[derbOac]

This makes an important point, and is important to think about, but I'm also interested in how societies go to that brink and come back.

I suspect there's a bit of bias in this, as you don't hear as much about the nations that come to the point of collapse and then somehow immediately recover, you hear more about those that disintegrate into decades of chaos and disorganization.

The essay also points to something else on my mind a lot lately, which is, when does that continuation of the status quo stop, and why? At what point did these societies start to see themselves as something else, and why? Is it always due to some fundamental breaking down of some governmental or military covenant?

[jcranmer]

The best answer may well be some time in the 1500s. Recall that as the era shifts from the late Classical to early Medieval, all of these people are still speaking the Roman language (Vulgar Latin, which evolves into the various Romance languages), following the Roman religion (Christianity), obeying Roman legal codes, and in many aspects, still following Roman customs and experience the same Roman economic and administrative system. In the case of the Byzantines, there is continuous institutional survival until the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Now, what that Roman society looks like in the 500s is very much not the same Roman society we conceptualize of in the 100s, but there is largely no clean break [1]. There is political disunity, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't a recognized commonality of culture (cf. China, where similar major periods of disunity are still categorized as all being part of China).

The major rupture is the Protestant Reformation, where the split between Protestant and Catholic Christianity proves irreconcilable, and results in the end of the notional idea of a unified Christendom. This is also when you start to see an end towards the practice of writing in the literate language of Christendom (i.e., Latin) and instead move towards working in the vernacular, especially in endeavors like scientific research.

[1] The major exception is Britain, where the end of Roman rule is very abruptly realized, and there is a distinct clear horizon between sub-Roman Britannia and Anglo-Saxon Britain. But the British experience is largely the exception, not the rule.

[userulluipeste]

"The major rupture is the Protestant Reformation, where the split between Protestant and Catholic Christianity proves irreconcilable, and results in the end of the notional idea of a unified Christendom."

The Christendom ceased to be unified a whole lot earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism

[wahern]

The Church of the East split in the early 5th century, followed later that century by the Oriental Orthodox Churches. Altogether they may have been larger than the Roman (Latin and Greek/Byzantine) Church.

Armenia became a Christian state before the Roman Empire did, and Ethiopia not long after Rome did. (Both churches now part of Oriental Orthodoxy. Another state church around the area of Sudan emerged, too, the last of whom disappeared only in the 1600-1700s.)

The growth of Christianity in the Persian Empire created a major source of friction between the Roman and Persian Empires (the latter was nominally Zoroastrian, at that time also a proselytizing religion), creating space for the emergence of Islam, which would later lead to the end of both empires and the conversion of millions of Christians and Zoroastrians.

Christianity was never coterminous with the Roman Empire. It just seemed that way from the perspective of European history and culture. European Christianity eventually forgot about those other Christians (I'm not sure if the reverse was true, though). Relative to modern Protestantism, all of these churches have near identical theology, Roman Catholicism included. Which perhaps bolsters the point about Protestantism representing a significant break in the European historical narrative.

[jcranmer]

Yes, there's a rupture between Eastern and Western Christianity, but Western Christianity still accepts the authority of the pope to speak on behalf of Christianity, and there's still a sense that they're still part of the same Christendom, just disputing who is going to come out on top. You might compare it to the modern "One China Policy" in that both Taiwan and China see themselves as the legitimate government representing all of China. Note that the Holy Roman Emperor and the Byzantine Emperor both titled themselves as Emperor of the Romans--they're still claiming heir to the same unified Christendom.

(And also note that the latest Byzantine Emperors repeatedly tried to mend the schism to secure Western aid in stabilizing their empire.)

[unsnap_biceps]

Can you give any examples of societies that went to the brink and reversed course? I can't think of any, but I'd be fascinated to learn more about examples who have.

[topkai22]

Rome, multiple times before the western empire actually fell. I’m not an expert, but roughly there was a major civil war about once a century (or more), a transition from a republic to an empire, the experiment with the tetrarchy, and a major change in state religion.

They didn’t entirely “reverse course”, the society changed and evolved at each point, but it remained recognizably Roman. And that’s just the western empire.

[acjohnson55]

Yep. The Crisis of the Third Century, especially.

But also, pre-imperial Rome, a number of times. The Conflicts of the Orders, the entire late-Republican period from the Gracchi to the final demise of the Republic under Augustus.

And then the Eastern Empire had to reinvent itself multiple times. The near-collapse to the Caliphate. The Norman invasions of the Balkans and the First Crusade. The Fourth Crusade and its aftermath.

---

Then in the West, you have a couple brief periods where Rome isn't subject to Eastern Imperial overlordship. Justinian fully reconquers it in the late 500s, and Rome stays nominally part of the Eastern Empire until its brief loss to the Lombards in the 750s. But Charlemange's father, Pepin the Short, reconquered Rome and confirmed the Pope's authority over it. A couple decades later, Charlemagne is crowned Emperor of the Romans. And Rome exists under a constantly shifting balance of authority between Popes and Emperors until the Italian Unification in the late 1800s.

It should also be noted that even before the end of the Western Imperial line in 476, Rome rarely served as the actual home of the emperors since the late 200s.

---

So there's an interesting question of whether Rome ever did really fall, before the modern period. I would say "yes", in the sense that after the mid-400s, you never again have a sense of authority over the Mediterranean basin eminating from Rome (or the northern half of Italy). That's what people think of when they think of Rome. There are only brief periods of anything like that, and you never again have multi-generational, institutional authority.

But in other ways, there really is a continual reinvention of political systems that trace their lineage and cultural power to Rome. In that sense, it's kind of like China, which is similarly not really a continuous institution.

[cadamsdotcom]

You’d really enjoy the book “The Democratic Coup D’Etat.” It looks at societies that had revolutions then installed democracy, starting with Portugal and moving to the US and several others, and tries to draw a through-line and find the common elements.

Focused on democratic turnarounds so its adjacent to your curiosity - but a great, enlightening read.

[skybrian]

In China, after the collapse of a dynasty, there eventually was another dynasty. It wasn’t the same rulers, but a similar pattern recurred.

Also, the Roman Empire had terrible civil wars and recovered. Until it didn’t.

[nn3]

There are many examples in anquity. Greek had a flowering in the Bronze age, then a dark age, before classical Greek took over. The Hittites had a major disaster including the destruction of their capital before they recovered in a great way (until their final demise at the end of the Bronze age). Egypt had several dark periods where they recovered from, until they fell prey to Greek and Roman imperialism.

[vkou]

In contemporary societies, you can view any peaceful transition from a strong-monarch to a parliamentary democracy as such an example. None of that happened out of the largess of the monarch, it happened because pressure and unrest has been building up, and he sees the writing on the wall, and would rather cede power peacefully rather than go the way of the Bourbons[1].

There are many situations in history when people on one side back down right before shit hits the fan. Another good example of that was British subjugation of India. Doesn't matter how much hot gas Churchill would emit about keeping India forever British, when push came to shove, Clement was sympathetic to India's desire for freedom, and did not choose to plunge the empire into colonial war.

--

[1] Which was up the steps to a guillotine, by order of the National Convention.

[mejutoco]

Funny enough, in Spain the bourbons went in the other direction in recent history (1975): republic -> civil war and dictatorship and then the bourbon monarch that was the dictator successor had a role in transitioning to parliamentary monarchy.

[pavlov]

English Civil War in the 1640s.

[derbOac]

Other people answered better than I could, although some of their examples were what I had in mind (China, much of Europe over the last 150 years or so, maybe the US during the 19th century).

[CamperBob2]

Europe in general, after the World Wars. Ditto Japan.

The thing is, though, they had help recovering, and help stepping back from the brink. Help won't be coming this time. Just as there are no George Marshalls in today's Republican party, and no room for any, there is no one outside the US who will come to our own rescue.

[userulluipeste]

The Marshall Plan merely accelerated the recovery, serving as seed money for a lot of investment (among other goals). Even without such help, the conditions for recovery were there. (I also like to think that the same conditions are still present nowadays, and the help you mention won't not play an essential role for anything. But, in case I'm wrong, i.e. if the conditions may not be there any more, then I very much doubt that financial help will count for anything.)

[red-iron-pine]

yeah the seeds were there for sure -- they countries that were rebuilt were already the major empires.

you're not creating a new society from whole cloth, you're taking already battered Big Dogs and getting them back to being Big again (minus the, you know, Nazis and bad actors).

but they were already societies that had cutting edge tech and made serious end-runs at taking over the world.

South Korea would be the only real example of where you took the poor agrarian area and eventually grew it into an asian tiger.

[ricree]

Arguably, Rome itself is such an example. Over the course of its long history it was repeatedly pushed to the brink of ruin only to slowly build back up without ever quite reaching its old heights.

The crisis of the third century could easily have been the doom of Rome, with its crumbling splinter states infighting until they broke apart completely. Instead, the succession of Aurelian, Diocletian, and Constantine were able to build it back into a single unified state, if not so prosperous or dominant as the previous version had been.

The same chaos that took the west might well have claimed the east as well under different circumstances, but over time they were able to restabilize, recover, and start to grow again. If not for the Justinian Plague, the reconquest of Italy might have been an actual success instead of the phyrric one it turned into. If nothing else, they at least managed to hold onto fully half the empire until centuries later when the Arabic conquests began.

And speaking of those early conquests, there was absolutely no guarantee that those wars were something they would survive. The Empire was still recovering from a brutal, generations long war against Persia, which itself did not survive as an independent state. The sieges of Constantinople were harsh and brutal, and could have gone differently, but they held on and slowly regained control of what they could, until the Macedonian dynasty was at least the foremost power in the region once again.

But then they screwed it up, spent some years in decline from a succession of bad rulers culminating in a few key defeats to the Turkish invaders caused in large part by infighting from wealthy elites. After this, they spent most of a generation with various elites selling off bits of the remaining empire to secure a throne whose value continued dropping with each betrayal. This too could easily have been the end, but eventually things stabilized. One of these grasping leaders actually managed to hold onto power and slowly rebuild. Then one lucky crusade later, they actually have much of their pre-Turkish territory back.

Except oops, a grasping member of the imperial family seizes control and drives it into the ground. After that we get a succession of weak emperors unable to deal with the harsh realities of their situation, followed by a series of coups that results in one of the displaced heirs inviting the fourth crusade into empire, which eventually results in the capital being sacked and the empire shattering into tiny city states.

That really ought to have been the end. Except that one of these states managed to regain control, rebuild to a fraction of their old strength, and at least hold most of Greece and Western Anatolia. It was a tiny, tiny fraction of the pre-crusade empire, much less Rome at its height, but they were still able to carve another century or two of stability when all hope had seemed lost.