 1644. During the same period, Japan was also in a chaotic state of
endemic warfare known as the Warring States Period. The country was
fragmented into half a dozen large power blocks at this point, all competing
violently with one another for supremacy within the archipelago. It would not be
until the turn of the seventeenth century that a semblance of lasting political
order would be enforced on the country by the warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu. The
Tokugawa spent the next half-century trying to augment their power at the
expense of the other warlords and foreigners who came to Japan in an effort to
tap into the rich silver mines of the country.8
While power struggles flare at the center, opportunities open on the edges of a
political system. We know from various clues interspersed throughout Return of
the Jedi that Jabba the Hutt is a gangster who exploits the remote location of
Tatooine for his own nefarious ends. He runs a smuggling operation, which
apparently includes the smuggling of spice. Han Solos loss of that cargo incurs
Jabbas displeasure, which leads to Solos encasement in a block of carbonite
and his display, trophylike, on the wall of Jabbas palace, most likely as a
warning to other would-be debtors. Also, similar to the bandits who dominated
Chinas lawless ports and the emperors they defied, Jabba boasts his own fleet,
including an ostentatious pleasure barge.
Jabbas barge is as much a vehicle used for intimidation as it is for pleasure.
(Return of the Jedi)
Pirates of the South China Sea employed grand ships identical to those of the
authorities who tried to contain them.
 Pirate bandits on the edge of Chinas empire took a similar approach and
established their trade networks in the port cities of southeast China. They then
used their extensive contacts, often with overseas Chinese kin, in the same way
that Jabba uses his Hutt clan, to secure trade with places such as the Philippines,
Japan, Taiwan, and the ports of Java. One such merchant was Li Dan, who was
born in the city of Quanzhou in Fujian province. He ultimately immigrated to the
port city of Hirado in western Japan, where he established a far-ranging
merchant empire with contacts in Manila, Taiwan, and China. Li Dan is most
famous for pulling a confidence trick on the head of the British East India
Company, Richard Cocks, in Japan during the early seventeenth century, in
which he took ever-increasing amounts of money from the poor Englishman in
return for trade in China. What Mr. Cocks was unable to fathom, apparently, was
that he was being duped, and that Li Dan had no real intention of allowing the
English to cut into his lucrative trading operation.9 Jabba wouldnt have shared
well with others, either.
When Li Dan died in 1625, his operation was taken over by another Chinese
merchant, Zheng Zhihlong.10 In cooperation with the Dutch East India Company,
Zheng engaged in unofficial trade in Taiwan and eventually in western Japan,
which brought him into competition with the Dutch.11 Although this trade by
Chinese merchant bandits was tolerated in Japan, it was definitively and totally
banned by the Ming dynasty. In that sense, people such as Li and Zheng were
categorically considered pirates by Chinese authorities, although some might see
them as entrepreneurial merchants. The story took a strange turn when Zheng
Zhihlong, after having defeated a large Ming fleet in 1628, switched over to the
Ming cause and was awarded the title of admiral, in which capacity he fought for
the Ming, while he continued to ply his own personal trade from Southeast Asia
to Japan for some years, although he was later executed by the invading Qing
dynasty. Zheng Zhilongs work as pirate and patriot continued with his son,
Zheng Chenggong (Coxinga), who led the resistance against the invading Qing
dynasty after 1644.
Like Zheng Chenggong, the seventeenth-century pirate and patriot, Lando
Calrissian eventually takes up arms against the usurping Empire. (The Empire
Strikes Back)
 Zheng Zhihlongs career goes to show that where no particular government is
able to exercise control, local actors will step in to fulfill the commercial needs
of the region and to exploit commercial niches for their own often great profit. In
that respect, Zhengs life most closely parallels the story of Lando Calrissian, a
smuggler, a gambler, and an opportunist who runs Cloud City for a short time
under the nose of the Empire until coming to Vaders notice. Landos conversion
to the Alliance cause is a wiser choice than Zhengs political experiments, as the
former baron-administrator becomes one of the heroes of the Battle of Endor.

Business Is Business: From

Independent Traders to
Multinationals
Zheng Zhihlong and Lando Calrissian were not the only morally flexible
characters to spot business opportunities in areas that were vulnerable due to
power struggles in the center: in Holland and England, seafaring merchants saw
that there were rich pickings to be had in the South China Sea, as well. When
Dutch and English merchants began to sail to the East Indies for trade in the
1590s, several small companies outfitted fleets to journey from Europe to Asia
and bring back valuable cargoes of spice and other luxury goods that would fetch
high prices on the European market.12 These companies were essentially formed
for the length of a single voyage, and when the voyage was complete, the profits
were divided up among the investors, and the companies dissolved. If a voyage
failed to return because the ships were lost or other problems arose, then the
investors were simply out of their investment, which was often quite substantial.
Another difficulty was that as European investors realized the potential profits to
be made in the Asian trade, more and more companies were formed to pursue
that trade. This surfeit of companies led to a glut of spices in the market and,
consequently, a crash in their prices in Europe. For the Dutch, the solution was
the creation of a singular body, the Dutch East India Company, whose acronym,
VOC, actually means the United East India Company.13
The new company came about in 1602, after long and complicated
negotiations among various merchants from across the Netherlands.14 Now,
instead of several companies competing, there was only one company to control
the supply, so as to manipulate the price of Asian luxury goods. Similar tactics
are employed by the Commerce Guild and the Trade Federation in the run-up to
the Clone Wars. Furthermore, to minimize losses and ensure the long-term
survival of the company, the company mandated that investors would only buy
stock in the company and would be obliged to keep their investment in the
company for a fixed term in return for a yearly dividend.15 A British equivalent,
the British East India Company, came into being in 1600 but lagged behind the
VOC for many years as a commercial and political success.
These two companies, the worlds first joint stock companies, are often termed
the first multinational corporations in world history. Both companies established
a series of trading posts, called factories, across Asia: from India in the east to
Japan in the west. They tied together capital from across Europe with the
production and distribution of spices and other luxury goods in Asia. Like the
Trade Federation, the VOC constructed a variety of its own ships, making up a
large fleet used in pursuit of trade, diplomatic, and military goals.16 Its British
counterpart, the East India Company, rented out its ships, at least during the
seventeenth century. Many of these great ships were actually built in India for
company use, produced from local resources and dominating the lucrative trade
route from India to the Chinese coast.
The Trade Federations origins are similar to these companies creation.
Several commercial organizations apparently came together to create a more
powerful and effective organization more capable of enforcing its trade policies
and dominating trade routes.17 Like the VOC and the British East India
Company, the Trade Federation is not shy about using military force to pursue its
own economic and political objectives, as it does on Alaris Prime, on Naboo,
and in many systems.
The overall organization of the Trade Federation and the VOC also seem quite
similar. The Trade Federation is headed by a powerful viceroy, Nute Gunray.
The VOC had a very similar structure, at least at the top of its hierarchy: the
company was directed in the Netherlands by a group called the Herren
Zeventien, or Gentlemen Seventeen, which was responsible for setting
company policy overall. In addition, the day-to-day governance of the company
was undertaken by a group of councilors at a city called Batavia (present-day
Jakarta) and headed by a powerful figure called the governor general. Powerful
governors general, such as Jan Pieterszoon Coen, resembled Trade Federation
viceroys such as Nute Gunray in that through sheer force of will, they were able
to imprint their own political, economic, and military views on the company in
Asia.18
Trade Federation viceroy Nute Gunray has powers similar to those of the early
trading company leadership. (The Phantom Menace)
Jan Pieterszoon Coen felt that he answered to no one as governor general of the
VOC.
 A Blockade of Deadly Battleships:
Tactics of Isolation and Intimidation
The VOC was created not simply to carry out trade with far-flung regions of the
globe, namely, South and Southeast Asia, but also as an instrument of war: the
vessels that its shipyards built to carry cargo were also well armed.19 The
companys foundation during a prolonged war with Spain and, by extension,
Portugal (literally named the Eighty Years War) meant that one of the primary
responsibilities of the fleet was to intercept Iberian shipping at every
opportunity, both as a way to inflict damage on a hated rival and as an avenue to
economic gain. In legal jargon, we would call the VOCs actions privateering,
rather than outright piracy, because a state of declared war existed. Military
action was important for the early VOC.20 This violence soon became a normal
and necessary part of the VOCs operations in Asia, directed not only against the
Spanish and the Portuguese, but also against indigenous rulers and populations,
as the Dutch sought to consolidate their position across Asia and to enforce their
monopolies over the export of local spices.21
Just as the commercial entities of the Star Wars galaxy dominate small planets
with their massive ships of war and commerce, the great East Indiamen, the
vessels sent out from Europe to Southeast Asia, were ships of war, as much as
they were of peace. These ships were exceedingly well armed, not simply for
defense against would-be pirates, but for offensive action in the East Indies. The
same situation can be observed in the Trade Federation: it is not simply an
organization dedicated to the pursuit of filthy lucre, but is eminently willing and
able to resort to warfare to further its economic aims.
Both the VOC and the Trade Federation used blockades to achieve their
strategic goals. The Star Wars saga begins with the Trade Federation engaged in
a planetary siege of Naboo in order to protest the Senates taxation of trade
routes. Similar tactics, albeit for different motives, were used by the VOC
against its arch-enemies the Spanish and the Portuguese. The VOCs blockade of
Goa, a port city on the west coast of India that served as the Portuguese
headquarters in Asia, was an almost annual event in the seventeenth century.
Although the blockades were never completely successful, they did manage to
severely disrupt Portuguese trade in Asia.22 In another instance, the Dutch East
India Company attempted a massive invasion of the Portuguese settlement in
Macao in southeastern China in 1622 that, because of poor planning and even
poorer execution, resulted in a hasty withdrawal to the island of Taiwan. Finally,
in an alliance with the English East India Company, the VOC imposed a
blockade of the Spanish port of Manila in the early seventeenth century that
succeeded in capturing several ships but ultimately failed to drive the Spanish
out of the Philippines.23
The Dutch East India Company could pursue these militaristic goals because
the charter that created the company in 1602 specifically allowed the company to
act as a representative of the Dutch state in all foreign affairs in Asia. The
company also made treaties with independent rulers in Asia, and it went to war
without waiting for authorization from Europe, just as Nute Gunray orders the
illegal occupation of Naboo. Some scholars have gone so far as to describe the
Dutch East India Company as either a state within a state or a quasi-state.24
VOC warships imposed their rule on the coastal kingdom of Cochin in 1656.
Trade Federation tanks invade the peaceful world of Naboo. (The Phantom
Menace)
 It is extremely difficult to separate politics from economics and both of those
from war when dealing with the Dutch East India Companys activities in Asia,
and the same could certainly be said for the Trade Federation, as it pursues its
own policies through a combination of negotiation, manipulation, and,
ultimately, war. The blockade of Nabooas the Trade Federation attempts to
force the Republic to accede to its wishes regarding the taxation of trade routes
is a complex dance of negotiation, given that the two Jedi sent to Naboo are
supposed to negotiate on behalf of the chancellor. Like the Dutch and English
trading companies, the Trade Federation practices gunboat diplomacy when it
attempts to force the Queen to negotiate a treaty favorable to the Trade
Federation and later uses outright force with a massive invasion to effect a fait
accompli on the Senate.

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
Federations 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 wasnt a long-lasting endeavor. A big company
became a big target or, as Qui-Gon Jinn would have understood: Theres 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 governments 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 Palpatines manipulation and eventual destruction of the Trade
Federation leadership.
The VOCs 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 Gods 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 Siths 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 Sithall, 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 coursewe see it today, as wellbut 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 Federations power doesnt 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 Palpatines
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 dealingsparticularly
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 Senateroutes over which presumably the Trade
Federation holds at least a partial monopolythis 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
agricultureparticularly, food cropsfrom 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 Federations invasion of Naboo in order to further its economic
goals also resembles the British East India Companys 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 Federations 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 resulted, 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 Federations greed leads to ruin as Viceroy
Gunray and the Federations droid army become unknowing pawns in
Palpatines 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 VOCs 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 companys 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.
 Often, when we think about Western imperialism in Asia, our minds jump to
images of the British Raj in South Asia or perhaps French Indochina or even the
Dutch East Indies. That is to say, we immediately tend to think of conquest on a
massive scale or even spheres of influence, as in nineteenth-century China.
This picture, however, is accurate only after the mid-nineteenth century.
Western involvement in Asian cultures during the period when the great trade
companies were emerging was very different and much more limited.33 Western
powers, led by Portugal and Spain and soon followed by the Dutch and the
English, were able to establish only relatively small footholds in various
strategic ports along the coastlines of South and Southeast Asia; their trading
companies were the means by which they accomplished this. What measure of
real control the Western powers did hold in Asia was determined not by great
territorial possessions, but rather by occupying strategic centers of commerce, as
well as port cities that happened to straddle commercially strategic waterways.
In the same way, the Trade Federation also increases its economic and political
power not by large-scale territorial conquest, but rather by monopolizing the
strategic trade routes that criss-cross the galaxy.
Even after the VOC was dissolved, its effects lingered, as evidenced by this
depiction of Dutch ships and a Dutch family in nineteenth-century Yokohama.
 This essay has pointed out the parallels between the Star Wars galaxy and the
chaotic and dramatic commercial competition in the South China Sea region and
the Indian subcontinent that began in the sixteenth century. Between the
dramatic decline of the Chinese Ming dynasty and the chaotic, war-torn situation
in the Japanese archipelago, there arose a group of pirates/entrepreneurs who
took advantage of the chaos to carve out for themselves exceedingly lucrative
networks of trade, which were later incorporated into the first of the great East
India companies. This resembles the state of affairs described on remote planets
such as Tatooine or Cloud City over Bespin, where the power of the center does
not hold sway, gangsters and smugglers are free to operate with relative
impunity, and even a giant, charismatic, slug-shaped smuggler can, with the right
attitude and the right family background (the Hutts, in this case), get ahead in a
cutthroat world of opportunity. In all of these settings, political instability and
warfare could make for good business: opportunities that lured in groups of
merchants from far away, who formed their own networks.
Just as the Trade Federation is an entity that blurs the lines between commerce,
politics, and war, the British and Dutch East India companies were willing and
able to employ a number of tactics to increase their power and profits in Asia.
They gained enormous political influence back home, while combining
commercial strategies with questionable, often violent, tactics to gain a foothold
in the Outer Rim, manipulating local rulers and populacesor using their own
armies or armed shipsin a way that was advantageous to the company. Both
companies, much as the Trade Federation did, began to resemble not so much a
commercial enterprise but rather another territorial player in the unfolding
history of South and Southeast Asia, becoming sovereign in the areas they
controlled. In the long run, however, the metropolitan powers in the center
ultimately absorbed the merchant states within a state: in all three cases, they had
outlived their usefulness.

Notes
1. Augustine of Hippo, City of God (New York: Penguin, 1984), Book IV, chap.
4.
2. This idea is briefly touched on in an article for slate.com, posted on May 24,
1999, titled The Economics of the Phantom Menace,
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/1999/05/the_economics_of_the_phantom_
3. Lynn Pan, Sons of the Yellow Emperor: A History of the Chinese Diaspora
(New York: Kodansha International, 1994), 6.
4. For a comprehensive overview of the South China Sea in this period, see
John Wills, ed., China and Maritime Europe 15001800 (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the
Age of Commerce, 14501680, Volume II: Expansion and Crisis (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1995).
5. For Japanese pirates, or sea lords, as he calls them, see Peter Shapinsky,
With the Sea as Their Domain: Pirates and Maritime Lordship in Medieval
Japan, in Jerry Bentley, Kren Wigen, and Renate Bridenthal, eds., Seascapes,
Littoral Cultures and Trans-Oceanic Exchanges (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 2007), 221238.
6. Probably the best description of piracy along the Chinese coast in the
sixteenth century is in Robert Antony, Like Froth Floating on the Sea: The
World of Pirates and Seafarers in Late Imperial South China (Berkeley:
University of California Institute for East Asian Studies, 2003).
7. Kenneth Swope, A Dragons Head and a Serpents Tail: Ming China and the
First Great East Asian War, 15921598 (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 2009).
8. Derek Massarella, A World Elsewhere: Europes Encounter with Japan in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1990).
9. Richard Cockss fascinating diary and a selection of his letters were edited in
two volumes by Edward Thompson, Diary of Richard Cocks: Cape Merchant
in the English Factory in Japan, 16151622, with Correspondence (London:
Hakluyt Society, 1883).
10. John Wills, Maritime China from Wang Chih to Shih Lang: Themes in
Peripheral History, in Jonathan Spence and John Wills, eds., From Ming to
Ching: Conquest, Region, and Continuity in Seventeenth Century China (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 216218.
11. Tonio Andrade, Lost Colony: The Untold Story of Chinas First Great
Victory over the West (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
12. Om Prakash, Precious Metals and Commerce: The Dutch East India
Company in the Indian Ocean Trade (London: Ashgate-Variorum, 1994).
13. Probably the best comprehensive account of the VOC in English is Feeme
Gaastra, The Dutch East India Company (Zutpen: Walburg Pers, 2007); see
also Els Jacobs, In Pursuit of Pepper and Tea: The Story of the Dutch East
India Company (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1991). A good comparison of the
various European trading companies can be found in Holden Furber, Rival
Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800 (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1976).
14. Although it is in Dutch, a concise description of this process is to be found
in Femme Gaastra, De VOC in Azi tot 1680, in Algemene Geschiedenis der
Nederland 5 (Bussum: Unieboek, 1980).
15. Niels Steensgaard calls this moment a metamorphosis. Niels Steensgaard,
The Dutch East India Company as an Institutional Innovation, in Dutch
Capitalism and World Capitalism, edited by Maurice Aymard (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1982), 239.
16. For Dutch ship production, see Charles Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne
Empire, 16001800 (London: Penguin Books, 1990).
17. According to The New Essential Chronology to Star Wars, the Trade
Federation was created in 350 BBY to represent the needs of major shipping
corporations. See Daniel Wallace and Kevin Anderson, The New Essential
Chronology to Star Wars (New York: Del Ray, 2005), 31. See also Steve Miller
and J. D. Wiker, Secrets of Naboo (Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2001).
18. Jan Pieterzoon Coen was responsible for locating the capital of the VOC in
Asia at Batavia on the island of Java and was extremely influential in laying
out a vision of comprehensive trade throughout Asia, using a network of
several factories. He has also been criticized for his often violent and inhumane
treatment of natives. See Steven R. Bowns accessible account of Coens life in
Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 16001900 New York:
Thomas Dunne Books, 2009), 756.
19. Kristof Glamann, Dutch Asiatic Trade, 16201740 (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1958), 67.
20. Eiichi Kat , Unification and Adaptation, the Early Shogunate and Dutch
Trade Policies, in Leonard Bluss and Femme Gaastra, eds., Companies and
Trade (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1981), 220221.
21. Niels Steensgard, in Bluss and Gaastra, eds., Companies and Trade, 55
56.
22. For a list of Dutch blockades of Portuguese ports, see Ernst van Deen and
Danil Klijn, A Guide to the Sources of the History of the Dutch-Portuguese
Relations in Asia (Leiden: Institute for the History of European Expansion,
2001).
23. For a good firsthand account of the combined fleet at Hirado, Japan, see
Thompson, ed., The Diary of Richard Cocks.
24. Glamann, Dutch-Asiatic Shipping, 7.
25. A good source for the history of the EIC, based on extant primary sources,
is Anthony Farrington, Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia,
16001834 (London: British Library, 2002).
26. Sushil Chaudhary, The Prelude to Empire: Plassey Revolution of 1757
(New Delhi: Manohar, 2000).
27. This trade network is described in Femme Gaastra, De Geschiedenis van de
VOC (Zutplen: Walburg Pers, 1991), 124127.
28. Kees Zandfleet, The Dutch Encounter with Asia (Amsterdam:
Rijksmuseum, 2002), 159.
29. See, for example, Victor Enthoven, Steve Murdoch, and Eila Williamson,
eds., The Navigator: The Log of John Anderson VOC Pilot-Major 16401643
(Leiden: Brill, 2010), 6869.
30. Mary Lindemann, Dirty Politics or Harmonie? Defining Corruption in
Early Modern Amsterdam and Hamburg, Journal of Social History 45, no. 3
(Spring 2012): 587.
31. Donald Keene, The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 17201830 (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1969), 5.
32. For a good, accessible overview of Dutch policy vis--vis the islanders of
the Spice Islands, see Giles Milton, Nathaniels Nutmeg: Or the True and
Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History
(New York: Penguin Press, 2000), chap. 11.
33. For a helpful discussion of Western power in South and Southeast Asia, see
P. J. Marshall, Western Arms in Maritime Asia in the Early Phases of
Expansion, Modern Asian Studies 14, no. 1 (1980): 1328.
 Chapter 11

Coruscant, the Great Cities of Earth,

and Beyond

Katrina Gulliver
I saw a city in the clouds.
Luke Skywalker, The Empire Strikes Back

Cities have an important role in human society. They house our centers of
education and government, become points of contact for diverse populations,
and foster new cultural development. As one scholar wrote, The city has thus
historically been the melting-pot of races, peoples, and cultures, and a most
favorable breeding-ground of new biological and cultural hybrids.1 Cities
generate their own culture, and their development in history has fueled advances
in technology, education, and communication.
In the galaxy of Star Wars, we see a variety of townscapes, from Otoh Gunga,
the luminous underwater city of the Gungans, to the elegance of Theed; from the
low adobe houses of Mos Eisley, to the industrial Cloud City and the glittering
diversity of Coruscant. Such bright urban centers have long been a lure for
people from rural areas, especially young people looking to broaden their
horizonssuch as Luke Skywalker on Tatooine, wanting to leave and attend the
Academy. In A New Hope he even says, If theres a bright center to the
universe, youre on the planet its farthest from.
Although cities have lured people from the country who want to pursue
opportunities, tales of urban danger for the unwitting rural visitor have also been
common in cultural history. Even the earliest recorded cities had a tinge of
danger, or sin, as Roman historian Tacitus (AD 56AD 117) commented in his
Annals: All thing atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome.2
Part of a citys attraction is the freedom and range of options it offers. As
urban theorist Jane Jacobs wrote, The point of cities is multiplicity of choice.3
Urban life can offer conveniences and access to services not available elsewhere.
Cities can allow for freedom in other ways, in anonymity, as when Anakin
Skywalker and Padm Amidala hide their marriage while living in Coruscant.
They are hiding in the crowd, safe in the knowledge that in a big city their
relationship will not be noticed.
This is demonstrated on a smaller scale by Padms security practices in The
Phantom Menace. Her makeup serves as a way to conceal her identity: she and
her decoys all look similar, interchangeable. This allows her to accompany Qui-
Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi unrecognized, as at least one of them does not
know what she looks like without the elaborate hairstyles and cosmetics. Her
makeup and style of dress also mark her cultural affiliation. We later see her
successor as Queen of Naboo wearing a similar costume. Indeed, she also shows
how cities lead fashion. Queen Amidala and later her daughter, Princess Leia,
demonstrate the fashions of elite women in their cities. Padms style of makeup
and costume also bring to mind the geisha, whose elaborate costuming helped
create the mystique geishas held in traditional Japanese society.

Going to Town
In medieval Europe, the biggest towns were often walled, built to be defensible
against enemy attack. They would also be trading points, to which farmers and
craftsmen would travel seasonally to sell their wares and buy their supplies. The
calendar of such events followed the harvest year, and traveling to town could be
a big event for a medieval peasant, just as traveling to Mos Eisley is an exciting
prospect for young Luke. Major trading towns were often at the junctions of
rivers or on coastal ports, allowing goods to be brought in and out. These trading
customs were the forerunners of the modern financial network, when cities
became centers of banking, as well as of commerce.
The medieval European custom of the freedom of the city also meant that
residence in the city for a year and one day could make a man free, reflected in
the German saying Stadtluft macht frei: city air makes one free. At a time
when peasants lived as vassals to landowners, this path to freedom was tempting
and placed cities in a particular place in the cultural imagination. For slaves such
as Anakin and Shmi Skywalker, such policies would have been welcome, but
their frontier worlds laws offer no such hope.
Cities were often sites of power, both secular and religious. They held the great
palaces of kings and the most important religious buildings, which were
designed to inspire awe in any who looked on them. They were also centers of
knowledge and education. As the capital of the Republic, Coruscant holds a
diverse population and offers services, entertainment, and business of all kinds.
This includes education, just as medieval cities provided. The first universities in
Europe were established in Bologna (1088), Paris (c. 1150), and Oxford (1167).
These cities became cultural magnets in themselves, attracting not only scholars
but all attendant support trades: tailors, bookbinders, vellum stretchers, and,
later, paper makers and stationers. The kind of archive that we see in the Jedi
Temple in Coruscant is like the great libraries of the ancient universities.
The Jedi Library on Coruscant. The Jedi Temple also has the scholastic role of
the ancient universities, drawing its pupils from across the galaxy. (Attack of the
Clones)
Radcliffe Camera, part of Oxford Universitys Bodleian Library.
 With the coming of the Renaissance, ideas of urban design changed. Whereas
cities before this point had developed organically, with no central planning,
Renaissance thinkers idealized their views of the classical city and ideas of
symmetry and balance in urban design. Buildings were made symmetrical; grand
plazas were built for public gatherings.
The beautiful Renaissance cities have long been part of the imagination of life
in other parts of space in science fiction. Giovanni Schiaparelli and Percival
Lowell, astronomers in the late nineteenth century, became known for their
theories about the existence of canals on MarsLowell, in particular, felt this
was evidence of intelligent life on the planet. His booksMars (1895), Mars
and Its Canals (1906), and Mars as the Abode of Life (1908)helped spark the
imaginations of a generation of science-fiction writers who envisioned life on
the red planet. Illustrations were drawn of their fantasized Martian towns. Their
influence can be seen in the way the creator of Star Wars conceived of his canal
city, Theed, on Naboo.
Long before London rose to prominence, before Columbus headed for the
Americas (thinking he was going to Asia), Venice was the most fabulous and
exciting city in Europe, and it remains our closest parallel to Theed. Elegant
palazzos demonstrated the wealth and taste of the citys residents. The canals
were an engineering feat, providing transport. They shaped the expanding city to
human needs, in keeping with a neoclassical aesthetic.
Theeds elegant architecture is reminiscent of Renaissance Italian cities. (The
Phantom Menace)
Renaissance Venice, as depicted by Bellini.
 Venice was also where some of our modern financial and banking concepts
emerged, including share investmentpartly as a tool for private merchants to
help fund long sea voyages. Where previously someone might invest in a ship
and lose everything if that ship were lostthe notion of shares meant instead
that it was possible to invest in a percentage of a fleet, rather than in one
particular vessel. Whichever of the ships returned safely, the investors could get
a return on their investment. This innovation helped spread risk and encouraged
people to back such trading expeditions, which, in turn, contributed to Venices
wealth and economic importance.

Reaching for the Sky: Cities Go High

Cities were centers of production in the Industrial Revolution, and the
introduction of factories led to massive urbanization during the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, with people seeking work in the fast-growing towns.
At the same time, technology was making agriculture less labor-intensive, so
many rural agricultural laborers became urban factory workers.
The first skyscrapers began to appear in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, although they were not tall by todays standards: for instance, the Home
Insurance Building, built in Chicago in 1885, was only ten stories high. Since
then, such buildings have appeared all over the world, as badges of urban
modernity.
The forerunners of skyscrapers were the multistory buildings that existed even
in Roman cities, built from brick, stone, and cement. Yet technology limited how
high masonry buildings could go. Walls had to be ever thicker to support the
weight of the higher stories. The development of steel-frame construction
allowed buildings to go higher than before, and the elevator made such buildings
usable. Henry Bessemer introduced the Bessemer Process for steel production in
1858. This enabled the inexpensive production of steel in large quantities, and
revolutionized the construction industry, shipbuilding, and the railways. Similar
technological innovations must have enabled residents of the Star Wars galaxy to
live in bubbles underwater in Otoh Gunga or among the clouds of Bespin.
The steel-frame building opened a way for architects to create upward, lifting
the visual spectacle of the city toward the sky. The notion of the urban skyline
contained both high-rise buildings to look at and such vantage points to look
from. Before the invention of the elevator, the highest floors of a building were
the least desirable and were associated with servants quarters. The modern
skyscraper with elevators changed this, with the appearance of the penthouse
apartment as the ideal of urban luxury. The convenient downtown location and
the view became the selling point for such homes, as we see in the view from
Padm Amidalas apartment in Coruscant. Besides offering a stunning view of
vistas such as the Coruscant skyline, skyscrapers also projected modernity,
ambition, and sophistication.
Skyscrapers increased both housing density and, by creating new workplaces
in high-rise offices, drove demands for public transportation. These buildings
radically changed a citys appearance and the ways people lived. Offices created
different modes of working in cities and led to the rise of the commuter lifestyle.
Factory workers had tended to live close to the factoriesoften in purpose-built
housing owned by their employer or in tenements nearby, as with the workers on
Cloud City. We have yet to reach the technology that allowed Cloud City to be
built, miles above the planets surface, as floating layers of urban cityscape
housing five million people.
The view from Padms apartment on Coruscant. (Revenge of the Sith)
 The growth in technology also helped create ideas of urban planning and ideal
living arrangements: as one urban historian notes, in the nineteenth century
enlightened planners wanted the city in its very design to function like a healthy
body, freely flowing as well as possessed of clean skin.4 This included the idea
that cities should have circulation, as a human body does: circulation of
vehicular traffic, railways, and subway systems, with green spaces to serve as the
lungs for the urban center.
The traffic had taken different forms: initially horse-drawn, with buses and
then streetcars that ran along tracks laid on the road. Later, the streetcars were
electrified: the cars were powered by electrical wires strung above the roadway.
Urban planners looked above (elevated railways), and below (subways), as they
tried to find ways to move the increasing numbers of commuters through the
city. These needs of growing urban populations produced some of the greatest
feats of human engineering, such as the London underground system.
Cloud City resembles many crowded, modern commercial cities. (The Empire
Strikes Back)
New York City began construction of its subway system in 1900.
 The first underground railway was constructed in London in 1863. Other cities
soon followed, adding underground systems that increased the volume of human
traffic through the city. Subways changed the way of moving through the city by
putting passengers in tunnels: they no longer saw the streetscapes they were
traveling through. In London, the underground system later saved the lives of
thousands of Londoners, who were able to use the underground stations as bomb
shelters during the air raids of World War II.
City life not only changed how people lived and traveled, it has made us
behave differently. Note how German sociologist Georg Simmel described the
particular psychological effects of living in a city:
With each crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of
economic, occupational and social life, the city sets up a deep contrast with
small town and rural life with reference to the sensory foundations of
psychic life. The metropolis exacts from man as a discriminating creature a
different amount of consciousness than does rural life. Here the rhythm of
life and sensory mental imagery flows more slowly, more habitually, and
more evenly.5
Urban life also created new figures, for instance, the private or undercover
detective: such policing was possible only once towns were large enough for
anonymity in crowds. The idea of being undercover depended on cities with
large populations and the need for such detectives (whether private eyes or
police plain-clothes detectives) to solve crimes, for which the pool of suspects
could be in the thousands. It is the plain-clothes detective who is able to move
through the juxtaposed spaces of the urban site. Indeed, in Attack of the Clones
Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi become, in a sense, private detectives
as they pursue the would-be assassin of Padm Amidala. Obi-Wan enters a bar
and orders a drink, very much as that quintessential urban detective Philip
Marlowe would do. The detective has to be able to operate at all levels of society
and relate to a range of people. The Jedis mind skills offer a shortcut to this
talent, which otherwise depends on a particular ability to relate and build a
rapport. In another scene in Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan goes to meet a friend
in a diner, in a setup that could have been in any 1930s hardboiled detective
movie. The robot waitress uses old slang such as Java juice for coffee, part of
a diner vocabulary that evolved in mid-twentieth-century America.
Diners specialized in being open long hours (often twenty-four hours),
providing for the needs of shift-workers but also, in cities, for nightclub partiers,
who wanted to get breakfast or a snack in the early hours. Occasionally, disused
railway dining cars were turned into cafes, often near a railway station. This
created a style of a long narrow room, with a counter and stools, much like that
on a railway dining car. So popular was this aesthetic that prefabricated diners
were built to resemble such carriages. Their streamlined shape, often accented
with chrome, became an icon of the American landscape from the 1930s onward.
This is the design of the diner in Attack of the Clones, suggesting a similar
urbanizing process there, too.
Star Wars also shows us the layers of economic development that follow the
rise of urban industrialization. The Jawas on Tatooine sell discarded or stolen
droids, as they sell C-3PO and R2-D2 to Owen Larsand as in our world used
cars, motorcycles, and other appliances are sold by entrepreneurial middle-men.
We can compare them to the rag-pickers of nineteenth-century European cities
and some of the slum dwellers of India today. Living on the fringes of cities,
they collect discarded items to repair or resell. This kind of secondary economy
has always sprung up around cities, especially in the Industrial Age, as the
volume of manufactured goods means there are more things to be discarded or
recycled.
Dexs Diner in CoCo Town, Coruscant. (Attack of the Clones)
The Summit Diner in Summit, New Jersey, is a prototypical rail car style diner
built in 1938.
 London and Coruscant: Cities at the
Center of It All
A long time ago in a galaxy not so far away, the first envoys of the East India
Company were sent by Elizabeth I in 1601. Their goal was to make contact with
the King of Aceh, to form a trading relationship for spices that were of high
value in Europe. Companies such as this were given charters to trade and
colonize certain parts of the world. As Michael Laver discusses in chapter 10 of
this book, the East India Company, similar to the Trade Federation in Star Wars,
had troops and ships, to defend (and enforce) their trade routes. As Venice had
introduced share investment, the joint-stock company became key to British
colonial expansion, with the East India Company, the Virginia Company, the
Hudsons Bay Company (and others) allowing private investors to drive colonial
expansion.
As trade grew, the need to improve geographical knowledge grew, too. The
British government and its trading companies relied on accurate maps to
delineate colonial territory, and ships needed precise charts to avoid heading off
course. This resulted in a contest for a means of establishing longitude (allowing
ships navigators to accurately establish their location). Inability to establish
longitude while at sea led to maritime disasters, as navigators miscalculated their
locations and hit rocky shores or reefs. Clockmakers, astronomers, and
mathematicians attempted to solve the problem. As long as they knew the time
in one place (for instance, the home port), sailors could establish longitude by
figuring the solar time where they were and calculating the time difference from
home. The problem they faced was that clocks were unreliable on sea voyages.
Given the importance of naval power and merchant shipping to London, it was
there that this problem was solved.
The successful establishment of international longitudinal measures in 1884
placed Londonspecifically, the Royal Observatory at Greenwichat the
center of the world, longitudinally. The Prime Meridian (or zero degrees west or
east) is the reason we still observe Greenwich Mean Time, because all time
zones are counted outward from London. Every time we set our watches to a
new time zone, we are in a way acknowledging Londons historic legacy and
dominant position in the global economy of the eighteenth century. For the
inhabitants of the galaxy in Star Wars, Coruscant fulfills this role, with its
coordinates of 0,0,0. In both cases, the use of these coordinates reflects the fact
that both London and Coruscant were the political and economic centers of their
respective worlds at the time the systems were set up.
That Coruscant long endures at the center of the Star Wars galaxy stands in
sharp contrast to our history. Great cities rose and fell over the centuries. As
Fernand Braudel explained,
Dominant cities did not dominate forever; they replaced each other. . . .
When Amsterdam replaced Antwerp, when London took over from
Amsterdam, or when in about 1929, New York overtook London, it always
meant a massive historical shift of forces, revealing the precariousness of the
previous equilibrium and the strengths of the one replacing it. The whole
circle of the world-economy was affected by such changes and the
repercussions were never exclusively economic.6
Like Coruscant, London from the sixteenth century onward was a center of
commerce, if not always the greatest center for world commerce that it
eventually became, which meant that ships carrying all kinds of goods would be
at the docks at any given time. To many residents and visitors, the city itself was
a wonder. William Dunbar wrote, London, thou art the flour [flower] of cities
all!7 By the time that London became the capital of the largest empire ever
known, the city boasted residents hailing from all over the world. In the
eighteenth century, traveling to London from the colonies was a primary
ambition of those who wished to be worldly and educated (and who had the
money to do so). It offered high life, low life, and all manner of cultural
diversions. Londons financial services were also sufficiently developedand
trustedthat when France sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803, it was not
a Paris or Philadelphia institution, but Barings Bank in London that handled the
financial transaction. Even Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson respected London as
the financial center of the world.
James Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, famously wrote, When a man is tired
of London, he is tired of life.8 In the nineteenth century, Benjamin Disraeli
described it as a modern Babylon, and Ralph Waldo Emerson said, London is
the epitome of our times, and the Rome of to-day.9 London could be all of these
things, offering the best and the worst of life, as one historian has described it:
the modern city was increasingly to be seen as simultaneously Babylon and
Jerusalem: a city of license (and potential disorder) was also a city of individual
liberty; a city of toil was also a city of opportunity for self-betterment; one
persons disorganisation . . . was another persons community.10
Meanwhile, the image of the city was not aided by the popular perception of it
as full of crime and danger. Commonplace nineteenth-century popular imagery
of the city states simultaneously that the citys streets are paved with gold and
that the city is a snare and destroyer of youth.11 Even Jane Austen admitted,
We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.12 She was referring not
only to urban life, but to political corruption, as we also see in the Galactic
Senate on Coruscant.
Along with moral risk, a concern in such crowded cities historically was
disease: large numbers of people in close proximity could turn an outbreak into
an epidemic. The Black Death, for instance, ripped through the cities of
medieval and Renaissance Europe. Potentially even more lethal is the Blue
Shadow Virus, recreated as an airborne contagion by Dr. Nuvo Vindi in The
Clone Wars. During the nineteenth century, major cities were still struck with
diseases such as cholera and yellow fever. Such instances spurred scientific
research into the causes and prevention of such diseases, as well as urban
populations providing (unwittingly) perfect subject populations for studying how
outbreaks had occurred, thus helping doctors trace the source.

New York: The Empire City

In what is known as the Gilded Age, the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
New York began to overtake London as the worlds cultural capital, and it is
seen even now as the worlds most important city. The center of gravity in the
financial world began to shift from London to New York around this time, too,
with the rise of firms such as J.P. Morgan making Wall Street the worlds
financial heart. This process was accelerated by World War I and was largely
complete by the 1920s. This importance meant that the Wall Street crash of 1929
triggered a global economic downturn. Home of the United Nations
Headquarters since 1952, New York is perhaps the most similar to Coruscant
(home of the Galactic Senate) of our contemporary cities. Although obviously
not a planet city, Manhattan is an island city, and indeed Manhattan is for many
of us the quintessential urban space.
With its neon and beautiful buildings, asked Ezra Pound, is New York the
most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the
night there. . . . Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether.
Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.13 The city
itself was a great human achievement, an image of optimism for a capitalist age.
Thomas Wolfe wrote that New York blazes like a magnificent jewel in its fit
setting of sea, and earth, and stars.14
Cities have always been centers of creativity and innovation, the opportunity
to meet the like-minded. Artists and musicians have honed their crafts, often as
entertainers for the diverse crowds in such cities. The musicians in the Mos
Eisley Cantina are like so many who developed different rhythms and new
sounds while playing in the speakeasies of the Prohibition era.
The victory parade on Naboo. (The Phantom Menace)
 Urban space has offered audiences and community for grand processions and
display, as seen in The Phantom Menace, which shows a parade following the
battle victory on Naboo. Although parades have long existed, the use of ticker
tape (essentially, a waste product of modern communication technology) as a
kind of confetti created a new kind of visual celebration medium. The corridors
of tall buildings in Manhattan particularly lend themselves to this, with people
able to throw tape and confetti from the windows of high floors. This allows for
a level of group participation that would not be present in a parade that was
simply watched, and it is also a tactile experience for those in the parade, being
showered with the recognition of the citys residents and workers. The first
ticker-tape parade was in fact spontaneous, after the opening of the Statue of
Liberty in 1889, so there was no person or group being hailed, so much as a
general group party atmosphere.
The celebration on Coruscant after the fall of the Empire. (Return of the Jedi)
A 1926 ticker-tape parade in New York City.
 This is shown in the images of celebrating cities at the end of Return of the
Jedi. In New York, ticker-tape parades quickly caught on, however, as a custom
and were organized during the next century for major figures who were visiting
the city. Parades and public events can also mark solemn occasions, as at the end
of Revenge of the Sith, when Padm Amidalas funeral is shown as a grand
public event, attended by throngs of mourners. Her hearse is led through the city
to be seen by all of the residents whom she represented in the Senate.
Yet the gilded urban surface often concealed an underbelly of crime or danger.
Cities, or their dock areas, were often regarded as seedy or disreputable. Mos
Eisley is the lawless space that many port cities have been, historically. Qui-Gon
describes spaceports as havens for those who dont wish to be found in The
Phantom Menace. Of Mos Eisley, Obi-Wan (who by that stage is a long-term
resident of Tatooine) says, You will never find a more wretched hive of scum
and villainy, in Star Wars: A New Hope.
Bars in such areas were regarded with particular suspicion. These were often
places where men would meet, and respectable women would not go near, as
well as having a reputation as havens for criminals and social deviants. In port
cities, they could be places to exchange information: sailors recently arrived
would have the most up-to-date news of the ports they had come from. Port
taverns were places to trade goods, make deals, and participate in gambling and
other entertainment. We see this in A New Hope, where Obi-Wan knows that the
Cantina will be the place to find someone who is willing to provide transport and
who will not ask too many questions.
In the twentieth century, private transportation and the introduction of the
automobile as an affordable commodity brought a new measure of freedom for
many people, and the private vehicle is clearly playing the same role in Star
Wars. We see on Coruscant traffic flowing at multiple levels in Attack of the
Clones, obviously the result of particularly detailed planning of the populations
needs.
The crowded city of Coruscant, a whole planet for a city, is much bigger than
any of the mega cities we have on Earth today. The challenges faced, in terms of
environmental pollution and public health, have obviously been resolved on
Coruscant. Its traffic of airspeeders and taxis is much like the World of
Tomorrow envisaged at the Worlds Fair in the 1950s. It demonstrates the
planning of skyscrapers and dense urban populations.
Airspeeder traffic lanes on Coruscant. (Attack of the Clones)
 The City of Tomorrow
Cities with aerial transport to the downtown area would be very different from
cities today. In the early days of aviation, such personal air transport was
envisaged. Although we now have large-scale long-distance aviation, the trend
has been toward building airports farther out of downtown metro areas, making
it less convenient than early planners had imagined. Indeed, original plans for
the Empire State Building envisaged a docking site for zeppelins at the top.15
Many images of the urban future anticipated downtown landing spots and
personal aircraft, such as this one from science-fiction illustrator Frank Paul. The
closest thing to the flying car in general use remains the helicopter, which is both
impractical and uneconomic for most people. Rather, as cities have grown, we
have seen a need for more public transport.
What can the worlds of Star Wars teach us about our own relationship with
cities? It is apt that we should look to film to learn about cities. It was the
medium of cinema in the early part of the twentieth century that first gave people
a chance to see cities in different parts of the world, in movies and newsreels.
Although photos were published in books and newspapers, the whirl of the urban
experience is captured more fully on film. Indeed, some of the earliest footage
still in existence shows us street scenes: horse-drawn carriages, bicycles, and
pedestrians flickering past the lens.
One of the greatest urban theorists of the twentieth century, Lewis Mumford,
wrote that cities themselves transcended reality:
This metropolitan world, then, is a world where flesh and blood is less real
than paper and ink and celluloid. It is a world where the great masses of
people, unable to have direct contact with more satisfying means of living,
take life vicariously, as readers, spectators, passive observers: a world where
people watch shadow-heroes and heroines in order to forget their own
clumsiness or coldness in love, where they behold brutal men crushing out
life in a strike riot, a wrestling ring or a military assault, while they lack the
nerve even to resist the petty tyranny of their immediate boss: where they
hysterically cheer the flag of the political state, and in their neighbourhood,
their trades union, their church, fail to perform the most elementary duties of
citizenship.16
Flying cars and skyscrapers inhabit this 1942 vision of a futuristic city.
 Science fiction has always been a way to explore our hopes and fears of the
futureStar Wars, although set a long time ago, exists in a different time from
ours, past, present, and future. There are millions of observers of the urban
space, in person and remotely through the media, and it is in fact the digital that
has created the final layer of the city as spectacle. This has been associated with
Tokyo, but we can see hints of it emerging in discussions of other Asian cities,
such as Shanghai and Singapore. Tokyo is often the focus of the positive
imaginings of future urban settlements and is associated with the notion of
technology and economic success. Many of the popular images of Tokyo involve
bullet trains or pod hotels, which represent the ultimate in social isolation or
alienation. Cities offer anonymity, the chance to hide in a crowd and to explore
new identities. The digital city of the future may remove human contact
altogether.
Cities have given us freedoms and opportunities, as the contact of groups has
sparked new creativity. Cities created problems to be solved (transportation,
housing, sanitation) and then supplied creative solutions. Cities of our world
have changed our lifestyle, our approach to socializing, our work and career
opportunities. Yet we can make our own cities, too: as Shakespeare wrote, The
people are the city.17 Our rural-urban relationships have varied over time and in
different parts of the world. Overall, though, the trend has been toward
urbanization. Star Wars manages to reflect some of these differences between
capital and outpost, city and frontier.
The built environment of a city is collectively consumed.18 Our conceptions
of urban space have changed with the means we use to travel through them.
Cities change us, too. In cities, we live cheek-by-jowl with strangers, surrounded
by the sights, sounds, and smells of thousands of other lives, unfolding right next
to our own. Yet the anonymity of the urban offers its own privacy, as we saw on
Coruscant and Cloud City. I may pass thirty people on the street where I live, but
I know none of them. We became city people and continue to do so, as the world
becomes increasingly urbanized. If youre reading this, chances are you live in a
city somewhere, too.

Notes
1. Louis Wirth, Urbanism as a Way of Life, in Richard Sennett, ed., Classic
Essays on the Culture of Cities (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969),
143164.
2. Tacitus, Annals, Book XV, chap. 44.
3. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York:
Random House, 1961).
4. Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western
Civilization (New York, London: W. W. Norton & Co , 1994), 263.
5. Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life,
http://www.altruists.org/static/files/The%20Metropolis%20and%20Mental%20Life%20%28
6. Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th18th Century, vol. 3:
The Perspective of the World, translated by Sian Reynold (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1992), 32.
7. William Dunbar, London, Thou Art of Townes a Per Se, in The Poems of
William Dunbar (London: Blackwood, 1893), 276278.
8. James Boswell, Life of Johnson (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1917),
341.
9. Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred (London: Henry Colburn, 1847); Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Essays and English Traits; Harvard Classics Vol. 5 (New York: P. F.
Collier & Son, 1909)
10. Richard Dennis, Cities in Modernity: Representations and Productions of
Metropolitan Space, 18401930 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2008), 51
11. Sam Bass Warner Jr., Slums and Skyscrapers: Urban Images, Symbols,
and Ideology, in Lloyd Rodwin and Robert M. Hollister, eds., Cities of the
Mind: Images and Themes of the City in the Social Sciences (New York and
London: Springer, 1984), 181195.
12. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, (New York: W W. Norton & Co, 1998).
13. Ezra Pound, Patria Mia, New Age 11, no. 21, September 19, 1912, 492.
14. Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock (Voices of the South) (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1999).
15. Christopher Gray, Not Just a Perch for King Kong, New York Times,
September 23, 2010, RE9.
16. Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (London: Routledge, 1997), 258.
17. William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, act III, scene 1, line 200.
18. David Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1985), 47.
 THE JEDI COUNCIL
William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), is a professor of history
at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. A Star Wars fan since 1977, he still
has his collection of STARLOG magazines from his teen days. His doctorate in
modern history is from the University of Oxford.
Kevin S. Decker is an associate professor of philosophy and the director of the
philosophy program at Eastern Washington University, where he plays the role
of Obi-Wan Kenobi on Halloween. His research interests include American
pragmatism, ethics, and social and political philosophy, and his work has
appeared in both scholarly journals and magazines such as Wired and Inked. He
is the coeditor of Star Wars and Philosophy, Star Trek and Philosophy, and
Terminator and Philosophy, and his work on philosophy and popular culture has
appeared in books on the work of Stanley Kubrick and Tim Burton and on
diverse films and television shows, including 30 Rock and Doctor Who.
Paul Finkelman is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of
Law and Public Policy at Albany Law School. He is currently the John Hope
Franklin Visiting Professor of American Legal History at Duke Law School. His
doctorate is from the University of Chicago, and he was a fellow at Harvard Law
School (19821983). He has published about thirty books, including Millard
Fillmore (2011), Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of
Jefferson (2001), and A March of Liberty (2011). The U.S. Supreme Court has
cited his Bill of Rights scholarship. He has published op-ed pieces in the New
York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, and Huffingtonpost.com. He has
appeared on PBS, on the History Channel, on C-Span, and in the movie Up for
Grabs. He was an expert witness in the Alabama Ten Commandments
Monument Case and also in the lawsuit over the ownership of Barry Bondss
seventy-third home run ball. In 2009, he gave the annual Nathan I. Huggins
Lecture at the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at Harvard University.
Katrina Gulliver holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Cambridge.
She is the author of Modern Women in China and Japan and presents the
podcast Cities in History.
Mark Higbee is a professor of history at Eastern Michigan University, where he
teaches courses in American and African American history. His Ph.D. is from
Columbia University. He saw the first Star Wars film on the day it opened in
1977, in his hometown of Indianapolis.
Paul Horvath is an award-winning teacher of mathematics at Eastern Michigan
University, where he also earned his graduate degree in mathematics. His love of
Star Wars is exceeded only by (in no order of importance) mathematics, his
children, fishing, and the most beautiful of wives.
Tony Keen teaches classical studies courses for the Open University in Great
Britain, for which he has also taught film history. He is active in science fiction
fandom as well. His book Martials Martians and Other Stories: Studies in
Science Fiction and Fantasy and Greece and Rome is forthcoming from Beccon
Press in 2013. It was in a cinema in Buxton, England, in 1978 that an Imperial
Star Destroyer first flew over his head.
Michael Laver is an assistant professor of history at the Rochester Institute of
Technology, where he teaches East Asian history, as well as classes on European
interaction with Asia. His research focuses primarily on the Dutch East India
Company and, more broadly, on early modern Japan. His most recent work is
titled The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Legitimacy, published by
Cambria Press in 2011. Michael lives in Rochester with his wife, Annie, and his
two boys, Bennie and Old Hambone, who are new and eager explorers of the
Star Wars galaxy.
Janice Liedl is an associate professor of history at Laurentian University in
Sudbury, Ontario. She has a doctorate from the University of Toronto and has
published on English intellectual and womens history. The editor of Wileys
forthcoming The Hobbit and History, shes collected Star Wars memorabilia
since she first spotted the novelization of A New Hope.
Terrance MacMullan is a professor of philosophy and honors at Eastern
Washington University. He received his doctorate in philosophy from the
University of Oregon in 2002 and has since published on a wide range of topics,
including Latin American philosophy, the philosophical relevance of The Daily
Show, and pragmatist solutions to racism. The Force is so strong in him that as a
five-year-old, he persuaded his parents to take him to see A New Hope a total of
twenty-six times in three different nations.
Lori Maguire, a professor of British and American studies at the University of
Paris 8 (Vincennes-St Denis), received her doctorate at St. Antonys College,
Oxford University, and her habilitation (advanced doctorate) at the University of
Paris IV (Sorbonne). She has published a large number of articles and books on
the political history of Great Britain and the United States, notably on their
foreign policy. Professor Maguire has been a fan of Star Wars since she saw
(even more times than her friends) the first film in 1977.
Nancy R. Reagin is the chair of the Department of Womens and Gender
Studies at Pace University in New York City, where she is also a professor of
history. She holds a doctorate in European history from Johns Hopkins
University and has sundry publications in modern German history and European
womens history; she is also the editor of Wileys Pop Culture and History
Series. She camped out in line for much longer than her parents thought
reasonable, in order to see A New Hope the day it opened in Los Angeles in
1977; the moment the music started and the opening crawl began, she knew it
was all worth it.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Making History That Spans Galaxies
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . . .
The words that open every Star Wars movie speak to historians: they tell you
that here is someone who understands how history shapes worlds and lives.
Consequently, our first and foremost acknowledgment is to George Lucas,
whose creative force launched us all on this journey. He generously shared
insights into how he drew on a wide range of world history to build the stories of
the Star Wars galaxy. We were equally fortunate in the historians who
contributed to this volume. They combined their own scholarship with an
abiding respect for Star Wars to produce fabulous chapters that exceeded our
expectations, time and again. We also thank our husbands, Bill Offutt and Mike
Myatt, whose endless patience and knowledge of history, American and ancient,
helped us improve this collection. When research questions took us further
afield, many others stepped in with timely guidance. We particularly benefited
from the expertise and generosity of Anne Rubenstein, James Fallone, Pamela
Fuentes, and David Leeson, who answered all of our questions.
This book would not have been possible without the help of our cunning and
resourceful editors at Wiley: Eric Nelson, Connie Santisteban, Lisa Burstiner,
and Becky Yeager. They helped with thousands of important tasks that turned
this volume from a good idea into a beautiful reality and kept us both on track
during the long process. We are also profoundly grateful to J. W. Rinzler of
Lucasfilm, whose encyclopedic knowledge of the Star Wars galaxy and elegant
way with words saved us, time and again.
Finally, we thank our fellow fans whove been with us every step of the way,
from the very first time a Star Destroyer cast its shadow across the screen. In
movie theaters and in bookstores, at conventions and online, weve come
together through the joy weve found in following the stories of Jedi and Sith,
smugglers and royalty. Star Wars has inspired generations of fans whove
enriched our lives with their creativity and enthusiasm. This collection is our
way of giving back to the fans who have been an integral part of our lives for
decades. May the Force be with you . . . always!
 ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Pages 89, 10 (inset), 11, 1617, 1819, 21, 24, 27, 29, 33, 36, 38, 39, 4041,
42, 46, 49, 51 (right), 52, 56, 61, 62, 64, 6667, 6869, 7475, 77, 78 (right), 79,
83, 8485, 8687, 89, 91, 92, 9495, 9899, 105, 109, 110, 114115, 116, 121,
124125, 130, 131, 133, 136, 141, 144 (bottom), 145, 148149, 150151, 154,
161, 167, 171, 174, 176177, 183, 185, 186187, 190, 192, 196, 198199, 200,
202203, 205, 208, 209, 215, 216, 218, 222, 224225, 228229, 241, 243, 244,
246, 249, 250, 254255, 259, 261 (inset), 264, 267, 269, 272, 276277, 282
283, 286 (top), 287, 290 (top), 290291, 294 (top), 299, 300301, 302,
Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved; 10, courtesy of William J. Astore,
Lt. Col., USAF (Ret.); 14, the National Archives and Records Administration,
General Services Administration, National Archives and Records Service, Office
of Presidential Libraries, Office of Presidential Papers (01/20/1969ca.
12/1974), National Archives Identifier: 194759; 17 (inset), Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Division, New York World-Telegram and the Sun
Newspaper Photograph Collection, [LC-USZ62-128858]; 20, Library of
Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, the American Revolution in drawings
and prints, a checklist of 17651790 graphics in the Library of Congress /
compiled by Donald H. Cresswell, with a foreword by Sinclair H. Hitchings,
Washington: [For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off.], 1975, no.
275., [LC-USZ62-39564]; 22, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs
Division, British Cartoon Prints Collection, [LC-USZC4-5286]; 28, the National
Archives and Records Administration, ARC Identifier 530624 / Local Identifier
111-C-CC53045; 33 (inset), the National Archives and Records Administration,
General Services Administration, National Archives and Records Service, Office
of Presidential Libraries, Office of Presidential Papers (01/20/1969ca.
12/1974), National Archives Identifier: 194759; 36 (inset), the United States
Army, creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en; 43, Eugne Delacroix,
Liberty Leading the People, Louvre Museum, creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
sa/3.0/; 44, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, United States
Treasury Department, [ILC-USZC4-9551]; 45, Library of Congress, Prints &
Photographs Division, G60288 U.S. Copyright Office, [ILC-USZ62-121205];
48, photo by Hunter Kahn; creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/; 50, Library
of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Brady-Handy Photograph
Collection, [LC-DIG-cwpbh-01246]; 51 (left), the National Archives of the UK,
Ref. Inf 3/229; 55, Donald I. Grant / Canada. Dept. of National Defence /
National Archives of Canada / PA-166396; 58, Australian War Memorial online
catalogue ID Number: P00885.001; 60, image courtesy of the Art Renewal
Center , (ARC) www.artrenewal.org; 64 (inset), (6094), CONACULTA.
INAH-SINAFO-FN-Mexico; 71, KongFu Wang,
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en; 73, Meir Shahar, The Shaolin
Monastery, 2008, ISBN 9780824831103, p. 127; 74 (inset), Bodhidharma on
Elephant, color on silk hanging scroll, Yiran Xingrong, Inscription by Yinyuan,
Kobe City Museum; 7677, Enrico H. Miquiabas; 78 (left), Terry Bennett, Early
Japanese Images (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1996), 75; 79 (inset),
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, David Murray collection,
[LC-DIG-jpd-01046]; 80, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,
Enryosai Shigemitsu, [LC-DIG-jpd-01722]; 84 (inset), Barbara Kabel,
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en; 87, Livre des Echecs (Libro de
Ajedrez, dados y tables), Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial, ms T. I 6, fol.
25, Patrimonio Nacional, Spain; 90, Project Gutenberg; 93, Bibliotheque
Nationale de France; 94, British Library, Ms Royal 20C VII fo.44; 100, title page
of John Taylor, A Dialogue, or, Rather a Parley (London: 1643); 101, Library of
Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Illus. in: MFingal: A
Modern Epic Poem, in Four Cantos by John Trumbull, embellished with nine
copper plates, designed and engraved by E. Tisdale, New York, printed by John
Buel, 1795, [LC-USZ62-7708]; 102, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs
Division, from disbound album of James Maxwell Pringles business trip to
Russia and Asia for First National City Bank of New York, [ILC-DIG-ppmsca-
31328]; 105 (inset), Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,
Lincolns Photographs: A Complete Album by Lloyd Ostendorf (Dayton, OH:
Rockywood Press, 1998), pp. 176177, [LC-DIG-ppmsca-19305]; 107, Library
of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Frank Leslies illustrated
newspaper, vol. 33, no. 836 (1871 Oct. 7), p. 61; 109 (inset), Billy Hathorn,
creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en; 115, Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Division, Purchase, William A. Gladstone, 1995 (DLC/PP-
1995:113.21), [LC-DIG-ppmsca-10900]; 117, Library of Congress, Prints &
Photographs Division, Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, [LC-DIG-cwpbh-
01159]; 118, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Grant and
Lee, the Virginia Campaigns by William Frassanito (New York: Scribners,
1983), [LC-USZ61-903]; Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,
[LC-USZ62-15887]; 127, Augustus of Prima Porta, Vatican Museums,
Chiaramonti Museum, Braccio Nuovo (New Wing), photo by Till Niermann,
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en; 128, The Death of Caesar,
Jean-Lon Grme, Walters Art Museum; 129, Library of Congress, Prints &
Photographs Division, BI, Shelf, sources checked: LC/MUMS, [LC-USZ62-
84591]; 130 (inset), Cicero (10643 BC) in the Senate Accusing Catiline of
Conspiracy on 21st October 63 BC, 1889 (fresco), Maccari, Cesare (18401919)
/ Palazzo Madama, Rome, Italy / Ancient Art and Architecture Collection Ltd. /
The Bridgeman Art Library; 137, Antony and Cleopatra, Sir Lawrence Alma-
Tadema, Private Collection; 140, Coronation of Emperor Napoleon I and
Coronation of the Empress Josephine in the Notre-Dame de Paris, December 2,
1804, Jacques-Louis David, Louvre Museum; 142, the Yorck Project;
gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html; 143, the National Archives and Records
Administration, Heinrich HoffmannNational Socialist Pictures Press/Press
Illustrations Hoffmann; 144 (top), courtesy of Jim Payne at
throughtheireyes2.co.uk; 147, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs
Division, Germany Nuremburg 1934, Nazis . . . Meetings, parades, rallies, etc.,
BI (3), Shelf, Himmler, H-, 19001945, Hitler, A-, 18891945, Lutze, V-, 1890
1943, [LC-USZ62-76094]; 154 (inset), Library of Congress, Prints &
Photographs Division, Plate no. 4.LC no. 5, [LC-USZ62-115872]; 160, H. F.
Helmolt, History of the World, vol. VII (Dodd Mead, 1902), plate between pp.
524 and 525; 164, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [LC-
USZ62-116782]; 169, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Rice,
James Rogers, [LC-DIG-pga-02485]; 171 (inset), Jacoba of Bavaria (1401
1436), Countess of Holland and Zeeland, Zeelandic Museum; 173, Library of
Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [LC-USZ62-105895], Edgeworth;
178, Portrait of Machiavelli, Santi di Tito, Palazzo Vecchio; 180, Ludovisi
Collection, photo by Jastrow; 181, William C. Morey, Outlines of Greek History
(Chicago: American Book Co., 1903), 125; 182, Library of Congress, Prints &
Photographs Division, Athens, Egypt, Rhine, Switzerland, Tyrol, Salzburg,
opposite p. 19, left side, [LC-USZ62-108943]; 189, Bust of Cicero, Musei
Capitolini, Rome, photo by Glauco92, creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
sa/3.0/deed.en; 193, statue of Niccol Macchiavelli (Serie the Great
Florentines), by Lorenzo Bartolini, Uffizi gallery, Florence, Italy, photo by
Jebulon, creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en; 194, Library of
Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, 40180 U.S. Copyright Office,
reproduction of painting by Federico Faruffini (18331869), [LC-USZ62-
100795]; 204 (top), United States Senate; 204 (bottom), the National Archives
and Records Administration, ARC Identifier 198535, Collection RR-WHPO:
White House Photographic Collection, 01/20/198101/20/1989; 206, Getty
Images, Omikron Omikron; 208 (inset), Federal Government of the United
States; 210, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [LC-USZ62-
70080], Chase-Statler, Washington; 214, Service Depicted: Air Force; 219,
National Archives and Records Administration; 226, the National Archives and
Records Administration. National Archives Identifier: 541900, Local Identifier:
306-NT-901B(3), U.S. Information Agency; 230, Slave Combing a Girls Hair,
Herculaneum, Third Style (fresco), Roman, (1st century AD) / Museo
Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, Italy / the Bridgeman Art Library; 232, Library
of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Saint-Mmin and the Neoclassical
profile portrait in America / Ellen G. Miles. Washington, D.C.: National Portrait
Gallery, 1994, no. 657, [LC-USZ62-54941]; 234, Library of Congress Rare
Book and Special Collections Division, LOT 4422-A-1, [LC-USZ62-34160];
236, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, The Graphic, London,
June 7, 1884, p. 548, [LC-DIG-ppmsca-15836]; 247, Library of Congress, Prints
& Photographs Division, Lincolns Photographs: A Complete Album by Lloyd
Ostendorf (Dayton, OH: Rockywood Press, 1998), pp. 67, [LC-USZ62-36582];
248, Attic red-figure cup depicting Cassandra chased by Ajax seeking refuge by
a xoanon of Athena, c. 430 BC (pottery), Greek, (5th century BC) / Louvre,
Paris, France / Giraudon / the Bridgeman Art Library; 252, Henry Londons free
papers, Port Royal, SC, 22 August 1862 (pen & ink on paper), American School,
(19th century) / Private Collection / Courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries / the
Bridgeman Art Library; 260, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs
Division, Japanese prints and drawings, [LC-DIG-jpd-00378]; 261, Library of
Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Japanese prints and drawings, [LC-
DIG-jpd-00083]; 264 (inset), In Busy Life: Traces of the VOC in the Old
Church, Summer 2002, De Oude Kerk, Amsterdam; 266, The Capture of Kochi
and Victory of the Dutch V.O.C. over the Portuguese in 1656, on the Coast of
Mallabar, 1682, Coenraet Decker, Atlas van der Hagen, Koninklijke
Bibliotheek; 268, John Ogilby, Asia: Being an Accurate Description of Persia,
and the Several Provinces Thereof (1673); 276 (top), Defeat of the Peishwas
Army before Jhansi by General Rose on 1st April 1858, from The History of the
Indian Mutiny published in 1858 (engraving), English School (19th century) /
Private Collection / Ken Welsh / the Bridgeman Art Library; 280, Library of
Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Chadbourne collection of Japanese
prints, [LC-USZC4-9983]; 286 (bottom), Roman Kirillov, creative
commons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en; 288, the Yorck Project: 10.000
Meisterwerke der Malerei; 292, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs
Division, Subways NY NYC 1901, NY NYC Union Sq., NY NYC Views 1901,
Photog. I., NY NYC Transit systems 1901, Geogr., Shelf, [LC-USZ62-63514];
294 (bottom), Stephen Power; 300 (bottom); Library of Congress, Prints &
Photographs Division, New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper
Photograph Collection, [LC-USZ62-120810]; 303, used with the
acknowledgment of the Frank R. Paul Estate

Insert Illustration Credits

Insert 1: p. 1 (top), 2 (symbol), 23, 4 (inset), 5 (symbol), 6 (symbol), 67, 8
(symbol and inset), Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved; 1 (bottom),
U.S. Government; 3 (inset), Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,
Detroit Publishing Company, [LC-D416-256]; 45, Washington Crossing the
Delaware River, 25th December 1776, 1851 (oil on canvas) (copy of an original
painted in 1848), Leutze, Emanuel Gottlieb (18161868) / Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, USA / the Bridgeman Art Library; 7 (inset), Library
of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-
39586, published in The American Revolution in Drawings and Prints: A
Checklist of 17651790 Graphics in the Library of Congress / compiled by
Donald H. Cresswell, with a foreword by Sinclair H. Hitchings (Washington:
[For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off.], 1975), no. 324; 8 Library
of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [LC-DIG-pga-01711]. Insert 2: 1
and symbol, 2 and symbol, 4 (symbol), 45, 67, 7 (symbol), 8 and symbol,
Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved; 1 (inset), Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Division, Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-48839; 3,
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Reproduction Number: LC-
D416-567, Detroit Publishing Co. no. 050334; 3 (inset), Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Division, Cabinet of American illustration, Haloed Joan of
Arc on Horse with Lion Flag Leading Army by Walter Appleton Clark; 4 (inset),
Cleopatra and Caesar, Jean-Lon Grme, mezzo-
mondo.com/arts/mm/orientalist/european/gerome/index_b.html; 6 (inset),
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Reproduction Number: LC-
DIG-jpd-01519, Shinkan no tsuki, Yoshitoshi Taiso. Insert 3: 1 and symbol, 2
(symbol), 23, 4 (symbol), 45, 67, 7 (symbol), 8 (symbol and bottom),
Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved; 1 (inset), photo by Andreas Wahra;
2 (inset), Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Reproduction
Number: LC-USZC2-1958, The Battle of Malvern Hill, Va. July 1st 1862,
Currier & Ives: A Catalogue Raisonn / compiled by Gale Research (Detroit, MI
: Gale Research, 1983), no. 0458; 4 (inset), Library of Congress, Prints &
Photographs Division, Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-2582, A Slave Auction
at the South / from an original sketch by Theodore R. Davis, Harpers Weekly,
vol. 5, no. 237, 1861 July 13, p. 442; 7 (inset), The Slave Market, c.1867 (oil on
canvas), Gerome, Jean-Leon (18241904) / Sterling & Francine Clark Art
Institute, Williamstown, USA / the Bridgeman Art Library; 8 (top), Library of
Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Reproduction Number: LC-USW33-
059244, Office of War Information, Overseas Picture Division, Washington
Division, 1944. Insert 4: 1 and symbol, 3 (inset and symbol), 4 (symbol), 45, 6
7, 7 (symbol), 8 and symbol, Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved; 1
(inset), Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Reproduction
Number: LC-USZC2-2711, John Hancocks Defiance: July 4th 1776, Currier &
Ives: A Catalogue Raisonn / compiled by Gale Research (Detroit, MI: Gale
Research, 1983), no. 3528; 23, The Return to Amsterdam of the Second
Expedition to the East Indies on 19th July 1599 (oil on copper), Eertvelt,
Andries van (15901652) / Johnny van Haeften Gallery, London, UK / the
Bridgeman Art Library; 5 (inset), courtesy of Professor Frances Pritchett,
Columbia University; 6 (inset), Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs
Division, Reproduction Number: LC-D4-73392, Detroit Publishing Co. no.
073392; 8 (inset), Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-99149, by G.A. Davis, the Arkell Weekly
Company, Frank Leslies illustrated weekly, 1894 Sept. 27, p. 206.
 INDEX
abolitionists
Abraham (biblical)
Afghanistan War
African American soldiers, in Civil War
Agrippa, Marcus Vipsanius
Ajax
Alderaan
Alexander VI (Pope)
Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence
American Revolutionary War
Amidala, Padm (Queen of Naboo)
civil war and
Coruscant lifestyle of
death of
dictatorship and
fashion of
history and
Jedi Order and
power and
rebellion and
as resistance fighter
rule of
on slavery
trade and
Annals (Tacitus)
Anna (Tsarina of Russia)
Apailana (Queen of Naboo)
Aqsa mosque, al-
archery
Aristotle
Ashla
Asimov, Isaac
AT-AT Walkers
Athena
Atkins, Vera
Atlantic slave trade
Aubrac, Lucie
Aubrac, Raymond
auctoritas
Augustine, Saint
Aurangzeb
Austen, Jane
Baldwin, Stanley
Baldwin II (King of Jerusalem)
Bane, Cad
Battle of Antietam
Battle of Christophsis
Battle of Endor
Battle of Geonosis
Battle of Plassey of 1757
Battle of Ruusan
Battle of Saratoga
Battle of Yavin
Beauregard, General
Beria, Lavrentiy
Bernard of Clairvaux
Bessemer, Henry
B-52s
Binks, Jar Jar
Bin Laden, Osama
Blair, Tony
Bleeding Kansas
Blue Shadow Virus
Bodhidharma
Bogan
Boleyn, Anne
Bolsheviks
Book of Five Rings, The (Miyamoto)
Boonta Eve Podrace
Borgia, Cesare
Boswell, James
Boudicca (Queen of Iceni)
Boushh
Braudel, Fernand
brinkmanship
Brooker, Will
Brookes
Bruni, Leonardo
Brussels Act
Bunbu itchi
Bushido
Caesar, Julius
Caesar Augustus. See Octavian
Caesarion
Calhoun, John
Calrissian, Lando
Campbell, Alexander
Campbell, James
Campbell, Joseph
Carlyle, Thomas
Carter, Jimmy
Cassandra of Troy
Cassius Dio
Catherine of Aragon
Catherine the Great
Charles I (King of England, Scotland, and Ireland)
Charles II (King of England, Scotland, and Ireland)
Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor)
Charles VI (Holy Roman Emperor)
Charles VII (King of France)
Charles VIII (King of France)
Chewbacca
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
Cicerone denuncia Catalina (Maccari)
Civil War (American)
Civil War (British)
Civil War (Galactic)
Clement V (Pope)
Cleopatra VII (Pharaoh of Egypt)
Clone Wars
civil war and
Clone troopers
Jedi Order and
trade and
women resistance fighters and
women rulers and
Cloud City
Cocks, Richard
Cold War
Commerce Guild
Confederacy of Independent Systems. See Separatist Confederacy of
Independent Systems
Corday, Charlotte
Corellian freighters
Coronation of Napoleon, The (David)
Corporate Alliance
Coruscant
characteristics of
Jedi and
London compared to
New York compared to
site of Senate of the Galactic Republic
cotton gin
counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy
Crittenden, George
Crittenden, John
Crittenden, Thomas
Cromwell, Oliver
C-3PO
Curato Salva
Dagobah
Dil ireann
Dantooine
Darklighter, Biggs
David, Jacques-Louis
Death Stars
civil war and
Imperial stormtroopers and
inspiration for
nuclear weapons and
Rebel Alliance attack
women resistance fighters and
women rulers and
De Gaulle, Charles
De Molay, Jacques
Des Barres, Everard
deterrence
Dexs Diner (CoCo Town, Coruscant)
Dio
Discourses (Machiavelli)
Disraeli, Benjamin
Dooku, Count (Darth Tyranus)
civil war and
Jedi Order and
power and
rebellion and
tyranny and
Douglass, Frederick
Drake, Francis
Droid Army of Trade Federation
Du Bois, W. E. B.
Dulles, John Foster
Dunbar, William
Dutch East India Company (VOC)
Duvall, Bettie
Easter Rising
East India Company Act
East India Company (British)
Edward VI (King of England and Ireland)
Eisenhower, Dwight
Elizabeth I (Queen of England and Ireland)
Elizabeth II (Queen of the United Kingdom)
Elizabeth (Tsarina of Russia)
Ellsberg, Daniel
Emancipation Proclamation
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Ewoks
factories
trade and
urban lifestyle and
Ferdinand of Aragon
Fett, Boba
Fett, Jango
Fianna ireann
First Battle of Bull Run
Force, the
defined
Jedi virtues and
rebellion and
Unifying Force
See also Jedi Order
Force Wars of Tython
Forrest, Nathan Bedford
Fort Pillow (Tennessee)
Fort Sumter
Foundation stories (Asimov)
Fourcade, Marie-Madeleine
Francis I (Holy Roman Emperor)
Frederick the Great
Free-masons
free soil position
French Revolution
Friang, Brigitte
Fuchs, Klaus
Fulk (King of Jerusalem)
Galactic Empire
civil war and
Death Star destruction and (See also Death Stars)
Galactic Republic replaced by
Galactic Republic
civil war and
French Republic compared to
Galactic Constitution
lack of military
replaced by Galactic Empire
Senate of
slavery in
Galidraan
Gardulla the Hutt
Gates, John M.
George III (King of the United Kingdom)
Grard, Georgette
Grme, Jean-Lon
Grand Army of the Republic (in Star Wars)
Grand Chapter of the Templars
Grant, Julia
Grant, Ulysses S.
Greenhow, Rose
Greenwich Mean Time
Grievous, General
guerilla tactics
Gungans
Gunray, Nute
Hagar (biblical)
Hammond, James
Hapsburg dynasty
Hawkins, John
Henry I (King of England)
Henry IV (Holy Roman Emperor)
Henry V (King of England)
Henry VIII (King of England and Ireland)
Herodotus
Himmler, Heinrich
Hipparchus
Hippias
Hitler, Adolf. See also World War II
Ho Chi Minh
Holofernes
HoloNet
Hospitallers
Hoth
Howe, William
Hugh of Le Puiuset
Hugh of Payns
Humphrey (Duke of Gloucester)
Hussein, Saddam
Hutts. See also Gardulla the Hutt; Jabba the Hutt
Imperial stormtroopers
Index Liborum Prohibitorum
Indian Rebellion of 1857
Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique
insurgency
InterGalactic Banking Clan
Iran-Iraq War (19801988)
Iraq War
Irish Citizen Army
Irish nationalist movement
Isabella (Queen of Castile)
Jabba the Hutt
Jacob (biblical)
Jacobs, Jane
Jacqueline (Duchess of Bavaria)
Jedi Order
Curato Salva
Jedi Code
Jedi Consulars
Jedi Council
Jedi Guardians
Jedi Library
Jedi Purge
Knights and Palpatine
Knights Templar comparison
origin of
power and
ranks of
rebellion and
samurai comparison
Shaolin monks comparison
slavery and
Trial of Courage
U.S. military compared to
virtues of
Youngling massacre
Jefferson, Thomas
Jesus
Jimnez y Muro, Dolores
Jinn, Qui-Gon
Joan of Arc
John of Brabant
John of Salisbury
Johnson, Lyndon
Johnson, Samuel
Judith (biblical)
Junger, Sebastian
Kahn, Herman
Kamino
Kashyyyk
Keene, Donald
Kennedy, Edward
Kenobi, Obi-Wan
civil war and
detective work of
dictators and
history and
Jedi Order and
in Mos Eisley
rebellion and
security and
slavery and
trade and
women resistance fighters and
women rulers and
Kessel
Ki-Adi-Mundi
Kissinger, Henry
Kleomenes (King of Sparta)
Knights, defined
Knights Templar
Knox, John
Ku Klux Klan
Kypselus of Corinth
Lancashire, Anne
Lars, Beru
Lars, Cliegg
Lars, Owen
Leia, Princess. See Organa, Princess Leia
Lenin, Vladimir
Li Dan
Life of Johnson (Boswell)
Liliukalani (Queen of Hawaii)
Lincoln, Abraham
Lincoln, Mary Todd
Locke, John
London, Henry
London (Great Britain)
Louis VII (King of France)
Louis XII (King of France)
Louis XIV (King of France)
Louis XVI (King of France)
Lowell, Percival
Loyalists
Lucas, George
Maccari, Cesare
Machiavelli, Niccol
Mandalorians
Manhattan Project
Mansfield, Lord
manumission
Mao Zedong
maquis
Marat, Jean-Paul
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus
Marianne
Maria Theresa (Queen of Hungary)
Mark Antony
Markievicz, Countess Constance
Mars (Lowell)
Mary I (Queen of England and Ireland)
masters, defined
Mata Hari
Matilda (Queen of England)
Matilda (Countess of Tuscany
McCarthy, Joseph
McNamara, Robert
McPherson, James
Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra, The (Alma-Tadema)
Melisende (Queen of Jerusalem)
Merrik, Tal
Mexican Revolution
milicianas
Military Creation Act
military-industrial complex
Millennium Falcon
Ming dynasty
Miyamoto Musashi
More, Sir Thomas
Mort de Csar, La (Grme)
Mos Eisley
Cantina
city of
Mothma, Mon
Motti, Admiral
Mumford, Lewis
mushin
Mustafar
mutual assured destruction (MAD)
Naberrie, Padm. See also Amidala, Padm (Queen of Naboo)
Naboo
characteristics of
civil war and
fearlessness and
power and
trade and
 victory parade
women rulers and (See also Amidala, Padm (Queen of Naboo))
Nagasaki (Japan)
Napoleon
National Security Council document NSC-162/2
National Socialist German Workers Party of Germany (Nazi Party). See also
World War II
NATO
Navy SEALs
Neimoidians
neutron bomb
New York City
Nixon, Richard
Nizong quan
Nuremberg Rally
Octavian
Odan-Urr, Jedi Master
Oola
Order 66
Organa, Bail
Organa, Princess Leia
civil war and
fashion of
history and
nuclear weapons and
parentage of
rebellion and
as resistance fighter
rule of
slavery and
Orlov, Count Grigory
Otoh Gunga
Outer Rim. See also individual place names
Oxford University
Padawan, defined
Palpatine, Emperor
Caesar compared to
civil war and
Death Star and
history and
Hitler compared to
Jedi Order and
Napoleon compared to
Nixon as inspiration for
Octavian compared to
power and
rebellion against
trade and
See also Sidious, Darth
Pan, Lynn
Panzer officers
partisanes
patriotism
Paul, Frank
Paul I (Tsar of Russia)
Pentagon
Peoples War theory
Peter II (Tsar of Russia)
Peter III (Tsar of Russia)
Philip (Duke of Burgundy)
Philip IV (King of France)
Pinckney, Charles
Pinkerton, Allan
Pisastratus
Plagueis, Darth
Plato
Plutarch
Podrace
Pompey the Great
Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ
Portrait de Napolon (Ingres)
potestas
Pound, Ezra
Pragmatic Sanction of 1713
Prasutagus (King of Iceni)
Prince, The (Machiavelli)
Ptolemy XII (Pharaoh of Egypt)
Ptolemy XIII (Pharaoh of Egypt)
qi
Qing dynasty
Qin Shi Huangdi
rancor monster
Reagan, Ronald
Rebel Alliance
civil war and
Death Star attack by
Galactic Civil War and
history and
Leia as resistance fighter for
rebellion and
Reichstag
republic, defined
Riefenstahl, Leni
Rights of Sentience
Rogue Squadron
Rome (ancient)
power and
Roman Empire
Roman Republic
See also individual names of leaders
ronin
Royal Guard
R2-D2
Russian Revolution of 1917
samurai
Sanchez, Ricardo
Sandinistas
Sand People
Sarah (biblical)
Satine Kryze (Duchess of Mandalore
Schiaparelli, Giovanni
School of Advanced Military Studies (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas)
secession
Second Crusade (1148)
Senatus Populusque Romanus (SPQR)
Seng Bing
Separatist Confederacy of Independent Systems. See also Dooku, Count (Darth
Tyranus); Trade Federation
sepoys
sexual slavery
Shakespeare, William
Shaolin chuan-fa
Shaolin monks
Sidious, Darth
civil war and
as dictator
inspiration for
Jedi Order and
power and
rebellion and
trade and
See also Palpatine, Emperor
Simmel, Georg
Sing, Aurra
Sinn Fein
Sith Code
skyscrapers
Skywalker, Anakin
civil war and
Coruscant lifestyle of
 as detective
dictators and
history and
Jedi Order and
marriage to Padm
power and
rebellion and
slavery and
women resistance fighters and
See also Vader, Darth
Skywalker, Luke
civil war and
Death Star attack and
history and
Jedi Order and
lure of cities and
parentage of
rebellion and
slavery and
trade and
women resistance fighters and
Skywalker, Shmi
Slavery Convention of 1926
snowspeeder pilots
Socrates
soldaderas
Solo, Han
the Force and
history and
Leia and
rebellion and
slavery and
trade and
women resistance fighters and
Solon
Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst. See also Catherine the Great
Spanish Civil War
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
Spring Offensive of 1972
Stalin, Josef
Star Destroyers
storm troopers (German). See also Imperial stormtroopers
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) (Star Wars)
Sugi
Summit (New Jersey) Diner
Tacitus
Takuan Soho
Tano, Ahsoka
Tarkin, Grand Moff
Tatooine
black market trade
rebellion and
slavery and
trade and
women resistance fighters and
Techno Union
Tllez, Dora Mara
Tet Offensive
Theed
ticker-tape parades
Togruta
Tokugawa Ieyasu
Torys Day of Judgment, The
Trade Federation
business of trade and
civil war and
power and
women rulers and
transportation, in cities
Trial of Courage
Triumph of the Will (documentary)
Truman, Harry
Tsunetomo
Tusken Raiders
Tython
Unduli, Luminara
Vader, Darth
civil war and
dictators and
history and
Jedi Order and
nuclear weapons and
power and
rebellion and
slavery and
trade and
See also Skywalker, Anakin
vajramushti
Valorum, Chancellor
Velazquez, Loreta
Venice (Italy)
Ventress, Asajj
Viet Cong
Vietnam War
Vindi, Dr. Nuvo
von Ranke, Leopold
Wake, Nancy
War (Junger)
Warring States Period (Japan)
Washington, George
Watto the Toydarian
Waysun Liao
Weimar Republic
Wesell, Zam
Westmoreland, William
Wilhelm II (Emperor of Germany)
Windu, Mace
Wolfe, Thomas
Wookiees
World War I
World War II
Hitler
nuclear weapons and
rebellion and
women resistance fighters and
Xiaowen (Emperor of China)
Yagyu-Munenori
Yavin 4
Yoda
on fear
history and
Jedi Order and
on power
rebellion and
Yong Tai (Princess of China)
Yothathep, Krom Luang (Princess of Thailand)
Younglings, Jedi
Zen Buddhism
Zenobia (Queen of Palmyra
Zheng Chenggong
Zheng Zhihlong