“Why Empires Fall” draws a comparison between the West in 1999, the zenith of its confidence, and Rome in 399—just decades before the empire’s collapse
This provocative short book adapts this approach with a novel twist. It draws a comparison between the West in 1999, the zenith of its confidence, and Rome exactly 1,600 years earlier, in 399—just decades before the empire’s collapse.. John Rapley, a political economist, and Peter Heather, a historian, dissent from the analysis familiar since Edward Gibbon of an empire in gradual decline almost from its inception under Augustus.
What went wrong? The book dwells on foreign forces that became ever harder to resist. At the empire’s weakening periphery, local bigwigs began throwing in their lot with, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Huns, Vandals and the rest. The sister of one emperor even married a Visigoth leader and produced a son with serious imperial claims. As Gibbon laboured to explain 250 years ago, the eastern empire based in Constantinople continued for almost another millennium.
Yet the analogy with Rome’s decline and fall is ultimately unconvincing. The rest of the world is certainly catching up with the West, both economically and demographically. China’s economy may soon be bigger than America’s. Europe accounted for a quarter of the global population in 1914, but has less than a tenth today. Immigration, especially from Africa and Latin America, is politically testing. Populism is on the march.
All the same, on a global scale it is hard to envisage a serious military rival to the clout of the United States and its European allies. Russia is revanchist, but it is also in long-term decline. China is brittle and its growth is slowing sharply. India is politically rancorous. The West’s grip on the best technology and research is firm. And though Europe’s economic prospects may be cloudy, American productivity leaves most competitors in the dust.
Declinists like to cite George Bernard Shaw, whose dictum on the transience of great powers jokily invoked an English village: “Rome fell. Babylon fell. Hindhead’s turn will come.” It is tempting to think that way. But for now, at least, it is not obvious when, if ever, the West will follow suit.
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