Star Wars The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire

by Chris Kempshall

To be a historian is, at times, to be cursed. Perpetually watching patterns or seeing similarities and worrying about whether whatever comes next will resemble the past behind us.

But the line between hope and blind hope is a dangerous one to walk.

In the post-war years people became so determined to look forward that they did not spend nearly enough time looking back at what they had left behind. They tied themselves so tightly to the belief that this should never happen again that they neglected to take the steps to ensure that it could not.

People so often misunderstand the purpose of historians. They think that we are just here to recount past events. To provide details without analysis. Facts without insight. Data without argument. This is wrong. The role of a historian—my role as a historian—is to try to tell you not just how but why these things happened. To try to make you understand the importance of these past events and what they mean for us today and tomorrow.

The recent deaths of Luke Skywalker and General Leia Organa were—while crucial in helping the Resistance survive and triumph—a tremendous loss to all of us who grew up idolizing them.

I can imagine that there will be those within the field of history and elsewhere who will find a declaration of my own potential blind spots to be unnecessary, but to them I say simply, this is an integral part of being a historian. As I recognize and analyze the relevant sources for this study I must too recognize and analyze myself.

As Emperor he appears to have, in some way, cheated death, suggesting Palpatine may be the most powerful Force-user to have ever existed.

Palpatine wanted to rule the galaxy, but he had no interest in running it.

there will always be those who are prepared to accelerate the death of democracy if they believe power is being given to someone worthy.

Devoted politicians and civil servants can do great work to benefit their own worlds and the wider galaxy. But the cynical and the corrupt can slip between the cracks of government and, if given the opportunity to embed themselves, become difficult to remove and dangerous to empower. How we avoid this cycle repeating, is perhaps the most difficult and important question of all.

Those who enjoyed the Imperial way of life. Who were happy to sacrifice some seemingly theoretical liberties if it meant they could live in comfort and security.

I can only wonder at how many children or grandchildren were discouraged from asking their elders about what they did in the Galactic Civil War because the truthful answer would outline how they had stayed at home, consented, and collaborated.

How do we reconcile the fact that Palpatine, the Empire, and the First Order were not rejected out of hand by all of us? Evidently there were some who never rejected it and who welcomed it back when given the chance.

How can we stop the Empire from continually haunting our galaxy when the ghosts of its acceptance exist in our own homes, our own families, and refuse to stay buried?

The Empire sat at the center of the galaxy like an enormous black hole—forever sucking wealth and resources inward. Coruscant glittered while those at the edges suffered. Worlds who had nothing left to give were abandoned to their fate and allowed to go dark.

Various accounts and records mention both Grand Moff Tarkin and Director Orson Krennic, though the pair of them actively cooperating on something seems unlikely given their mutual dislike.

This approach would eventually crystalize into what would collectively become known as the Tarkin Doctrine of “ruling through fear of force rather than force itself.”

There can often be a tension between the desire of, at least some of the public audience, to get up close to famous (or infamous) weapons of war like TIE fighters or stormtrooper armor, and the need for museums and historians to explain the context of these objects and the ways in which they are not neutral or set apart from the crimes and horrors they carried out.

there remained under the New Republic groups who idolized the Imperial aesthetic and tried to present a “clean” version of the Imperial military, which championed their training and military effectiveness while ignoring their war crimes and atrocities. This should not be allowed to stand unopposed.

There may never have been someone as useful and important to Palpatine as Tarkin across the entire duration of the Empire, and I include Darth Vader in that assessment.

Blasters would not be enough to win this war. The hearts and minds of ordinary people would have to be utilized against the supposed “Jedi menace.”

When placed alongside the more violent methods of forcing any aspect of Jedi culture underground, the reeducation of children, and the need to embrace Palpatine as a savior, it was not long before fond memories of the Jedi began to die out across the galaxy.

Killing their memory was one thing. Now the Empire needed to kill the survivors and erase their legacy.

By living lives that made allowance for the Empire’s controlled hypocrisy, people could convince themselves that they were safe from it.

The laws of the Empire were always in force and ready to be applied except for the times when they weren’t. Being able to tell the difference was the key to living or dying.

Even before the rise of the Galactic Empire, the galaxy was not some utopian vision of equality and liberation, despite the best efforts and intentions of those who strove for change within a system seemingly designed to create inertia.

the Empire did not invent the prejudices it manipulated. It did not pit humans and non-humans against each other for the very first time. Neither did it create the issues between various groups of humans on specific worlds across the galaxy. It finely honed some and expanded upon others, but it did so with material and emotions that already existed within the population.

The Empire did not need to convince many people to embrace its ideology, it just had to validate the prejudices they already held and grant them permission to act on them.

They deserve better than to be told they should be grateful to those who have never had to worry about stun cuffs and slave collars.

True freedom and liberation can only exist for all of us when none are left behind.

The Empire and its personnel killed by memo and dispatch, and they did it from office buildings surrounded by their colleagues.

The Empire killed far more easily than it ever gave life. Death was almost the mortar that held the Empire together. The outcome of this poses serious issues for historians.

This is the true face and reality of Imperial genocide. The further into the archives you dig the more pronounced the sheer absence is. Absence of life, of names, and of voices. Soldiers, civilians, adults, and children. All of them were victims of a government that believed their deaths were more useful than their lives. All of them gone.

We should have done more. I should have done more. Never again. These events should haunt and motivate us forever.

While Palpatine possessed a great deal of political skill, it seems likely that Tarkin was the man with both the vision and the drive to make Palpatine’s desires plausible.

What could the Empire do to strike back?

Darth Vader may have been many things, but a patient man was clearly not one of them.

Vader’s first action in his new role was to use the Force to choke Tagge to death.

While Lady Qi’ra of Crimson Dawn may have failed in her own quest to destroy the Sith and liberate the galaxy, she had—perhaps unwittingly—put the Empire and the Rebel Alliance on a collision course for a grand battle that would decide the outcome of the war. Maybe she had won after all.

If Endor was to prove the death of the Empire, it was one of Palpatine’s own making.

There are points during the work of a historian when you discover accounts of a single event that are so contradictory as to cause serious problems in attempting to understand what actually happened. How could eyewitnesses and participants of something produce such wildly differing accounts of an event they all supposedly experienced?

One officer is quoted as shouting, “Can we just once, for kriff’s sake, win the war?! How many times do we have to let Vader or His Majesty mess things up when victory is right here? It’s right here! Just win the war!” This outburst provoked accusations of high treason from an unnamed source,

She at least had understood that not only was the battle about to be lost but that the entire framework of the Empire was about to utterly change. Because within the battle station Emperor Palpatine, in his arrogance, had set in motion a series of events that would spell his own death. So fixated had he been on his attempts to lure Luke Skywalker to the dark side he had hamstrung his own military forces and turned his own apprentice against him.

Throughout the night on Endor a myriad of species and soldiers wildly celebrated the death of the Emperor and the final destruction of the Galactic Empire. As it would transpire, they were wrong on both counts.

What was to become of an Empire stripped of its Emperor? If personnel were expected to be loyal, loyal to what . . . or whom?

killing the Emperor was not enough to undo all of his plans and his hatred.

The Empire had been carefully constructed with him at its center. A great deal of time, effort, and violence had been spent ensuring that nobody but Palpatine could ever sit upon the throne. He had no intention of sharing that power in life, he had even less interest in bequeathing it to another in death. There was no heir apparent, partly because Palpatine did not intend to ever die. But, in the event that he did, he was not going to have his Empire presented to someone else. He intended to burn it, and the rest of the galaxy, to the ground in punishment.

he was a vindictive and murderous monster. That his fragile ego could not comprehend that he might fail, and the galaxy would reject him. As a result, all—but particularly those within the Empire—had to be punished for failing him in life.

Palpatine could issue however many murderous orders he wished, but no deaths would have occurred if others had not accepted them blindly and perpetrated the atrocities.

The worst crimes of the Empire were not simply rooted in the desires of the man who sat upon the Imperial throne, but rather within the actions of those willing to discard their own morality, simply because they were ordered to do so.