Marcus Aurelius’ time as an emperor, Ancient Rome was living in harmony and the empire was very rich and big and the military forces was strong and united as well as the senate. With many nations under their command, Ancient Rome was at their top of the history during his reign. After his death, the country became destabilized because his son was not a strong leader and he was corrupted. During the time of Aurelius’s son reign, corruption started to be seem more than ever. Another event that showed the decline of Ancient Rome was when the empire was split into two nations with two emperors.
Also, many experts say that it fell because of the lack of heart the people had to the Empire, the rise of Christianity, it was too immense to govern and protect, the decline of the economy and jobs, the army being made up of mostly foreigners, and outside invaders. Thus, one can say that the Empire collapsed more internally than externally. The first reason why the Western Roman Empire fell was because the people that lived in it had a lack of heart in the Empire. People didn’t believe the Empire was worth saving anymore. As Strayer, Gatzke, and Harbison state in their textbook The Course of Civilization states “The basic trouble was that very few inhabitants of the empire believed that the old civilization was worth saving… the overwhelming majority of the population had been systematically excluded from political responsibilities.
During the last centuries of the Classical Era, the world became witness to the downfall of leading civilizations such as Rome, China, and India. In western Rome, the government and society of the area, both previously considered to be at the apex of stability and creativity, devolved into positions of fragmentation and decline; however, in the eastern segments of the Roman Empire there was a political continuity of a centralized state later becoming the Byzantine Empire. At this time, the world also experienced new interaction between rural and urban people and the beginnings of the decline of empires such as the Han Dynasty. Due to a strong centralized government backed by an equally strong military, the Roman Empire experienced a golden age known as the Pax Romana in 100 C.E. The Roman Empire at this time was very large as it stretched from North Africa to the northern parts of the Britannica.
Through examining the collapse of Rome through Watson’s ‘Spectrum and Pendulum’ and analysing the legacies of the Roman Empire, this essay looked at how the European system was influenced by the legacy of the Roman Empire. From the fall of the Roman Empire in 476AD through to Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire in the 9th century, western Europe went through a period of great difficulty. The population of western Europe managed to preserve some of its Roman civilisation, firstly through the founding of the Holy Roman Empire by Charlemagne, ‘restoring’ the original Roman Empire. Secondly, Italy, Spain and France retained varieties of the Latin language, which became the Romance languages of today. Lastly, the population remained or became Catholic, and were organised and represented by the Catholic Church.
Some reasons are that the Huns, a fierce group of Mongol Nomads started to destroy everything in the Romans path. The Huns moved through the Roman Provinces of Gaul, Spain, and North Africa. In 410 AD, the Huns overran Rome for 3 days. The Huns leader was Attila. His forces terrorized both halves of the empire but failed in the East, due to the high walls of Constantinople.
The last years of Henrys reign was dominated by conservative and reformist factions . In this essay I will assess the extent of the threat created due to the rivalry of factions that had affected the stability of the government. The execution of Cromwell (1940) was a success for conservatives as was also Henrys marriage to Catharine Haword. The marriage was a gateway to influencing Henry by carving out a new royal policy via Catharine H. This increased tension between the Reformists and conservatives and so the reformists took action to destroy the reputations of Cahrine H , Duke of Norfolk and Gardiner. On the contrary this shows that the disputes between these factions may imply that the King was weak and not in control thus significantly threatening the stability of government .
In turn this would destroy Britain commercially and their industrial economy allowing Napoleon to take over Britain however did not work and left Napoleon worse off then he was before. His next mistake was the Peninsular war and as a result weakened his empire even more by the Spanish guerrillas, Germans, and Italians turning against him. Lastly his third mistake lost him most of his soldiers and the tactic used to defeat him was the scorched-earth policy, by the Russians. These mistakes greatly weakened Napoleons Empire. The empire was then declared war on by Britain, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and Austria.
Some were extremely successful, and others not so much. People like Qin Shi Huangdi folded under the pressure, and became too paranoid of his own people. Octavian on the other hand, knew the possibilities of internal and external threat, but actually made successful reforms to eliminate the possibility. A lot of the success rate of these empires
Unfortunately, similar to the Roman Empire, its fall was both unanticipated and catastrophic. With two world wars, the fall of a long dominant region (Europe) and the rise to power of two new superpowers, the world had changed. The empire fell due a fortunate combination of motives: the anti-imperialist ideology of the US, public opinion in Britain, the appearance of Europe as an alternative, the strong rise of nationalism and most importantly economic distress in Britain. Even though they were all interlinked and nationalism received a lot of attention by the media and historians alike, the underlying factor was that of financial crisis. Nationalism was partly responsible for the rapid fall of British Empire.
It is apparent on how the Ancient Athenians executed Socrates after the series of attempts of his followers to destroy Democracy. It is also a Democracy of the Sword because of the Ancient Athenians view war as a necessity to protect Democracy, which they claim to be the model government for other Greek City-States to follow but eventually these wars destroyed Democracy. The Democracy of the United States of America during the 20th century, as I see it, is a Democracy of principles in a sense that Ideologies are dominant in the United States. There are four dominant Ideologies namely: liberal, conservative, libertarian and populist. I tend to think that the United States view the world as a political area and it is just a mere battle of principles of state governance.