History of Empires and Nations

Expanding, reducing, vanishing, re-appearing — until the end

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

There were a period, some 20–30 years ago, where visual books of history were commonly available in the bookshops. You may have seen such one, with maps from different years during history, revealing how nothing stayed the same for very long.

The maps could show different things, such as human genotypes (Neanderthal, Denisova, etc.) and their presumed presence on Earth. Or different animals and where they were possible to find. But the most interesting to me were the maps of nations, countries, empires, whatever such constructions of people + land areas have been called during times.

They didn’t stay the same for long.

Maybe it looked like they did, for the people who lived at the time. A country could cover a certain area during many years, having certain borders with the neighboring countries, and this would then possibly, like today, be seen by people living there as “the correct” borders. Well, perhaps not always, as historical events had shaped these borders, and people do remember history.

They do not all remember it the same way, though, as history tends to be strongly biased. And, hence, from time to time, somebody wants to change the borders. This has often led to expansions of the country during a period, and then a collapse, when one of several things happened:

• some other country thought that it was enough now and fought back

• the expanding country ran out of resources

• the expanding country became too big for one ruler to manage and was ruined by in-fights

• everything was fine but simply faded out, until the surroundings would see the country as an easy prey

It appears to me that, from a historical perspective, countries are like bacteria in a Petri dish: the individual cultures grow, and when they meet each other, they start out having peaceful borders, but sooner or later, one will take over the other. Along the way, only one culture is left, and this then dies out.

Cultures, countries, whatever we choose to call these human constellations, cannot just sit still and enjoy what they have. They want change, and they create it to an extent where it ruins them in the end.

This way, even — or especially — the greatest empire one day becomes nothing but a memory.

Of course, all the people living in such a culture will have lives that, at times, can be with safe and certain surroundings from start to end. This is how we often look at history: “in those days, things were like that”. But more often than not, nothing stays stable for the lifetime of a human being.

At times, which is interesting to see, old countries re-appear from the ashes of those who took them over. Or simply break out again. But they will forever stay in a tense relationship to the other parts. There will always be people there who feel that things belong together, if they have ever been together.

We all want to establish ourselves and grow within the limits of our society, but that is part of the problem: we cannot all grow to the limits. We will limit each other before that happens. Our personal spheres will meet the others, preventing further growth, this leading to infighting and an effective destruction of the society, or some sort of agreement to grab a neighboring country and continue our growth there.

There is very little respect to be found in history. But a lot of personal ambitions.

And every culture seems to end up killing itself.

When studying history, it really makes sense to look at the longer lines. Through the effects in the longer run, we can better see how the studied country and culture was able to provide that personal growth while still maintaining stability both internally and with their neighbors.

The Petri dish cannot be expanded. It is, as it is, and any bacteria culture will reach its limits. And as the human population on Earth has grown, we see something similar happening — humans have expanded to the limits, and they cannot be expanded any further. We have consumed almost all available nutrition and can, in a sense, only survive by taking over other cultures. This, of course, only until one culture has exterminated all others, and then itself is reaching the limits of the planet.

Expanding to Mars seems like a sad attempt to avoid this destiny. A desperate thought, based on an impossible hope, rather than a real attempt to solve the problem.

The best use of history, and the maps of cultural expansion and collapse, would probably be to think out scenarios where the human species could survive without the eternal need for growth. Where we could stay at a number of people that could be sustained by our Petri dish, the Earth, and where we could avoid the eternal attacks on each other’s cultures, leaving room for everybody, but by that, accepting that each of us, also on a personal level, will have limits that are defined by the need to also make room for others.

Studying Petri dish bacteria cultures may even help to understand why this is necessary, and the mentioned maps are kind of that; kind of historical Petri dishes.

I will go hunting for some historical maps books — hopefully they still exist. Hopefully I’m not too late. Maybe you would too? Maybe more people could get engaged in finding the stable life that could allow humanity to survive. Maybe, as an ultimate hope, all people on Earth could some day understand that need.