Is there a recurring trend in what causes the downfall of empires?
>>84233
foreign invaders
modern word for this is immigration
invading russia during the winter
>>84233
yes
time
>>84233
Lack of willingness of the dominant ethnicity to participate in state affairs, large exchanges of population (typically through colonization or migration), refusal to innovate, inability of successors to hold up the standards of predecessors.
>>84233
Empires becoming too large to manage
>>84233
The material conditions of the political-economy.
No heirs/dividing power and land that destroys unity
>>84233
Overpopulation, resource scarcity, environmental degradation, loss of faith in institutions, economic crisis, and external pressures are the biggest factors.
I hate to admit it but Marx is pretty close
The answer is: USURY
>>84233
A ruling class that refuses to be unseated from power, leading to corruption.
>>84233
No.
Maybe poor OODA cycles.
>>84233
liberals and multiculturalism.
![41-Ay19ls1L._SX351_BO1,204,203,200_[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/VsQjooU.jpg "41-Ay19ls1L._SX351_BO1,204,203,200_[1].jpg")
This book has all the answers tbqhwy.
>>84340
>economic crisis
>>84233
Climate change affecting agriculture
I don't think there's a consistent theme.
Like, what are the similarities between the fall of the Ottomans and the fall of the Romans, or various Chinese dynasties?
"Powerful enemies"?
"Decadence"?
These are so vague as to be meaningless, and frequently untrue.
It stems from an increasing culture of passivity and decadence in a society that has become stagnantly comfortable and settled.
>>84233
Cultural unity wearing thin.
A group of people who no longer have anything to do with eachother will want to write it's own fate.
Here's the universal one: Erosion of the main competitive advantages that enabled the Empire to spring up in the first place, like with all the colonial peoples getting guns or the Germanics figuring out how to agriculture
>>84422
The Ottomans and Romans both relied too heavily on foreign armies which empowered them into a state of being able to fight back against them. With Rome it was the Germanic federates, and for the Ottomans it was Janissaries and people like Muhammad Ali.
when the people who control the empire stop liking that empire
>>84233
Degeneracy. And no, not in the way that /pol/ uses it - I mean like a degenerative illness, but in the context of socially and culturally
>>84556
*in the context of culture and society.
God damn it I hate this new phone
Open borders and/or cultural disintegration through other means such as the death of a lynchpin ruler
Civic non-participation (linked to #1)
Becoming a rentier-warfare state
Poor succession practices (whether this is "the Khan died, time to go home" or whatever else)
Ideological shifts removing the underpinning of the empire (whether through violent revolution or voluntary withdrawal)
Unsustainable level of material disparity
Things you have no chance of stopping (muh babby ice age)
tl;dr shit changes, empires fall, it's inevitable. You can tell when they're in their death throes, though, like the US.
This too
>>84340
>>84538
The Jannissaries were disbanded a century before the Ottoman empire was dismantled.
Also, Rome didn't just choose to use federates. They had a demographic crisis insofar as they could no longer pump out fucktons of Romans to fill the army, so they had no choice but to leverage their wealth to maintain their holdings.
It's fun to see "demographic crisis" and point to modern europe, but OTOH, other empires have collapsed without any such demographic crisis so I wouldn't call it a trend.
>>84246
>muh immigrants
>every fucking thread
As Bill Clinton said, "It's the economy nigga"
>>84679
>Implying it's not a valid factor
>Being this reductionist
baka to be honest, ma famille.
>>84589
A century before its official collapse, they were definitely their way into the grave. As for having a 'choice' or not, that's fair enough, but they chose to try and maintain their all-too-extensive borders rather than recede and centralize.
jews and women
>>84412
Finally, somebody else on here who knows the greatness that is based Tainter.
Ecological collapse & population overshoot, which tend to go hand in hand. Everything else is basically cultural window dressing, conveniently covering eroded mountainsides & deforested river valleys until they can't be ignored any longer.
>>84233
you haven't read the fate of empires?
get on my level
>>84233
giving women the right to vote
>>84733
It definitely can be a factor, but any time one of these threads come up, there's people claiming it's THE reason
>>84897
He looks like he is rich in natural fat. Poor source of natural hair, though.
>>84233
How about we agree on this, /his/? Let's avoid all words that are political charged in modern times when describing the fall of empires. Immigrants, degeneracy, etc. As a lot of these just are political views projected onto ancient countries, when really, modern countries are pretty different from ancient empires. "history never changes" and all that, but I'm pretty sure we don't have some peculiarities of history, like having a single ruling ethnic group over other ethnic groups, and other purely historical governments. As such, I'm not sure this /pol/ lingo is even applicable.
>>84233
being empires
the size where a group of people can do things together without damage is actually pretty small. the lifetime of a nation or citystate can be extended far with good management but empires have no natural lifetime at all. they're held together by a couple of people making everything else their bitch, and when those people are gone the empire disintegrates at the speed it takes for the news to travel.
>>87000
You think we're special because we have iphones?
>>87096
No, I think we're special because we don't have a feudal system, there's only a handful of countries that rule even 2 ethnic groups outside the ethnic clusterfuck of subsaharan africa. That's a huge fucking difference from a lot of history. Call me crazy, but I don't think any modern factor of downfall for current nations, would apply to places like the Holy Roman Empire. The systems are too radically different to just put a blanket statement over it.
>>84362
>If the masses had proportional power all along
If by that you meant if the power gap between middle class and rich stayed the same, you would probably be correct. If you meant that everyone should have equal power to each other, then you wrong. The average person wouldn't be able to make adequate decisions.
>>84233
There is a trend and it goes like this mostly
>small kingdom through the efforts of a wise leaders becomes bigger
>the big kingdom gets several more good leaders who expand its borders
>a golden age of culture and economy happens as the empire is militarily economicall and culturally at its peak
>decline happen whichs is followed by a dissolution
