ichthyoid

One of the main topics that I talk about here on Coil is this concept of decentralization—the idea that any human endeavor is best accomplished by distributed authority rather than a central or single one. In economic terms, a free capitalistic marketplace best represents this. In technological terms, the rise of blockchain today epitomizes this idea.

But what about politically? Historically, we've been taught that the decentralization of authority rests in democracy in contrast to monarchy or authoritarianism. But when we simply take a moment and think about it, we know this isn't true. Tyranny by a majority is really no better than tyranny at the hands of one. It is, in many ways, much worse. So how would we solve this problem politically?

I don't pretend to know the answer. But, after reading Walter Scheidel's book, Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity, I've found a fascinating analysis of western civilization that traces its history, not in the democratic roots of the Ancient Greeks or the imperial rule of Rome, but to the gradual but effective disunity of post-Roman Europe.

And this, I believe, is a key in unlocking why western civilizations in history were successful, and seeing a pathway for political decentralization.

A Summary of the Book

First, let me give a small summary of the book, since it is pretty dense and covers a lot of ground.

Scheidel opens the book by summarizing his position: that the Roman Empire, for all the pomp and circumstance we give it today, was an unlikely anomaly that grew and fell in Mediterranean Europe, and its oft lamented destruction actually paved the way for the rise of modern Western Civilization. He then goes through each part of said summary and explains it.

First, it's important to recognize the uniqueness of the Roman Empire. Unlike the empires which rose and fell and then rose again in other parts of the world, the Roman Empire is not only the biggest imperial polity which arose in Europe, it can be argued that it is the only one to do so. While a few, large polities have come before it (e.g. the Mycenaeans, Greeks), and a few tried to imitate it afterwards (e.g. Carolingian Empire, Napoleon's Empire, etc.), none of these other attempts could really be classified in the same way as the Roman one. And while other parts of the world can claim for cycles of rising and falling empires that were just as great or expansive (e.g. Chinese, the Indus valley, Arabian and Persian empires), Rome is unique in the world that none like it came before, and none like it came after in the same area.

There are a number of factors contributing to this. Geographically, Europe is quite varied in and of itself. Unlike the landscapes and climates of the Fertile Crescent, the Indus River valley, and eastern China, which all tended to be similar or focused around long chain of rivers and fertile land, Europe has many distinct features which make it difficult to unite. There are also many different kinds of people groups and cultures which exist that developed distinctly and separately from one another.

Thus, the rise of the Romans, as Scheidel argues, seems to be the result of pure coincidence. As a people who started in Italy, they were a more homogenous group that developed to protect the Italian peninsula. They took advantage of weakened neighbors that were still experiencing the disastrous consequences of the Bronze Age collapse. And their knife's-edge victory in the Punic Wars helped solidify their naval position, allowing them to dominate the Mediterranean Sea as no other civilization could have (at the time).

But just as a number of factors allowed the Romans to rule over most of Western Europe, parts of the Middle East, and Northern Africa, it also quickly disappeared. And the coinciding of those different factors never happened again, resulting in a Europe that would be forever fragmented.

But this fragmentation would, in the end, be the main cause of the first and second Great Divergences which allowed Europe to overtake and completely eclipse the progress of other empires around the world. It allowed an ever increasing number of nations states to compete against each other in a contest of ideas and invention. Whether in war, political strife and philosophies, or other kinds of technologies, the multiplicity of polities in Europe each vied for supremacy. None of them were really able to gain much advantage over the other, but the resultant, intense progress due to the competition allowed Europe as a whole to surpass the rest of the world.

Even Christianity, the mainstay religion of the European West, contributed to this, since, even though it was near universal, its western development had roots of separation between state and religion, which allowed various states to justify separation from others without needing to necessarily dominate them.

One of the ideas Scheidel mentions that I was absolutely fascinated by was how the European colonization in both the Old and New World was just another facet of this competition. As each state competed for resources, the smaller ones such as the Dutch and British were forced to begin looking outside their own locales to keep up with the competition of French and German powers. Thus, colonialism grew as an offshoot of these competitions. Imperialistic ambition was soon checked by rebelling colonies, and new powers like the United States rose as a result, and participated in the West's competitive nature.

And thus, when we take a step back and look at the big picture, we see that the fragmentation of the Roman Empire into smaller polities was actually a catalyst to progress and invention. We see that advancement and improvement comes when there are more autonomous groups, rather than less. And when we compare that to the rest of the world, we see that a diversity of polities eventually (and then overwhelmingly) win out against unitary empires all around the world.

My Thoughts

The above was, of course, not a comprehensive overview of the book. There were lots of areas that I didn't touch on, such as Scheidel's especial comparison between Europe and China in a large portion of the book, or how and why the Roman Empire was stagnant, or the various counterfactuals that still would not allow earlier and later nation states to rise to the level of the Roman Empire.

I think that the premise (and thus, the conclusion) of the book is so intriguing: that progress and prosperity are often hindered or halted by large centralized polities, and it is small polities in competition with each other that drives the world to a better place. It's the basic definition of decentralization, and arguably proved through a historical lens, as well as an economic and technological one.

The idea of decentralization is actually pretty simple: dissent is a fundamental keg that allows human society to work well. We might cloak this idea as “freedom of speech” or “human rights”, but the main crux behind it is simply dissent. It means we understand that human beings aren't perfect, and we don't have the whole picture. And so, it is essential that we allow those who disagree with us have the ability to voice that dissent, just in case their idea, however offensively it may be incased, is actually better than ours.

People like to work together. And working together often brings greater benefits than each individual could. But often, the bigger the organization, the slower it is to move and respond, and the more difficult it is to innovate within that larger organization. How some companies like Google have dealt with this problem is to divide their company into different parts that are under their own management, so that the ability to innovate isn't lost. But even then these aren't always on the cutting edge (as has been demonstrated in the case of crypto and blockchain).

More importantly, a corporate body's decision often affects more people. What at first was meant to be generous and helpful may actually harm instead in practice. When a small organization does this, it hurts less people. When a larger one does this, its impacts are sometimes exponentially more harmful.

And so, we come back to decentralization. The ability for people to voice and practice their dissent so that improvements can be made is essential. And while it's almost inevitable that bad ideas will also crop up, if everyone is able to dissent, then good ideas will at the very least also exist, if not win out against the bad ones.

I think it's amazing that this is a lens with which we can now look at history. Where smaller polities were allowed or forced to compete with each other, progress is made. It's another piece of the puzzle of decentralization that is still being played out, today. And one that can, I feel, become a guiding principle with which we forge our future.

Header Image credit to Pixabay.