The spark that would set off the flame was a strike in a cocoa field on Khalas. With the election of Strawberry Singh as Khalas’ delegate, popular sentiment had been at a high unseen since the establishment of formal democracy millenia ago. Frustration over the lack of power of the ordinary person had been easy to paper over during the long period of stagnation preceding the Revolution, but in the new environment it was rapidly proving untenable. Throughout the bottom clique of Khalasite society, it was felt to a increasing degree that they should have a say and control in their own destinies (this “clique” is estimated to have contained over 90% of Khalasites – even those of moderate wealth felt, not unreasonably, disempowered).
Starting in one of the smaller cocoa farms on the planet, it quickly spread through solidarity strikes to many of the larger plantations after a botched attempt at repression only gave the strikers publicity. Within a week, the planet was paralyzed, as the strikers were not only joined by their fellow plantation workers, but by the transporters and processors and every other major and minor trade necessary to run Khalas.
Most important for the grand run of the Revolution was the figure that a group of the most militant strikers coagulated around – Guo Sin. Like many leaders of the Revolution (and especially many Khalasite leaders), very little is known about Guo prior to the Khalas Revolt. He was a plantation worker, although he had a tendency of claiming at one time or another of having worked in every role on the plantation, making it impossible to tell what he actually did. It has also been suggested, and is accepted by most historians, that he was one of those disaffected individuals who were closely following the events of the Revolution, and especially the Mawrian Mutiny. The only reasonable explanation for how quickly Guo was able to connect with Fathma Iridis seems to be that he was in circles where that connection would have been easy to make.
With Khalas paralyzed, Guo was able to take advantage of the two assets that he had over anyone else. The first was an organized and motivated group. The strike wave was almost entirely spontaneous. It had formed without an overseeing body to direct it and it was still without one to protect it. That the strike wave succeeded at all is a sign of the frailty of the Khalasite elites. Guo’s group of militants, while still much looser than any dedicated militia, was able to punch above its weight in presenting its demands. The second was a coherent ideology. The demands for “justice” that many of the strikers shouted were unactionable. There were considerable differences between what a poor plantation worker and a relatively wealthy shopkeeper considered just, selecting one would have resulted in accusations of injustice by the other.
Had the elites of Khalas not been as frail as they were, this is where they most likely sided with the most wealthy chunk of strikers and sympathizers, offer them just enough reforms to satisfy them, and use those new allies to put down the rest of the strike. However, the Khalasite elite was frail. Some of them may have wanted to do so, but even had they made the offer, they had no force to support it. There was no significant planetary garrison like on Mawr and the planetary security forces had splintered, with the more radical members joining Guo Sin’s ever growing group of militants while the rest remained in sympathy with the strikers. Khalas had entered a stalemate just waiting for an idealistic group of militants to come in and topple the existing order.
That being said, it is extremely fraught to try and say exactly what Guo’s coherent ideology was because in it lie the seeds of Khalasism. Considering that it would not be an understatement to say that literally all modern politics exists as a reaction to Khalasism, readers will not find it hard to believe that historians are heavily divided on this issue. Due to this complexity, importance, and because it would be inconvenient to bring up such an issue that only becomes of greater importance after the Velvet Chamber Debates, the discussion will be sidelined until a future chapter. For the moment, all that needs to be said is that Guo had a much more sophisticated interpretation of “justice” than the rest of the strikers involving an expansion of public (and reduction of private) property rights that he instilled in his followers.
The critical moment came a mere 11 days after the initial plantation protests kicked off. In what was undoubtedly an act of conspiracy, a group of militant strikers led by Guo Sin burst into the capitol, planetary internet stations, and garrison armories, and announced that a “Band of Justice” representing the strikers had taken control of Khalas. Explicitly in that message, Guo Sin announced that the authority to do this was granted by the “new reforms in law and governnaces justly given to us by the Constitutional Chamber” (perhaps the only time Guo Sin would say anything positive about Q Loakh).
Within hours of the news reaching Mawr, this was followed by an announcement from Fathma Iridis on Mawr congratulating the Khalasites on their successful revolt and calling on planets across the galaxy on following their leader, forming their own Bands of Justice and joining them. For most historians, Iridis’ “Congradulatory Address” is considered to be the point where the Khalas Revolt ends and is transformed into the Revolutionary Wave. Like a sound wave rolling over the Empire, over the coming two weeks, every time Iridis’ address reached a new planet (often coupled with the news of the Khalas Revolt), a revolt would form. These revolts were not always successful, indeed they failed more often than not. Only specialists in the period have much knowledge in the so-called “Eonissi Avis Revolt,” led primarily by the planet’s cooks and maids, put down within hours of starting.
Even with all the failures, it is not without reason that the Revolutionary Wave is considered the most important event thus far in the Revolution. A close look at each individual revolt is beyond the scope of an overview like this, but at least 27 separate planetary governments were overthrown during the Wave (not counting Khalas, which was technically overthrown prior to the start of the Wave, or Mawr, which is often considered ancillary to but not directly a part of it), while 31 experienced significant political turmoil that did not result in a direct overthrow. The combined effect of 27 turnovers in planetary governments compounded what would have been a major effect had only Khalas succeeded. Interplanetary trade was forced to a momentary standstill, as merchants could no longer be certain that their contracts would still be valid by the time they reached their next port. This abrupt slowdown in interplanetary trade would mark the starting signal for the Price Crisis that would mark the final years of the Empire’s economic history, as those planets that experienced major strife would quickly experience massive inflation.
The most immediate issue for the Vaird however was that Q Loakh’s plan for legalizing popular revolution had just blown up to a degree they had never anticipated nor desired. As news of the revolt after revolt poured into the Vaird, followed by the establishment of a “League of Justice” led by Fathma Iridis to coordinate all of the Bands of Justice that every new revolution spawned, the delegates in the Vaird quickly became overwhelmed and split.
Initially, the split that formed was over whether or not to welcome these revolutions. After all, it had been expected that there would be some revolutions in the wake of Q’s legal reform, that had been their entire point. The point of concern that set some delegates off was the sheer volume of the revolts, not the fact that any were happening at all. The leader of this faction theoretically in favor of highly limited revolutions but wanting to take actions to stem the number of them was none other than Corporal Lourga Neptuna, who took the crisis as an opportunity to repair her reputation after the botched leak of General Lorkissian’s reforms by presenting herself as a respectable conservative reformer worried about the pace of events. That she was able to pull this off is a testament to her political skill.
he side most radically opposed to her was led by another member of the Military Committee – Colonel Javier Simsek. By this point in the Revolution, Simsek was known among many of the delegates as the most prominent and committed radical voice. There were no questions about his convictions and his military pedigree granted him a degree of legitimacy that other radicals, such as many of those who would form the leadership of the Khalasites, did not have.
The Conservative Reformers commanded the affections of about 15% of delegates, while the Radicals commanded only a bit more at approximately 20%. These numbers have often puzzled scholars unfamiliar with the Revolution, who remember it as it is remembered with historical hindsight. As the foundation of modern politics, the interpretation of the Revolution and the evaluation of many of its defining issues are the lines upon which ideology is drawn. But the delegates who made up the Chamber did not and could not know that. They were not elected to induct a new socio-political onto the galaxy, they were elected to offer sage advice that would protect the personal interests of their planets to the ruling Emperor. All of the delegates, even the most apparently political ones, were the citizens of a profoundly unpolitical age, unprepared for the rebirth of an era of galactic politics that had been dead so long it did not even exist in their cultural memory. From some of the records of the least engaged delegates that have survived, it seems that while many of them were caught up in support for “justice,” they still were not thinking of their task as one of politics, merely of administration. With a few notable exceptions, only the most active and aware delegates joined a party.
One of those notable exceptions, perhaps the most notable, was Q Loakh. Q undeniably had an awareness of the awakening politics of the new age, but the Wave had placed them in an extremely delicate situation. The Wave was their child. Without the legal approval which it granted, even if the Khalas Revolt had occurred, the ground would have had much less tinder with which to light. Either Fathma Iridis would never have felt comfortable enough to issue the Congradulatory Address, or the Address would not have had the power in sparking revolts in the same way. And every delegate knew this. Nobody except the most ardent reactionaries believed that Q had actively wanted the scale of the Wave, but it was an uncontrovertible fact that the policy they had supported had midwifed it.
But Q didn’t want to support the Wave. As always with Q, personal power may be the primary reason. Unruly new revolutionary governments could endanger their newly accruing power much more than stagnant elite regimes. However, as scholars have taken a closer look at Q over the past century, this view has fallen out of fashion. Q really did have beliefs, and those beliefs included an emphasis on the importance of justice order. They had been the chief of police on Sula, it is unsurprising that their sympathy for mass revolutionary action was thinner than many Radicals may have wished for.
Stuck between being unable to deny the Wave as their unintentional child and being unwilling to embrace the Wave as the Radicals were willing to, Q made their greatest mistake. They sent secret messages to Corporal Neptuna intimating that while they could not publicly support an effort she was making to reject recognition of some of the new revolutionary governments, they would direct some of their closest allies to. By sending this message, Q effectively sealed their fate, although they could not know that yet. Such an explanation of how though, and a further elaboration on the dispute between the Conservative Reformers and the Radicals, will have to wait until the narrative finally arrives at the Velvet Chamber Debates.