ABSTRACT
Walter Scheidel contrasts the collapse of the Western Roman Empire with that of Han China, and argues that both exhibited what he refers to as “peak empire” in the first or second century AD. Both societies had shown considerable resilience during and after periods of rapid expansion. Equally, both showed similar patterns of internal decay, perhaps exacerbated by a global cooling period affecting agricultural outputs. These pressures in turn gave rise to large non-state-affiliated military bodies that would eventually be impossible for any central authority to control and led to the fragmentation of both societies into smaller autonomous units. Scheidel notes that in the decay of both the Han and Roman empires, increasing wealth and power concentration among elites slowly hollowed out state authority—offering a cautionary lesson to observers of emerging fragilities in our contemporary systems.
