rome second century bcIIAmerica late 20th early twenty-first century

[Hamilton321]

The US has always had political families. Adams, Roosevelts, Lees- dear god, the Lees. The only difference is that you've had a couple of Bushes in relatively rapid succession, and almost had a couple of Clintons- and the latter is really only technically an example of a "political family", because there's really nothing dynastic about a husband-wife couple of individually obscure background. If you look beyond the surnames of Presidents, the overall trend is towards a less dynastic politics.

I actually was not so much talking about presidents and well-known major political families as I was talking about lesser-known, middle influence political families that hold power, not just the presidential political families, the political families in congress, corporations, banks, etc. that have been growing increasingly influential and interconnected over the last few decades.

There wasn't just a plebian/patrician divide, though. There were numerous broad divisions, between patricians and plebs, senators and equestrians, property-holders and proletarians, urban and rural Romans, Romans and Italians, citizens and slaves. The "plebs vs. patrician" thing is really just an imposition of modern assumptions onto an era which simply didn't work like that.

well, of course it was more complicated than pleb vs. patrician, I didn't really word that line of my original post well. Much like today in Rome at that time there were many small divides which built up to the large divides

 

[Dachs]

Lastly, there is always at least one other power waiting in the wings to take a stab at the role. While the globocop might welcome a deputy, will the deputy eventually want to be the sheriff? And where does that leave the former sheriff? The British Empire had two such prospects in its shadow by the end of the 19th century; Imperial Germany and the United States. With America's victory against Spain, it became the defacto deputy to England, while Germany was still looking to break out of central Europe and increasingly saw war as its only option.

I think that this is an inaccurate characterization of a few things:

1. the role of the British Empire
2. the way German elites approached geopolitics in the early twentieth century, and
3. the reason the First World War broke out.

There's also a problem that your definition of "globocop" seems a bit fuzzy. (Also, I can't read "globocop" without thinking of "Globocnik".)

If the requirement is an ideology of national exceptionalism in a Great Power, then yes, the British Empire possessed that quality. So did the other contemporary Great Powers. You can easily argue that Britain found itself more willing and capable to participate in foreign interventions than other powers due to the nature and extent of its empire, but that's a difference of degree, not type.

If the requirement is an actual, concerted effort on the part of the most powerful nation to enforce peace in order to achieve prosperity, that is hard to substantiate. The nineteenth century saw its fair share of wars both in Europe and abroad, and the British Empire's role in preventing them, stopping them, and participating in them is highly uneven. Sometimes you argue that some of the wars that Britain started were the ultimate expression of the British Empire's role as the enforcer of global peace, which is hard for me to swallow. Sometimes you argue that the wars that Britain failed to prevent (or even precipitated) weren't that big a deal. When you explain away the Austro-Prussian War - the conflict that saw one of the largest land battles in history up to that point and completely changed the history of Germany - as a "sideshow", it makes for an awfully mendacious read. Even the contemporary Britishers thought that the war made for one of the most "decisive" events in world history. It wasn't the only one; Disraeli described the subsequent Franco-German War as "revolutionary". The fact that the British Empire's role in resolving these wars was basically nil does not speak well for its supposed role as "globocop".

If the requirement is that the Royal Navy ensured global prosperity through trade, that is simply untrue. That global prosperity was instead based more on declining transport costs due to the application of steam power technology to sailing ships and railroads. It didn't have all that much to do with peace in and of itself. (Which is, in fact, one of the reasons the British Empire wasn't terribly interested in global peace in and of itself.) The prosperity ended when war broke out, but that again didn't have much to do with the Royal Navy or keeping global trade safe. Apart from a very brief episode in 1917, piracy (i.e. something the Royal Navy could actually prevent) did not threaten global trade, but global wealth, per-capita income, productivity, and so on began to decline in 1914 and continued to do so for the next three decades.

So I have trouble understanding why you think that this "globocop" thing is a Thing.

Structurally, most historians of international relations describe the period after the Revolutions of 1848 as "multipolarity", not as the hegemony of a superpower. Before 1848, the so-called Congress system was in fact a dual hegemony exercised by Britain and Russia over Europe and involving limited competition outside of it. Afterwards, while British industrial and economic and naval power remained strong, and while "dual hegemony" with Russia ended in 1853, the actual record of British governments exercising that power in a unipolar way is almost nonexistent. At no point did Britain attempt to "lead" Europe diplomatically, nor did British governments openly oppose the rest of Europe. Instead, British leaders made infrequent combinations with various powers against other powers, much as they had done in the past, while mostly remaining aloof from Continental affairs (the so-called "Splendid Isolation"). Eventually, both Conservative and Liberal leaders understood that Britain lacked the military and economic power to survive in early twentieth-century politics without actual allies, so the British found them. The fact that individual Britons often treated these alliances and agreements with the sort of supercilious disdain that implied their superfluity does not mean that they were, in fact, superfluous. They were absolutely necessary, and they strongly argue against any unipolar superpower diplomatic structure. It's easy to argue that the British Empire was the most powerful country in the world by most metrics in 1900, but most historians tend to classify it as a first among equals rather than a power that tilted the entire gravity of world politics towards it.

I simply don't think that describing the British Empire in this way is particularly useful.

 

[Ajidica]

Apart from a very brief episode in 1917, piracy (i.e. something the Royal Navy could actually prevent) did not threaten global trade, but global wealth, per-capita income, productivity, and so on began to decline in 1914 and continued to do so for the next three decades.

What piracy are you referring to in 1917? All I can think of is Germany announcing a return to unrestricted submarine warfare but I'm not sure I would count that as piracy or as something the Royal Navy could meaningfully prevent given the paltry state of ASW technology.

 

[Karpius]

I think that this is an inaccurate characterization of a few things:

1. the role of the British Empire
2. the way German elites approached geopolitics in the early twentieth century, and
3. the reason the First World War broke out.

The vigorous colonial efforts of the British Empire opened the new world to colonization and an explosion of trade but within a different framework from waning powers such as Spain and Portugal and even the Dutch. This trade created prosperity in the empire which prompted the growth of an industrial economy that relied on secure trade routes across the globe. This created a defacto open access policy that served the interests of financiers who pressured their governments to maintain security. For more than a century, the British Navy was unsurpassed and its role was less by design and more out of circumstance. If we step back from the details and view the 18th and 19th centuries as whole, it became less and less palatable to challenge the British on a large scale and co-operation became more rewarding economically. That alone helped reduce the instance of major wars - the Napoleonic wars not withstanding. The Austro-Prussian war was certainly monumental to central Europe, but on a global scale it mattered little. By contrast, the Opium Wars, though smaller in scale militarily, were a far bigger event in the global community as it definitively established "Western" power as supreme, and the West was most definitely led by Britain at the time.

After the Franco-Prussian war, the Kaiser's Germany prospered precisely because of the global economic boom spurred by the increasingly safer trade routes supported by British naval power. Also, the growth of industry within Germany was largely financed by British industrialists for the same reasons American industrialists invest in China today. Germany, however, wanted its own overseas possessions as well and Britain did little to stand in its way in an attempt to avoid any major wars that would spread beyond any local area. This was less an explicitly stated policy of the British and more the result of the power of the British Empire at the time.

By the beginning of the 20th century, British power was reaching its "culminating point" and Germany was feeling the effects "caging". While the British Empire was still supreme, other powers were gaining - principally Germany and the United States. Many of the same conditions that brought prosperity to the Empire were reaching their saturation points and the economy was beginning to decline. The United States posed no threat not for lack of ability, but lack of any real conflict of interest. Whether it embraced the role or not, the U.S. was becoming something of a deputy to Britain. Germany, however, if it wished to grow its economy and/or borders was bound to find itself in conflict with its neighbors as well as the ruler of the seas. These factors led to a complex string of diplomatic arrangements that allowed the powers to blunder their way into the Great War. But seen in the larger picture, that war seemed quite inevitable.

I would highly recommend the book "War....What is it Good For" by noted historian Ian Morris. He expounds on these theories far more eloquently and articulately than I can. He explains the concepts of "caging" and "culminating points" and their role throughout history. An excellent read, though on the surface it may seem controversial.

 

[Traitorfish]

What piracy are you referring to in 1917? All I can think of is Germany announcing a return to unrestricted submarine warfare but I'm not sure I would count that as piracy or as something the Royal Navy could meaningfully prevent given the paltry state of ASW technology.

 

[Dachs]

The vigorous colonial efforts of the British Empire opened the new world to colonization and an explosion of trade but within a different framework from waning powers such as Spain and Portugal and even the Dutch. This trade created prosperity in the empire which prompted the growth of an industrial economy that relied on secure trade routes across the globe. This created a defacto open access policy that served the interests of financiers who pressured their governments to maintain security. For more than a century, the British Navy was unsurpassed and its role was less by design and more out of circumstance. If we step back from the details and view the 18th and 19th centuries as whole, it became less and less palatable to challenge the British on a large scale and co-operation became more rewarding economically. That alone helped reduce the instance of major wars - the Napoleonic wars not withstanding. The Austro-Prussian war was certainly monumental to central Europe, but on a global scale it mattered little. By contrast, the Opium Wars, though smaller in scale militarily, were a far bigger event in the global community as it definitively established "Western" power as supreme, and the West was most definitely led by Britain at the time.

After the Franco-Prussian war, the Kaiser's Germany prospered precisely because of the global economic boom spurred by the increasingly safer trade routes supported by British naval power. Also, the growth of industry within Germany was largely financed by British industrialists for the same reasons American industrialists invest in China today. Germany, however, wanted its own overseas possessions as well and Britain did little to stand in its way in an attempt to avoid any major wars that would spread beyond any local area. This was less an explicitly stated policy of the British and more the result of the power of the British Empire at the time.

By the beginning of the 20th century, British power was reaching its "culminating point" and Germany was feeling the effects "caging". While the British Empire was still supreme, other powers were gaining - principally Germany and the United States. Many of the same conditions that brought prosperity to the Empire were reaching their saturation points and the economy was beginning to decline. The United States posed no threat not for lack of ability, but lack of any real conflict of interest. Whether it embraced the role or not, the U.S. was becoming something of a deputy to Britain. Germany, however, if it wished to grow its economy and/or borders was bound to find itself in conflict with its neighbors as well as the ruler of the seas. These factors led to a complex string of diplomatic arrangements that allowed the powers to blunder their way into the Great War. But seen in the larger picture, that war seemed quite inevitable.

I would highly recommend the book "War....What is it Good For" by noted historian Ian Morris. He expounds on these theories far more eloquently and articulately than I can. He explains the concepts of "caging" and "culminating points" and their role throughout history. An excellent read, though on the surface it may seem controversial.

Many of the things in this post aren't wrong, but they're massively exaggerated versions of what actually happened. The Royal Navy of the nineteenth century undoubtedly contributed to the security of the seas. British fleets did not make the seas "safe" by themselves, however, and the security of the oceans - while it certainly helped world trade - was not the primary factor in the increase in trade. That primary factor was instead the decline in transport costs, which was mostly due to improving technology. Similarly, British capital did participate in the industrialization of Germany but saying that the latter was "largely" due to Britain is a huge overstatement.

Other parts are a bit weird. Referring to "culmination" in anything other than a purely military context is odd. It's a bizarre misappropriation of terminology. It's like the whole "globocop" thing. Who does that?

And steadfastly arguing that the Opium Wars were more important for British trade than was the Franco-German War falls apart even on your own criteria: the volume of British trade with Germany was far greater (by, like, an order of magnitude) than the volume of British trade with China (including British India) throughout the nineteenth century and into much of the twentieth century. I don't even agree that you should be able to pick and choose what parts of global hegemony that an alleged global hegemon should be exercising (otherwise it wouldn't be, y'know, global hegemony, which is my point), but if you are going to pick and choose, you should be more careful than that.

Frankly, if this explanation is faithful to Morris's book, it's not much of an inducement to read it. Morris is a classicist who likes to write and publish Big Idea macrohistories, which contain interesting narratives in theory that look significantly weaker when compared with the current state of the field in any specific area. The idea makes sense, and it's easy to see how he got there, but, if this is his line of reasoning, he takes his evidence much farther than it can reasonably be expected to go.

 

[Dachs]

What piracy are you referring to in 1917? All I can think of is Germany announcing a return to unrestricted submarine warfare but I'm not sure I would count that as piracy or as something the Royal Navy could meaningfully prevent given the paltry state of ASW technology.

It was described as piracy at the time (leading to British submarine commanders beginning the tradition of flying a Jolly Roger), it meaningfully threatened British trade, and the countermeasures taken by the Royal Navy and US Navy effectively ended the threat.

 

[Karpius]

And steadfastly arguing that the Opium Wars were more important for British trade than was the Franco-German War falls apart even on your own criteria: the volume of British trade with Germany was far greater (by, like, an order of magnitude) than the volume of British trade with China (including British India) throughout the nineteenth century and into much of the twentieth century.

By themselves and on the surface the Opium Wars were not more important to British trade alone. But when looked at in the big picture, it was the real beginning of gunboat diplomacy after the British bombardment of Guangzhou. The following concessions by the Qing dynasty was a signaling event to other Europeans who now felt more secure about pursuing their own policies and gaining favorable trade in China. My point about the Opium Wars was its importance in establishing the dominance of "Western" power, which was led by the British at the time.. Also, one cannot underestimate the huge importance of resources such as silk, porcelain and tea to the growing British and world economy.

I don't even agree that you should be able to pick and choose what parts of global hegemony that an alleged global hegemon should be exercising (otherwise it wouldn't be, y'know, global hegemony, which is my point), but if you are going to pick and choose, you should be more careful than that.

I was not trying to suggest what a hegemony should do. Indeed I was trying to place certain events within the larger picture of why I agree with Ian Morris about the "globocop" analogy and why it bears some parallels to America's role today. If we look at the Prussian wars that eventually led to German unification under the microscope, we can easily see their huge importance to Europeans. Its unified industrial power was quickly becoming significant. But it was also a "central" nation which was hemmed in on all sides and had no significant navy until the very end of the century. It wanted more, but could not challenge Britain until it perceived a lessening of Britain's power and managed a series of alliances it believed could aid in such a challenge. In the end, British naval power (with some American assistance) still proved too much for Germany.

Essentially, for a century or more, the British Empire was the big guy in the room who could beat down anyone else. This tended to make the other guys in the room more co-operative and better behaved...until they believed they saw their own opportunities. I know it sounds rather simplistic, but I feel it serves in a basic way. Einstien once said something about theories needing to be simple, but never too simple.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I'm also confused by your comparison between the punic war and the cold war. Surely the obvious correspondence is with the punic wars and the world wars?

Also, Roman power and influence was growing hugely in the 2nd century BC, I'd be hard pressed to say that American power is doing the same. It's willingness to project force appears to have peaked in 2003, Rome was projecting ever more and more. Another major difference is that early 21st Century US has gone from a period of no comparative rivals (since the fall of the USSR) to the rise of a potential challenger (China). Rome went through the exact opposite transition when it eliminated Carthage and then the successor states.

I can see that there are a few point of similarities in your comparison, but there's a lot which is a polar opposite. Seems like you're cherry picking. After all, give me any two nations at any two points of history and I'm sure I can find some similarities.

Seems to me that the Punic wars and the world wars are a good parallel, and that the collapse of the Soviet Union, while the cold war didn't involve such direct action, is equivalent to the elimination of Carthage. The timeline might be off a little, but there does look to be a pattern in that globally dominant states upon the vanquishing of their rival disintegrate under internal stresses.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

And the thesis that the republic seems to be in profound trouble at its very roots is the opposite of reaching for a comparison.

 

[Dachs]

By themselves and on the surface the Opium Wars were not more important to British trade alone. But when looked at in the big picture, it was the real beginning of gunboat diplomacy after the British bombardment of Guangzhou. The following concessions by the Qing dynasty was a signaling event to other Europeans who now felt more secure about pursuing their own policies and gaining favorable trade in China. My point about the Opium Wars was its importance in establishing the dominance of "Western" power, which was led by the British at the time.. Also, one cannot underestimate the huge importance of resources such as silk, porcelain and tea to the growing British and world economy.



I was not trying to suggest what a hegemony should do. Indeed I was trying to place certain events within the larger picture of why I agree with Ian Morris about the "globocop" analogy and why it bears some parallels to America's role today. If we look at the Prussian wars that eventually led to German unification under the microscope, we can easily see their huge importance to Europeans. Its unified industrial power was quickly becoming significant. But it was also a "central" nation which was hemmed in on all sides and had no significant navy until the very end of the century. It wanted more, but could not challenge Britain until it perceived a lessening of Britain's power and managed a series of alliances it believed could aid in such a challenge. In the end, British naval power (with some American assistance) still proved too much for Germany.

Essentially, for a century or more, the British Empire was the big guy in the room who could beat down anyone else. This tended to make the other guys in the room more co-operative and better behaved...until they believed they saw their own opportunities. I know it sounds rather simplistic, but I feel it serves in a basic way. Einstien once said something about theories needing to be simple, but never too simple.

I don't think that the Opium Wars work as all that effective of a "signal" except to people trying to retrospectively impose a pattern on events that didn't really exist. The British empire in Africa didn't exist because African leaders saw what happened in China and submitted due to fear of British power. The Venezuelan crisis and the Alabama claims weren't settled with America due to pointed references to China. Britain's financial involvement in the Ottoman Empire didn't have much to do with China. The history of Britain's relationship with China mostly just impacted Britain's relationship with China. It didn't terrify the rest of the world into paying obeisance to Queen Victoria.

Saying that it's the "beginning of gunboat diplomacy" doesn't mean much, either. Plenty of historians would disagree on the date that "gunboat diplomacy", attempted or otherwise, by European powers became a Thing. You can go with Pitt's failed intervention over Ochakiv in 1791 (Schroeder's favored example), with the Battle of Navarino in 1827, or with the French conquest of Algeria from 1830 onward. But no matter where we put the start line, that still leaves us a long way away from "the Opium Wars (or whichever gunboat diplomacy war or incident you wish to pick) were important wars beyond their casualty count and financial impact to the point where they were two of the only wars in the nineteenth century that 'mattered' and all the other fighting that happened despite alleged British global power didn't matter so it's okay that the British didn't stop those wars and it still makes the nineteenth century British Empire the world superpower and 'globocop', whatever that means".

The problem with you not coming up with an adequate explanation for what a hegemon "should" do is that otherwise there are simply no grounds for using the word at all. Definitions matter. Much of amateur diplomatic history is nonsense because people talk about a "balance of power" without ever bothering to describe what a balance actually means, or does, or is supposed to indicate or predict. It's the same with hegemony (or "being a globocop"). Calling Britain a hegemon, or superpower, or globocop means nothing without a coherent idea of what those things actually are and do. What you have isn't really a theory so much as a mishmash of semi-related ideas, most of which arise largely from chauvinistic Englishmen who lived a hundred years ago (e.g. "Germany really wants to rule the world like we do" or "everything Britain does matters to everybody else, and things that Britain doesn't care about are irrelevant"). Maybe that isn't a fair representation of Morris' idea, but the point is that you have to do the legwork to prove this stuff.

My personal take is that if you want to call a country a superpower, its diplomacy, weight in global affairs, or involvement in foreign questions have to be meaningfully different from the things that other world powers do, enough to constitute a tremendous change compared to the affairs of other countries. The extent to which the US and USSR were involved in everything during the Cold War dwarfed everything the rest of the world did during the Cold War. They also explicitly styled themselves as superpowers and used economics, ideology, and diplomacy to deliberately organize the rest of the world to fit that characterization. I have no difficulty agreeing that Britain was the most powerful country in the world by many metrics during the nineteenth century, and that it undoubtedly had global interests. At one point, in September 1938, the leader of the UK could even reasonably be referred to as the leader of the "free world". But British diplomacy and British military power weren't that different from what most other countries were doing at the same time. France, Germany, Russia, Japan, America, and Italy all participated in the global competition for wealth, power, and territory. Britain differed from them not in means or policy but in scope.

Obviously, you don't have to share that definition. Plenty of people don't. But you do need a consistent and coherent one. As it stands, this bit about globocops and superpowers isn't just basic or simplistic, it is wrong on particulars. Einstein's actual quotation says that theory should be simple "without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience". Your line of argument does not adequately represent large amounts of nineteenth century history. Tighten up the facts first, and the theory will come from them.