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Anyone who's followed 40K right at the early 90s (and even first editions of the 80s for UK plaers) knows that the setting of the franchise has initially was a satire of British society like Ork Soccer Hooligans and the Imperium being Space Nazis and so on.. And that its a common view now that 40K and Games Workshop in general have stopped on political commentary after the new Millennia started......

I beg to disagree...... And I use the T'au who has been the flatout newest faction for decades before the new Voltan Codex....... Because the T'au has plenty of parallels with the Pax Britannica.

Before World War 2, the common teaching of UK history in public school was the belief that the British Empire not only brought civilization and educated backwards people across the world but since the defeat of Napoleon, it was Great Britain that fought to maintain peace across the World. That the Brits have stopped quarrels between nonwhite ethnic groups across their Empire and built infrastructure and the British arm acted as a police force across colonies of Britain.

Even disregarding the White Man's burden narrative so rife in the British education and pretty much all European colonial empires esp the French), even within Europe history in the UK before WWII taught that Britain always got involved in European wars and politics because they sought to prevent further wars by intervening and that the British Arm defended freedom across Europe as the stopped the French from rebuilding new empires post-Napoleon, checkered German ambitions from expanding, defended the Balkans from Russian imperialism, and so on.. The even directly sent troops to Turkey to help the Ottoman fight the Russian empire on the pretense that they were defending the helpless Turks right to self-sovereignty from the tyrant Russian Czar. It was the propaganda that Belgium was being ravaged by the Kaiser's army that motivated plenty of British citizens esp the educated Middle Class to volunteer at the trenches in the first World War.....

On top of that the popular image of the Empire before Margaret Tatcher was that it was a civilization that had so plenty people of different races, ethnicity, religion, skin color, languages, and cultures and that the Empire was at the core a diverse one that tolerates different opinions and world view to a point. Defender of secular freedom....... Does this sound familiar? All these facts make it tooo obvious that I wouldn't be surprised that despite Games Workshop moving away from political satire, that the T'au is very likely a symbolism of British culture. Specifically how patriotic citizens like to see the Empire and UK's overall history and the British pride of bringing "Pax Britannica" across the world. That the Empire brought a century of stability, prosperity, and peace around the globe.

What say you? Does anyone else get the vibe that T'au basically represents the idealism of the Empire and that the T'au race is trying to bring a "Pax T'au" in the same way as Pax Britannica?

ZydecoOccultist wrote:

What say you? Does anyone else get the vibe that T'au basically represents the idealism of the Empire and that the T'au race is trying to bring a "Pax T'au" in the same way as Pax Britannica?

I think you're being too quick to ascribe a single source of inspiration to the Tau. The concept of a nation acting like they're doing others a favor my conquering them and then proceeding to be (or claim to be) culturally diverse isn't unique to the UK. It's just a relatively common way to frame things when you want to rationalize the violence involved in expanding your borders and absorbing (or erasing) the culture of the conquered.

I don't think the behavior of the Tau empire is meant to be a direct reference to any one particular real-world nation. Rather, it's probably inspired by a hodgepodge of behaviors throughout world history with its own fishy flavor added in for good measure. If anything, absorbing other species into the empire seems like it probably stemmed from the idea of seemingly-"nice" cooperative aliens who decided to do the Star Trek interspecies cooperation thing in contrast to the imperium's grim darkness.

Similarly, you could say that the Fall of the eldar is reminiscent of the fall of the Roman Empire, but it's probably more accurate to say that it borrows some elements from lots of declining civilizations in general both old and new.

Basically, I don't think someone said, "Let's base the Tau on the British Empire." I think they said, "Let's make seemingly nice aliens who cooperate with other species as a contrast to our xenophobic primary faction," and then they went back and made them more sinister from there.

I would agree with Wyldhunt that it would be easier to say that Tau represent the horrors of colonialism in general. Which is still a novel and interesting idea. To see humans be on the other side of an alien's attempt at colonization. What few humans we have seen have been heavily converted to the Tau way of life. Even undergoing surgeries to speak the Tau'va language. Maybe the Tau have a museum full of other species' riches.

I also get strong feelings of American style colonization. The water caste use the 'blue jeans and coke cola' approach by starting with trade agreements to flood foreign markets. And if the Imperial Guard draw most of their inspiration from WW2, then the Tau feels much more like late, cold war NATO army or UN piece keepers. Both organizations represent the most modern approaches to colonialism.

The Tau are a combination of Chinese Confucianism, the Hindu caste system, and American carrot-and-stick expansionism.

Let's not forget the Tau's main Space Marine opponents are the White Scar and we all know the latter are Space Mongols.

Honestly? No, not everything has to have an underlying satirical play to it.

No, because, unlike the British Empire, the T'au actually improve the lives of those species they bring into the Greater Good.
The Caste system is still flawed but those species that join the Empire aren't treated as second-class citizens or a necessary irritation. Local infrastructure is improved and technology is shared enhancing the lives of T'au and non-T'au equally.

 Gert wrote:
No, because, unlike the British Empire, the T'au actually improve the lives of those species they bring into the Greater Good.
The Caste system is still flawed but those species that join the Empire aren't treated as second-class citizens or a necessary irritation. Local infrastructure is improved and technology is shared enhancing the lives of T'au and non-T'au equally.

Yes. The Tau kill entire species they've allied with through famine or other non-military means of killing people, like the British and their propensity to cause famines in India that killed millions. I can't find the name of the planet, but it was filled with Tau allies but somehow they all died and the Tau then became the dominant species.

 NorthernXY wrote:
Yes. The Tau kill entire species they've allied with through famine or other non-military means of killing people, like the British and their propensity to cause famines in India that killed millions. I can't find the name of the planet, but it was filled with Tau allies but somehow they all died and the Tau then became the dominant species.

No, they don't. The only time the T'au have explicitly killed their non-T'au allies was during the Fourth Sphere Expansion when the T'au elements of the force panicked at the idea of the Greater Good being perverted into some sort of god due to their allied races having stronger connections to the Warp than the T'au do. They saw this as a form of blasphemy to their ideology and began by only putting their auxiliaries in dire situations that would cause mass casualties before some Cadres outright started killing their auxiliaries out of fear.
When the Fourth Sphere was reunited with the rest of the Empire, investigations were started and hundreds of T'au soldiers were returned to the Empire for reconditioning and realignment with the T'au'va.

The race the T'au "killed" were the Poctroon, who died from a disease after they join the Empire and the T'au began living amongst them. It's not explicitly stated that this was engineered by the T'au but rather as a side effect of the two races cohabiting a planet. Maybe the disease was brought by the T'au like European settlers to the Americas or maybe it was a naturally evolving disease that just didn't effect the T'au due to genetics. The Poctroon didn't have to be forced to join the Empire though and employing a biological weapon to simply take a planet isn't something the T'au do.

 Gert wrote:
No, because, unlike the British Empire, the T'au actually improve the lives of those species they bring into the Greater Good.
The Caste system is still flawed but those species that join the Empire aren't treated as second-class citizens or a necessary irritation. Local infrastructure is improved and technology is shared enhancing the lives of T'au and non-T'au equally.

The T’au’s claim to be raising everyone equally is about as believable as that of the British and equally borne out by the evidence…

Have you got any evidence to support that claim?
When humans join the T'au they have a period of readjustment and then are allowed to fully participate in T'au society in whatever capacity they want to. Many ex-soldiers fight as Auxiliaries while other humans will serve the Water Caste as ambassadors. Human colonies receive equipment and industrial capacity to produce whatever their planets may need from farming tools to T'au copies of Lasguns and since the end of the Damocles Gulf Crusade, the Gue'vesa have become a respected and integral part of the T'au military on the borders of Imperial space.
Kroot are officially part of the Empire yet the T'au still allow them to follow their nomadic and mercenary lifestyles.

 Gert wrote:
Have you got any evidence to support that claim?
When humans join the T'au they have a period of readjustment and then are allowed to fully participate in T'au society in whatever capacity they want to. Many ex-soldiers fight as Auxiliaries while other humans will serve the Water Caste as ambassadors. Human colonies receive equipment and industrial capacity to produce whatever their planets may need from farming tools to T'au copies of Lasguns and since the end of the Damocles Gulf Crusade, the Gue'vesa have become a respected and integral part of the T'au military on the borders of Imperial space.

I look forward to hearing about all the alien Ethereals...

The fact that they are referred to as auxiliaries already suggests a degree of second-class citizenship. In addition, high-ranking commanders leading expeditions etc are all suspiciously Tau. Something of a glass ceiling, if you will. This is probably entirely natural to Tau, as they live in a caste society anyway.

I highly doubt that the Tau actually treat the aliens as truly equal.

 Haighus wrote:
I look forward to hearing about all the alien Ethereals...

The fact that they are referred to as auxiliaries already suggests a degree of second-class citizenship. In addition, high-ranking commanders leading expeditions etc are all suspiciously Tau. Something of a glass ceiling, if you will. This is probably entirely natural to Tau, as they live in a caste society anyway.

I highly doubt that the Tau actually treat the aliens as truly equal.

You must have missed the bit where I said "The Caste system is still flawed". Humans or Kroot can't become Ethereals but neither can non-Ethereal Caste T'au but that doesn't make them second-class citizens when everyone has access to the same standards of living. The Ethereals don't live in gilded palaces filled with treasures beyond imagining while Humans, Vespid, or Nicassar live in hovels eating dirt. Within the Castes, the circumstances of one's birth don't dictate what that individual can do and promotions are based on merit rather than lineage or wealth. A human soldier born in the lowest levels of a Hive can rise to leadership within the Gue'vesa and attain the respect of their T'au comrades due to their own skills and abilities while an upper hive officer can find themselves removed from command since their lineage and wealth mean nothing to the Empire.

I'd argue we don't see Auxiliary commanders because GW moved away from having the diversity of the T'au Empire as the defining aspect of the T'au, leaving us with just Kroot and Vespid units (and technically Humans if you convert Guardsmen), rather than the T'au explicitly disallowing it. You could use a Shaper as your army leader in-game, it's just not a great choice when the alternatives are Battlesuits.

The T'au aren't perfect and still have a lot of flaws but the fact is that life in the Empire is better than out of it and the comparison to the British Empire is immensely flawed.

 Gert wrote:
Have you got any evidence to support that claim?
When humans join the T'au they have a period of readjustment and then are allowed to fully participate in T'au society in whatever capacity they want to. Many ex-soldiers fight as Auxiliaries while other humans will serve the Water Caste as ambassadors. Human colonies receive equipment and industrial capacity to produce whatever their planets may need from farming tools to T'au copies of Lasguns and since the end of the Damocles Gulf Crusade, the Gue'vesa have become a respected and integral part of the T'au military on the borders of Imperial space.
Kroot are officially part of the Empire yet the T'au still allow them to follow their nomadic and mercenary lifestyles.

Same was nominally true of the British Empire, and soldiers from all over fought in both world wars and people from all over went to top universities. E.g Ghandi was educated in England and was an imperial administrator in Africa. But yet they were hardly a bastion of equality…

Similarly the T’au clearly consider themselves the superior race (and the Ethereals to another level within the T’au) and ultimately retain tight control of their Empire. Other races are never going to be in the ruling class.

And that’s even without getting into the DoW sterilisation thing…

Lord Zarkov wrote:
Same was nominally true of the British Empire, and soldiers from all over fought in both world wars and people from all over went to top universities. E.g Ghandi was educated in England and was an imperial administrator in Africa. But yet they were hardly a bastion of equality…

And yet as I said, the non-T'au races aren't mistreated by the Empire and live at the same standard of living as the T'au do. Just because a Kroot can't be a Cadre Fireblade doesn't mean they're second-class citizens.
Worlds brought into the Empire receive their technology and expertise to help improve that planet to the standards of the wider Empire. Freedom of religion is also allowed with some stipulations that it not explicitly contradict the Greater Good though exceptions are made such as in the case of the Kroot who consume the dead as a form of honouring the spirit of the fallen.

Similarly the T’au clearly consider themselves the superior race (and the Ethereals to another level within the T’au) and ultimately retain tight control of their Empire. Other races are never going to be in the ruling class.

I can't find anything to support the idea that the T'au claim to be the superior race of the galaxy. The Ethereals lead the Empire because they were the ones who introduce the T'au to the Greater Good and ended the ceaseless conflict on their homeworld, not because they were divine beings or the superior species.

And that’s even without getting into the DoW sterilisation thing…

That is explicitly said to be a rumour and that the more likely cause for the drop in Human births was the segregated re-education camps. Camps that were only created because the population of Kronus sided with the Imperium when it returned to the world.
Also, technically that ending isn't "canon" as the Blood Ravens ending is considered the "true" ending of Dark Crusade .

I can't point to a specific quote, but I vaguely recall it being implied in some of the BL (Farsight?) novels that humans living within the Tau empire are kind of looked down on. For instance, the main human character in the Farsight novels is allowed to attend the meeting of important people, but iirc it's sort of implied that this is only the case because they're about to launch an expansion campaign that will involve interacting with other humans directly.

In other words, it's probably accurate to say that non-tau aren't given quite the same respect/opportunities as tau. However, this form of inequality is still vastly preferable to being a manufactorum slave being worked into an early grave.

Being conquered by the tau probably means an improved standard of living, but it's definitely not a utopian existence.

FWIW, I get the impression that this is all extremely intentional on the part of the Ethereals. There's a lot of tension between the non-ethereal castes, but it seems like tau of any caste are a bit closer with each other than with alien allies. So if you're an ethereal, you functionally have the extreme loyalty of the guys who make things, the guys who run the propaganda machine, the guys who handle transportation, and the guys who make up the core of your millitary. So even if all your alien friends decide they're not happy with you, you have a very stable pool of resources to draw upon.

 Gert wrote:

Lord Zarkov wrote:
Same was nominally true of the British Empire, and soldiers from all over fought in both world wars and people from all over went to top universities. E.g Ghandi was educated in England and was an imperial administrator in Africa. But yet they were hardly a bastion of equality…

And yet as I said, the non-T'au races aren't mistreated by the Empire and live at the same standard of living as the T'au do. Just because a Kroot can't be a Cadre Fireblade doesn't mean they're second-class citizens.
Worlds brought into the Empire receive their technology and expertise to help improve that planet to the standards of the wider Empire. Freedom of religion is also allowed with some stipulations that it not explicitly contradict the Greater Good though exceptions are made such as in the case of the Kroot who consume the dead as a form of honouring the spirit of the fallen.

The second bit is again really no different to the British Empire, who very much told themselves stories about bring superior civilisation to the world and introduced huge amounts of improved technology.

As for the first. Yeah they don’t mistreat other races for fun, but they’re very happy to genocide people who don’t submit and the BL novels makes very clear that if the choice comes down to T’au vs others then T’au win out.

 Gert wrote:

Similarly the T’au clearly consider themselves the superior race (and the Ethereals to another level within the T’au) and ultimately retain tight control of their Empire. Other races are never going to be in the ruling class.

I can't find anything to support the idea that the T'au claim to be the superior race of the galaxy. The Ethereals lead the Empire because they were the ones who introduce the T'au to the Greater Good and ended the ceaseless conflict on their homeworld, not because they were divine beings or the superior species. .

They are absolutely 100% convinced that their philosophy and system of governance is the best, conquer others to get them to conform, and are happy to genocide those that don’t.

Major British Empire vibes…

Lord Zarkov wrote:
The second bit is again really no different to the British Empire, who very much told themselves stories about bring superior civilisation to the world and introduced huge amounts of improved technology.

As for the first. Yeah they don’t mistreat other races for fun, but they’re very happy to genocide people who don’t submit and the BL novels makes very clear that if the choice comes down to T’au vs others then T’au win out.

The difference between the British Empire and T'au is that we have canonic examples that T'au partnership does improve the lives of those who join the Empire unlike in British colonies where the locals were heavily oppressed, forcefully converted to Protestantism, and often enslaved. Technology wasn't given to the local populace to enrich their lives it was hoarded by colonial overseers who made sure that the locals were kept in line while profits went back home to Britain. Local customs and cultures weren't respected and the Empire tried to forcefully westernise and "civilise" the peoples it conquered.
The T'au don't do any of that. Technology is given freely, all levels of society are enriched, and customs and cultures are respected in the majority.

They are absolutely 100% convinced that their philosophy and system of governance is the best, conquer others to get them to conform, and are happy to genocide those that don’t.

Major British Empire vibes…

The vast majority of species that join the T'au do so peacefully and the invasions we see are of Imperial worlds that refuse to peacefully join the Empire. In fact, the T'au have it easy for new allies because the Imperium has a huge amount of Xenos races that harbour enmity for it including the Tarellians and Morralians.
The only times the T'au have actually enacted genocide are when they fight Necrons, Tyranids, and Orks which are foes that cannot be reasoned with or stopped by anything but a total war mandate. The Fourth Sphere cullings were a new and dark chapter in T'au history that was rectified as soon as the Empire established a connection to the Sphere's forces after they disappeared.
But you've changed what you're arguing this time. Before it was that the T'au were the superior race, now it's that their ideology is superior which compared to the xenophobic, highly fanatic, and oppressive Imperium or hedonistic torture-loving Drukhari, it is.

All you're showing with this is a complete lack of knowledge regarding both the T'au and the British Empire.

Slight topic shift, but wasn't the 4th sphere stuff the result of non-tau allies going full Event Horizon while in transit? I thought it was literally the result of the tau freaking out about non-tau going insane/possibly mutating during the voyage rather than freaking out over their friends thinking of the GG as a god?

But yeah, I agree with most of what you're saying, Gert. I just want to make the point that while non-tau brought into the empire probably lead happier, healthier lives than before, a certain amount of inequality is still present within the empire.

But yeah, I'd say that it's a kind of weak argument to claim that Tau expansion is a directreference to the British Empire specifically because white man's burden/general colonialism. You could make the claim that the Romans or the Ottomans or the Persians or any number of other societies all did vaguely similar things when expanding.

Not all colonialism is a direct reference to British colonialism, even if they smell similar.

The Tau are interesting in that they take tropes from many different totalitarian regimes and be under no illusions they are Totalitarian.

The greater good is literally a totalising ideology that seeks to control all interactions in Tau society and including those that come into contact with them.

for real world parallels we can look to Stalinism, Maoism or pretty much any Hegelian derived ideology such as Fascism, Communism and national socialism.

Throw into that the exceptionalism that usually goes alongside every empire to ever exist and you get your reason for expansionism as we have seen historically with the Chinese, British, Aztec, Comanche, Scottish, Ethiopian, Mughal empires.

As another has said here the Tau take inspiration from many places but sadly most only know about the British empire as it is the most recent (baring the current American empire and Chinese empire in waiting), so it is natural one would compare the Tau to them.

As for the British empire and genocides, no, the 2 cases ever cited are both nothing to do with the Empire itself but the Indian local governance causing the famine and a large drought, compounded by a world war and a massacre that local Indian troops committed against muslim civilians during the partition (1947 Amritsar train massacre), the Empire committed several atrocities however such as sacking, looting etc but genocide was never one of them and indeed when the above incidents happened the parliament of the time was horrified and sought to help in any way they could.

Sadly a lot of these events get misconstrued, a prime example of this is the continued demands for India to have the diamond returned, this is an Aghan Diamond taken by the Persians (Nadar Shah iirc) and then the Indians (Ranjit Singh, Sikh empire) and finally given as a spoil of war to the English after the first Anglo-Sikh war, long story short two empires fought, one lost and due to it losing India was later founded as a nation and unified by the British empire.

The British empire was many things, a driver for democracy and the concept of human rights around the world, a uniter for both for and against it, a great exploitation machine as well as a driver of morality with the ending of many barbaric practices such as the sacrificing of children, cannibalism, the transatlantic slave trade and many more.

Roman colonialism feels more similar in that there is an official "religion", but others are tolerated, and most peoples are assimilated after conquest.

Romans still tended to favour Italians until the Western empire fell, which kinda fits with how no non-Tau seem to have yet reached the upper echelons of the empire.