Timeline: Enterprise B/C era & Cardassian War

[Sgt_G]

This is a timeline based on data extracted from official Trek sources and Memory Alpha. It is by no means a complete list of events. I included my own ideas to fill in the holes. This lists have the pound-sign / hash-tag '#' right after the date. If you disagree with any of these lines, feel free to edit / change them, but please do give your rational as to why my version is "wrong". Thanks! I now open this up for others to expand the list, and do request that fan-fic authors enter the story titles that fall in this period. Cool with everyone??

 

[Sgt_G]

~2240: # Cardassia Prime resources exhausted; government orders their space fleet to explore for resources

~2250: # Star Fleet Intelligence is aware of the Cardassian Union

~2280s: # Cardassian exploitation fleet wanders into Klingon territory and is violently repulsed.

2293: Enterprise-B launched

~2300: # Cardassian fleet unable to locate new resources on non-inhabited planets, begin campaign to conquer and strip inhabited planets

2300-2315: # Cardassian fleet occupies at least a dozen colony worlds, and three or four planets with low-tech civilizations

2319: Bajor occupied by Cardassian Union

2321: Enterprise-B attempts to open diplomatic exchange and trade negotiations with Cardassia. However, because they are resource-poor, Cardassian rejects the overtures.

2328: Cardassia officially annexes Bajor

2329: Enterprise-B lost / presumed destroyed

2331: # Cardassian forces annex disputed planet near the Federation border; Star Fleet is ordered to stand down.

2332: Enterprise-C launched

2333: # Bajorian representative reaches Federation, requests aid against Cardassian occupation, officially rejected.

2339: # Cardassian forces annex another planet on the edge of Federation space; Star Fleet is again ordered to stand down.

2343/2344: # Klingon-Romulan War begins

2344: Enterprise-C destroyed by four Romulan warships at the Battle of Narendra-III

2344: # Klingon-Romulan War ends with the threat of the Federation entering on the side of the Klingons

2344: # Cardassian forces annex uninhabited planet inside Federation space; Star Fleet is ordered to stand down.

2345: # Covert Federation aid to Bajor is intercepted by Cardassian forces

2347-2366: Federation-Cardassian War
-- 2347: Cardassian commandos attack Federation outpost on Setlik-III
-- 2347: # Star Fleet sends a squadron of ships to repel Cardassians from Setlik-III
-- 2347-2348: # Setlik-III outpost evacuated and abandoned. Cardassian take control soon after
-- 2348: # Cardassians attempt to take several more planet; Star Fleet sends a reinforced Task Force
-- 2348-2352: # Open warfare between Federation and Cardassia. Federation is unwilling to fully commit to the task and thus never push into Cardassian space, only preventing Cardassian advances. There are at least six major battles and several smaller skirmishes during these years.
-- 2352: # Uprising on Cardassia Prime; government forces put the coup down
-- 2352-2358: # Dealing with unrest at home and on annexed worlds, the War dies down to occasional border skirmishes.
-- 2358-2360: # Cardassian forces make a concerted effort to push the Federation border back and annex many high-value planets. They have limited success.
-- 2360-2366: # Nearing economic collapse, Cardassian Union is unable to continue full-scale war and look to bargain for a diplomatic solution
-- 2363: Brief reprisal in the war after Cardassian attempt to capture an important Federation outpost
-- 2367: Federation-Cardassian Armistice signed
-- 2369: Star Fleet Intelligence believes Cardassia plans to invade Minos Korva
-- 2370: Federation-Cardassian Treaty finalized. New border is drawn as a sweeping S-curve that conceded to Cardassia many of the same planets they attempt to take by force during the war. The border also officially removes Bajor from Cardassian space.

2363: Enterprise-D launched

2369: Bajor regains independence from Cardassian rule
2369: Bajorian Wormhole discovered

2371: Enterprise-D destroyed

2372-2373: Klingon-Cardassian War
2373-2375: Dominion War

 

[DarthTimon]

I like this. I like this a lot.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I'd slip in, to help with a wider context, this did seem to be an ever increasingly violent time for the Federation:

2311: The Tomed Incident costs thousands of lives, leads to the signing of the Treaty of Algeron (banning Federaion development of cloaking technology), and the second period of Romulan Isolation (from the Federation at least)

Late-2350s: Talarian Border Conflicts
2357: Galen IV colony is overrun and destroyed by Talarian forces

Early-2360s: Federation/Tzenkethi War

2372-2373: This was also another Federation/Klingon War

 

[USS Firefly]

We need a book about this

 

[Sgt_G]

For the ebb and flow of the Federation-Cardassian War, I looked to Earth history for inspiration, specifically the Pacific theater during World War Two.

The Japanese spent years conquering China and French Indochina, and carefully planned simultaneous attacks on Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, the Dutch East Indies, Guam, and the Philippines. Over the next three and a half years, there were major battles at Midway Island, Java Sea, Coral Sea, Philippines Sea, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, to name a few, and dozens of smaller battles and protracted campaigns to retake the South Pacific Islands.

The Cardassian War differs in two important ways. First, the Cardassians didn't plan to invade the Federation. Rather, they thought they'd take "just one more planet, they didn't mind the last three times". Obviously, they miscalculated (as did the Japanese when they attacked Pearl Harbor). However, unlike the Americans, the Federation sought only to hold the line and not to push into Cardassian territory. Historians in the 25th century would conclude that if the Federation Senate had the political will to allow it, Star Fleet could have easily smashed the Cardassian fleet and invaded Cardassia Prime.

The source material, as posted on Memory Alpha, said the war ran from 2347 to 2367, when the Armistice was signed. There was a line-item that said the war tempo dropped to occasional skirmishes after 2360. Still, I felt 12 or 13 years of constant war seemed excessive for the timeline. If it had drug on that long, the Federation would grow weary of it and unleash the full weight of Star Fleet. Ergo, I built in a "pause" after about four years, with the failed coup in 2352. I figure that the limited resources would cause unrest at home and hinder the war effort. That gave them a few years to rebuild and try again in Round Two, years 2358-2360.

So, that's my view on how the war might have played out. If you disagree, feel free to suggest alternatives.

If there is any Official Canon that conflicts with *anything* posted above, please post a correction as needed with a citation.

Again, this was developed to allow fan-fiction to "live in the same universe", so please do list the title of your stories and the dates in which they're set.

 

[Sgt_G]

2278: USS Bozeman, under command of Captain Morgan Bateson, disappears into a temporal distortion.

 

[ChallengerHK]

Consider adding the relevant events from The Wounded. They're indicative of duplicitousness on the part of the Cardassians, or at least their government, vis-a-vis the Federation and their treaty.

 

[DarthTimon]

This is definitely the way to go as far as any kind of shared fanfic is concerned. @Sgt_G , this is brilliant work!

 

[Dukhat]

There is a discrepancy about the date for Setlik III. The 2347 date was based on O'Brien's transporter operator history in "The Wounded," but DS9's "Tribunal" gives a more exact date of 2362 for the event. That's a very large difference which would change your conjectural date for the start of the Cardassian war.

I also don't believe that the Federation-Cardassian war lasted 19 years. I got the impression, based on the 2362 date for Setlik III and TNG's "The Wounded" in 2366, and some other factors, that the conflict only lasted a few years and had concluded a few years after the start of TNG.

 

[Sgt_G]

2362 doesn't make sense. That's only a year, maybe two, before the Enterprise-D maiden voyage. It just doesn't seem like enough time for a full-scale war, in which O'Brien fought many battles, and still put him on the Enterprise.

I just read the script for Tribunal. I think I see how you get 2362. Still, all other data on Memory Alpha points to 2347. {shrug}

 

[Dukhat]

The problem with “The Wounded” is that nobody actually mentions the 2347 date. It was just extrapolated based on other information about O’Brien from some other episode. And “Tribunal,” while also not outright stating the 2362 date, is much more specific about it based on statements made by Sisko and Bashir. Remember, the Cardassians and their war with the Federation was a retcon four seasons into TNG. Previously, it didn’t look like the Federation had just ended a war as you say, but unfortunately that’s how retcons work. The MA entry for the Setlik III massacre states that no specific date was ever mentioned for the event.

Also, there’s plenty of time for O’Brien to have transferred from the Rutledge to the Enterprise by the start of season 1, so I don’t see that as a problem.

 

[Sgt_G]

Well, it's an inconsistency. Trek's full of them.

It's just that a two-year war is not really long enough to shoehorn in many battles or other events worth writing about. Maybe the best option is to move Setlik towards the end of the war, 2362, and have something else kick the war off in 2347, unless there is specific data that says Setlik cause the war or was in the early days. {shrug}

 

[Dukhat]

The Dominion War only lasted two or three years, and there were plenty of battles...

However:

"The Wounded" states that it's been a year since the peace treaty ending the war (2366). If the Setlik III massacre was in 2362, and if we conjecture that the war started in, say, 2355 (the last year Picard commanded the Stargazer), that gives 11 whole years for the war to take place. That's plenty of time for major space battles to happen, even if by 2364 the war was winding down (since we heard nothing about Cardassians for the first three seasons of TNG, let alone that there was any kind of war taking place at the time.) This also presumes that the Cardassian ship the Stargazer encountered took place during the war, not before it, since Picard wasn't clear about that.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I always thought there were a number of Cardassian Wars during the time, with shaky ceasefires and treaty negotiations pressing pause on the fighting, though none of them lasting very long. Maybe O'Brien found himself enduring a couple of campaigns at Setlik III.

 

[valkyrie013]

I've always thought of the Cardassian "War" as just border skirmishes, like the old time Tos Klingons, just occasionally they try to push out from there borders, and try to take a planet, a rogue captain fires on a starfleet ship, etc. and not some "Hot" war and the 2366 treaty was just a ceasefire and end to current hostility's, like the treaty of Versailles.
I have no idea when Setlik 3 was

 

[Sgt_G]

I went by what's on Memory Alpha and lightly filled in some holes to round it out. Seriously, I didn't create this thread for me. I'm more of a TOS/TAS fan. I never got into the whole Dominion War. I missed a lot of DS9 episodes due to work schedule and military deployments. Ditto with Voyager. I created the timeline for TUE authors as a starting framework. I'll leave it up to the consensuses of the group for what it needs to be.

I always thought there were a number of Cardassian Wars during the time,

I built that in is the Cardassians dealing with domestic issues.

I've always thought of the Cardassian "War" as just border skirmishes

Yeah, kind of, at least from Starfleet's point of view. My ideas is that the Federation government told Starfleet to simply hold the line and not push the line back even an inch.

I have no idea when Setlik 3 was.

Apparently, nobody else knows, either.