Look at the World

Richard Edes Harrison was an American cartographer who designed Look at the World: The Fortune Atlas for World Strategy, a marvelous collection of maps published in 1944 during the Second World War. Harrison's maps (and the accompanying text by the editors of Fortune) are understandably geared to the exigencies of the then-prevailing international conflict, but the new perspectives he offered on world geography are of enduring value. The book expressed the hope that the maps in the atlas, especially the perspective maps, "will help free many readers from the geometrical and psychological shackles of conventional maps." The editors note that the maps may seem "strange and unfamiliar"--as they continue to do today--but that "there is not a single projection or kind of map in the book that does not antedate the Mercator map (1569) by at least half a century. [The map below, 'One World, One War,] was invented by Glareanus in 1510, the orthographic and gnomonic projections were suggested by the Greeks, and perspective projections date back to the first man who sat on a hill and sketched what he saw stretching out to the horizon. The fact that any of these maps seem new at all is severe enough commentary on the state of geographical thinking. The current revolution in geography is not a revolution at all but a counterrevolution." (p. 12)

"One World, One War," the editors note, is in part a war map. "It shows the World War II line-up of nations, and it traces the battlefronts and supply lines of the various arenas." The top image above is a truncated version of the map. You can find every page of Harrison's study (and order prints of it) at the David Rumsey Map Collection. Most of the maps in Look at the World cover two entire pages and are about 14 x 22 inches in size, whereas my scanner is 8.5 x 12. While the snippets below show only portions of the maps, even the truncated versions give a nice idea of the originality and value of Harrison's mapmaking. When the maps are opened in a new window (as opposed to double-clicking), you can often get better detail--depending on the browser. I have had the best luck with Explorer.

Here is EUROPE FROM THE SOUTHWEST:

Here is EUROPE FROM THE EAST, or from Moscow, just out of sight in the lower center.

Next is SOUTHEAST TO ASIA, which sees things "from a point high above Berchtesgaden." The author describes it as "the scene of the inglorious end of the grandiose plan that followed the earlier German failure to destroy Russia by frontal assault. This plan involved attack on Asia Minor. Here there might not be a continent, but there at least was oil. Besides there was the dream of joining German and Japanese forces in Baluchistan or India. But the great Russian offensive from Stalingrad, the British blasting of the El Alamein line, and the American landing of troops in North Africa turned the Middle East from a Jappo-German meeting ground into a concentration field for Allied offensives." Can't figure out how to put these scanned images side by side, but the two together give most of the map.

Here's two scans of CHINA FROM THE EAST, stacked on top of one another, but losing four to five inches on either side:

JAPAN FROM ALASKA:

JAPAN FROM CHINA:

The following scan is drawn from the same map, JAPAN FROM CHINA, and gives a good view of the nations of the South China Sea. The map was published in 1944. French Indo-China, among other colonial outposts, is no more; the successor states are Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

This is drawn from the right side of the map, JAPAN FROM MANCHURIA. Contemporary readers will note all those pesky islands:

Fortune emphasized the growing importance of the Arctic Ocean. The rise of the airplane made obvious the importance of the Arctic in world transportation, but even sea transport, in 1944, was not seen as insignificant. "By air, the capitals of all the great powers, except Chungking, are closer to the Arctic Circle than they are to the equator. To get from one to the other, one must go north; even Chungking is best reached via Alaska and Russia." The editors made the prophecy that "the Arctic, heretofore explored for the sake of exploration, will be surveyed, mapped, and developed as one of the great commercial steppingstones in the world." (p. 51)

The graphic summation of the book comes in EIGHT VIEWS OF THE WORLD, which I have placed in single file to improve readability:

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Look at the World: The Fortune Atlas for World Strategy. By Richard Edes Harrison. Text by the Editors of Fortune (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944).

After posting the above, I ran across a website that includes a vast array of Harrison's output, including a full version of Look at the World.  But the site contains much, much more. Created by Chris Mullen, its rationale is to provide "a visually oriented taxonomy of the ways in which pictures are used to tell stories." Anyone interested in that subject will find incredible riches here.

1/23/14

The Expansion of Rome

This sequence of maps from William Shepherd's Historical Atlas of 1923 will help the student grasp the expansion of Rome. In the first snapshot, we look at an enlarged color key for Roman expansion in Italy, distinguishing Roman territory and Roman colonies, in blue, Latin colonies, in red, and Roman allies, in pink. The box is in the upper right hand corner of the map itself, which follows. If you right click on the map and open in new window, a much larger version will (or should) appear. The first ten books of Titus Livy, which Machiavelli took as the text of his Discourses, recount the very beginnings of Roman expansion in Italy (Livy wrote 195 books in all, of which only a portion survive).

Next follows a map of Rome and Carthage at the beginning of the Second Punic War, 218 B.C.E.

In the next two snapshots, we look first at an enlarged color key showing the utmost limits of Roman expansion achieved under the Republic (until the death of Caesar in 44 B.C.E.) and Empire. It is from the lower right hand corner of the map itself, which follows. Again, right click and open in a new window for a larger image. The Roman Empire of which Gibbon and Robertson wrote was of this much larger apparatus of power, the model and definition of "universal empire." Wrote Gibbon of the expansion of the Roman Republic: "The arms of the republic, sometimes vanquished in battle, always victorious in war, advanced with rapid steps to the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the Ocean; and the images of gold, or silver, or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome."

These maps are from the Historical Atlas by William R. Shepard, published in 1923 and 1926 and made available at the Perry Castaneda Library maintained by the University of Texas at Austin. That is a most valuable site for historical maps.

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Update: There is an excellent resource available at vox.com that entirely supersedes the above maps, rendering them even further obsolescent. See Timothy B. Lee, "40 maps that explain the Roman Empire," vox.com, August 19, 2014

August 21, 2014

From Westphalia to Utrecht (1648 to 1713)

Herbert Butterfield was one of the great British historians of the twentieth century, fully as engaged as Martin Wight in the history of the international system and of the political thought that arose concerning it. But Butterfield, a critic of the “Whig interpretation of history,” was too much the historian to be attracted to Wight’s incessantly conceptualizing vocabulary. Happily, the Dictionary of the History of Ideas commissioned Butterfield to produce a piece on the “Balance of Power”—he also contributed essays on “Christianity in History” and “Historiography”—in which he distills key themes in his internaitonal thought. What follows is an extract from that essay tracing the development of the balance of power from the Thirty Years’ War to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713).

Butterfield chided Hume for investing isolated expressions of balancing ideas in antiquity with the character of a fully developed system, and noted that of Renaissance writers only Guicciardini developed a conception of a balancing system: the author of the History of Italy, Machiavelli's contemporary and friend,“vividly described how the very jealousies between the states made the peace more stable, each power keeping an unremitting watch on the rest, so that none was able to steal a march on any of the others.” Guicciardini, however, was not recommending “a formula of general policy” but wrote as "a historian diagnosing a situation that seemed unique.” Machiavelli, says Butterfield, is a disappointment for diplomats, with little conception of the general balance: “He repeatedly deals with the question whether a state should remain neutral when its neighbors are at war, and he is aware that the result of the war itself may be the aggrandizement of one of the belligerents. If he presses the policy of intervention, however, this is not out of consideration for the balance, but because in his view the neutral loses the respect of both sides—he treats the problem as a question of prestige.”

 

From various scattered sources, however, was beginning to emerge something like a doctrine. By the beginning of the seventeenth century “references to the balance of power become more numerous, and it was in the course of that century that the ideal of the balance finally comes into place”: (3095 words)

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The long conflict between France and the Habsburg dynasty in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries made it more possible for men to envisage a great part of Europe in a single survey. The impression of omnipresence given by the Habsburgs, who were in Austria and Spain, in Italy and Hungary, in the Netherlands and Germany, was calculated to induce people to take something more like an overall view. It also provided the French with the basis of their claim that this dynasty was seeking “universal dominion,” while they themselves were fighting to save the smaller states of Europe as well as their own country. The idea of a balance of power may have been implicit in such a situation though it is surprising to see how rarely it receives explicit formulation in the sixteenth century. And if England or Savoy sought to reap benefit from the conflicts between their greater neighbors, we may be too ready to read modern ideas of the balance of power into their attempts to snatch some advantage out of other people's quarrels. What was important was the fact that most of Europe was coming to appear more like a states-system, and many states conducted their foreign policy with reference to the main conflict between France and the Habsburgs. Also the world learned to fear the threat of “universal dominion.” . . .

Quite early in the century the peculiar anxiety about the problem of menacing war led to some thinking that paid attention to Europe as a whole. In a different realm, but with similar preoccupations, Grotius produced a significant advance in modern international law. Apart from this, one can see that diplomacy itself was becoming an object of serious reflection among some of the people who were practicing it. This meant, not the adoption of the teaching of Machiavelli but the application of the method in a field where Machiavelli himself had not pursued it very far. An impressive example of this in the second quarter of the century is Cardinal Richelieu, who recognized his debt to the Italian writer. 

Richelieu shared the main preoccupation of the theorists of the balance of power when he put to his monarch the alternative of a reforming policy at home or an active policy abroad, while insisting that the adoption of the former would mean the sacrifice for an indefinite period of any chance of checking the hegemony of Spain. By the conscious confrontation with the problem which the conflict with Spain then presented to a genuine Catholic, he set out the terms for what we today would call a “non-ideological” foreign policy—a policy that was indispensable to a mature theory of the balance of power. Grasping the crucial distinction, he regarded it as a desperate necessity to check the menace of Habsburg dominion, but also he resolved (and tried to keep to his resolution) that his Church should suffer as little as possible from this. He adopted a parallel attitude to the Huguenots inside France, whom he determined to destroy insofar as they were an armed “state within the State,” though he would tolerate their religion and hoped that this example of charity would be conductive to their ultimate voluntary conversion. The later theorists of the balance of power realized the importance to their system of the processes which helped to bring Europe out of the fanaticism of the wars of religion; and there is something in the diplomatic ideas of Richelieu which extracts matters of faith from the objectives of diplomacy and war, and even hints at the idea of war for limited purposes only. He preached, furthermore, that negotiation should never cease, that states should negotiate even when there was no issue between them and simply for the cultivation of good relations. It is surprising that at least the theorists of the balance of power should not have followed him in his further injunction: that diplomacy should not be abandoned even in time of war.

Only after about the middle of the century, however, do the references to the balance of power itself begin to come in something like a flood, bringing the suggestion that the topic has wakened general interest. The prelude to this is found, in the 1640's, in the despatches of Richelieu's successor, Mazarin—despatches which show that the practicing diplomats are now having to pay attention to the matter. The idea is associated with Venice, and this means that it is treated as having special implications. Mazarin regards Venice as making a fetish of the balance of power because she has an interest in seeing that the status quo shall be preserved. Mazarin himself is willing to adopt the policy where it has the same implications; and in a treaty of alliance which he concluded with Denmark in 1645, there is a clause which says that since the interest of commerce require the maintenance of the status quo in the Atlantic, the North Sea, and the Baltic, the two powers will “work to secure that this ancient and salutary equilibrium shall be maintained without any alteration.” The balance of power is interpreted as the policy of those who want to keep territorial arrangements as they now stand.

After all that has been said, it still remains true that it was the decades of Louis XIV's personal rule (i.e., the period after 1660) which were the most important for the idea of the balance of power, producing the remarkable developments and the extraordinary currency of the idea. And now, at last, it seems that the maintenance of the equilibrium comes to be regarded as the supreme object of international politics. The significance of the idea was greatly heightened by the fact that, in this period, governments paid considerable attention to propaganda in time of war, and the conflicts associated with Louis XIV's reign provoked in various countries many pamphlets and topical treatises. Both in its origin (which one can trace back through Partition Treaties) and in its course, the War of the Spanish Succession reveals the degree to which the policy of states was now being determined by consideration for the balance. The European settlement at Utrecht involved a redistribution of territory in which that consideration was paramount; and if the idea of balance had put England at first on the side of the Habsburg candidate, the same idea helps to explain how Britain could accept a Bourbon candidate when a change in the situation of the Habsburg made him, in turn, a possible threat to the equilibrium. By this time the doctrine was repeatedly appearing in diplomatic despatches, state papers, treaties of alliance, and treaties of peace. . . .

The reign of Louis XIV added a new chapter to the history of man's modern experience; and, if the appropriate conclusions were soon drawn from it, we might say that whenever they have been forgotten since that date, the world has been the loser. It became clear that, after fighting for so long against the threat of“universal dominion” from the Habsburgs—fighting often on behalf of smaller states as well as on her own behalf—France herself had emerged as the aggressor and the dominating power, and Louis XIV now appeared as the continental bogy. The truth was not recognized as early as it might have been, and historians have sometimes noted that certain governments persisted too long in the view that Spain was still the general enemy. In time, however, even long-standing alliances came to require readjustment; and, towards the end of the seventeenth century the principle of the balance of power was being used as a weapon against France. Official circles in that country tended therefore to disapprove of the idea.

But, in a famous case, it becomes evident that the true consequences were drawn from reflection on the fact that Spain had been the menace in one age while France was the aggressor in another. Fénelon (François de Salignac de la Mothe), a representative of the dissidents in this latter country, did not rest content with the answer that the Spaniards had been wicked at one time, the French at another time. He produced the thesis which was the most essential of all for the mature doctrine of the balance of power in the eighteenth century. He insisted that it was the disposition of forces which made Spain the menace in the sixteenth century and France the aggressor at a later date. If a state were allowed to rise to a position of predominance, one would no longer be able to rely on its good behavior, no matter how moderate it had hitherto been in its policy. It might have struggled for the balance of power and defended the interests of small states—it might even have combated the whole idea of “universal dominion”—but once it found that it could do what  it liked with impunity, it would throw overboard the old inhibitions, and no longer confine its purposes within accustomed channels. Indeed the very process of resisting the predominant power of today would be likely to generate the new aggressor, who, demanding more and more securities against the enemy, might slide imperceptibly into lust for “universal dominion.”

As a consequence of all this, Fénelon not only insisted on the importance of the balance of power but held that its claims were of an overriding nature, the equivalent of an overruling law. Even the laws which prevailed in the interior of a country—the rules governing the succession to the throne, for example— should give way, he said, to “the right that so many nations had to security.” Also, a nation which had no quarrel on its own account with a predominating power had the right to take precautionary measures against it for the sake of European liberty in general, though care must be taken to limit one's objective, and never seek the destruction of a power under the pretence of curbing it.

Supposing the objection were made that a state might find itself lifted to a predominant position at a moment when it was being directed by a virtuous ruler, Fénelon had his answer ready. Such a state might conduct a moderate policy for a single reign, he said, but its merit could hardly endure longer than that. Important factors in the situation itself would produce the wrong policy or bring the wrong kind of ruler to the top.

The general treaties of Westphalia (1648) and Utrecht (1713) had made it more easy, and more a matter of habit, to see a considerable part of Europe as an integrated system. These were days when the parallel ideas of a balance of trade and the equipoise of the English constitution had already been gaining currency. The world had become familiar with parallelograms of forces, and in various human studies, as well as in different branches of science (zoology, for example), the mind seemed to be taking a mechanistic turn. Henry Brougham pointed out in the Edinburgh Review in 1802-03 that the theory of the balance of power had been unknown to the ancient Greeks and had arisen from the progress of science and the peculiar circumstances of modern Europe. The development of a Baconian kind of reflection amongst even the practitioners of diplomacy, as well as the incidental comments of international lawyers like Grotius, had brought out more sophisticated ideas, some of which came together in the work of Fénelon. And the ideas of Fénelon helped to give a moral basis to the resulting combination; for if the virtue of governments depended somewhat on the distribution of power, it followed that in a well-balanced Europe the ambitions of all rulers would be moderate, for all would grow accustomed to feeling that only marginal aggressions were feasible.

In the last struggles with Louis XIV the balance of power became a system fully conscious of itself and “quite as comprehensively and carefully worked out as the mercantilism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” [quoting E.V. Gulick]. It now graduated as a general theory of international politics. On this mature theory, Europe was seen as almost a parallel to the system of Newtonian astronomy. The various states—whether great or small—exerted a pull or a pressure on one another, and this bore some relationship to their respective masses and to their distances from one another. If the mass of any one of them was substantially altered, this would be likely to destroy the equipoise unless the distances were corrected, the alliances changed, the states regrouped. In a world in which governments could recognize their real interests, or could envisage long-term results instead of being governed by momentary desires and prejudices, the readjustments would be rapid and might be regarded as automatic. But since states could be shortsighted, the idea of the balance of power might not always be a theory of what actually happens. It might become a policy that governments were urged to pursue; and so it might be turned into a matter of precept.

The object of the system was to prevent the emergence of a power so predominant that it could misconduct itself with impunity and march to something like “universal dominion.” It was assumed that all states had the latent desire for aggression, even the small ones indulging in conquest if local circumstances provided the opportunity. So long as they were powerless, the tendency to this would be merely latent, and, where there was an equilibrium, it would become second nature to keep one's ambitions at a moderate level.  It was not held that under the system of the balance of power the tendency to aggression would be abolished altogether, however. On the contrary it was assumed that once a state found that the way was open for such a thing, it would move forward to “universal dominion.” The great requirement was that the others should see the danger, and adjust their alliances in time, so that vigilance and farsightedness were necessary. It might be too late if one awoke only when the aggressor had already made a great advance—too late if one even waited for him to show his hand. It had already been a matter of controversy as to whether it was permissible to attack a state merely because it was a potential menace—i.e., before it had committed any actual offence. Some writers were in favor of even this preventive policy, though Grotius had disapproved of the idea.

An objector might argue that it was better to allow a hegemony to be established—better to have something like a Roman Empire which would secure peace throughout the system. Before the end of the eighteenth century the writers on the balance of power were addressing themselves to this argument. They claimed that here were the only two alternatives—either a states-system which made the map of Europe look like a patchwork quilt, or a “universal dominion” that embraced the whole continent. They were well aware that when a supremacy of power has been conceded, the beneficiary can do anything that he likes with it—the chance of controlling him, or making him keep any promise that he has made, is lost. But they were prepared to confront the problem at a higher level still. Against the idea of a universal empire, which would end by producing a widespread uniformity, they pressed the case for a European civilization enriched by the variety of its national manifestations. If initially they needed a congeries of states because they insisted on having a distribution of power, they proceeded to advance further still, and argue that small states had in fact an intrinsic value. The system was claimed to be the only one which (in a world that was somewhat at the mercy of force) could secure the actual existence of small states.

The balance in fact secured not only their existence but also their autonomy, their power of independent action. Any defect in the balance would tend at least to deprive them of a genuine foreign policy, reducing them to the position of satellites. Richelieu had once complained that, in his own day, small states were able to have greater freedom of action than the larger ones, and we in the latter half of the twentieth century can see how this might be the case. In a certain sense the system of balance itself might depend on the small states, who could shift their allegiance if a power which had been their friend was turning into a general menace. The system was capable of providing, therefore, something like an actual diplomatic role for smaller states. 

Indeed, before the end of the century, it had come to be realized that the system of the balance of power was directed to the maintenance of liberty rather than to the prevention of wars. It assumed (or enjoined) the adoption of the view that the ultimate object of a state was its survival or its independence; and sometimes this was taken to imply that survival was the constant motive, that all conflicts should be treated as a question of survival—in other words, all policy should be subordinated to the issue of the distribution of power. This was perhaps an abuse of the theory, since it was sufficient to say that the question of survival, the question of the distribution of power, should never be allowed to fall out of sight. The effect of the abuse was to turn policy sometimes into an arid kind of raison d'état. . . .

Above all, the apostles of the balance of power feared anything like what we should call “ideological” diplomacy and “ideological” war. There was a further thing which they repeatedly said must never be allowed to happen again; and that was the fanatical “wars of religion.” . . . The “war of religion” (or the “ideological” war) was recognized to be the extreme antithesis to the system. It ignored the balance of power, and it rendered a policy of compromise too difficult. It came to be understood that the system of states depended in fact on an underlying unity of culture, a common sense of values and a preexisting community of tradition and custom. The international order itself, and the balance within it, depended on the assumption that all the participants were like members of the same club. A theory that was far from denying the egotism of states, called at times therefore for loyalty to the club itself and asked that egotism should stop short of any threat to the international order.

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These extracts form about two-fifths of Butterfield’s essay. The full essay is available online, along with the remainder of the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, at the University of Virginia. Back in the day, you could get a copy of the five volume Dictionary with a subscription to the History Book Club, for $1, and yes, that salespitch of something for practically nothing brought me in. These five volumes are a wonderful education in the liberal arts, and well worth prolonged study. A most valuable online resource.

Not Holy, Not Roman, Not an Empire

So says the old joke, which Voltaire first told, regarding the Holy Roman Empire, whose contours are displayed above. The accompanying text from the Times Atlas of World History notes that Germany in 1648 was divided into 234 distinct territorial units, 51  free cities and innumerable estates of Imperial Knights." 1648 brings partly to a close, with the Treaty of Westphalia, not merely the Thirty Years' War but something like a century of nearly interminable warfare. In the preceding conflict in Germany, about a third of the population perished. Rousseau, writing in the mid 1750s, thought that the treaty of Westphalia would "always be the basis of our political system": "It is certain, that, notwithstanding the defects in the constitution of the Empire, the balance of power in Europe will never be destroyed so long as that constitution subsists." 

In Anglo-American political thought, the empire was the butt of a hundred slighting references. The Germanic confederacy, said James Wilson in 1776, "is a burlesque on government, and their practice on any point is a sufficient authority and proof that it is wrong." In the German empire, said one Englishman in 1756 (arguing the need for a continental commitment by Britain), "they have what they call a constitution; but if there was a vis inertiae in any body whatsoever, it may justly be said to be by their constitution in the Germanic body, which renders it impossible for that body to defend itself, or any of its members." 

James Madison gave a detailed explication of the Holy Roman Empire in his classic analysis of the defects of ancient and modern confederations in The Federalist. After showing the remarkable similarity between the terms of the American and Germanic confederations and allowing for the “parade of constitutional powers” that the Germanic confederation possessed, Madison insisted that it displayed the general character which belonged to all such confederations, rendering them deeply flawed.

 

The fundamental principle, on which it rests, that the empire is a community of sovereigns; that the diet is a representation of sovereigns; and that the laws are addressed to sovereigns; render the empire a nerveless body, incapable of regulating its own members, insecure against external dangers, and agitated with unceasing fermentations in its own bowels. 

The history of Germany, is a history of wars between the emperor and the princes and states; of wars among the princes and states themselves; of the licentiousness of the strong, and the oppression of the weak; of foreign intrusions, and foreign intrigues; of requisitions of men and money disregarded, or partially complied with; of attempts to enforce them, altogether abortive, or attended with slaughter and desolation, involving the innocent with the guilty; of general imbecility, confusion, and misery. . . .

If the nation happens, on any emergency, to be more united by the necessity of self-defence, its situation is still deplorable. Military preparations must be preceded by so many tedious discussions, arising from the jealousies, pride, separate views, and clashing pretensions, of sovereign bodies, that before the diet can settle the arrangements, the enemy are in the field; and before the federal troops are ready to take it, are retiring into winter quarters. (No. 19)

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The Times Atlas of World History, Geoffrey Barraclough, ed., (Times Books and Hammond, 1979), from which the above map is taken (190-91), is one of the most useful reference guides a student can own and is undoubtedly the best single introduction to world history available. There is a shorter paperback version  which is also quite good, but students should buy the used hardback version available at various online sites like amazon or abebooks. You can get those for about ten dollars, including shipping, which is a fantastic deal.

Balances of Power, Ancient and Modern

David Hume’s essay, “Of the Balance of Power,” asks whether the idea of the balance of power, the pride of eighteenth century policy, was known to antiquity. His answer is that the Greeks certainly had an idea of it, but the "Roman history" was a different story; the rise and triumph of Rome offers strong proofs that “the maxim was not generally known in those ages.” How was it that a city swelled into an empire without encountering general resistance, as such a threat would clearly have done in Hume’s Europe? To an age still much disturbed by the specter of universal monarchy, the question was a fascinating one. It remains a fascinating one today, as a central question in IR theory is why the rise of the United States to "world's sole superpower"--and of the international system to unipolarity--has not provoked general resistance.

In the second part of his essay, first published in 1752, Hume considers the fate of the balance of power since 1500, and notes that the danger of universal monarchy posed by Charles V and the Austro-Spanish Hapsburgs was not as large as advertised: they were “more likely to decay, of themselves, from internal defects, than to overthrow all the bulwarks raised against them.” Following the decline of the Hapsburgs was the rise of Louis XIV’s France, in Hume’s view a much more serious threat. In digesting the lessons of Britain’s eighteenth century wars, Hume draws conclusions and issues warnings that anticipate basic features of the American experience since the United States became a world power. After drawing attention to various failures of British policy—too beset by the ancient Greek spirit of jealous emulation, too solicitous toward allies, too willing to bankrupt the nation through debt—Hume observed that these excesses might beget the opposite extreme and render Britain “totally careless and supine with regard to the fate of Europe.” Here, in a nutshell, is the oft-invoked cycle of intervention to isolation and back again. Of yet greater relevance is Hume’s demonstration of how “ambition blindly labours for the destruction of the conqueror,” with human nature checking itself “in its airy elevation.” The United States would seem not to be entirely immune from this tendency.  Was not some such phenomenon--of hubris punished by failure--the lesson of the last decade? (2221 words)

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It is a question whether the idea of the balance of power be owing entirely to modern policy, or whether the phrase only has been invented in the later ages? It is certain that Xenophon in his Institution of Cyrus, represents the combination of the Asiatic powers to have arisen from a jealousy of the increasing force of the Medes and Persians; and though that elegant composition should be supposed altogether a romance, this sentiment, ascribed by the author to the Eastern princes, is at least a proof of the prevailing notion of ancient times.

In all the politics of Greece, the anxiety, with regard to the balance of power, is apparent, and is expressly pointed out to us, even by the ancient historians. Thucydides represents the league which was formed against Athens, and which produced the Peloponnesian war, as entirely owing to this principle. And after the decline of Athens, when the Thebans and Lacedemonians disputed for sovereignty, we find that the Athenians (as well as many other republics) always threw themselves into the lighter scale, and endeavoured to preserve the balance. They supported Thebes against Sparta, till the great victory gained by Epaminondas at Leuctra; after which they immediately went over to the conquered, from generosity, as they pretended, but in reality from their jealousy of the conquerors.

Whoever will read Demosthenes's oration for the Megalopolitans, may see the utmost refinements on this principle, that ever entered into the head of a Venetian or English speculatist. And upon the first rise of the Macedonian power, this orator immediately discovered the danger, sounded the alarm throughout all Greece, and at last assembled that confederacy under the banners of Athens, which fought the great and decisive battle of Chaeronea.

It is true, the Grecian wars are regarded by historians as wars of emulation rather than of politics; and each state seems to have had more in view the honour of leading the rest, than any well-grounded hopes of authority and dominion. If we consider, indeed, the small number of inhabitants in any one republic, compared to the whole, the great difficulty of forming sieges in those times, and the extraordinary bravery and discipline of every freeman among that noble people; we shall conclude, that the balance of power was, of itself; sufficiently secured in Greece, and need not to have been guarded with that caution which may be requisite in other ages. But whether we ascribe the shifting of sides in all the Grecian republics to jealous emulation or cautious politics, the effects were alike, and every prevailing power was sure to meet with a confederacy against it, and that often composed of its former friends and allies. . . .

The reason why it is supposed that the ancients were entirely ignorant of the balance of power, seems to be drawn from the Roman history more than the Grecian; and as the transactions of the former are generally more familiar to us, we have thence formed all our conclusions. It must be owned, that the Romans never met with any such general combination or confederacy against them, as might naturally have been expected from the rapid conquests and declared ambition; but were allowed peaceably to subdue their neighbours, one after another, till they extended their dominion over the whole known world. Not to mention the fabulous history of their Italic wars, there was, upon Hannibal's invasion of the Roman state, a remarkable crisis, which ought to have called up the attention of all civilized nations. It appeared afterwards (nor was it difficult to be observed at the time) that this was a contest for universal empire; yet no prince or state seems to have been in the least alarmed about the event or issue of the quarrel. Philip of Macedon remained neuter, till he saw the victories of Hannibal; and then most imprudently formed an alliance with the conqueror, upon terms still more imprudent. He stipulated, that he was to assist the Carthaginian state in their conquest of Italy; after which they engaged to send over forces into Greece, to assist him in subduing the Grecian commonwealth.

The Rhodian and Achaean republics are much celebrated by ancient historians for their wisdom and sound policy; yet both of them assisted the Romans in their wars against Philip and Antiochus. And what may be esteemed still a stronger proof, that this maxim was not generally known in those ages, no ancient author has remarked the imprudence of these measures, nor has even blamed that absurd treaty above-mentioned, made by Philip with the Carthaginians. Princes and statesmen, in all ages, may, beforehand, be blinded in their reasonings with regard to events: but it is somewhat extraordinary, that historians, afterwards, should not form a sounder judgment of them.

Massinissa, Attalus, Prusias, in gratifying their private passions, were all of them the instruments of the Roman greatness, and never seem to have suspected, that they were forging their own chains, while they advanced the conquests of their ally. A simple treaty and agreement between Massinissa and the Carthaginians, so much required by mutual interest, barred the Romans from all entrance into Africa, and preserved liberty to mankind.[Ed. note: “As king of Numidia (202-148 B.C.) Masinissa followed an aggressive policy against neighboring Carthage. When Carthage was finally goaded into attacking Masinissa, Rome declared war on Carthage. This Third Punic War (149-146 B.C.) led to the destruction of Carthage and the establishment of its territory as the Roman province of Africa.”]

The only prince we meet with in the Roman history, who seems to have understood the balance of power, is Hiero, king of Syracuse. Though the ally of Rome, he sent assistance to the Carthaginians during the war of the auxiliaries; “Esteeming it requisite,” says Polybius, both in order to retain his dominions in Sicily, and to preserve the Roman friendship, that Carthage should be safe; lest by its fall the remaining power should be able, without contrast or opposition, to execute every purpose and undertaking. And here he acted with great wisdom and prudence : for that is never, on any account, to be overlooked; nor ought such a force ever to be thrown into one hand, as to incapacitate the neighbouring states from defending their rights against it.” Here is the aim of modern politics pointed out in express terms.

In short, the maxim of preserving the balance of power is founded so much on common sense and obvious reasoning, that it is impossible it could altogether have escaped antiquity, where we find, in other particulars, so many marks of deep penetration and discernment. If it was not so generally known and acknowledged as at present, it had at least an influence on all the wiser and more experienced princes and politicians. And indeed, even at present, however generally known and acknowledged among speculative reasoners, it has not, in practice, an authority much more extensive among those who govern the world.

After the fall of the Roman empire, the form of government, established by the northern conquerors, incapacitated them, in a great measure, for farther conquests, and long maintained each state in its proper boundaries. But when vassalage and the feudal militia were abolished, mankind were anew alarmed by the danger of universal monarchy, from the union of so many kingdoms and principalities in the person of the Emperor Charles. But the power of the house of Austria, founded on extensive but divided dominions; and their riches, derived chiefly from mines of gold and silver, were more likely to decay, of themselves, from internal defects, than to overthrow all the bulwarks raised against them. In less than a century, the force of that violent and haughty race was shattered, their opulence dissipated, their splendor eclipsed. A new power succeeded, more formidable to the liberties of Europe, possessing all the advantages of the former, and labouring under none of its defects, except a share of that spirit of bigotry and persecution, with which the house of Austria was so long, and still is so much infatuated.

In the general wars maintained against this ambitious power, Great Britain has stood foremost, and she still maintains her station. Beside her advantages of riches and situation, her people are animated with such a national spirit, and are so fully sensible of the blessings of their government, that we may hope their vigour never will languish in so necessary and so just a cause. On the contrary, if we may judge by the past, their passionate ardour seems rather to require some moderation; and they have more often erred from a laudable excess than from a blameable deficiency.

In the first place, we seem to have been more possessed with the ancient Greek spirit of jealous emulation, than actuated by the prudent views of modern politics. Our wars with France have been begun with justice, and even perhaps from necessity, but have always been too far pushed, from obstinacy and passion. The same peace, which was afterwards made at Ryswick in 1697, was offered so early as the year 1692; that concluded at Utrecht in 1712 might have been finished on as good conditions at Gertruytenberg in 1708; and we might have given at Frankfort, in 1743, the same terms which we were glad to accept of at Aix-la-Chapelle in the year 1748. Here then we see, that above half of our wars with France, and all our public debts, are owing more to our own imprudent vehemence, than to the ambition of our neighbours.

In the second place, we are so declared in our opposition to French power, and so alert in defence of our allies, that they always reckon upon our force as upon their own ; and expecting to carry on war at our expense, refuse all reasonable terms of accommodation. Habent subjectos, tanquam suos; viles, ut alienos. [They treat us like slaves, as though we belonged to them, but they regard us as worthless, as though we belonged to someone else.] All the world knows, that the factious vote of the House of Commons, in the beginning of the last parliament, with the professed humour of the nation, made the Queen of Hungary inflexible in her terms, and prevented that agreement with Prussia, which would immediately have restored the general tranquillity of Europe.  

In the third place, we are such true combatants, that, when once engaged, we lose all concern for ourselves and our posterity, and consider only how we may best annoy the enemy. To mortgage our revenues at so deep a rate in wars where we were only accessories, was surely the most fatal delusion, that a nation, which had any pretensions to politics and prudence, has ever yet been guilty of. That remedy of funding, if it be a remedy, and not rather a poison, ought, in all reason, to be reserved to the last extremity; and no evil, but the greatest and most urgent, should ever induce us to embrace so dangerous an expedient.

These excesses, to which we have been carried, are prejudicial, and may, perhaps, in time, become still more prejudicial another way, by begetting, as is usual, the opposite extreme, and rendering us totally careless and supine with regard to the fate of Europe. The Athenians, from the most bustling, intriguing, warlike, people of Greece, finding their error in thrusting themselves into every quarrel, abandoned all attention to foreign affairs; and in no contest ever took part on either side, except by their flatteries and complaisance to the victor.

Enormous monarchies are, probably, destructive to human nature; in their progress, in their continuance, and even in their downfall, which never can be very distant from their establishment. The military genius, which aggrandized the monarchy, soon leaves the court, the capital, and the centre of such a government: while the wars are carried on at a great distance, and interest so small a part of the state. The ancient nobility, whose affections attach them to their sovereign, live all at court; and never will accept of military employments which would carry them to remote and barbarous frontiers, where they are distant both from their pleasures and their fortune. The arms of the state must therefore be entrusted to mercenary strangers, without zeal, without attachment, without honour; ready on every occasion to turn them against the prince, and join each desperate malcontent who offers pay and plunder. This is the necessary progress of human affairs: thus human nature checks itself in its airy elevation; thus ambition blindly labours for the destruction of the conqueror, of his family, and of every thing near and dear to him. The Bourbons, trusting to the support of their brave, faithful, and affectionate nobility, would push their advantage without reserve or limitation. These, while fired with glory and emulation, can bear the fatigues and dangers of war; but never would submit to languish in the garrison of Hungary or Lithuania, forgot at court, and sacrificed to the intrigues of every minion or mistress who approaches the prince. The troops are filled with Cravates and Tartars, Hussars and Cossacks, intermingled, perhaps, with a few soldiers of fortune from the better provinces: and the melancholy fate of the Roman emperors, from the same cause, is renewed over and over again, till the final dissolution of the monarchy.

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I have used the critical edition of Eugene F. Miller, ed., David Hume: Essays Moral Political and Literary (Liberty Fund, 1987), which has excellent notes explaining references that are likely to be obscure to the modern reader. It is available at the Online Library of Liberty. Hume’s essay may also be found in the valuable compendium of Moorhead Wright, The Theory and Practice of the Balance of Power (1975). From the frontispiece of the Liberty Fund edition:

Scourge of God, Destroyer of Nations

William Robertson (1721-1793) was a distinguished eighteenth-century historian, on a par with David Hume and Edward Gibbon. This extract comes from the beginning of his History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V (1769), entitled “A View of the Progress of Society in Europe: A Historical Outline from the Subversion of the Roman Empire to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century." Before arriving at a delineation of “first rudiments of the policy and laws now established in Europe,” Robertson described the “general wreck of nations” that occurred during and after the fall of the Roman Empire. This was the period in human history “during which the condition of the human race was most calamitous and afflicted.” Contemporaries who beheld it, writes Robertson, “are at a loss for expressions to describe the horror of it.” But preparing the ground for these scourges, notes Robertson, was the Roman conquest itself, which laid waste the countries of Europe and left only a feeble remnant. Their recovery from this first conquest left them in a much diminished state, losing “not only the habit but even the capacity” to think for themselves: “the dominion of the Romans, like that of all great Empires, degraded and debased the human species.” (2851 words)

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Two great revolutions have happened in the political state, and in the manners of the European nations. The first was occasioned by the progress of the Roman power; the second by the subversion of the Roman Empire. When the spirit of conquest led the armies of Rome beyond the Alps, they found all the countries which they invaded, inhabited by people whom they denominated barbarians, but who were nevertheless brave and independant. These defended their ancient possessions with obstinate valour. It was by the superiority of their discipline, rather than of their courage, that the Romans gained any advantage over them. A single battle did not, as among the effeminate inhabitants of Asia, decide the fate of a state. The vanquished people resumed their arms with fresh spirit, and their undisciplined valour, animated by the love of liberty, supplied the want of conduct as well as of union. During these long and fierce struggles for dominion or independance, the countries of Europe were successively laid waste, a great part of their inhabitants perished in the field, many were carried into slavery, and a feeble remnant, incapable of further resistance, submitted to the Roman power.

The Romans having thus desolated Europe, set themselves to civilize it. The form of government which they established in the conquered provinces, though severe, was regular, and preserved public tranquillity. As a consolation for the loss of liberty, they communicated their arts, sciences, language, and manners, to their new subjects. Europe began to breathe, and to recover strength after the calamities which it had undergone; agriculture was encouraged; population encreased; the ruined cities were rebuilt; new towns were founded; an appearance of prosperity succeeded, and repaired, in some degree, the havock of war. 

This state, however, was far from being happy, or favourable to the improvement of the human mind. The vanquished nations were disarmed by their conquerors, and overawed by soldiers kept in pay to restrain them. They were given up as a prey to rapacious governors, who plundered them with impunity; and were drained of their wealth by exorbitant taxes, imposed with so little attention to the situation of the provinces, that the impositions were generally increased in proportion to their inability to support them. They were deprived of their most enterprizing citizens, who resorted to a distant capital in quest of preferment, or of riches; and were accustomed in all their actions to look up to a superior, and tamely to receive his commands. Under all these depressing circumstances, it was impossible that they could retain vigour or generosity of mind. The martial and independant spirit, which had distinguished their ancestors, became extinct among all the people subjected to the Roman yoke; they lost not only the habit but even the capacity of deciding for themselves, or of acting from the impulse of their own minds; and the dominion of the Romans, like that of all great Empires, degraded and debased the human species.

A society in this state could not subsist long. There were defects in the Roman government, even in its most perfect form, which threatened its dissolution. Time ripened these original seeds of corruption, and gave birth to many new disorders. A constitution, unfounded, and worn out, must have fallen in pieces of itself, without any external shock. The violent irruption of the Goths, Vandals, Huns, and other barbarians hastened this event, and precipitated the downfal of the Empire. New nations seemed to arise, and to rush from unknown regions in order to take vengeance on the Romans for the calamities which they had inflicted on mankind. These fierce tribes either inhabited the various provinces in Germany which had never been subdued by the Romans, or were scattered over the vast countries in the north of Europe, and north-west of Asia, which are now occupied by the Danes, the Swedes, the Poles, the subjects of the Russian empire, and the Tartars. Their condition, and transactions previous to their invasion of the Empire are but little known. All our information with respect to these is derived from the Romans; and as they did not penetrate far into countries which were at that time uncultivated and uninviting, the accounts of their original state given by them are extremely imperfect. The rude inhabitants themselves, destitute of science, and of records, without leisure, or curiosity to enquire into remote events, retained, perhaps, some indistinct memory of recent occurrences, but beyond these, all was buried in oblivion, or involved in darkness, and in fable.

The prodigious swarms which poured in upon the Empire from the beginning of the fourth century to the final extinction of the Roman power, have given rise to an opinion that the countries whence they issued were crowded with inhabitants; and various theories have been formed to account for such an extraordinary degree of population as hath procured these countries the appellation of The Storehouse of Nations. But if we consider that the countries possessed by the people who invaded the Empire were of vast extent; that a great part of these was covered with woods and marshes; that some of the most considerable of the barbarous nations subsisted entirely by hunting or pasturage, in both which states of society large tracts of land are required for maintaining a few inhabitants; and that all of them were strangers to the arts, and industry, without which population cannot increase to any great degree, it is evident, that these countries could not be so populous in ancient times as they are at present, when they still continue to be less peopled than any other part of Europe or of Asia.

But if these circumstances prevented the barbarous nations from becoming populous, they contributed to inspire, or to strengthen the martial spirit by which they were distinguished. Inured by the rigour of their climate, or the poverty of their soil, to hardships which rendered their bodies firm, and their minds vigorous; accustomed to a course of life which was a continual preparation for action; and disdaining every occupation but that of war; they undertook, and prosecuted their military enterprizes with an ardour and impetuosity, of which men softened by the refinements of more polished times, can scarce form any idea.

Their first inroads into the Empire proceeded rather from the love of plunder, than from the desire of new settlements. Roused to arms by some enterprizing or popular leader, they sallied out of their forests; broke in upon the frontier provinces with irresistible violence; put all who opposed them to the sword; carried off the most valuable effects of the inhabitants; dragged along multitudes of captives in chains; wasted all before them with fire or sword; and returned in triumph to their wilds and fastnesses. Their success, together with the accounts which they gave of the unknown conveniencies and luxuries that abounded in countries better cultivated, or blessed with a milder climate than their own, excited new adventurers, and exposed the frontier to new devastations.

When nothing was left to plunder in the adjacent provinces ravaged by frequent incursions, they marched farther from home, and finding it difficult, or dangerous to return, they began to settle in the countries which they had subdued. The sudden and short excursions in quest of booty, which had alarmed, and disquieted the Empire, ceased; a more dreadful calamity impended. Great bodies of armed men with their wives and children, and slaves and flocks, issued forth, like regular colonies, in quest of new settlements. People who had no cities, and seldom any fixed habitation, were so little attached to their native soil, that they migrated without reluctance from one place to another. New adventurers followed them. The lands which they deserted were occupied by more remote tribes of barbarians. These, in their turn, pushed forward into more fertile countries, and like a torrent continually increasing, rolled on, and swept every thing before them. In less than two centuries from their first irruption, barbarians of various names and lineage, plundered and took possession of Thrace, Pannonia, Gaul, Spain, Africa, and at last of Italy, and Rome itself. The vast fabrick of the Roman power which it had been the work of ages to perfect, was in that short period overturned from the foundation.

Many concurring causes prepared the way for this great revolution, and ensured success to the nations which invaded the Empire. The Roman commonwealth had conquered the world by the wisdom of its civil maxims, and the rigour of its military discipline. But, under the Emperors, the former were forgotten or despised, and the latter was gradually relaxed. The armies of the Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries bore scarce any resemblance to those invincible legions which had been victorious wherever they marched. Instead of freemen, who voluntarily took arms from the love of glory, or of their country, provincials and barbarians were bribed or forced into service. They were too feeble, or too proud to submit to the fatigue of military duty. . . .These wretched troops, however, were the only guardians of the empire. The jealousy of despotism had deprived the people of the use of arms; and subjects oppressed and rendered incapable of defending themselves, had neither spirit nor inclination to resist their invaders, from whom they had little to fear, because they could scarce make their condition more unhappy. As the martial spirit became extinct, the revenues of the Empire gradually diminished. . . . The limits of the Empire continued to be as extensive as ever, while the spirit requisite for its defence declined, and its resources were exhausted. A vast body, languid, and almost unanimated, became incapable of any effort to save itself, and was easily overpowered. The Emperors, who had the absolute direction of this disordered system, sunk in the softness of Eastern luxury, shut up within the walls of a palace, ignorant of war, unacquainted with affairs, and governed entirely by women and eunuchs, or by ministers equally effeminate, trembled at the approach of danger, and under circumstances which called for the utmost vigour in counsel as well as in action, discovered all the impotent irresolution of fear, and of folly.

In every respect, the condition of the barbarous nations was the reverse of that of the Romans. Among them, the martial spirit was in full vigour; their leaders were hardy and enterprizing; the arts which had enervated the Romans were unknown among them; and such was the nature of their military institutions, that they brought forces into the field without any trouble, and supported them at little expence. The mercenary and effeminate troops stationed on the frontier, astonished at their fierceness, either fled at their approach, or were routed in the first onset. The feeble expedient to which the Emperors had recourse, of taking large bodies of the barbarians into pay, and of employing them to repel new invaders, instead of retarding, hastened the destruction of the Empire. They soon turned their arms against their masters, and with greater advantage than ever: for, by serving in the Roman armies, they had acquired all the discipline, or skill in war, which the Romans still retained; and upon adding these to their native ferocity, they became altogether irresistible.

But though from these, and many other causes, the progress and conquests of the nations which overran the Empire, became so extremely rapid, they were accompanied with horrible devastations, and an incredible destruction of the human species. Civilized nations which take arms upon cool reflection, from motives of policy or prudence, with a view to guard against some distant danger, or to prevent some remote contingency, carry on their hostilities with so little rancour, or animosity, that war among them is disarmed of half its terrors. Barbarians are strangers to such refinements. They rush into war with impetuosity, and prosecute it with violence. Their sole object is to make their enemies feel the weight of their vengeance, nor does their rage subside until it be satiated with inflicting on them every possible calamity. It is such a spirit that the savage tribes in America carry on their petty wars. It was with the same spirit that the more powerful and no less fierce barbarians in the north of Europe, and of Asia, fell upon the Roman Empire.

Wherever they marched, their rout was marked with blood. They ravaged or destroyed all around them. They made no distinction between what was sacred, and what was profane. They respected no age, or sex, or rank. What escaped the fury of the first inundation perished in those which followed it. The most fertile and populous provinces were converted into deserts, in which were scattered the ruins of villages and cities, that afforded shelter to a few miserable inhabitants whom chance had preserved, or the sword of the enemy, wearied with destroying, had spared. The conquerors who first settled in the countries which they had wasted were expelled or exterminated by new invaders, who coming from regions farther removed from the civilized parts of the world, were still more fierce and rapacious. This brought new calamities upon mankind, which did not cease until the north, by pouring forth successive swarms, was drained of people, and could no longer furnish instruments of destruction. Famine and pestilence, which always march in the train of war, when it ravages with such inconsiderate cruelty, raged in every part of Europe, and compleated its sufferings. If a man were called to fix upon the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most calamitous and afflicted, he would without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Theodosius the Great, to the establishment of the Lombards in Italy. [395 to 571 A.D.] The contemporary authors who beheld that scene of desolation, labour and are at a loss for expressions to describe the horror of it. The scourge of God, The destroyer of nations, are the dreadful epithets by which they distinguished the most noted of the barbarous leaders; and they compared the ruin which they had brought on the world, to the havock occasioned by earthquakes, conflagrations, or deluges, the most formidable and fatal calamities which the imagination of man can conceive.

But no expressions can convey so perfect an idea of the destructive progress of the barbarians as that which must strike an attentive observer, when he contemplates the total change, which he will discover in the state of Europe when it began to recover some degree of tranquillity towards the close of the sixth century. The Saxons were by that time masters of the southern, and more fertile provinces of Britain; the Franks of Gaul; the Huns of Pannonia; the Goths of Spain; the Goths and Lombards of Italy and the adjacent provinces. Scarce any vestige of the Roman policy, jurisprudence, arts, or literature, remained. New forms of government, new laws, new manners, new dresses, new languages, and new names of men and countries, were every where introduced. To make a great or sudden alteration with respect to any of these, unless where the ancient inhabitants of a country have been almost totally exterminated, has proved an undertaking beyond the power of the greatest conquerors. The total change which the settlement of the barbarous nations occasioned in the state of Europe, may, therefore, be considered as a more decisive proof, than even the testimony of contemporary historians, of the destructive violence with which they carried on their conquests, and of the havock which they had made from one extremity of this quarter of the globe to the other. . . .

When nations subject to despotic government make conquests, these serve only to extend the dominion and the power of their master. But armies composed of freemen conquer for themselves, not for their leaders. The people who overturned the Roman Empire, and settled in its various provinces, were of the latter class. Not only the different nations that issued from the north of Europe, which has always been considered as the seat of liberty, but the Huns and Alans who inhabited part of those countries which have been marked out as the peculiar region of servitude [by Montesquieu], enjoyed freedom and independance to such a high degree as seems to be scarce compatible with a state of social union, or with the subordination necessary to maintain it. They followed the chieftain who led them forth in quest of new settlements, not by constraint, but from choice; not as soldiers whom he could order to march, but as volunteers who offered to accompany him. They considered their conquests as a common property, in which all had a title to share, as all had contributed to acquire them. In what manner, or by what principles, they divided among them the lands which they seized, we cannot now determine with any certainty. There is no nation in Europe whose records reach back to this remote period; and there is little information to be got from the uninstructive and meagre chronicles, compiled by writers ignorant of the true end, and unacquainted with the proper objects of history.

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The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V is available online at Google Books. A short edition containing the "Progress," entitled The Progress of Society in Europe: A Historical Outline from the Subversion of the Roman Empire to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, with an introduction and historical notes by Felix Gilbert, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1972. The "Progress," as Gilbert notes, was Robertson's most famous work and "deserves to be counted among the classics of European historical writing."

Image courtesty of Wikipedia.

Virtues and Vices of the Romans

Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the first volumes of which were published in 1776, has a stature all its own among great works of history, as much for Gibbon's inimitable style and wit as for his erudition and acute judgment. The following extracts show Gibbon as a dispenser of both praise and blame to Rome. He demonstrates how Augustus, who restored peace to Rome after prevailing in the Civil Wars, gave up "the ambitious design of subduing the whole earth" and made himself, by his moderation and acceptance of limits, the benefactor of humankind. With Rome "raised above the temptation of conquest" and prepared to show that it was "actuated only by the love of order and justice," something like a universal peace prevailed--for a time. Preserving peace by a constant preparation for war, and as little disposed to endure as to offer an injury, the system of Augustus and his successors holds attention not merely for its own sake but also for the lessons it may teach another globe-girdling power. Gibbon writes of a Rome that "had much less to hope than to fear from the chance of arms." In the prosecution of remote wars, the Roman undertaking "became every day more difficult, the event more doubtful, and the possession more precarious, and less beneficial." Gibbon was a member of Parliament during the American Revolution and, for reasons not entirely clear, a supporter of the war that Britain waged to subdue the colonies. His evocation of the distant world of Rome casts an unmistakeable shadow over both his day and our day. 

These extracts conclude with Gibbon's "General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West," which in two paragraphs gives the whole completed cycle of Roman history. "The decline of Rome," he finds, "was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness."  (2536 words)

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In the second century of the Christian Era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle, but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence. The Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of  more than fourscore years [A.D. 98-180], the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and afterwards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth.

The principal conquests of the Romans were achieved under the republic; and the emperors, for the most part, were satisfied with preserving those dominions which had been acquired by the policy of the senate, the active emulation of the consuls, and the martial enthusiasm of the people. The seven first centuries were filled with a rapid succession of triumphs; but it was reserved for Augustus, to relinquish the ambitious design of subduing the whole earth, and to introduce a spirit of moderation into the public councils. Inclined to peace by his temper and situation, it was easy for him to discover, that Rome, in her present exalted situation, had much less to hope than to fear from the chance of arms; and that, in the prosecution of remote wars, the under-taking became every day more difficult, the event more doubtful, and the possession more precarious, and less beneficial. The experience of Augustus added weight to these salutary reflections, and effectually convinced him, that, by the prudent vigour of his counsels, it would be easy to secure every concession, which the safety or the dignity of Rome might require from the most formidable barbarians. Instead of exposing his person and his legions to the arrows of the Parthians, he obtained, by an honourable treaty, the restitution of the standards and prisoners which had been taken in the defeat of Crassus.

His generals, in the early part of his reign, attempted the reduction of Ethiopia and Arabia Felix. They marched near a thousand miles to the south of the tropic; but the heat of the climate soon repelled the invaders, and protected the unwarlike natives of those sequestered regions. The northern countries of Europe scarcely deserved the expence and labour of conquest. The forests and morasses of Germany were filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom; and though, on the first attack, they seemed to yield to the weight of the Roman power, they soon, by a signal act of despair, regained their independence, and reminded Augustus of the vicissitude of fortune. On the death of that emperor, his testament was publicly read in the senate. He bequeathed, as a valuable legacy to his successors, the advice of confining the empire within those limits which Nature seemed to have placed as its permanent bulwarks and boundaries; on the west the Atlantic ocean; the Rhine and Danube on the north; the Euphrates on the east; and towards the south, the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa.

Happily for the repose of mankind, the moderate system recommended by the wisdom of Augustus, was adopted by the fears and vices of his immediate successors.  (31-32)

Such was the state of the Roman frontiers, and such the maxims of Imperial policy from the death of Augustus to the accession of Trajan. That virtuous and active prince had received the education of a soldier, and possessed the talents of a general. The peaceful system of his predecessors was interrupted by scenes of war and conquest; and the legions, after a long interval, beheld a military emperor at their head. . . . Trajan was ambitious of fame; and as long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters. The praises of Alexander, transmitted by a succession of poets and historians, had kindled a dangerous emulation in the mind of Trajan. Like him the Roman emperor undertook an expedition against the nations of the east, but he lamented with a sigh, that his advanced age scarcely left him any hopes of equaling the renown of the son of Philip. Yet the success of Trajan, however transient, was rapid and specious. The degenerate Parthians, broken by intestine discord, fled before his arms. He descended the river Tigris in triumph, from the mountains of Armenia to the Persian gulph. He enjoyed the honour of being the first, as he was the last, of the Roman generals, who ever navigated that remote sea. His fleets ravaged the coasts of Arabia; and Trajan vainly flattered himself that he was approaching towards the confines of India. Every day the astonished senate received the intelligence of new names and new nations, that acknowledged his sway. . . .  But the death of Trajan soon clouded the splendid prospect; and it was justly to be dreaded, that so many distant nations would throw off the unaccustomed yoke, when they were no longer restrained by the powerful hand which had imposed it. (35-36)

Notwithstanding this difference in their personal conduct, the general system of Augustus was equally adopted and uniformly pursued by Hadrian and by the two Antonines. They persisted in the design of maintaining the dignity of the empire, without attempting to enlarge its limits. By every honourable expedient they invited the friendship of the barbarians; and endeavoured to convince mankind, that the Roman power, raised above the temptation of conquest, was actuated only by the love of order and justice. During a long period of forty-three years their virtuous labours were crowned with success; and if we except a few slight hostilities that served to exercise the legions of the frontier, the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius offer the fair prospect of universal peace. The Roman name was revered among the most remote nations of the earth. The fiercest barbarians frequently submitted their differences to the arbitration of the emperor; and we are informed by a cotemporary historian, that he had seen ambassadors who were refused the honour which they came to solicit, of being admitted into the rank of subjects.

The terror of the Roman arms added weight and dignity to the moderation of the emperors. They preserved peace by a constant preparation for war; and while justice regulated their conduct, they announced to the nations on their confines, that they were as little disposed to endure, as to offer an injury. (37-38)

* * *

The tender respect of Augustus for a free constitution which he had destroyed, can only be explained by an attentive consideration of the character of that subtle tyrant. A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him, at the age of nineteen, to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside. With the same hand, and probably with the same temper, he signed the proscription of Cicero, and the pardon of Cinna. His virtues, and even his vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the father, of the Roman world. When he framed the artful system of the Imperial authority, his moderation was inspired by his fears. He wished to deceive the people by an image of civil liberty, and the armies by an image of civil government.

The death of Caesar was ever before his eyes. He had lavished wealth and honours on his adherents; but the most favoured friends of his uncle were in the number of the conspirators. The fidelity of the legions might defend his authority against open rebellion; but their vigilance could not secure his person from the dagger of a determined republican; and the Romans, who revered the memory of Brutus, would applaud the imitation of his virtue. Caesar had provoked his fate, as much by the ostentation of his power, as by his power itself. The consul or the tribune might have reigned in peace. The title of king had armed the Romans against his life. Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured, that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom. A feeble senate and enervated people cheerfully acquiesced in the pleasing illusion, as long as it was supported by the virtue, or by even the prudence, of the successors of Augustus. It was a motive of self-preservation, not a principle of liberty, that animated the conspirators against Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. They attacked the person of the tyrant, without aiming their blow at the authority of the emperor. (96-97)

In the life of Augustus, we behold the tyrant of the republic, converted, almost by imperceptible degrees, into the father of his country and of human kind. In that of Constantine, we may contemplate a hero, who had so long inspired his subjects with love, and his enemies with terror, degenerating into a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation. The general peace which he maintained during the last fourteen years of his reign, was a period of apparent splendor rather than of real prosperity; and the old age of Constantine was disgraced by the opposite yet reconcileable vices of rapaciousness and prodigality. (644)

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“General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West”

The Greeks, after their country had been reduced into a province, imputed the triumphs of Rome, not to the merit, but to the fortune, of the republic. The inconstant goddess, who so blindly distributes and resumes her favours, had now consented (such was the language of envious flattery) to resign her wings, to descend from her globe, and to fix her firm and immutable throne on the banks of the Tiber [Plutarch]. A wiser Greek, who has composed, with a philosophic spirit, the memorable history of his own times [Polybius], deprived his countrymen of this vain and delusive comfort by opening to their view the deep foundations of the greatness of Rome. The fidelity of the citizens to each other, and to the state, was confirmed by the habits of education and the prejudices of religion. Honour, as well as virtue, was the principle of the republic; the ambitious citizens laboured to deserve the solemn glories of a triumph; and the ardour of the Roman youth was kindled into active emulation, as often as they beheld the domestic images of their ancestors. The temperate struggles of the patricians and plebeians had finally established the firm and equal balance of the constitution; which united the freedom of popular assemblies with the authority and wisdom of a senate and the executive powers of a regal magistrate. When the consul displayed the standard of the republic, each citizen bound himself, by the obligation of an oath, to draw his sword in the cause of his country, till he had discharged the sacred duty by a military service of ten years. This wise institution continually poured into the field the rising generations of freemen and soldiers; and their numbers were reinforced by the warlike and populous states of Italy, who, after a brave resistance, had yielded to the valour, and embraced the alliance, of the Romans. The sage historian, who excited the virtue of the younger Scipio and beheld the ruin of Carthage, has accurately described their military system; their levies, arms, exercises, subordination, marches, encampments; and the invincible legion, superior in active strength to the Macedonian phalanx of Philip and Alexander. {Gibbon’s note: While Carthage was in flames, Scipio repeated two lines of the Iliad, which express the destruction of Troy, acknowledging to Polybius, his friend and preceptor that, while he recollected the vicissitudes of human affairs, he inwardly applied them to the future calamities of Rome.} From these institutions of peace and war, Polybius has deduced the spirit and success of a people incapable of fear and impatient of repose. The ambitious design of conquest, which might have been defeated by the seasonable conspiracy of mankind, was attempted and achieved; and the perpetual violation of justice was maintained by the political virtues of prudence and courage. The arms of the republic, sometimes vanquished in battle, always victorious in war, advanced with rapid steps to the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the Ocean; and the images of gold, or silver, or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome. 

The rise of a city, which swelled into an empire, may deserve, as a singular prodigy, the reflection of a philosophic mind. But the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigour of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians. 

The decay of Rome has been frequently ascribed to the translation of the seat of empire; but this history has already shewn that the powers of government were divided rather than removed. The throne of Constantinople was erected in the East; while the West was still possessed by a series of emperors who held their residence in Italy and claimed their equal inheritance of the legions and provinces. This dangerous novelty impaired the strength, and fomented the vices, of a double reign; the instruments of an oppressive and arbitrary system were multiplied; and a vain emulation of luxury, not of merit, was introduced and supported between the degenerate successors of Theodosius. Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, embitters the factions of a declining monarchy. (ch. 38)

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The “General Observations” are from the 1906 edition by J.B. Bury, available at the Online Library of Liberty. The preceding selections are from the Penguin edition edited by David Womersley, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I the First (1776) and Volume the Second (1781) (New York, 1994). This is the new standard edition and is especially valuable for Womersley’s 100 page introduction to Gibbon’s life and thought. Map from The New Times Atlas of World History, edited by Geoffrey Barraclough (Hammond, 1979), 86.

 

 

 

Portrait of Gibbon by Sir Joshua Reynolds, from Wikipedia