2021-03-07: Sir John Glubb's THE FATE OF EMPIRES

agenda

  • Introduction
  • Who is John Glubb
  • Unified Arabia’s military for the first half the 20th century, through civility, diplomacy, and military
  • Fall of Empires
  • similar to our previous discussions by Peter Turchin
  • TLDR
  • memetic innovation does not solve empire collapse
  • empire collapse occurs about every 250 years, or 10 generations
  • there are stages that seem to occur consistently, with some overlap
  • pattern the same, constituents different, which we will go into
  • A bit of global awareness
  • Definition of race and stock
  • Arabia, Asia, Persia different places
  • Persia, the *stans, Iran, east of Iran, north of Iran, between Arabia and India and Russia
  • Arabia between Africa (Egypt), Persia, Russia (Georgia), Turkey
  • Previously Israel, Babylon
  • The Zoroastrians/Achaemenids owned all of it
  • then a collapse into smaller nation states
  • Then the Romans/Hellenists/Seleucids owned all of it
  • then a collapse into smaller nation states
  • Then the Muslims/Caliphates owned all of it
  • then a collapse into smaller nation states
  • Then the Huns/Mongols owned all of it
  • then a collapse into smaller nation states
  • And so on for other areas, such as the dynasty's of the east, the lords of the west, the tsars of russia, and the kingdoms of the africas and americas

overview of the text

  • summary of the ages
  • age of resolution (revolution, internal conquest)
  • intolerance to the weak, eradication of the weak, achievement of racial homogeny/unification
  • virtues around strength, honour, duty, camaraderie 
  • age of expansion (outburst, external conquest)
  • national self-confidence, fervour, and ability to reconcile/assimilate/appropriate over the bickering and weak conquers far and wide
  • brings incredible wealth and opportunity and direction into everywhere it touches
  • age of commerce (trade turns into wealth)
  • new trade with expansive conquered diversity of previous weak nations
  • innovation and appropriation
  • improvements on prior structures
  • age of affluence (money turns into culture)
  • reaping of the seeded rewards
  • incredible wealth from homogenising the fruits of the previous dystopia