The 'sudden end' of the British and Roman empires?

You really got a hate on for the US eh?

Anthropologist and historian Joseph Tainter wrote a fine book about it, The Collapse of Complex Societies. Collapse tends to occur quickly, as complex systems simply break down and the social construct declines to a much simpler form.
-----Like the SOviet Union and sudden end of the British empire, Spain, Rome (they took a few years to decades, but that was quick considering they were dominat for a few centuries)

You realise that makes no sense. The Roman Empire, in one form or another (Republic, Byzantium, etc...) lasted for almost 2000 years and the British Empire simply ran out of money. Spain suffered mainly military setbacks and the Soviet Union was communist and thus doomed to fail.

 

You seem to be saying that complex empire/societies fall. Well, yes they do. As do simple ones. No empire lasts for ever and no one stays on top forever. The U.S. will eventually be surpassed; but complexity has nothing to do with it.

 

B.L. 

I challenge the very notion that the Roman Empire "fell."  A far more accurate term given historical context is that it evolved.  There was not a cataclysmic invasion which ended it.  Nor was there an economic meltdown.  It was a very gradual change taking place over several hundred years. 

Wicked,

 

It simply is not true that Rome "evolved". That is historical revisionism of the worst sort which, unfortunately, is common in the Marxist history departments so prevalent in many universities.

 

Rome failed because it was incompetent due to years of embedded bureaucracy eating the seed corn of its' vitality and years of internecine warfare over who would run the empire. Progressively greater taxation to support the various treasury calls (sometimes armies killed the emperor simply to appoint another and, thus get a "payday tithe" for the accession of a new emperor) killed the economy first in the west and, later in the east. The once proud Roman citizen was reduced to a proletarian slave. By the time of Justinian the citizen legion was gone -- replaced by mercenary elites and conscript proles.

 

This was not evolution but the culmination of fascist oppression by a government out of control.

 

BTW, does this pattern seem similar?

 

Best,

wjr

WJR,

 

The Roman empire as history books illustrate fell, but it was already converting to an empire of thought with Christianity as its driving force.  The Vatican sent European armies, under threat of excommunication of the kings, to the middle east to take back Jerusalem.  This power was enforced by banning the reading of the bible by anyone but clergy.  And even after the Protestant split, the Catholic Church is still a major political player in the world today.  The same could be said of Judaism and Islam.  There may be "holy centers" but there is no HQ and no walls to scale, they are empires of thought and emotion with no borders.

mother of GOD I hate this board.  I had a greater than 500 word response to you saying I am a revisionist evaporate.  

To sum up what I JUST FREAKING TYPED.  

1)  Before the worst of the periods of Civil-War (the ROmans never had just one at a time) the Empire was already more a strong central Government centered in Rome/Constantinople and numerous client states run by local Kings brought into the Bureaucracy.  

2)  THe military on the frontier gradually changed from deployed legions to locals trained in Roman tactics 

3)  Due to the civil wars the central gov'ts increasingly ignored their distant holdings giving the local rulers greater authority.

4)  Gradually, the above points led to total degradation in central roman authority.  The civilian authority had degraded rapidly after the Roman Governors became or were replaced by local kings.  The responsibilities of the Civilian arms of Rome were largely replaced by the Christian Church.  

All of the above happened slowly over more than a hundred years.

Rome changed from a pure, Large centrally governed Empire, to a Small Central Empire with numerous client states, to the Byzantine Empire.  Byzantine, WAS Rome, and was still ROme when it was destroyed by the Turks: they never referred to themselves as the Byzantines, but Romans.   Any time when an Empire has a greater than 1000 year declination period you cant say it "fell," that word describes something far too sudden.

 

 

Wicked,

 

You need to read some Grant or Runciman. The simplification that revisionists make are simply astonishing.

 

Throughout the fourth and  fifth century there was a form of yin/yang of central to distributed control of the empire. The state of play depended upon the strength of the central authority. Particularly in the fourth century (the era of the camp emperors) but, with the obvious exception of Palmyra, these contenders were Romans and held the concept of Rome as the universal state -- it's just that any particular insurgent would claim that they were the correct strong man for the position.

 

This uncertainty and the consequent "fix" for the uncertainty imposed by Diocletian finally and completely stripped the empire of fiscal resources.

 

Where the client kings come into the picture is in the West (in much worse shape that the east in terms of wealth in the late fourth  and early fifth century)  and this was simply due to the fact that the Romans had no resource other than land to give -- even with a fairly stable central government. Authoritarianism had finally stripped the empire of any ability to defend itself other than through the employment of barbarian hired hands.

 

Today we are converting our citizens into "sheeple". Much as Rome lost its' stakeholders so will we as long as we let the current conditions to play themselves out.

 

Best,

wjr