Here’s a good review of the Domination series by John J. Reilly* (warning: spoilers): http://www.johnreilly.info/draka.htm
*Conservative Catholic intellectual, has websites with pages of essays on alternate history, eschatology, world government, much more – http://www.johnreilly.info/.
Regardless of how “practical” the system Stirling created is, he did indeed paint a very bleak picture of life in the Domination, with Under The Yoke (post- WW II-analog consolidation of conquered Europe) probably being the best example, and the Draka conquest of India in The Stone Dogs (and assimiliation, as told through the eyes of an Alliance agent captured “behind-the-lines”) being a close runner up.
A fact clearly acknowledged by the characters in Stirlings works; if the Domination were ever to become content just with what it has, then it would probably begin stagnating technologically very quickly; but their hatred of the “damyanks” and an almost pathological need (inculcated into their society over generations by Nietzschan philosophy) to, well, dominate everything they can (land, space, planets, people, etc) drives the Domination to innovate and research; it’s how they developed superior biotechnology, in order to conquer and pacify Africa.
If you do, make sure you read the appendices in the back of the books. Stirling’s Domination may not be the most plausible alt world ever created, but the man did put some thought into it.
That’s why I think a mini-series may actually be the better way to go with something like this.
That reminds me of (another) glaringly ad hoc fudge – a society with that philosophy would be about as likely to develop “a Conservancy Directorate to minimize civilization’s burden on nature” as the Nazis were to develop new advances in Talmudic scholarship.
The whole Nietzchan thing is just their belief in their inherent superiority, that they are the ubermensch meant to rule the land and all other men; I don’t necessarily see how that precludes them from being adequate (even superior) stewards of the land than capitalist/liberal democratic societies.
Considering that a healthy chunk of the Domination’s Citizens are descended from plantation-owning agrarian aristocrats, I can readily see how they might be better stewards of the land than a society comprised of and descended from robber-baron capitalist industrialists.
Well, the Draka accept industrialization as necessary, but they look at the world through the eyes of a country gentry who love hunting (often taking on dangerous game with spears) and want to pass their estates down to their children in the same condition. They want big, unspoiled countryside everywhere to hunt in, and big green estates (worked by serfs) to live on. Major factory zones (worked by serfs) are tucked well away from the major cities so Citizens don’t have to see them.