How Empires Really End

[Mises Daily Article]

How Empires Really End

by Sean Corrigan

<http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1656>[Posted October 25, 2004]

 Here is what the standard historical textbooks will tell you. The Romans,
after nearly four centuries of occupation, abandoned Britain in the year
410 a.d., when the western Emperor Honorius sent a "Rescript"or official
proclamationto the leaders of the British municipalities, telling them,
thereafter, to look to their own defense.

Those same bookswith their urge to chop history up into neatly packaged
sliversthen roundly declare that Civilization was abolished and that the
"Dark Ages" promptly began.

They will inform you that, within the space of barely two generations, the
feeble British had abandoned the fertile lowland fields and farms, which
their ancestors had tended since the last Ice Age, giving them up to a few
boatloads of Germanic pirates and that they began to flee, finding a bleak
refuge in the harsher highlands on the oceanic fringes of their island.

And why would this not be trueno less than Rome herself was sacked by
Alaric and his Goths that same year, was it not?

As for Honorius, well, he was sheltering safely in Ravenna while his people
were enduring the barbarian siege. The story goes that when he heard the
news of its ruin, he thought it was a lesser evil than would be the death
of his pet cockerel of the same name!

But rather than using the words of a fool in purple, historians consider
the cataclysm was better encapsulated by the pen of St. Jerome, who gave
out a whole series of lamentations, wailing, in one letter, that:

"...the bright light of all the world was put out, or, rather, when the
Roman Empire was decapitated, and, to speak more correctly, the whole world
perished in one city."

Here and now, sixteen centuries later, in my line of work as an investment
analyst, you come across more and more latter-day St. Jeromes, wherever you
turn.

I know of people who are selling up and moving to seek Shangri-La in the
Southern Alps of New Zealand. Ive met those who think Paradise is to be
found among the palm trees of the Dominican Republic or Costa Rica.

A smart and very highly-educated American with whom Im friendly speaks for
many when he ends an e-mail with the words: "Im looking forward to seeing
you in Zurich. The way things are here, I might even stay."

In fact, its becoming increasingly common for well-to-do professional
folks and retired businessmen to reveal, in the course of a conversation,
that they are prey to increasing anxieties about their future.

These people evidently fear that their quality of life can no longer be
guaranteed and they often dont know what they can do about it.

Meanwhile, out in the wider world, the Gold Bugs and the more extreme
religious crazies (of all faiths) have seemingly set up a joint venture.

These two incongruous lobby groups have joined hands in trying to persuade
people that the End of Daysfinancial or universalis at hand.

What they seem to have agreed upon is that when God/Jehovah/Allah/Shiva is
shortly revealed in all His mighty wrath and when He causes credit to
collapse and the stock market to plunge, He will expect the Faithful not to
be caught up in the rout.

Oh, no! For the mark of the True Believer is that, when the Crash comes, he
should be ready to take the Lord straight to where he has his gold coins
buried instead!

As that mellifluous voice of carefully-crafted pessimism, Bill Bonner, put
it, in a recent piece:

"We like gold the way we like stacks of firewood, jars of canned green
beans and cheerful women. They make the going so much more fun when the
going gets rough. As we mention above, the going has never been easier. So
easy have things become that people no longer see the need for reserves. .
. . But someday, the going may not be so good. We hold it in inventory for
the day when just in time fails and just in case comes back into style
. . ."

This sounds eminently more reasonable, but, in truth, it is simply more of
the same doom-mongeringjust more soothingly and articulately expressed by
a master of the art.

For my part, Ill admit that our rulers chickens finally may be coming
home to roost, and that ours will be the generation up to our necks in
guano.

However, Im among those who also find this vogue for paranoiathis cult of
the Apocalypseboth unattractive and unfruitful.

The lesson of history

This is where the story of Rome and the manner of its tellingis
particularly instructive. This is because, as frequently happens in life,
if we look beyond the banner headlines of despair, we can find cause for
hope.

We can also draw several parallels with what is happening to us
todaythough not on the way our present crop of St. Jeromes would do it.

Lets take a glimpse at how Rome and her history can give us a
reaffirmation of our unshaken belief in the ability of Everyman, acting as
a free individual, to repair all the damage ever done by historys tyrants
and their tax gatherers.

The first thing to be pointed out is that, however dramatic the official
version of those past events, what historiansand, more emphatically,
archaeologistsare coming to realize is that, changes in political
leadership aside, nothing very much at all can otherwise be found to
distinguish the days before 410 a.d. with those afterwards.

Rome may have swapped leaders. Violence may have been done and property
destroyed on a considerable scale. Individual tragedy was, we suspect, both
undeniable and heart-rending, as it always is in such times.

Yet, the vast majority of men and women still lived their lives, tended
their livestock, took their goods to market, and worshipped their gods, as
they had always doneRome, or no Rome.

The thrifty and the enterprising still, on the whole, fared better than the
prodigal and the unthinking. In fact, freed of the crushing exactions laid
upon them by a Rome always eager to bribe its vast, unproductive military
class into quietude, they may even have been left to enjoy more of the
fruits of their own labors than usual.

But, the academic historians have always sought to ignore things like this,
for these are concerns of common peopleof traders and farmersand
historians focus mainly on the swaggering fools at the head of the Stateon
generals and governors.

Even if we momentarily share their obsession and even if we stick to the
old texts, unbacked by any harder evidence, the accepted view does not bear
much scrutiny.

Take the case of those feeble Britons, for instance.

Here, it should be noted that Honorius letter was not a denial of some
grovelling plea for aid, but a recognition of their de facto and
self-attained independence.

In early 5th-century Britain, memories still burned with the flames of the
pogrom unleashed by Emperor Constantius IIs emissary, Paulus Catena, sixty
years before, after the native leaders had backed the wrong contender in a
struggle for his masters throne.

Many of the current leaders fathers had probably collaborated in fomenting
what the texts call the "Barbarian Conspiracy," in 367 a.d.traditionally
viewed as yet another mark of Britains weakness, but now being revised
into what may actually have been another concerted attempt to shed the
Imperial yoke.

In fact, far from being wretched, the Britons invaded the continent several
times themselves after this supposed disaster; notably, under Maximus in
383 a.d., and, again, under Constantine III in 409 a.d. They even deposed
two previous, more circumspect leaders in swift succession in order to give
Constantine his shot at the title!

Thus, just a year before Honorius wrote his famous missive, one faction of
the Island Celts had already come close to deposing him, while another
spurned his rule completely.

As Zosimus wrote of the period:

". . . [events saw] some of the Celtic peoples defecting from the Roman
rule and living their own lives, independent from the Roman laws. The
Britons therefore took up arms and, braving the danger on their own behalf,
freed their cities from the barbarian threat. And all Armorica and the
other Gallic provinces followed their example, freed themselves in the same
way, expelling the Roman officials and setting up a constitution such as
they pleased . . ."

If this was the case, if some Celtic Washingtons and Jeffersons had,
indeed, won and formalized their peoples freedom, what of the notorious
Groans of the Britons letter, addressed to Generalissimo Aetius a
generation later? Surely this must prove that British sheep were still
being shorn by Saxon wolves?

Well, perhaps not, for it can better be read as the futile obsecration of
one pro-Roman (and Augustinian?) faction, losing out to their retro-Celtic
(Pelagian?) foes.

Note that, in it, the plaintiffs were bleating that the barbarians push us
to the sea; the sea pushes us back to the barbarians: between these two
kinds of death, we are either slaughtered or drowned.

Anglo-historians swell with pride here, assuming that their virile Saxon
forebears are pushing the effete Welsh off the cliffs of Cornwall, but a
far more realistic construction is that supreme commander Vortigerns men
are riding the imperial faction into the surf in Kent!

Moreover, as late as 470 a.d.when the Saxons had supposedly started their
"ethnic cleansing"it was a contingent of 12,000 Britons under King
Riothamus (tentatively identified by some as Vortigerns disobedient
warrior son, Vortimer) which is said to have sailed up the Loire in the
unsuccessful effort to succor the Emperor Anthemius against his Gothic foes.

So, contrary to popular belief, military aid and military adventurism did
not always flow West from Rome, but often it was directed the other way
around!

The victors write the history

But, no matter.

Objective truth counted for little when generations of Englishmen had been
schooled in the ways of Rome and were taught to treat its authors
propagandistic Latin as plain fact.

Who understood that these same worthies and their teachers were all too
eager to trace their contemporary naval and commercial pre-eminence back to
the alleged superiority of their race?

Who realized that history must bend if Victorian overlords were eager to
see in their own Empire a reflection of more ancient glories?

Thus was conjured up the myth of the Anglo-Saxon supremacy and its
counterpoise, the rapid descent of the degenerate post-Roman Britons back
to the mud huts and pig sties from which their Italian masters had briefly
roused them.

As evidence for this, the historians cited the collapse of urban society.

They noted the dwindling of the cash economy as the barely-civilized
savages retreated to rural isolation and relied, once more, upon barter for
the exchange of their few, poor goods.

Deprived of their Tacituses and Cassius Dios, they scorned the natives
lack of learning and mocked the dearth of literacy, which had replaced the
renowned intellectual salons of the auxiliary castra.

The fact that the Celtic Church, sponsored by the sovereign Celtic princes,
was the re-educator of continental Europe and that its footsore saints were
the proselytizers of both Faith and Science throughout these times, was
neatly overlooked.

Even on the economic front, the distortions are plain.

New archaeological evidence and recent reinterpretations of old data
suggest the towns had been undergoing a continual period of slow decay for
many years prior to 410 a.d. and that the cause was not to be found in
barbarian depredations, but in Romes own dysfunctional society.

For far too long, Rome had lived by conquestthrough seizing, by force of
arms, what its spendthrift patricians and Caesarian mafiosi could not hope
to gain by trade alone.

But once the Empire came to butt up against lands too infertile to be worth
the taking, or against terrain too inhospitable for its Legions to control
in the face of active native "insurgents," this predatory State turned
increasingly inward to devour its own wealth producers instead.

Punitive taxes were needed, above all, to pay the vast numbers of soldiers.

In some strikingly modern ways, it was mainly the military contractors and
the tradesmen (and trollops) in the towns (vici) which sprang up alongside
the legionary camps who did well out of equipping and servicing (in all
sorts of ways) their oppressors.

Naturally, in response to these tolls, rich men sought to keep their wealth
to themselves, as far as was possible.

Rather than squandering moneysome of it borrowed at hefty rates of
interestto build public edifices, such as baths and temples, solely for
reasons of prestige, the urban elite began actively to avoid such
impositions.

Indeed, the former privilege of Roman citizenship and the pride of holding
the offices which accrued to it became such a burden that the wealthy
retired to the Dominican Republics of their day, their country villas.

There, they could minimize the loss of their property to overt taxation and
there they could avoid the constant, unsubtle pressure for those
contributions aimed at displaying their loyalty to the regime.

So, unrepaired and unfrequented, town centers began to look dilapidated,
long before any unwelcome barbarian tongues were heard in their near empty
streets.

Fex urbis, lex orbis

Added to all this was the presence of that perennial, wasting affliction,
that debilitating disease so often visited by reckless rulers on their
long-suffering subjectsmonetary inflation.

Long before Alarics Goths had plundered the so-called Eternal City, its
money had become so debased that Imperial tribute and taxes were having to
be levied in kind, not in cash.

This greatly decreased the efficiency of the process. It also hurt the
leadership indirectly, because it made tax collection more personal and
more violently confrontational.

Gradually, then, the whole empire had become little more than an arena in
which competing warlords would raise forces to bid for the throne.

Increasingly, its farmers and merchants were seen as nothing more than tax
slaves to be exploited in order to provide the Dole to the restless urban
proletariat and to buy the fickle loyalties of the ever-important soldiers.

Over time, the difference between the "barbarians" and the Romans was
becoming blurred, too.

For one, the legions military pre-eminence became eroded as the hardy
peasants of Italy in its ranks gave way to the unwilling sons of the
conquered who were conscripted in their place.

Additionally, many sons of the unconquered would volunteer to join
themattracted by the pay and conditions and by the very modern enticement
of the chance to learn a trade.

There was also the prospect of becoming a man of mark back home when the
volunteers term was up. This was an advancement aided substantially by the
often sizeable retirement bonus with which nervous emperors made further
attempts to keep the military caste onside.

That bonus, could, of course, be most readily employed as capital in a
business which relied on the veterans ability to use his inside contacts.
He could call in a few favors, grease a few palms and so win a lucrative
tender to supply his old army mess mates with their victuals, their gear,
or their trinkets.

Once more, the parallels with todays "revolving doors" are obvious, Mr.
Cheney.

But, it wasnt just the soldiers: "foreign" tradesmen and artisans, too,
had learned what there was to learn from Rome and they applied it both in
their home markets and inside the imperial lines.

While this meant tribal leaders far beyond the empires boundaries were
able to show off their collections of Roman jewellery and plate and to
quaff the best Roman wines when feasting with their henchmenjust as their
unsavory equivalents today all drive Mercedes and sport Rolex watchesit
was they who often had the better of the terms of trade.

This must have discomfited the Romans then no less than China's new
manufacturing competitiveness or Indias growing software programming
skills frighten British and American union bosses today.

Rome, then, was not only undermined from within, but it became much less
singular in its abilities, as knowledge of its technologies and innovations
diffused across its borders.

The lessons we should draw from all this is that though things were, in
some senses, gradually getting worse as the Fifth Century began, many of
the evils were not the result of sudden irruptions of savages from the
outer fringes of the world, but were due primarily to a slow corrosion from
within.

Inflation, arbitrary government, swingeing taxation, the confiscation of
propertyoften undertaken on the flimsy pretext of punishing dissent, or
after the accidental infringement of some obscure regulation: these we
would all recognize as things which plague us today.

The development of an increasingly remote, self-serving and fabulously
wealthy governing elite; the destruction of the bedrock middle class; the
reliance of the poor on State grants and subsidies; the inhibition of free
enterprise and the pervasive militarization of societythese are all things
we also know all too well.

Our Rome, too, may be ending in exactly this fashion and in this, the
End-of the-World crowd may be right about a coming reckoning.

But, just like Ancient Rome was lost long before the Goths invaded her
precincts, it will not be our empires external foes who bring it down, but
the self-inflicted wounds from which it has been suffering for decades.

Should we care?

At the margin, perhaps, we should, for we may have to work that bit harder
to make our way against people outside the empire who will now be able to
compete on a more level playing field than before.

But what we should also remember is that Romes passing was not universally
mournedcertainly not by those at risk of its institutionalized terror.

As the noted British archaeologist, Sir Mortimer Wheeler summed it up,
after a lifetime of work in the field:

"I suffered from a surfeit of things Roman. I felt disgusted by the
mechanistic quality of their art and by the nearness of their civilization
at all times to cruelty and corruption."

We should recall also the passages above which showed that the Briton and
some of their Gaulish cousins thrived under their new found freedoms and
their recovered self-determination.

We should listen to the testimony of the present generation of
less-hidebound archaeologists and historians who are beginning to see
matters in a different light to that by which their professors worked.

Men such as Francis Pryor, who goes to great lengths to point out that
history (and prehistory, too, in his case) provides much more evidence of
continuity, overlaid with gradual change, than it does of revolutions or
mass invasions.

In fact, based on a careful study of settlement patterns, artifact finds
and burial practices, Pryor even doubts whether the "Anglo-Saxons"
themselves might not be largely or wholly a post-dated fiction, constructed
to give one set of relatively successful British kinglets a suitably
glorious lineage, the better to distinguish themselves more clearly from
their losing opponents among the other, no-less British kinglets!

At present, that seems too far a stretch for me, but his point is
nonetheless well made.

To return to the main issue, will the fall of our Rome mean a fundamental
change in the way our lives will be lived?

I would contend not and to support this contention, I would ask you to
consider the historical record again.

Life goes on

Over four centuries of occupationand countless more of commercial
trafficBritons adopted certain Roman mannerisms, were influenced by Roman
religious cults, and sought to purchase Roman consumer goods, just as
people in Tehran today wear Levi Jeans and Nike trainers while listening to
REM or Eminem on their iPods.

But, at heart they remained Britons and, beyond even that broad
classification, they were individual acting humans, each driven to provide
for himself and his family through working to satisfy their needs.

In their labors, these Britons were aided by the use of what capital they
had and they appreciated the benefits which came from specializing in a
trade.

In this, they did best when their property was most secure from either
legal or criminal jeopardy.

Then, just as now, they would look for opportunities to exchange the
surplus to which their trade gave rise. They would swap it for others
surplus goods at the best mutually agreed rate they felt they could achieve.

In short, their liveslike ourswere dominated, not so much by their
rulers, as by plain old economic necessity: by matters such as scarcity,
choice, capital, income, profit, and enterprise.

Do you suppose that all of this was called into question because a Pope
died, or an Emperor was usurped?

Do you suppose people thought that the local warrior princeeven if he
spoke German, or Welsh, not Latinwas any less, or any more, of an
inevitable ill with which to put up than were the procurators and legates
of a distant sovereign?

Do you think it will matter now if a President is thrown out, or if a Prime
Minister resigns?

No.

Now, as then, Men will adapt to their new circumstancesas they always do,
if their government allows them the necessary freedom.

Yes, there may be economic upsets and, yes, certain long-standing trading
networks might become defunct. Conversely, new business ventures will
suggest themselves as being potentially profitable and ships will still ply
the deep oceans, with holds stuffed full of goods to exchange.

No doubt, different loyalties will be expressed as the balance of political
risks changes.

Threats to life and property will take newer forms, though not necessarily
less bearable ones.

Crucially, the blessings of thrift and hard work and the fruits of
enterprise will still be enjoyedespecially where the States footprint
lies a little less heavily on the soil.

In summary, life will go on today, as it did even when the mightiest Empire
history had known was sinking into legend.

Life will go on, in the 21st Century as it did in the 5thdifferent, yet
the same.

If we cut through the religious intolerance and ascetic distaste evident in
the words of the sour old monk we met earlier, Saint Jerome himself, from
his hermits cell in Bethlehem, had already recognized this, well before
the embers had ceased to smoulder in his erstwhile City of Light:

"The world sinks into ruin . . . he wrote, as mournful as ever. The
renowned city, the capital of the Roman Empire, is swallowed up in one
tremendous fire; and there is no part of the earth where Romans are not in
exile. . . ."

But, pay particular attention to what he had to say next:

". . . and yet we have our minds set on the desire of gain. We live as
though we are going to die tomorrow; yet we build as though we are going to
live always in this world"

Well, of course, his contemporaries did just thatand it was no sin that
they did, either, but rather a matter for thanksgiving!

For, why wouldnt we expect people to go about their daily lives in much
the same fashion as they did before; buying and selling, building and
dreaming, speculating and investing?

And why wont we carry on, pretty much regardless, even if our modern
Western Empire loses its pre-eminence in its turn?

No. The one thing of which we can be sure is thatwhatever the details of
the looming changemore will stay the same than will be altered by it.

What you should do about it

Buy gold, then, if you willbut only because you share the view that it is
very much harder to acquire than paper money is to create and that this
means it should tend to maintain its value
better.                                                                                                              

But, whatever you do, dont buy it as part of a retreat from life you are
making just because times seem more uncertain than they used to appear.

In trying to preserve your liberty from the zealots in charge of todays
increasingly Roman State, dont surrender it instead to your fears by
becoming either a metaphorical or an actual survivalist.

Dont be tempted to hole up in the mountains with only your water purifier,
your rifle, and your Krugerrands for company for, if the end of the world
does come, no amount of gold is going to comfort you very much.

But if it is only our version of Rome which fallsthis will not invalidate
the lasting truth that your own wealth is best preserved when it helps
another entrepreneur in the process of creating his.

This means you must not hoard what is yours, for its real worth will only
dwindle, if you do, eaten away by inflation, confiscated by the tax farmers.

No, rather, you must keep on trying to invest it wisely by using it to
participate in undertakings which make their owners a living through
serving their post-Imperial, just as their pre-Imperial, customers better
than their competitors can.

All in all, you know the Emperor Honorius may not have been such a fool,
after all.

Maybe his roostera most useful bird, economically speaking did matter
more than the fate of any ruler or regime, for the final lesson we must
draw is that, as long as Men are Men, entrepreneurship will always outlast
empire.

So, take note, you historians of decline: our times will be no exception!

______________________________________

Sean Corrigan is the Investment Strategist at Sage Capital Zuerich AG
(<http://www.sagecapital.com/>www.sagecapital.com), a Swiss-based
organization dedicated to the cause of capital
preservation and is co-adviser to the Bermuda-based
<http://www.edelweissfund.com/>Edelweiss Fund. See his Mises.org
<http://www.mises.org/articles.asp?mode=a&author=Corrigan>Articles Archive,
or send him mail
(<mailto:corrigan at sagecapital.com>corrigan at sagecapital.com). This article
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"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
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