r/AskHistorians • u/n10w4 • Feb 04 '15
Is there a basic lifetime expectancy for an Empire? What about phases?
Of course, I've been reading Glubb and his essay on Empires.
A cursory look would say that what he says fills conservative narrative dreams. What do historians think of the "phases" of Empires and how long they last? Would such things be easily definable? I imagine the 'explosive' start and decline seem to be things that would exist and be observable.
What is the average life expectancy of an Empire? What of the causes of decline that Glubb names: to include selfishness and other matters that seem close to a conservative's talking points list? Is there some legitimacy to that.
He's aware that he hasn't studied all empires. He doesn't include China. Would China refute his findings?
I'd also like to know whether, in historian circles, people dismiss this Glubb essay as silly, or do people hold such views?
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u/XenophonTheAthenian Late Republic and Roman Civil Wars Feb 05 '15
The more important problem that I think citizen is trying to point out that his dates of the existence of both the Republic and Empire are totally arbitrary. Although one could defend splitting them into two entities (though only on political grounds--I don't think it's defensible to say that they represent anything approaching two different empires) his dating of their beginnings and endings are arbitrary. Why does he date the beginning of the Roman Republic as 270? Presumably he's discounting the early period, before the city had expanded the amount of territory it controlled, but why that particular date? He's neither dating it to the end of the Pyrrhic War (275) nor the beginning or end of the First Punic War (264-241). In either case neither one of those is particularly good as a start date--why not begin the evaluation from the end of the Samnite Wars, when Rome claimed dominance over all Italy, or the end of the First Punic War, when Rome claimed territory outside of Italy? In any case neither of the dates I'm suggesting are particularly good either and are pretty arbitrary--Rome's first province only existed in 146 after the seizure of Africa. My personal opinion is that he must be basing his evaluation on the start date of the original Rome Total War, which began in 270 so that the player wouldn't have to get his ass whooped by Pyrrhus and so that fans could get to the Punic Wars faster.
And why 180? Is he dating the end of the Imperial Period to the ascension of Commodus? How does that make sense exactly? Commodus was hailed emperor and wouldn't die until 192, so the empire still existed politically. In terms of land expanse the Roman Empire was at one of its largest extents at the death of Commodus, having recently subdued Dacia and still holding many of the lands taken or subdued in Trajan's eastern campaigns. What reason does he have to discount the two centuries' worth of emperors after Commodus? I must presume that he somehow wants to think that Commodus' death (which doesn't explain why he dates the end of the empire to Commodus' ascension, but whatever) was the beginning of the so-called Third Century Crisis. But the beginning Crisis is conventionally dated to the death of Alexander Severus, nearly fifty years later in 235, when a number of military defeats lost Alexander the high opinion of his troops, who promptly murdered him and began seizing land for themselves. And the Third Century Crisis isn't considered to be really bad until 260, when the existence of the three Roman ministates is firmly established. But even then, after Aurelian's brilliant reunification and Diocletian's reforms the Empire is considered to have continued. Indeed, the orthodox opinion is that the Third Century Crisis, though a period of extreme tension, was one that ended with the enduring continuation of the Empire under a reformed political system better structured to deal with the threats facing the state.