Jabba the Hutt was one of the most powerful and infamous crime lords in the entire galaxy.
But how did such a fat, slow, and sloppy creature gain so much power?
Well, Jabba himself gained most of his power from his family, by proving to them that he
was intelligent and vicious enough to run the family’s crime business, and by also
murdering any potential rivals that could have taken the throne from him.
So, the question now is, how did the Hutts in general get so much power to begin with
then?
This answer can be found by going back to the Hutt’s origins and their first expeditions
onto other worlds over 25,000 years before the clone wars.
Initially, the Hutts’ homeworld was Varl, which was under the rule of the Rakata and
their galactic empire known as the Infinite Empire.
Eventually, the Infinite Empire fell apart, and some of their technology fell into the
hands of the primitive Hutts.
It’s believed that the Hutts used this Rakata technology to develop their own ships, allowing
for interstellar travel.
Once the Hutts achieved interstellar travel, they began to conquer and enslave neighboring
worlds, which usually contained only primitive species.
Although their superior technology allowed them to conquer these worlds quickly and easily,
the Hutts themselves were actually pretty formidable when it came to fighting.
Despite looking like overweight slugs, they were pretty strong with the amount of muscle
they contained, with even those that wanted to, could train themselves into becoming pretty
quick warriors, transforming their fat into muscle, allowing them to move fast despite
their large size.
Sort of like bears.
Their skin was very resistant to many harmful elements, like poisonous gas and disease.The
skin could also resist light blaster bolts and regenerate in some cases.
Just to illustrate how the Hutts fought without blasters, was that they usually would thrust
themselves at their enemies and just straight up eat them, swallowing them up entirely and
literally suffocating them to death within their own bodies.
So even without weapons, trained Hutts could easily kill you if you underestimated them.
And the Hutts were brutal in their early conquest campaigns, driving some species to complete
extinction.
They eventually started to use a slave army to fight most of their wars.
Obtaining millions of slaves and countless resources, allowed the Hutts to create the
Hutt Empire, which composed much of the Outer Rim.
Unlike many of the other major empires and governments emerging around this time frame,
the Hutt Empire mainly focused on control of commerce rather than building up its military
or expanding its political influence.
This resulted in them becoming very wealthy.
The Hutt Empire eventually crumbled after it experienced a massive civil war, leaving
the Hutt homeworld Varl completely destroyed and lifeless.
This civil war transformed the Hutt Empire into the Hutt Space, and the planet Nal Hutta
later became the new Hutt homeworld.
The Hutt Ruling council was formed, with the purpose of preventing another civil war from
happening among the Hutt Clans.
The Hutt Ruling council settled disputes among rival Hutt Clans by playing a neutral role,
and by encouraging cooperation rather than rivalry.
Despite the collapse of the Hutt Empire, most of the ruling Hutts maintained their immense
wealth, leading to many to invest their fortunes into creating underworld criminal empires.
With their wealth, the Hutts were able to purchase countless mercenaries and thugs to
enforce and manage their rule over their respective territories.
The Hutts created a network among each other, and protected each other in a sense, in that
if you were to kill one Hutt, you were to become an enemy of all other Hutts.
So even if you were able to kill one Hutt crimelord, you would probably be dead by the
time you even attempt to kill another one, as every other Hutt crime lord would send
their menerancies after you.
And this also applied to other Hutts, who were caught killing or attempting to kill
their rivals.
We should note that Hutts on average live over 1,000 years.
Living for such a long time allowed the Hutts to not only become very intelligent and knowledgeable
of galactic affairs, but it also allowed them to make connections with other criminal syndicates
and contacts, boosting their influence in the criminal world and branding their name
as something to be feared.
They also negotiated deals with other neighboring galactic governments, forging alliances and
trading deals that benefited both parties, giving no logical reason for anyone to invade
them.
So for example, even though the Galactic Empire could have easily killed all the Hutts and
wiped out their entire criminal empire, they didn’t really have a reason to.
Doing so would have just been a waste of time and resources, as the Hutts pretty much already
bent the knee to the empire and established trading deals which benefitted the Empire
economically.
So the empire invading Hutt space would have done more harm than good for them.
In other words, the Hutt’s knew their place and understood that if they were to expand
onto the Mid and Inner rims of the galaxy, that they would be crushed with ease.
In Hutt culture, being as fat as possible was viewed as a good thing, as it showed that
you were powerful and wealthy.
This extra weight showed that the Hutt was so powerful that he didn’t need to do anything
himself, but command his servants to do his bidding.
And although it may be easy to kill an overweight Hutt in a one on one fight, the real problem
was not the Hutt himself, but the army of mercenaries that stood between you and him.
And getting to a Hutt was very difficult, as they almost always just sat on their thrones
in the center of their criminal empire, being surrounded by hordes of guards and traps.
They maybe would leave from within their palace or fortress once or twice a year at most.
So Jabba’s power mainly came from his species and family’s past, in which they accumulated
so much wealth and influence within a small, undeveloped region, that they were able to
basically rule everything without any real opposition within their corner of the galaxy.