Introduction
HISTORY MECHANICS OF HISTORY
(textual version of Web page)
Thisat Web site presents the history theory (you could name the History Mechanics) developed by author in 1990-2002. Mechanics of History is a collection of models and lawsIt is the general schema that explains the strongest historical, and economical processes.
You will not find here many facts from history (except some useful links to historic sites). Thisat page is devoted to present my work, so if you search for important information, you better click out.
But:
➢ If you are interested in mechanisms that driverules the history, and want to see some explanations answers, why our history was as it was.
➢ If you are interested what would happen if history took another path, and moreover when these “alternative variants of history” were possible, and when not.
➢ If you are interested in scientific explanation of history .
➢ If you want to learn tools that helps to predict events like South-Asia Crisis (1997) or fall of president Fujimori in Peru (2000).
This page will probably satisfy you.
Apology:
Before you start reading, you should remember that:
• I presented here only about 1% of whole theory (or even less).
• Because of that I have to use many simplifications, and I am not saying a word about many doubts I still have, and phenomenathings I do not understand.
• I have not enough space here to present all consequences of presented laws, and every connection between them. You have to do it by your own.
• And the last but not least, sorry for my weak English.
The theory consists of five important parts:
Introduction
Some basics foundations, and some author's remarks about basic powers that drive history are shortly described here.
Political Systems
The Cnew lassification of political systems classification (feudal system, populistic system, and democratic system), and related tools (like GPI). This page explains why the ancient Athens democracy was not really a democracy, butand ancient Rome was,, why Rome and Great Britain built great empires, and where dictatorships and totalitarian systems come from.
Laws for History
Description of the basic historical schemas, and processes. This page explains reasons that stands behind the rise, and fall of historical countries, and reason for upspring, and domination of Europe.
Economics Tools
Description of the basic economics tools used here, and mechanisms needed to understand the history. This page presents the classification describes the basic types of economic crises (stagflation crisis, and overproduction crisis), and mechanics that stands behind them. Explains when economy should be stimulated by government, and when not. WAnd finally, why sometimes a free trade will not work - the flaws of Comparative Advantage Theory, and why sometimes protectionism could be a reasonable policy.
The World History Rewritten
Short world history as from the point of view of author. This page contains more facts from history (and links) than other pages presented here, and is probably the most readable part of this site.
Introduction
Some basics foundations, and some author's remarks about basic powers that drive history are shortly described here.
Political Systems
The new political systems classification (feudal system, populistic system and democratic system), and related tools. That page explains why the ancient Athens democracy was not really a democracy, why ancient Rome was democratic, and where dictatorships and totalitarian systems come from.
Laws for History
Description of the basic historical schemas, and processes. That page explains reasons that stands behind the rise, and fall of historical countries, and reason for upspring, and domination of Europe.
Economics Tools
Description of the basic economics tools, and mechanisms needed to understand the history. That page describes the basic types of economic crises (stagflation crisis and overproduction crisis), and mechanics that stands behind them. Explains when economy should be stimulated by government, and when not. And finally, why sometimes a free trade will not work, and why sometimes protectionism could be a reasonable policy.
The World History Rewritten
Short world history as from the point of view of author.
That page contains more facts from history than other pages presented here, and is probably the most readable part of this site.
The basic knowledge you should have to read this material:
• Basic knowledge of economy (including microeconomics, and macroeconomics). Material from the first year of college course should be enough.
• Terminology used in the institutional economicsy (institutions, transactional costs, etc.).
• Comparative advantage theory used by economists to explain rationality of free trade.
• Complete knowledge about general world history.
• At minimum history of: England, Ancient Rome, USA, Ancient Greece, France, Italy, Switzerland, Poland or Hungary, Russia, India, and China. Each book you need to read should have about 400-500 pages (shortest books will not work) an should include economicy, and institutional background, plus a few words about social conflicts (should not be only a description of wars, and battles).
• Knowledge of the history of other countries will not hurt.
• It also be good to know the base terminology used by major scientist that writes about processes that drives the history, for example: Karl Marx, Max Webber, Immanuel Wallerstein or Paul Kennedy.
• A short contact with political game like Avalon Hill “Diplomacy”, and with game theory could help to understand some elements I presented here.
Special thanks to Sławomir Maszewski
Introduction
I strongly advise you to read this material in sequence, page-by-page, because I will introduce some concepts gradually. First simple definitions, then in World History Rewritten section, more exact explanations, substantations and examples. History Mechanics is extremly comprehensive, so I will start from easiest problems and then gradually go to more complicated. Moreover I sometimes have to present only half-true intermediary explanations (“lies for children” using terminology of Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) at first, and correct them later to make this lecture more user-friendly.
History processes are driven mostly by economic factors
To be more precise: economy is not the only power that drives history, but economic factors are the most important in macroscale, and in long run. Good analogy could be the gravity in physics. Gravity does not explain every physical process but is the easiest factor to eliminate, observe, and examine.
That doesn't mean that people behaviors are driven ONLY by economy. Often people acts according to ideologies they believe or motivated by some other reasons. Rationality of social behaviors is a statistical rationality like in biological evolution. Moreover, actions of people, parties, countries and other players ALLWAYS depends on available resources, and economics concrentrate on the problem of limited resources.
Exceptions
Of course, there are “critical points” (or history turning points) when two or more opposite processes acts against each other. These times other, weaker factors like ideologies, institutions, personal decisions of a single man (or even a casual nexus of coincidences) could prevail. The set of laws presented here helps to locate that critical points, and lets us ignore those events that are not important.
Institutions, and ideologies evolve according to economic factors
It is easy to predict emergency of a new ideology or institution (and its "shape" or "economic core") if we understand an economic process running in the backgroundthat stands behind.
And vice versa, knowing thewhat is economical background of particular ideology we can say what economic processes are working behind the scenes simply by observing ideologies, and changes in ideologies.
Of course, we must remember about theof historical background of a country where the ideology evolves. When there is a time (economic need) in Islamic country is a time (economic need) for anto ideology that promotes an religious dictatorship in Islamic country, its obvious that we should can expect Muslim religious dictatorship, and not for example Buddhism religious dictatorship.
When a few ideologies compete with each others, the winner will beis the ideology thatthat is the cheapest to promote (and is convergent with community economic needs).
History laws are universal, and works in every country, every culture, and every human community
All “cardinal” differences between cultures are more an effect of poor knowledge about history of Non-European countries (forgetting about Muhammad al-KChwvarizimi), and a very poor knowledge about European history (forgetting about Savonarola). Some times theseat “differences” are simply an effect of interpreting temporary historical process as an immanent element of Non-European culture.
Laws presented here will be true everywhere the second law of thermodynamics is true.
All laws presented here should work everywhere, where the second law of the thermodynamics (simply speaking: entropy always grows) works. There are many low-level laws that rules systems (saying “system” I mean every complicated being: living beings, species, institutions, technology, computer programs, etc.) evolution in competitive environment. I will not present all of them here. Except a few most important:
• The more complicated system is, the faster it evolves, and faster reaches a next levels of complication.
• More complicated systems that have evolved in competitive environment, are (usually) more effective.
• Systems evolve faster, when competition is stronger (but not too strong).
• The more numerous is the population, the more predictable is its behavior.
•
• The more complicated complicated is the system, the more rationale (predictable) it acts, and works. system is, the more rationale it acts, and works.
Political Systems
A new classification of political systems presented here is an answer for one question that obsessed me since 1986 (as I recall):
“Why a small city-state of Rome for a few hundred years won almost every war step-by-step building an empire. (What was the reason for such aberration of the statistics?)”
The answer came after Autumn of Nations (1989) when I found that there are strong analogies between XVIIIth century Great Britain and Rome in IVth century BC.
There are only three political systems: feudal, populistic, and democratic
Natural route of evolution for a political system of any state (country) is from feudal system thorough populistic to democratic. It is the consequence of increasing percentage of people living in cities.
Generally, the more people live in cities the “higher” the political system is.
So the process is reversible. Populistic state can turn back to feudal. Democratic state can turn back to populistic (howeverBut thisat happened only once! See the political evolution of Roman Empire.).
Every higher political system is more effective than lower ones. Country with higher political system usually have more effective economy, more effective institutions, more effective army, and diplomacy. Moreover, country with higher political system have a higher ability to expansion.
When you will read definitions below, please remember: dolphin is not a fish, even it likes as one. Its internal construction proves that this fish-looking animal is actually a mammal. The same is true for definitions of political systems presented here - the key element of this definition is the internal mechanics of political system -, so read carefully and make an effort to understand them.
Short definition of feudal system
Definition of feudal system is very similar to the definition presented by Karl Marx. The ruling class is a noble class. Political power comes from land. Usually only nobles have citizens laws, and have political monopoly. Social hierarchy have a shape of pyramid with a monarch on the top. Social mobility between different classes is very limitedow (or not possiblene).
Feudal system have a few sub-systems including despotism, absolute monarchy or noble-democracy with strong parliament (like in England, Hungary or Poland).
Not only medieval countries were feudal states. Many ancient states like Egypt or Assyria or Persian Empire were feudal too.
Short definition of populistic system
Like previous system, populistic system have many varieties: starting from totalitarian ones thorough authoritarian ones, many kinds of dictatorships (including military ones like junta or religious dictatorships), tyrannies to varieties that have republican or quasi-democratic form of government.
They are look so different. So, why to put them together in one basket?
Because internal mechanics of changing government, and laws of ruling are the same for every one of sub-systems I have mentioned. Under some conditions one variety could easily evolve into another. Quasi-democratic republic could become totalitarian state, and vice versa.
In populistic states political power comes from cities. But there are still many poor peasants, and poor people living in cities who are very susceptible to populistic ideologies, and often becomes political clients of strongest group of political interests (GPI) like: rich plantation owners, rich traders, religious fanatics or government bureaucracy. In consequence the ruling group could easily dominate the rest of community using ideologies, money, some administrative means (tools) or terror.
Some important characteristics of populistic system include:
← There are no effectively functioning institutions that protects the laws of political opposition, that guarantees the freedom of speech or citizens laws.
← Mobility between different social classes is greater than in the feudal system but is still often restricted.
← Government often changes in a very dramatic way: with revolution, coup d`etat, political upheaval.
← Even if populistic state has democratic-like or republican form, all political discussions are strongly saturated with ideology and emotions.
Sometimes, when the strength of different political groups are almost equal, and country economy prospers, populistic system could have form very similar to democracy. I will refer to this variety of populistic system as “quasi-democratic”.
Examples of populistic states include:
■ almost all ancient city-states including Sparta, Athens, Carthage or Corinth.
■ medieval, and renaissance “merchant republics” like Venice, Florence, Genua, Switzerland or Great Novogorod
■ post “merchant-revolution” (or “burgeois revolution” using Marx terminology) states like Netherlands, England (1642-1689) France (1789-1876), Spain (1810-1976) Germany (1848-1948), or Japan (1868-1948)
■ and many XXth century dictatorships, and quasi-democratic countries like India (1947-1998) or Mexico (1822-1997)
Short definition of democratic system
Democratic system usually emerges when most of the country population live in cities. There are a strong group of middle-income citizens (we can call them “middle class”). There is a STABLE balance between the major political powers. Because of that balance, a political group that holds government cannot dominate over other political groups, and thus cannot restrict or shrink political laws of opposition parties and individual citizens.
That balance is responsible for birth of institutions like freedom of speech, civil rights, free press, independent court system, etc. which preserve democratic system, and thus made it very stable.
So stable that democracy NEVER falls (actually there was one exception). All examples of “fallen democracy” are actually examples of quasi-democratic form of populistic system changing to more repressive form of populistic system (case of Mussolini or Hitler are great examples here).
IMPORTANT NOTE: Democratic system is not “the rule of majority” it is the system where “minority rights are well-protected”, and politicians (especially government) are well controlled.
Democratic system is not the system where all citizens have right to vote (in many populistic systems all citiziens also have voting rights people have that right too). Actually some times voting rights in democratic countries could be more restrictive to protect community against the danger of “political clientelism”.
Here are some most important characteristics of democratic system:
← There are set of civil rights like Bill of the Rights or first 10 amendments to USA Constitution
← There are effective and functioning institutions that protect civil and political rights of citizens
← Parliament has a control over government spending and income
← Political system changes in an evolutionary way. There is NO revolutions, coups d`etat or serious political upheavals. Democratic institutions and political balance are toso strong sothat this is impossible.
Examples of democratic states:
First democratic state, and only one example of democracy before the modern times was:
■ Roman Republic since 449 BC to more or less 133 BC
There was only one case when democracy had fallen. In modern times every country that become democratic stays democratic till now. Here are the oldest democracies in order of appearance:
■ England since 1689
■ Sweden since 1809
■ Belgium (probably since 1830)
■ Netherlands, and Switzerland since 1848 (but Protestant cantons of Switzerland wereas democratic a few years before)
■ USA since 1865 (but New England states of USA wereas democratic since more or less 1780)
■ France since more or less 1875
Basic laws for political systems
There are many laws linked with political systems. Here are a few most important:
• Democratic countries do not wage war against each other. (Best example is the war of 1812 between Great Britain, and USA when New England states of USA effectively did not wage war against Great Britain, and vice versa).
• Moreover, democratic countries are often in one alliance during the war that are great threat to one of them.
• Machiavellian politic tricks are effective in populistic state, and are not working in democratic state. Of course it not means that they are not used by politicians. People are free to make mistakes. It only means that this kind of tricks which are standard political techniques in the populistic system, are exceptions in democratic system.
• Because of stronger mechanisms of public control of the government, political scandals are more often observed in democratic countries -, because in populistic states most of them remains hidden. Watergate in USA becomes a scandal but the same time eavesdropping the opposition was a “standard procedure” in a country like for example Poland, Chile or USSR.
• The “higher” is the country political system, the greater ability to expansion has that country. As a rule of thumb we can expect that feudal country could conquer lands with population from 0.5 to 1 times its population, populistic country could conquer lands with population from 3 to 4 times its population, and democratic country could conquer lands with population from 30 to 40 times its population. Then the country’s political system is starting to decompose. As you can see populistic system ability to expansion about 6 times exceeds feudal system ability to expansion, and democratic system ability to expansion about 10 times exceeds populistic system ability of expansion.
There are three basic reasons, why democratic system is more effective than populistic.
• First, all important groups of citizens have real political laws, and thus they are protected from overexploitation by some other group of citizens. Democratic country works like an living organism, where all vital organs gains enough share of common resources to make organism work as effective as possible. Especially, there is no way in democratic system to create a situation when some part of community pays all cost of country policy (for example a war), and the other part gains all benefits of from thisat policy.
• Second, freedom of speech, and “the free market of opinions” usually protects democratic country from making major mistakes.
• And finally, there is a “positive selection” of politicians, so the political class of the democratic country (even it is hard to believe) is usually made of quite intelligent humans. Brainwashed fanatics, megalomaniacs that don’t see natural limits, or outright idiots are always a margin.
Similar argumentation we can use when comparing the efficiency of feudal system, and populistic system.
Differences between populistic system, and democratic system
First I have to mention that more than 50% countries that are commonly called “democratic” wereas (and are) really a “quasi-democratic” form of populistic states. Sometimes is very hard do differentiate real democratic country from quasi-democratic. So, here I present some flaws of quasi-democratic countries that, which helps us to distinguish “quasi-democratic (really populistic) system from true democratic systerm. say that this not really a democracy.
First, and most important:
Quasi-democratic populistic states often have the same institutions as real democracy have: free election, officially independent courts, freedom of speech, civil rights. But they are not working (are not “active”), they are only printed on paper -, so these guaranties really do not protect citizens, and political opposition from government abuses.
|The best illustration could be this short political joke from Poland (popular when Poland was under communists rule, before 1989): |
|- What is the difference between the Constitution of Poland, and the Constitution of USA? |
|- Our Constitution guaranties the freedom of speech, and the Constitution of USA guaranties the freedom AFTER the speech. |
So, If we want test whetherif some country is really a democracy or acually only a populistic state pretending to be a democracy, we have to take a look, how the democratic institutions really work in that country.
Here a list of a few, more common flaws of political system in quasi-democratic countries:
▪ Government could have a special (usually secret) funds to buy votes in parliament
▪ Voting districts could be intentionally constructed, so the ruling group (GPI) willcould always win
▪ Different social classes could have very different voting rights
▪ Political opposition have no real opportunity possibilities to control votes counting during elections
▪ Opposition politicians or journalists are continuously killed or terrorized
▪ Opposition politicians are blocked from public functions by the government using the administrative means
▪ Opposition politicians are forced to emigrate
▪ Parliament have no real control over the government finances
▪ There is a group in parliament, we can call “swamp” (term taken from French history), that have no strong political backbone, and always votes in an opportunistic way. Usually according to the wishes of the power that is the strongest at the moment
▪ Government have financial control over all important mass-media
▪ Government control all paper plants, and printing houses, and thus could threat the free press
▪ Large groups of peoples could be financial-dependent from local oligarchs (it is the “political clientelism”), soand thus they will always vote according to the wishes of their patrons
▪ Government could control (position “our people” here) most courts, so courts they will be not really independent, and courts’ their verdicts will be always against political opposition.
▪ Discussion in parliament focuses on abstractive ideas like: “honor”, “national proud” or “imponderabilies”, not on real problems like a country budget
▪ All political life (i.e. for example political comments in mass-media, political alliances, political programs of major parties, etc.) are strongly saturated with ideology
▪ Political parties have their own paramilitary organizations
▪ Parliament is permanently threaten by political demonstrations organized by some political party or politicians
▪ Parliament is permanently threaten with army or paramilitary organizations
▪ Major political parties hates each other so much that, they can’not cooperate at all (its a consequence of great role of ideologies in political life)
▪ There is an extended political censorship
etc.
Important note:
When populistic system changes to democratic system, there is often (especially in times of economic crisis) a few years long “intermediary period” when is hard to say if that particular country is yet a democracy or is still populistic.
Example: Spain is democracy since more or less 1976 but in 1979 an unit of few Guardia Civilarmy (Spanish gandarmerie)officers tried to take a rule over the country (as I said before coup d’etat isSomething that would be nearly impossible in a democratic country).
Tables
Here some tables showing dates of the beginning of populistic system (end of feudal system) in first column, and beginning of democratic system (end of populistic system) in second column. Third column shows how many years a country was populistic.
Some dates are presented as a ranges, because often a change of political system is a few years long process and a chain of small, gradual changes.
First table is an introduction, and shows some more important (or interesting) countries. Second and third are more complete, and show dates for many European, and Non-European countries respectively.
Table 1. The most important countries
|Country |Start of |Start of |How long that country was populistic |
| |populistic system |democratic system | |
|England |1642 |1689 |50 years |
|Brazil |1821 |1994 |175 years |
|China |1910 |Estimated 2010 |Estimated 100 years |
|France |1789 |1872-76 |85 years |
|Spain |1808-181210 |1976 |165 years |
|Netherlands |1566 |1848 |not applicable |
|India |1947 |1997-2000 |50 years |
|Iran |1898 |1897- |100-105 years |
|Japan |1868 |1946-50 |80 years |
|Germany |do 1848 |1945-48* |100 years |
|Poland** |1791(-1848) |1945-(81)-89 |190 years |
|Russia |1905 |Estimated 2005 |Estimated 100 years |
|Switzerland |1291 |1848 |not applicable |
|USA*** |1776 |1865 |90 years |
|Latin America countries****|1815-1825 |1989-2004 |175-185 years |
|African countries**** |1960 |- |- |
* Without West Germany.
** Poland history (same as Czech, and Hungary) is little complicated, so I will not explain here that strange dates.
*** USA (same as Switzerland, and India) is a federal country. Some states (New England) was democratic probably in 1780, and some southern states becomes democratic in times of president Eisenhower.
****There are some regions where political evolution will go more or less the same way for each country in that region.
Table 2. Table for Europe
|Country |Start of |Start of |How long that country was populistic |
| |populistic system |democratic system | |
|Austria |1848 |1948 |100 years |
|Belgium |1789* |1830* |40 years* |
|Bulgaria |1878 |1997 |120 years |
|Czech |1860* |1968-89 |130 years |
|Denmark |1849 |1905 |55 years |
|England |1642 |1689 |50 years |
|Finland |1809 |1941-45 |135 years |
|France |1789 |1972-76 |85 years |
|Germany |1848 |1948 West; 1953(89) East |100 years |
|Greece |1821 |1975 |155 years |
|Hungary |1848 |1956-89 |140 years |
|Ireland |1921* |1973 |55 years |
|Italy |1848** |1943-45 |100 years |
|Netherlands |1566 |1848 |not applicable |
|Norway |- |1905 |- |
|Poland |1791(1848) |1945-(81)-89 |190 years |
|Portugal |1820 |1974 |155 years |
|Romania |1848 |1989-97 |145 years |
|Russia |1905 |Estimated 2005 |- |
|Serbia |1878* |2000 |130 years |
|Spain |1808-181210 |1976 |165 years |
|Sweden |1719 |1809 |90 years |
|Switzerland |1291 |1848 |not applicable |
|Ukraine |1905 |2003- |100 years |
|England |1642 |1689 |50 years |
|Austria |1848 |1948 |100 years |
|Belgium |1789* |1830* |40 years* |
|Bulgaria |1878 |1997 |120 years |
|Czech |1860* |1968-89 |130 years |
|Denmark |1849 |1905 |55 years |
|Finland |1809 |1941-45 |135 years |
|France |1789 |1972-76 |85 years |
|Greece |1821 |1975 |155 years |
|Spain |1810 |1976 |165 years |
|Netherlands |1566 |1848 |not applicable |
|Ireland |1921* |1973 |55 years |
|Germany |1848 |1948 West; 1953(89) East |100 years |
|Norway |- |1905 |- |
|Russia |1905 |Estimated 2005 |- |
|Poland |1791(1848) |1945-(81)-89 |190 years |
|Portugal |1810 |1975 |155 years |
|Serbia |1878* |2000 |130 years |
|Switzerland |1291 |1848 |not applicable |
|Sweden |1719 |1809 |90 years |
|Ukraine |1905 |2003- |100 years |
|Italy |1848** |1943-45 |100 years |
* I could be wrong here.
** Whole peninsula, some Italian countries (city-states) were populistic since XIth century.
Table 3. Table for the World
|Country |Start of |Start of |How long that country was populistic |
| |populistic system |democratic system | |
|Afghanistan |1840 |2001- |160 years |
|Algeria |1955 |- |- |
|Argentina |1816 |1989 |175 years |
|Brazil |1821 |1994 |175 years |
|Chile |1817 |1989 |175 years |
|China |1910 |Estimated 2010 |- |
|Egypt |1882 |- |- |
|Ethiopia |1890 |1995-2002* |105 years |
|Philippines |1898 |1986 |85 years |
|India |1947 |1997-2000 |50 years |
|Indonesia |1945 |1997-2000 |55 years |
|Iran |1898 |1997- |105 years |
|Israel** |- |1948 |- |
|Japan |1868 |1946-50 |80 years |
|Colombia |1819 |1997-2003 |185 years |
|South Korea |1895* |1995 |100 years |
|Mexico |1821 |1994(98) |175 years |
|Nigeria |1960 |- |- |
|Pakistan |1947 |- |- |
|Peru |1822 |2000 |180 years |
|South Africa |1881*** |1991-1994 |110 years |
|Syria |1944 |- |- |
|Thailand |1868* |1995* |125 years |
|Taiwan |1910 |1995 |85 years |
|Turkey |1909 |1995-2002 |90 years |
|USA |1776 |1865 |90 years |
|Vietnam |1945 |- |- |
|Venezuela |1810-20 |2003- |195 years |
* I could be wrong here.
** There is possible that some countries that were the colonies of democratic country have no populistic period at all. Other examples are: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway.
*** Oranje (Orange), and Transvaal.
Maps
Maps courtesy of maps used with permission.
Here, in a chronological order I would like to present a few maps that shows political systems of different countries at various historical moments of history.
|If you are looking for historical maps, you can find useful links in The World History Rewritten section. |
|Plus here is the link to Historical Atlas of XXth Century. |
| |
|It is useful to compare classification of political systems in this Atlas with the classification shown below. And then to read again |
|principles of classification of political system I am proposeing. |
Here, in a chronological order I would like to present a few maps that shows political systems of different countries at various historical moments. Here is the basic legend for the maps:
• YELLOW indicates feudal system
• RED indicates populistic system
• BLUE indicates democratic system
• WHITE means "no reasonable data" or "no country" (pre-feudal barbarian lands).
• GREEN means that there is very hard to determine political status, because of the dependent status of green-marked countries.
Map shows today's borders to simplify overall pattern for those of readers who are not accustomed to historical maps and are little schematic (look at eastern border of Poland on the map of Europe, it looks rather strange), as most of the maps form maps are.
There could be some mistakes in classification, but (I hope) only a few.
First map presents the first ancient civilizations
[map]
As you can see, firsts civilizations wereas some times feudal like Egypt andor China, and some times or populistic like: Sumer civilization, Minoan civilization Empire, India Mohenjo-Daro & Harappa civilization (probably), and Majan civilization.
• Brown arrows indicate the major directions of expansion of populistic civilizations
• BlueGreen arrows shows migrations expansion of the Indo-European tribes launched (probably) by the expansion and fall of Minoan civilization Empire
Important note: civilizations presented here are not quite contemporary, especially American civilizations are about 2000 years younger than civilizations of the Old World civilizations
Here is a map of Mediterranean region during Greek colonization (850 - 450 B.C.)
[map]
• Red arrows indicates directions of Greek city-states expansion.
• Blue arrows indicates directions of Phoenician city-states expansion.
• Gray arrow indicates directions of Etruscan city-states expansion.
• Green arrows shows expansion of the Celtic tribes launched by the fall of Etruscan city-states.
• Orange is used to mark Macedonia that was feudal state but in times of Philip II (father of Alexander the Great, about 360 B.C.) becaome populistic.
And now the map of Roman Empire at the end of the democratic period
[map]
• Dark blue color indicates the city-state of Rome (the core of the empire) city-state.
• Light blue color indicates all the countries conquered or incorporated by Rome before 133 B.C.
• And many neighbouring feudal countries marked yellow were clients or allies of Rome.
Next map show populistic Roman Empire at the peak of its power
[map]
i.e. end of IInd century AD.
• Red indicates populistic lands inside of the borders of Roman Empire (generally Italy nad Greece were the core of Empire).
• Orange indicates feudal lands ruled by Rome.
Dusk of the Medieval dawn of the Renaissance
[map]
In the Medieval Ages most of the countries (except periodically populistic Byzantine Empire, and some Italian city-states) were feudal states, so next maps shows Europe in XV century.
There were few populistic states in northern Italy, populistic Switzerland Union, and one big populistic country: Turkey that was just about to build a great empire (the Osman Empire - red border show its conqueries in the middle of XVth century). Plus there were some populistic free cities in northern Europe. It is important to note that this map is little simplified, and some populistic countries should be drawn as the Republic of the Great Novogorod (in northern Russia) was: a small red populistic city-state, and lands conquered by that state marked using a red border line.
Orange indicates Bohemia that was populistic for a short period (since the Hussites heresy, about 1419-1436).
|I am not sure about the political system of Portugal in XVth century. |
Next map shows Europe in the second half of the XVII century (1642-1689)
[map]
There were only a few populistic states (but they are larger than former city-states): England (since The English Revolution, more or less 1642), Netherlands, Switzerland, and city-states of the Northern Italy (that had stagnated these times fallen into stagnation because of trade route shift at the beginning of XVI century - a concequence of great discoveries). Turkey (Ottoman Empire) was no longer populistic, because large conquered territories launched diffusion process that turned Turkey back into feudal state. The most powerful populistic state were Netherlands.
Map of the XVIII century Europe (before the Great French Revolution)
[map]
Thisat map looks almost the same as previous one, but there is one important change: England after the Splendid Revolution (1689) became the first democratic country (in modern times), and therefore is marked blue..
New agricultural technologies, and "industrial revolution" at the end of XVIIIth century allows cities to grow ever bigger than before, so since then all changes of political systems are irreversible (we can no more observe situation when democratic system turns back to populistic or populistic country turns back to feudal).
And here is the World in 1845
[map]
This map shows the World after The Great French Rrevolution (1789) that made Franceench an populistic country, and national revolutions in Latin America (1815-1830). ButAnd just before the Spring of Nations (1848) when most of the Central European Countriesthat (ex. made populistic most of the Germany, Austria, and Southern the rest of feudal countries in Italy) become populistic. There were only a three democratic countries these tmes: Great Britain, Sweden, and (probably) Belgium. PlusAnd two federal countries which were that are partially democratic, and partially populistic: Switzerland and USA (generally. southern states and frontier states were populistic).
There wereas some feudal countries in Africa but I have not enoughto little data to draw their borders, so theseat states are not marked here.
Next map shows the World in 1875
[map]
There wereare a few new democratic countries: Netherlands, Switzerland (both since 1848), USA (since 1865) and French (after the war with Germany that was ended in 1871). One relatively new (since 1868), and important populistic country is Japan. Countries marked brown in Balkans are just going to become independent populistic countries.
Here the World before the First1st World War
[map]
Three big populistic states (Russia 1905, Turkey 1909, and China 1910) destroyed the balance between democratic, and populistic countries., Furthermoreand the end of colonial expansion (including USA expansion) made wars relatively more profitable option for great non-democratic powers, so the World War was unevitable.
I have no data to determine status of some Arabican countries, so they are marked white.
Since 1911then there wereare no more independent, feudal countries., and I will use orange to mark populistic countries that are changing to democratic system.
Now there is a map of Europe after the Seco2nd World War
[map]
After the Second World Wwar a few new democratic countries appeared in Europe: Germany, Italy, Austria, and Finland.
Poland was marked orange because it could become democratic (after 1944) but Soviet Union domination freezes the political changes for a few decades. The same happens to other Central European countries: West Germany (after 1953), Hungary (after 1956), and Czechoslovakia (after 1968). I should mention here that I have a little problem with the classification of political system of Czech (Bohemia) between World Wars (1919-1939).
And map of the World after the Seco2nd World War
[map]
YAs you propably noticed two more can see these times democratic countries: were also Japan, and Israel, and there were several new populistic countries in the Middle East, in East Asia, and of course India (the biggest of them).
World in 1963
Then came the end of European colonial domination in Africa (except a few Portuguese colonies),, so I present the map of World in 1963.
Since then there are (probably) no more feudal countries.
Here is the map of Europe in 1978
[map]
In the middle of 70-ties a few populistic countries in Europe becoame democratic (Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland). It was a prelude to more dramatic political changes that will start after 1989.
After the 1989 we can observe probably the greatest changes in the World history. Several dozens of countries whichthat wereas populistic becoame democratic (and thisat process continues). Before 1989 only about 850 millions of people lived in democratic countries (about 15% of the World population). Today in democratic countries lives about 3000 millions of people (over 50% of the World population). BelowHere a few maps that illustratinges theseat changes. Of course, I was not able to trace situation in all countries of the World, so there could be some mistakes, especially in classification of African, and Central American cCountries.
Here the first map documenting theseat changes
[map]
Europe in 1992 (after the fall of Soviet Union). Compare that picture with the map above.
And the World in 1992
[map]
As you can see, there are several new democratic countries arisen, mainly in Central Europe, and Latin America. A few countries: Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand became democratic in South East Asia. An of course South Africa in the very south end of Africa.
Next map shows the World in 1997 (the year of the Asian Crisis)
[map]
In 1997 most of the Central European and Latin America countries were democratic (or have been started to change into a democratic system). And we can't of course forget about some countries like: Indonesia, Iran, and (the most important) India, whichthat were starteding to change into a democratic states more or less that year. I have marked orange Turkey, but here (similarly like ex. in South Korea or Brasilia) the process of changes was very gradual, so there is hard to point out when a an exact starting point for the democratic system beginscy.
World at the beginning of XXI century (2000/2001)
[map]
End of the millennium deserves a separate map.
And finally, map of the World today (2003)
[map]
In a very short time we could expect that a few other countries will become democratic. For sure Russia, and maybe some countries from Middle East, and southern coast of Mediterranean Sea. I have marked theseat countries with yellow dots. And there is a slight chance that I am mistaken about Iraqi.
All maps here were prepared before July 2003. But the first five maps were little corrected when I was writing "General History Rewritten". Sorry about that, but I not have all resources at home.
Political strength of a single human or institution
The useful tool that helps understand historical processes is a political strength of a man (human). Every person that is involved in some market (or market-like) transaction with other member of the community, gets some political strength.
Capital-owners get some political strength when they are offering capital, labour-workers get some strength when they sell they work, consumers get some strength when they are buying goods, shop-owners when they are selling goods, traders when they make transactions, managers when they manage the factories or corporations, and government bureaucrats when they administrate the country’s resources.
Political strength iscould be higher when demand for the “things” that a man offers is high, and isbe lower when that demand is low. So, sometimes merchants or capital-owners could have a great political strength, but another time labour workers or government administrators will have greater political strength.
When someone is not involved in market transactions of any kind, he (or she) have no political strengthpower.
Therefore, poor peasants that consumes most of the food produced on their farms have a very lowittle political strenghtpower. Similarly, women before XX century had very low political strengthlittle political power, because they were overloaded by household work, and had almost no contact with market.
Remember - political strength is only a theoretical construct (like ex. energy in physics) that helps to understand internal distribution of political power in human communities (like country) and the pattern of political alliances.
Groups of Political Interests (GPI)
When a group of people have common political interests, they form Group of Political Interests (GPI). Because groups of political interests could be very variable, and sometimes are only temporary alliances, I don’t use here a term social class. Using the concept of political strength, and having a basic knowledge about current economic situation, and historical processes, we can estimate future strength of each GPI that will be present on the political scene of particular country.
As you can see now, the political system is not really a function of urbanization of the country, but rather a function of percentage of citizens involved in market exchange processes.
However cCities helps to emerge higher political systems, because they are higher organized systems organisms, where people are involved in many market transactions, and even the poorest city-dwellers have to buy food, and some other goods. In consequence, differences in political strength between the rich, and the poor city-dwellers are not so great, and could be neutralized by the mass character of organizations that represents political interests of poor people. So cities “helps” higher political systems.
On the other hand, farmers could be easily pushed down to the status of peasants (which not sell anything on the market) in the times of crisis, and then easily dominated by the great land-owners.
But I have seen countries that became democratic when there was a little more than 30% of city-dwellers, and countries that became democratic when they have over 70% of city-dwellers (average is about 50% of city-dwellers for democratic system, and about 30% of city-dwellers for the populistic system).
Laws for History
Here I present only the very basic laws. More detailed concepts and models (with historical examples) will be presented in The World History Rewritten section (list of topics).
In times of growth people tend to cooperate, in times of crisis people tend to fight with each other
It is a trivial observation but its consequences are not always obvious for historians, and economists.
When we have period of economic growth, people are eager to cooperate, conflicts are rare, and problems are solved in peaceful ways. People looks like they were good, and rational-acting beings.
When we have economic crisis, economy, and politics is a “zero-sum game” (or niegative-sum game), so there are much more conflicts, which are solved with more brutal methods. We can expect strikes, revolutions, wars, and “irrational” ideologies. People looks like they were bad, and irrational-acting beings.
When we are analyzing history (or economy) of “good times”, we can use scientific tools that assumes the people are good, and will tend to cooperate. Good example of that kind of tools is the liberal economy, especially free-market theories.
When we are analyzing history (or economy) of “bad times” we should use scientific tools that assumes the people are bad, unhonest and the history is driven by conflicts. Examples of such theories could be: game theory, Marxism (with its “class struggleconflicts”), or the monopoly theory, and other economic theories that describes flaws of free market.
If we forget this basic truthot that, we could repeat the mistake of made a mistake made by Nicolo Machiavelli, who believed that only unhonest (“dirty”) strategies are effective in politics. Or opposite, we could repeat the mistake ofmade a young Winston Churchill’s mistake, who had prophesied (as a young journalist at the beginning of XXth century), that democracy and liberal economy would soon dominate the whole World.
This ruleIt is a consequence of very simple economic mechanism: When the economy is in the phase of growth, the middle-income citizens (for simplicity middle class) grows in number and wealth and thus in political strength. When the economy is in the crisis phase, the group of middle-income citiziens group shrinks, and opposite GPIs from the left wing and right wing of political scene (conflicted with each other) grow in strength. Economic mechanism responsible for destroying the group of middle-income citizens is very similar as in polarization effect, which destroys the economic prosperity of middle-income countries (described in more detail on the economics tools page, when I will write say about flaws of the comparative advantage theory).
Now you can see, why the observation that was made by Alexis de Tocqueville:
Revolution usually happens when the crisis comes after the phase of growth
is true.
When the country ruled by a privileged small GPI (group of political intereststhat occupies a top of its social hierarchy) is in the phase of growth, the middle-income citizens (whichthat have no political rights at all or have very limited political rights) grow in strength. When the crisis comes, the a dominant GPI usually tries to increase the rate of exploitation of other citizens. In a self-defense middle-income citizens can (if they are strong enough) made an alliance with low-income citizens group and made a successful revolution.
Of course, if the crisis not come (or middle-class is strong like in democratic system), the changes in political system will be gradual (system will be developing in an evolutionary way).
The Law of Connected Vessels
It is the law formulated by polish historian Pawel Jasienica.
When a country with higher-developed political institutions conquers (or unites with) a country that have less-developed political institutions, institutions in the first country starts to degenerate ad institutions in the less-developed country start to develop until “political levels” in both countries will become almost equal.
The reasons for that process are economic and will be explained in more detail later.
Expansion and fall cycle in states before the industrial revolution
Every feudal state goes (sometimes many times) through specific life-cycle:
1. Expansion, and a phase economic growth,
2. Decline, because of diffusion processes launched by conquered lands.
3. Final fall -, country breaks into a few smaller countries or is completely conquered by barbarians or some other country, or civil war changes the ruling GPI.
4. Eventually rebirth. After the crisis a new phase of economic growth begins, country unites, and the cycle starts from the beginning. (Technology level are little higher than at the beginning of previous cycle).
Here a short description of social mechanics that stands behind this cycle:
There are basically tree most important GPIs in feudal states:
Soldiers faction. Nobles whothat want to increase their wealth using military ways, by conquering or plundering some other country.
Priests faction. Nobles whothat wants to increase their wealth by increasing the rate of exploitation of local peasant (or introduce new, more effective methods of production).
Planters faction. Nobles whothat want to increase their wealth by selling their products abroad (usually to some richer country).
PlusAnd there are the faction of merchants. They are usually have no political rights, but sometimes could be an important ally for of factions mentioned above before.
Depending on situation, one of these faction is the strongest, and dictates the policy of the countryfeudal state policy. When planters are on the top, we can see so-called “noble democracy” - a feudal state (only nobles have political rights) with some elements of parliamentarism (ex. England, Hungary, Poland) -. bBut it is a very rare case. When priests are on the top, we can see a very religion drivenus feudal state, often with great religious buildings (like cathedrals or pyramids). When soldiers are on the top, the feudal country is expansionistic, and tries to conquer its neighbours.
Usually the most effective (most profitable) way to increase nobles wealth of dominating nobles is a military expansion, so feudal country tries to conquer the weakest of his neighbours. At the beginning, that kind of “government investment” is quite profitable. New conquered countries gives a monarch extra lands that he could use to revard give his warriors, officials and supporters, and opens new markets for local traders. Until the volume of the long-range internal trade (ie. trade between different provinces of kingdom) is high are large, country is united, because profits from trade makes stronger these GPIs that are interested in unity of the country. Long range trade is a glue that keeps different provinces together.
Then, after the long growth, comes the slow economic fall. There are numerous causes of such crisis.It could happen because of many reasons. Maybe too many conquered lands consume to many military resources of the country. Maybe too intensive exploitation of natural resources makes country vulnerable to natural disasters. Maybe long-range trade becomes less profitable because differences in wealth levels between provinces became smaller. Maybe the reason is the is an shift of trade routes because of some external processes.
As a result the volume of the long-range internal trade loses its power to glue country together, and local feudal lords grow in power (in comparisonng with the monarch). Eventually that process disunites the country into several (or even hundreds of) pieces - feudal domains.
Crisis in a relatively rich country makes some economic problems to their neigbours too. If that country trades goods with some barbarian tribes (or some other country with lower income), population, wealth, and technology level of theseat tribes increases rapidly when the rich country is in expansion phase. When the crisis comes, rich country would try to protect its trade balance using numerous protective means: its merchants will start buy little less goods, dictate lower prices or try to find other barbarian tribes that could sell the same goods cheaper. In consequence that middle-income barbarian tribes suffers from poverty because their “export” drastically decreases (see “polarization effect”).
In consequence, a war becomes a very good alternative for these barbarianat tribes: they are well equipped, and numerous, and have no other option to protect their social status. Moreover army of the rich country is quite weak because of economic crisis. So, we can observe a great barbarian expansion and migration. Middle-income tribes attacks (and in most cases conquer) the rich country, and also some low-income barbarian tribes in their neighbourhoodthat are their neighbours.
Country falls under the rule of barbarians (or some times a middle-income country), and the cycle starts from the beginning. (But barbarian lands join the civilized states.) ASo, as you can see, great nomadic barbarian empires (like Mongol or Arabian) emerge becauseare mainly an effect of the weakness of conquered conquered feudal countries.
Of course thisit is only one of many possible paths of this rise-and-fall, that cycle can take. Depending on GPI whichthat rules the feudal country (warriors, priests or planters), and many other factors, the schemaa of growth, and fall could be little different. Actually there are probably at least a two dozens variants of thisat rise-and-fall cycleschema.
„The Peninsula Schema”
When countries exists in a relatively open geographic region, and borders with many barbarian countries, its overall development is rather slow. Feudal countries goes through many cycles of expansion and fall, and size of civilized (non-barbarian) area increases rather slowly.
But when several countries are bundled together in a relatively enclosed peninsula-like region, and thisat region have some natural internal borders like mountains, forests, swamps,, (these borders make impossible situation when only one country permanently dominates the whole region - because there are many equally strong sub-regions that have very different economical interests), then the schema of historical evolution schema is a little different. (These borders prevent any singular country from permanently conquering or dominating the whole region - because there are many equally strong sub-regions that have very different economical interests.)
In such region tThere are several countries with comparable strength competing that hardly competes with each other. Even when one countryof them grows in power strength, its neighbours will immediately made an alliance to bring that country down. Countries have very little place to expand, so economic falls (and thus political regressions) caused by immoderate expansion are not so deep. Costs of war increase dramatically, because there is no longer “easy prey” in close surroundings (every new military discovery is very quickly implemented by neighbours). So, the alternative ways of increasing country wealth like trade, technology development an investments become relatively more profitable (we can construct curves illustrating what is the best choice for a country: war, trade expansion, technology-intensive investments, etc. - or to be more precise: what is the best choice for GPIs that rule the country have political rights - usingin similar way those kind of curves like are constructed in the theory of utility in economics).
For all those reasons technology development speeds up, and volume of trade grows. Technology development (especially in agriculture) helps cities to grow, and trade growth gives cities economic reason to growth (cities become important centers of trade exchange). So, we can observe appearance of first populistic city-states (like Sparta, Corinth and Athens in Ancient Greece, or Venetia, Milano anf Genoa in Medieval Italy). And their appearance makes technology, and trade development even faster.
Expansion of theseat city-states, and diffusion of new technologies imported bywhich other (feudal) states on our “peninsula” are importing from them, eventually make all counties on peninsula populistic. And there is a chance that after some time period one of populistic countries eventually become democratic - which. That makes technology development even faster.
We can observe the peninsula schema a few times in history: in Ancient Greece, in Medieval Italy, in Modern Europe, and in XV-XVIII centuries in India. (But before the southern parts of India subcontinent - for example Kerala - couldhad evolved into populistic states, whole this region was colonized by Europeans.)
Populistic system can also evolve in a country on an iIsland that is locatedlized at the crossroads of important trade routes, and have limited ability to expansion (You should remember that overseas military expansion is much more costly than land expansion, because of logistic reasons problems, so all alternative methods of increasing the island country’s wealth are more profitable). Good examples of that kind of countries could be Ancient Minoan Crete or modern England and Japan.
Economics Tools
Classifications and rules presented here are only subtle modifications of modern theory of economics, so is good to study at least the basic theory of microeconomics, macroeconomics and international trade to better understand the Mechanics of History.
|Few links to online resources about economics: |
|Lectures on economics at Digital Economist |
| |
|Lectures on Economics and Game Theory by William King |
| |
|International Trade Theory |
| |
|History of Economic Thought |
| |
|Library of Economics |
| |
There are two kinds of economic crisis: overproduction crisis, and stagflation crisis
Basically there are two kinds of economic crisis:
The stagflation crisis (or underproduction crisis) is the final effect of government-stimulated growth (or the war, which is no more that a special kind of government investment).
Just before the crisis (in the hidden phase) we can observe: shortage of goods, government regulation of the market (like rationing coupons or fixed prices), and the black market. These are signals of the increasing market unbalance.
When the crisis starts (in the evident phase) we can observe: unemployment, decline of the production, and inflation (or even hyperinflation), because publicity no longer believe in money offered by the government.
The overproduction crisis (or deflation crisis) is the final effect of growth stimulated by private financial institutions (like banks or investment funds).
Just before the crisis (in the hidden phase) we can observe: rocketing increase of prices on the stock market, and a periodical increase of inflation. These are signals of the increasing market unbalance.
When the crisis starts (in the evident phase) we can observe: sharp drastic fall of the stock market prices, unemployment, decline of the production, problems with selling goods (overproduction), and thus deflation.
Of course in the real world things are more complicated, and sometimes crisis is could be sometimes some combination of those two basic kinds of crises mentioned aboveis.
For example: when a country with government-stimulated economy borrows money for growth stimulation from an external and free financial market (i.e. from abroad financial institutions abroad), the crisis usually begins with a drastic fall of the national currency (Mexican crisis of 1994 is a good example here). The reasons for the crisis are the same like in stagflation crisis but the course of the crisis resembles rather an overproduction crisis - because of free financial markets involved.
There are two basic economic strategies for countriesschemas of economy organization: free trade, and protectionism
As there are two kinds of economic crisis, the same way there are two dominating economic strategies for a country. When most of the countries choose one of these two strategies, we can say that this trade strategy (economic schemas or phases) dominates in the world economyschemas of economic policies:
When economic growth in most of the countries is stimulated by private financial institutions, we can say that the World economy (or economy of a region) is in the free trade phase. Less-developed countries are financing their economic growth from external resources (usually using capital from high-developed countries). We can observe, usually short, overproduction crises, that easily propagate from one country to another, soand often crisis usually affects the whole world or large region.
When economic growth in most of the countries is stimulated by government, we can say that the World (or a region) economy is in the phase of protectionism. Countries are financing their growth from internal resources (like country savings). We can observe, usually long (sometimes even a hundred years long) stagflation crises, that in most cases affect only one or a few countries.
|Chronology of free trade (liberal periods) periods, and periods of protectionism (periodseconomic interventionism): |
| |
|Because for most of the history a war was the most effective way to increase country wealth (for most of the history), most of the time, the |
|human history is generallywas the history of protectionism, and government-stimulated economy. |
|There were only a short periods of time, when the trade was profitable enough to support “liberal” economy. Good example could be the Greek |
|colonization in the Mediterranean region in ancient times. |
|Moreover bBefore the age of great geographic discoveries, there was no true global market but many local trade zones. Also, liberal or |
|protectionist schemas have only application to limited geographic region. Moreover, economic data are we have about earlier periods is very |
|fragmentary, so I start this simplified classification from will not be describing here economy schemas before the XVIth century. |
| |
|After the 1500 AD, thanks to.D. technology advances, and global trade, made liberal periods are longer liberal periods longer, and global: |
|In XVIth century there was we can observe a stagflation-like crisis (price revolution)great stagflation crisis, as an side-effect of |
|government spendings of Spanishin Mmonarchy spendings, and economic stagnation recession in Mediterranean region (because of trade routes |
|shift). |
|In the first half of XVIIth century Netherlands promoted a free trade policy (with great fall on tulip market - a classic example of |
|overproduction crisis). |
|The end of XVIIth century and most of XVIIIth century was the age of protectionism (and domination of mercantiylism). |
|There was a short period of liberal economy between 1776-1789, that was ended withby the Great French Revolution, and wars waged by France. |
|Years of 1820(30) -1929 wereas the age of liberal economy (laissez-faire) and the free trade. There were many rather short overproduction |
|crises (more or less every 10 years). |
|Years of 1934 -1972 were the age of protectionism (domination of keynesism, substitution of import, etc.), that was ended with the |
|stagflation crisis in 1973. |
|Since 1982 till know we can observe a beginning of new free trade period (globalization). |
| |
|Of course ithist is very simplified schematic classification. Starts and ends of each period of protectionism and free trade were different |
|for different countries (example South Sea Bubble [] - stock market crisis in Great Britain |
|when European economies were generally government driven), and some countries were outside the main cycle. Some regions of the world could |
|have different start date, and end dates of periods when the free trade or protectionism had dominated. |
Free trade schema is more effective, but high-developed countries must have enough capital to support suspend thisat schema.
There will be no economic growth without the virtual money
Exact mathematical proof could be quite long, so here is a short (very simplified) descriptive substantiation:
As every economist know, there is a closed circulation of money in a country economy: Firms pays households for means of production (as work, capital, knowledge), and then households are buying goods and services from firms paying with money earned before.
Lets try to build an simple example: there is only one factory manufacturing 100 cars a month, and all people work in this factory. Let say that this factory gains a new technology, and is able to increase production to 150 cars. But we have a problem. Households have money only to buy 100 cars (money earned last month), so if the factory increase its production, it will gain exactly the same amount of money as for 100 cars a month before. So, board of directors will see no reason to increase production. An thus there will be no economic growth...
see Virtual money, descriptive explanation
Solution of this problem are the virtual money. Money that are completely fictional, taken from nowhere. Money to buy that extra 50 cars. Using a metaphor, we can say that the virtual money are borrowed from the future (I mean: we are hoping that our GDP grows, and we will be able to repay our debts). Simple speakingaying virtual money are it is nothing more than a credit.
There are two basic ways to generate virtual money:
• Government could print some paper (fiat) money (or spoil the metal coins), spending more money that gains from taxes, and thereby borrowing this way money from citizens. In this caseWe can say that growth is government-stimulated.
• Financial institutions like for example banks could lend more money that they have deposits or give credit too easy. In tThis case growth is stimulated by financial institutions (government could help here withusing low interest rates).
Which of those stimulation is better? It depends.
But there will be no economic growth without any stimulation (or the growth will be slow).
And sometimes because of other factors, no mater as strong, and well-constructed it is, none of methods of economic stimulation iswill be effective.
And moreover, this is a very simplified classification of methods used to produce virtual money. Some others include: credit cards, stock market options (and other derivatives), overvalued national currency rate, etc.
Basic scheme of economic crisis schema
At the beginning, when economy is in growth phase, growth is financed using virtual money. (Today’s debtors are borrowing money that have to repay tomorrow.) When the base for the economic growth is firm stable, debts made today will be repaid without any problem in the next period from the new, bigger GDP (income). Volume of virtual money is matching the expected future growth of income quite good (compare with the model of rational expectations).
But sometimes the parameters of economic environment (and thus the conditions for economic growth) could change in an unpredictable way. There are many reasons for these changes, but generally speaking most of them spring from politics, and political changes, or from changes in the volume of available resources.
When the change happens, such a high rate of growth, (as we expected before the change) will be no longer possible. However because of virtual money, there are debts that were made, when the expected rate of growth was higher. Because of natural inertia of political, and economic institutions, the rate of growth is still high for a some period of time, but it creates an extra cost of rapidly increasing debt. Publicity still believe in the virtual money. We can observe some symptoms of increasing market unbalance. Thisat is the hidden phase of crisis.
Then comes a shock. It could be some unpredictable event or even a gossip. Publicity loses its belief in virtual money. Thisat launches a rapid fall of prices of money, assets or goods, whose prices were partially created by the virtual money. We can observe a great fall of stock market prices, rapid fall of national currency value (inflation, and even hyperinflation) or rapid changes of currency exchange rates (when the growth was stimulated by money borrowed abroad).
Then comes the crisis - because the possible rate of growth is lower than before - and even the recession - because of the debt, that must be repaid. When debts are repaid, or reduced by some political means, and there are natural conditions for growth, the crisis ends.
Wealth redistribution between high income and low income countries
When we have “rich”, and “poor” country, then under normal conditions there will be a continuous diffusion of wealth from the “rich” country to the “poor” country. Levels of wealth in both countries will equalize to finally end at more or less the same level.
This is the economy counterpart of the Law of Connected Vessels presented before.
Rate of this diffusion of wealth will be faster when:
• Gap betweenDifference theof income levels of “rich” and “poor” levels between both countryies (measured for example. as GDP per capita) is greater “greater”
• Diffusion channel (i.e. volume of trade, and capital flows, etc.) between two countries is “wider”
However tThere are a few important reservations, that we must consider here:
• Protectionism makes the diffusion channel “narrower”, and thus could slow down the diffusion rate.
• According to the Solow’s Model, the final barrier for economic growth is technology level of the country.
Solow’s model consequences
➢ When the level of technology in a country is constant, there is a point where economy stimulation will have no effect, because costs of theat stimulation will be greater higher than the resulting increase of wealth. Only way to increase the country’s wealth in long run is to increase its technology level.
➢ A country with low technology level thus could be under the stronger “diffusion pressure” (i.e. could be relatively richer), than a country that have nominally bigger GDP, but with but have a higher technology level.
So, if we have one country with higher political system (which speed upthat causes faster technology development), and a country with lower political system, and government of both countries believe in protectionism, the technological gap, and thus the wealth gap between these countriesm may temporary increase. Even when diffusion forces are still working.
But under normal conditions, the diffusion powers are the main reason, why economy stimulation is sometimes ineffective. And because of them, no matter what the government will do, the country’s economy will stagnate or even fallgo into recession.
Important conclusion is that, the rate of economic growth depends strongly from its neighbourhood. If a small, poor country borders with a biggreat, rich country, it will develop very fast. If a rich country borders with many quite large (i.e. very populated) poor countries, its economy will probably stagnate or even decrease -, because of diffusion powers.
FourThree major flaws of the Comparative Advantage Theory
The Comparative Advantage Theory is the model used by economists to explain, why the free trade is more effective than protectionism. It is generally true, but there are cases when it will not work. Here are three major weakness of that theory:
*** First, it ignores merchants who are transportinging goods from one country to another. The Comparative Advantage Theory assumes that merchants they gain no profit, and have no ability to control prices in both countries to maximize their revenues profits. It is very dangerous assumption, especially when merchants from one country monopolize international trade. Everyone interested in history, knows that many wars were waged only to gain an privileged position in international trade.
*** Second, according to the Ccomparative Aadvantage Ttheory, large country (i.e. country with large market share) could maximize its profits manipulating the prices (natural ability of a big market-player). Under the normal conditions it does not matter, because free trade (for both large, and small country) the free trade will be still more profitable than protectionism.
But when the Wworld economy is shrinking (it is in crisis phase), it could be very important, how large is a market share (and thus profits from international trade) of each country, because both the large and the small country have debts to pay (see the description of economic crisis above).
*** Third weakness is the Polarization effect. The Comparative Advantage Theory is true will work only when thea number of traded goods is GREATER than the number of countries participating in international trade. If thisat number is smaller, one (or more) countries will not be able to sell any product on the world market. (see Polarization effect, descriptive explanation)
Normally thisat is not a problemthe case, because the number of tradable goods is almost always much larger than the number of countries. But when the global economy is in the crisis phase, protectionist efforts of rich, and poor countries, taken to prevent their global market shares (see above), will form effect in appearance of two large groups of goods: capital-intensive plus capitals (sold by rich countries), and labour-intensive (sold by poor countries). In consequence the middle-income countries will have serious problems with selling their products on the global market (there are 3 groups of countries but only 2 groups of goods). So, their economic situation may could become critical, and thisat could effect in political chaos.
This effectat mechanism is for example responsible stands for(for example) behind Argentina trade problems in 1997-2002. Polarization have also an impact on political balance inside country - could destroy the prosperity and political power of middle-class (more or less the same way as described above: no one want to buy goods and services sold by middle income-citizens). Social processes launched by the polarization effect are responsible for, behind most of barbarian expansions in medieval and ancient times, and also for the expansion of France in times of behind Napoleon’s wars, or forand Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP (Adolf Hitler’s party) successes party successes in elections in Germany.
*** And Fourth and most important :ND FINALLY, The Ccomparative Aadvantage Theory DO NOT PROVESdo not proves that a country, where the prices of all goods are higher, will export any of these goods to the country where the prices of all goods are lower. In this case we have to take into consideration another, special kind of goods: money. A very rich country will have comparative advantage AT MONEY, and will be exporting money (either as “pure money” - it means will have a negative trade balance - or as a capital). In other words: we cannot use relative prices in economic models of trade exchange.
Why the the free market is better?
Here some most important advantages of the free market in comparison to government-regulated economy:
Advantages of free market
➢ Competition eliminates the weakest, and most ineffective firms.
➢ Line of control (distance) between capital-owners, and people, who use capital to production is shorter, so it is easier to control if the capital is used in a reasonable way (i.e. is not wasted or stolen).
As you can see, great private company with monopolist position on the market could be the same way ineffective, as government owned companies are. On the other hand government-owned companies that have to compete on a free market could be very effective.
➢ Small firms are exploring economic opportunities that are too expensive for large companies.
➢ Diffusion of new technologies, and scientific knowledge is faster.
➢ Time of reaction to unpredictable external events is shorter, and the economy faster revives after external shocks.
Disadvantages of free market
➢ Transactional costs are higher than in government regulated market.
➢ Market companies tends to ignore external costs that they generate for the common environment.
Protectionist advantage of government-regulated market
When the tax rate is very high (and taxes are progressive), and government generally mainly buys goods manufactured in the national economy, that policy will have an extra protectionist effect, because it lowers tendency to import. (Money that normally could be spend by the richer citizens on goods imported from abroad, now will be spend on goods manufactured produced in our country.)
Protectionism makes diffusion channel narrower, thus slowing the technology diffusion between rich, and poor countries.
Government-stimulated economy could lead to overexploitation of natural resources and thus could be very vulnerable to catastrophic natural disasters.
Government-regulated works like a monopoly, and thus could give a country all advantages of scale. It is especially important in some sorts of economic activities like for example: export of natural resources or waging a war.
Reassuming:
Government-regulated economy has all strength and weakness that a monopoly has. Usually is less effective than a free-market economy, but not always. Argumentation that free-market is always more effective than a government-stimulated economy is like proving, that Microsoft has no advantage over smaller computer firms.
Laws for science and technology development
Here, a few basic laws that are explaining the rate of scientific, and technology development:
• The higher are expenditures for science the higher is the rate of development (well, its a very trivial law).
• The higher is the volume of gathered knowledge, the faster it increases. Science evolves in geometric progression (warning: this is a simplification, obvious when you think of the math behind).
• Rate of science, and technology development is faster in every higher political system (i.e. it is faster in populistic system than in feudal system, and faster in democratic system than in both two other systems).
• During the free market (liberal) periods the rate of science, and technology development is faster than during the periods of protectionism.
• When the country made a transition from government-regulated economy to free-market economy, we can observe a “scientific evolution” whichthat is a consequencen effect of practical implementation of theoretical knowledge gathered before (i.e. during protectionism period). ThatIt was the reason for “industrial revolution” in England in late XVIIIth century, and “computer & Internet revolution” in USA in last two decades of XXth century.
Virtual money, descriptive explanation
If the short description explanation of the concept of virtual money is not enough for you, h. Here is a more descriptive explanation (with illustrative pictures).
Let’s start from the beginning i.e. from the Say’s Law (Jean Baptiste Say was the French economists from the beginning of XIXth century). Aaccording to thisat law:
The total amount of money in economy will be always equal to the total amount of goods and services sold. In other words: "Supply creates its own demand" - all money people have earned will be spent for manufactured produced goods and services, even treasuredhesaurised money (i.e. saved for future) will be eventually spent. ThereforeSo the aggregate supply will be always equal the aggregate demand. So, in a free market economy will be no such phenomena like: oversupply, underconsumption, overproduction...
Here is the graphical illustration of this law (probably the first illustration in every Macroeconomics book):
There is a closed circulation of money and goods in the country economy:
[picture]
Consumers (households) are earning money selling means of production they have (i.e. labour, capital) and spend whole money on goods and serviced sold by firms. Firms are earning money from selling production, and spending thes whole income on means of production.
There are two problems wits Say’s law:
• First, it must have some flaw, because we can for time to time observe overproduction, underconsumption, inflation and other examples of situations, when supply of goods do not equals with supply of money.
• Second, all contradictory explanations (like for example explanation given by Keynes) are very weak and are not explaining what is wrong with Say’s law.
So, If we want to understand economic crises, we first have to understand, why Say’s law it is not true.
Let’s add the time to our schema of money circulation in economy:
Circulation of money in economy with timeline taken into account
[picture]
This schema of circulation looks better, because this time the stream of money doesn’t look like snake eating his own tail. We can see, that the money does not have a quantum nature, and could not be present in two places the same time. Money paid by firms (and spent by households) doesn’t come from nowhere, but have to be earned in antecedent period and the same is true for money spent by firms - they have to be earned before they are spent (even if that mean only one or two seconds before). Still everything is okay - the supply equals the demand. Bbut the economy is stagnated - there is no economic growth at all. Let see what will happen, if we have economic growth:
Circulation of money in economy with timeline and economic growth taken into account
[picture]
This time the country’s national product (ex. gross national product, GNP) increases - thiswhat is represented by increasing sizes of Households and Firms squares.
But the volume of money earned in antecedent period (blue arrows) is too small to buy all the goods and services produced in next period. Without some extra money, economic growth will be damped down by the undersupply of money.
So, the extra money are needed (marked with red arrows). Money that was no’t earned in antecedent period, and are taken from nowhere - the virtual money.
The virtual money are really a kind of magic trick (or accountancy trick). They have no real value, they wasere not earned by selling some real good or service - simply someone spends more money than he (or she or institution) really hasve. Publicity (other market players) accepts thisat extra spendings because they believe that a player (I will call him debtor), who offersing virtual money is solvent. To be more precise: they believe that the future growth of income will allow debtor to repay the debt (i.e. repay virtual money).
So, the virtual money isare really the debt or the a money borrowed from the future. And have value only when we have economic growth. If the rate of growth is notwon’t be asso highfast as the publicity (and debtors) expected, the virtual money will became worthless.
Virtual money can be created usingin any kind of money:
• Can be created in bank, when the bank lends more money than have deposits.
• Can be created by the government, when government prints some fiat money or “paper money”.
• Can be created by monarch, when he mints coins that have smaller percentage of precious metals than the monarch states.
• Can be created by a corporation, when firm sells bonds or stocks.
• Can be created by the government sellingusing government bonds.
• Can be created by households (ordinary people), when they make debts using credit cards, or borrow money from banks, or take mortgage credit.
• Can be created by the government, when government revaluates national currency to make easier borrowing money from abroad (and then repaying external debt).
etc.
Virtual money is are only a the small part of the particular “kind of money” inside which virtual money wasare created (small part of fiat money, small part of coin value, or stocks value). But when the crisis comes and the publicity loses belief in virtual money, the whole kind of money loses its value - its price falls. So, we can observe a spectacular fall on market (an effect of the collapse of value):
• People go to the bank to take their money away and the bank bankrupts.
• Price of fiat money falls and high inflation (or even hyper-inflation) starts.
• We can observe a rapid fall on the stock market.
• The national currency rapidly depreciates.
To recapitulate:
1. There will be no economic growth without some reasonable amount of virtual money - i.e. without some economic stimulation.
2. Generally the reason for crisis is almost always the previous growth. Or to be more precise, some unexpected change in economic environment that slows down the rate of economic growth (or starts the recession) and thus causes makes problems with repaying debts taken in antecedent periods. There are many possible reasons for this kind ofat changes in the economic environment:
• Some natural disaster
• Political changes in neighbouring state
• Change of economic policy in neighbouring state
• Important shift of trade routes
• Some changes in size of neighbouring economies or volumes and directions of market flows (the South-Asia crisis of 1997 is a good example here)
Of course, some times (especially in ancient times) great natural disasters like flood, plague, or drought could be only one reason for crisis, and these times we don’t need the concept of virtual money to explain the crisis.
To simplify the whole pattern you should know that, generally speaking, there are three most important ways to create virtual money:
1. Expansive fiscal policy of government - when economy is government-stimulated.
2. Expansive actions of private firms and financial institutions - when free market (laissez-faire economy) dominates.
3. Too highly revaluated national currency (or “over-valued”) - when the poor country borrows money from abroad.
But of course there are a hundred and one ways to create virtual money. Recalling the first picture presented here - we can complicate it a little, and add include a few moreing some other players:
Money circulation in economy, advanced schema
[picture]
We have added the government, the financial institutions (banks, stock market, etc.) and the abroad. And marked the money flows between all of the players. Virtual money can be created on any of theseat flows: ex. between financial institutions and households (like credit cards). And we can still add more players. Moreover, economy could be concurrently stimulated with two or more types of virtual money. I hope this picture clarifies, why the reasons for economic crises are so complicated.
Three elements that wasn’t mentioned here:
1. First there are other methods to createof creating additional supply of money without using the virtual money.
If you recall tThe Fischer’s Equation of Money, which states that the price level in economy and the velocity of money are also important factors for the money supply:
|The Fischer’s Equation of Money: |
|P ( Q = M ( V |
|where: |
|P = the current price level (the implicit price deflator of GNP) |
|Q = the current level of output (real GNP) |
|M = the current money supply |
|V = the velocity of money (the number of times each banknote or coin is spent each year) |
You can easy notice that the higherfaster velocity of money circulation also also increases the money supply. Thisat was the reason for inventing: the credit, coins, banks, paper money, stock market, derivates, internet transactions, etc.
2. Second - I skipped here the diffusion of wealth from richer countries to poorer ones. Thisat diffusion is one of the most important reasons for economic crises and economic growth.
3. Third - one of consequences of the virtual money is that no one economic equation is absolutely true, because most equations describe the static economy only.
-----
Clarification
Model of virtual money presented here is (using the words of Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart) no more than “a lie for children” - i.e. is a simplification needed to present thisat concept to unprepared reader.
I have assumed here that prices are not changing (see Fischer’s Equation of Money above), b. Because models with the changing prices are much more complicated. A careful analyze of models with changing prices proves, that the economic growth without the virtual moneythere is sometimes possible economic growth without the virtual money, and the reasons for virtual money are more sophisticated than I stated here.
Remember: the virtual money are not the reason for economic growth, and creating a stream of “unreal money” will not start the economic prosperity. Virtual money are only a tool that makes possible to consume (or to be precise to consume faster) the increase of productivity, which that is an effect of some real factor like discovering new technologies, new mineral resources, or new countries to conquerst, etc.
Polarization effect, descriptive explanation
Here, I will try to explain wWhy, the Comparative Advantage Theory will not works, when the number of goods are lower than the number of countries?. Here, I wi’ll try to explain thisat here. Let’s see the simplest comparative advantage model as it was presented by David Ricardo (British economist from the beginning of XIXth century, models used today are more sophisticatedcomplicated, but they are still based on David Ricardo assumptions and premises.).:
Let’s assume that we have two countries: Antigua (A) and Barbuda (B), whichthat produce and trade two goods: avocado (A) and bananas (B). On Antigua prices are high:, banana costs 100 $ and an avocado 200 $. On Barbuda prices are lover: an avocado costs 100 $ and a banana costs 10 $. Moreover, let’sPlus assume (as Ricardo did) that prices are money-neutral, so and thus we can use relative prices (i.e. not nominal - in dollars - but we will measure the price of one good using with the number pieces of another good, you can buy for it -. thisIt iit’s a very dangerous assumption, scroll down for explanation, but it is another story). On Antigua we can buy one avocado for two bananas (avocado is relatively cheap, bananas are relatively costly). And on Barbuda we can buy one avocado for ten bananas (avocado is relatively costly and bananas are relatively cheap).
A merchant from Antigua who have one avocado canould buy 2 bananas here on Antigua but also canould also go to Barbuda, and sell the same avocado for 10 bananas, then go back to Antigua, and sell bananas to buy 5 avocados, then go to Barbuda again...
[picture] Comparative advantage at work
The merchant goes richer, and richer, and everything was started from one avocado. Moreover, citizens of Antigua willcan consume more bananas and citizens of Barbuda will consume more avocado than without a trade. Everybody is happy, and the most important observation: international trade is profitable, even if prices of both goods are much higher on Antigua than on Barbuda. And that was Ricardo’s point.
|Warning: there is a major mistake in this reasoning, see below. |
(1!. SimpleLittle exercise: try to find what is wrong in this example.)
Now, let see,’s what will happen if we add there iswill be a third country - Montserrat (M) - - that participates in the international trade, but we do not add a there is no third good that can be traded (there is no mango). On Montserrat island prices are medium (intermediate) intermediate: and an avocado costs 160 $ and a banana 40 $ (we can buy 1one avocado for 4four bananas).
And what our merchant with one avocado will do this time? Will he go to Montserrat to, buy 4four bananas and go back to Antigua to sell theseat bananas for 2 avocados? Or will heo go straight to Barbuda, where the relative prices are better? The same is true for a merchant from Barbuda. She will not try to sell bananas on Montserrat, if she can get better prices on Antigua.
[picture] A country eliminated from international trade
As you can see, when the number of traded goods is lower than the number of countries, it is pretty possible that a country with intermediate relative prices willcan be completely excluded from international trade. (2!, 3! I did no’t write that the country will beis always excluded, because there are at least two little exceptions here. See frames below.
|First: When the demand in a rich country is very high and neither the poor and the middle-income country alone can’t satisfy demand in the |
|rich country, then the middle-income country is not eliminated from trade by polarization effect. So, the volume of export and import also |
|matters. |
lies in that reasoning. Try to find them.)
|Second: Prices in the international trade aren’t stable and can be manipulated. If the trade itself gives the country’s merchants great |
|profits (net profit from buying at lower prices in one country and selling at higher prices in another), merchants sometimes could manipulate|
|prices to increase the volume of trade. Even if the “bare” trade balance of their country will be negative, the net profit from trade (when |
|we add the income of merchants) could be positive. |
What isare the consequences of the polarizationthat effect?
Usually the number of traded goods is much more higher than the number of countries. But when the global economy shrinks, every country take some protectionistic measures to make its comparative advantage (relative prices) better. It is unavoidable, because every country has somea debts t - money borrowedaken when the global economy was growing -, that have to now must be repaid (see also virtual money).
Rich countries takes efforts to make the export of capital-intensive goods (orand the capital, whichthat is an important element of their export) relatively more profitable and try efforts to make import of labour-intensive goods less profitable. Poor countries take the opposite strategy: promotes the export of labour-intensive goods and try to make protect its economies against the import capital-intensive goods (plus capital) harder to import. Middle- income -countries have these times very serious problems, because their export rapidly shrinks. Moreover, middle income country couldn’t take any of those two strategies described above, because right-winged GPIs (groups of political interests), which that are interested in “capital-intensive” strategy have almost the same political strength likethat left-winged GPIs, which that are interested in “labour-intensive” strategy.
A side-effect of this polarization of international tradeThe consequence is a very deep crisis in middle-income countries and thereforea very serious social conflicts inside middle-income countries. Not only the polarization effect launches the economic crises in middle income countries but also a very similar “internal” polarization effect destroys the economic prosperity and safety of middle-income citizens (internal demand for their work, services, and goods thy manufacture, also shrinks). The best examples for democratic countries of that crisis are the Argentina collapse (2001) or crisis in France (1934). True democratic country survives polarization crisis but in populistic countries these times a quasi-democratic system changes into true dictatorship (or authoritarian, or totalitarian system) — good example is the history of Germany, Austria, Poland, Spain, Hungary and Latin America between two World Wars (1919-1939).
Here is the picture showing the normal distribution of goods (plus capital) in the international trade. Vertical axis represents the number of exported goods net income from export (revenue minus costs) of different goods plus the “weighted income” from the exportweight” of capital. and Hhorizontal axis orders goods fromrepresents rate of capital-intensive (right) toor labour-intensive (left) intensity of traded goods.
[picture] Distribution of goods in the international trade in times of prosperity
Middle-income countries have a privileged position. The reason is all traded goods usually have the normal distribution (known from statistic terms) - i.e. the group of medium goods (with more or less the same costs of labour and capital used to produce them) is most numerous.
And here is anothersimilar picture, this time that showings the “polarization effect”. Now, traded goods forms two large “mountains”, and the number of medium goods intermediate (equally capital- as labour-intensive goods) rapidly shrinks. Number of traded goods do not decrease but they form two groups (capital-intensive and labour-intensive) and the effect is more or less the same as we had Instead of large number of traded goods we effectively have only two traded goods - so middle income countries suffer.
[picture] Distribution of goods in the international trade in times of crisis
The most typical protectionistic measures take are:
• The increase of interest rates (for rich countries to increase the income from capital)
• The devaluation of national currency (for poor countries to increase the income from labor-intensive goods)
But there are manyore other protectionistic measures possiblemeans too: trade duties, more intensive exploitation of labour workers, etc.
Again, mMiddle-income countries have problem to chose the right protectionist strategy, because supporters of right-winged strategy (high interest rates, strong national currency, low taxes, reduction of government spendings, especially social spendings) and supporters of left-winged strategy (devaluation of national currency, expansive fiscal economic policy, protection of social spendings) have almost equal political strength. When crisis lasts for a few years, debt of middle-income country increases because of export problems. Eventually we can observe very serious crisis like Argentina collapse (of course institutional weaknesses, and corruption inside government mattered too).
But there are many other protectionistic measures possible: trade duties, more intensive exploitation of labour workers, etc. Moreover there are many variants of the polarization effect. When the top of the mountain (normal distribution of goods) is little shifted - i.e. is over capital-intensive goods or labour intensive goods (not over medium goods) - then the polarization crisis, and protectionistic measures taken may be different. And the crisis may affect middle income countries at different times, depending on their position on X (horizontal) axis. This explains (for example) different variants of oppressive populistic systems that evolved in Italy, Japan, Spain, Germany, Poland and other Central European or Latin America countries between 1919 and 1939.
Major flaw of the Comparative Advantage TheoryAnswers on riddles
1. Please look carefully at the first (“Ricardo”) example. We actually have There aren’t two goods: avocado and bananas. There are really three goods here: avocado, bananas and money. If you look closely, you will find that Antigua really have the comparative advantage inat money - money are cheap and fruits (avocado and bananas) are costly. On the other hand, on Barbuda money are costly and fruits are cheap. No one merchant will be so stupid, and try to transport avocados bought on Antigua forat 200$ and try to sell theseat avocados for 100$ on Barbuda, if he couldan simply buy avocados for 100$ on Barbuda, and sell for 200$ on Antigua. As you can seeThus, Barbuda will export both kind of fruits and Antigua will export the third good - money.
So, the comparative advantage theory is actuallyreally no more than a David Ricardo’s mistake. Well, he was very suggestive at his mistakes. and I feel little ashamed that I haven’t spot that before (i.e. before 23. Aug 2003), and knowledge that for nearly 200 years no one of thousands economists found that, doesn’t help.
|Exception: Ricardo’s model of Comparative Advantage could still work in case of internal exchange inside the monopoly (for example when some |
|country monopolizes the international trade). |
Of course rich countries still canmakes export goods totrade with poor countries, but the reasons for that are different (other i.e. export is not the effect ofthan the comparative advantage as classic model describes it):
• rich countries are exportings “bare” money, like precious metals.
• rich countries are exportings capital
• rich countries are exportingexports goods that could not be manufactured in other countries because of the lover technology level (like advanced software)
• rich countries could export trade and financial services (like insurance, transport, etc.)
• rich country could export “international currency service” (like USA exporting dollars), and gain extra income from that.
• If the prices are not muchore higher, goods could be exported to the country where the prices are little lower, because without the international trade local market in the second country couldwillcould be dominated by some local monopoly (and thus without the trade, prices here wouldill be higher, not lower).
Taking all these reservations into account I have to say that the real mechanism of the polarization effect is little more complicated than presented above is not quite true., but the polarization effect itself is true, because we can observe that effect many times in history. But the real mechanism is not very little different. The most important thing to remember is that in case of very Middle-income countries will have problems with their export when the crisis comes, because:rich
High-income countries, raising of interest rates could be a way to protect their trade balance. are raise the interest rates thus increasing their income from exporting capital.
• Low-income countries devaluate their currenciesy, thus making their export of labour-intensive goods more profitable (and export of capital-intensive goods less profitable, but these goods does not have large share in export, so the net effect is positive).
• And middle-income countries have serious problem which of the strategies to choose.
• I will try to present an exact mechanism, but it will take me some time.
Other riddles
2!. WhenIf the demand in a rich countrythere is very a high demand in a rich country, so neither the poor and the middle-income country can’t meet the whole demand of the rich country alone, the middle-income country is not eliminated from trade by polarization effect. So, the volume of export and import matters.
3!. Well, prices in the international trade aren’t stable and can be manipulated. If the trade itself gives the country’s merchants great profits (net profit from buying at lower prices in one country and selling at higher prices in another), they sometimes could manipulate prices to increase the volume of trade. Even if the “bare” trade balance of their country will be negative, the net profit from trade for that country could be positive.
--------------
Comparative Advantage in money - consequences Here are some notes about the consequences of major mistake in the comparative advantage theory, I have mentioned in answering on the firstsecond riddle
Knowing that a very rich country have a comparative advantage in money - not in any “normal” good - we have to makeFirst, there are three reservations about we have to consider when using every economic models derived from the Ccomparative Aadvantage Ttheory:
1. When analyzing trade exchange in a model with two goods we can’t use relative prices and have to use absolute prices.
2. Model with relative prices and two goods will be applicable only for analysisze of natural trade exchange (i.e. before the invention of money).
3. Or one of two analyzed goods (when we consider relative prices) have to be money.
Theseat precautions apply to all economic models explaining the trade. For example to the EdgeworthPareto box - when analyzingto analyze a trade exchange between two countries that trade two different goods, we have to use three- dimensional EdgeworthPareto box (one dimension for each of two goods and one for money). Moreover, even the three- dimensional ParetoEdgeworth box will noton’t give us unambiguous right answer when there are more than two countries!
The final conclusion is: very rich country have an comparative advantage in money - not in any “normal” good.
Rich country usually exports money in one of three forms:
• As the pure money - rich country has ave negative trade balance (its suppliesy of precious metals or currency reserves will shrinks)
• As the capital - country lends some money to governments or firms from abroad, gaining some extra income from interest rates.
• As the international currency service (like US Dollars today, British Pound in XIXth century, Florence or Venetia coins in Renaissance), gaining thisat way some extra income.
We can formulate a quick-and-dirty law:
▪ When a income from exporting capital and international currency service is higher than an outflow of pure money, a very rich country will promote (even using military ways) a free trade.
▪ When a income from exporting capital and international currency service is lower than an outflow of pure money, a very rich country will take some protectionist measures (duties, subsidies, increase of interest rates, etc.).
Increase of interest rates have two effects:
▪ Increases the income from exporting capital
▪ Increases the costs of capital-intensive goods production. So, it works against all countries which are specialized in exporting capital-intensive goods and importing capital - i.e. some middle-income countries (like Argentina 1997-2001).
Devaluation of national currencies launched by poor countries will have a sSimilar, but not exactly symmetric effect (like polarization picture above may suggest) will have a devaluation of national currencies launched by poor countries.
Of course, theseat effects appears only when a very rich country is so important supplier of capital, so that can enforce (dictate) the prices of capital - i.e. (interest rates). Moreover,And weyou have to remember that some times interest rates are increased because of some actions taken by countries borrowing capital (like nationalization of property of foreign investors), or simply because of falls on world stock markets (when overproduction crisis comes). These times effects mentioned above are simply side-effects and increase of interest rates is not intended to be a tool of a protectionistic trade policy.
As you can see, free trade is not always profitable for every player in international market. This is mostly because of diffusion powers (reason for protectionism in rich countries) and because of political factors powers (trade policy that is best for the country is not always the best choice for ruling GPI - i.e. ruling group of political interests). But generally we can assume that free trade is rationale in times of prosperity, and protectionism may could some times be rationale policy in times of global economic crisis.
Polarization effect, quick summary:
Variant in liberal periods:
1. When the overproduction crisis comes (i.e. after the when we have series of falls on world stock markets, usually starting ifromon some of emerging markets), rich countries increases interest rates to protect their income from abroad investments.
2. When the price of capital increases, poor countries devaluate their currencies to increase income from exporting labour-intensive goods, and retrieve thisat way compensate retrieve the higher costs of credit.
3.
4. Therefore middle-income countries (which imports capital and specialize in exporting labour-intensive goods to rich countries and capital-intensive goods to poor countries) face serious problems with their trade balance. It is the reason for fierce political conflicts between left-winged GPIs and right-winged GPI, especially in populistic countries.
5. Middle-income countries, which that are specialized in importing capital and exporting labour-intensive goods to rich countries and capital-intensive goods to poor countries, faces the serious problems with their trade balance. It is the reason for serious political conflict between left-winged GPIs and right-winged GPI, which often ends in election of some populist leader if a middle-income country have a populistic system (like ex. in Germany between 1929-1934).
This is true when world economy is in a free trade phase. Polarization crisis for a protectionist economy will be little different. Mechanism of crisis is not exactly symmetric, because economy of capital is little different than economy of labour. Although some protectionist strategies may look similar: ex. nationalization of foreign capital investments in countries exporting labour-intensive goods and deportation of immigrants in countries exporting of capital. Capital usually has a privileged position because it have to be accumulated again and again (I will explain this in The World History Rewritten section).
And a final note: probably I should completely rewritten that page when I found the major mistake in the comparative advantage theory, and make text under the horizontal line an integral part of this explanation, but science develops thorough mistakes and only half-true answers, so I decided to present you one of mines. Both elements mentioned here (problem of trade when the number of goods is smaller than the number of countries and comparative advantage at money) are important when we try to understand periodical trade problems of middle-income countries (ex. Argentina collapse 2001).
Variant in periods of protectionism is little more complicated (depends strongly on political decisions), and thus I will describe describe different elements of it in “General History Rewritten” section of this work.
And a final note: of course I could completely rewritten that page when I foundspotted the major mistake in the comparative advantage theory, and make text under the horizontal line an integral part of this explanation, but science develops thorough mistakes and only half-true answers too, so I decidedwant to show you one of mines. Both elements mentioned here (problem of trade when the number of goods is smaller than the number of countries and comparative advantage at money) are important when we try to understand periodical trade problems of middle-income countries (ex. Argentina collapse 2001).
Chronology of the theory
1990 (Nov-Feb) Classification: three political systems
1991 (Autumn) End of the work on classification after the elimination of some initial mistakes
1991/1992 Definition of the “political strength”, and GPI
1993 (May-Jun) Two kinds of crisis: stagflation, and overproduction crises
1992-94 The Law of Connected Vessels, and logistic problems
1995 (Feb) Protectionism, and free trade schemas
1995 (Spring) Virtual money, and time-shift of the market balance
1998-2000 Social processes launched by economic crises
2001 (Dec) The Polarization Effect, and other flaws of the Comparative Advantage Theory
Contact with author
To contact with author you should send e-mail to one of following addresses:
amber@terramil.pl
slawekd@.pl
holygraal@pf.pl
birthright@pf.pl
And please, write in plain English. That will speed my answer.
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I am looking for a sponsor, who will finance:
▪ a book about History Mechanics
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Cost of that investment are very low and potential benefits could be quite reasonable:
1. History Mechanics gives us ability to predict economic crises (like South Asia Crisis).
2. Showing which historical analogies are legal and which one not, History Mechanics gives us ability to predict future social and historic processes and sometimes even future events. For example, knowing the history and mechanism of anarchistic terrorism from the end of XIX century we could predict the similar explosion of terrorism today - as a side effect of globalization.
3. Computer simulation could be sold as a computer game.
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Slawek (Slawomir) Dzieniszewski
Rules of quotation
You can freely quote any part of this work if you
a) put the link () to this page at the beginning of quotation
b) put the name of the author (Slawek Dzieniszewski) at the beginning of quoted fragment
You should also remember that maps presented here are taken from page (), and if you want to use them you should follow the rules of quotation, you can find on page ().
Rules of scientific thinking
Pawel JasienicaPaweł Jasienica
Paweł (Paul) Jasienica is the pen-name of Leon Lech Beynar (November 10, 1909 - August 19, 1970), a Polish amateur historian. He was born in Simbirsk in Russia as a son of Poles: Mikołaj (Nicholas) and Helena (Helen) Maliszewski. His father was a Russian official. Until the Russian Revolution of 1917 he lived with his family in Russia and the Ukraine. After the Revolution Beynar's family returned to Poland (1920). Leon Beynar a was soldier of the Polish army during the Polish Campaign at the beginning of World War II (September 1939). After the fall of Poland, he was a soldier of the Polish underground resistance army AK (Armia Krajowa - Army in Country) fighting against the Germans. Following the war he a was a member of resistance organization WiN (Wolność i Niepodległość, Freedom and Independence) fighting against the Soviets and Polish communists under the command of Major Zygmunt Szendzielarz (called "Łupaszka"). He took his pseudonym from the name of the place where he had received treatment. Then as a civilian, he worked as a journalist and writer. He was famous for condemning nationalism and for his personal civil courage. There are numerous anecdotes about how he was congratulated for his courage by the censors. These acts led to his being labeled a political dissident, for which he suffered government persecution.
Piast Poland
History of Poland, Xth-XIVth centuries (Piast dynasty)
Jagiellonian Poland
History of Poland, XVth-XVIth centuries (Jagiellonian dynasty)
The Commonwealth of Both Nations, vol. I :
The Silver Age
The Commonwealth of Both Nations, vol. II:
Calamity of the Realm
The Commonwealth of Both Nations, vol. III:
A Tale of Agony
History of Poland, 1572-1795 (elected kings and "feudal republic")
Most important as a background for thesis presented here.
Translated by Alexander Jordan.
Thought on Civil War - theoretically about Civil War in France, Bretony
History of brutally pacified guerilla against revolutionary government of France (1793). Really not in Bretony but in Vendée (region south from Nantes).
Based on Wikipedia
Some of his books you can find at
|Simplified pronunciation some of Polish letters: |
|Ł = English W (or L) |
|SZ = English SH |
|W = English V |
|CH = English KH |
|Ś = English very short SH' (more or less) |
|Ć = English very short TSCH' (more or less) |
|J = English Y (like in “key”) |
|I = English EE or E |
|Y = English Y (like in “lynch”)I |
|Generally Polish vowels E, A, I, O, U and Y have different length than English vowels (English vowels have irregular length, on the other |
|hand Polish vowels, the same as in German, Italian or Spanish, have stable length), and thus could be represented using different vowel every|
|time. |
|So (more or less): |
|Paweł Jasienica = Pav-aw Ya-see-nee-tsa |
|Leon Lech Beynar = Leon Lekh Beynar |
|Mikołaj (Nicholas) = Mee-koh-way |
|Maliszewski = Ma-lee-shav-skee |
|Łupaszka = Woo-pash-kah |
|Wolność i Niepodległość = Vol-no-sh'tch' e Nye-pod-leg-wosh'tch' |
Paweł (Paul) Jasienica - pseudonym of Leon Lech Beynar (1909-1970). History writer, and publicist from Poland. Author of many historical books (mainly about history of Poland) where he presented some historical observations that was imported here as a laws. Chicaned by communist press, and administration.
Why Ancient Athens democracy was not really a democracy?
Here a list of few (most important) reasons:
• Government of Athens was very often changed, by coup d`etat. Especially in times of the Peloponnesian War.
• There was plenty of political lawsuits. Many opposition politicians was forced to leave Athens or killed based on very doubtful evidences.
• Meeting of all citizens (Ecclesia) was no more than a crowd (or mob) that was easy to control by some skillful demagogue: the number of people was to great for conducting typical responsibilities of parliament: creating law (legislation), and controlling the government or state administration. Few thousand of people couldn’t work effectively to conduct those responsibilities. Costs of communication between members of such a large group are to high.
• In real democratic country there is no need for institution like “ostracism”. Democratic system is too strong to have such “special protections” against ambitious politicians. Ostracism was the easy way to eliminate from politics those of Athenian politicians, who were dangerous for a people that had power, and ruled Athens.
• There was no strong, and stable “political parties” like plebeians, and patricians in Rome, but many relatively unstable groups of interests built around charismatic leaders.
• Procedures of election to other Athens institutions (like Aeropagus, Heliaia), and their competencies was very often unclear (so there was a chance to political manipulations) or outright promoted some group of citizens (but I am not going to describe all their flaws because election procedures, and competencies were changed many times).
• City state of Athens was responsible for many war crimes - Athens soldiers many times were ordered to murder all men in a country (and to sell women, and children as a slaves). That kind of “holocaust” was a kind of standard in wars waged by Athens.
• And at last but not least: If Athens city-state had been really democratic, there would be a second empire like a Roman Empire in a eastern part of Mediterranean Sea. Athens would not loose war against Sparta. Real democratic system is too effective.
It is also good to compare some Athenian politicians (like Pericles) speeches with the ones of modern dictators for example Mussolini or Castro. They contains plenty rhetorical tricks used to turn listeners to speaker side, but a very few facts related to current problems of the country.
Political evolution of Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was the first democratic state, and also the only one case when democracy had fallen. So there would be advisable to present its political evolution.
• First, Rome was feudal state. Probably Rome was an important exporter of crops to Etruscan city-states, and thus noble families have some political privileges under the rule of a few last Etruscan kings. It is very likely that kingdom of Rome was another example of “feudal democracy”, but I have only clues here.
• About 509 B.C. last king Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquinius the Proud) was defeated by revolution, and Rome started to be populistic republic. These times emerged the two major political powers patricians, and plebeians that fought with each others sometimes using very “dirty” methods. Generally these times Rome was ruled by patricians or some dictators.
• About 499 B.C. there was the Second Secession, when plebeians went out of the city, and refuse to fight in wars conducted by patrician government. The effect of that strike was “Lex dudecim tabularum” (the Laws of Twelve Tables) - the special law codex that regulated political system of Rome, and organized Rome law system, thus protecting plebeians against patricians abusing poorer citizens thanks to unclear law regulations that have been used before.
• Since then Rome was democracy with two strong political parties: plebeians, and patricians which have very balanced power. Political system was a little complicated but guaranteed good control over state officials. An effect of democracy was very stable expansion of Rome. About 133 B.C. this small city-state ruled or dominated almost all lands in the Mediterranean region.
• In 133 Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, and many of his political partisans were killed by his opponents. Since then political murder started to be an accepted tool in politics, so we can use this date as the end of democratic system an the beginning of populistic system. Roman democracy had fallen because of the too many conquered countries. Extra income from conquered countries made the richest citizens even more richer, and thus gave them extra political strength. And the agrarian crisis destroyed Roman “middle-class”. Finally, after the civil war in 90-89 B.C. all Roman allies in Italy became Roman citizens. As you can see, democracy in Rome have fallen a few decades before Julius Caesar.
• From 133 B.C to more or less end of II century A.D. Roman Empire was an populistic country. These times Roman Empire had no reasonable opponents, so continued expansion as long as it was possible.
• At the end of II century A.D. diffusion powers launched another crisis that made Roman Empire an feudal country. The final element of this fall was the edict of emperor Caracalla (212 A.D.), that gave citizens rights all free people who lived in the Empire.
• Since then till the final fall, the Roman Empire was an feudal country.
General history rewritten
This page is a short voyage thorough the human history. It could not be treated as a complete compendium of our history but rather as an illustration of practical use of tools presented in this work. The whole lecture goes in more or less chronological order.
|Here you can find a short course of World History plus some maps (very schematic). |
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|For more precise maps go to UT Library Online. |
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|Short information about persons, states, events, etc. you can find in Wikipedia or in wiki. (both use the same database). |
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Ancient civilizations
It is hard to describe the very beginning of first civilizations (and first states), because we not have very littleso many written documents that could help us. Of course some clues we could find some clues analyzing the most advanced cultures North American Indian, early African states (whichthat was sometimes described by European voyagers and traders) or history of Medieval Ireland, but you should remember that many “facts” from ancient history are really reasonableany construction we build will be mostly based on guesses made by historians. So, I am not goingwill not try to precisely describe the reasons for uprising of early countries here.
According to models presented here, the very first states emerges with the invention of the trade. When the level of agricultural, mining and pottery technologies increased enough to let the first human villages create the surplus of goods that could be traded, the first states and government could appear. Choice of first traded goods we can get to know analyzing the system of clay tokens from Syria and Mesopotamia region. Generally the first civilizations emerges in regions that have large agricultural surplus and easy ways to trade them. The best places are the river valleys.
|About clay tokens from which Sumerian cuneiform writing evolved. |
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|Ancient systems of writing. |
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|Art timelines (useful in archeology). |
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First governments could appear in many ways:
A village could be conquered or dominated by some military group that will collectss with force a non-voluntary tribute from merchants, craftsmen and peasants as a charge for “protection”. The leader of that group sooner or later becomes a king. It is the mob-like (or mafia-like) variant.
A family, or the group of families could buy or collect large share ofso more land, and thus that they could control the majority of land owned by the village community. In effect they can dominate poorer peasants, and turn them into the status of their clients or dependent people. The patron of the strongest family sooner or later becomes a king.
A village could nominate a group of people to build some constructions important for the community (like irrigation system or temples). When the scale of this work is great, those administrators could become athe closed group of “administration aristocracy”, and eventually the most influential of them (like the great priest) could become a king.
A group of the richest merchants could constitute asome council, and government to administrate the village, and to promote the trade and production.
Sometimes the village turns into feudal country and some times immediately in a populistic country. When the region offersgives the village possibilities to easy expansion, it usually becomes the feudal state. When village is located in a place that is the nexus of important trade routes and have limited space to expand (because of natural borders or other strong villages in the near vicinity), it usually becomes the populistic state.
|Here is the short and black introduction to Ancient Sumeria. |
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So, between the (more or less) 3000 B.C. and 1500 B.C. we have two important populistic civilizations: Sumer city-states (older) close to the sea coast of Arabian Gulf in Mesopotamia (here we can find for example the very firstearliest example of two-chambers parliament consisted of two-chambers), and Minoan civilization (younger) on the islands of Aegean Sea. Ancient Egypt, which that have one important trade backbone of river Nil was probably the first large feudal state. And there was two other important cultures: Harappa & Mohenjo Daro in India (maybe populistic) and early China civilization in a today’s Shaanxi province (feudal).
|Ancient Egypt links |
|Here is the complete site about Ancient Egypt (I wish all sites I quote here were like this). |
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|Or short and little more complete summaries of the history of Ancient Egypt, for those who want only a brief introduction. |
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Populistic cultures made some important technology advances that enables great colonization and trade expansion of theseat civilizations. After some time (about 2300 B.C.) populistic cultures of Sumer city-states goes to the limits of their expansion and was conquered by barbarian tribes - since thenand Mesopotamiathat region was dominated bythe beginning of feudal states in Mesopotamia region.
|Mesopotamia links |
|Quick review of Ancient Middle East. |
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|Useful link-site about the basics of Mesopotamia history. |
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Minoan civilization whichthat was younger and localized on sea island, lasted longer. Military expansion across the sea is more expensive that land expansion, so Minoan Empire expansion was probably mostly the trade expansion and thus could last longer and spread over the larger area. A few hundred year before the final fall, economy of the Minoan Empirestate economy probably starts to decline. That made the Minoans to start military expansion and launched the migrations of Indo-European barbarian tribes. Minoan state finally feall about 1500 B.C. because of eruption of volcano on Thira (or Thera) island and the invasion of Greek tribess.
|Why Minoan civilization was populistic? |
|First, why I believe that Minoan civilization was populistic: |
|In Egyptian writings Minoians (called Keftu) are always mentioned as a traders, and the lists of traded goods shows that Minoans hadve to |
|trade with many distant countries. |
|There are no evidences of intensive military expansion in close vicinity of Crete (except the last decades before the final fall of Minoan |
|civilization). There are no great monuments to glorify great kings and conquerors. |
|Minoans have large fleet and ruled over the seas. This what is typical forto countries that have to protect large sea trade. |
|The scale of migrations launched by the fall of Minoan civilization is to large for a feudal country. When a feudal country falls, the fall |
|is relatively shallow and barbarian tribes which conquers the country usually are absorbed by the higher culture. |
|Minoan art is typical for populistic countries, where the money for art comes from large number of quite rich people, not only from thea |
|monarch’s court. |
|etc. |
|Minoan and Ancient Aegean links |
|Short summary of Minoan Civilization. |
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|Minoan Crete archeological sites. |
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|Maps of Ancient Crete. |
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|Academic lectures about Aegean Region in Bronze Age. |
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|Why I believe that Minoan trade spanneds on the whole Mediterranean region? |
|Well, let’s compare Crete with Netherlands in XVIth and XVIIth centuries. Holland, which was relatively small country, hadve colonies in such|
|a distant places as Indonesia or South Africa, and almost no colonies (only trade outposts) on the coasts of large feudal countries or in |
|places where trade was less profitable (like Africa or Northern America). |
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|The same was probably true for Minoans. Crete was too small island to conquer feudal states and strong barbarian tribes, so Minoansthere |
|hadwas probably only a trade outposts and maybe small colonies in places that could offer goods for profitable sea trade (such like ivory, |
|different metals, slaves, pottery). So its perfectly legal for Minoans to have trade outpostsfactories in Georgia (Kolchida), Romania, |
|Northern Turkey, Tunisia, Spain or Italy (maybe also in Etruria). |
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|Of course there are only weak evidences for that: |
|Trade with Black Sea region have to be important, because of the wealth city of Troia. |
|There are numerous archeological evidences of rapid economicmaterial development of different communities which lived on Mediterranean coast |
|more or less 2000 B.C. |
|Probably Phoenicians took over some of Minoan colonies. That could explain, howwhy they could so fast started such a distant trade (with |
|Northern Africa and Spain), very soon after the fall of Minoan civilization. |
|Directions of migrations of Indo-European tribes suggesthows some locations of Minoan trade outposts (ex. Black Sea regionbasin, Italy). |
|Minoan artifacts were found by archeologists in different places around the wWest coasts of Mediterranean Sea coast. |
|etc. |
|Why the eruption of Thira volcano was so destructive? |
|It was probably the strongest eruption of volcano in historic times (stronger than eruption of Krakatau volcano in 1883). The Isle of Thira |
|(Thera) exploded and disappeared - today here are a few small isles around an undersea volcano. |
|Great Tsunami waves probably destroyed all ports and ships on northern coasts of Crete and in all close colonies in close vicinity. |
|Volcanic ashes probably destroyed most of the farms on Crete causing hunger. |
|Floating pumice for many months blocked ports and coasts making sailing across the Aegean Sea very difficult sailing across the Aegean Sea. |
|So, the eruption destroyed the trade of Minoan Empire launching the economic crisis and the final fall of Minoan state came faster. |
Greek tribes (Achaians) that conquered Crete, formed here and in Greece some feudal states (Mycenian civilization). Aroundbout 1200 B.C. they probably destroyed the state of Troia, and shortly after that they were conquered by anotherinvasion of the next invasion of Greek tribes (these times Dorians).
|A word about migration of Indo-European tribes |
|Migration of Indo-European tribes have a few stages: |
|It was started probably around 2000 B.C, when Indo-Europeans probably came to Greece and Asia Minor. |
|Then, there was a migration launched by the fall of Minoan Empire (more or less 1500 B.C.). |
|And the migration after the fall of Troia and Mycenian civilization (more or less 1200 B.C., the same time as the invasion of “sea nations” |
|into the Egypt). |
|To be honest, I don’t know reasons for the first migrations (except there were launched by some economic changes in the Black Sea basin). Of |
|course it is possible that the Minoan civilization before 2000 B.C. traded with Aegean Sea region, then started to trade with West |
|Mediterranean Sea region, and that shift of trade launched the first migrations of Indo-Europeans. It is possible, and very likely (according|
|to mechanisms whichthat drives great barbarian migrations), but you have to remember that there is no material proof for thisat hypothesis. |
InvasionThat of Sea Nations (and Dorians) was the beginning ofstarts the dark period in the Aegean Sea region. It is important to note (and thisat will be true for the early centuries of Medieval Ages too) that when the general level of technologies declined, the most basics technologies did not. Technologies that was used in a day-to-day human existence in agriculture, sea sailing or war, were on more or less the same level as before, and there was even some advances (for example use of iron weapons). Only the high-level technologies, like a writing or advanced construction technologies used in Minoan palaces, completely disappeared. CThose common, everyday technologies are very important, even if are less spectacular than “great discoveries”, because these those technologies create the economical basement for building more advanced communities and cultures.
And a final note:
You have to remember that generally all “facts” from the ancient history (i.e. before 500 B.C.) bases in a great part on guesses made by historians. So the same is true for my constructs. Using my laws I am quite sure that Sumer and Minoian civilizations were populistic, but everything I am writing here about the migrations of Indo-European tribes and the political system of ancient India civilization is no more than guessing.
|As an example of problems historians have with Ancient History see David Rohl’s “New Chronology. |
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Ancient Greece
In a very short time after the fall of Mycenian civilization Phoenician city-states (Tyrus, Sidon, Byblos and others) becameomes populistic and dominateds the Mediterranean trade. Phoenician city-states were located at the crossroads of important trade routes to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Western Mediterranean Sea, so the large amount of trade that goes thorough those cites makes the merchants class stronger. Before the industrial revolution the trade was the main power that created populistic states. Phoenicians retained some technologies invented in older populistic cultures plus invented some new (with the most famous invention of alphabet).
These times Greek city-states were stressed on Greek Peninsula and Aegean Islands. Numerous mountain rangess on the peninsula and of course surrounded seas made there military expansion much more costly and thus made relatively cheaper import of technologies (from Phoenicians), and invention of new technologies and trade enterprises. In a few hundred years the dark period in Greece was ended, and the first populistic city-states appeared.
One of the first was Sparta, more or less since the times of politician Lykourgos (or Lycurgus, who lived probably in IXth century B.C.). Having more advanced political system than their neighbours Sparta very soon conquered a half of Peloponnese Peninsula, especially the large kingdom of Messenia. Large colonies made the political system of Sparta political system a classical example of the rule of oligarchy.
|When a populistic country conquersconquests many other countries, its political system usually becomes very stable and oligarchic. The reason|
|is that any instability or political upheaval could give the country’s colonies opportunity to win an independence. Great income from |
|colonies makes other citizens of empire core (who participate in that income) more agreeable to quite “frozen” political system, and the rule|
|of very narrow elite of elders (gerontocracy). It is useful to compare political system of Sparta and political system of Soviet Union |
|between 1960-1980. |
Appendix: Polity of Ancient Sparta.
In a very short time other Greek city-states (Corynth, Athens, Argos, Aegina and others) becaome populistic too. This starts the period of Greek colonization and trade expansion in the Aegean Sea, Black Sea, and other regions of Mediterranean Sea. That expansion (very profitable at the beginning) createds the great demand for capital, so the first populistic governments in Greek city-states were dominated by the richer citizens and wereas oligarchic like in Sparta. Eventually there wereas a hundred or more Greek populistic city-states.
Here is the map showing some of the most important populistic city-states in the Aegean Sea region.
[picture]
Populistic city-states was marked with red dots. The most important are little bigger.
I have also marked the borders of some of the biggest city-states: Sparta, Argos, Corinth, Athens, Thebes (really a union of city-states).
And a big feudal state of Thessalia, and the kingdom of Macedonia.
Really the map should be more complicated: there was more populistic-city states. Some of them changed to populistic a few centuries after the first ones. Some of them were colonies. Some of the most important , achieved the peak of their power in different centuries (ex. Samos and Chios wereas great sea powers before the times of Persian invasion and Athens Sea Union. But to be accurate I would have to present several maps, not one.
|This map was taken from the web page , part of Bernard SUZANNE's "Plato and his dialogues" site, |
|which also presents a very good short introduction to the Ancient Greece. |
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|Other Ancient Greece Links |
|Ancient Greece Timeline. (PDF) |
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|Nice overview of Ancient Greece History based on Herodotus. |
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|History of some important cities of Ancient Greece (for example Thebes) |
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|Library of ancient texts in Ancient History Sourcebook. |
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|And a short, systematic review of Greece History. |
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This map was taken from the web page , part of Bernard SUZANNE's "Plato and his dialogues" site, which also presents a very good short introduction to the Ancient Greece.
|Slavery |
|Here is a good time to correct one of Carl Marx mistakes. Slavery in ancient times was an effect of very low technology level, and not the |
|immanent element of political system. These times there was plenty of jobs that did not require any special skills from workers, but only a |
|simple strength. So the workers have very limited political power, and thus could be was easy turned to slaves very easy. Especially in |
|labour-intensive jobs like in mining, great plantations or household services. Since the ancient times, our technology level have grownew |
|drastically, and now even the labour-intensive jobs requires much more knowledge and skill, so today there is no slavery today. Except maybe |
|kidnapped women that have to work in whore houses in Western Europe, or quasi-slavery in some “dirty jobs” taken by immigrants. It is useful |
|to compare this with the status of private slave in Ancient Athens, who generally could went everywhere in the city and took any job, and |
|only have to pay his master some percentage of money he had earned. |
In the VI century B.C. most of the Mediterranean coast had been colonized, and thus colonization becameomes less profitable, and other ways to increase the community income (like wars to conquer other countries or to dominate the trade), became more attractive. In consequence, the demand for capital went lower, and of course the political power of rich citizens decreased too. As middle and lower classes (middle-income merchants, craftsmen, farmers) come to power, oligarchic governments in some cities fell, giving the place to tyrannies or so-called “democracies”.
In a populistic state there are many different GPIs (groups of political interests) - there are factions of: rich people and poor people, capital owners and labour workers, small business owners and consumers, expansionists and pacifists, free-market adherents and protectionism adherents, farmers and food consumers from cities, money lenders and debtors, religious conservatives and liberal progressives, government administrators and believers of free initiative and personal freedom who pursues government abuses. All that GPIs fights or cooperate with each other, and forms different alliances. But with all that various GPIs, there were basically only three basic forms of populistic system in Ancient Greece:
oligarchy with the rule of richest citizens,
“democracy” (really a quasi-democracy) with the rule of poorer citizens,
and tyranny whichthat usually emergedstarts in middle-income countries in times of economic crisis.
plus many mixed variants like ex. Athens after Solon reforms
“Democracy” in Ancient Greek city-states was no more than left-winged populistic system dictatorship. “Democratic” systemIt had usually emerged in states strongly involved in sea trade (mostly in Aegean Sea region), because that kind of countriesy canould easily increase its wealth by combined military/trade expansion. That policy was strongly supported by middle-income groups of citizens like traders, craftsmen and low-income groups like labour-workers or sailors, because they were beneficiaries of increase of the trade exchange. Sea trade madekes necessary the large navy that could be build only by a country government, and thus the role of “government administrators” GPI increased too. So Greekthe “democracy” was simply an effect of alliance between middle and low-income citizens against the high-income groups of political interests: aristocracy, planters, the richest merchants.
When the economy was in a good condition, this kind of populistic regime worked quite well without serious conflicts, and at first glance was very similar to real democracy. But when the crisis came, all institutional weakness of that system became obvious. Here some examples form ancient Athens:
There was very weak control over the government income and spending (In Athens atin the times of Pericles, era the main part of the city income was the tax paid by the members of Athens Sea Union. Those members were obligated to pay, and could not protest because Athens army terrorized them. So payers had no way to decide, how large tax they wouldill pay, and how these money wouldill be spent.)
There wereas institutions whichthat madekes easy to haunt opposition politicians (like ostracism, special courts founded to “protect democracy”), and almost no institutions that could protect them against government abuses.
Meeting of all citizens was very weak in controlling government and conducting serious legislative work, but was very easy to dominate by a skillful demagogue.
Appendix: Polity of Ancient Athens
When the crisis had caome, the low-income groups of citizens increased in numbergrew larger, and they became the political clients of government politicians, who couldan buy their support using non-controlled government money or propaganda. Large groups of mob (low-income citizens) leaded by demagogues from the most influential faction of “democratic party” helpeds that faction to dominate meeting of all citizens and thus to dominate and threat other groups of citizens. Everyone who tried to madeke politicss against them could be banished from the city or even killed.
|It is useful to compare this with the France after the Great Revolution, when the Jacobines faction ruled the country and threateneds the |
|other political faction and politicians using the street demonstrations of sanquillots (little merchants, craftsmen, etc.). |
Especially the freedom of richer groups of people was restrictedere suppressed. They were for example obligated to make “voluntary” financial donations for the state. So, when we look at political regime (organization) of a country, we should always think, how it will work in times of economic crisis, and how easy is to abuse the political institutions of the state and use them to haunt the political opposition.
|Let’s start ansome intellectual experiment: |
|Let assume that in early 70-ties (XXth century) during the oil crisis, the democratic party won the election in USA, and then made all |
|important republican politicians to leave the country, prohibited all “republican anti-american propaganda”, killed some less important |
|republican politicians after manipulated court trials. Moreover, they forced other NATO members to pay large sums of money into USA budget, |
|and when Frenchmen protested, they pacified France with army, killing most of citizens of Paris citizens. If USA had do that, would you call |
|you call that country “democratic”? But in Athens all things mentioned above were some kind of standard Athenians do that all time, and in |
|spite of this we still call ancient Athens “democracy”. |
Let’s make it clear, I have no personal prejudice against ancient Athens. I am showing all its weaknesses, because it is the very good illustration, how easy is to mistake some forms of populistic system with democracy. I have to confess that for the first two ytears after 1990 (when I invented the new political system classification), I believed that Athens was a democracy. But then I have read some books describing ancient Athenian democracy in more detail, and found that it was the classic example of a populistic state. Of course it was the populistic country that have a great propaganda (like the propaganda of Soviet Union or comrade’s Mao China - many people from the West believed in communist propaganda), but not really a democracy. Ironicallly that propaganda was so great that I have to name the most advanced of political system in my classification “democracy”.
In the VI century B.C. Greek city-states achieved developed technology so high, that Aegean Sea region slowly became the economical center of the ancient world (center of the Mediterranean region to be precise). Greek city-states were the richest and most advanced countries of the ancient world. That faces them with new dangers, problems and expansion opportunities. First, the Greek city-states on the coasts of Asia Minor were conquered by kings of feudal states in Asia Minor (most important was kingdom of Lydia), whichthat had grown in power on export to those city-states. After that, city-states on islands (Samos, Chios, Rodos, etc.) faced the crisis because of less profitable conditions of trade with Asia Minor, and thisat pushed them into military expansion plus made social conflicts inside cities more intensive.
Then the Asia Minor kingdoms were conquered by the Persian Empire - a great feudal state in the phase of growth, and the Greek populistic city-states were incorporated too. We have learned in school that Greeks from Asia Minor heroically fought against the Persian Empire, but it is only partially true. Some of the Greek city-states citizens felt oppressed (usually left-winged GPIs that were interested in Aegean Sea trade), but some prospered (usually right-winged, oligarchic GPIs that was interested in trade with Asia Minor). => It is useful to compare this with today’s Hong-Kong under the China’s rule.
Generally, when the small populistic state neighbours the large feudal state, it usually falls into a kind of symbiosis with his bigger neighbour, and in most cases both countries finally unite each other. Phoenician city-states are the good example of this process. They began to cooperate with strong land empires like Assyria or Persian Empire, and sold their independence (but still had some autonomy) for the profits from the land trade.
Then the European Greeks faces with the Persian invasion. Basically there was three main reasons for Persian aggression on European Greeks:
Persian Empire was in the phase of expansion, so wars and tribute from conquered countries was the main way to increase Persia’s wealth.
Persian Empire supported the economic interests of Phoenicians merchants, who competed very hard with Greek merchants these times.
European Greeks city-states weraes a shelter for oppositionists whothat have to flee from Greek cities in Asia Minor.
It’s a good example that even if the reasons of war (or any other historical event or process) are understandable, there areit usually more than one or two simple reasons, that we should take into account to understand, why the war started.
The Persian Wars wereare the classic example, how a small country with the higher political system (populistic Greek city-states) could defeat a much more bigger country with lower political system (Persian Empire). Of course the rule “of nec Hercules contra plures” is still true, but combination of higher war technology, and great mobilization and determination, which wasthat was an effect of patriotic ideologies of populistic states, helped the Greeks to defend their freedom. Moreover, even if the Persians had won, they probably won’t be able to hold Greeks down for long.
About 50 years after defeating the Persians, Greek city-states starteds the 100 years long period of wars for domination in Greece. During that period different states had the status of dominant power: Athens, Sparta, Thebes, but none of them was strong enough to completely overpower all opponents. It is a great demonstration of practical rule obvious for all players of political games: when there are 5-10 countries more or less equal in power, whichthat competes each other in some enclosed region, no one of these countries can win. The reason isBecause, when one country grows in strength, others made an alliance against it, and bring it down.
And there is one interesting thing I want to show you here. During the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta the low-income groups of citizens in Athens generally supported the war, because the warit gave them a chance to improve their social and economic status (ex. from war loots) if they had made their duty in fleet., Or the waror gave them a chance for stable employment, when they worked in the naval industry. And the upper middle-income groups of citizens were generally against the war, because they were the core of Athens land troops, and have to pay with their own blood (very often because Sparta troops generally won most of the land battles) for the profits of low-income GPIs (groups of political interests). So, as you can see populistic country with left-winged government could be sometimes more aggressive than a populistic country with right-winged government.
Two observations related to populistic states in general: First, Sparta was less expansive than Athens during the Peloponnesian War, because oligarchic government of Sparta, was rather interested in protecting the lands conquered before and tried to avoid war as long as possible. Second, these times traveling teachers called sophists gained popularity, and advised Greek politicians, how to present political ideas to citizens using rhetorical tricks (just like media-specialists in Russia or Ukraine today).
When the Greek city-states were involved in wars with each other, the kingdom of Macedonia in the north slowly grewows in strength. Macedonia was an important exporter of many different goods and natural resources to the Athens Sea Union. Thisat export slowly created the material and social base for the emergency of populistic system. With the decline of Athens and protectionist policy introduced by Athenianthat governmentcity-state, Macedonia faced with the threat of economic crisis. So, when the kingdom of Macedonia had had become the populistic state (more or less 360 B.C. in times of Philip II), the country immediately started military expansion.
Populistic Macedonia was quite large state comparing the other Greek city-states, and had similar technology level, so Philip II have no problem with conquering and subordinating most of the Greece except Sparta. It is useful to note that Macedonia had the similar geostrategic (and geoeconomic) position for Greek peninsula, as Russia has for Europe.
His son, Alexander the Great, as everybody knows, conquered the whole Persian Empire. It was more the effect of Greek advantage in technologyical advantage and the overall decomposition of Persian Empire than his skill. Persian Empire started to decline about two centuries before, and for a long time the only real power in its army were Greek mercenaries (about 70 years before Alexander 10 thousands of unpaid Greek mercenaries had marched without problems thorough the half of the empire). Alexander have simply the luck of starting his war expedition when the Persian Empire was in the final stage of decomposition.
|Great ConquersConquests |
|The reason for the other great-and-fast conquersconquests wereas generally the same: political and economical decomposition of conquered |
|countries. No matter who wasis conquering: Alexander, Arabian Kalifs, Vikings, Gengis Khan, Cortes or Pissarro. |
Conquests of Alexander conquers opened the whole Middle East for Greek economic expansion, creating opening this way a new wide diffusion channel between technologically advanced Greece and less developed lands of Persian Empire. Thisat diffusion started caused the age of economic prosperity in new Hellenistic kingdoms, but alsotoo a period of relative economic stagnation in Greece. Capital and technology (and immigration) flow to Middle East was very intense, but not enough to stop the decomposition powers, which that wereas tearing apart lands of former Persian Empire., Sso after the death of Alexander, his generals portioned his kingdom into a few smaller countries.
Final Notes on Ancient Greece
There are two important observations I would like to present at the end of this short tale about Ancient Greece:
First, the populistic system is not always bad, oppressive and inhuman. Comparing with the neighbouring barbarian lands and feudal kingdoms (especially Persia), Greek city-states was the lands of liberty, justice, economic freedom and prosperity. Moreover, Greece was the center of art, culture and science. Comparing with the feudal country, a populistic state is usually a very good place to live.
Second, the history of Ancient Greece is a great example of many historic and economic processes, that we could analyze in search for answers on present problems:
We could find here (in Corynthus, Athens, Thebes, Argos, Samos, Sparta, Siracuse) almost every variant of populistic system, every form of political oppression that the populistic government could invent, and every method used in populistic countries to promote one particular GPI.
We have great examples, how the form of populistic systems evolves when economic conditions changes.
We have examples what are economic and political effects for the feudal countries neighbouring the technology advanced populistic states.
We could observe evolution of many social processes (like mass immigration, economic stagnation, social effects of trade route shifts and many others), and the effects of different measures taken to solve theseat problems.
We canould observe the shifts in people’s mentality and ideologies launched by new economic processes. (Ex. the sexual revolution after the end of colonization period - sexual freedom generally decreases the rate of population growth, and sexual oppressive ideologies increase this rate.)
And so on. Therefore, I strongly encourage everyone to study the history of Ancient Greece deep behind this short introduction. Quite good place to start canould be the History of Ancient Greece written by N. G. L. Hammond.
Ancient Rome
Speaking about Ancient Rome there are two important problems that have to be aforementioned:
First, people usually have a knows quite good knowledge about the history of Rome in times of late Republic (I-st century B.C.) and history of Roman Empire after Caesar. But, as I mentioned before these times Rome was no more a democracy, but a populistic country. And a common knowledge about the history of democratic period of Ancient Rome history (449 - 133 B.C.) is usually very poor.
Second, we have limited historical sources about early ages of Rome. Everything before year 500 B.C. is half-legendary (like Lykourgos in Sparta). I think that most of the facts in Roman chronicles are generally true, but it is my personal opinion (that roots from laws presented here). Moreover, most of the chronicles that describes the early ages of Rome were written in times of late Republic, so are not always impartial.
|Good place to start, if you are looking for facts from the History of Rome. And some detailed maps Ancient Rome (and other ancient |
|countries). |
| |
| |
|Here is the academic course of Early Roman History. |
| |
|And schematic Timeline. |
| |
As I said before, Rome became populistic state in the year 509 B.C. when citizens of Rome banished Etruscan king Tarquinius Superbus, and after a very short time (only 60 years after) in 449 B.C. Rome city-state became democratic country. What was the reason for so fast political evolution?
Well, here is “quick-and-dirty” explanation:
First, Rome have no place to expand because have many strong neighbours: Etruscan city-states and Latin tribal states, so its political system could not decompose because of too many conquered lands. Moreover, for the same reason, the war was always was the worst strategy of increasing wealth for Romans. Trade and export wereas more profitable.
Rome was important intermediary in salt trade that goes thorough the city (whichthat made merchant class stronger), and an exporter of agricultural products (whichthat turned Roman peasants into farmers).
Rich Etruscan city-states these times colonized the Northern Italy and were a great market to sell Roman agricultural products.
Because of reasons mentioned above Rome becameomes the “noble-democracy”. Etruscan kings have limited power (probably wereas even elected by Roman nobles), and noble class (patricians) hadwas many political privileges. As the example of England proves, when the feudal state with “noble-democracy” becomes populistic, it very quickly turnsgoes into democratic, if the external economic conditions are good.
After the banishment of Etruscan kings (509 B.C.) Rome became a republic. A small populistic city-state that waged many, but rather small wars in close vicinity (no more than 50 miles from Rome), and its political system evolved step-by-step because of many conflicts between patricians (who ruled the city) and plebeians who at the beginning have almost no political rights.
In 494 B.C. plebeians made the First Secession - they went out from the city threatening, that they will not work and fight for patricians. With that “strike” they gained a special representation: plebeian tribunate - a few special city-officials (or ombudsmen), who that could negate the laws created by Roman senate dominated by patricians, and have political immunity (no one citizen could kill plebeian tribune). Thisat privilege made easier the further political strugglefight conducted by plebeians against the patricians senate much easier. It useful to note that this success shows the economic strength of plebeians. If plebeians position had been weaker, they would have been pacified with brute force by richer citizens.
With that institutional protection plebeians could fight for their rights more effectively. Finally, after the 45 years of (sometimes brutal) struggle, the populistic system ended. In 451 B.C. the Commission of Ten was nominated to write down law regulations that for the plebeians was demanding of plebeians. These times courts were dominated by patricians who can abuse law against plebeians, taking advantage of fact that law regulations wasn’t written down. But the 10 patricians, whothat wereas nominated to thein Commission, tried to rule Rome as long as possible and refusedtried to tonot include plebeians postulates to new codex.
|Here you can find short summary of Political Evolution of Ancient Rome (Struggle of Orders). |
| |
So, in 449 B.C. plebeians made and in the second secession that effected in a compromise between patricians and plebeians, and the Laws of Twelve Tables (lex duodecim tabularum) were legislated. It was something like a Constitution and Law Codex in one:
regulated the political life of Rome
regulated the legal system of Rome
With this dawn of democratic system (in 449 and in a few subsequentnext years) plebeians gaineds also:
law to marry with patricians (since then patricians were no longermore a closed social class)
some guaranties and privileges for tribunes and for the meeting of plebeians
a law that prohibited to create any city office (function) from itswhich decisions a citizen of Rome couldn’t appeal to some other city institution (ius provocationis).
|Democratic system usually starts when different GPIs (groups of political interests)become have not enough power tdo dominate other GPIs, |
|not because of politicians had become honest and intelligent or country inhabitants become more mature. Democratic system is simply an effect|
|of a draw situation in the struggle for power. |
Since then the polity of Rome weree changed in an evolutionary way. And finally after a many decades of political struggle (but waged in democratic manner) finally plebeians acquired the law to be elected on every city office that were before accessible only for patricians (it is useful to compare this evolution with the evolution of Great Britain political institutions in XVIIIth and XIXth centuries - struggle of Orders between patricians and plebeians resembles the conflict between Whigs and Tories).
To be honest: usually in democratic manner. There wereas some exceptions. For example in 439 B.C. a rich plebeians Spurius Melius, who presented grain for free buying this way a political votes for himself, was killed by an army officer who had beenwas ordered to arrest him.
|Democratic system is not an utopia or ideal system |
|It is rather a continuous, never-ending struggle to protect democratic institutions against government abuses and manipulations (and |
|sometimes against the manipulation made by political opposition too) or against the corruption. The criminal methods of making politics |
|sometimes happen in democratic system, but are exception rather than the rule (opposite as in populistic system). |
But generally the laws of twelve tables and political institutions of Rome worked fine for over 300 years. And the higher rationality of democratic system gave Rome an important advantage over all of the neighbouring countries.
|Democratic system is not free from brainwashing ideologies |
|Of course in democratic system political ideologies have no such power like in populistic country, but this doesn’t mean that ideologies are |
|not present in democratic country. Even in democratic system more than 95% of citizens made their political choices under the influence of |
|some ideology. Overall effect is rational only because they believe in different ideologies. Rationality of democratic system is an effect of|
|a free market of ideologies, an effect of freedom and pluralism in the world of ideologies. |
|But under some conditions, (ex. when the dangerous or profitable war comes), there is a chance that political life in democratic country will|
|be strongly saturated with ideology. |
It is a good moment do describe shortly the system of democratic institutions of Rome. It was quite complicated system (but no more than institutions of European Union today), but well balanced and with many protections against potential abuses. And please forgive me some terrible simplifications I have made here, because of limited space:
There were a several city offices that creates the administrational framework for the city, and have some built-in protections against abuses:
Every office cameomes from election
Every office (even dictator nominated when Rome was in serious danger) hadve the limited cadency
Important offices like consulate (two officials that took the most important decisions for the city, and command the Roman army) wereas collective, so one official could control another
When the cadency was endeds, a citizen mightshould not be nominated for the same office for some time (usually for 10 years)
There was something like the hierarchy of offices, so politician who wanted to hold the highest offices was usually first tested on less important offices
And of course no politician could hold two offices or hold an office and be a senator the same timeAnd of course no politician could have two offices or be a senator the same time
There was the senate of Rome (SPQR), that was something like a higher house of parliament or a government. The members of the senate were former city officials.
There wereas a number of institutional guaranties whichthat protected the civil rights of every citizen: ius provocationis, immunity of plebeian tribunes, independent courts, legal system rooted from Laws of Twelve Tables. Theseat guarantiesties had similar function as British Bill of the Rights or Amendments to US Constitution.
There wereas four different kinds of citizens meetings:
concilia plebis. Meeting of poorer citizens. A counterbalance for the senate. Had a right to elect plebeian tribunes and other plebeians officials plus some legislative privileges.
comitia tributa. Meeting of all citizens organized according to administrational districts. The most democratic meeting. Most of Roman laws (called “lex”) were legislated here.
comitia curiata. The older kind of meeting without great importance in times of democratic Rome. Probably have (aside of the other responsibilities) the same responsibilities as the High Court or the Constitutional Court.
comitia centuriata. Meeting of citizens organized by with the types of military units they belonged (and the types of military units corresponded with the social status of different groups of citizens). Dominated by patricians, who have privileged representation here. Thisat meeting elected higher city officials.
|Here you can find a short description of Roman offices and institutions. |
| |
It is useful to note here, that in spite of privileged position that patricians had in senate and in comitia centuriata, since the early days of democratic republic a plebeian could be elected even to the highest office (i.e. could not became a consul, but a “military tribune” whoich generally have the same sphere of authority).
And with the permanent political conflict between the plebeians and patricians (which is typical in democratic states), the Rome was surprisingly strong. Ironically because athat permanent conflict forced Romans to solve potential social problems before that problems could become serious. This is one of the most important strengths of the democratic system.
|Political power in a democratic system usually is not equally distributed |
|When there is a group (GPI) of 10% richest citizens, that group will usually hasgain more than 10% share in political life of democratic |
|country. There is nothing strange here, they simply have greater political strength than other groups of citizens. The same is true for |
|educated citizens, they are alsotoo over-represented in political life (comparing with their number). |
|Thisat is not honest or righteous, thisat is effective. |
|When political interests low-income citizens are over-represented, the rate of development is slower, and that country have not enough |
|capital resources to compete successfully with other countries, either on economic nor, political and military planes. |
|When political interests of upper-income citizens are strongly over-represented, the costs of protecting a very unfair redistribution of are |
|wealth become too high (and the risk of social unrest is very high) making the country’s economy ineffective too. |
|So, democratic country is effective because it maintains the balance. |
Of course Rome was not a democracy like democratic countries today. Times and people mentality have changed, and technological advances made present democracies more “people-friendly” and wealth distribution more righteous. Honestly, there is even a great difference between democracies today and before 1968. But comparing with any other ancient state, ancient Rome was the country of political freedom and much safer place to live.
Now it is time to explain shortly, why Rome built athe great empire. But first I have to correct one false image that many people have about ancient Rome:
People generally think that about Ancient Rome was as a very militaristic state. It’s not true. Let see a map that compare Rome and Athens states about 440 B.C. Just after Rome changed to democratic system and just before the Peloponnesian War in Greece, when both countries have more or less the same population (150 - 200 thousands of citizens).
Athens and Rome 440 B.C.
[picture]
Rome city-state is marked blue.
Athens city-state is marked red and its colonies in Athens Sea Union are marked orange.
Orange arrows shows the farthest operations of Athens fleet (with troops on board) during the Peloponnesian Wwar.
And thin green line shows borders of Rome 327 B.C., just before Alexander the Great conquestsrs in Persia that, that changed economic conditions for whole Mediterranean and Middle East.
As you can see, comparing with Athens, and with almost any populistic city-state in the Mediterranean region, Rome was rather peaceful, non-expansionistic state. Actually, a great part of Roman conquersconquests at the early stage of its expansion were the effect of devise “si vis pacem, para bellum” (you want peace, be prepared to wage war) - Romans simply eliminated the potential threats to their state.
Generally a 320 years long expansion of democratic Rome was possible because of five reasons:
First, Rome was democratic, so ruling GPI (group of political interests) could not involve the state into a war that would give profits only that GPI, whenan others GPIs hadve to pay costs of that war. All costs of every war were evident, no cost were hidden. So, Rome waged only those wars which were necessary because of national security reasons or were profitable for most of the citizens.
Second, Rome used only a small percentage of its resources in expansive wars. So, when the city was in real danger (as the war with Sammites, with Pyrrus or with Hannibal), Rome could loss a dozen of battles, and always had reserves to build another army. (Compare this with great industrial production increase when USA joined into the 2nd World War.)
Third, Rome almost always built an alliance against its enemy with some other states (even if Rome was actually stronger). About half of the Rroman Empire conquers were really the allies of Rome - countries or tribes that were united with Rome in more or less peaceful way. It is useful to mention here two basic rules from diplomatic games:
Even much stronger enemy can be defeated by the alliance of smaller states
When there are several players, is often no chance to win anything without making an alliance
Fourth, Rome very quickly adapted and imported technologies from neighbouring countries. Most of the Roman war tactics and military technologies were taken from its enemies.
Fifth, divide et impera (divide and rule). One of the basic tactics that lowers the costs of occupation ofy a country is to find here an important GPI (conflicted with other GPIs) that will support the rule of the occupier and pay some costs of occupation. It is very easy to find that group in a feudal country, rather hard in a populistic country, and almost impossible in a democratic country. Therefore Rome could use the tactic of divide and impera against almost any enemy, and no enemy could use that tactic against Rome.
|Democratic system is a very dangerous enemy |
|Generally, democratic country loses a war only when it have to retreat from colonies that had became to expensive to control (like United |
|States for England or Algeria for France). |
|Of course there are no rules without exceptions. There was one war that was completely lost by democratic country: in 390 B.C. a Rome was |
|defeated and occupied by Celtic tribes. |
And now is a good time for a short digression. I have written that science and technology development is faster in a democratic country than in a populistic one. But we all know that Greeks made much more discoveries than Romans. Are you wonder why? Here is a quick-and-dirty explanation:
There was many Greek city states and only one Rome city-state.
At the beginning Rome had quite low technological level, so more profitable choice was to import technologies from Etruscans and Greeks.
Romans invented many new technologies whichthat was not so spectacular as Greek discoveries but had important impact on everyday life (ex. in road and bridge building, construction, law system). We don’t call people like James Watt, Thomas Edison or Steven Wozniak great scientists but their inventions launched great changes in our life.
When Rome achieved technological level comparable with Greece, was so strong country that the state investments (i.e. expansive wars) started to be more profitable than science development. Then in a very short time Rome became populistic state.
As you can see, even very strong history law could be (under some circumstances) negated by a cumulated effect of other laws. It is one of the reasons, why the overall history pattern is so complicated.
With all conquered lands, the polity of Rome still was the same as when it was a small city-state. Conquered provinces were administrated by former city officials or special private enterprises. Romans usually confiscated from 1/3 to 2/3 of fields from countries they had conquered (Athens usually confiscated the whole land). Theseat fields then became a property of Rome called ager publicus (public land). Thisat land was divided between the citizens of Rome, who organized here farms or plantations.
In the middle of II century B.C. the great conquestsrs of Rome (whole Italy, Spain, Greece, North Africa, Mediterranean coast of France, coast of Adriatic Sea and western portions of Asia Minor) started two important processes:
First, a cheap import of agricultural products from newly conquered lands and Egypt started the agricultural crisis in Italy. Many small farmers bankrupted, and migrated to the city of Rome where they have better chances to survive crisis. Rich planters increased the exploitation of slave-workers.
Second, rich citizens grew in wealth, because they have better starting position in the race for profits that great conquersconquests of Rome had brought: they could gain a larger farms made from ager publicus, and have a better chance to gain a privilege of administrating the conquered provinces, which was extremely profitable.
This way the GPI (group of political interests) of the richest citizens grew in strength, and many very poor citizens arrived to Rome increasing the number of poor educated citizens with no financial independence (because of low-income) who can be easy to manipulated by populist leaders. The group of middle-income citizens became overpowered, and that was the economic reason for the fall of democratic system in Rome.
GPI of richer citizens formed a faction of Optimates (represented by the senate), and the leaders of poor citizens formed the faction of Populares (represented by plebeian tribunes). At the beginning both factions competed in democratic manner but about 133 B.C a leader of Populares and a plebeian tribune Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus tried to promote an legislationact that introduced the agricultural reform: project to divide great farms formed from ager publicus, and gave that land to poor citizens. In counter-strike armed senators killed him and many men from his faction on Forum (a central public square in Rome, the place of political meetings).
The year of 133 B.C. was the moment when democratic institutions of Rome were definitively broken. So, I am nominating this year as the end of 315 years long democratic period in the history of Rome. Of course it is an arbitrary date. Whole process was gradual, and the economic base for democracy dissipated probably a few years (or even decades) before, but democratic institutions suspended the final fall of democracy until 133 B.C.
The final element of diffusion caused by conquersconquests of Rome was the war with Roman allies in Italy in 90-89 B.C. Rome hadve to grant a privileges of citizens to all free people living in Italy (with edict called lex Julia after young Julius Caesar, who promoted that law). Since then, the core of Empire was the whole Italy, not only the city-state of Rome.
Because of economic changes, no matter which politician, or which political option would won, the final result would be the same: some kind of populistic system. Further military expansion was the most profitable way to increase national income, so finally the finally populistic system in Rome took a form of military dictatorship.
|Political clientelism |
|When the group of poor citizens is very large, they don’t represent their own political interests but the interests of some other, richer or |
|more influential citizens. They are usually poor educated, with no work or any stable source of income, what made them very susceptible to |
|manipulation by skillful demagogues, populistic ideologies or easy to bribe with relatively small sums of money or cheap gifts. They become |
|clients of some other GPI or a populistic political party, organization, church, charismatic leader, etc. |
| |
|Term clients come from the history of ancient Rome. During the first populistic period (509-499 B.C.) rich patricians families were usually |
|supported by group of financially dependent clients. But there are other forms of political clientelism too: |
|Politicians could buy votes for food (like Spurius Melius mentioned before or Julius Caesar) or for alcohol (like in Kansas in the early XXth|
|century or in modern Russia). |
|Local oligarch could threat them to vote for him, if he have someway a control over their source of income (ex. could stop their wages). |
|Political party like communists in Soviet Union (or some GPI of government administrators) could gain their votes offering social protections|
|and material stability, even if their wages would be relatively low. |
|etc. |
|Ironically, because of the danger of political clientelism, sometimes voting rights in democratic country could be the privilege of smaller |
|group of people than in some contemporary populistic countries. Compare for example France and Great Britain in the last decade of XVIIIth |
|century. |
| |
|One of the symptoms of increasing problem with political clientelism could be a high popularity of primitive entertainments like gladiator |
|fights. Therefore it is always useful to observe changes in culture, because thisit gives us a chance to predict social and economic |
|processes we cannot measure statistically for some reasons. |
Populistic Rome was still the largest and strongest country in Mediterranean region, so could continue military expansion with ease for next 150-200 years. Until too high costs made that expansion economically ineffective. Basically there was three elements of theseat costs:
Costs of occupying many large (i.e. with numerous inhabitants) countries and protecting a very long border. These areat was more or less the logistic costs, as Paul Kennedy describes them.
Decreasing country income because of crisis that was launched by diffusion powers.
Increasing costs of continuous wars with barbarians whothat grew in number and strength (effect of importing Roman military technologies) because of the same diffusion powers.
Diffusion powers launched by Roman conqueststhat conquers were responsible for one of the longest economic recessions in history. Of course thatat crisis hadve some intervals, and the same time some provinces like Gallia (France) or provinces in Asia provinces could had experiencedthe same time the periods of economic growth thanks the implementation of Roman technologies and law system.
About the end of II century A.D. political system of Roman Empire regressed from populistic to feudal. As with the fall of democracy, is hard to give an exact year date here, because it was a gradual process. I can only say this wasat happened probably between year 180 A.D. (death of imperator Marcus Aurelius at the end of serious wars with German tribes of Marcomans) and the edict of emperor Caracalla (212 A.D.) whichthat grantedives citizen status tos rights all free people whothat lived in the Empire. That way emperor Caracallahe gained extra money from new citizens.
Here is a quick list of a few important processes that we can observe in falling Roman Empire:
Because of economic crisis income from taxes shrank. That forced Rome Emperors to increase taxation and to spoil the money (decrease the amount of precious metals in coins - a historical receipt to start inflation which always helps to finance government spendings). Unfortunately the side-effect of inflation is always the destruction of credit system plus the higher transactional costs of every trade transaction.
Because of the fall of the trade, economic power of the cities declined. And many richer citizens moved to rural areas to avoid high taxes and other tributes for the state.
Slavery production on large plantations became less and less effective because of shrinking trade, increasing costs of capital and workers resistance. Therefore, large land owners started to prefer small farms with feudal-dependent peasants over the organized slavery plantations.
Rome as the rich state was an immigration destination country for many barbarians, a long before they tried to military invade Roman Empire. It was very similar process like Muslim immigration to EU, with the same social and political consequences, but of course the scale of immigration in Ancient Rome was greater.
Social processes like: shrinking of the liberal-oriented middle-class (and thus decay of rational ideologies promoted by that class), long lasted economic crisis plus natural disasters launched by that crisis (like great plague in the last decades of II century), and need for ideology that can cement the resistance against government and economic oppression - all thoseat reasons increased the popularity of different religions (cults of Kybele, Isida, Mitra, etc.) imported from the East.
Change from populistic to feudal system for a short time increased the military power of Roman Empire, but couldn’t stop the diffusion processes, so the final fall of the Empire was unavoidable. Long-distance trade whichthat glued the state, shrank so much that the Empire finally broke into a few pieces (which was the beginning of feudal fragmentation). Eastern part of the Empire (Byzantium) which was composed of mostly civilized lands, survived the crisis, but the Western part that was consisted of many lands conquered on barbarians was completely destroyed by the invasions of German tribes in the V century A.D.
Final Notes on Ancient Rome
Generally, first chronicles that are describing the history of the beginnings Rome were written in I century B.C. when the Rome was populistic or at best in II century B.C, when the democratic system of Rome was slowly decomposing. Ancient hHistorians were not always objective, and they obviously weren’t know for sure some facts from the first centuries of Rome (especially because some documents were lost in the time of Celtic invasion - 390 B.C.). Moreover many parts of theirat chronicles were lost too. So, you have to be aware that facts from the democratic period of Rome history are not always certain.
For example, I know two variants of history of Spurius Melius. Which one is true? On the other hand, statistical information about the number of Roman citizens are precise because were systematically collected by the democratic administration of Rome, and the number of citizens of ancient Athens we can only guess.
Pre-Columbian America
Here I will present some remarks about civilizations of Pre-Columbian America. But first two reservations:
First we have to remember, that civilizations of Pre-Columbian America have many great achievements, but generally had the technology level of middle-east civilizations had about the year 2000 B.C. It means that Spaniards were about 2500-year technological advantage over the Indians empires when they conquered them.
Second, there were several dozens of Indian cultures in Pre-Columbian America and a few cycles of rise and fall before the Christopher Columbus voyage, but I will mention only three of them: city-states of Mayan civilization, the Aztec Empire and the Inca Empire.
Mayan Civilization
Mayan civilization developed in Jungles between today’s Honduras, Guatemala and Southern Mexico. Here is the schematic map of the region:
City-states of Mayan Civilization
[map]
This map is hand-drawn so some so location of cities is approximate. Names of the cities are in Polish transcription, but it is (I hope) the same as English.
Red circles shows some Mayan cities of the “Old Empire” (term “empire” is a mistake here)
Purple circles shows some Mayan cities of the “New Empire”
Black outlines highlight metropolises of Tikal and Calakmul
It wasn’t the first Indian civilization in this region, but have the most important influence on the development of Indian civilizations in neighbouring Mexico. First villages of Maya culture were formed in the first millennium B.C.
But the apogee of Mayan civilization was between IIIrd and IXth centuries A.D. These times Mayans formed several dozens (even more than 40) city-states with population of 5,000 - 50,000 people. The reasons for evolution of populistic city-states here were probably:
Some discoveries in agriculture, astronomy and writing technologies.
Trade between regions of Yucatan peninsula, Central America and Southern Mexico - maybe influence of some older Indian cultures (ex. Olmecs).
And the relative isolation of villages because of jungles (very similar to the isolations provided by mountains and isles in Ancient Greece or swamps in Sumer).
|Mayan Timeline |
|Here you can find nice chronology of Mayan culture (or Mayan Long Count if you are interested). |
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Every city was relative independent, so term “Old Mayan Empire” traditionally used by archeologist to describe this period is a mistake (term Classic Period is better). There wasn’t any centralized state here. The most important cities these times were populistic. Their trade, culture and technology radiated on neighbouring lands: today Southern Mexico, Honduras and the Yucatan peninsula, which was colonized by Mayans. Especially important Mayan discoveries were the alphabet and the calendar (with extraordinary exact calculation of the year length).
Final decryption of the Mayan “alphabet” made not so long ago let the archeologists discover, that Maya city-states continuously waged wars against each other. Rulers of the cities were often changed by coups d’etat, many times sponsored or supported with military force by neighbouring cities. The ruler of the city was often a priest-king (it is not usual in ancient populistic states, for example Julius Caesar have the title of pontifex maximus - the high priest).
Two most powerful states at the peak of the classic Period were Tikal and Calakmul. For long decades both cities waged wars against each other, making clients and allies of less powerful cities. This resembles the long wars between Athens and Sparta in Greece or Umma and Lagash in the ancient Sumer.
Around the year of 900 A.D. Mayan civilization of the Classic Period was destroyed by severe drought. Drought was the reason for bad crops and catastrophic famine. This catastrophic natural disaster launched civil wars and mass migrations. The reason for the drought was the climatic change but also too intensive agricultural exploitation of land.
|Overexploitation of resources |
|Mayan city-states at the end of the Classic Period reached the limits of productivity in the agriculture. Some symptoms of that were |
|intensive wars and great government investments like building new temples (tiered pyramids with temples on the top). City-states and |
|different groups of political interests (GPIs) started to fight for limited resources. Methods of this fight were a conquest of weaker |
|neighbors or increasing exploitation of poorer citizens. No matter of method the particular city chose, the result was the same - greater |
|role of government in economy and overexploitation of the land. |
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|When the economy is free-market oriented, prices are not regulated, and there is some inequality in the social distribution of income, then |
|the increase of prices usually forces a community to start search for alternate, cheaper natural resources some time before a crisis. But |
|when economy is government-driven the prices of goods, land or human work could be administrative-regulated (and lower than market prices), |
|resources are overexploited to the limits of effectiveness - and the economy becomes very vulnerable for natural disasters. |
After the disaster of the great drought, Mayans rebuild their culture in colonies on the north end of Yucatan peninsula. This new culture is called “Post-Classic Period” (or the “New Empire”). Mayan states were not so powerful as before, and were probably feudal states, that sometimes united many Mayan cities. About 1200 A.D. Mayan cities of the New Empire were invaded by Toltecs. Then comes the economic and political crisis. When the Spanish voyagers discovered Maya, the civilization was totally decomposed. And Spaniards conquered Mayans with ease.
|Here is a quite good site about Mayan Civilization, if you want some basic knowledge. |
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The Aztec Empire, Herman Cortes
One of the oldest cultures in Mexico was the civilization of Olmecs (1500-300 B.C.), a nation that lived in Gulf Coast Region north from the Maya city Palenque on my map (generally in the Mexican state of Tabasco).
Then in the Classic Period (300-900 A.D.) there was a few brilliant civilizations in Mexico, probably because of the influence of Maya city-states of the Classic Period. The most important ones were the Zapotecs (with the capital in Monte Alban), culture of Teotihuacan, and culture of El Tajin (in the Mexican state of Veracruz).
In the IXth century A.D. more or less the same time when the Maya city-states started to decline, region was invaded by barbarian Toltecs, who built a great feudal empire spreading on the whole Central Mexico with the capital in Tollan. After a few hundred years in XIIIth century Mexico was again invaded by barbarian tribes (Chichimecs), and Toltecs were forced to migrate to Yucatan Peninsula, where they invaded Mayan states of Post-Classic Period.
The Aztec Empire, Herman Cortes
[map]
It is the same map as above, but this time you should look at its left side.
Green area represents the (approximate) territory of Aztec Empire at the beginning of XVIth century A.D.
Yellow spots marks some other independent or half-independent Indian states this time.
Red arrow is the route of Herman Cortes expedition.
Black dots marks some important Pre-Columbian cities (some of them were already ruins in XVIth century).
Blue dot is the city of Vera Cruz founded by Cortes.
Black dot with Yellow outline is the Aztecs capital of Tenochtitlan localized on the isle in the middle of a lake (today is a Mexico City here).
One of the last barbarian tribes were Aztecs, who in the XIIth century invaded Central Mexico and built their state in the valley, where today is Mexico City. Valley was fertile, was an important strategic point, and have great importance as a nexus of trade routes, so the Aztecs grew in strength, and in the last decades of XIVth century started a very spectacular expansion.
|Here is the link to the short history and chronology of the Aztec Empire. |
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At the beginning of XVIth century Aztecs conquered most of the Indian nations in Central Mexico. One of the reasons for their expansion was the need for captives used then in human sacrifices made on many religious rituals. Aztecs killed this way thousands men a year. But it is useful to note that this religious terror was not so strong at the beginning of the Empire, but became stronger with every conquest - helping Aztecs to preserve their rule over many Indian nations. At the beginning of XVIth century Empire reached the logistics limits of expansion, and Aztecs king Montezuma II stopped further conquests. But Aztecs still waged some ritual wars with other Indian states (ex. with Tlascalans, whose state was in the yellow area east from Tenochtitlan).
In 1519 Herman Cortes expedition landed in Mexico. He had little more than 500 Spanish soldiers, several horsemen, several light canons and guns (arquebuses), about thirty crossbows. Realized that he discovered a large and rich country, and the Aztecs are hated by conquered Indians, he set off to heart of the Aztec Empire. During his march, Cortes won alliance and support of subsequent Indian tribes. For this reason he entered Tlascalans state. With the support of Tlascalans (which he gained defeating them in a battle), Cortes marched to the Tentochtitlan. Montezuma II let Cortes’ army enter the capital without a battle. Probably reasons for his “ostrich tactics” were: the legend of Quetzakoatl, Indian rebellion and the reputation of unbeatable soldiers, which Spaniards gained defeating Tlascalans.
This time Spaniards made a terrible mistake. Drunken with easy conquest, they forget, that the superior military advantage could be not enough to occupy a conquered country and to promote a completely new ideology. They started to rob Aztecs’ treasury and temples. Finally they killed Aztecs nobles and officials on a religious festival. That was the last mistake, which launched the Aztecs’ rebellion against Spaniards. Cortes with his army had to retreat from Tentochtitlan losing during a “noche triste” (sad night) 2/3 of his army. Withdrawing to the coast Spaniards were stopped with 200 000 Aztecs army in an mountain pass to the Otumba Valley. And Spaniards won that battle. Batle of Otumba was probably the greatest victory in the history of warfare. Cortes was the only one commander who dare to defeat the 1000 times greater army.
|He killed the Indian commander ad Aztecs army fled. But Spanish estimations of the size of Aztecs’ army were probably exaggerated. Maybe even|
|ten times. |
Fortunate for Cortes, he got reinforcements from Spanish colonies, and with a new army of Indian allies he besieged and destroyed Tentochtitlan, finally conquering Mexico (But the Montezuma’s treasury lost during a noche triste was lost forever.
How Spaniards could so easy conquer so great country like the Aztec Empire? Well, there were basically four reasons for that:
Aztecs land was only a small isle in the sea of conquered Indian nations. The Aztec Empire had just started to decompose (was not so decomposed as the Persian Empire in times of Alexander, but if Greeks were united, they could conquer Persian Empire or at least its large part, a 100 years before).
Spaniards had a 3500 years of advantage in warfare technologies (these times had the best army in Europe). Aztecs did not know metal weapons, armors, pikes, had no cavalry, no chariots, had only very primitive bows and ranged weapons. No city wall could stand Spanish canons. Even their tactics was weak: Indian armies usually made a frontal attack on Spanish column in narrow mountain pass, so they could not use their advantage of great number - and thus Spaniards seemed completely unbeatable for them.
Indians were afraid of horses, guns, cannons, and had a legend about the god of wind Quetzalkoatl (taken from Toltecs, name means “feathered serpent” or “plumed serpent”, probably a merge of two deities) - a good white and bearded god, who gave them laws, alphabet and taught many technological inventions, then departed to the East Sea, and who some day would return from East on a “winged ship” to punish bad people and help poor and oppressed (every second Indian culture in Central America had a myth like that, so you may find also another versions of that legend). So at the beginning Cortes was taken for Quetzalkoatl. And even if Montezuma II was not sure Quetzalkoatl really returned, he had to take into account beliefs of his subjects (people who were under his rule).
And at last but not least Cortes had a great dose of a good luck.
|As an anecdote (I was not able to verify this information): The Holy Thursday 1519, a day when Herman Cortes landed in Vera Cruz was exactly |
|one day before the day of Quetzalkoatl’s return according to Indian’s prophecies. |
|Link to Web site with many information about the History of Mexico. |
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The Inca Empire, Francisco Pisarro
Again, there was several Indian cultures in South America (Andes Mountains region) before the Inca empire, and some regions experienced at least tree cycles of expansion-and-fall. I am not going to describe them here, the same as (when talking about Central American cultures) I didn’t mentioned many important archeological sites for example in Panama. I am going to focus only on the Inca Empire, the kingdom of Chimu and Pisarro’s conquest of the Inca Empire.
|Here you have the short description of major Indian cultures in Peru, and the most important archeological sites. |
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And here is a schematic map of the Inca Empire
[map]
Yellow color shows the Inca Empire.
Blue area is the kingdom of Chimu conquered by the Inca Empire.
Green squares represents some of the pre-Inca archeological sites.
Red arrows shows the march of Francisco Pisarro.
Red circle with black outline represents Cuzco - capital of the Inca empire.
Other red circles marks the cities of Tumbes and Cajamarca, which plays important role in the story of Pisarro’s conquest.
Green circle with the black outline represents Machu Picchu, the last (and never conquered) stronghold of Incas.
The Inca Empire originated in a mountain valley around the capital of Cuzco (or Cusco). It was the third or even forth culture in this region of Andes Mountains (all these cultures based on potatoes, which helped to feed large populations). The same as with the Aztecs Empire, valley was the important nexus of trade routes. From the second half of XIVth century till the year of 1525 the Inca Empire conquered many tribes and states and got control over the most part of Andes Mountains and Pacific Coast.
The original name of the state was Tahuantisuyo (which means “the four sides of the world”). The Incas was not exactly the name of nation but a name of privileged ruling class of soldiers, priests and sages (called amautas), who were administrating the state. The rest of people were subjects (ruled ones) and had almost the helot status.
|Here you can find the short summary of the Inca Empire. |
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|An here more detailed (probably the best site about Incas). But be careful there are other versions of names’ transcription, see for example |
|Inca kings list. |
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It is useful to look at the organization of the Inca Empire because it was strongly administration-regulated (we can call it “feudal communism”):
Regular people generally had no property (like houses, clothes, tools, animals), almost everything was distributed by Inca administration.
There were no private fields, all land was owned and disposed by state (king), temples and local administration. Peasants were ordered to cultivate these fields in strictly defined order.
Craftsman workshops, mines, cattle of llamas, and so on were also owned by the state, and the Incas precisely administered the production.
And every economic activity (except some small local fairs) were regulated by Inca administration (There was also “ecological” regulations protecting for example some valuable animals).
All precious metals, jewelry and gems were prohibited to commoners, and only Incas could posses them.
Commoners have obligation to work for free for the state (in mines, at roads construction, etc.)
Even marriage was regulated by administration.
Whole villages and nations were deported or moved from one place to another to pacify rebellions, or simply to increase the productivity.
etc.
Two elements made possible effective administering such a large empire:
Extended road system with the state service of mail couriers (relay runners), who delivered messages with the speed 250 miles a day (400 kilometers, unbelievable but verified).
Incas writing called khipu (or quipu) using system of knots on the strings (khipu/quipu was rather a mnemonic system, which should be read by an educated Inca, who reconstructed the information).
Both inventions helped Incas to collect statistical information needed for effective administering.
|Similar economic conditions result in similar economic and political systems, no matter of the cultural background of the country. Other |
|examples of feudal states with strongly government-regulated economy are medieval China of Japan. |
Another interesting element of Inca culture was the religion - with very similar rituals like in Christianity (generally almost all nations of Pre-Columbian Indians conquered by Spaniards have rituals that resembled Christian rituals, but similarities Spaniards had found in Inca’s religion were so great, that made them think it was a devil’s joke).
For example Indians had a ritual of confession with priest ordered expiation, and remission of sins. It was an element of religion but also a tool that helps Incas to control common people. So it have the same function like the ritual of self-criticism in XXth-century communistic states.
|Religion (as every ideology) has some political and economic impacts |
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|Here are some of them: |
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|Religion could be a brainwashing ideology that helps to control commoners (it is Marx observation, but ironically communist ideology - for |
|example in USSR - had the same function). |
|Religious institutions (like confession mentioned above) or offices (like European Inquisition) could have the same role in a community as a |
|security service or a secret police in modern communities. |
|Religion promotes honesty, and thus lowers the transaction costs of trade and every economic activity (so religion could stimulate the |
|economy). |
|Religion could suppress free thinking, and thus slow science and technology development. |
|Religion usually promotes legality, and thus stabilizes political institutions, reducing the chances of revolutions. |
|Religion could give hope, virtues and ideals, which makes human life easier, when there are limited supply of goods and resources to dispose.|
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|I have mentioned six, probably the most important consequences of religion. And most of them could be some times positive while other times |
|negative. Religion could also protect peasants and labour workers from exploitation or discourage them to defend themselves against |
|exploitation. |
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|This theory makes possible to analyze social and political impacts of different religions. But remember, no scientific theory could give |
|answer if God exists or not or give answer on any other religious question. This is the scope of philosophy or theology. |
In XVIth century, Inca king Tupac Yupanqui (or Thopa Inca Yupanqui) conquered the coastal kingdom of Chimu. It is didactic to compare the Inca Empire with Chimu Kingdom (but please treat the story below as an illustrative story tale rather than as a record of facts, because all we know about Chimu comes from Spaniards, Incas and from archeological discoveries).
Opposite to the Inca Empire, kingdom of Chimu was rather a “liberal” (i.e. freedom-oriented, not left-winged) feudal state, with larger differences of wealth between peasants and aristocracy, and with larger amount of personal freedom. Kingdom sometimes was the arena of domestic wars between different feudal factions, but also was richer than the Inca Empire.
Because the strong culture of freedom and national proud, conquered kingdom many times rebelled against Incas. Rebellions were pacified with army, but also made Incas to treat the coastal region of Chimu in a special way (we could say: with some autonomy).
|Ideology of freedom |
|Freedom is not the natural aspiration (or goal) of every human, but not more than another ideology. People are not identical - some of them |
|want to be rich, some want to be free, some wants a material safety, or a safety from crime. And ideology of freedom is only one of many |
|ideologies existing in human society. People who live in democratic countries tend to forget about that. |
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|When a country is oppressive, the promotion of the ideology of freedom will be very weak, and the ideology of freedom will be suppressed with|
|other, stronger ideologies like ex. nationalism. People who live there, will not be fight for freedom, understand the freedom, or even see |
|that they are brainwashed. From my own experience: until I was 13 years old, I believed in communist ideology, because it was so strongly |
|promoted in my country that I didn’t know it was based on lies - no mater how intelligent you are, you can always be brainwashed by some |
|strongly-promoted ideology. It is only the matter of the balance of resources used to promote different ideologies. |
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|Ideology of freedom stimulates the economic growth. Generally because of two reasons: |
|Helps the science and technology development. |
|Guarantees the more effective economic redistribution of resources, for example capital (or to be precise, thanks to the freedom in economy, |
|faster corrects the ineffective uses of resources). |
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|But not guaranties a honest redistribution of resources. Honestly, the ideology of freedom favors richer, active or more intelligent people. |
|Please look at this simple schema. |
|[picture] |
|As you can see, the country with dominating ideology of freedom is usually little right-winged. This is not honest, but usually guarantees |
|the higher economic effectiveness, because the ideology of freedom protects the interests of the capital, the knowledge, the science, etc. |
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|Life in freedom-oriented country could be very hard for poor, not so educated, not so intelligent or not so enterprising peoples. When some |
|members of the society become rich very rapidly (active-ones), others could suffer poverty, because the active-ones increase demand on goods |
|bringing prices of goods up, and increasing this way the living expenses for the rest of the society (this effect could be analyzed using |
|math and economic tools, but have a social and economic consequences - for example could be some times responsible for the increase of |
|popularity of populistic politicians and ideologies). |
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|Please note that both too equal distribution of income and unequal distribution of income (typical in freedom-oriented country) could have |
|negative consequences: overexploitation of natural resources and slower growth or political instability and mass poverty, respectively. |
|Probably the most important law in my History Mechanics is: There are no ideal solution in politics and economy, every solution will have |
|some positive and some negative aspects. |
At the beginning of XVIth century the Inca Empire reached the logistics limits of expansion. Country stars to build walls and fortifications where barbarian Indian tribes were especially active, costs of pacifying rebellions of other Indian nations began to increase dramatically. And we can observe the very beginning of conflict between the “soldiers faction” and the “priests faction”. Army wanted to conquer new lands, while Incas close to the Court and priests tried to get some extra privileges from the king, destroying this way the equality inside the Incas class. That had to end in a civil war between factions and it was.
After the death of old king Huayna Capac, prince Atahualpa (soldiers faction) started the coup d’etat against the first son of old king, a new king Huascar (priests faction). Atahualpa defeated his brother and imprisoned in Cuzco (Cusco). But that was probably the last victory of soldiers faction - next Inca king would have no resources to continue the expansion. The side effect of the war was that the empire was rebelled, and some provinces still supported the legal king. And exactly in this moment (1532) The expedition of Francisco Pizarro landed in Peru in Tumbes (or Tumbez).
|Again, Pizarro have also a great dose of god luck. |
|First, he discovered the Inca Empire about 5 years before, but have no money to finance the expedition. And when he tried to organize funds |
|in Spain, the civil war mentioned above started in the Inca Empire. |
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|Second, Indian nations of the Inca Empire (and also some tribes from Columbia) have legends about white, bearded god called Viracocha, |
|Kon-Tiki (Con Tiqui) or Pachacamac, very similar to the legend of Quetzalkoatl. Probably the main difference was that prophecies about |
|Viracocha said: he would return from the north or from Pacific Ocean. |
Pizarro had even the smaller army than Cortes. About 300 soldiers, but better equipped and with more horses. Realizing that the Inca Empire is in the middle of civil war, Pizarro marched south, hoping to conquer the kingdom the same way like Cortes did. Partisans of Huascar tried to got an alliance with him, but Pizarro didn’t answer yes or no, to have options of alliance open.
In the city of Cajamarca Spaniards met 30 000 Incas army leaded by Atahualpa. The negotiations started. Cortes invited the king to the meeting, and when the procession of 2000 servants, guardsmen and officials went into a wall-bordered city square, Spaniards attacked them and kill everybody but Atahualpa. The great Inca army, now without commanders, fled. Among Spaniards only Cortes was wounded, when he tried to protect Atahualpa.
Atahualpa was a great commander (and chess player when imprisoned), administrator, the ruler skilled in intrigues, who had no problem to kill the whole family of Huascar and many of his brother’s partisans. Why he went so carelessly right into Pizarro’s trap?
Well, he was a king of great empire, have 30 000 man against less than 300 Spaniards. He had more guardsmen in his procession! He did not believed that Cortes was so stupid to attack him.
Atahualpa waged a civil war and hoped to get an ally who could help him to defeat partisans of Huascar.
And finally, common people believed that Cortes was send by Viracocha or Pachacamac (in Chimu), and hoped that Spaniards would bring them freedom form Incas rule.
|Even if the ruler of the despotic country does not believe in an officially promoted ideology (like Atahualpa in prophecies about Viracocha) |
|that ideology limits his political moves and options. If the ruler (or tyrant) acts against the official ideology, he would destroy one of |
|the key-elements that support his rule. This would force him to use (more costly) brute-force methods for protecting his rule. |
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|It is (for example) one of the reasons why Saddam Hussein could not say that he had no WMD (weapon of mass destruction) - that will destroy |
|his ideology of “New Saladin fighting against Western Crusaders” - ironically true Saladin (Salah-ad-Din) was a Kurd. |
The battle of Cajamarca was really the end of the Inca Empire. Spaniards imprisoned the Emperor, and got significant reinforcements when copartner of Pisarro, captain Almagro, landed in Peru. Atahualpa tried to save his kingdom secretly ordering to kill Huascar (which not stopped the civil war), and trying to get the freedom paying Spaniards with gold. Very soon important Inca armies and cities capitulated and Spaniards killed Atahualpa.
After some time Pisarro and Almagro started to fight with each other. This war between Spaniards gave Incas a chance to start a rebellion against Spanish rule. Indians were adopted Spanish technology very fast: they used cavalry and gunpowder weapons (taught by Spanish renegades). But there was now too many Spaniards in Peru, and most of Indian peasants were not interested to die for Incas, so the rebellion was unsuccessful. But remains of Inca Kingdom survived in Vilcapampa (mountain region close to Machu Picchu) for many years.
Consequences of the Spanish conquest
Conquests in America gave Spain great resources of precious metals (mainly silver from new mines), which allowed Spanish kings to wage imperial politics in Europe. But also launched the diffusion processes which destroyed the “parliamentary” institutions in kingdoms of Aragon an Castile (two components of Spain), helped Spanish kings to introduce oppressive governments in Spain (using the Inquisition and income from colonies), and in a long run were the reason for the fall of the Spain.
Indians were murdered during the conquest and rebellions (but Aztecs and Incas did the same). Were turned into feudal-dependent peasants, and many of them (maybe 1/3, maybe more) died from European diseases. But we should also remember that European technologies made local economies much more effective (it is easier to cultivate field with iron tools than with tools made from wood and stone).
What would happen if...
It is a good moment to present how important role coincidences could play in our history. Columbus voyage (who discovered probably the longest possible route to America), and very fast conquests made by lucky commanders - Cortes and Pisarro, in a very few years gave Spain control over most of the contemporary Latin America (except Brasilia colonized by Portugal).
Let’s assume this not happened:
America would be probably very soon discovered by Portugal’s (Brasilia) or English (New Foundland) sailors. Other European countries (England, France, maybe Netherlands) would probably gain large colonies in the New World. Indian Empires would be conquered anyway, but maybe by different countries. Large colonies of England would launch the diffusion powers inside the kingdom - according to the law of connected vessels - which would stop the evolution of political institutions in England (the same way like in Spain, as it was said above). And England would not became a democratic state in 1689 but many years after. Which, of course, would delay the industrial revolution.
And there would be no large, democratic country of United States, because USA grew on British capitals and technology. Well, there would be some large state in North America, because the river Mississippi and system of Great Lakes are the natural trade backbone for a great country (the same way as rivers Dniepr and Volga and lakes Illmen and Ladoga for Russia), but it would be a populistic country. With two great populistic states: one in Russia and second in North America a nuclear war in the second half of XXth century would be probably inevitable.
China
Speaking about the history of China (and then about history of India) I will try to show you that it is not so different form European history, and historical processes and laws are basically the same.
You should also remember that China has extremely large share of the World population. For the whole history (except XVIIIth and XIXth centuries) 1/4 of the World population lived in China. The same is true for India.
A
|Here is the short introduction the history of China (with maps). |
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|And more systematic summary (with lists of emperors). |
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|Plus more maps. |
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For this lecture I will divide the history of China (before XIXth century) into five stages. Map below illustrates this, and also shows basic geography of China: rivers, deserts, mountain ranges (cities are today’s cities).
[map]
First stage is the ancient China when the state that appeared in Shaanxi province (blue border) conquered the valley of River Huang He (Yellow River). Blue arrow shows this expansion.
Second stage is the feudal fragmentation of “Springs and Autumns” and “Warring Kingdoms” periods (770-221 B.C.).
Third stage starts from emperor Shi Hunagdi (founder of Quin dynasty), who conquered all kingdoms, built the Great Wall (navy blue zigzag) and was the real creator of China Empire. It was the period of relative economic prosperity because of the expansion to the South China (green arrow) and profitable export thorough the Silk Road (red line).
Fourth stage is the period of stable and relatively isolated feudal state, periodically invaded by barbarians (black arrows) or convulsed by peasants revolts (yellow border shows the core of China lands).
Fifth stage begins in XVIIth century when China started to isolate form the European penetration. This period was ended in XIXth century with Opium Wars.
First stage: Ancient China
Historians have very limited knowledge about the first China’s dynasties (Xia, Shang and Zhou). Those dynasties are mentioned in China tradition, but most of the early literature and historical writings were destroyed according to orders of emperor Shi Hunagdi, when he fought with political opposition to unite China. Chronologies before the year 841 B.C. are constructed based only on archeological discoveries and have the fault that historians could mistake cultures (people who use the same pottery, weapons, etc.) with dynasties (families of rulers). But we can safely assume that before the year of 770 B.C. there was three cycles of rise-and-fall of early feudal China states (called Xia, Shang and Zhou). We also know that Zhou dynasty was real and started form barbarian invasion.
These times early China state, probably formed in Shaanxi province, expanded East along the river Hunag He. The Shaanxi province was originally called “The Land Between Mountain Passes” (or sometimes “west of the mountain passes”) and is really the great valley, where a few important trade routes are stressed together and cross. Maybe this was the reason the first state was formed here not in the North China Plain (East form Shaanxi), where the local rulers cannot easy control many trade routes. It is also useful to note that Huang He river (Yellow River) very often changes its river-bed (in Medieval for some time Huang He went to the sea thorough the River Yangtze).
Of course it is hard to say, was it more a military or peaceful economic expansion. In my opinion, because of geography of Huang He river basin, the expansion of Ancient China probably resembled the expansion of early medieval Russia from river Dniepr Basin to river Volga basin: peaceful colonization of higher-technology nation was when necessary supported with military force by rulers.
Second Stage: Feudal fragmentation 770-221 B.C.
Feudal fragmentation (divided into two periods: “Springs and Autumns” and “Warring Kingdoms”) started from barbarian invasion, but rulers of China were loosing their power gradually for some time before. For five centuries China was divided into many kingdoms fighting with each other. It was the period of wars and chaos, but also the acme of culture and philosophy.
I am not going to describe different schools of Chinese philosophy here (Chinese tradition says wit some poetic emphasis that there was a 100 of schools of thought), but I have to mention two most important:
Confucius doctrine. Simplifying terribly Confucius (Kong Fu Zi) doctrine concentrates on life according to virtues, respect to moral authorities, respect for elders and ancestors. Finally Confucius doctrine (Confucianism) became an official doctrine of China Empire, because it have natural elements that support the authorities of Empire.
Taoism (or Daoism) was a mystic doctrine which promotes self-development and some magic practices. Taoism finally became a philosophy of poor ones and common people, and was sometimes ignored, some times haunted by authorities.
|It is an example of ideological polarization natural to feudal countries. Such opposite ideologies (pro-authority and anti-authority) like |
|Confucianism and Taoism in China, were also present in medieval Middle East (sunnites and shi’ites) and in medieval Europe (official church |
|hierarchy and beggars Orders, heresies, mystic religious movements respectively). |
|Here is a short introduction to Hundred Shools of Taught of Springs and Autumns and Warring Kingdoms periods. |
| |
Continuous wars (the same as renaissance wars in Italy inspired Machiavelli) inspired Sun Tze (or Sun Tzu) to write tractate about the art of waging war.
|Below is an link to “The Art of War” written by Sun Tze (Sun Tzu). Well, it is a very basic tractate about strategy and tactics, and do not |
|mention many important elements (the main weakness is that Sun Tze describes the war as an art of deception, but sometimes there is no chance|
|to use deception tricks, and the brute clash of steel decides who will win), but in spite of this, his tractate is a mandatory introduction |
|for everyone, who want to study tactics. |
| |
|The basic rule of tactics from his tractate could be summed up as: Find what advantages (number, morale, terrain, maneuverability, firepower,|
|intelligence, etc.) you have over your enemy, and what advantages the enemy have over you. Then don’t let him use his (or her) advantages |
|against you, and use yours advantages against him (or her). |
| |
|The Art of War |
| |
| |
|I also don’t like this translation, because Lionel Giles had problems with poetic nature of Chinese language. For example word “heaven” |
|should be probably translated as “sky”! |
| |
Finally China was reunited by kingdom of Quin. Probably the reason for Quin strength and conquests was the income from the export by the Silk Road (a trade route from China to Middle East, Europe and India) plus maybe better iron weapons and other war technologies imported from West.
Third stage: Export by the Silk Road
Emperor Shi Huangdi (name means “The First Emperor”) - famous for his funeral terracotta army and from movie “Hero” - from Quin, who united China was the real creator of China Empire. He introduced many reforms: unified law, administration, currency, systems of measures, built roads. His methods were brute (like methods of Peter the Great or Ivan The Terrible in Russia) - many opponents were killed, many nobles were deported, many books were burnt. And he also built the Great Wall joining together many smaller walls protecting China from barbarians.
|Walls. It is useful to note that great walls protecting borders are often the first symptom that the country have no strength to continue |
|expansion beyond the protected border. It was true for the Great Wall, for Roman walls (called limes), for wall built by Chimu kingdom or for|
|French Maginot Line. |
After Shi Huangdi death, a great rebellion destroyed the Quin dynasty, but thanks to his reforms the Empire survived the civil war, and next dynasty - Han - ruled China for four centuries. Another reason for this political stability was the economic prosperity because of colonization of low-populated South China and export by the Silk Road. China (peripheral state) had lower income than Middle East and Europe (core states), so could easy export some goods, China had a technological monopoly: first silk, then china (delicate pottery), tea, etc.
|Economic center of the World (core states) |
|Well, Immanuel Wallerstein classification of “core” and “peripheral” countries is too simplified. Actually the whole pattern is more |
|complicated, and we should distinguish at least three types of states: high-income (core), middle-income, and low-income countries plus a |
|special subclass for countries which have great deposits of natural resources (comparing to the number of inhabitants). And there are periods|
|when the international trade is extremely profitable for non-core countries, and periods when non-core countries are exploited because of |
|monopolistic prices dictated by core countries or some international trusts (ex. OPEC). A few paragraphs below I will present a picture that |
|helps to understand reasons for both scenarios. |
| |
|But since IIIrd century B.C. most important regions of the Old World (Europe Asia and Africa) was one economic organism, and we can define |
|the economic center of the World (i.e. core states). Below I present simplified timeline: |
|IIIrd B.C. - IVth A.D., Greece, Hellenistic States and then Roman Empire |
|VIth - VIIth, Byzantium |
|IXth - Xth, Arabian states of Middle East and Spain plus Byzantium |
|XIIth - XVth, Italian city-states |
|XVIth - XVIIth, Spain, Netherlands and Northern Italy (in decline) |
|XVIIIth till the first half of XIXth century, England |
|1860-1940, England plus some Western European states and North-East USA |
|After 1940, USA, Western Europe plus Italy and Japan (since 1975) |
|Of course there were also “local cores”. For example medieval China was a core state for Japan and other neighbouring states. |
China is one of the best examples of feudal state with a strong role of government and administration. The feudal hierarchy was the hierarchy of offices (like ex. in XIXth century Russia). Moreover China officials (like in the Inca Empire) were usually highly educated. We can say that in Europe generally dominated a “free-market-oriented” feudal system and in China “state-oriented” feudal system.
Free market is generally more effective, but government regulated marked also have some advantages, which are generally the same, the monopoly or great corporation with big market share has:
Big firm or country have advantages of scale in some economic activities (for example a big country usually wins wars with smaller countries).
When a country is important exporter of some goods or resources (silk or china for China), could dictate the prices and thus maximize income from export.
Monopoly could protect important technologies longer than many independent producers (China was able to protect technology of silk and china for few centuries).
And finally, transaction costs for some economic activities are sometimes lower when there is a kind of central management (government administration, corporate managers).
|Transaction costs generally speaking are the whole costs of transaction other than price: costs to get to the market place, costs to |
|negotiate the price, costs to chose the best offer, cost of recalculating the currencies and units of measure, cost of controlling if we are |
|not cheated by a dishonest market-player, etc. |
| |
|These costs can be so high that is sometimes better to implement some organization and central management than to allow a free-market game |
|(using math tools we can say when). Do you imagine that a Grand Canal (between Huang He and Yangtze rivers) could had been built by a |
|thousands of small private enterprises employing only several workers each? |
Of course a government-regulated market have some flaws. One of them is an inflation when government spendings are to high. China experienced this after the year of 133 B.C. as an effect of wars with barbarian tribes of Huns (the same nation that a few centuries later invaded the Roman Empire), when emperor - because of the costs of war - had to spoil money, but Huns were defeated and started a migration to the west.
It is useful to note here that China had a very limited deposits of precious metals, except copper (comparing with the demand for money created by the China’s economy). So when Chinese a several centuries later discovered paper money, they really discovered the hyperinflation, which as you recall is a side-effect of stagflation crisis in a government-regulated economy.
Han dynasty (the same Tang dynasty a few centuries later) - as every feudal government supported by planters faction GPI (i.e. group of political interests that represents feudals and merchants interested in export) - was open for new ideas. China even sent expedition of explores to the West.
Centuries from IIIrd to VIth were the another period of feudal fragmentation in China. One of the reasons for that was the economic and political crisis in the Roman Empire, which reduced the demand for Chinesee export and thus weakened China’s government which had monopolistic control over the export. With the economic recovery of populistic Byzantine Empire, China recovered also. Of course there is some latency in economic cycles in both regions.
|Here is a simplified model explaining economic relations between countries and thus economic cycles. Although very simple, this model is |
|quite strong, because is based on the second law of thermodynamics and the Solow’s model. |
|[picture] |
|This model would probably look better if animated: countries should go up and down, diffusion channels (pipes between bottles) should become |
|wider or narrower, and red valves could be opened or closed by governments. Of course there are some simplifications here: |
|There are no “backflows” (blue streams going up) from the export of capital. |
|There are no income from international trade (income collected from diffusion channels). |
|There are no tributes from conquered countries. |
|There are no extra income when a country have a monopoly on a particular good. |
|And the most important: economic policy is usually (except maybe the highest political system in my classification) constructed in such a way|
|to protect the economic interests of the ruling GPI (group of political interests). So sometimes government policy could be protectionistic |
|when a free trade is profitable for the whole country, and vice versa. As you recall, this is one of basic explanations, why the higher |
|political system is usually more economically effective (a country with higher political system usually has a higher rate of “natural |
|growth”). |
| |
|But even playing with such a simple model, you can understand reasons for most of the economic processes in history. Including reasons for |
|feudal fragmentation of China when the demand in Europe and Middle West shrunk. |
In the times of another great dynasty, Tang (VIIth-IXth century A.D.), the process of colonization of South China ended, and populations of both regions equalized. The trade between Southern and Northern China became more important than the trade with the West. In result the capital of China was moved from the Shaanxi province (Xi’an) closer to the Grand Canal. (It is not unusual for the capital of the state to be moved, when trade routes shifts or government changes the economic policy. Great examples are removals Roman Empire capital from Rome to Constantinopole or the Russia capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg and back).
Tang dynasty is also the period, when Buddhism imported from India (generally in Vth century A.D.) gained popularity in China. In China is that religion did not played so important role here as in Europe, India or Middle West. Well, here are a simplified explanation:
When feudal country prospers because of profitable export, there are no serious social conflicts (see frame below), and thus elites are tolerant and open for new ideas (including other religions).
China conquered many lands with local beliefs and local religions, so the ideology that united the Empire had to be irreligious and tolerant for local traditions.
And there was little or no economic need for ideology like religion (see below).
|Economic function of religion |
|Generally most of the religion ideologies have one common element: promise the happiness after death on in the future, if the believer lived |
|honestly, sparingly and not fought for his (or her) rights. So, religions have an economic effect of promoting the capital accumulation and |
|suppressing the power of labor workers. Simply speaking: in the early history of the China Empire when the export was very profitable and |
|there was a high demand for peasants (people were more valuable than the capital) to colonize South, there was no natural economic conditions|
|and reasons for a religion system to evolve. |
| |
|Of course, when I speak “capital” I really mean “land” which is the main form of capital in feudal countries. There is a little difference |
|between them: land can’t “run away”, when is confiscated by government or external invaders. Capital can also be confiscated or nationalized,|
|but because it should be continuously renewed, is much harder to hobble (imprison). |
| |
|And again, I do not want to say there is a conspiracy mechanism here. There is no secret meeting of aristocrats or government officials, who |
|decides that introducing the religion ideology will be profitable, because will help to exploit peasants or to rule the common people. No, |
|new ideologies emerge in an evolutionary way - simply speaking: people who promote new ideology gradually gains more money, larger audience |
|or influential friends in administration structures of the state. |
After a few centuries when conditions changed, Confucianism ideology was so strongly rooted in China tradition that could substitute the religion. But in the times of Tang and Song dynasties (VIIth-XIIth) there was some times periods or serious religious conflicts between main religious and ideological movements: Buddhism, Taoism (in many aspect very similar to religion but not so formalized), Confucianism, Islam and Christianity. And government periodically organized haunts for followers of non-China religions. As you can see China was not really so different from Europe - when different factions fought to gain control over country’s politics, ideological conflicts were intense.
With the shrinking demand for Chinese export in the Middle East and with the less profitable trade exchange between South and North China when economic levels of both regions equalized, the power of central government declined, and Tang dynasty failed (at the beginning of Xth century). And another period of feudal fragmentation began.
Fourth stage: Relatively isolated feudal state
Since Xth century China was a relatively isolated feudal state that had its own cycles of rise an fall (more or less as the Ancient Egypt). Economic policy of the Emperor court changed many times and because of many reasons. Originally I have planed to use China as an example to show the reasons for transitions of government policy in a feudal state (to explain when different feudal factions take over the leadership). But then I realized that the whole lecture is too long for this short introduction to the History Mechanics. Some of reasons you can find in the frame below.
|My simplifications |
|I said before that in feudal country there are basically three feudal factions: soldiers faction, priests faction, feudal faction. But you |
|have to remember that this is only a kind of simplification. For example in China there were a subfactions interested in expansion West, |
|South and North-East (Korea) in the soldiers faction (expansive faction). Also the transitions of the state policy was (depending on economic|
|circumstances) an effect of military coup d’etat, court intrigue, peasants revolt, barbarian invasion, or simply effect of changing advisors |
|by the Emperor. Moreover, transition could be brutal or quite peaceful depending on a few factors like: |
|Is the country’s economy in decline or in growth |
|How rich is the country comparing with its economic partners |
|How deep are conflicts of goals and interests between different factions |
|Also the personal decisions of the Emperor mattered. Intelligent ruler could slow the decline a few decades, while stupid one may cause the |
|catastrophe of the Empire come sooner. So, my classification of political factions in the feudal country should be used to explain only the |
|basic processes. |
The Empire of Song dynasty - which united China again (and ruled the Empire till the Mongol invasion 960-1225 and till 1279 in South China) - was rather peaceful comparing with Han and Tang dynasties. This time the Empire was smaller and strong half-barbarian kingdoms controlled the Great Wall, northern mountain passes and the Silk Road. Simply speaking, China quite rich country these times and has no profitable lands to conquer in close vicinity, so the pacifism was the most reasonable economic policy.
|Here is a short article about steppe states of Asia. |
| |
Also there was no reason to control trade route to the West because economic gap between China and the West (i.e. Europe and Middle East) almost disappeared. China Empire was one of the richest countries these times. Also the technological gap between China and the West was smaller. Chinese made many important discoveries like: gunpowder, print, compass, paper.
But we have to remember that China was still less technologically developed than the West. These discoveries were spectacular, but there were only a few of them while Europeans and Arabians had known many technologies that Chinese did not know (in metallurgy, warfare, constructing, engineering, math, writing, mining, ships building). Here are only a few examples:
Chinese discovered printing but did not know the alphabet, so the technology of printing was not very profitable.
Chinese discovered gunpowder, but were behind in metallurgy, so did not invented canons.
Chinese had no technology of stove, so could not colonize Siberia forests (and even Manchuria) north of them.
It is the irony of history that the country ruled by civil service of very educated officials - because education was the main criteria to become a state official and then to go up in hierarchy (as you recall feudal class in China was the class of state officials) - was developing new technologies slower than countries of the West, often rulled by ineducated rulers. The main reason is, the scientific development is chaotic of nature and its rate slows down when the government controls and regulates the country’s economy.
|Chaotic nature of scientific development |
|The rate of science development is slower in states with government-regulated economy. There are a few reasons for this: |
|First, and the most important: new scientific and new technology ideas are most often result of cross-branches studies and implementation of |
|new ideas stolen from neighbouring branches (for example economics was originaly developed when Adam Smith used the idea of predictable |
|clock-like nature taken from Isaak Newton’s phisics). When there are a very formalised castes of researchers with very limited areas of |
|interests, the scientific development slows down. |
|Second, development of new technologies is much more effective when there is an economic pressure that eliminates the most ineffective |
|research efforts. When there is no wasting money for large, innefective government-sponsored projects and when scientists are forced do |
|search the cheapest solutions and are forced to use their brains first. And when there are many private sponsors without prejudices, who are |
|open for new ideas, which may be considered as “stupid” or “magic” in academic community (great example is the gunpowder and alchemic |
|researchs, which was considered by Confucianists as “magic tricks for plebeians who uses to believe in Taoistic superstitions”). |
|Third, when economy is free-market oriented, new ideas and discoveries are almost immediately implemented and used in economic enterprises. |
|Practical implementation of thechnologies gives scientists a great volume of new data, and much more of obserwations than any academic in its|
|ivory tower could ever produce in laboratory experiments. These times a scientist need only a talent for observation, and a few tools to |
|verify his (or her) new theories. Plus of course a faster implementation means that the ecomomy grows faster and thus there is more money for|
|scientific researchs in a long run. |
We should also remember that the great part of Chinese inventions were really the toys for the Imperial Court and for rich officials, and were not implemented in every day life or were not implemented in the most efficient way. On the other hand, European inventions were usually not so spectacular, but had greater impact on economy. It is like comparing the technology of Soviet Union and USA in 50-ties and 60-ties. Launch of Sputnik (first satelite launched by USSR) was spectacular, opposite to computers, genetics, plastics, television, and many other US technologies, which however had greater practical value. But to stay honest: in early Medieval (VIth-Xth centuries A.D.) China had probably higher technology level than Western Europe (but not higher than the Byzantine Empire and Arabian Middle East). Then with the emergence of populistic city-states in Italy in XIth century, the rate of technology development in Europe speeded up and China technology started to stay behind.
Before the XIXth century one of the basic economic evidences, which country was richer is the direction of coins (money) flows. We just need to see which country was an exporter of goods (China), and which one had to export money (Middle East, Europe). Country that had to export money, usually is richer - demand for the goods imported from abroad is so high that the country have not enough exportable goods to balance the import and thus have a permanent negative trade balance (it is true only when economies of most countries are government-regulated). As I said before: rich country have a comparative advantage at money.
An effect of economic stagnation in China was the neighbouring barbarian tribes grew in strenght. Song dynasty lost the north of China for the half-barbaric rulers in 1126 - Ruzhens (or Jurchens), founders of Jin dynasty. And finally China experienced the Mongol invasion. Mongols leaded by great chieftain Gengis Khan conquered Northern China at the beginning of XIIIth century. (Song which dynasty survived in Southern China till 1279 A.D., when the grandson of Gengis Khan, Kublai Khan conquered the rest of the China.) The Mongol Empire of Ghengis Khan and his descendants (called Yuan dynasty) was probably one of the greatest empire in the history. (See map) As I said before, one-fourth of human population lived in China, so barbarian conqueries of Mongols launched by the fall of China have to be extraordinary. Esspecially because steppes and grasslands of Eurasia (from Hungary to Manchuria) are a very easy communication route for nomad tribes.
|Climatic changes |
|There is also a theory that barbarians invasions on China were caused by climatic changes. Of course in feudal states and primitive barbaric |
|societies climatic changes (periods of cold or drought) can expedite the crisis and have the influence on economic cycles that are |
|responsible for the falls of feudal states and barbarian invasions. |
Armies of Mongols conquered and subordinated China, Siberia, Central Asia, the great part of Middle East and Russia. (Of course most of the feudal countries conquered by Mongols were more or less decomposed.) They even plundered Poland and Hungary in Central Europe. But after the flames and destruction that Mongol conquests brought to many cities and states, the uniting of Asia had an positive aspect: opened again the trade route from Europe to China. Before mongols the Silk Road was controlled by several countries and the costs of trade exchange were very high, because of many taxes merchants had to pay.
Opening of new trade routes brought extra profits to Italian populistic merchant republics of Genua and Venice. With the travels of Venetian merchant Marco Polo () Europeans gained knowledge about China and the Court of Kublai Khan. But for China export to the West was these times not such profitable as before. The main source of government income for Mongol Emperor - who resided in Bejing - was the salt monopolly.
Under the rule of Kublai Khan the empire of Yuan dynasty reached the peak of its power. Mongols as every barbarian tribe which conquered China were absorbed by the higher civilization of conquered country. Emperor even tried to conquer Japan, but the strong ressistance of Japanesse and the fortunate storm called Kamikaze (divine wind), which destroyed the invasion fleet, saved Japan from Chinese conquest. It is useful to mention that even the invasion was successful, the large population of Japan (plus the logistic problems) would made the long occupation of Japan isles impossible.
|Here is a short introduction to the History of Japan. |
| |
|Plus the short History of Korea. |
| |
|Detailed lectures on Japan and Korea history, you can also find in Wikipedia. |
The rule of Yuan dynasty was ended with national rebelion against Mongol Emperors and that was the start of Ming (1368-1644) dynasty famous in Europe from precious china. In the times of Ming dynasty European sailors (Portugalese) arrived in China, and since then trade exchange with Europe was not longer conducted by the Silk road but by the sea.
It is also worth to mention here that in times of Ming dynasty - and a few decades before the Great European discoveries - between the years of 1405-1433 Chinese admiral Zheng He (Muslim eunuch) made a number successful expeditions to India Ocean (here is a map, ). His fleet reached even the eastern coast of Africa, but then his journeys were stopped by the Emperor. Zheng He expeditions reached only the well lands known for a few centuries to the Arabian sailors, which had for some time trade outpost in South China. But the strange order of Emperor is a good example that in feudal countries with government-regulated economy there is very little economic pressure to explore of new lands and made geographic discoveries, because political interests of merchant class are poorly represented.
Fifth Stage: Protectionism and isolation
First contacts with Europeans were not encouraging. European sailors (especially Portuguese, who first reached China) used to practice piracy taking advantage of superior firepower of their ships. It was the normal practice among European sailors of all nations. European countries were much richer (per capita) than China, so there was a high demand for Chinese goods in Europe and almost no demand for European goods in China. European traders had three options:
To pay with precious metals (coins) - again: rich country has comparative advantage at money.
To monopolize the sea trade in the region, and get extra income as trade middlemen, which will help to pay for Chinese goods.
To rob traders of other nations, getting Chinese goods for free.
Strategy 1. will effect in money leak from Europe, and strategies 2. and 3. sanctioned the piracy as a way of economic activity.
However sea export to Europe was extremely profitable for local Chinese officials (often corrupted by European merchants), so for some time China government did not react. But in XVIIth century China Emperors started to take some protectionist measures - more or less the same time as shoguns of Japan did. To be honest, the reason for this change in policy was rather to protect the Emperor income from taxes and monopolies than to protect Chinese traders.
The last dynasty of the Emperial China was the Quing dynasty (1644-1912). Emperors of Quing dynasty came from Manchuria (region north of Bejing and Korea east from Mongolia), which conquered the China when Ming dynasty was ended with civil unrest. After the years of unrest rule of external invaders were reasonable option for Chinese elites. Manchuria (Manchu state) was a half-nomadic tribe, but Manchu were not really barbarians, because there was many Chinese cities in Manchuria these times. As I said before, when a feudal state falls, it is usually invaded by barbarians, but invaders could also come from a neighbouring middle-income country.
The rule of Quing dynasty was the age of economic protectionism. So, the ideology promoting that policy evolved supporting official policy of isolation. Here are some basic foundation of this ideology:
China Empire is the center of the World, and have the oldest tradition. Other nations (especially Europeans) are barbarians.
Other nations did not developed anything important - our culture, goods and technology are the best.
There is nothing interest in ideas imported from other nations, they (ideas) could bring only corruption to our traditions (which are no doubt the best).
This isolationistic ideology was very different from the openness of Han or Tang China, but Europeans, who did not know the China before, perceived this ideology as a natural philosophy of Chinese. It is useful to note here that similar ideology could evolve in any state that is in protectionist phase of economic cycle, for example: in Spain in XVIth century, in Poland in 1650-1750 (called Sarmatism), in Soviet Union, or even in France in last decades of XXth century.
Isolationism made China terribly behind in technology, so British Fleet had no problem to defeat China ships in two Opium Wars (), which ended the China’s isolation and opened the Empire for European trade and investments.
Great Britain started the Opium Wars, because the lack of money to pay for import from China. As a rich country England would had to pay for Chinese goods with gold (again rich country has comparative advantage at money, see the polarization effect). To protect English trade balance, British tried to export to China opium (a drug cultivated in British colonies in India). Since then English could buy Chinese goods paying not with British gold, but with money earned from exporting a drug, which was cheaply produced in India. China government tried stop British smuggling of opium - but rather to protect state income from export taxes and tolls than to protect drug-addicted commoners - so the war was inevitable.
As you can see, the country with the highest political system (third in my classification) also could wage “dirty” and morally doubtful war if that war is profitable. And reasons that stands behind the promotion of free trade are not always honest.
India
The same as China, India has extremely large share of the World population. For the whole history (except XVIIIth and XIXth centuries, when here was a demographic explosion in Europe) 1/4 of the World population lived in India subcontinent - i.e. on the territory of today’s India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (Ceylon).
Speaking about the history of India (the same as about history of China before) I will try to show you that it is not so different form European history, and historical processes and laws are basically the same.
|Links about the history of India |
|Here is a short introduction to the India history. |
| |
|Plus as usual, systematic article from Wikipedia. |
| |
|And a set of maps for India history. |
| |
Opposite to the history of China where generally there was one state (which sometimes had a periods of feudal fragmentation), history of India before the British conquest is a history of thousands smaller or larger feudal states fighting with each other (where some times one country conquered a large part of subcontinent). So this page will be rather a presentation of some tools from my theory than a guide to the history of India (Jambudvipa):
First, I say a word or two about the ancient Harappa & Mohenjo Daro Civilization and the invasion of Aryan tribes.
Second, I present a geography of India subcontinent.
Third, I give you a short, chronological summary Indian Empires that conquered a large part of India.
Fourth, I present some observations from my theory using the examples from India history.
And finally, I give you some links to the history of the South-East Asia.
Harappa & Mohenjo-Daro Civilization
Indus Valley Civilization (also called Harappa & Mohenjo Daro Civilization after the contemporary names of two biggest cities discovered by archeologists) was the oldest civilization of India subcontinent. The script used in Indus Valley is still not deciphered, so all knowledge we have about Harappa & Mohenjo Daro civilization comes from archeological digging. The start of Indus Valley culture is dated on more or less 2800 B.C. (so it is almost as old as the Egyptian Civilization) and the end came in XVIIIth century B.C., when Indus Valley was conquered by barbarian Aryan tribes.
|The best and user-friendly site about Harappa & Mohenjo Daro Civlilization is probably The Ancient Indus Valley. |
|Here you can find maps, notes on Indus Script, and even 3-D simulation of the city of Harappa. |
| |
|And here is another Web site with a nice review of archeological discoveries in Indus Valley. |
| |
Mesopotamian artifacts found in ruins of cities prove that Indus Valley civilization had intense trade contacts (probably also by the sea) with Sumerian city-states, and Mesopotamia. Although in times of natural trade (when one good is exchanged for another without using any kind of money) is very hard to say which one of the trading countries is richer, we can assume that Indus Valley was less developed, and was a kind of ancient “emerging-market” exporting goods to Mesopotamia. Archeological discoveries prove that overall technology level of Indus Valley civilization was lower than technology level of Sumer city-states. For example bronze tools and weapons were rare and poorer quality than in Mesopotamia. One of important Harappa & Mohenjo Daro exportables was probably a cotton (India discovery).
I have said that cities of Harappa & Mohenjo Daro civilization were probably populistic merchant republics or oligarchies (or at least two or three biggest cities). But because we can’t read the Indus Script, and there was almost no information about Indus Valley civilization from other sources, this is only a hypothesis based on very weak premises:
Archeologist discovered a very advanced canalization systems in major Indus Valley cities. Usually it is a signal that a city is ruled by some kind of populistic government (like in Sumeria, Ancient Greece or Roman Empire), which needs a popularity among citizens (opposite to the feudal states, where monarchs usually have a little or no interested in a comfort of people living in cities).
There were many quite rich houses in cities, which suggest that there was a strong class of merchants here.
Crisis after the fall of Indus Valley civilization was very deep, as after the fall of populistic civilization, and the Indus Valley civilization was almost completely destroyed by Aryans. In case of populistic civilization period of growth are longer but the fall is deeper and barbarians invaders are to numerous to be absorbed by invaded country, as usually happens when the feudal country is invaded.
There are also several “low-weight” evidences, for example a popularity of seals among Indus Valley people may suggest a very strong trade exchange typical for populistic civilizations. But these evidences are weak.
Besides the trade with Mesopotamia, merchants of Indus Valley traded with the tribes of Ganges Valley and probably with the west coast of India peninsula. Expansion of Indus Valley Civilization, I have marked with a brown arrow on my first map on Maps page was probably a trade expansion and a diffusion of Indus Valley technology, not the military expansion.
The reason for fall of the Harappa & Mohenjo Daro civilization were probably combined crises in Mesopotamia (the fall of the Sumer city-states and thus the shrinking demand for India export) and the local crisis in India, when the trade of Indus civilization spread over too large territory, and the diffusion powers outweighed the profits from expansion. Trade contacts with Mesopotamia was broken after the fall of Hammurabi’s Empire (called Old-Babylonian Empire).
Decomposed civilization of Indus Valley was Invaded by barbarian Indo-European tribes of Aryans, who probably first (about 2000 B.C.) arrived from the north Black Sea coast to the territory of today’s Iran (which was named from Aryans), Northern Mesopotamia (see ancient state of Mitanni formed by Indo-Europeans here ) and Afghanistan, and then at the beginning of the second Millennium B.C. invaded Indus Valley thorough the Khyber Pass. Aryans although barbaric had an advantage of better bronze weapons and the technology of chariot. Aryans conquest was rather a process than an immediate event (similarly as with Germanic invasion of Roman Empire).
Geography of India subcontinent
The most important observation about India subcontinent is its relative geographic isolation. From the East and West India peninsula sis surrounded by Indian Ocean. From the North a Himalayan Mountains and Tibetan Plateau gives India is a natural “Great Wall”, much better than Chinese, because almost impassable. Even Afghanistan and Burma borders are protected with mountains and with deserts and jungles respectively. Only one land gate into India is a Khyber Pass between Indus Valley and Afghanistan. Therefore is not strange that (before the European colonization) India was successfully invaded only two times in a 4500 years long history (of course external empires conquered Indus Valley several times, but the rest of the India stayed independent.)
Here is a schematic map of India subcontinent
[map]
Red lines show the main trade routes.
Yellow dots marks the most important historical capitals of India Empires
Green dots marks Portugal colonies in India.
Light blue are names of lands, countries and regions, which I will mention later.
On the map I have marked the most important trade routes in India. Please note that the Indus Valley and Ganges Valley are the natural backbone for a great state, so most of the Indian empires were founded here.
$$$
Appendix: Polity of Ancient Sparta
According to Sparta’s tradition its polity was created by a lawgiver Lycourgos. Historians are not sure if he really existed, and some of them thinks that the political system of Sparta at the beginning was not so restrictive as described below. But in very short time after the Lycourgos the city-state of Sparta started a very rapid military expansion. So there is possible that the story of Lycourgos is partially true and it is a reminiscence of the beginning of populistic system in Sparta.
Social classes
There was three major social classes in Sparta:
Spartiates - the only class that have full political rights (full citizenship). It was the class of soldiers. When they were young, they lived in barracks and took hard military training and were the core of heavy infantry of Sparta. When they were older, they could start for city offices. They not have to work at all, because everyone had a land with dependent farmers called helots. It was quite limited group.
Perioikoi - they had personal freedom, and some autonomy, but have no political rights. They also served in army, but the units of heavy infantry made of perioikoi was not so elite as the units of Spartiates.
Helots - were the dependent farmers that have to pay up the half of their income (i.e. fruits of the land) to the Spartiates, who were the real owners of the land. They have no political or civil rights, and could not be sold like slaves nor fried by spartiate who owned them.
Generally the first two groups was the “political base” for the state of Sparta. A great mass of helots were oppressed and from time to time made unsuccessful rebellions. So there was a special institution - we can call it “secret police” (but of course it was not such a formal organization as nowadays secret policies) - called cryptia that continuously terrorized helots.
State of Sparta is probably the first known totalitarian populistic state. State of Sparta had enclosed society, with brainwashing (militaristic) ideology that was preserving the political system of the state, strong control of the contacts with abroad, and the institutionalized mechanism of terror (cryptia and other political traditions invented to oppress helots).
Polity of Sparta
Two kings
At the top there were two kings, who ruled the city-state of Sparta. After some time their power was reduced with introducing the office of ephores, and since then kings were only responsible for commanding the army of Sparta and for the diplomacy of the city-state. Two kings allways came from two powerful families of Sparta: Agiades and Euripontides.
Five ephores
Office of ephore was introduced to reduce the power of kings. They have full administrative and executive authority in Sparta, and had the privilege to control kings of Sparta. They have one-year long cadency and were elected by the meeting of citizens.
Gerusia (council of elders)
The members of Gerusia were all citizens (i.e. Spartiates) that were more than 60 years old, so it was a quite limited group and therefore the council were naturally very conservative. Gerusia had the privilege to prepare laws that were then voted down by the meeting of citizens. And had the privilege to control that voting process.
Meeting of citizens
Because only the Spartiates had citizens privileges, it was the meeting of Spariates. Meeting was convened by kings, ephores or Gerusia (could not convene by it own). Citizens have privilege to elect ephores and vote down laws prepared by Gerusia. They could not prepare laws by their own, or made any modifications to laws prepared by Gerusia - if they did, Gerusia could annul the voting.
As you can see, the polity of Sparta preserved the power of the most important families, have built-in institutional solutions, that made the political system almost invariable and all representative institutions (like ex. meeting of citizens) were strongly controlled by ruling oligarchy.
Appendix: Polity of Ancient Athens
Here is a short, tendentious and very simplified description of the evolution of political system in Ancient Athens. But first two important reservations:
First: Historians are not always sure when exactly a particular element of political system was invited. Good example here is ostracism.
Second: We have very limited information about the Athens before Solon. So, for example, I couldn’t say when exactly Athens became populistic. We can only be sure that Athens were populistic under the rule of tyrant (tyran) Dracon, who in 621 B.C. introduced the very restrictive law codex (Draconic laws).
Before Solon
At first populistic Athens city-state was the oligarchic state ruled by aristocratic families. There were a few state offices:
archont - kind of president with one year long cadency
basileus - this name of office means “a king”, but he was only responsible for organizing religious ceremonies
polemarchos - the chief of Athenian army, great commander.
6 thesmothetai - officials responsible for creating new laws (have legislative power).
After some time all the officials mentioned above were called “archonts”. Former city-officials (archonts) formed some kind of council called Aeropagus.
The country was divided into 4 districts called phyle (pl. phylae).
This type of polity is typical for many oligarchic populistic states. Renaissance Venetia could be a very good example of similar political system.
After Solon's reforms
Solon was an aristocrat politician (and poet) who was elected for the archont office for the year 594/593 B.C. and reformed the polity of Athens. His reforms were the compromise between aristocrats protecting their privileges and other Athenians fighting for more righteous political system. Poorer citizens of Athens also argued for the reduction of debts.
So, Solon cancelled some of the debts, tookakes the personal dependency from dependent peasants, introduced the new law codex, and gaveives the Athenian citizenship to many of previously dependent peasants and immigrants living in Athens.
But he also introduced a completely new political system:
He created the Council of 400 - a parliament of Athens with 400 members
Introduced Heliaia - court (or courts) consisted of jurymen, important protection from law abuses
He also defined four social classes organized according to the annual income of citizens:
pentakosiomedimnoi - the richest people with annual income over 500 bushels, as the name of the class states (probably mainly former aristocrats).
hippeis - “horsemen” with annual income over 300 bushels (rich citizens).
zeugitai - “hoplites” (members of heavy infantry) with annual income over 200 bushels, Athenian “middle-class”.
thetes - all other citizens with lower income.
There was also two other political classes in Athens with no citizens privileges:
metoikoi - immigrants (sometimes quite rich).
slaves
Since then political privileges depended on the income of citizen (each of four classes elected a 100 members of the Council of 400). And there was still the council of Aeropagus, and still usually only the richest citizens were elected for city offices.
Political system of this kind is commontypical for many populistic states (for example in XIXth century France or Germany) we could observe very similar system where political and voting privileges depends on citizen’s income). That kind of populistic system is an result of political alliance between rich citizens and middle-income citizens.
It is also useful to note similarities between theseat social classes and the classes in early Roman republic, and similarities between Athenian Council of 400 and Roman comitia centuriata. In ancient times social classes were often organized according to the role of citizens in city-state army, because war was these times a very profitable kind of “state-investment”.
"Democracy" since Cleisthenes's reforms
In the last decades of VIth century B.C. Athens were ruled by tyrant Pisistratus and his sons. The rule of Pisistratus wasn’t so oppressive, but his sons weren’t so wise. After a serious upheaval, politician named Cleisthenes introduced (508/507 B.C.) a completely new organization of political institutions, that was called democracy (the rule of common people).
Here are the most important of his reforms:
New territorial organization of the state. Now there was 10 phylae and three regions: the sea coast, the interior, and the city. Each region was divided into 10 segments. Three segments: one from the coast region, one from the interior region and one from the city region made one phyle. Second segment from the coast region, second from the interior region and second from the city region made another phyle and so on. Moreover, segments that made one particular phyle could not border with each other. Very strange, right?
No so strange indeed. Phylae wereas the voting districts. Here Athenians elected the members of the Council, and local officials. Such a fragmented districts reduced the political power of aristocrats, because great families of land owners usually have many political clients in the vicinity of theirs lands. Since the reform aristocrats can no longer easy win elections in rural phylae, so the reform enhanced the political chances of not so rich citizens.
Introduction of Bule. New Athenian Council (also called the Council of 500). Members of the Council was chosen randomly (using an “ballot-box” with black and white balls) from the candidates elected in each phyle. New Council of 500 was no longer a parliament like Council of 400, but rather a bureaucratic and court machine. For every 1/10 of the year members elected in one particular phyle worked as officials paid from the country budget, then members from the second phyle took over the presidency and so on.
The method of election again promoted the organized faction of “democrats” and was against the aristocrats, who have now very limited chance to become a member of the Bule (because of the random mechanism of the election).
Meeting of all citizens (Ecclesia). Formally since the reforms, the meeting of all citizens of Athens was responsible for the most of the political decisions. But a several thousands of people could not effectively carry the function of parliament. There wereas too many peoples to legislate laws, control the state budget, and solve other more sophisticated problems. Actually the meeting was easy to control by charismatic leader, well-organized political faction or a skillful demagogue -, as every large crowd of people.
|Here is an example, how unstable and easy to dominate was the meeting. In the times of Athens Sea Union, one of the allied cities on the isle|
|of Lesbos rebelled against the Athens. Athenians sent the soldiers, who pacified the rebellion. Then the Athenian meeting deliberated, how to|
|punish the rebelled city. At first, stirred up by populistic demagogues, meeting decided to kill all adult men and sell all children and |
|women as a slaves. But next day, calmed by some more rational politicians, Ecclesia changed that cruel decision, and the city survived. |
Isegoria, isonomia, isotimia, isocratia. Cleisthenes’s rReforms introduced some basics rules of the polity system. Every citizen have a freedom of speech (isegoria), every citizen have equal rights before the law (isonomia), every citizen have equal rights to be elected into the city offices (isotimia), and every citizen formally have equal political power (isocratia). It was the great progress comparing the times before Cleisthenes, when different groups of citizens have different political rights.
It is not obvious were these equalities more populistic slogans (like liberté, égalité, fraternité slogans, we know from the Great French Revolution) used by the faction of “democrats”, or were the real guaranties of the political rights of citizens (isotimia probably was, at least for some time). But they started the idea of political equality, and thus created the ideological basement for modern European democracies.
Ostracism. Probably also introduced by Cleisthenes. Once a year citizens of Athens have a privilege to point out the politician whothat is the threat to democracy (tries to become a tyrant). They write down names of politicians on broken pieces of pottery. Politician, who got the most of such votes (and no less than 6,000) was banished from Athens for 10 years (but his property wasn’t confiscated).
True democratic country do not need such a “protection”. Stable balance between different GPIs (groups of political interests) plusand institutions that are protecting individuals against state abuses (passive protections) are the best shield against tyranny. That kind of “active protecting” political tools are very dangerous, because can be easily used against political opposition (while passive protections not).
|It is informative to look at the names of politicians who were banished this way: Themistocles, Thucydides, Kimon, son of Miltiades |
|(political opponent of Pericles), Alcibiades the Elder, etc. OstracismIt was a verythe nice tool to eliminate the most prominent politicians,|
|sometimes men with great personal honesty. Let’s imagine that Winston Churchill or Franklin Delano Roosevelt were eliminated from politics |
|that way. |
To recapitulate:
Cleisthenes’s reforms eliminated the true parliament and introduceding the bureaucratic offices (financed from the state treasury) used to reward citizens whothat supported the leaders of “democrats”. All important projects were prepared by a small group of people and then voted over by the meeting of all citizens, where no one could really control introduced projects. Very similar to quasi-democratic political systems (where bureaucrats employed by the state offices are the political clients and supporters of party leaders) of were created for example by PRI party in Mexico or Congress Party in India.
Well, I am exaggerating a little. Most of the time there wasn’t any organized structure of “democratic” faction in Ancient Athens. Political system was not so different from real democracy (except the ostracism, and the lack of parliament). New legislated laws was controlled by the Aeropagus, and there still was law system that was respected, so politicians have no absolute power.
However Cleisthenes reforms did notwasn’t introduced a real democracy but the another form of populistic system. With no oppressive institutions, because the overall economic conditions was good and there was no serious social conflicts. The political system was stable, because of the alliance betweenof middle-income citizens (zeugitai) and low-income citizens (thetes, led by charismatic leaders) against the aristocracy that, and that alliance cemented new political institutions.
Evolution of Athenian “democracy” before the Peloponnesian War
Until the Peloponnesian War quasi-democratic system in Athens worked quite well. Main reason was the economic prosperity:
First, Athens took over the trade cross the Aegean Sea, when the rich Greek city states from Asia Minor had fallen under the dominance of the Persian Empire.
Then, just before the Persian Wars, very rich deposits of silver (483 B.C.) were discovered in the Laurion Mountains, giving Athenians an extra income from the export ofing that precious metal and money minced from that silver.
Third, after the Persian Wars (about 454 B.C. when the treasury of Sea Union was moved from Isle Delos to Athens) Athens gained the domination over other the smaller states of Athenian Sea Union, and forced them to pay large sums of money to the Athenian treasury (that money was called collections for common defense, but finally became nothing more than a tribute).
Before the Peloponnesian War two important modifications of political system were introduced:
Since 487 B.C., the Aeropagus members were elected (to be more precise were randomly chosen from the candidates elected in local administrative districts).
Second, since the Efialtes reform in 462 B.C. Aeropagus prerogatives (area of authority) wereas further restricted. Since then Aeropagus had no longer privilege tof controlling the legality of new laws.
Both reforms mentioned above eliminated the last institution that could control the laws legislated by Meeting of all citizens (Ecclesia), and thus there was no longer way to control new laws promoted by charismatic politicians.
Crisis of the Peloponnesian War
A long Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta that startedbegan in 431 B.C. ended the period of economic prosperity in Athens and launched some changes in the relative power of different GPIs (groups of political interests):
The growth of the prices pauperized some of the middle-income citizens (zeugitai).
Many middle-income citizens died in land battles (the heavy infantry of Sparta was most of the time undefeatable).
The great role of fleet increased the political power and of low-income citizens (thetes), who were the sailors and oarsmen on Athenian warships.
Generally, thetes were interested in war and zeugitai in peace. And every year of the war the middle-income citizens GPI became weaker and Athenian politics and politicians became more populistic (see Thucydides “The History of the Pelloponesian War” )..
|See Thucydides The History of the Peloponnesian War. |
| |
|And the Chapter XVII with Melian Dialogues which disappeared from a version in MIT archives. |
| |
Finally this resulted inat was ended with the political trials (a kind of “hunt for witches”) of the “enemies of democracy”. Good example was the elimination of political faction leaded by Alcibiades. Then, after the unfortunate expedition against city-state of Siracuse, the war went very badly, and the political struggle became much more brute. There was a few coups d’etat, mass executions of political opponents, even the home war. Finally, defeated by Sparta, Athenians Empire collapsed.
|Very good test to find, if the country is really democratic is to observe, how well itsthe political systems behavesworks, when the country |
|was put thorough the mill. True democratic systems survive serious conditionss (there are numerous examples from the history of Great Britain|
|or Ancient Rome), but populistic quasi-democratic countries usually turn to true populistic. |
After the war
When Athens was freied from the domination of Sparta, the political system was reconstructed to the form more or less the same as before the disaster (maybe a little more conservative). But I am not going to describe theseat changes here, because I have any good resources at hand, and don’t want to serve you information that I can’t verify.
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