The social development graph is unclear to me. How does Ian Morris define “east” and “west”? Is Egypt and the Levant “West” or “East”? We don’t usually consider Egypt to be part of “the West” these days. From the perspective of Ancient Rome the Levant were as farther east as Asia [Roman province] but if you look at a globe they are both on the western side of Eurasia. Whether Cairo and Constantinople constitute “east” or “west” gives the graph completely different meanings. Does “East” include Arabia and Persia? How about the Levant? My guess is “West” refers to Europe and the Mediterranean and “East” refers to India and the Sinosphere.
I think this analysis could benefit from a broader perspective. The knowledge of Rome wasn’t lost. The Renaissance didn’t happen in a vacuum. The European classics were preserved by Arabic scholars during the European Medieval period. The Byzantines survived until 1453. They were the legitimate Roman Empire.
Western historians traditionally view the collapse of the Western Roman Empire as a deviation from normalcy. I think about the rise of the Western Roman Empire as the anomaly and its collapse as a return to normalcy. Rome’s grain came from Cairo. Egypt was the center of Mediterranean civilization for the first half of history. It makes more sense that Egypt, not Italy, be the locus of Mediterranean civilization.
If you’re curious to learn more, a terrific resource is The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan which walks you step-by-step through the rise and fall of the Western Roman Empire. From listening to that podcast, I think the destabilization of Rome started with an influx of slaves which increased inequality and drove citizens out of work. Internal economics broke democracy which brought about Caesar’s autocracy. Mike Duncan isn’t surprised because the Western Roman Empire fell too early. He is surprised it survived Crisis of the Third Century.
From Ian Morris’ companion book Social Development:
I define “East” and “West” as the societies that have developed from the original core areas in the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers and between the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers where agriculture began developing after the end of the Ice Age.
Western historians traditionally view the collapse of the Western Roman Empire as a deviation from normalcy. I think about the rise of the Western Roman Empire as the anomaly and its collapse as a return to normalcy.
I don’t know if Rome is the anomaly for most civilizations. When looking at Europe, Rome was the only civilization to unify (most of) the continent, while others couldn’t—though many tried. But when looking at human civilizations as a whole, most centres are unified, and then stay so.
For the Middle East, that was the Assyrian and Achaemenid Empires, later being replaced by the Empires of similar sizes. For India, that was Ashoka and the Mauryan Empires, for China it was the Han, for Ethiopia it was Aksum, and so on.
Europe is (mostly) unique in that Rome came, Rome fell, and then no one was ever able to replace it.
The lack of an empire to supplant the Romans was recently discussed by Walter Scheidel in Aeon. In most cases the bureaucracy of empire survived when power was supplanted by an invader, and so some semblance of the the social structure of empire continued.
When Rome collapsed the empire totally fragmented.
I meant that the Roman Empire was an anomaly within European-Mediterranean history. It is unusual for the European-Mediterranean region specifically to be unified.
Oh yeah for sure. Europe is very unique in this regard, only really sharing it with West Africa. I don’t have any definitive reasons why Europe specifically tends towards disunity, but I would say it is mostly culture.
The Frankish Empire got very close to dominating the entirety of the West (I feel like that’s close enough), but then Charlemagne died, and it was split into three due to succession laws. Later, the Holy Roman Empire got close again (around the time of Otto II), but castles and the ratio between the ease-of-building and the defensibly prompted further disunity. The very fine balance of power between the Catholic Church, the nobility, the serfs, and burghers also prevented one from gaining too much power (in Rome the nobility and the urban-poor banded together).
Maybe geography played a small part, because there are no large irrigation-based river bodies to control, but there is the Rhine, Danube, and others (I’m not European, so I don’t know which rivers require irrigation). Also, there was the Mediterranean, which Rome used.
Sidenote: I just wrote 150 words on ancient history, completely unprovoked.
I think we’re on the same page. Three more people who came close to dominating the region include Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. I think there are good arguments for both sides to the argument of whether Europe’s disunity comes from culture or geography.
I didn’t know West Africa is like Europe in this regard. That is interesting.
I would also include Charlemagne, Otto II, and Justinian onto that list.
For West Africa, I need to read more on the topic, but I believe that a couple empires came and left (Mali and Ghana?), but their descendants eventually split into various small kingdoms and polities. Although, I guess you could include the French as being one unifier.
The social development graph is unclear to me. How does Ian Morris define “east” and “west”? Is Egypt and the Levant “West” or “East”? We don’t usually consider Egypt to be part of “the West” these days. From the perspective of Ancient Rome the Levant were as farther east as Asia [Roman province] but if you look at a globe they are both on the western side of Eurasia. Whether Cairo and Constantinople constitute “east” or “west” gives the graph completely different meanings. Does “East” include Arabia and Persia? How about the Levant? My guess is “West” refers to Europe and the Mediterranean and “East” refers to India and the Sinosphere.
I think this analysis could benefit from a broader perspective. The knowledge of Rome wasn’t lost. The Renaissance didn’t happen in a vacuum. The European classics were preserved by Arabic scholars during the European Medieval period. The Byzantines survived until 1453. They were the legitimate Roman Empire.
Western historians traditionally view the collapse of the Western Roman Empire as a deviation from normalcy. I think about the rise of the Western Roman Empire as the anomaly and its collapse as a return to normalcy. Rome’s grain came from Cairo. Egypt was the center of Mediterranean civilization for the first half of history. It makes more sense that Egypt, not Italy, be the locus of Mediterranean civilization.
If you’re curious to learn more, a terrific resource is The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan which walks you step-by-step through the rise and fall of the Western Roman Empire. From listening to that podcast, I think the destabilization of Rome started with an influx of slaves which increased inequality and drove citizens out of work. Internal economics broke democracy which brought about Caesar’s autocracy. Mike Duncan isn’t surprised because the Western Roman Empire fell too early. He is surprised it survived Crisis of the Third Century.
From Ian Morris’ companion book Social Development:
Thanks. It sounds like, the Islamic world counts as “West” and India just isn’t included on the chart.
I don’t know if Rome is the anomaly for most civilizations. When looking at Europe, Rome was the only civilization to unify (most of) the continent, while others couldn’t—though many tried. But when looking at human civilizations as a whole, most centres are unified, and then stay so.
For the Middle East, that was the Assyrian and Achaemenid Empires, later being replaced by the Empires of similar sizes. For India, that was Ashoka and the Mauryan Empires, for China it was the Han, for Ethiopia it was Aksum, and so on.
Europe is (mostly) unique in that Rome came, Rome fell, and then no one was ever able to replace it.
The lack of an empire to supplant the Romans was recently discussed by Walter Scheidel in Aeon. In most cases the bureaucracy of empire survived when power was supplanted by an invader, and so some semblance of the the social structure of empire continued.
When Rome collapsed the empire totally fragmented.
It is a very interesting read:
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-fall-of-the-roman-empire-paved-the-road-to-modernity
I meant that the Roman Empire was an anomaly within European-Mediterranean history. It is unusual for the European-Mediterranean region specifically to be unified.
Oh yeah for sure. Europe is very unique in this regard, only really sharing it with West Africa. I don’t have any definitive reasons why Europe specifically tends towards disunity, but I would say it is mostly culture.
The Frankish Empire got very close to dominating the entirety of the West (I feel like that’s close enough), but then Charlemagne died, and it was split into three due to succession laws. Later, the Holy Roman Empire got close again (around the time of Otto II), but castles and the ratio between the ease-of-building and the defensibly prompted further disunity. The very fine balance of power between the Catholic Church, the nobility, the serfs, and burghers also prevented one from gaining too much power (in Rome the nobility and the urban-poor banded together).
Maybe geography played a small part, because there are no large irrigation-based river bodies to control, but there is the Rhine, Danube, and others (I’m not European, so I don’t know which rivers require irrigation). Also, there was the Mediterranean, which Rome used.
Sidenote: I just wrote 150 words on ancient history, completely unprovoked.
I think we’re on the same page. Three more people who came close to dominating the region include Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. I think there are good arguments for both sides to the argument of whether Europe’s disunity comes from culture or geography.
I didn’t know West Africa is like Europe in this regard. That is interesting.
I would also include Charlemagne, Otto II, and Justinian onto that list.
For West Africa, I need to read more on the topic, but I believe that a couple empires came and left (Mali and Ghana?), but their descendants eventually split into various small kingdoms and polities. Although, I guess you could include the French as being one unifier.