{"id":66422,"date":"2024-01-01T12:51:37","date_gmt":"2024-01-01T17:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=66422"},"modified":"2024-01-01T12:51:37","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T17:51:37","slug":"rome-was-eternal-until-it-wasnt-imperial-analogs-of-decay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=66422","title":{"rendered":"Rome Was Eternal, Until It Wasn’t: Imperial Analogs of Decay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rome Was Eternal, Until It Wasn’t: Imperial Analogs of Decay<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

The tricky part is distinguishing the critical dependencies–those resources the empire literally cannot do without–from longer-term sources of decay and decline.<\/i><\/p>\n

In response to my recent post\u00a0What If There Are No Analogs for 2024?<\/a>, an astute reader nominated the Roman Empire as a fitting analog.<\/b>\u00a0Longtime readers know I’ve often discussed the complex history of Western Rome’s decay and collapse, for example,\u00a0Why Rome Collapsed: Lessons For the Present<\/a>\u00a0(August 11, 2023).<\/p>\n

Dozens of other posts on the topic stretch back to 2009:\u00a0Complacency and The Will To Radical Reform<\/a>\u00a0(February 12, 2009)<\/p>\n

What conclusions can we draw from recent research and the voluminous work done by previous generations of historians?<\/b>\u00a0Our first conclusion is simply to state the obvious: it’s complicated. There was no one cause of Western Rome’s decay and collapse. A multitude of factors generated feedback loops and responses over hundreds of years, some more successful than others.<\/p>\n

Indeed, we cannot help but be struck by how many times impending collapse was staved off by brilliant leadership and policy adjustments.<\/p>\n

Our second conclusion is to distinguish between the erosive forces of decay and critical vulnerabilities that can trigger collapse.<\/b>\u00a0Many authors have pointed to moral decay and fiscal over-reach as sources of Rome’s eventual fall, but there were far more pressing dependencies that created potentially fatal vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n

In the case of Western Rome, these included:<\/b><\/p>\n

1. The depletion of the silver mines in Spain (and the eventual loss of Spain to the Visigoths). Once you run out of hard currency, your free-spending days are over. This dependence on large quantities of hard currency to fund your armed forces is a trigger for collapse.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rome Was Eternal, Until It Wasn’t: Imperial Analogs of Decay The tricky part is distinguishing the critical dependencies–those resources the empire literally cannot do without–from longer-term sources of decay and decline. In response to my recent post\u00a0What If There Are No Analogs for 2024?, an astute reader nominated the Roman Empire as a fitting analog.\u00a0Longtime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,7],"tags":[24078,150,27385,10956,34064,587,5923,34063],"class_list":["post-66422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","category-survival-2","tag-charles-hugh-smith-2","tag-collapse","tag-decay","tag-imperial-collapse","tag-imperial-decay","tag-of-two-minds","tag-roman-empire","tag-western-rome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66423,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66422\/revisions\/66423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}