The fate of empires

[Monterrey]

The Fate of Empires
11
The ambition of the young, once engaged
in the pursuit of adventure and military
glory, and then in the desire for the
accumulation of wealth, now turns to the
acquisition of academic honours.
It is useful here to take note that almost all
the pursuits followed with such passion
throughout the ages were in themselves
good. The manly cult of hardihood, frankness
and truthfulness, which characterised
the Age of Conquests, produced many really
splendid heroes.
The opening up of natural resources, and
the peaceful accumulation of wealth, which
marked the age of commercialism, appeared
to introduce new triumphs in civilisation, in
culture and in the arts. In the same way, the
vast expansion of the field of knowledge
achieved by the Age of Intellect seemed to
mark a new high-water mark of human
progress. We cannot say that any of these
changes were ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
The striking features in the pageant of
empire are:
(a) the extraordinary exactitude with which
these stages have followed one another, in
empire after empire, over centuries or even
millennia; and
(b) the fact that the successive changes
seem to represent mere changes in popular
fashion—new fads and fancies which sweep
away public opinion without logical reason.
At first, popular enthusiasm is devoted to
military glory, then to the accumulation of
wealth and later to the acquisition of
academic fame.
Why could not all these legitimate, and
indeed beneficent, activities be carried on
simultaneously, each of them in due moderation?
Yet this never seemed to happen.
XIX The effects of intellectualism
There are so many things in human life
which are not dreamt of in our popular
philosophy. The spread of knowledge seems
to be the most beneficial of human activities,
and yet every period of decline is characterrised
by this expansion of intellectual
activity. ‘All the Athenians and strangers
which were there spent their time in nothing
else, but either to tell or to hear some new
thing’ is the description given in the Acts of
the Apostles of the decline of Greek
intellectualism.
The Age of Intellect is accompanied by
surprising advances in natural science. In the
ninth century, for example, in the age of
Mamun, the Arabs measured the circumference
of the earth with remarkable
accuracy. Seven centuries were to pass
before Western Europe discovered that the
world was not flat. Less than fifty years after
the amazing scientific discoveries under
Mamun, the Arab Empire collapsed. Wonderful
and beneficent as was the progress of
science, it did not save the empire from
chaos.
The full flowering of Arab and Persian
intellectualism did not occur until after their
imperial and political collapse. Thereafter
the intellectuals attained fresh triumphs in
the academic field, but politically they
became the abject servants of the often
illiterate rulers. When the Mongols conquered
Persia in the thirteenth century, they
were themselves entirely uneducated and
were obliged to depend wholly on native
Persian officials to administer the country
and to collect the revenue. They retained as
wazeer, or Prime Minister, one Rashid al-
Din, a historian of international repute. Yet

[coksiw]

Originally Posted by Monterrey

The Fate of Empires

Page 2

Physical science has expanded its knowledge by building on the work of its predecessors, and by making millions of careful experiments, the results of which are meticulously recorded. Such methods have not yet been employed in the study of world history. Our piecemeal historical work is still mainly dominated by emotion and prejudice.

II The lives of empires

If we desire to ascertain the laws which govern the rise and fall of empires, the obvious course is to investigate the imperial
experiments recorded in history, and to endeavour to deduce from them any lessons which seem to be applicable to them all.
The word ‘empire’, by association with the British Empire, is visualised by some people as an organisation consisting of a homecountry in Europe and ‘colonies’ in other continents. In this essay, the term ‘empire’ is used to signify a great power, often called today a superpower. Most of the empires in history have been large landblocks, almost without overseas possessions.

We possess a considerable amount of information on many empires recorded in history, and of their vicissitudes and the
lengths of their lives, for example:

The nation Dates of rise and fall Duration in years
Assyria 859-612 B.C. 247
Persia 538-330 B.C. 208
(Cyrus and his descendants)
Greece 331-100 B.C. 231
(Alexander and his successors)
Roman Republic 260-27 B.C. 233
Roman Empire 27 B.C.-A.D. 180 207
Arab Empire A.D. 634-880 246
Mameluke Empire 1250-1517 267
Ottoman Empire 1320-1570 250
Spain 1500-1750 250
Romanov Russia 1682-1916 234
Britain 1700-1950 250
This list calls for certain comments.
(1) The present writer is exploring the facts, not trying to prove anything. The dates given are largely arbitrary. Empires do not usually begin or end on a certain date. There is normally a gradual period of expansion and then a period of decline. The resemblance in the duration of these great powers may be queried. Human affairs are subject to many chances, and it is not to be expected that they

Yeah those start-end dates are questionable. The author needs to be more specific about what it means beginning and end.
Why isn’t Egypt in there?

[Amanah]

Rome didn't really "fall" it morphed into nation states as the so called barbarians divided it up in late antiquity.

The US has morphed into a technocracy or an oligarchy.

[Originalist]

The USA was never meant to be an empire but a VOLUNTARY association of free and independent States, the people of each State being the supreme authority concerning their continued participation in this voluntary union.

[coksiw]

Originally Posted by Originalist

The USA was never meant to be an empire but a VOLUNTARY association of free and independent States, the people of each State being the supreme authority concerning their continued participation in this voluntary union.

Well, it behaved like one according to Glubb and it is also showing its “age” perfectly described in the book.

[coksiw]

Originally Posted by Amanah

Rome didn't really "fall" it morphed into nation states as the so called barbarians divided it up in late antiquity.

The US has morphed into a technocracy or an oligarchy.

If I understood correctly, the morphing into states like that with no a central head could be seen as the end of the life of an empire. The people of the empire doesn’t perish, just the system.
UK is an example, once an empire with territories all over, now it is just one little state. It is the system that perish, the people are still there, and who knows, they may even come back as an ethnic group of pioneers (stage one of an empire).

According to Glubb’s stages the USA is perfectly described in the stage of decadence at this moment. The most peaceful outcome is USA looses international influence, and becomes a weak nation. The worst would be a violent series of secessions.

[Amanah]

A semblance of the original structure of Roman empire continued in the Roman church which broke into the western part, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eastern part which continued until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

[coksiw]

This is my reasoning from his finding. The root cause, as he explains, it is excessive wealth. So, truly, this is then applicable to all human systems that generates a lot of wealth.
The pioneer, and conquest, and commerce stage is unique of an empire, or any other wealth motivated system expanding beyond their boundaries.

However, the affluence, and rest of stages, is the result of excessive wealth. That second part could happen even to a country that it is not an empire per-se, but somehow had a significant prosperity period that lasted enough generations to cause wide-spread corruption of people's souls.

There are so many verses in the Bible about that.

[Esaias]

Originally Posted by coksiw

If I understood correctly, the morphing into states like that with no a central head could be seen as the end of the life of an empire. The people of the empire doesn’t perish, just the system.
UK is an example, once an empire with territories all over, now it is just one little state. It is the system that perish, the people are still there, and who knows, they may even come back as an ethnic group of pioneers (stage one of an empire).

According to Glubb’s stages the USA is perfectly described in the stage of decadence at this moment. The most peaceful outcome is USA looses international influence, and becomes a weak nation. The worst would be a violent series of secessions.

The British Empire is still pretty much in power via financial arrangements and banking. The City of London (the banking district, not the municipality) is the agent of Vatican wealth and influence, and manages the international banking (central bank) industries who control most of the individual nations.

[Originalist]

Originally Posted by coksiw

Well, it behaved like one according to Glubb and it is also showing its “age” perfectly described in the book.

A faction desiring economic dominance took over by force in 1865. The States were nationalized at that point and became economic subjects to these economic imperialists. The free nation of Hawaii was their next victim. They then experienced with seizing already existing colonies of Spain (Peurto Rico, Guam. the Philippines), but soon realized that the economic costs of colonization outweighed other benefits. Since then their focus has been on the homefront as they continue to grind their heel into the sovereign States.