Why aren't megacorps as big a part of Steampunk as they are of Cyberpunk?

[Bohandas]

I reads like you're trying to be contrary and snide, but you undercut yourself in getting it right. For each of those cases, you find an individual who is actually the genius/mastermind, and driving force behind the power. That power is not assumed to be able to survive the individual. So, yes corporate power in the steampunk genre is artisanal

Again though, the East India Company was around for like 300 years

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Again though, the East India Company was around for like 300 years

You mean the British East India Company? There was also a Dutch. The main difference is these companies remained allegiant to a nation-state, even when acting without their consent or control. In cyberpunk the corporations are entirely independent of nationhood.

 

[Tonguez]

Again though, the East India Company was around for like 300 years

One could certainly cast the EIC as a Megacorp, especially as its Royal Charter gave it powers to build forts, collect taxes and make its own treaties in pursuit of profit. It took 3 - 6 months for communication to move between London and India so the Nabobs on the ground were essentially autonomous, but the Court of Directors in London were still subject to Parliament oversight, especially after rumours of its overreach and atrocities in India got back to England.

By the mid 1700s there was increasing concern about the "dirty Asiatic wealth" of the EIC being disruptive to British society. Then after the Bengal Famine 1770 the Company was in debt and had to ask the Parliament for a loan - the perfect opportunity for Parliament to demand more oversight, which they got leading to the eventual end of the EIC as an independent entity.

Maybe in an alt.history where the Bengal Famine didnt happened and the EIC Directors not needed Parliament bail out the company might have continued to the point that it openly defied Parliament and become a real 'autonomous megacorp", but it never happened irl

 

[dragoner]

If I were to do a steampunk megacorp I would base it on Standard Oil.

Standard Oil - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[MarkB]

Eberron's dragonmarked houses aren't a bad example if you want to get megacorp-ish in your Steampunk setting. They do still have at least some government / nobility ties in most cases and mostly aren't as overtly amoral as your standard corp, but they're nevertheless up for some shady stuff under the right circumstances.

 

[jian]

One could certainly cast the EIC as a Megacorp, especially as its Royal Charter gave it powers to build forts, collect taxes and make its own treaties in pursuit of profit. It took 3 - 6 months for communication to move between London and India so the Nabobs on the ground were essentially autonomous, but the Court of Directors in London were still subject to Parliament oversight, especially after rumours of its overreach and atrocities in India got back to England.

By the mid 1700s there was increasing concern about the "dirty Asiatic wealth" of the EIC being disruptive to British society. Then after the Bengal Famine 1770 the Company was in debt and had to ask the Parliament for a loan - the perfect opportunity for Parliament to demand more oversight, which they got leading to the eventual end of the EIC as an independent entity.

Maybe in an alt.history where the Bengal Famine didnt happened and the EIC Directors not needed Parliament bail out the company might have continued to the point that it openly defied Parliament and become a real 'autonomous megacorp", but it never happened irl

Quite. And the British EIC was finally finished (though not officially dissolved until 1874) when its mercenaries decided to join the Indian Rebellion in 1857, which had to be put down by government troops, leading the crown to take over as rulers of India (and giving Victoria a new title in the process, making her the only Empress of India).

The British government then decided to inaugurate their reign by killing 150k civilians during the Delhi massacre as retribution for the rebellion (which they defined as the Indian Mutiny because of the mercenaries, belittling the revolution). This effectively cowed the population until the Amritsar massacre (now usually known as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre) in 1919, which in turn convinced the Indians (including Gandhi and Nehru, who had until then been pro-Imperial in the hopes of securing Home Rule) that as crazy as we Brits were, we could not be tolerated.

So I’d say that as incredibly powerful as the British EIC was, it’s not that similar to cyberpunk megacorps - it was either a very rich and influential company in the U.K. but with little effect on normal citizens there, or the actual government (including collecting taxes) of its Indian territories, not just a very powerful employer and monopoly company.

Standard Oil is probably a better model (huge employer, very lucrative, massive corrupting influence on government, the original monopoly targeted by the first antitrust laws) for a steampunk megacorp, though it’s not diversified enough.

 

[Bohandas]

You mean the British East India Company? There was also a Dutch. The main difference is these companies remained allegiant to a nation-state, even when acting without their consent or control. In cyberpunk the corporations are entirely independent of nationhood.

Yes the British one, the one that conquered India with a bigger army than its home nation

 

[dragoner]

Standard Oil is probably a better model (huge employer, very lucrative, massive corrupting influence on government, the original monopoly targeted by the first antitrust laws) for a steampunk megacorp, though it’s not diversified enough.

Easy enough to make Rockefeller a mustache twirling villain as well.

 

[jian]

I think this takes us again to - to what degree is imperialism and colonialism part of cyberpunk? It’s obviously a huge part of steampunk.

I’d say that baseline cyberpunk (starting from Gibson) is mostly concerned with the plight of people in rich Western countries - even there, everyone is dehumanised and exploited in some way. In other words, things that have historically mostly happened to non-white people in poor countries are now happening to white people in rich countries too. It’s a very 1980s view of how that works.

But cyberpunk has expanded since then, especially with non-white writers, and the world has changed too. There are more and more mentions of colonial wars abroad between megacorps, and then stories from those countries themselves - there’s a fair bit of SE Asian cyberpunk from Malaysia and the Philippines now. I’m not sure about Indian cyberpunk fiction. I haven’t seen much Chinese cyberpunk fiction, maybe living 996 in Chongqing is basically too cyberpunk already; you don’t have to read about it.

 

[MarkB]

I think this takes us again to - to what degree is imperialism and colonialism part of cyberpunk? It’s obviously a huge part of steampunk.

I’d say that baseline cyberpunk (starting from Gibson) is mostly concerned with the plight of people in rich Western countries - even there, everyone is dehumanised and exploited in some way. In other words, things that have historically mostly happened to non-white people in poor countries are now happening to white people in rich countries too. It’s a very 1980s view of how that works.

But cyberpunk has expanded since then, especially with non-white writers, and the world has changed too. There are more and more mentions of colonial wars abroad between megacorps, and then stories from those countries themselves - there’s a fair bit of SE Asian cyberpunk from Malaysia and the Philippines now. I’m not sure about Indian cyberpunk fiction. I haven’t seen much Chinese cyberpunk fiction, maybe living 996 in Chongqing is basically too cyberpunk already; you don’t have to read about it.

A big aspect is that megacorps are effectively colonising their own host nations too. Entire cities are corporate-owned, along with large tracts of farmland and mining towns, to the extent of something approaching sovereignty.

In some works this is taken to an extreme, such as in Snow Crash, where the entire USA is balkanised into micro-nations run by corporate concerns and you're technically crossing borders every few dozen miles along the freeway.