By Marcus Havelock
In the seventeenth century, Dutch East India vessels cut through contested seas, their sails heavy with spices and silver. These maritime routes were not merely lines on a map but arteries of empire, defended with cannons and fortified ports. Today, the battleships have given way to satellites, and the contested seas have become low Earth orbit. Yet the underlying struggle is strikingly familiar: control of the lanes determines the balance of power.
From Sea Routes to Sky Routes
Colonial empires fought for choke points — the Strait of Malacca, the Cape of Good Hope, the Panama Canal. Whoever held these gates controlled commerce, intelligence, and influence. In the twenty-first century, satellite constellations form the new shipping lanes. Instead of nutmeg or porcelain, they carry data, navigation signals, and surveillance power. SpaceX’s Starlink, China’s Tiantong, and Europe’s IRIS² represent competing infrastructures that knit together not oceans, but continents’ worth of connectivity.
Like their maritime predecessors, these constellations are vulnerable. Satellites can be jammed, hacked, or destroyed, much as galleons could be sunk or captured. Nations now speak of “space situational awareness” the way admirals once spoke of keeping eyes on the horizon.
Colonial Logic in Orbit
History offers warnings. In the age of empire, monopoly routes created dependencies: Indian cotton flowing only to British mills, Caribbean sugar sustaining European palates. Similarly, reliance on a single satellite provider risks creating digital colonies, where access to communication is contingent on the goodwill — or geopolitical alignment — of another power.
Consider Ukraine’s wartime reliance on Starlink, or the way Pacific Island states look to China for orbital coverage. Connectivity is no longer neutral infrastructure; it is a bargaining chip. The colonial logic of “who sails where” has returned, dressed in the sleek metal of orbiting machines.
The Coming Orbital Choke Points
Maritime history also teaches us that bottlenecks matter. The Panama and Suez Canals reshaped trade by concentrating flows. In orbit, certain orbital slots and frequency bands are already at a premium. The International Telecommunication Union, meant to allocate fairly, faces pressure as spacefaring nations jockey for favorable positions.
A future conflict may not begin with tanks crossing borders but with satellites disabling rivals’ networks, severing data lifelines as effectively as a naval blockade once severed grain shipments.
Lessons From History
Empires at sea eventually collapsed under the weight of overreach, resource drain, and rebellion. The question is whether empires in orbit can avoid the same fate. A more cooperative order — orbital “commons” treated as global infrastructure — could prevent escalation. But history reminds us that when new routes emerge, the temptation to dominate them is strong.
The satellites gliding above may look silent and serene. Yet like the spice-laden ships of centuries past, they carry the ambitions of states and corporations determined to rule the lanes. The story of empire, it seems, is not finished. It has simply moved higher.
