I’m not sure what you mean.
You had said
What good is consolidating your control over the population if you’re a tiny minority species wise? You’d quickly run out of populations to corrupt/control. This only makes sense to me if Humanoids ( I keep using that word, but I can’t think of people in a galaxy far far away as just humans) are the predominate population of the areas that the Empire was attempting to control.
“Where are you taking that…thing?”
My favorite line in the whole trilogy.
The strategy worked for South Africa for a good long while. Although it’s possible Palpatine didn’t want long-term stability. The Jedi represent peace, tranquility, and order. The Sith stand for war, chaos, and change. Palpatine’s policies were likely designed to orchestrate as much strife as possible for in the Empire. It’s possible that he even engineered his Empire to eventually collapse in as bloody and terrible a fashion possible, although he probably didn’t expect to get the shaft at the end like he did.
Okay, you threw me when you said, “humanoids,” because virtually every sentient we see in the films is humanoid. A humanoid is anyone roughly shaped like a human: four limbs, one head, upright posture, etc. Chewbacca is as much a humanoid as Princess Leia, although only one of them is human.
I think we are to assume that. At least, the FTL-capable worlds. IIRC, one of the core human worlds (like Corellia or Coruscant) developed FTL travel, which spurred colonization. I don’t think the other species ever overcame that first human advantage and outbred them, as it were.
Also works better when you’re in space; the Empire not only had control over the entire Navy, but also official faster-than-light communication. Humans, and Empire-affiliated humans, might be only a small part of the overall galactic community, but they might very well match or exceed the population of a single planet.
Humans apparently are suppsed to be very, very common amidst the Star Wars galaxy, and probably are the most numerous species. Of course, some of them tend to have really high but tightly packed populations (like on Geonosis) or they’re smaller than the average, so it’s hard to tell. Humans and some odd-looking human derivatives live almost everywhere, though.
I’m going with that (or that the central species in that Long Ago and Far Far Away Galaxy are portrayed as human for the purpose of relating to the audience).
I think it’s pretty clear that their galactic civilization is thousands of years old. Given that our own population has quadrupled in a hundred years with mere 20th/21st century technology, there could be trillions of humans throughout the Star Wars galaxy.
But it is also clear that there aren’t enough Imperial troops and ships to patrol and garrison the entire galaxy. Otherwise they wouldn’t need terror weapons like Death Stars.
Whenever the conversation gets around to the relatively high proportion of humanoids in science fiction universes, I always fall back on the same, indisputable argument.
Kirk would fuck anything. Even if it wasn’t in his own universe or time line.