Deconstructing the Domination of Draka

The Domination of Draka series is something that I have…….complicated feelings about. There are aspects of it that I really like. There are aspects of it that I can’t stand. There are aspects of it that are just weird. And they’re all mixed and muddled together, in a way that makes it very difficult to separate the “good” from the “bad”. I have a weakness for formulaic MilSciFi, which often has right-wing politics, and I’ve gotten pretty good at just ignoring that parts that I dislike. The problem is that I can’t just toss the Draka on to the pile of “enjoyable but crappy” fiction, because the good parts are really good. But the bad parts? Very bad! But not always bad in the way you might suspect, if you’re aware of the premise. Like I said, complicated. I have read The Stone Dogs (the third book in the trilogy, and my favorite) at least a dozen times, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it to anyone without so many caveats and concessions and qualifications that it’d be useless. Today I want to try and break it down, both what I like and hate about these books, and why I think they’re worth talking about. This is not a traditional book review, exactly, and I am assuming that you have at least some familiarity with the series. I am also going to spoil EVERYTHING, so if that bothers you, go read the books first. I’ll wait.

CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND VIOLENCE

So, I’ve heard the premise of the Draka Series described as “all of history’s villains take over South Africa and then conquer the world.” That’s…..not really correct, even if kind of makes more sense. The actual Point of Divergence in this timeline is kind of confusing, and involves differences in the development of breech-loading rifles. You can read about it at great length in the Draka Appendices. But the end result is that after the Revolutionary War, a lot of American Loyalists and Hessian Mercenaries get settled in South Africa, which they rename the ‘Crown Colony of Drakia’, after Sir Francis Drake. This eventually gets shortened to ‘Draka’ in the common parlance. They’re joined over time by planters fleeing slave revolt in Haiti, exiled French loyalists, and Confederate diehards. In this timeline, the Industrial Revolution gets rolling much faster and earlier (steam-automobiles are common by the 1820s, airship travel by the 1870s), and the Draka carry out a militarized conquest and exploitation of the native Africans, becoming a brutally expansionist slave state. Over time, the Draka become convinced that they are the Master Race, destined to domesticate all the other people of Earth. During WWI, they conquer the Middle East and Central Asia, during WWII (known here as ‘The Eurasian War’) they take advantage of the chaos to conquer all of Russia, Europe, and China. After they, a long Protracted Struggle for dominance emerges with the American-led ‘Alliance for Democracy’, finally resulting in an atomic Final War in 1999 and the Draka conquest of the Solar System.

So that’s pretty grim! But, as S.M. Stirling likes to angrily point out whenever this series is criticized, it’s supposed to be a dystopia. There’s a whole sort of Discourse going on right now in some circles about the morality of writing about bad people and stuff, and I think a lot of is puritanical nonsense. I do not think that depiction automatically equals endorsement. On the other hand! Saying that depiction doesn’t equal endorsement doesn’t automatically exempt your work from criticism or critique, and I don’t blame people for steering clear of Stirling’s books because they’re full of graphic sexual assault and rape and a lot of gratuitous lesbian sex scenes. But that’s not my main problem with these books, even if it is gratuitous and gross. And I don’t really have a problem with the fact that the Draka win. My problem is not with what the Draka do, it’s with what they are.

My problem is that they’re a Master Race.

Now, to be clear, in the books, they are consistently described by non-Draka characters as thinking of themselves as a Master Race. You’re clearly supposed to see this as a belief, not objective reality. But the problem is, it clearly is? As depicted, the Draka are quite literally Übermenschen. Every Draka citizen, without exception, is in perfect physical condition, to a level that non-Draka can only dream of. They can preform extraordinary feats of strength and endurance. They are brilliant strategists and tacticians, soldiers without compare, and also great engineers and scientists. By the time the series starts (in 1941), the Serfs in Africa they conquered in the early 19th century have been so pacified that they literally can’t even think of rebellion.

It occurred to him suddenly that these people had only to rush in a body to destroy their owners. Only three of us, he mused. Sidearms, but no automatic weapons. We couldn’t kill more than half a dozen. It would not happen, could not, because they could not think it….

The Domination, S.M. Stirling, pg. 35

Slavery is, of course, a very common social institution historically. But the Draka are a slave society to a point beyond anything that ever existed. According to the figures given in the Draka Appendices (linked above), as of 1942 only about 6.8% of the Draka population were Citizens. All the rest are slaves. Historically, the only society that even comes close to this is Sparta. Population figures for Ancient Sparta are fiercely debated, but in general I’ve seen estimates of 5-10% Spartiates (citizens), 15-20% Perioikoi (free non-citizens) and 65-85% helots (slaves). The French colony of Saint-Domingue also had a similar demographic profile; 87% slave, 5% freed blacks, and 8% French, but the death rate was so high that the slave population had to constantly refreshed with new shipments from Africa, so I’m not sure you can call it a “society” exactly. Also, it ended very, very badly.

The point is, the Draka are a tiny minority, ruling over a vast sea of subjects, and they not only do it, but they do it with ease, and with enough surplus time and energy to conquer the world. In essence, the Domination is portrayed as a combination of the mass collectivization-forced-industrialization programs of Stalinist Russia, the plantation economy of the American South and the Caribbean, and the hyper-militarized society of Sparta, with all their benefits, and none of their drawbacks. Despite a population that is 95% enslaved, the Draka are able to carry out massive industrialization programs, without the sort of inefficiency and corruption endemic to these sorts of projects. Despite a ruling elite dedicated to stability and stasis above all else, the Draka are able to revolutionize technological progress on several occasions and build a hyper-efficient modern state. Despite a population-control policy built entirely on coercian and terror, they are able to pacify vast swaths of the world with only minimal difficulty. Did I mention that every single Draka is basically a Greek God/ess of glistening, chiseled muscles with the fighting ability of a tiger?

_{“The Gun That Broke The Tribes”}

The society the Draka come closest to in terms of organization and function is Sparta. They’re both slave societies in which the elite were forced to militarize absolutely out of fear of their subjects, and then turned that military prowess against their neighbors. But it’s worth taking a look at the reality of Sparta as compared to the myth. As always, I firmly recommend reading Bret Devereaux’s series of posts on the subject, but to summarize in brief: The Spartan military was tactically very effective, and one of the better hoplite forces in Classical Greece, but they lacked an even marginally-functional logistics system, had no siege capability, no navy, and terrible strategic direction. Sparta only won the Greco-Persian Wars by allying with Athens, and only won the Peloponnesian War by voluntarily becoming a Persian client state. Spartan hegemony in Greece would follow the latter victory, but only for thirty or so years, before it was broken by the Thebans at the Battle of Leuctra, where Sparta proved unable to respond to Theban tactical innovation or flexibility.

The much vaunted Spartan social structure was basically in a crisis during the city-state’s entire existence, we know of essentially no time in which it was working correctly. Inequality, consolidation of power by fewer and fewer citizens, alienation of more and more Spartiates from the ruling elite, attempts to reform stymied by entrenched interests, etc. Compare to the Draka, where their social and cultural system lasts for centuries with virtually no dissension or degradation. In fact, I don’t think we ever meet a Draka who’s stupid or cowardly or corrupt. We’re expected to believe that they’ve genuinely created a meritocratic aristocracy.

Most tellingly, the entire system of Spartan society seems to have been forged in an effort to keep control of the vast population of slaves gained by Sparta when it conquered the city of Messenia circa 720 BCE. Despite this, helot revolts were common (and sometimes surprisingly successful) and after the Battle of Leuctra three hundred and fifty years later, the Thebans rebuilt the city, and liberated most of the helots, who happily reclaimed their old territory, identity, and political independence. But we are expected to believe that the Draka have achieved total obedience in Africa in a century and a half.

Basically every aspect of Draka society and culture is based on something that actually existed, but the way it’s portrayed here is with all of their benefits and none of the inevitable problems that ensue. For example, the way the Draka maintain order with such a small Citizen population is by drawing on their serfs, recruiting armies of slave-soldiers to be Jannissaries and Order Police. This is not without precedent! But it tends to either backfire, or at least require a lot of maintenance, as can be seen in what happened to the original Janissary Corps, or with the Mamluk slave-soldiers of the Medieval Levant, who ended up overthrowing several of their owners. Even Rome, which was probably the most successful ancient Empire at utilizing subject-soldiers, ran into problems.

Part of what annoys me so much about all this is that a lot of it is actually addressed in the text. In the first book, Marching Through Georgia, it is strongly implied by the protagonist that the incipient Draka conquest of Europe is going to prove to be a long-term disaster for the Domination.

“Most of the places we’ve taken over have been like this”–he nodded at the village–“peasants, primitives. If they’re really fierce, like the Afghans, we have to kill a lot of them before the others submit. Usually, it’s only necessary to wipe out a thin crust of chiefs or intelligentsia; the rest obey because they’re used to obeying, because they’re afraid, and because the changes are mostly for the better…….Sofie, what are we going to do with the Europeans? We’ve never conquered a country where everybody can read, is used to thinking. Security–” he shook his head. “Security operates preventively. They’re going to go berserk; it’s going to be monumentally ugly. And I’m not even sure it will work.”

The Domination, S.M. Stirling, pg. 97

Europe is fully pacified by the mid-1950s.

If the series was just White Supremacist propaganda, you could write it off, but I don’t think it is, I don’t think you’re supposed to sympathize with the Draka. The problem is that Stirling has written a book where the stated morals (importance of freedom of choice, need to stand up to evil, and so on, things of that nature) don’t really match up with the objective reality he’s created, in which the Draka have unambiguously created a Master Race that is willing and capable to ruling the rest of mankind. I don’t think fiction needs to impart moral lessons, I don’t think it needs to be realistic, but I do think the discongruity between what Stirling says he wanted to create and what he actually created undermine the whole text. Some of this is driven by his own unconscious biases, some of it I suspect by getting so deep inside the Draka society he’s creating that he lost track of the forest for the trees. He gets so proud of his cleverness in “solving” all these potential problems and so eager to shock the reader that he forgets what the original point was supposed to be. The end result, however, is a series that is going to make people uncomfortable, and not just because they’re squeamish or politically correct or don’t understand what “dystopia” means.

Weirdly enough, a lot of this is actually dealt with by S.M. Stirling in his novel The Chosen, which is basically a re-telling of the Draka series in the context of a totally different series (it’s complicated). The Not!Draka in that book are still Ultra-Amazing Badass Warriors, but their society is actually portrayed as fatally flawed in the ways that you’d expect. Tactical brilliance is marred by arrogance and strategic impatience, and most importantly, constant resistance and rebellion among their slaves proves to be an Achilles heel. So maybe Stirling was actually listening to everyone who yelled at him, I dunno.

So that’s what’s wrong with the Domination of Draka, or at least some of it. There’s a lot more you could go into, and plenty of others have already torn this series to shreds. But like I said, I actually like a lot about these books. So what’s worth putting up with all the nonsense enumerated above?

I think what makes the series so appealing initially is how strange it is. There are a lot of tropes you run into over and over again in Alternate History, hyper-industrialized-African-colonial-racist-Empire-conquering-the-world isn’t one. It’s a genuinely unique premise, and it’s one that Stirling commits to completely. Again, you should really look at the Draka Appendices if this sounds at all interesting, because it’s wild, he charts out entire alternate development histories for how small-arms and steam-power evolve in this timeline, not to mention ridiculously detailed explanations of how Draka society works, down the the specifics of plantation life for serfs. I don’t think it all actually makes that much sense, but it feels realistic, and that sensation of depth is really enjoyable. The scale of the plot is another thing that stands out, right from the start this is a series about Great Powers, about the military/political/ideological/economic struggle for the fate of the world and humanity. It sets up these huge stakes, and sucks you in. The heroes are, to paraphrase, “brave men and women, doing their best” but it always feels like they’re just small cogs in a much larger story. And Stirling paints a picture of a world that is just so extreme that you can’t look away. I mean, putting aside the Draka for a minute, the United States ends up annexing all of Canada, Mexico, Central America, Cuba, and Hispaniola by the mid-19th century, and the Eurasian War ends up something like twenty-one atomic bombs being used by the Domination and the United States against the Axis Powers. You almost can’t look away.

_{“Marching Through Georgia”}

For me in particular, I’ll admit that I love the aesthetics of a lot of the Domination series, it’s this very weird Steampunk/near-future/hard SciFi look and feel, with airships and jets and nuclear pulse-drive spaceships. In the Appendices Stirling described it as “In the end, the world of the Domination achieved what might be called “yesterday’s tomorrow”, and that’s something I really enjoy. I also just really like Cold Wars as trope? That’s something you will notice if you look at my collection of Alternate History Maps; there’s just something about the idea of power blocs lining up and jostling for position, the slow, glacial conflict of influence and strategy and preparation, that I think makes for great political drama, and the Domination gives us a Cold War cranked up to the nth degree, a world that spends fifty years on the knife’s edge of annihilation or slavery. But that’s all just stuff that I like about Domination of Draka, what (if anything) makes it interesting or worthwhile?

In his excellent podcast ‘Hardcore History‘, Dan Carlin likes to talk about his interest in “the extremes of the human experience”, especially in his episodes on ugly, disturbing topics like slavery or public executions. I think that’s what makes the Draka books so interesting, their willingness to dive deep into pure evil, and to really think about what a society organized along those lines would like, to examine it from the inside and out. The Draka are so fundamentally alien to anything that’s ever actually existed, that they serve as a way of isolating and viewing some of those “extremes of the human condition” look like. In the review I linked to above, the writer calls the books “trashy”, “pulpy”, and “sleezey”, all of which are absolutely correct descriptions. But I almost wonder if it doesn’t take an exploitative genre novel to look at some of this stuff, because an author with better taste would steer clear of it. I don’t know.

The closest thing the series has to a main character is probably Eric von Shrakenberg. He’s a young paratrooper officer in the first book, by the end of the third he’s the head of state for the Domination. And he’s a character that I find fascinating because he’s one of the very few people in the Domination to completely understand what a monstrous evil it is. He has no illusions about the State he serves, no belief in the propaganda about “will to power” and “the destiny of the Race”, just a clear-headed and bitter contempt for what he’s inherited.

“And it appeals to our national love unchanging stasis, and the basic Draka emotion.” Yolande looked a question. “Fear…..Why else would we have backed ourselves into this social cul de sac?” He rolled the liqueur glass between his hands. “Ever since the Landtaking, we’ve been in the position of a man runnin’ downhill on a slope too steep to stop; got to keep going, or we fall on our faces an’ break our necks.”

The Domination, S.M. Stirling, pg. 644

And yet……he can’t find a way to escape it. Shrakenberg wants to live in a better world than the one he does, but he is unable to escape the preconceptions of his birth, unable to envision an actual break with the system he despises. Despite his deep antipathy for it all, he climbs the ranks of the military and government, hoping that he’ll be able to improve things somewhat. And at last, in a deep and bitter irony, he ends up being the Draka Archon to preside over and win the Final War, despite being one of the few who genuinely regrets it. Eric has a moral compass that we, the readers, as well as the Americans who encounter him in the books, can recognize, and even relate to, but he’s been shaped by a society and culture that has left him unable to conceptualize a way out of the path set before him. “A true difference in national temperament, I think. If’n a Draka thinks of choice at all, it’s as constrained within narrow bounds; human beings make history, but they don’t make it just as they choose.”

This turns into something of a theme, I think. Several times, we see the “best” of what the Draka society produces, and how even that is constrained and shaped by the preconceptions they’ve been brought up with, on a mental level so deep that it’s totally unconscious. If Eric von Shrakenberg represents that on the political level, his niece Yolande Ingolfsson shows it on a more personal level. Yolande has kind of a weird quirk as a Draka, in that she doesn’t enjoy raping serfs. This is something that she frames, both to herself, and to others, as an essentially aesthetic preference, that sex just isn’t that fun if the other person isn’t enjoying it. But it’s something that she clearly cares deeply about, to the point of coming into conflict with other Draka about. It’s something that would be a moral issue for her—except that she doesn’t have the terminology or mindset to encompass that, so she re-frames it in a way that works within her mental system. Yolande is also unusual in that she’s pretty clearly a lesbian in a social system that, again, doesn’t have a word of mental space for that concept. Side note on Draka sexual behavior; children are sent to sex-segregated boarding schools their entire childhoods, the boys get slave concubines when they’re thirteen or so, the girls have elaborate romances with each other, until their up in their mid-twenties and start having children—often with the mother’s ex-girlfriend as an unofficial aunt or godmother. Except that Yolande is deeply, passionately in love with her girlfriend, to a degree that is not really contiguous with social expectations. Again, she doesn’t have the vocabulary or mindset to know why she’s unhappy with this, she just is.

_{“A bat-winged dragon, talons clutching the slave fetter of mastery and the sword of death”}

I think this is a genuinely interesting topic, the way in which people are constrained and shaped by their social structures on a level that is far beneath their conscious understanding. There’s a scene where Yolande is talking to Marya Lefarge, one of her serfs. Marya was a deep-cover OSS operative, captured and enslaved in the Draka conquest of India in 1976, during the same battle that killed Yolande’s girlfriend. Yolande had tortured her severely in revenge for that, and now, twenty years later, is regretful.

“I’ve been a good owner to my serfs, with one exception. You, of course. It was wrong to torture you, hurt you beyond what was necessary to compel obedience. Actin’ like a weasel, to assuage my own hurt.”

“Mistis? May I speak freely?” Yolande nodded, and the serf continued. “You don’t feel in the least, ah, disturbed about enslaving me, but using this”—she raised the controller cuff—“makes you feel, mmm, guilty?”

“Slightly ashamed, not guilty, such a bourgeois emotion, guilt.” She frowned. “Not about—yes, enslavin’ is the correct term, I suppose—no. You not of the Race; I am. My destiny to rule, yours to obey and serve. Obedience and submission: protection and guidance. Perfectly proper.”

The Domination, S.M. Stirling, pgs. 724-725

It’s this look at a genuinely alien moral structure that takes it seriously and tries to make us actually understand it. And look, the whole thing is just a mishmash of barely-sublimated fetishes and sexploitation but…..I really do find a lot of this interesting? This is what I meant about the good parts and the bad being inextricably linked, though, because we’re getting deep into the weeds of the constant sexual assault and the sleezy softcore porn and the fetishization of Draka aristocracy but……again, I really do think there’s interesting meditations on society and human nature embedded in it all. There’s one line in particular that’s genuinely really stuck with me. Marya ends up serving as the surrogate and nursemaid for one of Yolande’s children, and is reflecting on this now that she’s grown.

Oh Gwen, she thought. It was easier when you were a child. A saddening thing, not to be able to wish luck and happiness to one you loved.

The Domination, S.M. Stirling, pg. 732

Marya loves Gwendolyn, because she literally gave birth to her and raised her. How could she not? But she’s also working in secret to destroy her and everything she holds dear, because how could she not? And Gwendolyn loves her nursemaid, deeply and sincerely, but also thinks nothing of treating her as a slave. These are the inherent contradictions in a system of treating humans as property. These are the extremes of the human condition.

I said above that a theme is a way that even “good” Draka are unable to escape the preconceptions and assumptions of their society. At one point Marya describes Yolande as “She’s not evil. Neither was an apple full of cyanide. It was simply to dangerous to be allowed to exist.” But that’s why I think the most interesting character in the series might well be an unnamed Draka defector to the United States who appears in one scene in one book.

“It was a mattah of circumstances, luck an’ opportunity,” he continued. “I’s an only chile, and mah mothah died early. Pa away most all the time, no relatives near. Raised by serfs mo’ than most, didn’t fit in well at school. Eventually realized that all the people I really cared about had numbahs on they necks, and that I was spendin’ my life grindin’ them down.” He grinned, a gaunt expression. “Had an opportunity to get out, took it. Doesn’t mean I’ve got any particular affection fo’ Yankees or Yankeeland. The air stinks, everythin’s ugly, there’s no decent huntin’ an’ the people are soft an’ contemptible.”

The Domination, S.M. Stirling, pg. 584

I’d happily read a whole story or book about how he reached his decision and got out of the Domination.

I suppose I should talk about the ending of the series, which is what I think really grinds people’s gears. After all, exploitative, fetishistic pulp novels are a dime-a-dozen, but how many of them end with the Evil Villains conquering the world? It’s what makes the Domination stand out as a series. But honestly, that’s not one of the things I dislike. I actually mostly like the ending. There’s a few reasons for that. I complained at length earlier about the way in which the Draka are presented as incomparably badass super-soldiers who can defeat anyone, but the way the Final War plays out is a lot more, well, “realistic”, for lack of a better term. Both the Alliance for Democracy and the Domination have developed potentially war-winning superweapons; a computer virus for the Alliance, and a biological plague, for the Domination. Both are racing to deploy theirs first, the Domination gets the jump but barely, there’s a mutual bloodbath that ends with a third of the human race being killed in the atomic exchange, and a shaken, battered but triumphant Domination inheriting the Earth.

Despite the fact that The Stone Dogs ends with nuclear apocalypse and the enslavement of most of humanity, I actually find it less depressing than the first two books, because it’s the first one in which the Draka get scared. They win the Final War, but by the skin of their teeth, and a far worst cost than they’d feared or hoped. And despite their victory, and the fact that they bring all of Earth “under the yoke”, the ending is actually ambiguous and hopeful. First of all, a star-ship called the New America is able to escape the Solar System, fleeing to Alpha Centauri with 100,000 refugees, where they keep the lights of Civilization and Freedom burning. Secondly, there is reason to think, or at least hope, that victory will usher in an eventual era of Draka reform. Remember, the Archon of the Domination is Eric von Shrakenberg, who desperately wants to rebuild his nation into something better. His own theory is that with victory over the entire world finally achieved, the Draka will be able to step back from their ever-present terror of the outside world and begin to (slowly, gradually) evolve away from a society built on the whip and the gun.

“You see, an outright slave society like ours is a high-tension solution to a social problem. Extreme social forms are inherently unstable; ours is as unviable as actual democracy, because it’s as unnatural. It’s too far up the entropy gradient. We have to push, continually, to keep it there. Remove the motive of fear and necessity an’ the inherent human tendency to take the path of least resistance will modify it. Eventually—perhaps in a thousand years—we’d have . . . oh, a caste society, certainly, an authoritarian one, perhaps. But somethin’ mo’ livable fo’ everybody than this wolf-sheep relationship we have now.”

The Domination, S.M. Stirling, pg. 645

It’s not exactly a happy ending, but it leaves open the possibility that the future will not be, with apologies to Orwell “a boot stomping on a human face, forever.” It’s nicely ambiguous, even if the series itself ends in 2000, long before we get to see how this all shakes out. That’s why I dislike Drakon, the fourth book in the series. Drakon starts four centuries in the future, and centers around a Draka accidentally being flung through a wormhole into our timeline, where she tries to take over the planet. The book itself is mostly a pretty fun thriller, and I enjoyed it, but its vision of the Draka-ruled Earth of the 2400s annoyed me, and I thought undermined what I liked about the ending of The Stone Dogs. The “Final Society” of the Draka is essentially a post-scarcity eugenic utopia, in which humanity has speciated into Homo Drakensis and Homo Servus, and the Draka control their Serfs with pheromones and pure force of will, with no need for physical force. My problem with this isn’t realism exactly—though I think the series is way too credulous about the possibility of genetic engineering—but that this has now become so alien that it’s no longer interesting. There’s no insights to be had about the human experience or the nature of society from something that divorced from reality. It’s just sort of boring.

So, in the end, what are we to do with the Draka? I don’t really know! Usually I end my book reviews with a recommendation on whether or not I think you’d like it, and why, but I’m not sure how to do that here. I am glad I read these books, but I’m not sure I actually enjoyed doing it? I think there’s some genuinely brilliant aspects of the series, but I’m not sure it’s worth putting up with everything else to excavate them. I disagree pretty strenuously with the idea that you see floating around in the zeitgeist these days that all fiction needs to have clear and obvious morals, I think there’s real value to be had in engaging with works of art that challenge you, that are willing to try and make you face horrible people and ideas but…….I think the Domination fails as often as it succeeds in that, to be charitable. I don’t feel like defending the series from the many, many (many) valid critiques but……I do admit I find myself annoyed at the sort of cavalier dismissal of it from people who like to think that their taste in fiction makes them better. I don’t think it’s an intentional work of White Supremacist propaganda, but I do think that Stirling’s biases and prejudices shape his ideas about how this society might function, and how well it might work.

In the end, I’m left without much of a conclusion, and the sneaking suspicion that I’ve spent a lot more time thinking about these books than they really deserve. The Domination of Draka; it’s got some good parts and some bad parts, read it if it sounds intriguing, don’t bother if it doesn’t. If nothing else, I hope this serves as a reminder that there’s almost always something of interest to find in a work of art, no matter how stupid or squalid it appears.

I think that’s always worth remembering.

_{The Protracted Struggle: 1975}