The Warshawski Sail changed that, along with everything else. Transit speeds soared as higher hyper bands were entered and their predominant grav waves slowly charted, and a Warshawski Sail hypership with inertial compensator could be of almost any desired mass. Huge ships might be slower than small ones, but they were still far, far faster than cryo ships, and their cargo carrying capacity could be enormous.
The first interstellar warships were (probably inevitably) piratical. Hyperships were scarcely needed for system defense, as any attacker was required to reenter normal space and could then be engaged by sublight ships with normal impeller drives, and after centuries of being literally unable to get at one another, there were no such things as power struggles between rival star systems. Humans had not changed appreciably, however, and the emergence of latter day "vikings" to prey on newly established or weakly defended colonies was almost a forgone conclusion. Ownership of at least eleven colonies changed hands by force during the first half-century of Warshawski Sail capability, financed in many cases by "respectable" corporations formed for the express purpose of mounting filibustering expeditions. In time, particularly as interstellar shipping established itself and began to grow, actual squadrons of independent pirates came into existence. As always, threats to commerce provoked the creation of navies to police the trade lanes, and the first system navies of interstellar warships appeared.
These navies were remarkably successful in running down and eliminating outright pirates, but they themselves didn't go away once the threat abated. Having been created, they took on a life of their own, particularly as the Warshawski Sail began knitting the far-flung community of Man back together. Traditional sources of contention reappeared, and the discovery of wormhole junctions created a whole new source of rivalry, as these were of immense value to trade, expansion, and warfare alike.
Since the restoration of the precious gift of the ability to make war upon one's neighbors, several inter-system polities have been created. Most have grown relatively peacefully, on the pattern of the old Solarian League; others have been forged by more forceful means, and no political unit can afford to overlook its own security needs any longer.
Aside from the Star Kingdom, the other three major polities of concern to Honor Harrington are: The Solarian League, the Anderman Empire, and the Republic of Haven. Although important as a trade partner and near-neighbor of the Star Kingdom, the Andermani have not (as yet) impinged as directly on Manticore's prospects of survival as have the League and the People's Republic, which are briefly described below.
(B) The Solarian League:
Composed of the oldest colony worlds, the Solarian League extends for roughly ninety-eight light-years from the Solar System. Old Earth is the League's capital but is only first among equals, as her daughter colonies had enjoyed centuries (in some cases over a millennium) of independence from the mother world and were unwilling to surrender their sovereignty when the new star nation emerged.
As a result, every member world of the Solarian League exercises full local autonomy. That is, the League's Executive Council, its highest governing body, has no legal authority over the local policies of its member worlds. On the "national" level, the Executive Council consists of delegates from all member worlds, and each world holds a veto right. On the surface any central government ought to find it impossible under such circumstances to maintain any sort of sustained policy, but there are countervailing pressures.
First, most of these worlds are quite populous, wealthy, and content, and pursue a consensual domestic policy, both locally and for the League as a whole, in which disputes which might draw a veto are unlikely to arise.
Secondly, the League's member worlds work off a great deal of their contentiousness in foreign policy debates because they feel safe in treating foreign policy as an area in which to make "statements of principle." Most League statesmen realize that this attitude makes any coherent military or diplomatic policy impossible, but the League is enormous. With the greatest concentration of wealth in human history (and counting almost two-thirds of the total human race as its citizens), it feels unthreatened by external dangers. Its navy is the largest in the galaxy, and the idea that any foreseeable combination of foreign powers could threaten its security is unthinkable.
Third, although every member world has veto right, the Executive Council has a counter-weapon; a two-thirds vote of the Council can strip any planet of its League membership. This power has never been used, but the threat of its use has brought several obstinate delegates to see reason over the centuries.
Despite its lack of an organized foreign policy, the League has an almost uninterrupted history of gradual expansion. From time to time an independent world will request admission to the League, and these requests are almost always granted, but any form of organized League imperialism is virtually impossible. In a sense, the League is isolationist willing to trade with anyone, still the greatest source of recruitment for new colonies, but content to stand aloof from the power struggles prevalent in other regions of the galaxy. For all that, however, the League's size, power, and historical record of attracting requests for admission have given it a sense of manifest destiny. Its view (which, so far, has been justified by events) is that any of its neighbors will eventually recognize the advantages of League membership and ask to join. There is thus no need for the League to conquer anyone, as passing time and the inevitability of peaceful expansion will take care of the problem.
There have, however, been two exceptions to the League's "non-imperial" policy. First, the League has a tradition of extending protectorate status to what might be called "third-world planets" along and beyond its current frontiers. This is justified on the basis that such worlds are vulnerable to piratical raids and/or economic exploitation by less principled interstellar powers. As such, they need looking after which just happens to give the League's merchants the inside track and prepares the ground for the protectorate's eventual admission to the League.
The second exception is a consistent policy of extending the same protectorate status to wormhole junctions with termini in or near League space. Among those junctions was the Erewhon Junction roughly a hundred light-years from the People's Republic of Haven's "southern" frontier, but this effort failed. The Erewhon Republic rejected League "protection," despite the proximity of the threat of the PRH. Instead, Erewhon chose to place its reliance upon the Manticoran Alliance and the assistance of the Royal Manticoran Navy probably because the League's lack of a coherent foreign policy failed to fill the Republic with confidence in the face of Peep expansionism.
The League itself contains no wormhole junctions, but at least five junctions have termini in League territory. Where possible, the League has secured control of the junction at the far end of the wormhole as a defensive measure, though the use of force majeure to do so remains contrary to League policy. Nor, for the most part, has force been required, as the League is well able to proffer economic and industrial incentives to encourage most colony worlds to accept League membership quite eagerly.
The most important junction not to pass under League control is the Manticore Junction. Historically, Manticore has enjoyed congenial relations with the League but has no desire to submerge itself within the League's bureaucracy, and the combination of the revenues generated by the junction and the sturdily independent, continually growing population of its three worlds make the League's traditional incentives less attractive to the Manticorans than to most struggling colonies. In the last thirty years, however, an undeniable edge of strain has crept into League-Manticoran relations due to the looming conflict with the People's Republic. The one thing the Star Kingdom most fears is a situation in which the Peeps would be able to purchase advanced technology from the League, thus redressing their tactical inferiority vis-a-vis the Royal Navy. In its efforts to prevent that situation from arising, the Cromarty Government was forced to resort to strong-arm economic pressure to get a technology embargo out of the Executive Council. The effort succeeded, but at the result of strained relations.