Colonial Wars

The Colonial Wars were a long-running series of conflicts in the Terran sphere of influence which lasted from 2203 to 2669. For this reason, it is sometimes referred to as the Four Hundred Years' War, though it is not one singular conflict. The UN, Terran Federation, Terran Dominion, and Terran Empire, successively, claimed and asserted sovereign authority over the Earth, the Solar System, and all colonies and inhabited worlds under Earth's political control. This sovereignty was contested by various groups with a wide array of ideological underpinnings and methods, some of which were violent insurrections. These rebellions were a major source of internal conflict within the Terran state, and occasionally instigated external wars.
== Early colonial period ==
=== Colonisation and first conflicts ===
Following a series of conflicts in the 21st century, a series of interplanetary revolutions in the 22nd century, and the Interplanetary War, the UN committed itself to extrasolar colonization. Humanity first expanded to extrasolar regions in the 23rd century, first with slow travel methods to the nearest planet in Proxima Centauri. In the 2240s, jump-gate technologies were developed with the intent to 'tunnel' between space in the Sol System and Proxima Centauri, and were tested with an intrasystem network. The United Nations were reorganized as the Terran Federation in 2187. The early 2220s saw the development of the first jump gates between Earth and its extrasolar colonies, including new start-up colonies in Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. The next few decades saw an explosion in settlement and space development in increasingly far-flung worlds and habitable moons.
The first conflicts began in 2203, with the Epsilon Uprising, a violent protest of repressive taxation and brutal militarized policing by the Terran colonial administration; and with the Tau Ceti Conflicts, an internecine struggle between colonies in the Tau Ceti system. Though these conflicts were put down within a couple years, it stirred unrest in other colonies as social media and news coverage displayed the brutality of the Terran Marines and of mercenary groups contracted to fight the protracted guerilla wars. A wave of low-level insurrections and terrorist attacks continued from 2205 to 2248. The bombing of the UN Building on Earth in 2247 contributed to the consolidation of Earth's nations into a single member state of the Federation, and an expansion in Federal action in the colonies. The second phase of 2248 to 2270 saw a lull in active resistance, but a spike in terrorist activity. The terrorist bombing of the Federal colonial office headquarters in Nairobi led to passage of restrictive taxation designed to 'punish' colonials for the actions of violent terrorists and insurrectionists, on the principle that their lack of action to police themselves carried an implicit approval of the terror attacks. The lack of representation of colonial worlds in the Terran Parliament was decried as unfair by colonial civil action groups, especially in the face of the new tax regime.
=== Orionese War of Independence ===
The oppressive policies designed to control the financial activity and freedom of the colonial population led to widespread civil unrest and clandestine insurrectionist planning. For the first time, businessmen and local political leaders in the Orion Arm colonies banded together with ideological revolutionaries and militants to form committees of correspondence and public safety. These militia groups opposed the forces of the Terran military, policing their own communities and organizing their own governance. The gradual rise in unrest and political conflict culminated in the assembly of representatives from the colonies to coordinate a plan of action. The first unified motion was a petition of grievances to the Terran Parliament, requesting the establishment of parliamentary seats for the colonists in proportion to their population, in April 2274. The petition was rebuffed by the Terran government and the Colonial Assembly submitted a second petition in May, requesting a small delegation of seats for the colonists. This too was rejected, and the final proposal was the establishment of a single parliamentary representative, with the ultimatum that the colonies would commit to a unilateral declaration of independence if it was not accepted. Rejection once again came, and the Colonial Assembly debated fiercely the issue of independence. In January 2375, they declared their independence as the Federation of Orion Arm Colonies. The state changed its name several times during the ensuing rebellion, finally settling on the Republic of Orion on 1 August 2276.
The Orionese rebels first moved to secure their arms, and seized several military depots and armories during the first six months of the insurrection. The Terran garrisons were tasked to put down rebellion on a planet-by-planet basis, a severe underestimation of the colonists' unity and their resolve. By 2277, the Orion colonies held the upper hand in supply and coordination. A small expeditionary fleet was dispatched by the Terran Federation, which turned the tables from early 2278 to mid-2279, harassing Orion spacecraft squadrons and besieging several key worlds. The pressure of various pro-colonial groups in Parliament, the support of non-governmental organizations for the colonial rebels, and the defeat of the Terran fleet in 2379 in a decisive battle led to a political shift in favor of peace. The war more or less drew to a close in 2280 and peace was established in January 2281 with the Eridanus Accords. The Republic of Orion was recognized as independent, and all worlds pledging allegiance to it at the time of the accords were allowed separation. Further separatism was disavowed, and diplomatic relations were established between Terra and Orion. A later treaty in 2289 established strong trade relations and a military alliance.
=== Interwar era ===
The postwar period saw victory of the pro-peace party in the Terran parliament. Dominated by both aristocrats and industrialists, and by populist social progressives, the Peace Coalition pressed forwards the reform of the Terran state with the addition of an upper house to the parliament composed of legislators appointed by the member states, with a more collegiate and aristocratic bearing. This new house, called the Senate, held dominant power over foreign affairs while the General Assembly held dominant power over financial matters, and both held power to originate legislation. This split legislature greatly empowered those who had pushed for the new order, primarily the Terran 'Old Nobility'. The new government appealed to colonials by appointing notable colonists to the Senate and establishing colonial and spacer delegations in the Assembly.
These balancing acts initially worked but over time, as local power-brokers came to dominate the colonies along with industrialists, colonial citizens questioned the connection between their leaders and the Terran aristocracy. Many protested the appearance of their politicians being "in bed with" the Terran power elite, and yet others saw the political arrangement as trading "one tyrant a thousand light years away for a thousand tyrants one light year away". The increased political power and latitude of these local magnates was nearly unchecked; the Terran military was not large enough to wage a war of attrition in the colonies to maintain control, and so delegated this authority to local self-declared nobles, landowners, and the colonial governments, which were increasingly seen as being out-of-touch with the people. This was made even more complicated by the rapid introduction of humanity into a wider galactic community after First Contact in 2301, and the reciprocal influence between humanity and a myriad of spacefaring species.
Significant colonial violence occurred in the Perseus Arm colonies, dominated by piracy and rebel terror attacks. The Terran military committed a great deal of forces against them, but were unable to suppress the rebels. Forming the provisional Perseid League in the late 2370s, these forces later allied themselves with the Soviet Republic, achieving foreign recognition, aid, and arms. The communist faction in the Perseid rebel army seized power from other factions and transformed the Perseid League into a Soviet-backed communist state; the Terran Federation refused to recognize the independence of the Perseid People's Republic.
However, some colonies were able to achieve their goals peaceably. The local aristocracy of the Cygnus colonies successfully achieved a separation from the Terran Federation in 2384, forming the Federation of Cygnus. This new nation was founded on similar principles as the Terran Federation, and became close allies and trade partners with Terra. However, this peaceful separation spurred colonial independence movements, some of which turned again to violence. In the 2400s, local magnates and colonial proprietors were ceded further control over their worlds, creating a distinct class of autonomous landowners and lords in the colonies that owed little loyalty to the Federation but bitterly opposed the working-class independence movements, most of which were militantly communist. The Terran Federation also opposed the Second Orion Revolution, which saw a communist coup d'etat in the Republic of Orion in 2411, leading to the occupation of the Halian Republic in 2418 and war with the Soviets in 2422. The latter would last ten years. In the middle of the war, the Terran Federation was reorganized as the Terran Empire under William Compton, who made the stated goal of creating peace in the colonies. The war ended in a peace treaty that recognized Perseid independence and the new Orion government.
== Imperial Era ==
The Terran Empire, inaugurated by First Lord William's coronation in January 2431 as Terran Emperor, proved to be little different from the late Federation. While Emperor William did end the war with the Soviet bloc in 2432, the Terran Imperial military was still too weak to directly confront the feudal lords. The Empire accelerated the grant of noble titles and proprietary rights to colonial magnates in the 2440s, hoping to create a "neo-feudal" social structure that would provide a buffer between the colonists and the Imperial bureaucracy and military, hoping to avoid direct confrontation. However, returning veterans from both Terran-Soviet War, the Spinward Crisis of the 2460s, and the Second Perseid War of the 2480s came to be retained by these nobles as private militia. Still more were recruited by far-left and far-right paramilitary groups.
The Colonial Wars in this phase became a multi-polar asymmetric conflict wherein feudal lords waged war upon other feudal lords; colonial rebel groups fought on multiple sides; and the Crown attempted to "bring to heel" the feudal magnates that refused to accept Imperial authority and insisted on their allodial rights. Many emperors died in combat during these Feudal Wars. In 2525, Empress Mary II came to the throne and committed the full might of the Imperial military to subjugating the feudal lords and bringing the Empire under centralized management, a process that lasted ten years and saw millions of deaths. In the end, the Empire ceased to be a federal state, and was reorganized into Provinces, containing Crown Counties and Crown Colonies with varying levels of representative government, with a common representative Imperial Parliament based on party-list proportional representation.
=== High Empire ===
While Empress Mary's efforts quashed the feudal revolts, they did not stem the tide of colonial agitation. While her reforms were intended to streamline and centralize colonial administration, they were criticized as technocratic and militaristic. Violent groups arose to combat the perceived undemocratic nature of this, especially communist guerillas. The Terran Communist Party became a potent coalition of colonial communist parties on the left, and was effectively the political wing of the Terran People's Liberation Army. With the feudal crisis put down, and the expansion of the Terran Imperial military, government forces were deployed directly to put down revolt and hunt down terror cells. The colonial conflict became greatly intensified as the Terran central government became more capable of power-projection.
A coalition of colonial advocacy groups formed in opposition to the political violence, advocating for a "dominion" status for colonies to grant them self-rule and responsible government even if they were not directly provinces of the Empire. The Colonial Home Rule Party emerged as the parliamentary wing of this advocacy coalition, and was marginally successful at pursuing peaceful political advocacy for a time, but it failed to achieve its goals; many of its political platforms were adopted by the larger political parties, such as instituting responsible elected government in the Crown Colonies. It dwindled in parliamentary influence, and turned to the Colonial Liberation Organization for aid in progressing the colonial struggle.
At the same time, far-right paramilitary groups and free corps emerged to counter these leftist colonial militias, engaging in vicious street fights. Some volunteered for foreign service as private military forces in support of Terran nationalist and conservative policies, such as in the Third Orionese Revolution in 2512. In 2551, parliamentary reforms consolidated the size of the House of Commons down to 800 members, and the the following election brought the National Humanist Imperial Labor Party into parliament. The NHILP amalgamated several right wing militias under their umbrella, unifying them as the National Volunteer Force in the 2570s.
== Late Empire ==
The CLO was a coalition of various paramilitary and political factions engaged in the colonial autonomy struggle, but had been banned in 2481 as a subversive organization. After that, it came to be dominated by revolutionary socialist factions, advocating for social revolution as well as the separation of the colonies from the Empire. It engaged in violent action to achieve these goals, not just terrorism, but raising militias and capturing cities, space habitats, and industrial centers with the intent of creating a quasi-state of "liberated colonies". They acted in concert with the CHRP as their parliamentary wing, though it had limited success. In the 2600s, the CLO stepped up its efforts to create this Colonial Alliance, greatly intensifying its military operations and staging rebellions and attacks on multiple worlds on a constant basis.
During this period, the Empire sought a policy of rapid industrialization of existing colonies and crash colonial expansion in order to strengthen the Empire against opposing states, especially the Soviet Republic, by exploiting more resources and expanding the Imperial population. The ISTO alliance coordinated campaigns against internal rebellion and violence while also making a strong show of force against the Soviets, the Freyan Federation, the Republic of Cassiopeia, and the United Suns.