ABSTRACT
Why Europe? In his remarkable account of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire Gibbon (1781) celebrated European progress in terms both material and ideological. By framing it in terms of Roman collapse, he emphasized a paradox. Relative to other centers of settled agriculture on the Eurasian land mass – China, the Indian subcontinent – the fragmentation of Roman rule into contending cultural political jurisdictions set Europe back for centuries. At the same time it ultimately set in motion progress – improvements in the standard of living, improvements in military technology, improvements in transportation and communications, and a drift toward freedom both intellectual and political – that was making Europe the wonder of the world. What were the sources of Europe’s collapse in Gibbon’s account?1 To a degree political fragmentation was responsible for the disaster. Emperor Constantine moved the imperial throne to the east, thereby setting in motion ongoing clashes between the western and eastern portions of the Empire. Military elites residing in Italy contested the usurping of power by the military rulers ensconced in Constantinople. As well, Constantine’s conversion to Christianity was a disaster. By unleashing doctrines “of patience and pusillanimity” centering on the rewards of a future life in Heaven upon the populace of the Empire, the Romans became slaves of monkish superstition, jettisoning their war making culture for a culture “servile and effeminate.” Finally, by turning to barbarians as yet uncontaminated by Christian doctrine by protect the borders of the Empire with their legions, Constantine and his successors abandoned control of the Empire to Germanic, later Hungarian invaders penetrating the eastern frontiers of the once powerful political and economic entity. Having explained why Roman rule collapsed Gibbon turned to happier developments. Europe gradually escaped the torpor of Roman decline by forces both material and intellectual. The military art was revolutionized by gunpowder that “enables man to command the two most powerful agents of nature air and fire.” Intellectual advances in mathematics, chemistry, and architecture applied to warfare to a point where “. . . cannon and fortifications now form an
impregnable barrier against the Tartar horse, and Europe is secure from any future irruption of barbarians.”2 To the advances in military technology Gibbon added improvements due to Europe’s fragmentation. Intellectuals were freed from being controlled by any one political ruler. Intellectual freedom gradually won ultimately yielded the insights of great scientists like Newton. Trade and commerce crossing political jurisdictions promoted the development of laws and policies conducive to openness. Economic competition between the various political jurisdictions of Europe meant the diffusion of laws of policies encouraging the arts and sciences into domains independent from one another. No longer could a single emperor unilaterally consign Europe as a region to the intellectual and commercial darkness. Indeed, this was China’s great tragedy. As Gibbon said “. . . private genius may be extirpated” here and there, but “. . . these hardy plants survive the tempest, and strike an everlasting root in the most unfavorable soil . . .” Moreover, as a result of European political and commercial expansion since the end of the fifteenth century “. . . the arts, war, commerce and religious zeal have diffused among the savages of the Old and New World these inestimable gifts” to the point where “. . . they can never be lost.” As a result, “. . . every age of the world has increased and still increases the real wealth, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race.”3 Gibbon was a child of the Enlightenment. He dwelt upon Rome’s collapse, drawing out a general theory about European progress. His idea was simple: Europe became fragmented into competing states. The resulting competition stimulated progress: in military science, in commerce, and in intellectual and artistic endeavors. Like Voltaire, he believed that European discovery and conquest of the New World was a singular achievement that foreclosed on the possibility of future atrophy and decline in renewed darkness. There is no doubt that Gibbon was right about the fact that the collapse of the Roman Empire ushered in an era of decline from which Europe eventually escaped. This is clear from the figures on social development assembled in Panels A and D, and from Maddison’s estimates of per capita income appearing in Panels E and F, of Table 1.1. Indeed, one reason why Europeans felt that long run progress was achievable was the fact that Europe had suffered significant setbacks attendant upon the fall of the Roman Empire, setbacks that the Chinese Empire managed to escape. It is obvious that there is an association between Europe’s breakup in separate competing states and Europe’s saw-tooth dive into decay followed by an eventual salutary rise. But association is not causation. What can we say about Europe’s eventual escape from decadence, what can we say that explains why the Enlightenment bristling with Gibbon’s confidence about progress occurred in Europe and not elsewhere? Sticking with Gibbon’s thesis about European fragmentation, it is useful to start with geography. Two points stand out: one involving the impact of invasions into the settled agricultural core areas by nomadic groups (e.g., Magyars, Huns, Mongols) sweeping out of the steppes of Central Asia; the other involving
natural barriers to the amalgamation of territories in Europe. On the first point comparison between China and the West is telling. Morris (2010a) emphasizes the fact that Chinese settled agriculture originated in the north, penetrating and marginalizing hunting and gathering regions that were unusually fertile, rice farming in the warmer climes watered by the summer monsoons expanding south of the Yangzi River basin. Building the Great Wall in the north as a defensive fortification against Central Asian invaders from the outset, China’s richest farm lands were by and large protected from invasion directed out of Central Asia (the Mongol invasions were eventually successful in bringing all of China to heel, the Mongol Yuan dynasty briefly ruling both north and south before the establishment of the Ming dynasty).4 By contrast the Western core started out in the Fertile Crescent – the region Morris calls the Hilly Flanks – spreading out into the Mediterranean then northward. The northern and central European frontier regions of the Roman Empire were fully exposed to invasion from Central Asia as they were the last to adopt settled agriculture. This argument helps us understand why the Chinese Empire tended to survive while the Roman Empire fragmented. Another geographical argument – by Jones (2003) – offers an alternative scenario that complements the thesis about the absence of a Great Wall in the West. Jones argues that the Europe north of the Mediterranean consisted of a scatter of high arable potential “islands” separated by wastelands, forests, and mountains. States arose in these core zones, naturally fragmented from one another by geographic barriers that also promoted language drift. As a result, “ethnic and linguistic apartheid” settled in Europe, the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Carpathians slicing up Europe into diverse cultural and political zones.5 Continuing along these lines, it is not hard to add on geographic arguments that explain why it was Europe – and not China for instance – that discovered and conquered the New World. As works like Morris (2010a) remind us the Atlantic Ocean was far easier to navigate and explore with sailing ships than was the Pacific. Moreover, because Europe was fragmented it was easier for oceanic explorers like Columbus to shop around for backing for journeys designed to open up routes for commercial exploitation, a point emphasized by Diamond (1997).6 Other geographic arguments can easily be piled on to further nail down this line of reasoning. For instance, Jones (2003: 76) notes that the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 cut off Europe from use of the silk routes criss-crossing Central Asia because the Islamic powers could bottle up use of the Bosporus. Given the fact that the bulk of world production circa 1500 was in Asia – see Table A.1 in the Appendix – securing access to Asian markets through non-overland sea routes to Asia was a strong incentive for European explorers. In short, geography is one of the keys to understanding Europe’s revival and China’s stagnation. In Europe slow and steady progress leading out of the abyss of the Roman Empire’s collapse gave rise to the notion that sustained improvement was possible. This notion, inchoate in the late Middle Ages, ultimately laid the groundwork for the Enlightenment.
