✍️ ESSAY CONTEST ENTRY
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There are many people who see the Empire as purely evil but I dont see it that way. In this post I would like to explain why it was a necessary step to take in between the Galactic Republic and the New Republic. Note that I'll only list four of the (in my opinion) major reasons, I'm sure there are more and I'd love to hear them if you can think of any.
1. The Empire ended the clone wars. And without the Empire it would not have ended so soon. It was Palpatine, Vader and the Clones who ended it by killing the Jedi and the Separatist leaders. The Clone Wars were very destructive on the galaxy and we see in the Clone Wars TV series how it was about to bankrupt both sides of the war and it already cost a lot of lives.
2. The Empire stopped the high corruption that existed in the Republic and was one of the reasons so many systems joined the separatists. With the powerful companies like the Trade Federation loosing their influence and their power within the CIS and the Senate the galaxy permanently became a better place. Less corruption always leads to a place that's easier to govern. This is not just good for the Empire, the New Republic could also benefit from it since it makes their democratic system work much better than it did in the Republic before.
3. The Military was of course primarily used to keep order and protect the empire's interest on other worlds but since they stopped using clone troopers, the storm troopers had to be formed by the average population. People signing up to become soldiers were of course mostly young people who would then have a job and werent driven into the bounty hunter profession or even to become pirates by poverty. Meaning they decreased the number of new criminals. Without that, the situation in the outer rim would be even worse than we have seen in the Mandalorian.
4. With the rebellion and the Civil war between the alliance and the empire, the galaxy became united against the oppression of the empire. This is something that is quite impressive considering the clone wars was basically thousands of wars for independence from the republic for certain species and systems. And since we didnt see much of that later on, I'd say the galaxy grew closer together thanks to the empire.
I admit the last point is more a result of the empire's politics, not their goal.
I think overall the Empire was bad. Very bad actually. But it was a necessary step to make the republic become again what it once was. Without it the republic would have continued to decline to the point were it would destroy itself and leave the galaxy in ruins.
Thanks for reading all of this, do you agree or disagree with me on any of these points? I'd love to get your opinion on it.