I am having dificulty recognizing historical reality in the current
discussion, so please consider this being written for my own self-
clarification, so you needn't unless you have the same difficulty in
defining "core" and "periphery" for pre-capitalist world-empires.
In the precapitalist agrarian civilizations, the world-empires formed
in the respective civilization-areas as a rule, perhaps *never*, had their
economic cores coinciding with their politico-military cores. This occurred
for two reasons.
1. World-empires were invariably formed from the unification of state-
systems. As we know, states never come into existence singly; only as state-
systems. They interact, fight, struggle for power, perhaps in equilibrium
for centuries, perhaps unstably and susceptible to quite rapid unification,
perhaps until they all more or less coevally undergo "system collapse," bad
archeologibberish shorthand for a withdrawal of resources previously rendered
by direct producers or tributaries or both from parasitic, militaristic
elites hitherto "paid for," eventuating in "the end of civilization," which
for those rid of "macroparasites" may not be such a Bad Thing. The Maya are
one instance.
State systems are unified by military innovators also commanding newly-
developed economic resources. They are marcher-states, not accepted as part
of the "Civilized" community until their conquest-hegemony entails their
right to define their civilized condition unhindered by preexisting
snobberies. To this day, not even North Americans and others remote from
the Balkans dare call Alexander The Great an "Albanian," and I daresay
any Albanian resident of contemporary Hellas would be in danger if he or
she did so. Analogously, Rome. Analogously, the Chinese Empire, unified
by the King of Qin, a marcher state on the western "barbarian" frontier.
The key to the latter achievement, in 221 BC, was the conquest, in 315,
of the non-Chinese (ie "barbarian") Kingdom of Shu, in Sichuan, whose vast
food resources permitted the long-range mobility of Qin's armies. (See
Steven V. Snyder, Sichuan and the Unification of China, Stanford, 1992.)
We can go backward through Achaemenids, Assyrians, etc, to Sargon of
Akkad; or ahead to the Islamic conquests in the formerly-divided civiliza-
tion-areas of the Near East which, however, had hitherto comprised a single
state-system.
It is a curious fact that, where state systems are stable notwithstanding
continuous interstate warfare, there prevails a conservatism in military
technique, replete with etiquettes and proprieties, with potential areas
of innovation, eg, cavalry in the context of Greek hoplite infantry warfare,
neglected for reasons other than military efficiency; howbeit the naval
forces of the same period underwent extremely rapid development in tactics
and maneuver though not in size and technique (which characterized the later
Hellenistic state system).
2. The second reason is that a world-empire requires, simultaneously,
ferociously-motivated soldiers for military efficiency *and* thoroughly-
domesticated, inured-to-toil direct producers. The latter are excessively
"civilianized"; if independent within state systems, they hire mercenaries,
turn the latter if possible, into hereditary *cleruch*s, and enroll the
locals only in the direst emergencies. (Allusion to Ptolemaic Egypt, but
applicable to Chinese Conquest Dynasties, domination of Indian states by
Muslim Afghan or Khwarizmian tribals, Persian and Arab Muslims by Turkish
tribals, and numerous other familiar cases.
What renders this intractable problem especially interesting is the
unity in the same persons of the economic-exploiter and rulership roles.
The same persons appearing as *owners* or *fiefholders* also appear as
*officeholders*, *magistrates*, *generals*, *dictators*, *bureucrats*,
and *warriors* (in feudal polities). What is maximized is not wealth, but
military power, which guarantees accumulation of wealth. This may be
maximized as well through the holding of a Chinese magistracy entitlement
whereto is conferred by holding of the *jinshi* degree from the Northern
Song period on, for a thousand years, as by the direct holding of a great
lordship in Europe of the period coeval with the Northern Song (960-1126).
Loss of access to the means of violence endangers ownership or other
controlling rights in property; and property accumulation is far more easily
rendered by maximizing office or household-warrior-retinue than is
accumulated wealth convertible into political power, state or feudal variety.
This holds even for European protocapitalism: You lost your political rights
in Mediaeval Italian cities, you lost your money. The other causal linkage
to downward mobility was slower.
By contrast, compare capitalism: The economic cores even within nation-
states correspond geographically to politico-military cores. (Even in the
USA, where enormous, and a trifle weird, efforts were made to eschew
urbanization qua moral corruption, the surest method of making oneself
president*abile* has been via the governorship of New York, Ohio, Illinois,
California. I cannot account for Arkansas, frankly.)
While the capitalist class is bifurcated into specialized, at times even
mutually hostile, but heavily intermarried, wings of entrepreneurial
specialists and politco-military specialists. As Beijing now becomes for
the first time a great center of Big Business, we now know that the answer
to whether an entrepreneurial culture can coexist with the domination of
a totalitarian Communist party is Yes!
Now, let's look at the Roman Empire, and its relations with the Near
East, as an instance of dissociated cores, associated ruling-class roles
in actual history. The Roman Empire is the unification stage of the Hellen-
istic state system in the Eastern Mediterranean, overlapping toward the
Western Mediterranean with Hellenistic kingdoms in Sicily in unstable
equilibrium with Carthage, with a new state system forming in the interior
of Gaul as the unintended consequence of massive slave-trading by Massaliots.
(There's an article in Rich & Shipley (Eds.), War and Society in Greece,
Routledge, 1992, 1994 I forgot to bring in. What's more, I forgot to bring
in my Post-It Notes. What's more, I forgot to bring in the parallels in the
literature with state-formation in Africa during Euro slave trade. Shoot me.
I'm irresponsible.)
What the Roman state didn't know, under the Republic, was how much money
it was making on what, inclusive of its partly-private, partly-state
chicanerous citizenry abroad whose potential for furnishing of *casus
belli* by fleecing and skinning the provincials beyond endurance to revolt
and massacre these people deserving of said fate was only nominally
unwelcome. What was the common crook's loss in the Mithridatic War was
Sulla's gain.
Warfare and conquest, in the late republic had an exessively "short-run
time-perspective," where, say, the looting of Gaul by Caesar's proconsular
army was the one-shot deal required for the binding of the men's loyalty
to Caesar himself; whereto was added his payoff of campaign debts incurred
in winning election as consul in 59 BC; these notably included one million
or one and a half million sesterces for a necklace required for a spectacular
seduction, these things having the opposite electoral impact from that thought
usual in the USA. This is dwelt on to indicate the perhaps frivolous motives
for expansion, slaves aside, they were a dependable byproduct in any event,
which were possible, so long as an aggregate ruin of state finance was not
possible. This only entered the realm of theoretical possibility with the
expansion of the legions to half a million men in the civil wars from 44 to
31 BC.
Augustus, in founding the principate, ensured that he, and his successors,
could, would, if they were curious, have some vague idea of how much revenue
versus the relative magnitude of expenditure each province represented. The
glory-and-grandeur motive was not, however, easily extinguished; for when
Germany was given up as a growth-point, Claudius, in 44, conquered Britain.
He had no way of knowing at this time how profitable an investment he'd just
made; and the cleanup of the administration following Boudicca's revolt, in
60, which had the salutary impact, moreover, of the massacre of the leeches
and speculators found in every instance ofnew conquest.
Palmer, in The Roman Legions, 1926, remarked that units recruited in
the Latin west routinely defeated those raised in the Greek east; but a
citation is hardly necessary. The Roman army was recruited from tough
tribes. Some of these empirically demonstrated their toughness in fighting
Romans. Asturii and Cantabrii revolted in 22BC; too few were left unenslaved
for their language to remain unRomanced, as was Basque. Other examples are
Welsh, Berber, Armenian, and of course Albanian. My curiosity about the
latter was not piqued when I first read Perry Anderson's characterization
of "Illyria," in Passages From Antiquity To Feudalism, as "the last refuge
of *latinitas*," for in 1973 I was wallowing in cults of personality and
reverence for authority figures. Show me a pre-Roman language spoken to
this day, and I'll show you a tribe so tough, the Romans durst not mess
with them, and furthermore welcomed them most warmly as soldier material.
Who rose like the veritable cream to senators and emperors.
Trajan (98-117) , a Spaniard, added his easy conquest, the Nabataean
Arab kingdom, to the empire, along with grandiosely expanded possessions
in Mesopotamia. These, Hadrian (117-142) prudently withdrew from; but then,
his rear was threatened, unrest among the Jews having already recrudesced
under his predecessor, in Alexandria, in 115. Tha Bar Kokhba War (132-135)
saw a vast improvement in tactics by the rebels over the effort in 66-73.
Another of Hadrian's achievements, the Wall in Britain, contributed to
later prosperity of that province; he also erected baths in London.
By this time, the conquests of Ban Chao in Central Asia had led to
Chinese control even farther to the west of the Stone Pillar at Kucha.
(The Kuchans are also known as Tocharians.) At the Stone Pillar, the
caravans from Changan and North China - the Later Han had moved the
capital from Changan eastward to Loyang - turned back, having completed
exhange of trade goods with dromedary caravans from the Parthian Empire,
An Pi, in Chinese, through Afghanistan, to the rendevous point. To the
west of the Parthian empire the caravans exchanged trade goods with those
from Antioch, in the Roman Empire, An Pu in Chinese, at the sole legal
exchange point, Nisibis, once this had been wrested from feeble Parthia.
Antioch, in Syria, became the third, then second, largest city in the
Roman Empire, whose specialty was the silk industry; and as a huge city,
it was the de facto headquarters of Christianity. Original Sin vied with
conspicuous "decadence," as fashionable young women affected the "naked
look" in silk gauze in the second century.
Septimus Severus was the first emperor to indisputably launch predatory
expansion to the east, at Parthia's expense; the groundwork had been laid
by his predecessors, of course. His victories culminated in the occupation
of the Parthian royal capital, Ctesiphon, and the enslavement of 100,000
people. One third of the Roman legions were permanently on station in the
East, and the reason was the control of ever longer stretches of Silk Road
made money.
What about the Marcomanni and Quadi, whom Marcus Aurelius had fought to
his dying breath up in Dacia? Reprioritized. Severus was "a native of Leptis
Magna in Africa and married to a Syrian princess," (Wilkes, The Illyrians)
commanding Balkan troops, using the latter to expand the Roman East. The
oriental influences on the Severan family, including dabbling in Christianity,
are well-known. The latter was true of Philip The Arab, 244-249, whose
demise was the single most precipitate step toward the Third Century Crisis.
Here was an actual eastern native as emperor, and though the question as
to, in what sense the Romans might be said to have been animated by "racism,"
as recognizable to us, is obscure, given that Antiquity employed discourse
most *unrecognizable* to us, the assassination of Philip looks like a case
of it.
The frontier in Dacia was crumbling, and the legions defending the Danube
were Balkan tribals.
"During the early decades of the third century the army of Illyricum
became more reluctant to commit its strength elsewhere, while insisting
that resources were contributed from other areas of the Empire to sustain
the exposed frontier on the Danube....(Wilkes, p. 261)
Or, in plain English, the currency was worthless, and the troops were going
nowhere without guaranteed loot and power in some combination. Two successive
field commanders at Sirmium, Pacatanius, removed in time, and Decius, who
wasn't, bid for power. Messius Decius, best known for persecuting Christians
and getting stupidly ambushed and killed by Goths (249-251) personally
assassinated Philip, issuing "coins bearing the legend 'virtus Illyrici.'"
The worm turned in Mesopotamia. The Sassanid founder Ardashir had promised
revenge, and Shapur I invaded the Roman Near East three times, sacking Antioch
in 252, reducing Dura Europus in 254 (hence preserving the place for later
archeological research), and capturing Valerian in 260, using the latter for
footrest. The circumstances of a power vacuum on the Roman side obscured the
altered cost-benefit ratio of wars in Mesopotamia.
Epidemics of smallpox and measles (see McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, 1976)
rendered the Mediterranean (and North China at the same time) a "demographic
sink," by which I mean, the reduction of a dense population of a deasease-
infested region to a level too low to support its previous labour-system,
or "mode of production," if only in the style whereto it was accustomed.
Mortality rates were highest in cities; and the cities of Roman Gaul, and
to a lesser degree Spain, were so reduced in population that the commercial
and agricultural estates supplying them, and if worked by slave gang labour
most likely of declining profitability already, went out of business very
quickly, becoming *agres vacantes*. As did peasants, free and slave, who
weren't replaced. The cities were shrunken to tiny garrisons, a tenth of
their former walled areas. Coinage went out of circulation. Usurpers did
their usual usurping; as usurpers are paid to do. One of those who won,
Gallienus, 260-268), led an army of Welsh and Germans to take over after
the dubious loss of Valerian. He managed to get killed in ambush by a
bunch of beaten Goths hiding out in a swamp, leaving it to the Illyrian,
M. Aurelius Claudius [II] Gothicus, to mop up this wretched tribe; but
meanwhile the most fantastic thing seemed to be happening in the east,
a city-state had got grandiosity delusions, taking over a third of what
had used to be the Roman Empire.
The Roman Mesopotamian town of Palmyra, calling itself Tadmor, was vastly
rich from the China trade in silk and the Indian trade in spices. It kept
its own fleet on the Euphrates; citizens owned vast, immense numbers of
dromedaries for the caravan trade. What happened was obscure, unplanned,
and its consequences were unintended. This is the only way it could've
happened. A Roman Senator, meaning in context a quite rich personage, S.
Oedanathus, proclaimed himself emperor. Nobody much out of town paid
attention. Usurpers were usurping everywhere, and purely local talent was
a favourite-son candidate, nothing more. He died in 268, with his claim
passing to his son, Wahabalat [sp?], in whose name power was exercised by
his mother, Zanab [Zenobia]. There being as noted a Power Vaccum, Palmyrene
money was deployed in masses to secure the allegiance of Roman Syria, Egypt,
Arabia, Palestine, and most of Asia Minor.
Claudius died in an epidemic in 270; an Illyrian from south Illyria,
Albania proper, Domitius Aurelianus, seized power and marched on Palmyra
in 272, promising that he'd do something really nice for the Syrian sun
god, Sol Invictus of Emesa, if he won; hence made the god's birthday,
Dec 25, a legal holiday, as it remains. This was all preparatory to the
final takeover by C. Valerius Diocles and his junta of Albanians, in 284.
Diocletian, as he is commonly known, is best known for his work in the
Roman East. There remain remains, for instance, of the Strata Diocletiana,
a military supply route along the obscurely defined Persian frontier.
Also, whist he is roundly condemned for issuing the Edict of Diocletian
at Antioch, in 303, it is nearly always forgotten by the accusers that the
Antioch populace was the most riot-prone in the Roman Empire, as they proved
under Theodosius I, in 383, the Day of the Statues, when every statue of
every emperor was smashed because the food supply ran out.
The ruling Albanian coterie, commanding the legions, filled with Albanians
and Welsh, when they weren't filled with Germans, made a ruthless analysis
of costs and benefits; in the course of which, we know, the monumental
decision was made to move the political core of the Roman Empire to the
East. From Naissa (Nish), home of Diocletian, and Nicomedia, in Asia Minor,
the capital was shifted to the world's most famous naval choke-point, renamed
Constantinople from Byzantium. Constantine was a second-generation Albanian
general, leading his father's Welsh troops in what amounted to an Albanian
blood feud against Maxentius, where the policy switch associated with the
supremacy of eastern over western interests, ruthless and rational as it
may have been in substance was, withal, guided by sheer superstition, signs
and portents in the heavens, in 312 at the Milvian Bridge. The implications
for this, ie, Christinization, were foreseeably relevant to the east, not
the west, as the latter was deficient in urbanism, hence of Christians. How
the east was won (324) is not important; a few months later, in 325, in
Nicaea, across Marmora, the assembled prelates were told, after three
centuries of denouncing principalities and powers, that the Church was to
be run the army way; and Constantine hadn't even any right to call the
Council; he had no right to be there; he wasn't even to be baptized till
his deathbed due to his mass-murders.
The dynasty of Constantine ended with Julian, called the Apostate, 361-363.
Without military experience, he'd won the battle of Strasbourg, 360, against
the Alemanni by *having the armies of Gaul supplied from Britain*. In the
latter, the *villa* economy was flourishing. In Gaul, it was in ruins. Was
this possibly related to the raiding for slaves in Caledonia, north of
Hadrian's wall? No written evidence exists. If the slaves on the *villae*
were Picts from Caledonia, this makes a horse of a different kettle of fish
after what happened after the mutiny of the Saxon mercenaries blamed on
"Vortigern." Conquerors don't conquer because they desire freedom, equality,
liberty, and yeoman status; the do so to watch somebody else do the work.
So the Romans held onto the Welsh recruiting grounds, a nursery of usurpers
however, as long as they could, pulling out only after the crossing of the
Rhine by whole German peoples on Christmas Eve, 406. The rest of Western
Europe could revert, so long as the military cared, to the condition of
Fierce and Warlike Tribes, or Wild West, so long as the high command cared;
the State was them. They had packed up and moved any people who counted.
When the Empire was divided into separate but unequal halves, it turned out,
it was especially important to the East, where the empire was in flourishing
condition, relatively and at times even absolutely, right up to the Plague
of Justinian, in 542, which made the most densely-populated areas of the
economic core into another, worse, demographic sink, even though the East
had Armenians to draw upon.
The dynasty of Heraclius (610-641), which lasted until Justinian II,
d. 711, was of Armenian origin; and the Armenians were the only Monophysite
Christians ever appeased by the Late Romans/Byzantines. (Nobody ever mentioned
skin colour, but something applied to the Syrians and Egyptians which did
not to Armenians.
Late Romans/Byzantines fought Sassanids over Mesopotamia until both
sides forgot about it, for a long time, due to the fact that the rewards
from political rent over the Silk Route could not support the wars of both
powers; only that of one of them in fairly uneventful control for extended
periods. Once this had been grasped, both powers fought by using proxies,
the Ghassanids for the Late Romans/Byzantines, Lakhmids for the Sassanids.
This relatively happy and cheap state of affairs was terminated by the
Plague of Justinian and its aftermath, when both powers attempted, the
Sassanids following Justinian's example, of recouping revenue shortfalls
from demographic collapse from foreign predation, first under Khushraw I
Anushirwan, who sacked Antioch in 540 while Justinian's "reconquest" was
on, then under Khushraw II, who'd owed his throne to Maurice (580-602).
The effect was something like if both Allies and Central Powers had been
replaced by Communism; but who knew. The curious thing about that outcome
was, the Hijaz route from Yemen, which all the learned scholars here have
been arguing about, was not sufficiently profitable from the carrying trade
in frankincence and myrrh; this had anyway been drastically reduced by
Constantine's religious policy's effect upon the Roman balance of payments,
ie, by substiting inhumation, relatively odour-free, for cremation, which
stinks, requiring vast quantities of frankincense and myrrh to cover it
up; the same is true of the abolition of animal sacrifices in Christian
areas over the period required for conversion of the population, which had
been underway since the economic collapse of the pagan cults in the third
century.
What made the Hijaz route profitable, extremely profitable, was the
closure of the Roman-Persian frontier, as normally occurred in times of
war; and by annihilating the former boundary, the Arabs doomed the trade
prosperity of Arabia. But they, like the Romans before them, packed up and
moved Arabia to where they went, a better life on Earth, let alone Paradise.
Daniel A. Foss