Latest / The Smart Cookies podcast / Why did Rome fall? And will the West follow? With Professor Peter Heather

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Why did Rome fall? And will the West follow? With Professor Peter Heather · The Smart Cookies podcast

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Peter Heather is chair of medieval history at King's College London. His many books include
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The Fall of the Roman Empire, Rome Resurgent, Christendom and most recently Why Empires
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Fall, Rome, America and the Future of the West, which he co-authored with John Rapley,
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in which is what we're going to be discussing today. Professor Heather, welcome.
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Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm very, very happy to take part in the conversation.
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What a pleasure. All right. When thinking about the fall of Rome, which is pretty popular
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amongst men these days, so I'm told even memes are being made about this topic mocking us.
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I have to say that I'm guilty as charged as well. Hence why I invited you in the first
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place. But yeah, when we're thinking about the fall of Rome, I think most of us instantly
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visualized that famous painting by Thomas Cole. I believe it's called Destruction of
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the Empire. Yeah. And on it, we see hordes of stinky barbarians pouring into this beautiful
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city, desecrating its glorious white marble structures, dragging women away and burning
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everything they can get their hands on. In short, the painting is sort of kind of hinting
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that Rome became too complacent. If it is Rome in the painting, I think that's the usual
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interpretation. But anyway, that Rome became too complacent and kind of too weak, which
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is why it was finally brought to its knees by these vast barbarian hordes who are constantly
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banging on its doors. What if anything is wrong with this interpretation of the fall
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of Rome? You can also say everything. Yeah. Where do you want to begin? Well, I think
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it's picking up a trope that's there in kind of historical literature, starting even before
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Edward Gibbon and going beyond. And it is this, I think what's fundamentally wrong about
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it and what I find frustrating about it is the sort of, as we would almost say now, colonial
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concentration on the imperial structure itself, as though it always has its own future in
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its own hands and that it should, in inverted commas, have been able to go on forever. Had
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it had the willpower or the moral force or the whatever qualities you think are appropriate
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for sustaining an empire, had it continued to exercise the same kind of moral power and
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will and determination that had shown in the period of its creation, then it should have
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been able to endure forever. And certainly for myself and for my co-author, who's a modern
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political economist, John Rappley, it's worth saying, which is why we have the dual focus
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in the book. This is what is deeply unsatisfactory about those kind of traditional images in
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the sense that when you're looking for what changes as the imperial structure unravels,
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there's plenty of change inside the Roman world. There always was, nothing is ever unchanging.
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Imperial systems, societies, cultures evolve, you would expect that. But if you're looking
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at the kind of raw strategic power, if you're thinking in terms of economic strength, military
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strength, demographic strength, people as well, then the big shifts are not happening
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inside the empire itself. The empire has many limitations. This is a thing that ran from
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Hadrian's wall to Iraq in a world where people move at about 40 kilometers a day. So it's
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unconscionably vast. It's like running the whole of Eurasia now, or something bigger.
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This is never going to be a perfect structure. Well, even small perfect human structures
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don't exist that long, big ones. So there's always going to be problems within it. You
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can find problems, but they are not showing any signs whatsoever of pulling the imperial
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system apart by itself. What really changes is the world around it. And this is the narrative
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that's always interested me. The changing of the strategic context, if you like, in
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which the Roman Empire operates. And more particularly, and this is the sort of central
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argument of the book that John and I both share, I'd thought about Rome and also thought
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about the modern world, even before talking to John. And John knows far more about the
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modern world than I do, but he kind of reinforced the lines of thought that were pinging through
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my brain. It is actually that these imperial systems not only come apart because the world
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has changed around them, but they materially make the world around them change. So in other
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words, there's a kind of Newton's third law of empire. To every empire, there's an opposite
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and equal reaction over time. It doesn't happen quickly, but it happens. The imperial systems
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and the way that they interact with surrounding populations change that strategic context
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in which they're operating and make it increasingly difficult for themselves to continue to operate
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as they had operated in the past. So this is... Right. If we're being a bit more specific,
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how did Rome change its surroundings? Yeah, it changes it in just about every way. When
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you look at the evidence is obviously, as you would expect, a bit rubbish. You don't
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get detailed accounts of everything that you would like to get. On the other hand, the
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archaeological picture is now increasingly rich and it reinforces what you find if you
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go looking for it in the texts. Namely, that there is an agricultural revolution operates
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on its borders. I'm talking here particularly about its European neighbors between the birth
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of Christ and about 400. You get more productive agricultural economies growing up. The reason
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why Rome is implicated in that is that Rome sticks this huge military force on its frontiers
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with a vast demand for foodstuffs, for raw materials, for labor, for leather goods, for
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timber, you name it. And actually, it's very reasonable to think that the agricultural
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systems around Rome adapt in order to be able to satisfy Roman demand and make money out
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of it. There are plenty of transactions that record this. But an incidental effect of increasing
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your intensity of your agricultural regimes is that there's more food available in your
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own society and populations increase. Before the 19th century, then the big, well, there
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are two big limiting factors on the size of potential populations. One is disease, which
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acts periodically. But the other structural one that's always there is the amount of food
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that your agricultural regime can produce. And whenever we see advances in agricultural
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technique in the sort of pre-modern world, we see populations increase. So Rome plays
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a role there. It also plays a role in developing social and political complexity because it
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is a rich target. The one thing that's not wrong about that painting is that those outside
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Rome like to raid it. In fact, what's perhaps the only thing that's wrong about it is it
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shows them pulling over statues and things like that. But actually, such was the difference
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in the economies that they were interested much more prosaic things as well. There was
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a fascinating find dredged up out of the Rhine near the German city of Speyer in the 1960s
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and early 70s. There was two cartloads of stuff, which was clearly the entire looted
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contents of a Roman villa were trying to be carted back across the Rhine. And they were
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intercepted or they sank or whatever. So you see what they took. And they took absolutely
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everything. They take all the frying pans. They take all the ladles. I think there are
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eight different sizes of frying pan in this collection because the metal was valuable.
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It was an easy source of metal. I don't know why I'm laughing, but the image in my head
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is very funny. You think barbarians are out there after golden people. Hairy barbarians
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with a cart full of pans. Taking frying pans. To me, it's an extraordinarily vivid image
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of what might be of interest. So Rome is very interested, therefore, in forming relationships
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with groups beyond the frontier who will minimize raiding and difficulties and this kind of
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stuff. So they're always looking for allies and sponsoring them with diplomatic subsidies
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and trading privileges, which those actors are beyond the frontier can then use to reinforce
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their role in their own societies. Three hundred years of that, which is what we see, you know,
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and you start to see the buildup of much larger and more powerful political actors in the
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non-Roman world. And we get so, you know, when Rome first moves into central Europe
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in the century, either side of the birth of Christ, 50 BC to 50 AD, this is a world of
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very small political communities. Tacitus lists about 60 of them just on the territory
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of Western Poland, Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic and Germany. So if you think of just
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that area then divided between 60, these things are tiny. But by the time we get to the fourth
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century after 300 years of this kind of diplomatic interaction and manipulation, we find much
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bigger confederations on the frontier. Again, they're not given, not un-given to fragmentation,
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shall we say, but the 50 or 60 have disappeared and they've been subsumed into confederations
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that might contain something like 10 or a dozen of the previous smaller entities. And
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that's just the start of the process. So this is what I mean about changing the strategic
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context, if you like. You affect the economy in fundamental ways. Social and political
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power is always closely related to economic structures. So if you change the economic
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structures, you're changing social and political patterns as well. And the overall effect of
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all of these things working together is to place the later Roman Empire in the context
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of a smaller number of more powerful neighbors. And not just doing this on its European frontiers,
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it's also doing it on all its other frontiers as well.
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I think part of the problem that we have or I have is picturing barbarians as a sort of
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constant. You know, have you seen the gladiator? I'm sorry, I'm bringing the gladiator up,
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but I can't help myself. You know, that first scene with the German barbarians and there
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are these unwashed people with long hair, just a small band, they have no chance against
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the might of the Roman army. And they come with like, whatever they say, and they have
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the head of the Roman messenger and they're throwing it around. And I think when we picture
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barbarians, it's always that kind of an image. They never evolve. They stay that way in our
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imagination. But just for a slight pushback from a complete non-historian here, but preparing
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for this interview, I quickly skimmed through the list of emperors in the last hundred years
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of or so of the Western Roman Empire, Wikipedia guilty as charged here. And it seems that
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almost all. Yeah, yeah, I agree. But it seems that almost all of them got murdered after
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a year or two, sometimes after a couple of months even looking at this list, it seemed
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more like some sort of a constant mafia shootout instead of a state with stable institutions.
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This aspect alone seems a little bit problematic internally. And we kind of can't blame barbarians
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for it, can we? Well, that's an interesting question. In part we can. Oh, wow. I was not
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expecting that answer, but please go ahead. No, absolutely. I mean, as I said at the beginning,
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there's no perfect political society. And succession is always a difficult problem.
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Even in the Roman Empire's most stable periods, succession is always the thing that brings
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out the knives because there's so much at stake. You get your man on the throne and
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everything follows. So this is why people who are in high political circles are always
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interested in succession and they're always looking to it. But two points about what we
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see, you know, you're talking about the fifth century there where we get this very swift
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success. Well, you get alternate periods of quite long reigns and then intense periods
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of infighting and then another period of a relative. I mean, it's more that a couple
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of guys there are keeping the peace for a bit longer. It's more that pattern of everybody
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dying every year, as it were. It is really that succession becomes very messy. And I
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think the reason why barbarians are involved in this is by the time we get to this highly
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messy succession process, we've already got some very large, well, two major barbarian
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settlements on Roman soil. And that is complicating the political game and putting extra pressure
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on it. So there's much more at stake. And that's one reason why succession becomes so
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bloody is because it's really important. And the barbarian groups are already settled on
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Roman soil. We've got two large settlements. You've got Vandals, Alans in Spain and then
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North Africa. And you've got Goths in southwestern Gaul, France, as is. They become further power
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blocks in the struggle for power. They're putting their all in. They are looking to
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destabilize in their own interests. At this point, they don't think that the empire is
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going to end. I mean, that's what's so fascinating. The settlements have happened by the first
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by the end of the first two decades of the fifth century. The western half of the empire
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carries on for another 50 years after that. And for clearly for about 40 of those years,
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no one thinks the empire is ever going to end. What we're trying to do is maximize our
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position within the imperial system, not not bring the thing down. It's only later on they
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realize, oh, my God, it's going to end. The new game in town is to establish your own
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kingdom, independent kingdom, which should be as big as possible, not not maximize your
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position within the structure. The structure is is over. But that takes a long time for
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people to do that. So I think barbarians are firmly implicated in that process.
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Interesting. All right. I know you get asked this all the time, but it's such a popular
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talking point that it needs clearing up over and over again, probably in the collective
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imagination. There's this persistent idea that, OK, yes, there might have been an oddball
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or even a psycho sitting on the throne here and there like Caligula or Nero or Commodus,
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but that it was more of an anomaly in Rome's earlier period. Later on, however, total decadence
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takes over, causing the empire to rot from within. Is there any truth to that at all?
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I honestly don't think there is. And this is the sort of new. My main reason for thinking
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that is that the new body of evidence that became available in the last couple of decades
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of the 20th century, when archaeologists developed the capacity for testing the overall health,
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as it were, of Rome's economy for the first time, because Rome's economy towns are important,
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whatever, but it's an agricultural economy and towns are there for the most part to make
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the agricultural economy work better. So what you really need to know about to understand
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the health of the Roman Empire is what's going on in the countryside. How many people are
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there? How busy is it? What's the intensity of rural production like? And before about
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1970, there was no capacity for looking at that. All you could do is look at the towns
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and see whether public buildings are being maintained or not. There was no systematic
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way to look at how many people might be occupying the Roman countryside. What changed that was
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the new technique of field surveying, which in turn relied on being able to identify and
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date Roman pottery and to know what density of pottery on the surface of a field represents
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a settlement underneath or is likely to. And it's the buildup of the knowledge to get to
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that point that takes until 1970 or thereabouts by, well, certainly by the mid 70s, you can
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date Roman pottery within 10 years. And you also know from trials, and these have been
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confirmed now where you can now use ground radar, of course, which wasn't available in
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the 1970s. But they've confirmed the general pattern that if you get a dense enough cluster
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of Roman pottery sherds on surface because modern ploughing goes down deep enough with
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tractors actually to pull up the hidden layers, then you can tell that there's a settlement
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underneath. And because you can date the pottery, you can therefore date the settlement and
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you know how many settlements there are. So the 19 later 1970s and 1980s are full of teams
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of archaeologists walking up and down valleys of the Roman world, picking up every last
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single damn piece of pottery and putting it in plastic bags. They literally operated with
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one meter square. Not exactly Indiana Jones. Absolutely not. You know, I would never they
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did go swimming in the afternoon if they were doing it in the Mediterranean. That was the
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good part. This is not this is not wildly exciting activity, but the results were exciting.
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OK, because the the collective results that emerged is that over the vast majority of
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Roman landscapes, not quite all, but the vast majority. So southern Britain, most of France,
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most of Spain, certainly North Africa did quite a lot on territory of what's now Israel,
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Greece, Turkey. That actually the period of maximum occupation to maximum rural population
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and maximum rural activity is actually the late empire. It's the fourth century, you
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know, in Gibbons view. And it's the kind of view you've got actually in gladiator as well.
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The second century is the is the apogee of the the peak. Yeah. Right. And everything
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is Marcus. Absolutely. Marcus Marcus. Damn. Or radius. He's the man. That's where it's
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all so fabulous. Smart guy. Yeah. You know, had enough time to meditate and do philosophy
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because, you know, the empire was just so great. It didn't need him from nine to five
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in the way that it would be. But it's become clear that's not correct. You know, the second
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century was absolutely fine. But the fourth century was much richer. There's no doubt
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that, as it were, maximum gross imperial product would be in the fourth century. And it's not
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just a single area. These surveys, bless them, were done not quite everywhere because you
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can get everywhere. But most places in the Roman world that were tested, that was the
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picture you got. So the idea that the empire is going downhill by the fourth century, and
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this is, you know, that's the standard picture you'll find in anything written before about
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1916 is that the empire is going downhill from the second century onwards, very much
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downhill by the fourth century and the fifth century collapse is just a natural product
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of this fourth century malaise, which is already so deeply established. But that's, you know,
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this is what would have all my sort of earlier peers rotating in their graves. I hope with
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excitement that they would just enjoy it. My God, you know, we know something we didn't
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know before this huge body of data. And it is a huge body of data. You can imagine all
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the little plastic bags we're talking about here. This is not this is not a small. An
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Ikea warehouse. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. They probably sell you some nice containers
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to keep the pottery in as well. Very, very helpful. But yes, but professor, if I if I
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may ask, since the empire wasn't expanding, at least not that much in the fourth century,
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how come it was so rich? I thought all the riches were coming when Rome was expanding
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earlier. What you mean by the slaves and so forth? Yeah, I mean, you get lots of movable
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wealth early on. You know, these triumphal parades that you're getting in first century
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BC and first century AD Rome, or particularly the first century BC, by the first century
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AD, they're just conquering Britain and you don't get very much from Britain. But in the
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first century BC, you're conquering Egypt and things like that. So you're parading the
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ancient wealth of the Near East through the streets of Rome. That kind of movable wealth
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we're not seeing so much of by the fourth century. But the fundamental generator of
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wealth is agricultural production in the Roman Empire. And that's at its peak. So, you know,
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we have very, and in fact, they turn up in the in the historical written evidence, we
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have a very well established and very prosperous landowning elite whose lives are very secure,
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shows up in the richness of their villas. The Roman Empire is structurally able to support
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itself. I mean, I do think this is an important point. It starts off as a conquest state,
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but by the time we get to the fourth century, it is a structure that's been there at maximum
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extent by for at least 400 years. This is not something that's relying massively on
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flows of wealth from the outside to keep it in business.
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Alright, so the periphery outside of Rome kind of rises. Yeah, right. But Rome is doing
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just fine up until that point. Yes, I still can't imagine. Why does that tip it over into
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a decline or a fall? What exactly happens? Can you complete this image? Yes, of course,
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when we talk about Rome, by the fourth century, we're not talking about the city of Rome and
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just southern central southern Italy, we are talking about the empire, the whole empire,
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you know, this is this is the fundamental point one has to get, you know, when who's
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a Roman in the fourth century? Well, it's everyone who participates in this elite land
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earning culture. So living in villas, learning Latin, making learning, learning the Latin
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Greek classics, living under Roman law, participating in the political structures of empire, and
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they are everywhere, you know, there are plenty of them in Britain, which is about the sort
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of furthest output, but also in Syria, you know, all the way from Britain to Northern
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Iraq, we have Romans who understood themselves as Roman, and were accepted as Romans. So
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it's, it's a big, big enterprise. Outside those frontiers, though, we have a whole series
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of actors whose political structures are becoming much more robust, they're capable of parrying.
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You see this in the fourth century, they're capable of parrying some Roman ambitions,
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not they're not capable of conquering the empire. So confederations like the goth that
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I cut my teeth on, for instance, in my doctoral thesis, can fend off the worst excesses of
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imperial of Roman imperialism in the fourth century, but they're not showing any signs
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of conquering large parts of it. Two things, I think really changed that one is Rome's
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ambitions in the Near East, have a kind of counter effect in the Persian world, and generate
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a superpower competitor. By the third century for the first time, Rome hasn't had a superpower
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competitor for several centuries until the mid third century when we see the rise of
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a new Persian dynasty, the Sasanians. And from that point on, a very large chunk of
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Roman military and economic resources have to be devoted to the Persian frontier. In
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the third century, Persians defeat and kill three Roman emperors and destroy their armies.
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By the end of the third century, Rome has mobilized itself enough to restore stability
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to Persia, but the Persian threat hasn't gone away. So you've used up a lot of your spare
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economic surplus fending off Persia, and it will have to stay there. So when you look
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at the military listings and our other information, it suggests that something like a third of
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Rome's military establishment from 400 onwards, sorry, 300 onwards is always pointing in a
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Persian direction. And you cannot move it. If you try and move it, then Persia will take
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advantage of it. So that's one big change. Then the other big change is the arrival of
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a step nomad group Huns, which causes chaos amongst these semi subdued client states on
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Rome's European frontiers, people like the Goth that I studied. But all the way from
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the Northern Black Sea literal in about 370 to modern Hungary in about 410, so over a
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period of about 40 years, a Hunnic steppe empire builds up, partly by absorbing some
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of these client states like the Goths, but partly by, well, there are two reactions,
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some get absorbed, and the others run away into the Roman Empire. So involuntarily, in
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that generation from about 370 to 410, we see two massive waves of barbarian invasion
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of the Roman Empire, which is not a kind of, you know, let's go and invade Rome because
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it's fun kind of phenomenon.
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Yeah, there's no sign they would ever have done any of that if the Huns hadn't turned
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up. And an awful lot of those who try invading the Roman Empire get destroyed by Roman counteraction.
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This is not an easy thing to do. It's not a pleasant choice. They're caught between
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a rock and a hard place. But quite large numbers do. And enough that the Roman Empire can't
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defeat them all individually. So we get too big a rush. So what we then see is the build
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up on Roman soil of these migrant groups into two larger confederations. Those that survive
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form themselves into two larger confederations that are big enough to survive on Roman soil.
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And they find out the hard way. Quite a lot of them die or are captured and turned into
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slaves or whatever defeated before the survivors form these two larger confederations. And
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this is the heart of what I studied in my doctoral work so many years ago now is actually
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that process of taking these quite large client states from over the border and forming them
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into even bigger confederations on Roman soil because they've run away from the Huns and
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in order to survive. And it's that which finally changes the balance of power against the Western
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Empire. If I can go back to the painting from the
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beginning I think it successfully conjures up a feeling of a very specific type of fear
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which is you know hey my friend look at the paradise we had but we are letting it slip
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away. Usually of course because we are losing our core values which is also why the image
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is popular online especially with the conservatives. But as you're telling me this is pretty much
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hogwash. It is. As I said the leaders of these two large confederations become part of the
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elite. Part of the elite. Yeah they all start learning Latin and reading Virgil. They become
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players in the Roman political game. What they do is that they start eroding parts of
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the Roman Empire's tax base because the Vandal Islands settle in North Africa which was the
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sort of jewel in the Western half of the Roman Empire's crown. This is we're talking here
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Tunisia the snazier parts of Morocco and Algeria. This is where before well in the late 19th
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century and up to World War II this is where all the rich people from Europe went on their
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holidays and they all had villas. This is lovely. I don't know if you've been there
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but this is a lovely place. Fabulous climate. Very agricultural. Yeah not really I haven't
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been there but you know it's where all the French designers and industrialists would
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have their summer homes. This is a beautiful country. So the Vandal Islands set up there
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one rich territory. The enlarged Gothic Confederation they set up in southwestern France. Not a nice
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place. Every time the empire loses a chunk of its tax base that immediately limits the
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size of the military forces that it can maintain because the tax is what pays for the professional
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army and what you see across the fifth century is the slow erosion of the buying power of
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the tax revenues coming into the centre. In part because these confederations are able
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to expand the territories slowly that they control but essentially what happens is that
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the western empire ceases to be able to exercise a predominance of military force within its
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own sphere of control as the tax revenues dry up. That's the process. There are two
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sacks of Rome but the Roman Empire the last of which is in 457 but the empire itself carries
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on after the sacks and the city of Rome is still pretty grand place. It's not the sacking
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that ends Rome it's the disappearance of its military forces because it can't. It no longer
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has the tax revenues to keep big enough military forces in being. I have to say I'm only slightly
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disappointed in a way because instead of this dramatic sack of Rome this high drama Rome
34:06
collapses because it couldn't collect taxes anymore. This is not what I was expecting
34:11
going into this conversation. The centre already runs out of buying power and that means that
34:17
local elites who are still there like the British villa owners have to navigate whatever
34:23
way they can into a new future where the Roman state is no longer able to protect them. But
34:30
weren't Romans conscripting these vandals and Goths into their armies at a certain point?
34:37
They sometimes fight for them. Half the Roman army from the time of Augustus onwards consists
34:43
of non-citizen auxiliaries some of whom come from outside the frontier always. But it wasn't
34:49
enough. No and because you can't you know if you mercenaries only fight for money so
34:57
I see if you run out of money here we go again yes yes indeed follow the money okay yeah
35:07
I've heard that before yes I think someone said that in the past yeah yes okay last push
35:17
back and I know I already know what you're gonna say but I but please humor me. I read
35:23
an article a while back for the life of me I can't remember who it was or where I read
35:28
it but I do remember that in it the author insisted that one of the reasons at least
35:33
why Rome fell was that the elites couldn't relate to the issues facing ordinary citizens
35:39
anymore because they were so far removed from reality on the ground that of course left
35:45
them kind of unable to navigate this giant ship through the crises that it was facing
35:51
is that a semi-legitimate point or not at all again? Well there's an interesting observation
36:01
lying underneath it I think which is that of course in the political debates and discourse
36:09
of the of the Roman period and indeed most pre-modern ones what we call the ordinary
36:15
people have no place or part you know you you don't have a vote that's brutal you know
36:22
I come from solid peasant stock I know right I know my great- same to be honest my great
36:28
grandfather left the farm in about the 1860s you know prior to that point he wouldn't have
36:35
had a vote you know right the stuff of politics is above your pay grade you're not involved
36:42
no one gives a damn what you think you know that's that is that is the brute reality
36:50
and you know what I'm teaching my students I asked them to think you know who are the
36:57
politically enfranchised classes in any given era who's participating in some ways in the
37:03
political process it's never you know just three people the the groups involved can be
37:10
considerably wider than that and in some relatively underdeveloped economic context you find quite
37:21
large numbers of peasant free peasant farmers who have a lot of legal rights and who are
37:27
involved in low-level political discussions that feed into the high-level political discussions
37:32
so you know it isn't just always one answer you have to think about it but the you know
37:38
the mass of the rural population is not involved in these political processes the the villa
37:45
owners certainly are villa owners and above are profoundly involved in this process and
37:54
they are threatened by it in the sense that there's only a fixed stock of good agricultural
38:01
assets when a king of the Goths or a king of the Vandals settles his army in a place
38:08
they want agricultural assets they don't want to go and dig holes they don't want to be
38:12
you know getting out the spades and the picks and whatever but they do want to be landowners
38:17
so there's a kind of competitive process about distribution of land so villa owners care
38:24
about this process and they're deeply involved in it it's one of the myths that's knocking
38:30
around in the historiography that the Roman landowners could say goodbye to the Roman
38:35
state because it its disappearance did not affect them it indeed they may have benefited
38:41
from it by the fact that some of the tax demands disappeared but that's not borne out by the
38:46
evidence everywhere the arrival of a new landowning group in terms of the chief supporters of
38:56
barbarian kings distributing land to their followers that had effects for Roman landowners
39:01
sometimes total you know the the landowning latinate toga wearing landowning class of
39:10
southern Britain disappears completely there is no sign of them that we see a complete
39:17
disappropriation of their landed properties so that's total elsewhere it's more of a
39:24
deal and actually the way in which Roman landowners are able to negotiate their way into the post
39:30
Roman world is by giving up part of their assets and that's a more normal outcome so
39:38
across most of Gaul though not I think in the northeast where again the disappropriation
39:43
was I think total but in southern Gaul the local landowners are able to do a deal with
39:48
Gothic and Burgundian kings again the Italians do deals with Gothic kings and they're able
39:56
to keep some of their assets but they lose some they do lose some of the some of the
40:03
capital assets on which their wealth is based so they did care about it it's it's more
40:09
a question of you know what the hell are you going to do when the state that has protected
40:14
you for 400 years and which you have successfully navigated you know its structures in order
40:20
to build up your wealth when that structure disappears you are really caught in a difficult
40:25
situation so I I think it's it's not that the the landowning elites did not understand
40:32
what was going on or were unaffected by what was going on they knew perfectly well what
40:37
was going on and wow fascinating what does this
40:43
immediate post-Roman fall in the west at least world look like I'm just imagining myself
40:52
what would I do if I was a Roman citizen and the institutions just disappeared I'm just
40:58
imagining myself sitting on a pile of rubble and just being like what am I supposed to
41:04
do now yes where am I going what am I doing like what's or is it supplanted by a different
41:11
system straight away and the process is kind of seamless and people don't even ordinary
41:16
people except the elites don't even notice I think for a lot of peasant farmers if you
41:21
went in an area that got heavily fought over you wouldn't notice very much but you were
41:28
still a farmer working for somebody else absolutely okay but if but there were some places where
41:33
fighting is fierce and that has horrible consequences for everyone as we know and it was no less
41:40
horrible in the early middle ages than it is now it depended where you were so in Britain
41:48
it looks as though Britain is taken over by a large number of quite small intrusive groups
41:54
crossing over the channel and there I think villas did were reduced to piles of rubble
42:03
and did disappear it's a pretty violent and a pretty sudden process in those areas where
42:09
you've got a more organized taking over group so where you're dealing with the king of a
42:17
big gothic confederation or a vandal confederation then that's what allows you then to start
42:23
doing these deals but you have to go to his court I mean I think the the big change you
42:29
would see would be you set out from your villa but instead of going to the Roman regional
42:33
capital you go to the royal court whoever your nearest powerful barbarian king is and
42:40
you say well you know if you keep me on I can keep a certain amount of revenues flowing
42:47
and if you protect me so I only lose maybe a quarter of my assets then I can give you
42:51
a lot in return I'm a very useful person how about a deal and that is that is I think what's
42:59
happening across large parts of the former empire it's that kind of a process how come
43:06
the barbarian king is not okay we have a deal and then a couple of months later he's like
43:11
hey mate I'm gonna need 50 percent instead of 25 percent well exactly I think you know
43:19
that was the first shot things did move on but actually but what you see is a very interesting
43:24
process unfolding over the next political generation whereby the Roman landowners are
43:30
able to keep some of their lands but then we've got Europe now divided into a series
43:35
of successor kingdoms which fight each other and if they're fighting each other what do
43:41
we need we need military manpower we don't have a large-scale taxation anymore we change
43:46
from professional armies to armies composed of landowners and their retainers and within
43:52
a generation of the disappearance of the empire if we say the empire disappears around about
43:57
470 with the the overthrow of the last pretenders to the western throne by 500 we've got Roman
44:05
landowners fighting for barbarian kings turning up with their dependents so the initial deal
44:13
is we hold on to a bit of our assets the longer term deal is we become military aristocrats
44:21
and actually that then brings about this extraordinary fusion between Goths and Romans in Spain or
44:29
Franks and Romans in Gaul or whatever because you're all doing the same kind of thing for
44:35
the same royal courts so interesting how no matter what period of history we are talking
44:44
about the elites kind of find a way to survive even though the whole Roman Empire has just
44:50
collapsed well some of them do I know some of them okay Britain is an exception yeah
44:56
you guys over there were a little bit too violent yeah they were not on top of the process
45:01
at all we we don't know of course you know we can't give you a full body count whereas
45:10
it were right you know in any particular region there used to be 90 villa owners and 33 of
45:16
them made it through got bumped off right right I said you know we we tend to hear about
45:22
those who are successful because they're and they're sick they're descendants survive and
45:31
write things so you know so I wouldn't I wouldn't be sure that everybody makes it okay fair
45:39
enough let's fast forward to the present time as it stands right now what are some of the
45:47
most obvious parallels between the end of days of Rome and the West in 2024 well to
45:55
my mind that the big parallel is that the sort of Western world system as it evolved
46:05
after 1945 around with American leadership of a sort of coalition of very rich Western
46:12
powers that has transformed the non-Western world in the same way that the Roman Empire
46:21
transformed the non-Roman world and in such a way that it's building up or it's changed
46:31
the economic strategic context within which we all live within the planet so you know
46:38
the Western world just about continues to develop economically and to grow slowly very
46:47
slowly but what's really changing everything is the kind of growth rates that you see in
46:54
the developing world so that not just brick countries but other parts of the planet too
47:02
you know over the last decade seven out of the ten fastest growing economies are Africa
47:08
you know in a sense China and India are yesterday's news Africa is the future the world is changing
47:16
around us and the you know the figure that we start with in the book is that in 1999
47:26
the West is producing and consuming 80 percent of global GDP you know three quarters of everything
47:35
is being consumed in the West and that's an extraordinary level of economic domination
47:44
that's down to about 60 percent and most of that happening in the crash of 2008 but then
47:52
slowly slowly moving down subsequently but you know we've gone from 80 to 60 percent
47:59
but that's not because the total size of the world economy has shrunk or even that Western
48:03
economies have shrunk by you know on that scale it's because the economies of the rest
48:08
of the planet have grown so much and are continuing to grow so that's the fundamental
48:14
message it's a bit like the the one about the Roman Empire you know the empires do not
48:21
have their fates totally in their hands they can't you can't necessarily expect them to
48:28
go on forever there may not be something that allows you to continue the same level of global
48:34
domination that you've exercised over a previous era because the context in which you're now
48:40
operating has changed so much and and that's the fundamental narrative that drew John and
48:47
myself together I thought I saw it in the Roman world I thought I saw it already in
48:52
the modern world looking at it as a you know a pretty well-informed but not expert on the
48:59
modern world it seemed to me those patterns were very clear but he and he's an expert
49:06
in the developing world in modern political he's a political economist with a specialist
49:11
in the with a specialism in the developing world so he was interested in the non-Western
49:17
world and has lived and worked there all his life but we got into a conversation and we
49:23
both felt that this is this is the big story you know that and Western politicians go around
49:30
talking as though it's entirely in their hands and you know elect me and I can reverse this
49:35
and whatever and you know everything will be fantastic if you elect me we can make America
49:40
great again you can't you can't make America great like it was in the 1950s because the
49:46
level of economic power that had in the 1950s can never be replicated it belonged to a particular
49:54
moment most of the rest have been flattened rest of the West have been flattened by World
49:58
War Two and the developing world hadn't developed yet so America is globally dominant in an
50:03
extraordinary way in the 1950s and on into the 1960s but it belongs to that time and
50:11
you won't begin to make sensible choices about how to proceed from where we are now
50:16
unless you really see that unless you stop pretending that something that belonged to
50:22
a particular moment could magically be recreated in a totally changed global context so in
50:33
this case if we acknowledge this pill that's quite hard to swallow what is the best course
50:41
of action in the West since the fate is not entirely in our hands anymore what can we
50:48
do to kind of ease the pain there are various things that you can do to maximize your position
50:56
going forward and that probably need to be done I mean one is obviously it would change
51:02
the nature of the relations that you develop with the world around you and John and I both
51:08
think for instance that there are an awful lot of countries that have emerged to statehood
51:17
out of colonial pasts and to share considerable values with Western countries and you know
51:25
in saying what we're saying we both think that there is certain structures that develop
51:33
within the Western world that make life better for most people and we think particularly
51:40
of relatively free presses particularly of rule of law you know I teach a lot of students
51:46
now who come from different autocratic societies of one kind or another Eastern Bloc Chinese
51:54
whatever and they do say when they come to Britain they can't believe how relaxed everyone
51:59
is and the reason that people relaxed in what way in daily life yes in daily life and it's
52:06
simply you know right you can't be just be screwed over in Britain or any other Western
52:11
country because the person next door to you has got connections into the party you know
52:16
whereas you can you know everything is so much more fragile in autocratic societies
52:22
because if you've got a chain of connection that allows you you can just pull the rug
52:26
out from someone you know the rule of law is far from perfect I'm from Eastern Europe
52:30
so I think it's a bit of a different story although I don't want to make it seem too
52:36
bad because I'm you know I'm from Slovenia sure but still I think you know maybe it's
52:41
also because it's a small country so people know each other and these circles of power
52:45
are kind of incestuous and everybody knows each other and there's a lot of corruption
52:49
and nepotism it takes a long time actually for I mean this is the kind of problem in
52:56
the in the 1990s where people were swallowing around patronizing you know people from the
53:02
West were patronizing the rest of the world and saying you know why don't you just be
53:05
like us whatever it was 200 years of fighting within Western societies after the Industrial
53:12
Revolution that actually created a rule of law which protects most people reasonably
53:20
well. You know rich people still have an advantage but it's not an overwhelming advantage you
53:25
know that that's where you're trying to get to you know you you'll never invent a system
53:32
where it isn't worthwhile being rich but you want it so that the advantage of being rich
53:38
is limited that you can't just do what the hell you want you know. Well I wonder if even
53:44
in the West we are kind of leaving this point these ultra billionaires are now owning digital
53:50
platforms that we're all using son of like public spaces I heard this ex Greek finance
53:57
minister saying that we've left the realm of capitalism and are now living in techno
54:03
feudalism I think he wrote a book about it. No sure so I certainly think the challenges
54:10
are there the challenges are deeply there and again recognizing them is very important
54:19
you'll not get anywhere towards limiting them if you don't realize that that is a problem
54:25
that's why inequality huge inequality is such a problem because it leaves right it gives
54:30
so much advantage to the very wealthy not least by having a very vulnerable larger group
54:37
of people who will having to do anything to survive so they will respond to what rich
54:44
people want. No I think thinking a bit harder about what democracy means so you were asking
54:50
about parallel so the first parallel is very much the development of the developing world
54:54
and changing that strategic context but it does have the knock on effect then of creating
54:59
challenges and problems within western society because expectations about continued growth
55:04
of wealth within the west are unrealistic and therefore that then creates tensions and
55:11
stresses because people expect you know to carry on becoming richer that my children's
55:18
generation is the first one that probably won't be richer than their parents. So how
55:27
are we going to respond to that we're going to accept that in a kind of sensible way or
55:31
is that going to lead people to vote for people who seem to offer easy answers they're actually
55:38
rubbish but you know that offer a kind of false hope that somehow the fundamental change
55:50
in the global patterns of economic organization can somehow be overturned by voting for this
55:57
particular person in Britain well really yeah you know you can see the challenge is seriously
56:06
there challenges are very serious. Professor is it always necessary that when the periphery
56:12
rises that an empire must fall and the periphery sort of takes over I'm thinking about the
56:19
so-called polycentric world order people keep talking about lately all the time so we have
56:25
the west which is not as strong as it used to be we also have China we have India as
56:32
you mentioned we have Africa African states and they're all kind of sort of equally strong
56:38
maybe keeping an eye on each other it's maybe an uneasy equilibrium but it's an equilibrium
56:43
nevertheless is that possible I think that is possible and you know I alternate between
56:51
being optimistic and pessimistic you know as I think anybody any sensible person would
56:58
as I was saying it I realize it's too optimistic you're right well I'm not sure it is necessarily
57:05
in the sense that if we can get past our colonial heritages in the west and accept the fact
57:14
that you know everybody else has a right to be wealthy too and we have no particular right
57:18
to be massively more wealthy than everybody else and in fact a lot of our extra edge in
57:25
terms of wealth came from some very dodgy lines of economic development which had a
57:32
lot to do with slavery and that story has still got a lot of mileage to run yet you
57:37
know if we can get past that then it is possible to build coalitions and alliances and you
57:47
know they won't there won't just be one of them but we do actually need that to happen
57:51
because there are some big things that are much bigger than rise and fall of the west
57:57
or whatever to be dealt with right you know global warming yeah yeah exactly we all have
58:07
to meet this there's no point in having a kind of well this is actually right right
58:12
this is my last question professor because for the first time like you mentioned we are
58:17
facing truly collective challenges as humanity the climate breakdown ai probably a couple
58:23
more epidemics and also to a degree the population collapse at least in the west also china is
58:28
dealing with that sure there used to be localized natural disasters or catastrophes before but
58:35
most of these issues we can't solve as individual countries anymore right if we don't work
58:42
together we all go down yeah do you think it's possible for empires of today kind of
58:48
always hungry for power as we see in the news to not see this is just another power grab
58:55
in other words despite our tribalism can we smarten up enough to cooperate and survive
59:02
i think we can i mean i wouldn't put my house on betting that we will but i think we can
59:11
okay if you think in evolutionary terms and you look at human beings you know we are we
59:18
have an extraordinary capacity for cooperation it is the capacity for cooperation that has
59:25
made us the dominant predator across the planet you know we don't have very big teeth we don't
59:33
have massive claws you know we're quite fast we're not very fast it is the capacity for
59:39
cooperation that has made human beings such a dominant force as far as we can tell if
59:46
you look at the you know the history of planetary evolution there has never been a species that's
59:51
been this dominant so that is both the problem but is also potentially the root success if
1:00:00
we have the capacity to revise our concepts of them and us so that them so that all of
1:00:07
humanity is us that we do all need to work together we do all have a stake together in
1:00:14
ensuring that the conditions and the planet remain viable for our descendants then it
1:00:23
can be done i mean over time human societies have increased in scale and size they've revised
1:00:31
their boundaries of them and us from quite small and limited ones to bigger ones you
1:00:36
know yeah sounds like a big order it sounds like a difficult problem but i'm not without
1:00:45
hope because i think you know at the moment you can still go around more or less saying
1:00:51
climate change is a fraud and all this kind of stuff you can just about get away with
1:00:55
it in another 10 years you won't be able to and the demographic effects of massively aging
1:01:04
populations in the west will that require a lot of thought and structural solutions
1:01:12
and that are not unrelated to what you might do about the areas of the planet that are
1:01:19
going to become less and less habitable you know those kind of things you will move beyond
1:01:28
i think we will move beyond the very divisive political debates of the moment because i
1:01:33
think it'll just become clear that they're no use and that's leading people down blind
1:01:38
alleys it won't be pretty we say it won't be easy right i think it could be done as
1:01:44
we say back home from your mouth to god's ears because things are looking pretty scary
1:01:48
out there they are yeah no i'm not scared i'm i don't want i wouldn't want to come
1:01:53
off thinking that i'm you know some born-again internationalist looking at the world through
1:01:58
rose-tinted spectacles i have no illusions about you know how ruthless human beings are
1:02:07
that's you know you've you've got to understand us as the most vicious intelligent predator
1:02:14
that evolution has ever thrown up otherwise the the history of the world since human beings
1:02:19
appeared with it on its on the earth it makes no sense you know so you you really do have
1:02:26
to take that time depth view but we do also have this extraordinary capacity for cooperation
1:02:31
so a sobering thought professor if you can humor me one last time who was the absolutely
1:02:40
the worst roman emperor and why is please humor me let's end on this note
1:02:47
that's such a great question thank you who do i think is the worst like absolutely just
1:02:59
a complete mess from start to finish yes that's i think whoever comes to mind i think sadly
1:03:08
although i quite like him in some interesting start the the emperor julian of the fourth
1:03:15
century okay is that the guy who was killed by the persians yes no yes it is he was he's
1:03:23
the guy who tries to turn the christian empire back into the pagan pagan empire and he tries
1:03:30
to turn the whole of the non-christian world into a kind of mirror image pagan church which
1:03:41
had never been you know all the non-christian cults were separate cults and they all did
1:03:45
different things and whatever and he tries to make everyone that sounds pretty good yeah
1:03:50
no i mean it's uh but he's he's the idiot who goes into battle at the end uh having
1:03:57
forgot forgotten to put his armor on okay well okay yeah okay i can understand why you
1:04:04
chose that's bringing his short-lived attempt to uh repaganize the empire uh to a shattering
1:04:11
halt as he gets a spear through the through the chest you know darwinism at work yes and
1:04:18
and okay if you read his works he really is a bit of an idiot you know
1:04:24
you might say he's a bit unlucky in that so much of his writing survived so you can read about
1:04:28
him a lot but i think i will do just that before bed tonight he kind of to cheer myself up um
1:04:36
first year undergraduate approach to historical analysis you might say uh and sufficient power
1:04:42
to act on it and it's the combination of the two that makes him um in the end so utterly
1:04:48
reminds me of myself to be honest um thank you so much professor heather what a what an amazing
1:04:54
conversation i thoroughly enjoyed it where can people get your book um what find bookstores
1:04:59
everywhere yeah find bookstores everywhere um uh we're being translated to um there there are
1:05:08
two chinese versions one mainland china and one taiwan that would make fascinating comparison
1:05:15
if one was able to read both right but uh spanish italian um don't think there's french yet there
1:05:22
is a german translation coming um but uh english versions of course um fully available there'll be
1:05:30
uh an english paperback very shortly um that's in the works but it's a nice as you've seen it's
1:05:37
not a very long read that's uh yeah yeah yeah we'll put the link into this it's meant to be
1:05:42
lively and fun well is it stimulating stimulating yeah good word uh professor do you have any social
1:05:52
media where people can find what you're up to these no i'm a sad old english git who doesn't do
1:05:57
social media so um i don't do it too busy living life as it should be well i my children laugh at
1:06:06
me of course but i've always uh made a principle to stay at least one major technological shift
1:06:13
behind the rest of the world so i can get on doing what i want to do rather than having to run around
1:06:18
after it so so far it seems to have worked out all right but to be honest i envy you
1:06:25
professor thanks again my pleasure i hope we can do this again in the future i would love to thank
1:06:29
you so much for listening if you enjoyed what you heard please consider subscribing and following
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