Excerpt from "The Confederation of Worlds," IN, The Encyclopedia. Lodge of Kootosh-Lan.
Pertunis. With the collapse of the brief Thomsid Empire, the Generals' Junta surveyed the merchant houses of Iryala and subsequently appointed Pertunis of Ordunak as King of Iryala and Emperor of the Worlds. Pertunis's first official act was to dissolve the empire formally. While this was no more than official recognition of the existing situation, it made of Pertunis a sectorwide hero. Indeed, the Confederation numbers the years of its calendar from Pertunis's coronation.
Within 34 years, Pertunis had reestablished the Confederation in much the same form as before the Charter of Halsterbors a millennium earlier. He based it, however, on a network of new trade agreements, the desire of certain rulers to safeguard or regain certain fiefs and other advantages, and, of course, on Iryala's shipbuilding monopoly and military fleet. He did this without any apparent desire for self-aggrandizement. And it served essentially to strengthen the unity, homogeneity, and central guidance—the "Standardness," if you will, of civilized humanity.
The 26 other member worlds were not without differences and ambitions of their own. And their ruling classes could see themselves becoming vassals of the Iryalan throne through the commercial network. But each world had a strong taste for off-planet goods. And each had evolved an economy and developed a standard of living that depended on exports and imports. One by one, Pertunis made them certain guarantees in exchange for their joining the commercial network or for certain modest fees in currency and services. They were also to acknowledge the Iryalan crown as the Administrator General of the network.
Each step into the net seemed the best alternative at the time, the decision to take it the most logical and favorable. And as one after another joined, the remainder began to see that, if they excluded themselves, they would end up in the "trade-world" category, along with the 14 old "junior autonomies," with minimal commercial rights and mostly unable to acquire ships or land like those they had on Confederation member worlds. As trade worlds, they would be outside the Confederation but dependent on it, in positions of considerable economic disadvantage. Only Splenn and Carjath chose ideology over logic, and in their newly reduced positions as trade worlds, neither was long able to maintain a centralized planetary government, nor generally to develop a peaceful and stable alternative. Which of course suited the Confederation, whose merchants then played the various states against their rivals.
At this writing, life on Splenn and Carjath remains quite stimulating and interesting after nearly 500 Standard years. Their mostly aged, though well-captained ships, keep reasonably busy. Some provide a service important in the farflung Confederation: smuggling.
All the 26 other ex-senior autonomies finally joined Iryala in the network, which in the Year of Pertunis 37 was reproclaimed the Confederation of Worlds.
With the firm establishment of the new confederation, Pertunis was able to give more attention to a project he had worked on at intervals since he'd taken the throne: the development of a logical system of rules, guides, and procedures for the operation of organizations—any organizations—but with special reference to the Iryalan and Confederation bureaucracies. He worked on this, as opportunity allowed, into his final illness. It had begun as a means of rationalizing and lightening the labor of ruling as king and administrator general. In the later stages of the project he elaborated it in extreme detail, in a considerably successful effort to more fully circumvent the bureaucratic stupidities he observed around him. Despite certain weaknesses, it is a true masterwork, of major value to those who are polarized to any major degree. Even to those who are not polarized, it can be well worth contemplating.
After Pertunis's death, this work was declared by the new king, Wilman IX, to constitute "Standard Management." It has markedly reduced operational variation within the Confederation and occupies a place in Confederation life second only to the Standard Technology of "prehistoric" origin.
But while adding efficiency both to government and business, Standard Management further calcified the already rigid Confederation culture.