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THE HISTORY OF EMPIRE Edited by THE FROLINAN SCHOLAR

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF EMPIRES: A THEORY OF DE-DEVELOPMENT By Johan Galtung, dr hc mult, Professor of Peace Studies

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THE HISTORY OF EMPIRE Edited by THE FROLINAN SCHOLAR

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF EMPIRES: A THEORY OF DE-DEVELOPMENT By Johan Galtung, dr hc mult, Professor of Peace Studies

Empire 1

Empire

Imperialism and colonization in 1900

The term empire derives from the Latinimperium (power, authority). Politically, anempire is a geographically extensive groupof states and peoples (ethnic groups) unitedand ruled either by a monarch (emperor,empress) or an oligarchy.

Aside from the traditional usage, the termempire can be used in an extended sense todenote a large-scale business enterprise (e.g.a transnational corporation), or a politicalorganisation of either national-, regional- orcity scale, controlled either by a person (apolitical boss) or a group authority (politicalbosses).[1]

An imperial political structure is established and maintained in two ways: (i) as a territorial empire of directconquest and control with force (direct, physical action to compel the emperor's goals), and (ii) as a coercive,hegemonic empire of indirect conquest and control with power (the perception that the emperor can physicallyenforce his desired goals). The former provides greater tribute and direct political control, yet limits furtherexpansion because it absorbs military forces to fixed garrisons. The latter provides less tribute and indirect control,but avails military forces for further expansion.[2] Territorial empires (e.g. the Mongol Empire, the Median Empire)tended to be contiguous areas. The term on occasion has been applied to maritime empires or thalassocracies, (e.g.the Athenian and British Empires) with looser structures and more scattered territories.

DefinitionAn empire is a state with politico-military dominion of populations who are culturally and ethnically distinct fromthe imperial (ruling) ethnic group and its culture[3] — unlike a federation, an extensive state voluntarily composed ofautonomous states and peoples.What physically and politically constitutes an empire is variously defined. It might be a state effecting imperialpolicies, or a particular political structure. Empires are typically formed from separate components that cometogether. Some units include ethnic, national, cultural, and religious diversity.[4]

Sometimes an empire is a semantic construction, such as when a ruler assumes the title of "Emperor". The saidruler's nation logically becomes an "Empire", despite having no additional territory or hegemony such as CentralAfrican Empire or the Korean Empire proclaimed in 1897 when Korea, far from gaining new territory, was on theverge of being annexed by the Empire of Japan, the last to use the name officially. Amongst the last of these empiresof the 20th century were the Central African Empire, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Manchukuo, the German Empire, andKorea.The terrestrial empire's maritime analogue is the thalassocracy, an empire comprising islands and coasts which areaccessible to its terrestrial homeland, such as the Athenian-dominated Delian League.

Empire 2

History of imperialism

Early empires

Early empires

Achaemenid Empire of Persia at its zenith Maurya Empire of India at its greatest extentunder Ashoka the Great

The Akkadian Empire of Sargon the Great (24th century BCE), was an early large empire. In the 15th century BCE,the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, ruled by Thutmose III, was ancient Africa's major force upon incorporatingNubia and the ancient city-states of the Levant. The first empire comparable to Rome in organization was theAssyrian empire (2000–612 BCE). The Median Empire was the first empire on the territory of Persia. By the 6thcentury BCE, after having allied with the Babylonians to defeat the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Medes were able toestablish their own empire, the largest of its day, lasting for about sixty years. The successful, extensive, andmulti-cultural empire that was the Persian Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE) absorbed Mesopotamia, Egypt, partof Greece, Thrace, the rest of the Middle East, much of Central Asia and Pakistan, until it was overthrown andreplaced by the brief-lived empire of Alexander the Great.The Maurya Empire was a geographically extensive and powerful empire in ancient India, ruled by the Mauryandynasty from 321 to 185 BCE. The Empire was founded in 322 BC by Chandragupta Maurya who rapidly expandedhis power westwards across central and western India, taking advantage of the disruptions of local powers in thewake of the withdrawal westward by Alexander the Great. By 320 BCE, the empire had fully occupied pastnorthwestern India as well as defeating and conquering the satraps left by Alexander. It has been estimated that theMaurya Dynasty controlled an unprecedented one-third of the world's entire economy, was home to one-third of theworld's population at the time (an estimated 50 million out of 150 million humans), contained the world's largest cityof the time (Pataliputra, estimated to be larger than Rome under Emperor Trajan) and according to Megasthenes, theempire wielded a military of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry, and 9,000 war elephants.

Empire 3

Classical period

Classical period

The Roman Empire under Trajan (98 - 117). This would be theEmpire's peak territorial power.

Han Empire of China in 87 BC.

The Roman Empire was the most extensive Western empire until the early modern period. Prior to the RomanEmpire the kingdom of Macedonia, under Alexander the Great, became an empire that spanned from Greece toNorthwestern India. After Alexander's death, his empire fractured into four, discrete kingdoms ruled by theDiadochi, which, despite being independent, are denoted as the "Hellenistic Empire" by virtue of their similarity inculture and administration.In western Asia, the term Persian Empire denotes the Iranian imperial states established at different historicalperiods of pre–Islamic and post–Islamic Persia. And in East Asia, various Celestial Empires arose periodicallybetween periods of war, civil war, and foreign conquests. In India Chandragupta expanded the Mauryan Empire toNorthwest India (modern day Pakistan and Afghanistan). This also included the era of expansion of Buddhism underAshoka the Great. In China the Han Empire became one of East Asia's most long lived dynasties, but was precededby the short-lived Qin Empire.

Post-classical periodThe 7th century saw the emergence of the Islamic Empire, also referred to as the Arab Empire. The Rashidun Caliphate expanded from the Arabian Peninsula and swiftly conquered the Persian Empire and much of the Byzantine Roman Empire. Its successor state, the Umayyad Caliphate, expanded across North Africa and into the Iberian Peninsula. By the beginning of the 8th century, it had become the largest empire in history at that point, until it was eventually surpassed in size by the Mongol Empire in the 13th century. The ally of the Caliphate, the Somali Ajuuraan Empire, ruled over the Horn of Africa.[5] Through a strong centralized administration and an aggressive military stance towards invaders, the Ajuuraan empire successfully resisted an Oromo invasion from the west and a Portuguese incursion from the east during the Gaal Madow and the Ajuuraan-Portuguese wars.[6][7] Trading routes dating from the ancient and early medieval periods of Somali maritime enterprise were strengthened or re-established, and foreign trade and commerce in the coastal provinces flourished with ships sailing to and coming from a myriad of kingdoms and empires in East Asia, South Asia, Europe, the Near East, North Africa and East Africa.[8] In the 7th century, Maritime Southeast Asia witnessed the rise of a Buddhist thallasocracy—the Srivijaya Empire—which thrived for 600 years, and was succeeded by the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit Empire in the 13th to 15th century. In the Southeast Asian mainland, the Hindu-Buddhist Khmer Empire built an empire centered in the city of Angkor and which flourished from the 9th to 13th century. Followed by the sack of Khmer Empire, the Siamese Empire was flourished alongside the Burmese and Lan Chang Empire from 13th through to 18th century . In Eastern Europe the Byzantine Empire had to recognize the Imperial title of the Bulgarian rulers in 917 (through a

Empire 4

Bulgarian Tsar). The Bulgarian Empire remained a major power in the Balkans until its fall in the late 14th century.

Post-classical period

The expansion of the Rashidun Empire. The Ajuuraan Empirein the 15th century.

Mongol Empire in the 13th century.

At the time, in the Medieval West, the title "empire" had a specific technical meaning that was exclusively applied tostates that considered themselves the heirs and successors of the Roman Empire, e.g. the Byzantine Empire whichwas the actual continuation of the Eastern Roman Empire, and later the Carolingian Empire, the largely GermanicHoly Roman Empire, the Russian Empire, yet these states were not always technically — geographic, political,military — empires in the modern sense of the word. To legitimise their imperium, these states directly claimed thetitle of Empire from Rome. The sacrum Romanum imperium (Holy Roman Empire) of 800 to 1806, claimed to haveexclusively comprehended Christian principalities, and was only nominally a discrete imperial state. The HolyRoman Empire was not always centrally-governed, as it had neither core nor peripheral territories, and was notgoverned by a central, politico-military élite — hence, Voltaire's remark that the Holy Roman Empire "was neitherholy, nor Roman, nor an empire" is accurate to the degree that it ignores[9] German rule over Italian, French,Provençal, Polish, Flemish, Dutch, and Bohemian populations, and the efforts of the ninth-century Holy RomanEmperors (i.e. the Ottonians) to establish central control; thus, Voltaire's ". . . nor an empire" observation applies toits late period.In 1204, after the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople, the crusaders established a Latin Empire (1204–1261) inthat city, while the defeated Byzantine Empire's descendants established two, smaller, short-lived empires in AsiaMinor: the Empire of Nicaea (1204–1261) and the Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461). Constantinople was retakenby the Byzantine successor state centered in Nicaea in 1261, re-establishing the Byzantine Empire until 1453, bywhich time the Turkish-Muslim Ottoman Empire (ca.1300–1918), had conquered most of the region. Moreover,Eastern Orthodox imperialism was not re-established until the coronation, in 1721, of Peter the Great as Emperor ofRussia. Like-wise, with the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, in 1806, during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815),the Austrian Empire (1804–1867), emerged reconstituted as the Empire of Austria–Hungary (1867–1918), having"inherited" the imperium of Central and Western Europe from the losers of said wars.The Mongol Empire, under Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century, was forged as the largest contiguous empire inthe world. Genghis Khan's grandson, Kublai Khan, was proclaimed emperor, and established his imperial capital atBeijing; however, in his reign, the empire became fractured into four, discrete khanates. Nevertheless, the emergenceof the Pax Mongolica had significantly eased trade and commerce across Asia.[10][11]

In Oceania Tonga Empire was a lonely empire that existed many centuries since Medieval till Modern period.

Empire 5

Colonial empiresEuropean landings in the so-called "New World" (first, the Americas and later, Australia) in the 15th century, alongwith the Portuguese's travels around the Cape of Good Hope and along the southeast Indian Ocean coast of Africa,proved ripe opportunities for the continent's Renaissance-era monarchies to launch colonial empires like those of theancient Romans and Greeks. In the "Old World", colonial imperialism was attempted, effected and established uponthe Canary Islands and Ireland. These conquered lands and peoples became de jure subordinates of the empire, ratherthan de facto imperial territory and subjects. Such subjugation often elicited "client-state" resentment that the empireunwisely ignored, leading to the collapse of the European colonial imperial system in the late-19th century and theearly- and mid-20th century. Spanish discovery of the New World gave way to many expeditions led by England,Portugal, France, the Dutch Republic and Spain. In the 18th century, the Spanish Empire was at its height because ofthe great mass of goods taken from conquered territory in the Americas (Mexico, parts of the United States, theCaribbean) and the Philippines.

Modern period

Modern period

The Russian Empire in 1866 became the second largestcontiguous empire to have ever existed. The RussianFederation is currently the largest state on the planet.

In 1920, the British Empire was the largest empire in history.

Ottoman territories acquired between1481 and 1683 (See: list of territories)

The Spanish–Portuguese Empire of the Iberian Union (1580–1640)was the first global imperial entity.

Empire 6

The red of this map of North America 1775, shows thoseareas the British exercised direct control, while the pink

shows areas largely under indirect control.

In the year 1690, the realms of the Mughal Empirespanned from Kabul to Cape Comorin.[12]

In general governments styled themselves as having greater size, scope and power than the territorial,politico-military and economic facts allow. As a consequence some monarchs assumed the title of "emperor" (or itscorresponding translation: tsar, empereur, kaiser, etc.) and renamed their states as "The Empire of . . . ".The French emperors Napoleon I and Napoleon III (See: Second Mexican Empire [1864–1867]) each attemptedestablishing a western imperial hegemony based in France. The German Empire (1871–1918), another "heir to theHoly Roman Empire" arose in 1871. Europeans began applying the name of "empire" to non-European monarchies,such as the Qing Dynasty and the Mughal Empire as well as Maratha Empire, and then leading, eventually, to thelooser denotations applicable to any political structure meeting the criteria of imperium.Empires accreted to different types of states, although they traditionally originated as powerful monarchies. TheAthenian Empire, the Roman Empire and the British Empire developed under elective auspices. The Empire ofBrazil declared itself an empire after breaking from the Portuguese Empire in 1822. France has twice transited frombeing called the French Republic to being called the French Empire, while France remained an overseas empire. Todate it still governs colonies (French Guyana, Martinique, Réunion, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, St Martin, Stpierre et miquelon, Guadeloupe, TAAF, Wallis and Futuna, Saint Barthélemy, Mayotte) and exerts an hegemony inFrancophone Africa (29 francophone countries such as Chad, Rwanda, et cetera).Historically empires resulted from military conquest, incorporating the vanquished states to its political union. Astate could establish imperial hegemony in other ways. A weak state may seek annexation into the empire. Forexample, the bequest of Pergamon by Attalus III, to the Roman Empire. The Unification of Germany as the empireaccreted to the Prussian metropole was less a military conquest of the German states than their political divorce fromthe Austrian Empire. Having convinced the other states of its military prowess — and having excluded the Austrians— Prussia dictated the terms of imperial membership.The Sikh Empire (1799–1846) was established in the Punjab. It collapsed when the founder, Ranjit Singh, died and their army fell to the British. During the same period, Maratha Empire or the Maratha Confederacy was a Hindu state located in present-day India. It existed from 1674 to 1818 and at its peak the empire's territories covered much of South Asia. The empire was founded and consolidated by Shivaji. After the death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb it expanded greatly under the rule of the Peshwas. In 1761, the Maratha army lost the Third Battle of Panipat which

Empire 7

halted the expansion of the empire. Later, the empire was divided into a confederacy of Maratha states whicheventually were lost to the British in the Anglo-Maratha wars by 1818.[13]

The British also established their first empire in North America by colonizing the northern part that included Canadaand the colonies in America. In 1776, the United States declared itself independent from the British empire thusbeginning the American Revolution.Politically it was typical for either a monarchy or an oligarchy, rooted in the original core territory of the empire, tocontinue to dominate. If government was maintained via control of water vital to the colonial subjects, such régimeswere called hydraulic empires. When possible, empires used a common religion or culture to strengthen the politicalstructure.In time, an empire may metamorphose to another form of polity. To wit, the Holy Roman Empire, a Germanre-constitution of the Roman Empire, metamorphosed into various political structures (i.e. Federalism), andeventually, under Habsburg rule, re-constituted itself as the Austrian Empire — an empire of much different politicsand vaster extension. After the Second World War (1939–1945) the British Empire evolved into a loose,multi-national Commonwealth of Nations; while the French colonial empire metamorphosed to a Francophonecommonwealth. The British Empire also colonized China after the opium wars and had major influences in theregion via controlling Hong Kong, which was handed back to China in 1997 after 150 years of rule. The Portugueseestablished its colony in China and had control over the territory of Macau, which was also handed back to China in1999. Also, the French established its colony in China and had control over the territory of Kwang-Chou-Wan,which was also handed back to China in 1946.An autocratic empire can become a republic (e.g. the Central African Empire in 1979); or it can become a republicwith its imperial dominions reduced to a core territory (e.g. Weimar Germany, 1918–1919 and the Ottoman Empire,1918–1923). The dissolution of the Austro–Hungarian Empire, after 1918, is an example of a multi-ethnic superstatebroken into its constituent states: the republics, kingdoms, and provinces of Austria, Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia,Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czechoslovakia, Ruthenia, Galicia, et al.

Empire from 1945 to the presentContemporaneously, the concept of Empire is politically valid, yet is not always used in the traditional sense; forexample Japan is considered the world's sole remaining empire because of the continued presence of the JapaneseEmperor in national politics. Despite the semantic reference to Imperial power, Japan is a de facto constitutionalmonarchy, with a homogeneous population of 127 million people that is 98.5 per cent ethnic Japanese, making it oneof the largest nation-states.[14]

Characterizing some aspects of American foreign policy and international behavior "American Empire" iscontroversial but not uncommon. Stuart Creighton Miller posits that the public's sense of innocence aboutRealpolitik (cf. American Exceptionalism) impairs popular recognition of US imperial conduct. Since it governedother countries via surrogates — domestically-weak, right-wing governments that collapse without US support.[15]

G.W. Bush's Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said: "We don't seek empires. We're not imperialistic; we neverhave been"[16] — directly contradicts Thomas Jefferson, in the 1780s, awaiting the fall of the Spanish empire: ". . .till our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece".[17][18][19] In turn, historianSidney Lens argues that from its inception the US has used every means to dominate other nations.[20]

Since the European Union began, in 1993, as a west European trade bloc, it established its own currency, the Euro, in1999, established discrete military forces, and exercised its limited hegemony in parts of eastern Europe and Asia.This behaviour, the political scientist Jan Zielonka [21] suggests, is imperial, because it coerces its neighbourcountries to adopt its European economic, legal, and political structures.[22][23][24][25][26][27]

In his book review of Empire (2000) by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Mehmet Akif Okur posits that, since the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S., the international relations determining the world's balance of power (political, economic, military) have been altered. These alterations include the intellectual (political science) trends

Empire 8

that perceive the contemporary world's order via the re-territorrialisation of political space, the re-emergence ofclassical imperialist practices (the "inside" vs. "outside" duality, cf. the Other), the deliberate weakening ofinternational organisations, the restructured international economy, economic nationalism, the expanded arming ofmost countries, the proliferation of nuclear weapon capabilities and the politics of identity emphasizing a state'ssubjective perception of its place in the world, as a nation and as a civilisation. These changes constitute the "Age ofNation Empires"; as imperial usage, nation-empire denotes the return of geopolitical power from global power blocsto regional power blocs (i.e. centred upon a "regional power" state [China, Russia, U.S., et al.]) and regionalmulti-state power alliances (i.e. Europe, Latin America, South East Asia). Nation-empire regionalism claimssovereignty over their respective (regional) political (social, economic, ideologic), cultural and military spheres.[28]

Timeline of empiresThe chart below shows a timeline of polities which have been called empires. Dynastic changes are marked with awhite line.

References

Notes[1] "definition of empire from Oxford Dictionaries Online" (http:/ / oxforddictionaries. com/ definition/ empire?view=uk). Oxford Dictionary. .

Retrieved 21 November 2008.[2] Ross Hassig, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest (1994), pp. 23–24, ISBN 0-582-06829-0 (pbk)[3] The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, Second Edition (2001), p.461, ISBN 0-19-860046-1[4] Howe, Stephen (2002). Empire. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 15. ISBN 978-0-19-280223-1.[5] I.M. Lewis, A modern history of Somalia: nation and state in the Horn of Africa, 2nd edition, revised, illustrated, (Westview Press: 1988),

p.24.[6][6] Virginia Luling, Somali Sultanate: the Geledi city-state over 150 years, p. 17[7][7] Luc Cambrézy, Populations réfugiées: de l'exil au retour, p.316[8] Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, 800–1900 (African Studies) by Pouwels Randall L – pg

15[9] Voltaire (http:/ / en. wikiquote. org/ wiki/ Voltaire), Wikiquote, citing Essai sur l'histoire generale et sur les moeurs et l'espirit des nations,

Chapter 70 (1756), , retrieved 2008-01-06[10][10] Gregory G.Guzman - Were the barbarians a negative or positive factor in ancient and medieval history?, The historian 50 (1988), 568-70[11][11] Thomas T.Allsen - Culture and conquest in Mongol Eurasia, 211[12] The East India Company and the British Empire in the Far East - Marguerite Eyer Wilbur, The East India Company - Google Books (http:/ /

books. google. com. pk/ books?id=HTCsAAAAIAAJ& pg=PA175& lpg=PA175& dq=baharji+ borah& source=bl& ots=AlYwMkBwb6&sig=KpQbE7bMcMILePXasygPjYd6Xkk& hl=en& ei=ahnNTtnqEOHb4QSUtZ1S& sa=X& oi=book_result& ct=result& resnum=4&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage& q=cape comorin& f=false). Books.google.com.pk. . Retrieved 2012-04-29.

[13] Pagadi, Setumadhavarao R. (1983), Shivaji (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=UVFuAAAAMAAJ), National Book Trust, India, p. 21,ISBN 81-237-0647-2,

[14][14] George Hicks, Japan's hidden apartheid: the Korean minority and the Japanese, (Aldershot, England; Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998), 3.[15] Johnson, Chalmers, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000), pp.72–9[16] Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, Lay summary (http:/ / booksellers. penguingroup. com/ nf/ Book/

BookDisplay/ 0,,9780143034797,00. html)[17] Sidney Lens; Howard Zinn (2003), The forging of the American empire: from the revolution to Vietnam, a history of U.S. imperialism (http:/

/ books. google. com/ books?id=qvLfIHqkOOAC), Pluto Press, pp.  63–64 (http:/ / books. google. com. ph/ books?id=qvLfIHqkOOAC&pg=PA63), ISBN 978-0-7453-2100-4,

[18] LaFeber, Walter, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (1993) 2nd edition, p.19

Empire 9

[19] Max Boot (May 6, 2003), American Imperialism? No Need to Run Away from Label (http:/ / www. cfr. org/ publication. html?id=5934),Council on Foreign Relations OP-Ed, quoting USA Today, , retrieved 2008-01-06

[20] Lens & Zinn 2003, p.  Back cover (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=qvLfIHqkOOAC& printsec=backcover).[21] http:/ / users. ox. ac. uk/ ~polf0040/[22] Ian Black (December 20, 2002), Living in a euro wonderland (http:/ / www. guardian. co. uk/ elsewhere/ journalist/ story/ 0,,863888,00.

html), Guardian unlimited, , retrieved 2008-01-06[23] EU gets its military fist (http:/ / news. bbc. co. uk/ 2/ hi/ europe/ 2574625. stm), BBC News, December 13, 2002, , retrieved 2008-01-06[24] Nikolaos Tzifakis (April 2007), "EU's region-building and boundary-drawing policies: the European approach to the Southern

Mediterranean and the Western Balkans 1" (http:/ / www. informaworld. com/ smpp/ content~content=a777076388~db=all), Journal ofSouthern Europe and the Balkans (informaworld) 9 (1): 47–64, doi:10.1080/14613190701217001, , retrieved 2007-01-06

[25] Stephen R. Hurt (2003), "Co-operation and coercion? The Cotonou Agreement between the European Union and acp states and the end ofthe Lomé Convention" (http:/ / taylorandfrancis. metapress. com/ index/ HNG8A7X4G9BWAM84. pdf), Third World Quarterly(informaworld) 24: 161–176, doi:10.1080/713701373, , retrieved 2007-01-06

[26] Europeanisation and Conflict Resolution: Case Studies from the European Periphery (http:/ / www. belspo. be/ belspo/ home/ publ/pub_ostc/ WM/ rS10303_en. pdf), Belgian Science Policy, , retrieved 2008-01-06

[27] Jan Zielonka (2006), Europe as empire: the nature of the enlarged European Union (http:/ / users. ox. ac. uk/ ~polf0040/ IAReview. pdf),Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-929221-3, , retrieved 2008-01-06

[28] For the Okur's thesis about "nation empires", look at the article: Mehmet Akif Okur, Rethinking Empire After 9/11: Towards A NewOntological Image of World Order (http:/ / www. sam. gov. tr/ perceptions/ volume12/ winter/winter-004-PERCEPTION(mehmetakifokur)[4]. pdf) Perceptions, Journal of International Affairs, Volume XII, Winter 2007, pp.61-93

Bibliography• Gilpin, Robert War and Change in World Politics (http:/ / books. google. it/ books?id=2iKL7zr3kl0C)

pp. 110–116• Geiss, Imanuel (1983), War and empire in the twentieth century, Aberdeen University Press,

ISBN 0-08-030387-0• Johan Galtung (January 1996), The Decline and Fall of Empires: A Theory of De-Development (http:/ / web.

archive. org/ web/ 20071013085302/ http:/ / transcend. org/ galt. htm), Honolulu, archived from the original(http:/ / www. transcend. org/ galt. htm) on 2007-10-13, retrieved 2008-01-06 Written for the United NationsResearch Institute on Development, UNRISD, Geneva.

• Lens, Sidney; Zinn, Howard (2003), The Forging of the American Empire: From the Revolution to Vietnam: AHistory of American Imperialism (http:/ / books. google. com/ ?id=qvLfIHqkOOAC), Plkuto press,ISBN 0-7453-2100-3

• Bowden, Brett (2009), The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea, University of ChicagoPress, ISBN 978-0-226-06814-5

External links• Index of Colonies and Possessions (http:/ / www. worldstatesmen. org/ COLONIES. html)• Gavrov, Sergey (http:/ / ru. wikipedia. org/ ?oldid=46320689) Modernization of the Empire. Social and Cultural

Aspects of Modernization Processes in Russia (http:/ / books. google. ru/ books?printsec=frontcover&id=Xk_2XdutUVcC#v=onepage& q=& f=true;) ISBN 978-5-354-00915-2

• Mehmet Akif Okur, Rethinking Empire After 9/11: Towards A New Ontological Image of World Order,Perceptions, Journal of International Affairs, Volume XII, Winter 2007, pp.61-93 (http:/ / www. sam. gov. tr/perceptions/ volume12/ winter/ winter-004-PERCEPTION(mehmetakifokur)[4]. pdf)

Article Sources and Contributors 10

Article Sources and ContributorsEmpire  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=511453459  Contributors: (, 200.191.188.xxx, 2812, 3141llamsR, 4shizzal, A. 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Image Sources, Licenses and ContributorsFile:WorldEmpires.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:WorldEmpires.png  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0  Contributors: User:GBozankoFile:Map achaemenid empire en.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Map_achaemenid_empire_en.png  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 Contributors: User:FabienkhanFile:Maurya Dynasty in 265 BCE.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Maurya_Dynasty_in_265_BCE.jpg  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Contributors: Vastu (talk). Original uploader was Vastu at en.wikipediaFile:Roman Empire-117AD.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Roman_Empire-117AD.png  License: GNU Free Documentation License  Contributors: Eleassar, ErKomandante, Gryffindor, Rettetast, 1 anonymous editsFile:Han map.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Han_map.jpg  License: GNU Free Documentation License  Contributors: User Yuninjie on en.wikipediaFile:Rashidun654wVassal.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Rashidun654wVassal.png  License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0  Contributors: GabagoolFile:Ajuuraan.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Ajuuraan.png  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0  Contributors: User:RunehelmetFile:Mongols-map.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Mongols-map.png  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.0  Contributors: Electionworld,Firespeaker, Latebird, Nik Sage, Quadell, 1 anonymous editsFile:The Russian Empire-en.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:The_Russian_Empire-en.png  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0  Contributors:ShadowxfoxFile:BritishEmpire1919.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:BritishEmpire1919.png  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5  Contributors: Maps & LucyFile:Ottoman empire.svg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Ottoman_empire.svg  License: unknown  Contributors: André KoehneFile:Spanish Empire.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Spanish_Empire.png  License: GNU Free Documentation License  Contributors: Users Albrecht, ArthurWellesley, XGustaX on en.wikipediaFile:Map of territorial growth 1775.svg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Map_of_territorial_growth_1775.svg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Cg-realms;adapted from a scan from the National Atlas of the United StatesFile:India in 1700 Joppen.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:India_in_1700_Joppen.jpg  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Charles Joppen

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THE DECLINE AND FALL OF EMPIRES: A THEORY OF DE-DEVELOPMENT

by Johan Galtung, dr hc mult, Professor of Peace Studies

Director, TRANSCEND: A Peace and Development Network

Written for the United Nations Research Institute on Development, UNRISD, Geneva

Honolulu, January 1996

Tokyo, May 1996

Contents

1. Introduction: Why study de-development?

2. Decline, fall, and the afterlife of empires

3. Toward a theory of development: Some factors

4. Toward a theory of de-development: Twenty factors

5. Ten mini-studies

5.1 The decline and fall of the West Roman Empire

5.2 The decline and fall of the East Roman Empire

5.3 The decline and fall of the Arab empires

5.4 The decline and fall of Spain (la decadencia)

5.5 The decline and fall of the Italian city-states

5.6 The decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire

5.7 The decline and fall of the Chinese Ch'ing dynasty

5.8 The decline and fall of the British Empire

5.9 The decline and fall of the Soviet Empire

5.10 The coming decline and fall of the US Empire

6. Twenty factors, Ten mini-studies and Five reflections

7. A mini-theory of rats, sinking ships, and new ships

8. Sustainability vs. natural death and euthanasia

9. Conclusion: Decline and fall of the global marketplace?

1. Introduction: Why study de-development?

Development studies often focus on deficits relative to certain goals and on how to make up.

Resources can be made available, like capital through savings, grants, loans, investment; human

capital through education/skills, health, modern values; fixed capital through technical

assistance, infrastructure, etc. One interesting formula is Development = Education/skills +

Infrastructure.

Given the development crisis, however, another perspective may also be appropriate.

"Development" is positive, carrying an idea of progress perspective. How about studying "de-

development", a negative, regress perspective, with decline and fall? As a minimum it might be

useful to know how and why things went wrong, trying to draw some conclusions about what not

to do. A focus on positive outcomes is needed. But we should also focus on negative outcomes,

on what should not be done, not come about, backed by data and theory. Falsification is also

easier than verification.

Economists and macro-historians like Edward Gibbon, Carlo M. Cipolla, Mancur Olson, Paul

Kennedy, P. Dasgupta have made material and hypotheses/theories available. Their books can be

mined for insights in de-development, and their findings can be related to general studies of

factors conditioning development.

After looking at about 30 cases, ten cases were selected: West Rome, East Rome (Byzants), Arab

Empires, Spain/la decadencia, Italian city-states, the Ottoman Empire, Ch'ing dynasty, British

empire, Soviet empire (socialist), and the US empire (capitalist). The mini-studies are superficial,

mainly based on Cipolla's major book. There may be other views. But there is sufficient basis to

propose a theory of de-development which can then be used as an additional approach,

complementing positive development theory.

2. Decline, fall and the afterlife of empires

Our cases are empires and dynasties. That they decline and in the end fall, can be seen as a

special case of the more general "law" or principle that nothing lasts forever. Everything is

subject to the "Law of Change." But if that is so, this should also be the case for that Law. Its

validity should not be "forever". Looking at the list of the ten empires, their creators certainly did

not think of their projet as existing on a limited lease of time only. The presumed viability was

forever; the project was irreversible. They thought they had created an End of History through a

new reality. Reality, however, put an end to their project. Why? How?

One answer: "because of dialectics". Actio creates reactio. Push long enough and counter-forces

arise. Empire-building without "pushing" is difficult, to put it mildly. To grow economically

some "pushing" is also needed. A single counter-force may not tear down what has been built,

being too weak. But in the margin of the system these forces will accumulate and their synergies

may ultimately lead to decline and fall as the system exhausts itself fighting or in general trying

to control the disruptive forces.

The dialectics is not always based on exogenous, external forces, like "ecological decay", or "the

barbarians crashing the gates" (Ibn Khaldun), hammering at the Roman Empire in synergistic

ways. The dialectic can also be endogenous, like Marx' theory of rupture when the mode of

production no longer is adequate for the means of production. Or Sorokin's "principle of limits":

any system will satisfy only a limited range of the broad spectrum of human needs; sooner or

later accumulated frustration from the needs left unattended will lead to major upheavals.

And a third possibility: stupidity, the March of Folly.

Such theories are far-reaching, but too general for a theory focusing mainly on the economics of

de-development. The range of factors behind the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, for

instance, spans far beyond economics, even with a broad definition of that field, into any field of

inquiry, like lead-poisoning from the pipe-lines in the Roman water system.

There is much to be gleaned from general dialectics, however, starting by asking a question:

"what would a diagram of decline and fall look like?" People usually draw single-peaked curves

with birth-growth-peak/maturity-decline-fall/death. The model is human biography. But that

should make us pause and think. Is the single-peaked life not a social construction. like in "he

reached the high point of his career"? Could we not have multi-peaked lives/empires? How about

shifting the achievement criterion, like an engineer-businessman becoming a scientist in the

history of his own specialty later on in life? How about empires doing the same?

Moreover, how do we reject any afterlife after death, neither in the form of eternal life "up there"

or "down under", nor in the form of reincarnation, nor in the form of rebirth of certain aspects? Is

an empire that disappeared but left behind strong memorials and memories, even to the point of

becoming archetypal like the Roman Empire, really dead? Do reincarnations like the "Holy

Roman Empire of the German Nation", or Mussolini's short-lived effort, not imply that

something was still alive? The Roman Empire was a more or less successfully imitated archetype

in all the other nine cases. Is that not some kind of rebirth - and in that case is it Christian

(forever), Hindu (intermittent) or Buddhist (partial)? We shall return to this question of after-life,

discussing sustainability, euthanasia, and acceptable death.

3. Toward a theory of development: Some factors

Critics of contemporary theories of development generally take the line that "economics is not

everything", let alone "the only thing", and charge development theory and practice with

"economism". The present author is among them, and this opens for a chance to explore some

limitations of that critical approach.

Usually the critique of economics in the development process takes two different forms:

[1] When economics is used as consequence, effect: the critique would be that the goal is not a

well-functioning economy, in the black at household, company, country levels, with high and

robust growth rates to ensure that it stays that way. The goal is not rich countries, companies,

families, but humanly rich individuals. The goal is human development, with nature

development (ecological balance as a minimum), social development and world development.

Homo mensura, humans are the measures of all things, not something else like an economic

system abstracted from human beings. We could expand that concept to include nature

development, with a focus on life, vita mensura. Even Protagoras can be improved upon.

[2] When economics is used as condition, cause: the critique points to many other factors

conditioning development, also when development is conceived of in a narrow, economic, sense.

Nature with its limits, is certainly one; so is the motivation structure in the human Self, in turn

conditioned by culture. The location of individuals, households, companies, countries in social

and world structures matters. None of these factors, or syndromes of factors, is sufficient. But

they are all necessary conditions, meaning that economic development is certainly a necessary,

but not sufficient condition for development.

If E is a set of necessary economic conditions for development, D; then this means that D implies

E. But then we also have that -E (the negation of any one of the conditions in E) implies -D, and

the negation of D is what we mean by "de-development. What we have to do is evidently to try

to identify some of these factors or components of E, leaning on reasonable accounts of the

decline and fall of economies, even big economies.

This is not a return to any primacy of economics, so dear to liberal/conservative and marxist

development schools. But economic factors must be taken explicitly into account. In the

eagerness to show that economics is neither everything nor the only thing, many critics read as if

economics is nothing. The cut between necessary and sufficient is too sharp, like much of

Cartesian/Aristotelian logic. But it points in the right direction.

In that case, following this simple logic above, all we need is a list of economic factors that play

at least a subsidiary, contributing role to development. We can then hypothesize that the negation

of any factor, singly or combined, on this list would cause de-development. No doubt this is one

approach.

Below is an exercise for seven factors found useful in development studies, four of them non-

economic and three economic.

Generally, however, this is not the way out. We are always dealing with syndromes of factors.

The above logic is too simple. The negation of one factor may be inconsequential if there is

enough momentum from the remaining factors. But the negation of a whole syndrome matters.

Empirical studies, like our mini-studies, may tell. Moreover, by studying de-development we

may benefit from other discourses that include non-economic factors, and that may have some

impact on the positive study of development.

Let us look at how some factors--like hard work, savings, greed, inconsiderateness and Q/P, C/N,

F/R, explained below--work their crooked ways into this messy field.

Hard work. If production factors are hard to arrive at, the processing difficult and the distribution

tiring, then hard work is needed, at least for economic development. But if the factors are easily

available, processing is unnecessary, and consumption is on the spot or nearby, where is the

necessity for hard work? Or, is development defined so that the necessity of "hard work" is a

tautology, making the British Midlands rather than South Pacific Islands "normal"? Is

development theory conditioned by the British Midlands? If so, is that not driving imperialism

too far?

No doubt Kant worked hard to produce his master-pieces, so did Beethoven. But could it be that

we define as an indicator of development only that which has "hard work" as a price? That the

type of kindness, for instance, that seems to come more easily to women than to men, and could

be seen as a criterion of real human development, does not count if it comes easily, naturally?

Savings. If we live on the margin savings serve as a hedge against such calamities as hunger and

disease, and for investment to grow further. But imagine a life with neither hunger and disease

next door, nor with any compulsion to grow further. Like a welfare state with those worries

removed. Then, why do we need savings? Do we de-develop without them? No, their absence

would only be a sufficient condition for de-development if we want more development, or to

remove worries. The general logic still holds, only that "savings", like "hard work", fit the wet,

cold, foggy British Midlands with little or no welfare state better than a South Pacific island with

mutual rights and obligations intact.

Greed. Economic activity steered by need rather than by greed leads to a replacement rather than

to a growth economy. The element of greed guarantees a continued search for higher growth. But

greed may also come about as a consequence rather than as a condition for hard work and

savings. Greed answers the question, why do I continue working so hard, and saving so much,

when I have all I need? We can choose to see this like the former US President Reagan once did,

"greed and corruption are the price we pay for a free society". Or we can see it as de-

development. Only by defining development as economic growth, and not as satisfaction, do we

escape a de-development conclusion. In that case we would look at people becoming less greedy

as an indicator of coming crisis. And again, only if we prefer a rich society with nasty people in

it to a poor society with nice people. Do we?

Inconsiderateness. Economic activity, like medical activity, has side-effects and side-causes,

externalities. Some of them are negative, like the greed just mentioned. To go ahead with

growth-oriented economic activity a certain blindness to these negative externalities is needed,

with shallow justifications, like "the good end justifies the bad means", "eggs must be cracked to

make an omelette", or "this will sort itself out in the longer run".

The argument might be that if we really should take into account all negative side-effects then

we would never do anything but resign ourselves to our miserable fate. The argument is, of

course, a non sequitur: externalities could be taken into consideration from the very beginning, as

is done today routinely with some ecological externalities. Potentially this would yield more, not

less development. The problem is, however, that economists admit only a very narrow range of

externalities.

Q/P, the ratio of quality to price for a product. The higher Q/P, the higher the probability of a

deal. And, the more deals, the more growth. But does it follow that if we decrease quality and/or

increase prices, then we are on the road to de-development? Can anything be gained by

decreasing the quality, meaning functional adequacy, cultural adequacy and sustainability? Well,

there is planned obsolescence (low sustainability) as a strategy to sustain production, and with

that employment. In the same vein, increasing prices can also be seen as a strategy to decrease

market activity in order to cool the economy. Again the answer is not so simple. It all depends.

On what? That also depends.

C/N. This is the ratio of culture to nature in a product. Is a product mainly culture, like a CD, or

matter, like blueberries? The higher the degree of processing, the better. More revenue can be

made at higher levels of C/N, degree of processing. Does that mean that a move downward

ushers in de-development? Or, could there be something positive in "back to nature", correcting

for too much culture? It all depends. On what, also depends.

F/R. This is the ratio of the finance economy to the real economy. It should be neither too high,

nor too low. Does that mean that shifts toward finance economy, as speculation, or toward real

economy as a subsistence economy, is catastrophic? Probably not for a shorter period of time.

But to live in pure speculation or subsistence forever is a different matter. It all depends.

The conclusion is not so clear. But the first four are indicative of a development theory seriously

biased by a hard geography and by a hard bourgeoisie insensitive to the suffering of the inner,

the outer proletariat, and nature. The other three, however, particularly when combined, are

probably crucial.

4. Toward an economic theory of de-development: Twenty factors

Easier because falsification is easier than verification. We could proceed inductively, extracting

factors from each of the ten cases, or deductively, presenting a scheme of such factors, using

them to comment on the cases. The author started inductively to identify factors, and proceeded

deductively to present the findings. We are dealing with post-, not pre-dictions anyhow.

We first divided the world into two parts, the "country in a process of de-development" vs.

"foreign countries/abroad/the context". Self vs. Others, in other words. They relate to each other

economically, and also militarily, politically, culturally.

And then we cut into the countries in six different ways:

- humans vs. environment, a rather key inter-face;

- natives vs. foreigners, as foreigners may play a crucial role both for development and de-

development;

- center/elites vs. periphery/people, roughly in terms of power - normative/contractual/coercive -

and privilege;

- primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of economic activity, meaning extraction from nature,

processing, distribution, adding to the tertiary sector professional/cultural activities;

- production factors: nature, labor, capital, technology, management, (N, L; C, T, M), and their

availability;

- deep culture, cosmology, for motivation patterns and adequacy.

Given this scheme a necessary condition for development is balance/adequacy for all six divides.

But that formula is vacuous if we do not know a priori what that means. In hindsight it is easy to

draw the conclusion that there was serious imbalance, but at that time it may already be too late;

the decline may be self-reinforcing, irreversible. We should be able to tell in advance.

Twenty hypotheses about de-development, decline and fall:

De-development will take place as a consequence of:

First divide, Self vs. Other: Bad division of labor

I,1: long-term accumulation of foreign debt,

I,2: long-term accumulation of negative externality balances

I,3: excessive military costs keeping other countries at bay

I,4: long-term exploitation of Periphery by political hegemons

I,5: cultural imitation and absence of creativity

Second divide, humans vs. environment: Imbalance

II,6: depletion from extraction

II,7: pollution from processing, distribution and consumption

II,8: general deterioration of diversity/symbiosis, of maturity

Third divide, natives vs. foreigners: Bad division of labor

III,9: long term accumulation of debt to foreigners

III,10: long term accumulation of negative externality balances

Fourth divide, elites vs. people: Bad division of labor

IV,11: long-term exploitation of the people by the elites

IV,12: excessive miliary costs keeping other people at bay

Fifth divide, primary/secondary/tertiary sectors: Imbalance

V,13: neglecting one or more sectors

V,14: foreigners controlling one or more sectors

Sixth divide, production factors: Insufficient availability of

VI,15: nature, internally, through import, or processed abroad

VI,16: labor, internally, foreign workers, or working abroad

VI,17: capital, internally, foreign investors, or invested abroad

VI,18: technology, endogenous, or imported from abroad

VI,19: management, elite, people, or imported from abroad

Seventh divide, deep culture: Inadequate motivation pattern

VII,20: deep culture, too expansionist, or too contractive

But how do we know that a country is de-developing, what are the criteria, as distinct from

factors/causes/conditions? If the divides above are the independent variables, and the 20

hypotheses are the mechanisms, then what are the dependent variables?

Here "sustainability" or the classical "reproducibility" enters: when the economy is no longer

sustainable/reproducible. A human being can take stock of his/her wellness every morning: am I

the same, better off or worse off than yesterday morning? - knowing very well that successive

"worse-offs" spell illness, decline and fall, possibly impending death. An economy, a company

or a country, takes stock at the end of the year and arrives at the same conclusion. Thus,

"expenses exceed revenues" is not a reason for decline, it is a criterion of decline. "Expansion

brought economic benefits but incurred military costs, and the latter exceeded the former" is not

a reason either, only a way of spelling out that budget more clearly. A possible cause might be

that the country was too expansionist (hypothesis VII,20 above), and then start inquiring more

deeply into the reasons why.

Massive migration out of the country, or at least out of the cities, by elites or people, is also a

criterion rather than a reason, or rather a reading of how elites or people read the situation: the

system is doomed. And the same applies to spiritual migration: the body is still in the system,

performing its tasks, but halfheartedly since the spirit is anywhere else. Both elites and people

are observing rather than participating, drawing conclusions for themselves rather than for

society, assessing the right time to leave, to jump the sinking ship.

Demralization, in other words. And, as the saying goes, will the last person leaving please turn

off the lights - -

5. Ten mini-studies

5.1. Case 1: The Decline and Fall of the West Roman Empire

The reader will find on the next page (Diagram I) an effort by the present author to summarize

much of the literature on the Roman Empire and to go one step further. As the Roman Empire

became model for other empires, at least in the West, its decline also became archetype for other

declines, defining the discourse. One more example of how the Roman Empire has survived its

own demise, dominating our thinking even about the death of empires.

The diagram is divided into three columns. To the right are five indicators/criteria of decline and

fall, break-down, failure to be sustainable/reproducible. As mentioned above, we could also talk

about dependent variables. The extreme Other, the barbarians, are increasingly successful

militarily. The society militarizes to the point that even the emperors are military men. A strict

command/control ethos permeates society with rigidity and lack of creativity, except, possibly,

on the battle-field. People lose interest and faith. The more imaginative escape to another habitat,

the countryside, building alternative societies like the villa romana, thereby also escaping state

taxation and the ecological depletion of the soil. Long before that they have become observers

rather than participants. What happens in society happens because of "them", never because of

"us".

Obviously these five criteria are interrelated in circular loops; they serve as each other's

conditions and consequences. These may also be the only five factors visible to the members of

society at that time, the causes, and the root causes, being invisible. "Native theory" would

cluster around these criteria, to the point of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy about decline.

In the second column, in the middle of the diagram, the reasons/causes are indicated, but as a

hypothetical flow chart, not as a list of factors. The basic divides used are between elites and

people (here called proletariat), and between natives and foreigners (here called barbarians). The

economic model of society is based on the two answers to one question: how does surplus flow

to the materially non-productive elites, engaged in political/military leadership, and in cultural

production, only. The two answers are: through territorial expansion, conquest, plunder, exacting

taxes from the external proletariat (Toynbee), the barbarians; and through slave-based

production, paying the slaves little or nothing, living off the added value produced by the slaves,

or the internal proletariat in general.

No wonder that barbarians and slaves protested, counter-attacked, revolted. To contain the

protests two approaches were used. There were the military campaigns against both. But there

were also positive approaches. For the proletariat there was the famous panem et circenses, bread

and circus, welfare state and entertainment. And for the barbarians co-optation into the elite, the

state and the army. In both cases the idea must have been to give them vested interest in the

continuation of the Roman Empire. As they were given channels of mobility into the coveted

elit, the elite expanded, became more foreign and more costly to maintain, generating more

conquest and exploitation to become sustainable.

The system worked as long as it worked, meaning as long as there was a reasonable balance in

the flow chart. The system was remarkably stable, for centuries, and also remarkably fragile, in a

state of unstable equilibrium. The implication was that when decline really started it was

irreversible. Or so it seemed.

In the first column there is an effort to look for the root causes of the whole phenomenon,

locating them in the deep culture of the Roman Empire. The cosmology was centrifugal. That

they had not only the right, but even the duty to expand was taken for granted. They saw their

own conquest, plunder and exploitation as the best that could happen to the barbarians and the

proletariat, probably including the gladiators sacrificed for entertainment purposes. Their whole

history from the beginnings around -750 bears testimony to an expansionist or centrifugal

mentality, pushing the limes outward; to the British Highlands, the Rhine-Danube and the

Euphrates, with an army of 600,000.

In that column there are also two competing cosmologies, barbarian and Christian. The

"barbarians" were smaller groups, probably more centripetal in their basic orientation. However,

exposed to the contagious expansionism of the Roman Empire, including being co-opted, the

Carolingians, the Vikings, and the Franks of the Crusades became no strangers to expansion.

And the Christians, not only inner-oriented but other world-oriented in their search for a New

Kingdom, became converts to expansionism as Christianity became religio lecita in the Roman

Empire (+313). The incorporation succeeded. The Christian successor systems were also

expansionist, hence also subject to decline and fall.

And that may be the basic key: expansionism in the deep culture leads to expansion without stop

signals leads to counter-forces leads to decline leads to fall after the outer limits have been

reached and transgressed. There are in-between mechanisms as indicated in the second column.

But the basic conclusion remains that the cause of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire was

its expansionist deep culture, never questioning expansionism as such.

>From this it does not follow that "contractionism" is the answer. The historical successor was

the manorial system, and then the feudal system, and many of the units were very small. The

totality, the "medieval system", did not prove sustainability either. Without trade, self-reliant in

principle, spending huge amounts of resources on what today would be called ritual, like

tournaments, parties, religious ceremonies, they over-used natural resources till the environment

could sustain neither itself, nor them. Cultivating the mountainsides did not help much either.

So the serfs left, headed for the city-states and positions at the bottom of artisanry. Ultimately the

knights left too, and became troubadours, robbers and pirates, or artisans, burghers.

In retrospect, how could the Western Roman Empire have been saved, have been made

sustainable? Here is one formula/answer:

- by exploiting nature in Italy and North Africa less;

- by exploiting the inner proletariat less;

- by conquering and exploiting the barbarians less;

- by keeping a lid on the growth of the elite sector;

- by turning more towards spiritual and away from material values. No doubt this combination

would have worked. But then the Roman Empire would not have been the Roman Empire, but

closer to its successor system in the Middle Ages. A futile speculation.

A more profound question is why the Roman Empire should be made sustainable at all. The

answer is probably affirmative for those training their eyes on the elites and their achievements,

negative for those more concerned with what happened to nature, the proletariat and the

barbarians. There is something to learn from that about the concept of sustainability. What is so

great about sustainability? And - sustainability for whom? Against whom?

5.2 Case 2: The Decline and Fall of the East Roman Empire

This was essentially the Balkans and "Little Asia", Turkey. But they behaved as if they were the

Roman Empire after the division was final in +395 and particularly after West Rome fell in

+476. They had their own identity centered on Constantinople, the old Byzants, built by

Constantin the Great in +330, and on Orthodox Christianity. The Great Schism of +1054

between the Western (Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox) Churches added the religious to the

political division, solidifying the faultline through Europe. Losing Asia Minor, and Jerusalem!,

to the Seljuq Turks gave rise to the Crusades 1095-1291 that also hit East Rome.

Economically the loss of land meant loss of agriculture, making them dependent on food imports

from the outside. Having no ships the trade had to be done by others. To the West they had three

competitors, Genova, Venezia and Ragusa (Dubrovnik). What remained for East Rome to do was

statecraft, playing Genova and Venezia against each other, giving Venezia concessions to import

goods free of duty. Already in 1347 the situation was so critical that the Emperor conducted his

wedding in ceramics, not in gold and silver. Finally they were encircled by the Ottomans, and the

1453 conquest by the Ottoman Mohammed II of Constantinople under Constantin XI

Palaeologus was only the final death blow.

Past capital and prestige may impress satellites but not the competitors. If the primary sector

declines then other sectors have to function to compensate. But they had neither industry, nor

crafts, nor trade; only statecraft. To entrust primary and tertiary sectors not only to foreigners but

to foreign countries did not work. The miracle is that the empire nonetheless lasted a thousand

years till finally the bells tolled in 1453.

5.3 Case 3: The Decline and Fall of the Arab Empires

We are essentially talking of the Caliphate, the rulership of Islam by a leader who is both

temporal and spiritual. Soon after the death of the Prophet the Caliphate split into the Umayyads,

ruling from Damascus, and the Abassids ruling from Baghdad. The Abassids massacred the

Umayyads in +750, but some found the way to Spain and continued as the Western Caliphate of

Córdoba +712. The Abassids were massacred in +1258 in Baghdad during the Crusades by an

alliance of Christians and Genghiz Khan's grandson, Hulaku. Under the Fatimids the center

moved to Cairo, taken over by the Abassids in +1171.

In Cairo the Mamelukes, originally slaves brought to Egypt by Fatimid caliphs, were ruling as a

warrior caste of landlords with private armies. Economically Mameluke sultans, chosen from the

ranks of the warriors seem to have been particularly inept. First, there was the problem of origin,

celebrating the rise from slaves to rulers, maybe enjoying the fruits rather than cultivating them.

Second, there was the problem of warriors being better at destruction and ruling than at

construction and serving, whether the latter is done from the primary, secondary or tertiary

sectors of the society. Being inadequate as farmers and traders the whole economy suffered a

serious decline from a commercial and monetary economy to a subsistence economy. Local

chiefs got feudal rights, meaning thy were more interested in squeezing surplus out of theie serfs

than in economic growth. The Portuguese Vasco da Gama, +1497-99, captured the trade between

Africa and India.

And in 1517 the death blow came when the Ottomans, following their Constantinople success,

conquered Cairo. One lesson seems to be never to leave key sectors to foreigners or/and the

military.

5.4 Case 4: The Decline and Fall of Spain (la decadencia)

Few countries have had such access to wealth through theft, after the conquest of most of

South/Central America from 1492 onwards, and then wasted it so quickly, as Spain during the

decadencia 1620-1690. After the genocide on the dominant indigenous peoples, the Aztecs and

the Incas, the rest was up for grabs, including precious metals and jewels. The flow into Spain

from the Colonies, mainly through Sevilla, was continuous. And yet, by the end of the 17th

century little remained. How? Why?

The general explanation seems to be that an economy based on industry and commerce did not

fit into an economy based on feudal agriculture and colonialism. The latter two blended easily,

being based on the same concepts of dominio, ownership, of land for agriculture or mining, and

of people, as serfs and slaves. There is no need for innovation beyond control to ensure

maximum gain. And no search for markets either as the wealth piled up at the feet of the hidalgo,

the grande, and the church.

This was being and having rather than becoming. Why should a rich Spanish grande make

anything that could be bought from those who had the skills? With that ethos the Spanish never

develop those skills, a fact that pleased their competitors in the Italian and Low Countries city-

states, and in England, enormously. Experts from their competitors were even invited to make

cannon balls, and the trade went to such major enemies as the British. The Spanish gladly gave

away more challenges than they stole gold. By 1898-1902 the fall was completed by the USA

walking into their downtrodden imperial shoes in the Pacific and the Caribbean.

The lesson seems to be never to give away challenging work; if you do you will suffer serious

consequences.

5.5 Case 5: The Decline and Fall of the Italian city-states

The economic decline of Italy, like for Spain, was during the 17th century. Italy was not the

primary beneficiary of Spanish "don't manufacture, buy" policies. The major beneficiaries were

England, France and the Low Countries. And the net result at the end of the 17th century was

clear and similar to Spain:

"From being a developed country, mainly importing primary products and exporting

manufactured good and services /banking and shipping/, Italy had become an underdeveloped

country, mainly importing manufactured articles and services and exporting primary products".

But not for Spanish reasons. They did no pay sufficient attention to Q/P, quality over price. The

quality of Italian textiles was still excellent. But there was the problem of price. The Italian

prices became too high, for three reasons:

- excessive control by the guilds, tying Italian manufacturers to old-fashioned production and

organization;

- the pressure of taxation in the Italian states;

- labor costs too high relative to other countries.

But behind these well-known factors something else was lurking.

Thus, could it be that they were the victims of their own tremendous success in earlier centuries?

That they considered themselves to be basically invulnerable, having nothing to learn where

production and organization are concerned? Could it be that the city states and labor also felt that

way, that the textile industry was so secure that they could easily take on more taxation and still

pay higher wages? The result was the end of "her career as a country, once depressed and

overpopulated".

The lesson seems to be never rest on one's laurels, to watch both Q and P, and remember:

customers are treacherous people! They may vary both Q and P so as to arrive at a better Q/P

themselves.

5.6 Case 6: The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire

There were beginnings before 1453, but the real rise and expansion came after that fall of the

Byzantine Empire. Having conquered Syria and Egypt, Sultan Selim I also assumed the

Caliphate, ruling over major parts of Asia, Europe and Africa. But in the 18th-19th centuries the

Ottomans lost to Russia in the Russo-Turkish wars that lasted almost two centuries, and also lost

Greece and Egypt. The Balkan wars (1912-13) and World War I (1914-1918) led to the

beginning of the end in 1918.

Much of the warfare was with military defeat, but much of the dynamic was economic. Three

basic factors are known to us.

First, the Ottomans created an elite corps of civil servants and military, the Janissaries, based on

war captives and abducted Christian youths from the Balkans, marched far away from their

families and raised by the Ottoman State. The Janissaries had the power to make and unmake

sultans. There were some similarities with the Mamelukes in Egypt, rightly or wrongly suspected

of disloyalty. In +1826 the Janissaries were massacred by Sultan Mahmud II in their barracks;

fifteen years after the founder of modern Egypt, Mohammed Ali, had done the same to the

Mamelukes.

Second, Ottoman society was long on religion, government, war and agriculture, but short on

industry and trade. A dangerous formation in a period when European empires developed

industry and trade. Consequently the status as industrialist and trader had to be filled by

foreigners, among them Armenians. Jews evicted from Spain had played important roles

financing the Ottoman Empire, and Europe beyond that. When the natives fail to learn and

change, the tasks and fruits of modernity accrue to foreigners and foreign countries instead.

Classical.

5.7 Case 7: The Decline and Fall of the Chinese Ch'ing Dynasty

The fascinating account by Ping-Ti Ho will be used in the following, with the usual caveat that

reliance on one author always is dangerous. His account starts describing the wealth of China at

the end of the Ming (1368-1644) and the beginning of the Ch'ing (1644-1912) dynasties, with

fabulous accumulation in some families, with long-distance and inter-regional trade, and with

guild-halls in commercial centers.

And then came five reasons for decline from the 18th century, culminating in the Taiping/Great

Peace rebellion 1850-64:

- the best way of getting rich was to buy the privilege of selling staples, like salt and tea, under

government monopoly;

- the profit was not reinvested in commercial and industrial enterprises that were less profitable

than money-lending and tax-farming. Rich people preferred to buy official ranks and titles and

encouraged their sons to become degree-holders; in addition conspicuous consumption played a

role;

- with no primogeniture wealth was shared within families and clans, meaning that there was no

great accumulation at one point;

- Confucian values rewarded the learned and studious, not the hardworking merchant.

Philosophy prevailed over technology;

- the most powerful economic control was exercised by the State, giving a choice between

bureaucratic capitalism (the solution during the Kuomintang dynasty) and bureaucratic

collectivism (the solution during the Communist dynasty).

Lesson: hard work, savings, greed and inconsiderateness on the top led to an economic growth

insensitive to stop signals. The Age of the Merchant; followed by the Age of the People as

Sarkar predicted, the Communist dynasty. With its decline and fall.

5.8 Case 8: The Decline and Fall of the British Empire

The UK was the Center and exemplar par excellence of archetypical modern Western

imperialism modeled on the Roman Empire. On the next page (Diagram II) is an effort to

summarize some thinking on the problems of imperialism, and to go one step further. The

diagram is similar to Diagram I for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Similar

phenomena demand similar models.

There are some differences, relating to "modernization".

The materially nonproductive elite now divides into state bureaucrats, corporation capitalists and

intellectuals, all three at national and transnational levels. Modernity differentiates, but also

integrates across borders. The native protest against geopolitical expansion, and the inner

proletariat protest against capitalist socio-economic expansion, have Roman Empire dimensions.

Military and police punishment expeditions in the colonies join with welfare, entertainment and

sport strategies to placate the inner proletariat. A costly system, in a precarious balance.

The centrifugal cosmology of the modern West is then held responsible as the root cause,

defining expansion as normal and natural. There are challenges from such non-Western

cosmologies as Buddhism, and to some extent Hinduism, both found attractive by less

expansionist Westerners, particularly by women. And there are sectarian countertrends within

the West, like the Green movement.

The outcome was inevitable: the system collapsed. By the 1960s colonialism was almost gone.

But the British economy made up for lost markets in the EU/ACP system. And the major threat

to common people was not the loss of empire, but the loss of welfare.

Lesson: don't have empires, also for your own sake. You may get into trouble. But the fall of

empire may be your new beginning.

5.9 Case 9: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Empire

The problem of the Soviet Union may not have been too much planning, but too little. With, say,

400 people in gosplan and the socialist planning commissions, planning for 400 million in the

Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the 400 were obviously over-challenged and the 400 million

under-challenged. But even this key externality, challenge, did not enter their planning. They had

very narrow visions of the economy, just bringing production factors together to produce, with

little or no attention given to distribution and consumption. The plans were production plans.

And countless externalities were left unattended, eg.,

- in nature: depletion and pollution, including toxic pollution;

- in humans: boredom, withdrawal, apathy, general demoralization; - in society: a top-heavy,

centralized, non-participatory society run by the Russian nation controlling other nations, the city

controlling the countryside, the bourgeoisie the proletariat, and the bourgeoisie having nothing to

buy because the C/N was too low;

- in world: a confrontational foreign policy run by the Soviet Union controlling and intervening

in satellite countries;

- in time: a rigidity making social change very difficult;

- in culture: linear marxist visions, the Stufengang, on rigid narrow tracks, and a basic

contradiction between myth and reality.

With such matters left unattended tensions accumulated. The society did not produce enough

surplus to bribe everybody and lost the Stalinist nerve to suppress. Due to low level international

trade they could not do what capitalism is good at, exporting negative externalities, like toxins,

letting others abroad suffer.

Accumulated pollution led to diseases, adding to the general demoralization. Topheaviness

deprived them of initiative which also was largely forbidden. Confrontations led to a very costly

arms race. Rigidity and linearity deprived them of hope. Finallly, the fall was imported from

other, peripheral, socialist countries.

Lesson: socialism, better at material basic needs, pays less attention to externalities, does not

export them, and breaks down.

5.10 Case 10: The Coming Decline and Fall of the US empire

Let us try the three economic factors on the US economy:

SYNDROME DIAGNOSIS THERAPY

Q/P no dignity for workers; respect for skilled work

syndrome bad or no trade unions; company+national unions

very short term contracts more life-long contracts

bad pay means no respect higher minimum salary

bad CEO/worker income ratio improve the income ratio

low level education improve lower education

disastrous media, TV moratorium on some media

boring, degrading work increase challenge level

bad health, absenteeism social security for all

junk workers, junk work go in for quality in both

C/N profit above challenge go in for both

syndrome low C/N exports (not arms) increase the level

high C/N imports reindustralization

too much military work liberate R&D from military

too much secrecy lift the secrecy

L cheap, no T-incentive make Labor less cheap

CEOs C&M- not T-oriented more engineers as CEO

CEOs too much power flatter organization

R&D far from marketing decrease distance

excessively free trade selective protectionism

junk work, junk products go in for quality in both

F/R CEOs C&M- not T-oriented moratorium on some CBAs

syndrome quarterly reports onger time perspectives

finance-trading too easy make it more difficult

too much speculation money incentive for production

junk products, junk finance go in for quality in both

Cardinal shortcomings of the mainstream US economy:

Q/P syndrome: inattention to quality of labor; inattention to unemployment as reason for L-

intensive, T-extensive production;

GNP does not reflect quality, only quantity of products marketed; economists underestimate the

significance of the working class

C/N syndrome: inattention to degree of processing, "it does not matter whether we make potato-

chips or micro-chips"; inattention to spin-off effects; GNP does not reflect degree of processing;

overemphasis on free market and trade regardless of product level.

F/R syndrome: inattention to the F and R difference; GNP does not reflect difference between F

and R; economists overestimate the significance of economists, and serve their own capitalist

class

Key blocks: class society; greed/inconsiderateness; media power; expansionism; militarism;

patriarchy; CEO'ism; serving dividend interests of stock-holders, not of workers; extremist

economism.

As the therapies are unacceptable, the prognosis is military and finance economy because Q/P

and C/N are too low to compete, crash of finance economy because F/R is too high, recession,

depression.

6. Summary: Twenty factors, Ten mini-studies and Five reflections

DECLINE AND FALL: AN OVERVIEW

In [4] above twenty factors in the life-cycle of an empire were explored, and in [5] above ten

mini-studies were presented.

This table is an effort to summarize the findings:

West

Rome

East

Rome

Arab

Empi-

res

Spanish

deca-

dencia

Italian

city-

states

Ottoman

Empire Ch'ing Dynasty

English

Empire

Soviet

Empire

USA

Empire

No.

Yes

1 No Yes No No No Yes No Yes No Yes 4

2 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 10

3 Yes Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes 7

4 No Yes Yes No No Yes No No No No 3

5 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Y/N 9.5

6 Yes No No No No No No No No Yes 2

7 Yes No No No No No No No Yes Yes 3

8 Yes No No No No No No No Yes No 2

9 No Yes No No No Yes Yes No No No 3

10 Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes 8

11 Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 8

12 Yes No No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes 5

13 Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes 8

14 Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No No 5

15 Yes Yes No No No No No Yes No No 3

16 Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No 6

17 Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes No No No 5

18 Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Y/N 8.5

19 No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 9

20 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes 9

Yes 17 16 13 8 5 15 10 11 11 12 118

YES: a major issue NO: a minor issue, or none Y/N: Yes and No

The vertical reading informs us how narrow or broad the causation behind decline and fall was

for each mini-study; and the horizontal reading informs us about the relative prevalence of the

factors. Both readings will be used for the reflections.

Needless to say all 200 judgments are problematic. Each cell could easily be the subject of one or

more books (some of them have already been written). But the focus here is on the pattern more

than on any single judgment. The assumption is that even if each judgment is not very robust,

conclusions based on patterns may be.

Here are the five reflections, with care and reservations:

[1] No single factor theory has emerged. No single factor, with score 10 and score 0 for all

others, explains the decline and fall of all. No. 2, "long term accumulation of negative externality

balance" has scote 10, but it is not alone. The narrowest syndrome, for Italian city-states, has five

of the ten factors operating, and in the broadest syndromes, for the two Roman Empires, 17 and

16 of the 20 factors respectively have been recognized.

[2] We are not dealing with tautologies.

Factor No. 2 may sound close to a tautology, but there is content in "long term", "negative", and

"externality". The short term may not be that dangerous. Strong positive side-effects of economic

activity may balance the negative externalities. Implied is also that monetized parts of the

economy, internalities like the national account balance, are not the only factors that count. But a

factor like "elite demoralization", certainly present in all of them at some time, would have been

a part of the description, even definition of decline and fall, and not have explained anything.

[3] There is a causal syndrome with a clear message/logic.

If we draw the line at score 9 four factors (Nos. 2-5-19-20) account for 37.5 of the 200

connections, or 19%; not very high. But if we draw the line at score 8, a causal syndrome of

eight factors (Nos. 2-5-10-11-13-18-19-20), or 40% of the 20 factors, we can account for 70/118

= 59% of the connections identified.

That syndrome can now be summarized as follows:

- a division of labor whereby foreign countries, and/or foreigners inside one's own country, take

over the most challenging and interesting and developing tasks, given the historical situation;

- a deficit in creativity related to a deficit in technology and good management, including

foresight and innovation;

- one or several sectors of the economy neglected or lagging;

- and, at the same time, expansionism as ideology/cosmology, exploiting foreign countries and/or

one's own people inviting negative, destructive reactions.

Clearly, if the system "took a sabbatical" and rested to restore itself, then some deficits may be

rectified. Thus, it looks as if the combination of economic deficits with expansionist immodesty

summarizes this syndrome. Obviously, if the elites are unable to manage, suppress their own

people, leaving important tasks to foreign countries and/or foreigners rather than to their own

people, then the end must be near. Where is the source of renewal in that case? No internal

challenge-response dynamics?

[4] The systems vary in the scope of the explanatory basis; some (like the Roman Empires)

having a very broad base, others (like the Italian city-states) a more narrow base. This, however,

is certainly also a function of the lore that has developed in the historiography of the decline and

fall of the systems: the more people and disciplines involved, the more factors. Some appear

over-explained: the oldest for the reasons given, and the most recent because they are parts of

contemporary debate. Some others that fall between these two chairs may be under-explained.

There is a methodological danger here: whoever searches sufficiently long for any factor will

probably finally identify also that one.

[5] The broader the base of factors, the more inevitable an impending death, the narower the

base, the less inevitable. A sick empire is like a sick human being: the more pathologies, the

more inevitable and hence more acceptable the death. There is nothing that can be done anyhow.

To sustain is to prolong suffering, not vitality. To speed up the decline for the two Roman

Empires, giving space for others, appears more rational than artificial longevity.

On the other hand, Spain and Italy might have been sustained using simple measures, like more

self-reliance and more willingness to take on new challenges for Spain, and labor market

flexibility and entrepreneurial freedom for Italy. The measures would have saved millions, and

generations, from centuries of decline.

The first conclusion from all of this is obvious: the pathologies have to be nipped in the bud, at

an early stage, and above all before they spread like metastases. Sustainability presupposes

sufficient health to be able to resist multiple shocks from syndromes. A high level of immuno-

deficiency is catastrophic.

The second conclusion is equally obvious: in some cases the system may have come to a point of

no return. The system is not sustainable, regardless of how strong the desire for eternal life, or a

more modest lease on eternity, might be. Like for human beings the system may be headed for

what is often referred to as natural death, close to the concept of "acceptable death". The system

has completed its life-curve (single-peaked in the Occident), and there is no clear successor. And

the end is due to a broad syndrome of causes, not one single cause for which a remedy might be

found.

The third conclusion is more problematic. Sustainability is a part of the issue. But is

sustainability itself sustainable? Or, is another concept knocking on the door: euthanasia for

societies?

7. A mini-theory of rats, of sinking ships and of new ships

These are ten stories of sinking ships, and ships usually harbor rats known to leave sinking ships.

But who are the rats, and what do they do after leaving the sinking ship? They probably do not

leave to drown, but possibly to find a new ship and a new life?

The immediate answer would be to find a new ship, although some rats may prefer dignified

suicide to a life in the ruins of their own creation. There are exceptions like the captain of the

sinking ship, the last one to leave even at the risk of joining the ship on its way down. Like ship

captain, like captain of the state ship, the head of state. In principle. But in fact he often prefers

escape and ends up as a monarch in exile, unable to find new ships. Better a life in faded

splendor than death or suicide.

But we are thinking of more dynamic rats, not of aristoc-rats or bureauc-rats, but of creative

clergy and intellectual ratss, and indeed entrepreneurial merchant rats. Each imperial decline

creates its exodus and its diaspora. The question is, what kind of talent left, and where did they

go? Regardless of the answer, this is clearly an illustration of Buddhist rebirth rather than Hindu

reincarnation, let alone Christian eternal life.

The system does not reincarnate with many of its original features intact. By dying the system

liberates creative energy, in the form of a diaspora which then starts working somewhere else.

The obvious prognosis would be [1] given reasonable conditions they will probably succeed, [2]

if or when there is no success they will probably leave the new sinking ship. Once a rat always a

rat.

A major importer of rats leaving European sinking ships has been the USA. But the USA may

also one day become a net exporter if the decline in mini-study 10 broadens and deepens further.

What people can do, countries may also do. Societies are to a large extent center-periphery

systems with the center defining the problems and how to solve them, and the periphery doing

the menial tasks of implementing the decisions. In the same vein, the World is to a large extent a

Center-Periphery system, with the Center deciding what to do, giving minor roles to the

Periphery countries, e.g., as defined by Ricardo's comparative advantages "theory", or ideology

rather, of international trade.

But what happens if the center of society, or the Center of the world, declines? The social

periphery may decide to leave, and vast caravans, trains of people, migrants in search of work

and more promising conditions elsewhere will accompany the decline. The center minority may

try to keep the migration within bonds, by sheer force or by the Toynbee formula, responding

creatively to the crisis challenge by initiating new departures to convince the majority that they

are still in command of the situation. Maybe they have three chances. After that, the periphery

leaves, if not physically by migrating, then spiritually through lost allegiance.

Satellite client countries in the Periphery may do the same. They watch for the signs, and may

decide to turn from a former Center to a new Center, like Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union

to the EU and the USA. Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand, parts of the UK Center-Periphery

system may look to Japan for new roles. Norway changed her allegiance from the USA (before

that the UK, before that Sweden, before that Denmark) to the European Union. The latter seem

better at practicing Toynbee. One Center elite may not be able to convince its Periphery, but by

pooling together they may come up with a more attractive formula, like the Yaoundé-Lomé

system for the African-Caribbean-Pacific countries.

Looking at the list of cases it is obvious that there are some genealogies at work. A major

function of a dying system is to leave the scene, providing a niche of new economic

opportunities to others. Brutal, but "such is life". "Decline and fall" is only one half of the story.

The other half are the new ships, boarded or not by old, partly recycled, rats.

And thus it was that West Rome yielded to Franks and Gauls, and in the longer run to the

Carolingians. Two centuries after the fall the Umayyad Arab empire of Damascus, defeated by

the Abassids of Baghdad, changed the gap in Spain into the Caliphate of Córdoba (712). A dying

Byzants had to yield to the triumphant Ottomans, and Spain to the Italian (and Low Countries)

city-states and to the UK. The Ottomans had to yield to Russia, and to the Habsburgs and

UK/France. And UK and Russia's successor, the Soviet Empire, had to yield to the USA. And to

whom will ultimately the USA be yielding? To an expanded EU, to an East Asian Community,

or both?

China has her own logic. The Ch'ing dynasty did not yield to any other country (except, for a

short while to UK/France and some others), but to the Kuomintang dynasty, which in turn had to

yield to the Communist dynasty; in both cases for much more than economic reasons narrowly

defined. Precisely for this reason China has to be conceived of as a diachronic chain of dynasties

rather than as a synchronic system of competitors, struggling over the same space.

This serves to relativize the concepts of decline and fall. A human being falls ill and dies, the

family or somebody else fills the space. Societies also have families, inside their territory, or

outside. None has a claim on eternal life. The death cause is interesting among other reasons to

know whether euthanasia and midwifery would be the solution. Which is the Marxist thesis.

In the Marxist proposition Marx projects on World history a Hindu cosmology: reincarnation at a

higher level, ending in Nirvana (Communist society), and no more reincarnation. Marx differs

from Ibn Khaldun; there are no barbarians knocking on the gates till they fall down, and from

Sorokin and Sarkar in being more linear. Each social formation, up to but not including

communism, runs through the cycle of birth-growth-peak-decline-fall-death. But then at the

same place a new formation is ushered in by endogenous dialectic and forces. The working

classes do no leave but pave the way for that new, higher level, formation. That idea must have

been attractive to Chinese seeing history as a chain of one dynasty after the other. And the great

Chinese macro-historian Ssu-Ma Chi'en long ago entertained ideas of progress within this chain.

So there is decline and fall, but maybe no death, and what looks like death has its own

metaphysics and metaphors. The only religious metaphors that do not fit come from Christianity

and Islam: an eternal afterlife, with two varieties: in heaven, and in hell. Translated into empires,

what would this mean?

Eternal life in heaven must be what they all probably were hoping for: to become irreversible,

never disappearing from Earth. Eternity was not so much in Heaven as on Earth, implying that

they had a mandate from heaven, that they were gratia dei.

Eternal life in hell must be the opposite: to have been so reversible as to disappear completely,

leaving almost no traces, condemned to oblivion. The Nazi and Soviet empires? And the US?

Reality, it seems, is neither one nor the other, but an afterlife after decline and fall, with

reincarnation or rebirth, at a higher or lower level, depending on their merits, at the same place or

somewhere else.

8. Sustainability vs natural death and euthanasia

Hopefully the reader emerges with some more understanding of how empires come to an end.

Beyond the logic of warfare there is an economic logic, whoever breaks it does so at

considerable risk. The wayside of history is littered with empires, and there is space for many

new ones as history unfolds.

How does the sustainability of the 1990s, in UN documents, in new disciplines and institutes,

hold up against our findings? Is the concept of "sustainability", as slogan, itself sustainable?

The preceding section gives some insight in where the concept belongs: as one more secular

Western effort to bring about eternal life. We say "secular", or "modern". Before the

"enlightenment" there would probably have been less concern with eternal life on earth, Reality

being transcendental anyhow.

If we look at the ten cases again the important question is, of course, what would have been

gained by making them, and not only their economies, sustainable? Are we so sure about the idea

of mastering the techniques whereby the Roman Empire, West or East, would still be with us?

When we remember what that social formation meant for the slaves and the barbarians?

Imagine that not only they but the regimes to follow learn the lessons from the 20 hypotheses in

section 4 above and bring about good division of labor with foreign countries, with foreigners

inside their own lands, between the social classes and bring about balance with the environment

and among the sectors of economic activity, and in addition to that ensure that production factors

will be available from here to eternity. Would that constitute a better human history than we have

had? Probably not because of the many other aspects of human society and those empires in

particular.

A Roman Empire that functioned better ecologically and economically in general would still be a

Roman Empire, a massive Center-Periphery configuration with flagrant inequities between and

within countries/provinces. There would still be slaves and barbarians, probably even more of

them, with limes even further out and more exploitation, with a better Center economy available.

The same applies to all the other cases because they all have something basic in common,

pointed out in connection with the Roman Empire: expansionism in their deep cultures, whether

as military expansion, political hegemony, economic growth at the expense of others (from

whom the surplus is extracted), and/or as cultural mission civilisatrice. As they expand they

sooner or later hit the ceiling, the outer limits, problems start accumulating, and decline and fall

set in. Sic transit gloria mundi.

But China? China is more flexible, actually remarkably non-expansionist given its size.

Moreover, decline, fall and reincarnation take place, but are, like for the Egyptian empire,

masked by the dynasty formula creating continuity over time.

To try to make these empires sustainable without changing their code (deep culture) is at best

naive, at worst an effort to keep alive what perhaps should better decline, and then fall. Did we

really want to keep the Soviet Union forever, by solving one of its colossal problems, the

environment? We could make sustainability very many-dimensional, but aren't we then saying

that we have found a utopia that should be granted eternal life?

Maybe any social formation has a limited lease on life, like human beings? And, could gentle

euthanasia sometimes be a better approach than sustainability or natural death? Like nonviolent

gandhism administered to the British and the Soviet empires?

9. Conclusion: The decline and fall of the global market-place?

What would be the implications of all of this for the ultimate empire, the integrated world

economic system, the global market-place, broadening and deepening under the name of

"globalization"?

Globalization would seem to satisfy the decline syndrome:

- a division of labor whereby foreign countries, and/or foreigners inside one's own country, take

over the most challenging and interesting and developing tasks, given the historical situation;

- a deficit in creativity related to a deficit in technology and good management, including

foresight and innovation;

- one or several sectors of the economy neglected or lagging;

- and, at the same time, growth and expansionism as ideology/cosmology, exploiting foreign

countries and/or one's own people and nature, inviting negative, destructive reactions.

Obviously, the first three points would apply to most non-OECD countries in the world. Foreign

OECD countries in general, the West in particular, and often the USA/UK even more

particularly, would monopolize the secondary and tertiary sectors of economic activity, meaning

technology and management in a broad sense. But their bridgeheads in the non-OECD periphery

would not necessarily be "foreigners". They could be nationals, but for all purposes acting like

foreigners, possibly on behalf of a corporation with its center abroad rather than on behalf of a

foreign country.

There is no doubt that the local elite just described will "do well", nor much doubt that the

national gap in acquisitive power will increase and the livelihood at the bottom deteriorate. The

country will be heading not for decline and fall as an empire, not being one. but for the position

as a "failed state", and more so the more emphasis there is on expansion, meaning economic

growth as opposed to economic distribution. The country will have no self-correcting, self-

improving capacity and invites revolts from below. There will be massive emigration from all

layers of society, from impoverished masses to elites afraid of massive revolts.

But how about the OECD, and the Western, and the US/UK, and indeed the USA Center? There

is a certain ambiguity here.

On the one hand they enrich themselves by keeping control of the economic sectors with the

highest value added because secondary and tertiary sector outputs have more specificity and can

demand higher prices whereas primary sector products is "merely" nature, with laughed or no

specificity. Even nickel is nickel. Oil varies in quality, but not as much as cars.

But on the other hand they may risk destroying the periphery to the point that there is little more

to fetch from a polluted nature and an impoverished, ailing population. And they may also treat

their own periphery the way they treat the world periphery, meaning in both cases that they do

not have enough purchasing power to buy the products offered on the markets. The result will be

overproduction relative to buying capacity, deflation, and recession that may easily turn into

depression.

The basic element in the image of an alternative is a world where each part, down to

confederations of neighboring villages, is its own center. Concretely, following the conclusion

quoted above, this means avoiding any division of labor that give very important positive

externalities to the external and internal "abroad", keeps all three sectors of the economy intact,

retains innovative and managerial capacity, and abstains from exploitation of external and

internal peripheries. That economy may be short on certain products but high on satisfaction of

basic needs and on sustainability, less in need of any euthanasia or midwifery.

A number of countries have practiced such policies, including the USA roughly speaking 1850-

1900. Problems arise when they deviate from that pattern. This study is intended as a warning.