The End of Empire
In the Fourth Century A.D. what had one day been the glory of the Republic of Rome and had become the Holy Roman Empire and would further become the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire (run from Constantinople) before it finally passed into history under the sword of the Ottoman Empire, was overrun by Goths and Huns. The general historical consensus is that the Roman Empire we all know from our Western Civilization courses failed due to a combination of population growth and diversity, a failure of military fitness and respect, the weakening of the economy due to the overextension of the empire and its infrastructural standards, shifts in religious outlook, failing civil administration effectiveness and, believe it or not, climate change. Sound familiar?
The British Empire, which spanned four hundred years, give or take a few years, was arguably the largest empire in the history of the world. The reach of the Anglo Saxon culture was so extensive that the saying went that “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. While we can debate the impact of the Greeks or the Romans on the modern world, it is hard to deny that the British impact on the world was far greater both through direct influences like language, legal system, administrative process, religion and baseline values, but also in a derivative sense when we think of the American, Canadian, Australian, Indian and even Chinese systems and how much they are modeled after the British system. This is less about the Monarchy per se and more about the attributes that most pragmatically drive the every day life in these and many other countries. And yet, for 150 of those 400 years of existence, the British Empire was is a process of gradual and painfully slow decline.
In the last month we have watched both the Netflix series Turn and the stage production of Hamilton. Turn is about the network of spies working for and against the British during the Revolutionary War. It gave an unusual insight into the complicated fabric of a divided community of people who’s allegiance had always been to the British crown, but which was now being ripped apart by conflicting independent forces seeking self-rule. Hamilton, a truly cultural phenomenon that may have taught more about the Revolutionary War and the founding of our illustrious Federalist Republic than any history book ever written, showed us in colloquially-cool hip-hop lyrics how the founders of our country operated with one another as real living and breathing human beings of great ambitions and even greater ethical foundations.
In both shows we see that no one is immune from the issues of self-interest, but that the truly great leaders and founders stay on the right side of history by staying true to their higher ideals rather than falling prey to evil forces. Benedict Arnold is the stalking horse for evil in Turn, and Aaron Burr plays that role in Hamilton. Interestingly enough, in both shows, while not a major protagonist, Washington is shown to be the pinnacle of idealism that is almost unbelievably good in his intentions and modus operandi. In both cases, Washington was raised and his bed feathered by the British system he stood against. King George III is portrayed as the simpering, weak, aristocratic sovereign out of touch with the reality of late Eighteenth Century life in both America AND Britain. The reason for the tea tax, the reason the King needed to keep the colonies was not JUST about control of empire, but about faltering economics of the empire in the form of multinational conglomerates like the East India Company unable to sell tea from the outlands of the empire against the normal forces of commercial competition from the European continent and other tropical lands outside the realm of the Empire.
Last night nephew Will was over for the evening. He is a manager at a Trader Joe’s grocery store and is as close to being an essential worker as anyone that isn’t directly on the healthcare front line. He needed a night off and there is no bosom like the bosom of his Auntie Kim, so he came up for a socially distant, but friendly evening and guest room stay-over. We were in loco parentis for Will when he was in New York and now we are likewise in San Diego. While wearing a Hawaiian shirt and selling great wine and cheese is somewhat of a suitable job for Will, he is also a history buff with a solid sense of the past. If not for Trader Joe’s, he might be a history teacher. So when we needed to agree on a movie, he noticed that Master and Commander with Russell Crowe was on. This was a great end-of-empire movie of the primary source of British power, its Royal Navy. What we see in 1805 is the scrambling by a brave and accomplished British sea captain against superior technology and a failing culture of class-driven authority over the wishes of the masses. We also see the imperative of aggression over science, showing once again the short-sightedness of empire builders when an empire is past its prime.
So Italy (the closest proxy for the historical Roman state) and the U.K. (again, the closest successor for the Britannia that ruled the waves) are now minor players in and out of the EU and holding vestigial voting rights in antiquated forums like the UN Security Council (in the case of the U.K.). They have little sway on the affairs of the world and are satisfactory and sometimes helpful allies, but rarely drivers of change or order. That role for at least 75 years and perhaps 100 years has been the sole province of the American Empire with the likes of China and Russia poking sticks in the spokes of whatever bicycle the U.S. chooses to ride around the world. This has all now come to an end and its perhaps too soon to say that we are at the end of empire just yet, but it would not be incorrect to say that the beginning of the end of empire has begun, just as it did one day for Rome and one day for Britain.
I am always influenced in my thinking by the movies that I watch, but the impact they have on me are rarely in abstraction, but most often rooted in the events of the times. We see every day that the Trump Administration, for one reason or another, has decided that global leadership is a money-losing game. One cannot avoid wondering about his motivations given his extreme goodwill towards Vladimir Putin and the Russian state goals. He is less definite about China though he loves to praise its Premier, unless it fits his of-the-moment political goals. Usually one empire falls when another is ready to takes its place or at least make its move. It does not seem either Russia or China are prepared for that challenging and costly road (the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative notwithstanding) and they seem more willing to let America flounder in its end of empire death dance for a while longer. For my part, I hope we can get more than a dead cat bounce back to primacy after November. Fingers crossed. The world needs us.