"The Consummation of Empire," by Thomas Cole, 1836.
"The Age Of Empires"
by Joel Bowman
“The place and the object gave ample scope for moralizing on the vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave; and it was agreed, that in proportion to her former greatness, the fall of Rome was the more awful and deplorable.”
~ Edward Gibbon, from "The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire" (1776)
Tokyo, Japan - "We are up in the air this week, dear reader, traveling through space and time, from one End of the World to the other. From such great heights, we watch the earth turn beneath us, same as it always has, and we wonder… where to from here? From great heights fall great empires. Ancient Egyptians to Akkadians... Assyrians to Babylonians... Hittites to Spartans to Parthians... and down on through the ages. Rise and fall. Sunrise and sunset.
In the east and in the west, all across time, political power congeals around a centralizing idea, a unifying mythology. Inwardly focused at first, a critical mass is formed, often spontaneously. Order emerges out of chaos. The core is hardened, refined, made resilient, as in a crucible. Pressure builds, intensifying to the point of implosion. With nowhere to go, the direction changes. Centripetal forces turn centrifugal... political power projects outward... in search of new energy, new resources, new horizons. And new people and lands to conquer. Whether through trade and commerce, spear and sword, or a combination of them both, the sphere of influence is expanded. Until the core comes to depend on expansion itself as a form of sustaining energy…
Age of Empire: On average, the great empires of the world – across the east and west – stand for about 250 years. (Remember that figure…) The Qin dynasty, the very first dynasty of imperial China, might have expected to exceed the average when, having conquered its surrounding rival states, founder Ying Zheng abandoned the title of king and declared himself China’s first ever emperor. The year was 221 BC.
The Qin harbored grand ambitions under Zheng’s leadership, including the creation of a centralized government, standardizing weights, currency and measurements and even the introduction of a uniform system of writing. The Qin also embarked on a massive roads and infrastructure program, including connecting various walls along the northern border (which would eventually become the Great Wall we know today).
But despite its bold aspirations, the Qin proved to be the shortest lived of all the major Chinese dynasties, with just two emperors. The enterprise ended in a bloodbath of usurpation, execution, betrayal and rebellion. The Qin’s 15 years (221-206 BC) puts it roughly on par with the little known Nanda Empire of the northern Indian subcontinent and various breakaway states from the Roman Empire, such as the Gallic Empire (260-274) and the Palmyrene Empire (260-273).
On the other end of the scale, there are a handful of empires which endured beyond the millennial mark. The Kingdom of Kush (780 BC - 350; 1,129 years) of the Nile Valley, the Chera Dynasty (200 BC - 1100; 1,300 years) of southern India, and the aforementioned Assyrians (2025-609 BC; 1,461 years) of ancient Mesopotamia, managed such unusual longevity. Only the mighty Pandyan Dynasty, one of the four great dynasties of southern India, qualifies for the multi-millennia club (300 BC - 1759; 2,059 years).
Fast-forward to our own fleeting blink in history, the term “empire” has fallen somewhat out of fashion. The world’s preeminent superpower, the United States of America, may not consider itself an empire... and yet, the US maintains between 750 and 800 military bases in some 80 countries around the world, enough to make poor old Genghis Khan bend the knee, if not kiss the ring.
That’s more than three times as many military bases as the US has embassies and consulates, leaving little doubt as to whether Washington prefers diplomacy or militancy. The cost of maintaining such a presence around the world means the US spends more on its military than the next nine countries – China, Russia, Germany, India, the UK, Saudia Arabia, Ukraine, France, and Japan... combined.
Countries with the highest military spending worldwide in 2024
(in billion U.S. dollars)
Freely download ""The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire",
by Edward Gibbon, here:
No comments:
Post a Comment