First Martian Revolution

The First Martian Revolution a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of Mars, some of which was directed at the Federal government on Earth and the company governments of the Mars Corporation. It included worker strikes, civil unrest, and security mutinies. It led to political reform including the establishment of the Interplanetary Trade Commission.

Causes

When the First Mars Revolution Started, it was Bradbury that acted as the main power broker between the Martians and Adrian Hayer's loose confederacy of colonies that would become the ITC. Prior to the revolution, Bradbury had founded and directly governed the largest network of colonies on the surface of Mars via the Bradbury Cooperative. As a show of good faith, the ITC set its headquarters in Bradbury. As the billions of new colonists flooded in through the towers at New Richmond, Chamba, New Babylon, Chrysaor, Lucus City, Heavensgate or Midgard, Bradbury's population eventually topped out at 10 million people. A respectably large city, but the state no longer could compete with the sheer size of fertile land in Araby and Magartifer, Tharsis was simply too rocky, too tall, and too arid to support those kinds of projects. But the city remained a crucial trade port, and a center for business and culture. When the MSIF and Maise Luong wanted to start another revolution, they directed their fury at Bradbury, when Earth needed a President to unite the system, they got one from Bradbury.

Where most of Mars's founding corporations had ceded more and more power to the populace throughout the first half of the 21st Century, the Praxis Group maintained private control of the New Richmond Elevator and the colony itself, leveraging its position as the primary landing site and interplanetary trade port to always be exempt from MarsCorp reforms.

Border closures on Earth

On the eve of Mars being opened for large scale human colonization, the space economy stands on the edge of collapse at the threat of the United States government closing its borders. The First Martian Revolution ends with the Rosalind Amendment. Establishing a line of legal separation between the United States on Earth and the space colonies, that essentially makes them semi-autonomous territories. Following the First Martian Revolution, the Mars Corporation official dissolves, and formal territorial governments are established with the Interplanetary Trade Commission serving as an administrative entity.

Representation

In 2079 the Delegation of New Richmond submitted a formal petition to Congress calling for New Virginia and any other territory that qualified to be admitted to the Union as a state.

Distribution of resources

In March 2077 MarsCorp Chairman Kanzaki, a former CEO of Praxis Group, announced plans to impose planet wide fees on products imported from Earth and travel between the territories. Shortly after the plan was debuted, protests, boycotts, and strikes broke out planet-wide, and Mars seemed poised for Revolution against MarsCorp and more specifically Praxis Group.

Fighting between colonists and Praxis security forces broke out whenever a protest was held and assemblies were often broken up by raids. In 2078 members of the Delegation of New Richmond held one of the largest sit-ins in Martian history. 25,000 people surrounded the base of the New Richmond Elevator and stopped all unloading and loading of the most critical supply line for Mars. The Great Sit-In lasted 6 months, thanks to freeze packed food from shipping containers at their disposal, and a wall of people that the security forces could not penetrate. The Praxis Tower at New Richmond handled more trade with Earth and the rest of the Solar System than the other three towers combined, and the loss in operations led to a crash in MarsCorp stock.

Start of the revolution

The First Martian Revolution, wasn't really a revolution by any definition known to the politicians on Earth, but to Mars it was the closest they'd ever come to such a change. Mars's first wave colonial population was comprised almost entirely of people who would work to see Mars terraformed over the course of a century, reaching habitability in the late 2070s. That kind of commitment requires a level of patience that isn't seen in most humans, and therefore political change comes more easily as acts of adaptation and compromise. In the 2030s the Mars Corporation changed from a confederacy of semi-autonomous corporate purchase, to a commonwealth of territories under corporate rule. In the 2040s they changed again, as the corporations that founded Mars began using it as a staging point for the outer planets, its citizens ruled themselves more directly. In the 2050s Mars was officially acknowledged as a US Territory and granted a resident commissioner in the US Congress. In the 2060s the non-human rights movement came to Mars, and new questions of liberty began to be asked.

In the 2070s its citizens began to formally call for full representation in the US Congress. These calls were less for the current citizens, and more for Mars as a whole. When the population cap would be lifted and the billions of new citizens flooded in from Earth, would they be left without representation? As economic activity increased exponentially with the new citizens and the lifting of travel limits, would they be taxed and regulated by a government that did not represent them? For five years these questions went unanswered, and for five years the people of Mars grew restless. Talk of banning all immigration to the United States directly threatened Mars's future, and leave the planet bankrupt. The Mars Corporation, which had been a relatively "hands off" entity in the daily lives of Mars's population began meeting to discuss post-Settlement governance of the planet, and just like the US Government, they were content to leave the Martian people out of the conversation. When MarsCorp Chairman Kanzaki announced the plan to impose planet wide fees on products imported from Earth and travel between the territories, Mars finally spoke up. Protests, boycotts, and strikes broke out planet-wide, and Mars seemed poised for revolution against MarsCorp, and potentially the United States on Earth.

MarsCorp response

In 2079, on the eve of the next Presidential election, and as MarsCorp's shareholders were reeling from profit losses and the potential loss on their territorial claims, Galileo Development's President, Adrian Hayer proposed a solution. Galileo Development was an offshoot of Lunar Energy Ltd, and while it did not have a direct stake in MarsCorp, it had been shipping Nitrogen down system from Titan to Mars for four decades. Through LE, Galileo agreed to broker a deal with the colonists and Earth, and purchase 35% of MarsCorp's holdings, in exchange for long term trade between the colonies. MarsCorp would be dissolved after its remaining lands were bought by settlers and after reaching out to popular presidential candidates with promises of Helium-3 deliveries from Neptune, Galileo Development was able to deliver a compromise to Mars. When any immigration bill would be brought before Congress, it would stipulate that its policies would not apply to people wishing to relocate to the colonies. These promises quieted the Martians and in 2081 when the borders were closed the Rosalind Amendment was passed with the broader immigration bill, allowing people to immigrate to the United States on Mars, and granting the Martians the right to divide themselves into Territories, just not states. This was enough to satisfy the Martians, and so the First Martian Revolution drew to a close. The seeds of true revolution, however, were planted, and it would be another generation before they would sprout.

Results

MarsCorp's shareholders were reeling from profit losses and the potential loss on their territorial claims, Galileo Development's President, Adrian Hayer proposed a solution. Galileo Development was an offshoot of Lunar Energy Ltd, and while it did not have a direct stake in MarsCorp, it had been shipping Nitrogen down system from Titan to Mars for four decades. Through LE, Galileo agreed to broker a deal with the colonists and Earth, and purchase 35% of MarsCorp's holdings, in exchange for continued trade between the colonies. Praxis agreed, and ceded all claims to New Virginia to the newly created Interplanetary Trade Commission. Praxis would only hold ownership of a financial district in the heart of New Richmond. To prevent any future monopolization of trade, the first order of the ITC was the creation of 12 additional elevators, and improvements to the existing three outside of New Richmond.

The New Virginia Colony was partitioned in 2085, but the core of the colony around the New Richmond Elevator remained intact. By 2100 New Richmond surpassed every city in the system for size and population; despite its new competition with the other elevators, most colonists still came through New Richmond. The terraforming process left the peninsula in a perfect position for colonists to easily reach the fertile coats of Araby and the farmland stretching from the Chryse Gulf to the Argyre Sea. The wealth of Mars all flowed through New Richmond and New Virginia prospered, so much so that when the Luongists tried to gain a foothold in the colony where the first Revolution had started, they found no support for as Second. New Virginia was comfortable and sought integration over separation. When the first calls for statehood went out in 2134, New Virginia was one of the first to be accepted to join the Union along with 50 other territories across the system. And when the call for colonial reinforcements came down, it was from New Richmond that they ascended to help.