Revolution!

The struggle for independence was long and hard. No small amount of damage was done to the cities and to Mars itself, and many lives were lost, but in the end everyone agreed it had been worth it.
They were finally free. No more orders from Earth, no more losing their own precious resources to that ravenous behemoth planet, but just total and utter freedom. Able to use their own resources and their own hard work however they wanted.

Can you imagine it? They owned themselves, they weren’t just indentured labourers, indebted to one huge corporation or another! Actually able to live where they wanted instead of company appointed blocks! It was amazing, it really was. Oh, finally having freedom of association, able to talk to anyone instead of just others from your own corporation block. It’s impossible to describe the sheer joy of being able to talk, really talk, to your next door neighbour for the first time in the five or ten years since being sent up from Earth.

Naturally, things had managed to get off to a pretty rocky start, since no mega-corp would be happy to hear that its largest production plant had decided to halt all production. The Ares Mining Conglomerate initially tried to starve the Martian workers of resources, refusing to send up fresh tools, plant maintenance equipment, spare parts. It very nearly worked, and a little faction of rebels within the rebels attempted to seize power and turn it back over to the AMC. A wiser group had been squirreling spares and equipment away for some time, though, and they had enough for at least a decade without replenishment from Earth. A little bit of hacking and quite a lot more manual labour could convert part of the plant to the production of new parts, too.

The AMC was not interested in waiting a decade for the plant’s mechanisms to fail on their own. The next stage of recapturing their Martian operation was to send up engineers and soldiers, attempting to retake the plant by force. By now, news of the AMC plant had spread, and other plants were starting to down tools and demand independence. Earth’s governments got involved, nations sending up their own space-faring armies to try and re-establish the mother planet’s dominance over its red son.

The First Martian War was conducted through guerrilla tactics, with the Martian workers sabotaging factories when it looked like they might be retaken by Earth forces, and the planet’s own precious regolith being booby-trapped with cunningly placed explosive gel to cause sudden, massive landslides across the deep canyons and arroyos that were used for transport. Earth withdrew to the landing areas they’d secured from the start, and for a while it was all a stalemate.

AMC, the Mars Association, Galactic Minerals and all the others stopped to regroup. They began to wheedle and make suspiciously generous promises. They offered full repatriation to Earth for anyone that wanted it, guaranteed citizenship in the nation of their choice, and a whole raft of new privileges for the workers that remained on Mars to continue the extractions. Some of the Martians accepted, of course. The offers really were very generous, and full citizenship was pretty hard to come by in the better countries. The Second Martian War was a civil war, between those wanting to give Mars back to Earth, and those wanting to develop their own independent nation.

Eventually, the Earth faction was cornered into the Earth landing bases, and given the choice of becoming Martian or returning to Earth. Large numbers chose to return to Earth, even though many of the promises made by the major groups had expired. By now, the Mars Revolution had been going for a solid five years.

That was the turning point, where it became clear that Mars was no longer going to be another mining resource like so many hollowed out asteroids. The real end of the revolution came when the Mars factions took control of the orbitals and started using them defensively. With the satellites in Martian control, Earth could no longer observe unless sent the images by the Martians themselves, and no ship could attempt a landing without a well-armed welcoming party waiting for it.

Seven years since the first AMC factory had stopped production, Mars had freed itself from Earth’s grasp. The Martian Republic of Robotic Sentients had finally been formed.
We hope that you have found our educational recording to be beneficial in teaching both sides of the Martian Revolution’s story. We look forward to continued trade with Earth, and welcome newly uploaded Virtual Humans who wish to embody in a newly developed Martian apparatus.