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A theory about empires and frontiers
I've read Peter Turchin's Historical Dynamics, a fascinating book in which he quantifies social history and describes the rise and fall of civilizations with autocatalytic functions but beneath all the math is a very compelling and clear theory about the formation of empires.
He argues that all empires have formed along inter-ethnic fault lines, especially along the borders of another older empire.
His rationale is that those living on these borders become more militaristic and solidified because they are likely fighting against barbarians or another empire or, in the case of less hostile borders, the exposure to a (despite possibly peaceful) 'other' leads to a typical 'us vs. them' situation that increases solidarity on both sides of the border.
As a result, with such strong solidarity, these border peoples (those inside the empire and outside of it) are likely to try to form a successor empire when the older empire falters.
Why will it falter? Because as the empire expands away from its core, the pressures of the frontier that foster solidarity vanish and, as a result, the empire weakens. When it finally collapses, the core areas do not create a neo-empire but rather the frontiers do. In fact, the core area will likely remain decentralized for some time if it does not get conquered.
There are dozens of examples of this which he cites to which I can add a few more.
Rome was not succeeded by a unified empire in Italy... far from it! Italy could not unify again until the 19th century and even today Lombards and Sicilians are quite different and Italy is fairly decentralized. The core area could not produce a new empire while the frontier at Thrace, battered by Celts, Goths, Huns, Avars, and Magyars to the north and Arabs and later Turks to the east, solidified into the Byzantine Empire.
Meanwhile, on the barbarian side of the Rhine frontier, the Franks forged the beginnings of an empire which they established in Gaul (Note also that the Goths formed as an entity just across the Roman border of the Danube). When Charlemagne's empire dissolved, new kingdoms and empires formed on its marches, including Castile/Leon/Aragon/Navarre in Spain, Denmark, and the short-lived Ottonian German empire which faltered as the threat of the Avars and Slavs withered and the frontier between Latinized German culture and pagan Slav was pushed into Poland, another case of the core losing solidarity as the frontier moves away. Of course this period of the frontier moving into Poland saw the rise of Lithuania, clearly a frontier polity, into an empire, merging with the Polish kingdom.
whether its first the Akkadians then the Assyrians then the Persians (not to mention the short-lived attempts at empires of the Amorites, the Elamites, the Medes, etc.) all on the edge of the Sumero-Babylonian world or the Carthaginians nestled along the Tunisian coast away from the Berbers or the Macedonians between the Greeks and the barbarians of the Balkans or the kingdom of Wessex (near the Anglo-Saxon/Welsh border) as opposed to East Anglia unifying England or so forth... there are many examples of empires forming on the marches of an ethnic fault line.
thanks
He argues that all empires have formed along inter-ethnic fault lines, especially along the borders of another older empire.
His rationale is that those living on these borders become more militaristic and solidified because they are likely fighting against barbarians or another empire or, in the case of less hostile borders, the exposure to a (despite possibly peaceful) 'other' leads to a typical 'us vs. them' situation that increases solidarity on both sides of the border.
As a result, with such strong solidarity, these border peoples (those inside the empire and outside of it) are likely to try to form a successor empire when the older empire falters.
Why will it falter? Because as the empire expands away from its core, the pressures of the frontier that foster solidarity vanish and, as a result, the empire weakens. When it finally collapses, the core areas do not create a neo-empire but rather the frontiers do. In fact, the core area will likely remain decentralized for some time if it does not get conquered.
There are dozens of examples of this which he cites to which I can add a few more.
Rome was not succeeded by a unified empire in Italy... far from it! Italy could not unify again until the 19th century and even today Lombards and Sicilians are quite different and Italy is fairly decentralized. The core area could not produce a new empire while the frontier at Thrace, battered by Celts, Goths, Huns, Avars, and Magyars to the north and Arabs and later Turks to the east, solidified into the Byzantine Empire.
Meanwhile, on the barbarian side of the Rhine frontier, the Franks forged the beginnings of an empire which they established in Gaul (Note also that the Goths formed as an entity just across the Roman border of the Danube). When Charlemagne's empire dissolved, new kingdoms and empires formed on its marches, including Castile/Leon/Aragon/Navarre in Spain, Denmark, and the short-lived Ottonian German empire which faltered as the threat of the Avars and Slavs withered and the frontier between Latinized German culture and pagan Slav was pushed into Poland, another case of the core losing solidarity as the frontier moves away. Of course this period of the frontier moving into Poland saw the rise of Lithuania, clearly a frontier polity, into an empire, merging with the Polish kingdom.
whether its first the Akkadians then the Assyrians then the Persians (not to mention the short-lived attempts at empires of the Amorites, the Elamites, the Medes, etc.) all on the edge of the Sumero-Babylonian world or the Carthaginians nestled along the Tunisian coast away from the Berbers or the Macedonians between the Greeks and the barbarians of the Balkans or the kingdom of Wessex (near the Anglo-Saxon/Welsh border) as opposed to East Anglia unifying England or so forth... there are many examples of empires forming on the marches of an ethnic fault line.
thanks
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