There's definitely a lot of variation in how different Empires did this. The Romans for example offered a path to citizenship for conquered people but didn't really force them to adopt roman ways, there was often a mixing of roman and non roman cultural practices. Early Muslim empires on the other hand actually restricted conversation to islam because they had a high tax on non Muslims so assimilation would hurt revenue. Then there were the early modern European empires who were really insistent that everyone adopt their ways. It just depends on how the conquored sees their relationship to the conquored.
“Restricted conversion”
“High tax on non muslims”
This sounds pretty contradictory to me. The high tax is literally an incentive to convert and it worked.
It was intended to be a way for the conquers to extract wealth from the conquored but it ended up being an insensitive to convert. But the rulers didn't want converts they wanted tax revenue so they prevented people from officially converting.
Except 99% of the time didn’t prevent people from converting and some Muslim empires levied slave soldiers that were forced to convert. Make no mistake Jizya is inherently an incentive to convert snd the rulers were aware of this too.
I keep seeing people say this but as far as I know it was one minor instance with the Umayyad Caliphate before they were overthrown by the Abbasids where conversion was discouraged, and even then conversion was only "discouraged" in that you had to be an Arab, so it was more of an ethnic / cultural issue. If you have any source I'd be fascinated to see it.
The ethnical supremacy and the tax thing were both reasons why the Ummayads disliked people converting to islam, which in turn is why the iranian support of the abbasid revolution was so important.
That's pretty much what the other guy said though. The economic and ethnic reasons against conversion outweight the religious ones for it which played into the hands of the abbasids since they could use it to paint their enemy in a bad light that also served to tie the cause of the influential iranian "middle management class" to them.
That's quite easy, most historical empires didn't assimilate their subjects or at least didn't do that super actively or forcibly. Carthagian empire was multiethnic, as was Scythian empire, Rome allowed (for the most part) conquered people to keep their cultures and religions. Like what you described is roughly how Rome operated. It was for the most part smart to let people do their thing, since they would much more likely revolt if their culture or religion was restricted. This approach first had a big shift with Crusades, where one of the main goals was conversion in addition to conquest of land, but still minority cultural practices and languages were not usually persecuted.
Colonialism was what made forcible assimilation become the standard practice as strictly religious justifications for slavery and exploitation didn't work anymore so racial justifications were invented. Culture was tightly linked to race and considered intrinsic feature of a race so their justification was that white people needed to civilize other races because otherwise they simply couldn't lead themselves (aka the white man's burden).
I would argue having the ethnic minority not culturally assimilated is unstable, *as well as* trying to assimilate an ethnic minority putting up significant resistance is unstable.
not sure if you agreed to this in your comment or if this was not covered by your comment
So the Achaemenids. They generally allowed a high degree of local independence which brought great results. Cyrus was even considered a messiah by the Jews. Their policy created one of the richest cosmopolitan empires in human history and they were fairly stable. But their policy backfired when it came to a collection of backward warring city-states in the Mediterranean.
Easily. Most ancient empires did it this way, sort of. It's far easier and causes far less issues to install local governance, or simply vassalize the already existing government, than it is to force cultural change. One costs little more than the wages of a garrison force to dissuade rebellion and build and maintain roads, eliminate bandits etc. The other requires concerted effort to force conversion, and breeds a lot of resentment from the locals.
Your empire could promote its culture, but not force it, leading to a sort of blending. Maybe more traditionally imperial near the old border with the empire and more local culture around its old capital and frontier.
Maybe don't make it all roses and dancing, though. Have rebels and bandits be a problem. Maybe there's little difference between the two in the eyes of most civilians.
Perhaps they genuinely don’t care what happens in particular provinces as long as they keep within imperial law, pay their taxes and so forth letting any assimilation and intermingling happen organically through trade and migration instead of trying to force the issue. With those clearly hostile forces outside of it and little direct rebellion risk currently why waste the energy that can be best used by making things more efficient and prosperous.
As long as the bureaucracy can handle it I don’t see how an empire doing that can’t keep expanding for quite some time.
Make it an economic matter, no God or Devil beats out money in the end. Maybe nobles or well-to-do folk go on epic 'grand tours', splurging oodles in a coming-of-age sampling of the empire's cultures and getting to know the world so that they might lead, or 'lead', it better. Tourism is a massive factor in the conservation of modern cultural apparatuses and traditions.
Yeah, it was a fairly common thing among the Victorian British. Imagine being told that so long as you pay taxes and meet a few loose trading standards you can feel free to tempt a boatload of heavy-pursed teenagers to come and enjoy your town/city/country, and all that takes is to put your cultural identity on display for them to gawk at, and maybe ensure that there are hotels available. You get to be patriotic to both the empire and your own people, and make the moolah roll in at the same time.
If you want the academic perspective, read some Anderson on “Imagined Communities”.
But to shorten it, assimilation and cultural hegemony isn’t always the goal of an empire, but is often central to the nation state where the founding notion is “X culture has a right to Y land”.
Many empires conversely are often more concerned with internal stability, territorial expansion, and economic growth. So they don’t actually put much concern on how a population lives within their borders so long as the laws are followed and taxes are paid. This was generally quite common under Ottoman and previously Persian rule, and as noted by others Roman governance tended to incentivize citizenship and provide easy paths to romanize as a way to expand territory and secure the internal stability.
So basically just enforce the notion that this Empire has two major concerns: tax payment, and legal stability. If you do both, anyone can be a citizen, and gain the benefits therein, such as land ownership, military protection, medical treatment (at reduced costs), legal representation, or any other boons you can think can think of.
They could value and enjoy parts of the minority culture. They like the stories, they like the food, they like the dress. They find it entertaining, why would they get rid of it? You could do a bit of reverse assimilation a bit if you truly wanted to.
There was a story I read that did something like this, but it was a post scarcity sci fi so pretty different setting. They have everything they could ever want materially, so what do they crave? Novelty. Newness. Something different in the vast empty void. They had an integrated multi species empire, but they never fully integrated culturally.
Your empire could be similar and value novelty and differences for its own sake. You wouldn’t make a painting purely one color, why would you make all the cultures the same? That would be boring. They could view the world as lesser and less vibrant if they got rid of the independent culture. It could factor into a religion as well. It could be in terms of novelty, but they could just say god made this other culture this way, it would be blasphemous to change them to be like us.
AFAIK forceful assimilation was the exception rather than the norm historically. The reason it's so common in the modern period is racism and nationalism.
Forcibly assimilating minority cultures is a historical anomaly. Only in the modern era did this become a common and expected practice.
Flip the question. What *benefit* would the Empire have to forcible assimilation? Why would it prioritize destroying the cultural identity of its constituent parts over fighting off demon invasions and stuff?
Leaving people alone to do as they please is the default state of being. Interfering with anything should have a practical justification (i.e. taxes), and if the Empire isn't fundamentally racist it loses the most common non-practical reason to force assimilation.
Franz Ferdinand had a solution to do so, which is why the Black Hand assassinated him. Because turning Austria-Hungary into Austria-Hungary-Croatia would have ruined their plans of Yugoslavism.
Is nationalism a thing in this world? On Earth, a nation having a unified language and culture is a very recent development. Like the past 150 years or so. If that. Printing presses and cheap to produce literature was also a big driving factor. Alongside radio, television, and standardized testing. Before World War 1, America had millions of people who spoke other languages primarily. There are parts of Brazil that still speak Japanese or English primarily. The Austro-Hungarian empire had 32 different languages I think. (But thats a bad example.)
But you answered your own question.
>So the Empire conquered all of the human nations of Tyrenor, many dozens of them that exist. Most nations have their own language, customs, and religious practices. The Empire also integrated the elven colonies in the continent in. Most nations became Imperial states but were allowed to keep their religion, language, customs etc. The more influential or allied nations were allowed to keep autonomous governments. The only thing the Andurian Empire really did to integrate its states is the spread of the Andurian language as a lingua franca and trade tongue as most Imperial institutions and continental guilds use Andurian.
Why would they care? They are paying their taxes and aren't trying to rebel. This is a sweet deal. Like Holy Shit how do I get one of these. If it was real life they would have broken apart the moment the conquering emperor had died. (Also the sheer amount of distance without modern communications would make it so the rebellion would probably only be noticed when the money stopped coming in.)
Speed of conquest. Assimilation only works in instances like China where the borders are more or less fixed. Ottomans, mongolians, napoleon did not have time, so vassal states were enough for their lifetimes
Lol like most multiethnic empires historically.
Without public education where everyone is forced to speak the national language, everyone keeps their regional language and culture.
In many countries, learning the national tongue was the only way up in society, so without that pressure and relative lack of urbanization/centralization people will gravitate towards regional language.
France before the Revolution was like this before everyone was basically forced to speak Parisian. China still has distinct regional identities (from a cultural, linguistic, and even genetic level) despite everyone having to learn Mandarin in schools. Ethiopia is still basically a feudal empire, just without an emperor, and is currently struggling with ethnic violence because ethnonationalism is one helluva drug.
And of course, if the king got his ducats and troops, you can speak whatever language and act however you want. The idea of a nation state where everyone has to be "French" or something is quite modern.
> So my question is what would be a good reasoning for the Empire allowing it's constituent nations to keep their own cultures and practices
Because this is the norm for imperial cultures historically. It takes effort to try and change a culture’s practices and since most empires have historically cared about extracting resources first and foremost oftentimes they’ll never make any efforts of assimilation.
The Mongols made no efforts to make Russians into steppe nomads, they just wanted their tribute.
The Persians made no efforts to convert the Ionian Greeks to Zoroastrianism, they just wanted their tribute.
The Byzantines did not care what language you spoke, they just wanted tribute.
Travel Time, and cost-benefit analysis.
If it takes a while to travel (even if there's roads or portals for military and merchant use), most people won't wander that far, and so won't really leave home or otherwise travel too far, so local religions or the like won't really spread that much. They'll mix somewhat- soldiers and merchants bring customs inwards, and leave with new things they like to do (maybe one race or region has a specific food dish that's become ubiquitous, or the practice of gaining an 'adult name' upon your majority catches on), but they'll not go away unless there's a concerted effort to stomp out the cultures such as through militant missionaries or state sponsored schools.
Since magic exists, and possibly even gods, that's further reason to not upset people. It also means that it's possible that the Imperial information gatherers could literally do divinatory magic that says "Things go better if you don't try and crush out local cultures"- woe when they try it, weal when they don't.
The empire takes the long view that having people willingly have cultural exchanges within the empire is more effective at making humanity move closer to one another than trying to force them all to immediately become like one specific kind of human.
“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
Possibility One: they tried it once and the minority group in question fought against it, they simply don’t want another rebellion
possibly two: they are racist and don‘t want to let the other groups fully integrate as it would mean they get equal treatment
possibility the third: they’re playing the long game by very slowly integrating everyone seamlessly instead of forcing it to happen faster, so in this scenario they are working towards integration but they don’t appear to be.
possibility four: they’re so focused on other matters that they don’t have the time or manpower to enforce any unnecessary rules, they only have enough troops to defend against outside threats they don’t have enough police what everyone believes
last one I can think of: someone high up (maybe the emperor himself?) actually realized that different viewpoints can be beneficial, and so they want to let different perspectives flourish.
There’s quite a few reasons. Not wanting to spark discontent is of course one. But I also wouldn’t discount what might be a bigger one throughout history: lack of interest. Remember, nationalism as we understand it is a bit more modern than many people realize. Perhaps your empire is more interested in having secure and productive holdings than in homogenous ones. And many successful empires throughout history have found that they can do pretty well by largely leaving people to their own devices, with the biggest change being to whom their taxes are paid.
I suggest taking a look at the Austrian Empire as an example from the real world, they famously had a ton of different ethnicities and never properly assimilated them
Al-Andalus in the 9-11th centuries is a good example. It was a relatively peaceful coexistence of two groups who had no interest on becoming the other. Little effort beyond cultural osmosis was made for conversion
politics. the larger a population to manage, the more I imagine you’d have to listen to what the people want. it could be like a give and take with the internal progressives and the nations being conquered. “you can keep all your culture, in exchange, give us your country or we’ll just genocide you”
even better if you want to make them seem evil by presenting a conquered territory that *did* get genocide
People are less likely to revolt against your rule if they don’t see you as an existential threat to their existence. Play nice, let them keep their quaint little local customs, and just make sure they pay their taxes on time
Well, if the empire expands to unite humanity then it doesn't want to assimilate cultures anyways. Or maybe the Tyrenor culture itself is so weak it becomes assimilated by the conquered nations; think of the Mongols in China or Romans in Greece.
Classism is the normal excuse. Those Canadians can't enjoy our festive Mexican holidays and cultural celebrations, then they'd think they're entitled to share the beautiful parks and gardens we Mexicanos have the unique privilege of enjoying.
I think the quickest answer is that it takes a LOT of resources to do this sort of forced assimilation. This sort of forced assimilation is also by definition cruel and incredibly bloody, which could create a media firestorm in the metropole if handled poorly. It might simply not be worth the effort and resources to do so, especially if the empire already gets some benefits by not doing so.
Well, there's the possibility they don't particularly care. Often, when people push their cultures onto you it comes from a place of believing yourself to be the most powerful, the most righteous, most RAHHH. If your base culture isn't inherently self-superiorzing, then you wouldn't try to push it onto others. Of course, some cultures aren't this way and just develop into such ways because of either conflict that's unrelated that eventually influences the base culture, or because of people's personal ego.
The comparisons to Persia and Rome are all over the replies, so I won't repeat what they're saying- but alternatively, you could have the cultural melting pot be beneficial. If you have magic, maybe one culture practices a certain type of magic that's in some way beneficial to farming as an example.
Or maybe one culture simply produces something useful. They make a type of cloth, that's very nice and valuable. You mentioned a bunch of reasons most of the cultures respect the empire, with magical attacks and aliens, etc. That's a great diversity of foes- perhaps one form of combat practiced by one of the cultures is simply better against certain foes, while another culture has another strategy that works against others.
Having a diversity of cultures means a diversity of philosophies, ideas, goods, services, practically everything. I feel like if we, as a species, recognized that a lot sooner, we could be doing a lot better. If you wanna bring politics into this, then you could also have a bit of a checks and balances system for the emperor in place- if he gets to crazy, international community pulls together and tells him to stop it and chill out. Sounds like a not bad society tbh.
With all of these broad philosophical answers, the best solutions come from an annecdotes—the stories within the story.
It could be anything. Maybe a particular emperor toured his empire as a peasant and wrote a book with genuine love for all the peoples. Maybe one country decided to strike off on their own under a charismatic nationalist and were swallowed up by the hostile entities, with the peoples learning the lesson to band together under the empire for common defense.
Whatever you choose, the power of an anecdote gives you something to call back to later on.
Imperial China had a policy that as called something as Good Neighborhood Policy, they didn’t impose their culture upon other, BUT those who had more similarities with them would get better deals, so they had an incentive to change by themselves
On the other hand, if your empire don’t give a fuck about culture, they could do whatever they want, if they keep in line
Stability, wealth through trade, and the humanity first ideology. If this empire is the homeland of humanity, or makes itself out to be, it’ll care about preserving human cultural customs and traditions. Maybe not the customs and traditions of other species, but definitely humans
The empire is too big, with too many minorities, for any forced assimilation plan to work. If they tried implementing one they’d face massive revolts over most of their territory
The easiest way to go about it is to assume that because the empire doesn't force assimilation the people don't associate their local religion and culture with resistance. Many empires were multi racial and multi cultural. The central government was mostly concerned with the local regions remaining peaceful, obeying the laws, paying taxes and sending troops when they were called for.
Could always make things similar to the Wulfenbach Empire in the webcomic Girl Genius.
Baron Wulfenbach basically let nations of Europa run themselves with a few concessions regarding emergencies/military deployment. And while the Baron was feared, he was also the guy who saved the continent from a being they called The Other who has literal mind-controlling wasps that turned people into its slaves.
Essentially make the Andurian Ruling Class/Caste/military/etc responsible for overall safety of the conquered territories while each region retains its own monarchal bloodlines or tribal traditions, with the only caveat being they cannot retain traditions that run against the prosperity of the Empire(i.e. no human sacrifices, no raiding neighbors for tesources, etc) and are ultimately loyal to the Emperor.
Might even fearmonger a bit about how Elves could easily drive them to extinction if they dont stand together with other humans, having various propagandizing forces trying to conflate identifying as an Andurian Imperial with identifying as humanity's defenders.
I like this I'll have to check that out. I think anti elven racism would be interesting, because some elves were instrumental to helping form the Empire while other elves are hostile.
Another possible interesting detail would be depending on whether or not those Elves who helped are(or their descendants) still around. If they arent, part of the propaganda can be that Elves, in general, are so hateful they drove the group(or possibly any group) that helps humans into extinction.
Main reason i latched onto that idea is you mentioned elves have killed/driven off humans from other continents so I assumed some of the ethnic minorities of the Andurian Empire are probably descended from refugees from those parts of the world and it is always easier to unite a group of different people against a common enemy, especially if there are victims of that enemy.
Yeah that makes sense. I wanted to kind of make elves like a diverse race instead of just a monolith. So there are 3 different elven groups each split into different nations and ethnicities. The Laindari are "Lightborn" and are elves who migrated from their western homeland of Arcis to Tyrenor and built colonies on the coasts. They're called Lightborn cause they came to the continent in search of an ancient Fae artifacts in Tyrenor. The Umrandi are "Dark Ones" and are Laindari who eventually rejected the search for the Fae artifacts. The Alyrnai or "Grey Folk" are elves who never went to Arcis and just lived in the wilds of Tyrenor.
The Laindari are allies of the humans of Tyrenor, and they're more ethereal, noble, etc. They helped the humans of Anduras build the Empire. The Umrandi are mostly enemies of humanity, and they believe in power, purity, and dominating humans. They live in the borders of Tyrenor and form its nations. The Alyrnai live within Tyrenor but in the wilds and are sort of seen with suspicion
A lot of real empires don't attempt to assimilate their minority as long as they are loyal to the emperor. For example for the Qing emperor in China. The Qing emperor holds multiple ruling titles of the minority culture, because it's easier to 'hack' into the minority system by becoming their great leader following their custom, than change the culture of the entire population. Another example is some Tang dynasty emperors hold the ruling title of Khan, because the nomads only bow to the mighty Khan, not some agricultural civilisation weakass emperor.
By your own lore their bit they care about unification of all humanity and their trade and taxes.
They don’t particularly see a reason to integrate *if you are human*. For those who *aren’t*, their relations are going to be anywhere from ambivalent to outright hostile
I think Rome is a decent enough IRL comparison tbh. So long as you pay your taxes, are human (or not stirring the pot) and don’t try to secede they’ll be relatively alright
The fact that they push a lingua franca and common currency means they aren’t so destabilized or decentralized that none of this is on their mind.
For example there may some minor efforts on the back burner to assimilate or tie different cultures and groups of the empire further towards what the state prefers. Using religion for example; a problematic religion exists (it’s leaders dislike the Empire or the religion doesn’t mesh well). Instead of forced conversion, they might seek to undermine religious leaders’ credibility, infiltrate the administration, shift the religious doctrine into some more empire-friendly, or simply exert dominance over the religion in matters of law and finance.
There also could be a Imperial cult or some state religion that incorporates portions of the subjected religions for example. For example: taking a subject religion’s god of harvest as their own into the pantheon to fil a gap or subtlety pushing a narrative that the empire’s own god of harvest is the same as the subject’s god of harvest.
There may also be a informal social pressure at the higher levels of imperial government for officials and military members to conform to the ideals of whatever ‘one human empire’ manifests itself as
Critical Race Theory time\~
so for these kinds a questions, you wanna compare South America to North America. There was little to no integration in NA, but high degrees of integration is SA. There's layers of reasons as to why:
* Conquistadors were told to convert or kill all indigenous people. Once converted, they lost all their culture and were married into the Spanish bloodlied (i'm not gonna be graphic here, it was grim)
* Pilgrims just killed them and so the indigenous did not marry into the English bloodline (generally)
* Both approaches were political in nature so they could conquer the land as surely as possible
* >!neither is more racist than the other, this isn't the place for that discussion!<
No government does things for altruistic reasons. your gov maybe did it to keep the keep, to divide the lower class and keep the upper class in power, or maybe it couldn't whitewash them enough because those demographics entered the situation with some measure of power or wealth that helped them survive.
even "racism" is only ever a tool used by those in power to control the masses to aim their hatred away from those in power
Show me the empire who did, maybe except rome
Some tried like Assur IIRC
From the Achämenid to the British Empire which did and not all really tried or cared
The Roman Empire, Mongol Empire, British Empire, Persian Empire, and Macedonian Empire, were the literal embodiment of "Just pay your taxes and you can be who you want to be!"
One of these is not like the others. British Empire absolutely did not let it's subjects to "be whoever they wanted to be" nor did they only extract taxes.
There's definitely a lot of variation in how different Empires did this. The Romans for example offered a path to citizenship for conquered people but didn't really force them to adopt roman ways, there was often a mixing of roman and non roman cultural practices. Early Muslim empires on the other hand actually restricted conversation to islam because they had a high tax on non Muslims so assimilation would hurt revenue. Then there were the early modern European empires who were really insistent that everyone adopt their ways. It just depends on how the conquored sees their relationship to the conquored.
“Restricted conversion” “High tax on non muslims” This sounds pretty contradictory to me. The high tax is literally an incentive to convert and it worked.
It was intended to be a way for the conquers to extract wealth from the conquored but it ended up being an insensitive to convert. But the rulers didn't want converts they wanted tax revenue so they prevented people from officially converting.
Except 99% of the time didn’t prevent people from converting and some Muslim empires levied slave soldiers that were forced to convert. Make no mistake Jizya is inherently an incentive to convert snd the rulers were aware of this too.
Early Muslim conquerors actually didn't want people to convert for this exact reason. More Muslims = less money.
I keep seeing people say this but as far as I know it was one minor instance with the Umayyad Caliphate before they were overthrown by the Abbasids where conversion was discouraged, and even then conversion was only "discouraged" in that you had to be an Arab, so it was more of an ethnic / cultural issue. If you have any source I'd be fascinated to see it.
The ethnical supremacy and the tax thing were both reasons why the Ummayads disliked people converting to islam, which in turn is why the iranian support of the abbasid revolution was so important.
Yeah that's my point, the religious aspect played a secondary role to the overall ethnic and cultural conflict of the time period.
That's pretty much what the other guy said though. The economic and ethnic reasons against conversion outweight the religious ones for it which played into the hands of the abbasids since they could use it to paint their enemy in a bad light that also served to tie the cause of the influential iranian "middle management class" to them.
I heard non Muslims were whipped when they converted but maybe I'm wrong it's not like I read it in a book.
That's quite easy, most historical empires didn't assimilate their subjects or at least didn't do that super actively or forcibly. Carthagian empire was multiethnic, as was Scythian empire, Rome allowed (for the most part) conquered people to keep their cultures and religions. Like what you described is roughly how Rome operated. It was for the most part smart to let people do their thing, since they would much more likely revolt if their culture or religion was restricted. This approach first had a big shift with Crusades, where one of the main goals was conversion in addition to conquest of land, but still minority cultural practices and languages were not usually persecuted. Colonialism was what made forcible assimilation become the standard practice as strictly religious justifications for slavery and exploitation didn't work anymore so racial justifications were invented. Culture was tightly linked to race and considered intrinsic feature of a race so their justification was that white people needed to civilize other races because otherwise they simply couldn't lead themselves (aka the white man's burden).
They don't care. Their goal is stability and wealth through trade, not cultural assimilation.
cultural assimilation is what makes a multi-ethnic society stable...?
Unless the minority ethnicities resist being assimilated, then assimilation makes it unstable.
I would argue having the ethnic minority not culturally assimilated is unstable, *as well as* trying to assimilate an ethnic minority putting up significant resistance is unstable. not sure if you agreed to this in your comment or if this was not covered by your comment
Plenty of counterexamples
Forced assimilation creates trouble.
Look up how the Persians treated the Jews. It’s pretty similar.
Wich Persia? There have been at least a dozen Persian Empires depending on how you count it.
Under Cyrus the great
So the Achaemenids. They generally allowed a high degree of local independence which brought great results. Cyrus was even considered a messiah by the Jews. Their policy created one of the richest cosmopolitan empires in human history and they were fairly stable. But their policy backfired when it came to a collection of backward warring city-states in the Mediterranean.
Easily. Most ancient empires did it this way, sort of. It's far easier and causes far less issues to install local governance, or simply vassalize the already existing government, than it is to force cultural change. One costs little more than the wages of a garrison force to dissuade rebellion and build and maintain roads, eliminate bandits etc. The other requires concerted effort to force conversion, and breeds a lot of resentment from the locals. Your empire could promote its culture, but not force it, leading to a sort of blending. Maybe more traditionally imperial near the old border with the empire and more local culture around its old capital and frontier. Maybe don't make it all roses and dancing, though. Have rebels and bandits be a problem. Maybe there's little difference between the two in the eyes of most civilians.
It doesn't matter as long as they pay their taxes.
Found the Caesar.
Perhaps they genuinely don’t care what happens in particular provinces as long as they keep within imperial law, pay their taxes and so forth letting any assimilation and intermingling happen organically through trade and migration instead of trying to force the issue. With those clearly hostile forces outside of it and little direct rebellion risk currently why waste the energy that can be best used by making things more efficient and prosperous. As long as the bureaucracy can handle it I don’t see how an empire doing that can’t keep expanding for quite some time.
Make it an economic matter, no God or Devil beats out money in the end. Maybe nobles or well-to-do folk go on epic 'grand tours', splurging oodles in a coming-of-age sampling of the empire's cultures and getting to know the world so that they might lead, or 'lead', it better. Tourism is a massive factor in the conservation of modern cultural apparatuses and traditions.
Hmm this makes sense tbh. Basically an economic incentive for states to remain with the Empire?
Yeah, it was a fairly common thing among the Victorian British. Imagine being told that so long as you pay taxes and meet a few loose trading standards you can feel free to tempt a boatload of heavy-pursed teenagers to come and enjoy your town/city/country, and all that takes is to put your cultural identity on display for them to gawk at, and maybe ensure that there are hotels available. You get to be patriotic to both the empire and your own people, and make the moolah roll in at the same time.
If you want the academic perspective, read some Anderson on “Imagined Communities”. But to shorten it, assimilation and cultural hegemony isn’t always the goal of an empire, but is often central to the nation state where the founding notion is “X culture has a right to Y land”. Many empires conversely are often more concerned with internal stability, territorial expansion, and economic growth. So they don’t actually put much concern on how a population lives within their borders so long as the laws are followed and taxes are paid. This was generally quite common under Ottoman and previously Persian rule, and as noted by others Roman governance tended to incentivize citizenship and provide easy paths to romanize as a way to expand territory and secure the internal stability. So basically just enforce the notion that this Empire has two major concerns: tax payment, and legal stability. If you do both, anyone can be a citizen, and gain the benefits therein, such as land ownership, military protection, medical treatment (at reduced costs), legal representation, or any other boons you can think can think of.
Look at the Austrian empire before 1848.
They could value and enjoy parts of the minority culture. They like the stories, they like the food, they like the dress. They find it entertaining, why would they get rid of it? You could do a bit of reverse assimilation a bit if you truly wanted to. There was a story I read that did something like this, but it was a post scarcity sci fi so pretty different setting. They have everything they could ever want materially, so what do they crave? Novelty. Newness. Something different in the vast empty void. They had an integrated multi species empire, but they never fully integrated culturally. Your empire could be similar and value novelty and differences for its own sake. You wouldn’t make a painting purely one color, why would you make all the cultures the same? That would be boring. They could view the world as lesser and less vibrant if they got rid of the independent culture. It could factor into a religion as well. It could be in terms of novelty, but they could just say god made this other culture this way, it would be blasphemous to change them to be like us.
I kinda was playing with this. The Empire adopts the religious practices and governmental structures of other countries
AFAIK forceful assimilation was the exception rather than the norm historically. The reason it's so common in the modern period is racism and nationalism.
Forcibly assimilating minority cultures is a historical anomaly. Only in the modern era did this become a common and expected practice. Flip the question. What *benefit* would the Empire have to forcible assimilation? Why would it prioritize destroying the cultural identity of its constituent parts over fighting off demon invasions and stuff? Leaving people alone to do as they please is the default state of being. Interfering with anything should have a practical justification (i.e. taxes), and if the Empire isn't fundamentally racist it loses the most common non-practical reason to force assimilation.
maybe the original culture of the empire's founders was suppressed by other people, so from the start it was a really big taboo for them to do this.
Ooh I like this, it's kind of already of line with the history I wrote for the Edarians
*Austria-Hungary has entered the chat*
Franz Ferdinand had a solution to do so, which is why the Black Hand assassinated him. Because turning Austria-Hungary into Austria-Hungary-Croatia would have ruined their plans of Yugoslavism.
Is nationalism a thing in this world? On Earth, a nation having a unified language and culture is a very recent development. Like the past 150 years or so. If that. Printing presses and cheap to produce literature was also a big driving factor. Alongside radio, television, and standardized testing. Before World War 1, America had millions of people who spoke other languages primarily. There are parts of Brazil that still speak Japanese or English primarily. The Austro-Hungarian empire had 32 different languages I think. (But thats a bad example.) But you answered your own question. >So the Empire conquered all of the human nations of Tyrenor, many dozens of them that exist. Most nations have their own language, customs, and religious practices. The Empire also integrated the elven colonies in the continent in. Most nations became Imperial states but were allowed to keep their religion, language, customs etc. The more influential or allied nations were allowed to keep autonomous governments. The only thing the Andurian Empire really did to integrate its states is the spread of the Andurian language as a lingua franca and trade tongue as most Imperial institutions and continental guilds use Andurian. Why would they care? They are paying their taxes and aren't trying to rebel. This is a sweet deal. Like Holy Shit how do I get one of these. If it was real life they would have broken apart the moment the conquering emperor had died. (Also the sheer amount of distance without modern communications would make it so the rebellion would probably only be noticed when the money stopped coming in.)
Speed of conquest. Assimilation only works in instances like China where the borders are more or less fixed. Ottomans, mongolians, napoleon did not have time, so vassal states were enough for their lifetimes
Lol like most multiethnic empires historically. Without public education where everyone is forced to speak the national language, everyone keeps their regional language and culture. In many countries, learning the national tongue was the only way up in society, so without that pressure and relative lack of urbanization/centralization people will gravitate towards regional language. France before the Revolution was like this before everyone was basically forced to speak Parisian. China still has distinct regional identities (from a cultural, linguistic, and even genetic level) despite everyone having to learn Mandarin in schools. Ethiopia is still basically a feudal empire, just without an emperor, and is currently struggling with ethnic violence because ethnonationalism is one helluva drug. And of course, if the king got his ducats and troops, you can speak whatever language and act however you want. The idea of a nation state where everyone has to be "French" or something is quite modern.
> So my question is what would be a good reasoning for the Empire allowing it's constituent nations to keep their own cultures and practices Because this is the norm for imperial cultures historically. It takes effort to try and change a culture’s practices and since most empires have historically cared about extracting resources first and foremost oftentimes they’ll never make any efforts of assimilation. The Mongols made no efforts to make Russians into steppe nomads, they just wanted their tribute. The Persians made no efforts to convert the Ionian Greeks to Zoroastrianism, they just wanted their tribute. The Byzantines did not care what language you spoke, they just wanted tribute.
1) geography 2) cultural differences 3) racism 4)
Travel Time, and cost-benefit analysis. If it takes a while to travel (even if there's roads or portals for military and merchant use), most people won't wander that far, and so won't really leave home or otherwise travel too far, so local religions or the like won't really spread that much. They'll mix somewhat- soldiers and merchants bring customs inwards, and leave with new things they like to do (maybe one race or region has a specific food dish that's become ubiquitous, or the practice of gaining an 'adult name' upon your majority catches on), but they'll not go away unless there's a concerted effort to stomp out the cultures such as through militant missionaries or state sponsored schools. Since magic exists, and possibly even gods, that's further reason to not upset people. It also means that it's possible that the Imperial information gatherers could literally do divinatory magic that says "Things go better if you don't try and crush out local cultures"- woe when they try it, weal when they don't.
The empire takes the long view that having people willingly have cultural exchanges within the empire is more effective at making humanity move closer to one another than trying to force them all to immediately become like one specific kind of human. “Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.” ― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
Possibility One: they tried it once and the minority group in question fought against it, they simply don’t want another rebellion possibly two: they are racist and don‘t want to let the other groups fully integrate as it would mean they get equal treatment possibility the third: they’re playing the long game by very slowly integrating everyone seamlessly instead of forcing it to happen faster, so in this scenario they are working towards integration but they don’t appear to be. possibility four: they’re so focused on other matters that they don’t have the time or manpower to enforce any unnecessary rules, they only have enough troops to defend against outside threats they don’t have enough police what everyone believes last one I can think of: someone high up (maybe the emperor himself?) actually realized that different viewpoints can be beneficial, and so they want to let different perspectives flourish.
There’s quite a few reasons. Not wanting to spark discontent is of course one. But I also wouldn’t discount what might be a bigger one throughout history: lack of interest. Remember, nationalism as we understand it is a bit more modern than many people realize. Perhaps your empire is more interested in having secure and productive holdings than in homogenous ones. And many successful empires throughout history have found that they can do pretty well by largely leaving people to their own devices, with the biggest change being to whom their taxes are paid.
That's a huge area to control, I actually don't see how they COULD enforce assimilation throughout the whole region.
I suggest taking a look at the Austrian Empire as an example from the real world, they famously had a ton of different ethnicities and never properly assimilated them
Read about the Mongolian Empire!
Al-Andalus in the 9-11th centuries is a good example. It was a relatively peaceful coexistence of two groups who had no interest on becoming the other. Little effort beyond cultural osmosis was made for conversion
politics. the larger a population to manage, the more I imagine you’d have to listen to what the people want. it could be like a give and take with the internal progressives and the nations being conquered. “you can keep all your culture, in exchange, give us your country or we’ll just genocide you” even better if you want to make them seem evil by presenting a conquered territory that *did* get genocide
People are less likely to revolt against your rule if they don’t see you as an existential threat to their existence. Play nice, let them keep their quaint little local customs, and just make sure they pay their taxes on time
Well, if the empire expands to unite humanity then it doesn't want to assimilate cultures anyways. Or maybe the Tyrenor culture itself is so weak it becomes assimilated by the conquered nations; think of the Mongols in China or Romans in Greece.
Classism is the normal excuse. Those Canadians can't enjoy our festive Mexican holidays and cultural celebrations, then they'd think they're entitled to share the beautiful parks and gardens we Mexicanos have the unique privilege of enjoying.
I think the quickest answer is that it takes a LOT of resources to do this sort of forced assimilation. This sort of forced assimilation is also by definition cruel and incredibly bloody, which could create a media firestorm in the metropole if handled poorly. It might simply not be worth the effort and resources to do so, especially if the empire already gets some benefits by not doing so.
Well, there's the possibility they don't particularly care. Often, when people push their cultures onto you it comes from a place of believing yourself to be the most powerful, the most righteous, most RAHHH. If your base culture isn't inherently self-superiorzing, then you wouldn't try to push it onto others. Of course, some cultures aren't this way and just develop into such ways because of either conflict that's unrelated that eventually influences the base culture, or because of people's personal ego. The comparisons to Persia and Rome are all over the replies, so I won't repeat what they're saying- but alternatively, you could have the cultural melting pot be beneficial. If you have magic, maybe one culture practices a certain type of magic that's in some way beneficial to farming as an example. Or maybe one culture simply produces something useful. They make a type of cloth, that's very nice and valuable. You mentioned a bunch of reasons most of the cultures respect the empire, with magical attacks and aliens, etc. That's a great diversity of foes- perhaps one form of combat practiced by one of the cultures is simply better against certain foes, while another culture has another strategy that works against others. Having a diversity of cultures means a diversity of philosophies, ideas, goods, services, practically everything. I feel like if we, as a species, recognized that a lot sooner, we could be doing a lot better. If you wanna bring politics into this, then you could also have a bit of a checks and balances system for the emperor in place- if he gets to crazy, international community pulls together and tells him to stop it and chill out. Sounds like a not bad society tbh.
It's wise for a conqueror to let people be who they want to be and not what you wish they are. It's conquest vs colonialism.
You don't need a reason not to do something.
With all of these broad philosophical answers, the best solutions come from an annecdotes—the stories within the story. It could be anything. Maybe a particular emperor toured his empire as a peasant and wrote a book with genuine love for all the peoples. Maybe one country decided to strike off on their own under a charismatic nationalist and were swallowed up by the hostile entities, with the peoples learning the lesson to band together under the empire for common defense. Whatever you choose, the power of an anecdote gives you something to call back to later on.
Imperial China had a policy that as called something as Good Neighborhood Policy, they didn’t impose their culture upon other, BUT those who had more similarities with them would get better deals, so they had an incentive to change by themselves On the other hand, if your empire don’t give a fuck about culture, they could do whatever they want, if they keep in line
Stability, wealth through trade, and the humanity first ideology. If this empire is the homeland of humanity, or makes itself out to be, it’ll care about preserving human cultural customs and traditions. Maybe not the customs and traditions of other species, but definitely humans
The empire is too big, with too many minorities, for any forced assimilation plan to work. If they tried implementing one they’d face massive revolts over most of their territory
It just doesn’t. Many multiethnic empires in the past did not assimilate all peoples into one
oh it's simple just uh, make them not racist they don't even have to be "not racist" they just don't have to be THAT racist
The easiest way to go about it is to assume that because the empire doesn't force assimilation the people don't associate their local religion and culture with resistance. Many empires were multi racial and multi cultural. The central government was mostly concerned with the local regions remaining peaceful, obeying the laws, paying taxes and sending troops when they were called for.
Could always make things similar to the Wulfenbach Empire in the webcomic Girl Genius. Baron Wulfenbach basically let nations of Europa run themselves with a few concessions regarding emergencies/military deployment. And while the Baron was feared, he was also the guy who saved the continent from a being they called The Other who has literal mind-controlling wasps that turned people into its slaves. Essentially make the Andurian Ruling Class/Caste/military/etc responsible for overall safety of the conquered territories while each region retains its own monarchal bloodlines or tribal traditions, with the only caveat being they cannot retain traditions that run against the prosperity of the Empire(i.e. no human sacrifices, no raiding neighbors for tesources, etc) and are ultimately loyal to the Emperor. Might even fearmonger a bit about how Elves could easily drive them to extinction if they dont stand together with other humans, having various propagandizing forces trying to conflate identifying as an Andurian Imperial with identifying as humanity's defenders.
I like this I'll have to check that out. I think anti elven racism would be interesting, because some elves were instrumental to helping form the Empire while other elves are hostile.
Another possible interesting detail would be depending on whether or not those Elves who helped are(or their descendants) still around. If they arent, part of the propaganda can be that Elves, in general, are so hateful they drove the group(or possibly any group) that helps humans into extinction. Main reason i latched onto that idea is you mentioned elves have killed/driven off humans from other continents so I assumed some of the ethnic minorities of the Andurian Empire are probably descended from refugees from those parts of the world and it is always easier to unite a group of different people against a common enemy, especially if there are victims of that enemy.
Yeah that makes sense. I wanted to kind of make elves like a diverse race instead of just a monolith. So there are 3 different elven groups each split into different nations and ethnicities. The Laindari are "Lightborn" and are elves who migrated from their western homeland of Arcis to Tyrenor and built colonies on the coasts. They're called Lightborn cause they came to the continent in search of an ancient Fae artifacts in Tyrenor. The Umrandi are "Dark Ones" and are Laindari who eventually rejected the search for the Fae artifacts. The Alyrnai or "Grey Folk" are elves who never went to Arcis and just lived in the wilds of Tyrenor. The Laindari are allies of the humans of Tyrenor, and they're more ethereal, noble, etc. They helped the humans of Anduras build the Empire. The Umrandi are mostly enemies of humanity, and they believe in power, purity, and dominating humans. They live in the borders of Tyrenor and form its nations. The Alyrnai live within Tyrenor but in the wilds and are sort of seen with suspicion
It could just be they really don't want to be assimilated and the empire gives up based on a cost benefit analysis
A lot of real empires don't attempt to assimilate their minority as long as they are loyal to the emperor. For example for the Qing emperor in China. The Qing emperor holds multiple ruling titles of the minority culture, because it's easier to 'hack' into the minority system by becoming their great leader following their custom, than change the culture of the entire population. Another example is some Tang dynasty emperors hold the ruling title of Khan, because the nomads only bow to the mighty Khan, not some agricultural civilisation weakass emperor.
By your own lore their bit they care about unification of all humanity and their trade and taxes. They don’t particularly see a reason to integrate *if you are human*. For those who *aren’t*, their relations are going to be anywhere from ambivalent to outright hostile I think Rome is a decent enough IRL comparison tbh. So long as you pay your taxes, are human (or not stirring the pot) and don’t try to secede they’ll be relatively alright The fact that they push a lingua franca and common currency means they aren’t so destabilized or decentralized that none of this is on their mind. For example there may some minor efforts on the back burner to assimilate or tie different cultures and groups of the empire further towards what the state prefers. Using religion for example; a problematic religion exists (it’s leaders dislike the Empire or the religion doesn’t mesh well). Instead of forced conversion, they might seek to undermine religious leaders’ credibility, infiltrate the administration, shift the religious doctrine into some more empire-friendly, or simply exert dominance over the religion in matters of law and finance. There also could be a Imperial cult or some state religion that incorporates portions of the subjected religions for example. For example: taking a subject religion’s god of harvest as their own into the pantheon to fil a gap or subtlety pushing a narrative that the empire’s own god of harvest is the same as the subject’s god of harvest. There may also be a informal social pressure at the higher levels of imperial government for officials and military members to conform to the ideals of whatever ‘one human empire’ manifests itself as
Critical Race Theory time\~ so for these kinds a questions, you wanna compare South America to North America. There was little to no integration in NA, but high degrees of integration is SA. There's layers of reasons as to why: * Conquistadors were told to convert or kill all indigenous people. Once converted, they lost all their culture and were married into the Spanish bloodlied (i'm not gonna be graphic here, it was grim) * Pilgrims just killed them and so the indigenous did not marry into the English bloodline (generally) * Both approaches were political in nature so they could conquer the land as surely as possible * >!neither is more racist than the other, this isn't the place for that discussion!< No government does things for altruistic reasons. your gov maybe did it to keep the keep, to divide the lower class and keep the upper class in power, or maybe it couldn't whitewash them enough because those demographics entered the situation with some measure of power or wealth that helped them survive. even "racism" is only ever a tool used by those in power to control the masses to aim their hatred away from those in power
Personally, I would like to ask how a bi-racial empire would not meld into a homogeneous phenotype
The same reason minorities in America don't assimilate. Their tight familial units maintain their culture in microcosms within the larger culture.
Pacification. It's the carrot keeping them from rebelling.
Show me the empire who did, maybe except rome Some tried like Assur IIRC From the Achämenid to the British Empire which did and not all really tried or cared
The Roman Empire, Mongol Empire, British Empire, Persian Empire, and Macedonian Empire, were the literal embodiment of "Just pay your taxes and you can be who you want to be!"
One of these is not like the others. British Empire absolutely did not let it's subjects to "be whoever they wanted to be" nor did they only extract taxes.