It's Evening in America: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

Part 1 of 8

­­­Can I tell you something?

I took three terms of History of Western Civilization in college. In fact, I did it twice. The first time was at the University of Oregon, where I was stoned a lot which made it hard for me to pay attention or fully appreciate what was being taught. And that was too bad because it’s important shit to learn.

As Mark Twain once mused, “history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Therefore, if one is to have an understanding of what goes on around them, and more importantly how one might move forward into a brighter future, then one is well advised to recognize the iambic pentameter of the past.

I didn’t fail the course, I got A’s, but I utterly failed to grasp the significance of the lessons.

The second time around was at Portland State University. A bit older and wiser, paying for my own education, and less stoned at least while attending class, I was much more open to learning and had a newly acquired thirst for it. I also became aware that because I’d taken only graded classes at U of O, it was possible for me to take all those outside my major on a pass/no pass basis. This meant I could enroll in a whole bunch of classes not just to amass enough credits to graduate, but for the simple reason that I actually wanted to. So I re-upped for duty to see the world as it was.

One thing that became clear as I progressed through the course was that for the vast majority of recorded human history the hoi polloi lived under the thumb of despots and dictators as serfs and servants in one empire or another.

The Greeks tried something novel around 500 BC but less than 200 years later the Macedonians put paid to their Promethean experiment. Other than that blip on the historical screen – set aside the fact that millions of indigenous people all over the not-very-civilized world lived quite happily and for the most part peacefully without the need to loot, pillage, and colonize other people – empires were the sole form of political organization and governance up until the end of the first world war. It was then that the concept of sovereignty became all the rage and various peoples went about the business of creating something heretofore unseen called nation-states.

The other thing that became clear is all empires have a tendency to rise and fall. It’s said nothing lasts forever, which really was true until DuPont invented Teflon, but the main premise underpinning the concept of empires is that they should last forever because the dominant race or religion or party or whatever was put on Earth as God’s gift, and also because with all that nonpariel power and wealth, why wouldn’t they?

Trouble is, there’s always another empire that thinks the same thing and since there’s generally room for only one empire, something’s got to give. Or fall.

Some empires obviously rose longer and fell slower than others, but fall they did. Holding the record for empire longevity – one many observers feel will never be broken – is the Chinese Empire which lasted 2,132 years beginning in 221 BC and finally ending with the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. The Holy Roman Empire, kickstarted in 800 AD by Charlemagne – the Pope not ‘tha God’ – held on for just over 1,000 years. And the Moorish Empire, which officially registered their birth in 711 AD, made it nearly 800 years before Isabell and Ferdinand – the king not the bull – defeated the Moors and united the Iberian Peninsula as a Spanish kingdom in 1492.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that countless kingdoms, sultanates, duchies, dominions, and whatnot existed along with the empires, but they were routinely swapped like Pokémon cards among the emperors.

Naturally, when one speaks of empires the first one that comes to mind is the Roman Empire. Whether this is because of historical significance or a good PR firm is hard to say, but it likely has more to do with their orgies than anything else. The Roman Empire, not to be confused with the less debauched Holy one, never threatened the world record, lasting barely more than 500 years from 27 BC to 476 AD, but the name nevertheless has become synonymous with empire excellence.

Also getting ink are the Incas, who aside from regularly sacrificing their own citizens to buy good weather, had a very civilized and stable empire. Theirs lasted less than a century, however, up until Francisco Pizarro slaughtered them all while looking for gold.

In more modern times, when empires simply had to have colonies if they were going to show their face at the club, just about all major European powers had some, but the British Empire had the most and lasted the longest.

Starting around 1583, the rather isolated island kingdom leveraged the most powerful navy in the world to lay claim to foreign lands and rule people across oceans on other continents. From 1815 to 1914 – modestly referred to as Britain’s ‘Imperial Century’ – they added over 10 million square miles of territory and 400 million people to the empire, never minding that the vast majority of these people hadn’t petitioned the crown to be part of it, and in fact deeply resented it. The biggest and most resentful was the so-called ‘Jewel in the Crown’, India, where the British pillaged natural resources, abused the populace, and imposed Raj rule which lasted until 1947.

It wasn’t until 1982 when they declared war on the tiny Falkland Islands and everyone who had moved on from the colony thing said, ‘okay that’s it, you’re done,’ that the nearly 400-year empire finally fell.

Britain’s main rival in Asia was the Russian Empire which got rolling in 1721 and lasted 196 years until the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 when Tsar Nicholas II and the ruling Romanov family were shot and bayoneted to death – better to be safe than sorry – thus beginning an exciting, never-before-tried experiment in communism. This new form of government promised to eliminate class distinctions in society and equitably distribute wealth, but instead gave rise to the Soviet Empire. Embarrassingly, they only made it 74 years before being exposed as just another run-of-the-mill, power-hungry, incompetent, corrupt, and ultimately flat-broke empire.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire – runner-up to the Gupta Empire for worst empire name ever – united much of Central Europe for 51 years until World War I made it clear that uniting Central Europe was both a bad idea and as a practical matter impossible.

Which didn’t stop some sick megalomaniac from trying to establish a Nazi empire, but thankfully that didn’t work out either.

On the ephemeral end of empire duration, the Galactic Empire lasted a mere 24 years from 19 BBY to 5 ABY when they were shockingly defeated by a puny band of rebels and a bunch of cuddly teddy bears on the planet of Endor. If you don’t know what BY stands for it’s of course the Battle of Yavin when the Rebel Alliance blew up the Death Star. If you did know, you shouldn’t admit it.

But that’s not all I wanted to tell you.

To be continued next week…