Eve online: Minmatar Republic - History
Hi Canuck capsuleers, welcome to the Chronicles of new Eden I'm Dame du Nord the Co-CEO of Sorry in advance a alliance in whormhole and low sec. I'm also the co-host of the Canuck capsuleers chronicles: It's a weekly show about Eve's news every tuesday at twenny fifteen eastern time zone.
Today it's the first episode about the minmatar. We talked a bit about them in the first episode describing them as a tribal republic of warrior poets and artisans, fiercely proud and individualistic. We also talked about them in the history of the Amarr empire where the Amarr enslaved them. They have manage to free themself after a fight between the Amarr and the Jove. If you wanna hear what happen from the view of the Amar, I suggest you listen the second episode named the Amarr empire - History. I'm gonna put the link in the description below.
Are you ready to dive into this episode with me? Oh and keep in mind that I'm doing that podcast to get better in english so I'm sorry in advance.
Minmatar Republic
Of the four major races of New Eden, none has endured more tragedy and suffering than the Minmatar. Once part of a thriving and technologically capable tribal civilization, billions of Matari were enslaved by the Amarr Empire for more than seven hundred years, until a mass rebellion freed most, but not all, of those held in servitude. Initially modeling its recovery after Gallente Federation notions of democracy, the Minmatar Republic was born through the cooperation of four major tribes.
The Minmatar are the most numerous of all the races in New Eden, but their vast numbers are dispersed widely and divided into many factions. While the Minmatar Republic is the official state, only a quarter of all Minmatar currently alive are part of it. A very large proportion, almost a third, remains enslaved within the huge Amarr Empire, while a fifth resides within the Gallente Federation, creating a powerful political bloc that contributes in no small part to the constant state of tension between Gallente and Amarr.
The remainder, who are not part of any formal organization, live as freemen throughout the world. Many are itinerant laborers, roaming from one system to another in search of work. A fair number make their living on the darker side of the law, acting as pirates, smugglers, and peddlers in all kinds of illegal goods. It is worth noting that many of the larger criminal groups in New Eden are run by people of Minmatar heritage.
The free Minmatar peoples are resilient, ingenious, and hard working. Perhaps most of all they are proud, and many of them believe that democracy, though it served them well at first, will never restore what was taken from them by the Amarr Empire. As all seven tribes of Matar have united again and found a new sense of their identity in the Empyrean Age, the development of the Minmatar Republic has swung away from Gallente ideas of unadulterated democracy. The Minmatar have created a form of government truly reflective of their historical tribal culture. Almost invariably they remain deeply attached to their enslaved kindred and will go to extraordinary lengths to recover them. The Minmatar will forever resent the Amarr and yearn for the days before the empire’s accursed ships ever reached their home world.
History
Origins
In AD 8017, the Terran explorers of the CMS-17 system were delighted to discover two temperate planets in the circumstellar habitable zone, and even more so when they found that one of these worlds, the fourth planet from the sun, was blessed with particularly hospitable conditions. News of these discoveries made the CMS-17 system a prime target for colonization, and it was soon renamed “Pator,” with the fourth planet becoming known as “Matar.”
Matar was quickly colonized by numerous expeditions attracted by the prospect of settling a world that would require no terraforming and very likely support self-sustaining colonies. Indeed, when the EVE Gate closed, most of the settlements on Matar survived and even prospered once they recovered from the initial crisis. Over the centuries these colonies lost their advanced technologies, as a lack of supplies and the loss of knowledge led to an inevitable breakdown.
The Minmatar Empire
Over the next ten thousand years, several distinct civilizations developed on Matar and gradually became aware of one another, as technological advances allowed for regular trade. Certain legends and fragmentary histories indicate that internecine warfare between the tribes, and even between clans of the same tribe, was commonplace in the early period of the world. In the end, perhaps promoted by a combination of trade and the spread of a mystic belief system, the tribes understood that cooperation was a far better way than war.
After a general peace between the tribes was established in AD 20374, a global culture developed, and the Minmatar eventually unified in a loose empire. Minmatar technology developed at a respectable pace in this period, and a little over a millennium later they made their way into space. As well as colonizing much of the Pator system, the Minmatar Empire was able to settle colonies on a number of planets and moons in several local systems, usually depending on ancient star gates but initially using ships accelerated to near light speed.
The Day of Darkness
Despite having made great strides in space technology, the Minmatar Empire did not manage to expand very far or develop a large space fleet before its fateful first encounter with another empire: the Amarr Empire. A theocratic state driven by its religion to “Reclaim” the stars and all living around them, the Amarr Empire had managed to reverse engineer star gate technology and occupy a great swath of star systems. In AD 22355, after detecting the Minmatar Empire’s presence and evaluating its capabilities, the Amarr sent a large fleet to the Pator system intent on a grim purpose. The day the Amarr fleet entered the Pator system, a great storm blew up over the largest continent of the planet Matar.
The storm was incredibly destructive and turned the skies dark, an ill omen that would be remembered as the herald of the Amarr fleet. The core of the fleet was made up of six giant slaver vessels, each escorted by many heavily armed warships. Each of the slaver vessels made for a different planet and, once in orbit, proceeded to land troops and round up large numbers of people. The escorting warships took pains to destroy every Minmatar spaceship, satellite, and station they encountered. Surface installations of military or space-industrial value were systematically bombarded. The Minmatar armed forces tried bravely to resist but were crushed by the superior arms and technology of the Amarr slavers.
On that day the Amarr took hundreds of millions of slaves, depopulating most of the colony worlds they invaded and wreaking havoc on Matar. The day itself, by association with the black storm it began with and to underline the horror of the deeds the Amarr carried out, became known as the Day of Darkness.
Conquest and Occupation
For a little over a century after their first incursion, the Amarr continued to make slave raids on the Minmatar Empire. In this period, for all practical purposes, the Minmatar Empire ceased to exist, as the Minmatar colonies were cut off from Matar and eventually left empty and ruined. Matar itself entered a period of chaos, as the global infrastructure that had been created was wrecked by successive slave raids. Finally, in AD 22480, Emperor Damius III ordered the conquest and occupation of Matar. The entire Minmatar race was to be subjugated and enslaved. As with each time they had been raided, the Minmatar attempted to resist, but no power left to them could stop the Amarr from conquering their world. With the exception of a few mountain strongholds and secret resistance cells, the Amarr quite easily achieved global domination of Matar. Every remaining Minmatar colony world was likewise invaded and placed under the rule of Amarr holders.
For the next seven hundred years or so, the Minmatar lived under Amarr occupation and enslavement. Many hundreds of millions of Minmatar were shipped across the Amarr Empire as slaves. The Amarr always crushed what rebellions occurred with utter ruthlessness and brutality. The uprising of the Starkmanir tribe some 450 years after their conquest was deemed so serious—and indeed a royal heir of House Ardishapur was killed in this rebellion—that the tribe was ordered annihilated by orbital bombardment. Later events showed that the genocide, while it killed the vast majority of the once-largest tribe of the Minmatar, was not complete.
However, so far as anyone at the time was concerned, the Starkmanir had been destroyed, and inevitably the story and its symbols, notably that of the khumaak, spread among the Minmatar. From that time on, if they had not known it before, the Minmatar knew that one day they must all fight to be free of their overlords.
The Great Rebellion
A little over 250 years after the annihilation of the Starkmanir, the four great star empires of the Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, and Jove had come into contact with one another. The Jove had limited their contact with the others and, while it was clear they were technologically advanced, their true capabilities and motives were a mystery to the other nations. The Gallente Federation and the Caldari State, for their part, were still at war, but their conflict had bogged down into a stalemate. The Gallente, libertarians by instinct and prone to intervention, had become aware of the plight of the Minmatar and were appalled by it. Over the preceding centuries, the Minmatar resistance had organized itself and even achieved the capability to mount raids on Amarrian installations. The Gallente Federation secretly aided this resistance in every way it could.
Against this background, the Amarr Empire was feeling increasingly uneasy at the presence of several rival powers along its borders. As so often before, the Amarr decided that they must act according to their doctrine of “Reclaiming” and chose the Jove Empire for a demonstration of Amarrian might. The Amarr had concluded that the Jovians were hiding weakness behind a cloak of mystery and a few minor technological advances. Consequently, in AD 23216, the Amarr sent a fleet of two hundred warships to a system they called Vak’Atioth, a fringe holding of the Jove Empire, where the Amarr intended to crush the Jovian presence and begin a new campaign of conquest. The Amarr had not been shy about the matter of their intentions and all their propaganda for weeks past had made it clear they intended to act against the Jove. For their part, the Jovians had made sure to infiltrate the highest levels of the Amarr government and military. When the Amarr fleet entered Vak’Atioth, the Jovians were waiting.
The ensuing Battle of Vak’Atioth was notable in several ways: it was the first defeat, and a crushing one at that, of an Amarr war fleet by another race; it was the first and last time that the Jovians engaged in battle with another race, at least so far as the other races knew; and it was the first and last time that a Jovian mother ship was seen in battle. The Amarr reaction to their defeat was to prepare a second, larger fleet to attack the Jovians. At this time, as news of the first Amarr fleet’s defeat spread throughout the empire, the Minmatar resistance sent the signal to their people to rise up against the Amarr. Faced by a large, well-equipped rebellion on multiple worlds, the Amarr had no choice but to sue for peace with the Jovians and see to the flames spreading across their empire.
The Great Rebellion made fantastic gains in its first days, the Amarr occupation of Matar was lifted, and those Amarr unable to flee the planet found as little mercy at the hands of the Matari as they had shown their erstwhile slaves. The Amarr occupation fleet was driven out of Pator in some disarray, the shock of the defeat at Vak’Atioth seemingly deeply demoralizing the Amarr military. This pattern was repeated in most of the systems previously controlled by the old Minmatar Empire and many others besides in the coming months and years. The Amarr only stabilized the situation in the end by establishing and massively bolstering the Ammatar Mandate—a puppet state nominally ruled by the Nefantar, a Minmatar tribe that had always collaborated with the Amarr and fled with them from the wrath of the free tribes during the rebellion. By this time the free Matari had consolidated their hold over a considerable number of systems, giving them a firm base on which to establish a new nation: the Minmatar Republic.
The Early Republic
With the aid of the Gallente Federation, the free Minmatar rapidly established their new nation-state as a parliamentary republic. The Minmatar Republic’s first concern was the security of its new borders and its second was to develop a self-sustaining industrial base. The new republic willingly participated in the CONCORD Assembly when it was founded in AD 23233, even if it meant entering into diplomacy with the hated Amarr. They also took part in the Yoiul Conference and adopted the new standard time and calendar of New Eden.
The Minmatar tribes accepted that much of the management of the new republic would have to be overseen by the Republic Parliament and its agencies. Gallente aid was essential in these early days, and federation notions of democracy were accepted without too much scrutiny. To many Minmatar, they were a breath of fresh air after the horrors of the Amarr occupation. Even so, some Minmatar were not so sure about the republic, and the Thukker tribe decided they wanted no part of it, choosing to take their spacefaring caravans to the Great Wildlands region. Others could not adjust to civil society and democratic politics, variously carrying on the fight against the Amarr as terrorists, joining criminal cartels, or taking themselves into space as wanderers.
Many Minmatar, on the other hand, were very taken with Gallente ideals and chose to migrate to the federation rather than help build a new Minmatar society. Over time more and more Minmatar took this path, with the effect that Gallente influence over the republic as a whole waned. Resentment of those who had left the Minmatar Republic became common, and those most enamored of Gallente ways tended to be among those emigrating to the federation. By YC 110, the Minmatar Republic had started to undergo a “tribal renaissance,” as the tribal heritage and culture of the Minmatar increasingly influenced the society and politics of the republic.
Wouah that was so interesting. The Joves were such bad asses... oh wait I cannot finish my first episode of the minmatar serie talking about the Jove. Let me redo it. Thanks guys for listening I hope you liked it and please follow me and hit the bell to be advised of my new episode. The minmatar looks like to have so little wonderful days before the nightmare of being slaves of the Amarr. I wonder how they manage to find their own identity after that. I wonder if you notice that the only one who didn't took place in this conflict was the Caldari. That's definitely their attitude they don't wanna get involved into conflict that doesn't concern them directly and they also were at war with the gallente. It was also question of a Jovian mother ship that no one seen after the conflict. In Eve right now we are in YC 125 and we just discovered a structure full of jovian techologies called the fulcrum. Do you think we gonna find THE blueprint of this mother ship in the fulcrim? This is me again talking about the Jove, Sorry! So next week we’re gonna talk about the tribes and what makes them so specific and unique. See you next week Canucks and friends.
