Why Empires Rise and Fall: Comparing Them
A comparison across the course and the West African, Yoruba and China courses: geography and trade, military technology, administration and writing, legitimacy and religion, succession and overmighty generals, fiscal strain, climate, disease and trade shifts, and the limits of grand theories (Ibn Khaldun, Toynbee, Diamond, Acemoglu and Robinson).
Patterns, not laws
| thinker | explanation | a caution |
|---|---|---|
| Ibn Khaldun (1377) | asabiyya: group solidarity builds dynasties; luxury erodes it in about three or four generations | drawn from North African and Arab dynasties |
| Jared Diamond (1997) | geography, crops and animals shaped which societies grew powerful | criticised for environmental determinism |
| Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) | inclusive institutions sustain prosperity; extractive ones fail | debated case selection; useful for colonial legacies |
| Kyle Harper (2017) and others | climate and disease as causes of collapse | interacts with, does not replace, politics |
Comparing Oyo, Songhai, Rome, the Tang and the Inca shows recurring patterns, but every case has its own sequence of causes. The habit worth keeping is to ask several questions of any rise or fall (wealth, edge, administration, legitimacy, internal division, external shocks) rather than accept a single cause.
Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah (1377, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 1958); Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997); Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail (2012); Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome (2017).