In short, given their head start in tech and Imperialist Ambitions the Romulan Star Empire should have emerged and established themselves as the dominant force in the Alpha Quadrant long before their now conquered potential rivals developed the Steam Engine, let alone Warp Travel.
Imperator-zor wrote:Would you agree and if not, why?
Zor
This all would be true, except for some small details: The Romulan Star Empire we encounter in the Trek series, is not the first Romulan Empire. There were others before or, at least, existing in parallel and they clearly collapsed for unknown reasons, by the time of TNG. One notable example, are the Debrune. It's possible that there was infighting between the various Raptor's offshots or an as of yet unknown third party kept them in check.
Conversely, we know that the Romulan Star Empire isn't exactly warlike. They are xenophobic, militaristic and isolationists. Waging offensive wars, isn't exactly their way of expanding their Empire. They're schemers and long-term players, which would explain the slow expansion of the Star Empire, it's simply a question of philosophy.
Then there's also the possibility that there were several setbacks due to civil wars within the Empire. Remember, those who marched beneath the raptor's wings were clearly agressive and warlike. Somewhere down the line, that paradigm shifted within romulan culture, indicating major upheavals within their society and those often times tend to be rather disruptive.
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
Do we know much about the other races nearby? If there were other Warp-capable races hailing from worlds nearby then they’d have to compete with those first; for example, when did Andorrans and Tellerites develop Warp and what were their military capabilities? There might even be Alpha and Beta Quadrant civilisations that we’re extinct by the 22nd century because they were priority targets that the Romulans has to deal with first.
Another consideration is how many uninhabited M-class worlds are there near to Romulus? Those would probably have been higher priority for colonisation as the Romulans wouldn’t have to deal with an indigenous population before establishing colonies, especially as they could still keep an eye on the inhabited worlds and pop over to nuke them if it looks like they’re close to becoming a threat, (and in the meantime the locals can mine and refine the ores and other natural resources to make less work for the Romulans when they do get around to invading them). This would also mean there would be less troops to engage in conquest as they’d need a minimum number of colonists/troops to hold onto a world. Further, do we know that they went straight to colonising Romulus? It’s possible they stopped off on those uninhabited worlds along the way before moving on/being chased off, meaning they wouldn’t have turned thoughts to conquest until much later.
There’s also the Vulcans to consider. While they try to be pacifistic, they’re not adverse to combat if needed (infact abandoning militaristic ships, tech, etc would be illogical considering the threat the Romulans pose, let alone the other races out there), and it’s plausible that Earth fell within Vulcan territory, or at the very least is close enough to it that they monitor/patrol it periodically, so moving on Earth would risk moving on Vulcan and sparking a war with them. And speaking of war with the Vulcan’s, there was an off hand mention in one episode (think it was a TNG Q episode) of a two century long war between Vulcan and Romulus, so (assuming that wasn’t meant to refer to the Vulcan civil war that caused them to split into Vulcans and Romulans) there was a lengthy period when they were likely more focused on them rather than conquering primitive worlds.
Yet another consideration; the Earth-Romulan War ended in either a stalemate or at the very least without one side vanquishing the other, implying that techwise they were relatively even, so Romulan tech either stagnated for a period/some periods or was slower than that of Earth which would in turn limit how fast they could spread. In fact, do we actually know that they departed Vulcan in Warp-capable ships? Is it possible they left in sleeper or generational ships, meaning that they didn’t develop Warp until much later?
And one last thought; who’s to say the Romulans necessarily have to come in disruptors blazing? Considering the manipulative/sneaky nature of the Romulans, maybe they had a more clandestine approach as their opening moves? We see throughout Trek Starfleet officers going in disguise among the populations of more primitive worlds, so why can’t Romulan agents do likewise but without the non-interfearance mandate? They could easily plant agents and manipulate things so the locals destroy themselves; eg maybe the Eugenics Wars and WWIII were caused by them manipulating things.
The Pon Far is not really a thing though. You see, the Vulcans are a species of Nerds and as we all know, nerds never have sex if they are left to their devices. Pon Far is actually the clever solution to this problem, because after Surak happened, the Vulcan population was on a terminal decline, as all the nerds had no sex and since all the nerds were all the people... go figure. Now, they are forced to mate at least once every couple of years, due to a "biological enforced" mating-season.
The Romulans obviously never had that problem. They just fucked whenever they pleased and they continue fucking around with everyone they please, till today.
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
I have to imagine it relates to the Star Trek equivalent of "The Rule of Two".
Their society was just so back biting that they couldn't build up a good head of steam.
My Blog: http://rocketboy1313.blogspot.com/
My Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rocketboy1313
My Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/rocketboy1313
My Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/13rocketboy13
Well, let's assume there even IS much population growth. Humans ourselves are about to hit our ceiling in the next centuries (barring significant technological or cultural shifts, or disasters); the U.N. doesn't even expect the 12 billionth Human will ever be born, because our comfortable technological level really mellows out our breeding speed. It's true that an expansionist culture wants to breed more, because Sparta always needs occupational forces, but how does that weigh against their natural desires? And then there's a lack of knowledge about Romulan mating habits, and these are all big question marks that, alone, could shoot the theory full of holes.
(Though I'd also like to point out in LGM that Quark says he could give the Ferengi warp tech that allows them to expand BEFORE "even the Vulcans" so the canonicity of the statement is in question automatically. He could be referring to the relative power of his warp drive, but it doesn't come off that way, and at the least we should question his grades in galactic history)
Further, to the points above with which I concur, we see some examples of how imperialism works in Trek. The vast distances and sheer amount of organization and resources needed for planetary invasions seems to be something very new, and even then, only things that the Big 3, the Dominion, Borg, and MAYBE the Cardassians have pulled off successfully, and even then only in recent years.
It's a very Persian-style imperialism, though, generally speaking. Kirk battles a number of Klingons who are a prelude to invasion, but their general mission to that end, is to pacify the local government to get THEIR support BEFORE the troops come down. Control is established locally, not marched in like Patton rolling across Africa. Fifty years later the Cardassians did it the same way; "Bajor didn't resist; it surrendered". Had the Bajorans really resisted, they might not have actually been subjugated, because there just aren't these sweeping planetary invasions until the late 24th century. Imperialism in the Trek verse pretty much requires local complacency. It's only then that troops are slowly funneled planetside and entrench, becoming impossible to uproot.
Therefore; what real value is there to invading really primitive worlds? Without a massive strategic resource, we don't see it happening all that much. It seems likely that in assessing where you commit those limited resources, there's more, "this civilization needs to be fattened up before it is useful to us, we call it the Two-Ply Rule; if they wipe with rags and not disposable sanitaries, we don't need them". And there are a few outliers in this regard but generally the captains log on the NCC-1701 is all 'bout them dilithium crystal mines.
In such an environment, I think the Romulans were probably just "building tall", subjugating the Remans, using them to process the resources in local systems, rather than worry about how many notches they could carve into their codpiece. That's not a very Romulan priority.
The one thing that does feel suspect, though, is the technological gap, or rather the lack of one. Even if the Romulans were forced back to 18th century living standards when they landed, it's hard to wave away the stagnation. But that's just something we kind of have to accept.
We don't know exactly when the Vulcans has warp drive. The Romulan migration may have used generation ships, relativalistic speeds, or suspended animation to settle Romulus and whatever other colony worlds they had. It's worth noting that the Bird of Prey in "Balance of Terror" was stated to just have impulse power, and that Federation starships' warp drives seem similar to Cochrane's dual-nacelle design than the Vulcan ring design. Maybe Cochrane made a breakthrough which had just eluded the Vulcans for centuries. We had bows, cams, and pulleys for a long time before a Missouri engineer put two and two together for the compound bow, and, for all their intelligence, Vulcans don't seem any better at lateral thinking than humans.
And we've never heard of a Vulcan empire even when the Vulcans were warlike. They may have kept pulling each other down for centuries. And when they were warlike, they may have been too afraid of what they might do with antimatter to keep much of it around.
-We don't know what other powers might have slowed down Romulan expansion.
-Internal problems could really slow down expansion
-Humanity was only able to expand because of the Vulcans, Starfleet, and the Federation, so in a sense their expansion is artificial. The Romulans weren't really interested in that kind of cooperation, and therefore they had to rely on their own population to expand.
-Vulcans, domination of worlds really isn't their thing, and its a pretty good bet that they do reproduce at a slower rate.
-The more difficult question might be how the Klingons were able to keep up with Starfleet. The overarching portrayal of Klingons doesn't make them look very tech savvy, they're xenophobic, and they're prone to back-biting and civil wars.
