"The Consummation of Empire", by Thomas Cole, 1836
"Decline And Fall"
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)
"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 the 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. 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.
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... combined.
Countries with the highest military spending worldwide in 2023
(in billion U.S. dollars)
(Source: Statista, 2024)
From Qin to Pandyan: No doubt scholars will debate when, exactly, the Age of Empire began for the United States. Was it during its era of economic dominance, following World War I... or its ascendency to military superpower, in the aftermath of World War II?
Having turned 248 this year, it may be fair to ask whether the American Empire is closer to the beginning or the end of its global dominance. In the pages of history, will she fall closer on the timeline to the Qin, or the Pandyan? And here we allow ourselves a whimsical flight of fancy, dear reader. One wonders...
Would ceding the global superpower reins really be all that terrible? The Golden Era of Athens is the stuff of dusty textbooks, and yet many are those who manage to eke out a passable existence on sunny Greek Islands (often thumbing the pages of said textbooks). So too are the glory days of the Roman Empire long gone, yet as far as we can tell, life remains stubbornly tolerable along the Amalfi Coast. Likewise has the sun set on the British Empire, and... well, scratch that last example.
(NB: Please, will a dear reader residing in the UK write in with some good news from Ol’ Blighty? It’s been a while since we’ve visited your fair shores and, judging by the news of late, we’re beginning to think all is lost...)
All is to say, what’s good for The State (warfare, welfare, mass surveillance, etc.), is not necessarily good for “We, The People.” The average American citizen, content to sweep his own stoop and tend his own garden, might even find it a relief to no longer foot the bill of being the world’s police, to suffer the privilège exorbitant of bearing the world’s reserve currency, to find his troops on every foreign shore and his politicians in every bloody pocket.
Maybe, when it comes to the all-powerful, all-seeing nature of his government, less may indeed prove to be more for decent, private citizens. And perhaps, as Thomas Jefferson once envisioned, there might be a future in which the United States of America is left to pursue “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations... entangling alliances with none.”
Pure fantasy, of course. But worth a passing, weekend reverie…"
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