On the face of it, it's surprising that comparisons between the European Union and the Roman Empire aren't made more often. There was a brief flurry of them back when the Euro was introduced, with Rome offered as the last example of a single currency, but, at least in English language publications, commentators who normally have no problem in offering any number of dubious analogies as solid facts are suddenly overcome with an awareness of historical difference.
One reason seems to be the ambiguous image of the Roman Empire. A hardline Eurosceptic could certainly invoke Rome as a prototype of the repressive, over-bureaucratic state tyranny that the EU allegedly wishes to impose on the heroic Asterix and Obelix figures of each individual nation - but that leaves open the possibility of the old "what the Romans did for us..." argument, which might make repressive state tyranny seem a less unpleasant possibility. Conversely, pointing to the success of Rome in bringing peace and civilisation to warring and barbarous nations while nevertheless permitting them to rule themselves and retain as much of their identity, a positive vision for what Europe might become, is always at risk of someone pointing out the less-than-consensual means by which this 'peace' was introduced. The contrast with the US, where the ambiguous image of the Roman Empire is nevertheless at times embraced with enthusiasm, must be due at least in part to the fact that no one is countenancing military force as a means of resolving disputes about the level of agricultural subsidies, even if Barroso must sometimes wish he had a couple of legions to despatch. Military force as a means of preventing the coronation of President Blair, on the other hand...
However, there is one group whose view of Rome isn't ambiguous in the slightest, and who therefore have no hesitation in drawing analogies with the equally satanic force of the European Union: the Christian lunatic fringe. "Europe will one day almost certainly be the heart of the Antichrist beast-system of governmental, economic and religious control prophesied to engulf the world," asserts Rapture Ready. "The fifth world empire symbolized in the statue is prophesied to be an extension of the fourth kingdom. That is exactly what the EU is –an extension of the ancient Roman Empire." "All that currently remains to create a truly revived Roman Empire is the creation of a permanent executive branch of government and the full integration of the new Euro currency. With the introduction of the new EU constitution, the groundwork is being laid for just such an executive branch and economic system," suggests Contender Ministries, adding helpfully that Javier Solana was granted emergency powers in 2000 through recommendation 666. Above all, as Heisnear.com notes, Europe will be where Antichrist rises to power as the new emperor of Rome's successor - and let's not start on the number of websites that think Tony Blair is the obvious candidate for the job...
Or maybe not. World News and Prophecy thinks that Europe is trying to revive not the Roman Empire but the Holy Roman Empire. So that's all right.
Sunday 11 October 2009
Tuesday 25 August 2009
The End of European Civilisation
It had to be just a matter of time. The ‘debate’ over the ‘Islamisation’ of Europe, like the ‘debate’ over immigation in previous decades, makes much of the imagery of ‘swamping’; entire streets and districts are being taken over by Them, there are places where you don’t hear any English/French/German and they eat cats you know, our lovely culture is being smothered in curries and sharia law and so forth. The obvious riposte, from the people who feel a duty to respond wearily to this sort of nonsense, is that Muslim immigrants make up at the most 3-4% of the population of Europe; what sort of ‘swamping’ is that, and what sort of a society feels threatened by a tiny minority of mainly poor and marginalised foreigners? A society run by wishy-washy liberal multi-culturalist race traitors, of course...
The Roman Empire always tends to crop up in these discussions. Enoch Powell’s classical education allowed him to pinch the image of rivers foaming with blood from Virgil, but decades earlier there was the obsession of the French with the vast hordes of German barbarians lurking just over the eastern border, intent on destroying all (i.e. French) civilisation just as their ancestors had done, the obsession of the Germans with the vast hordes of Jewish and Slavic barbarians lurking just over the eastern, intent on swamping true (i.e. German) culture, and the obsession of almost everyone, British and American included, with the threat of the Inferior Races. The example of Rome showed what happened to a civilisation that allowed itself to be overwhelmed by aliens and/or corrupted from within by allowing aliens in.
What lay behind and constantly reacted upon all such causes of Rome’s disintegration was, after all, to a considerable extent, the fact that the people who built Rome had given way to a different race. The lack of energy and enterprise, the failure of foresight and common sense, the weakening of moral and political stamina, all were concomitant with the gradual diminution of the stock which, during the earlier days, had displayed these qualities.
(Tenney Frank, ‘Race mixture in the Roman empire’, American Historical Review 21 (1916).)
The last few decades of research into the later Roman empire has undermined the main planks of these accounts. Even leaving aside all the evidence that in most cases the transition from a loose federation of cities paying taxes to the Roman state to smaller but more tightly organised kingdoms paying taxes more locally was gradual and peaceful, how do we imagine that disorganised barbarian tribes, numbering a few hundred thousand at the most, swamped a population of 60 million? Either Roman culture was completely rotten and needed to be invigorated with an infusion of Germanic dynamism, as German historians and Nazi ideologues tended to argue in the first half of the twentieth century, or we’re thinking about the phenomenon of ‘culture change’ in completely the wrong way.
‘Yes, but Rome did fall.’ That’s the line of argument that worries me. At some point – quite possibly it’s already happened, but I can’t bear to read every racist screed about the threat of ‘Islamification’ – someone is going to say, yes, I accept that Muslims are a tiny minority – but Rome fell because of a tiny minority of barbarians, so we need to be even more afraid, and protect our culture ever more zealously. Rome as the archetypal empire, above all in its ending; ‘decline and fall’ appears to legitimise any dodgy political position you care to mention, even contradictory ones. The political organistion of the empire fell apart; that is taken to mean that the entirety of Roman Civilisation was destroyed, and then the alleged lessons of Rome’s fall are extended to contemporary Europe. Modern Muslims are the vast barbarian hordes that swamped the empire, and the sinister groups of outwardly civilised barbarians who undermined it from within – and the descendents of the Arabs who, according to the French historian Henri Pirenne, should take the real responsibility for destroying the empire’s unity in the eighth rather than the sixth century. They are to be seen as the great enemy, and we can find any number of dubious but powerful historical analogies to present them as such.
The Roman Empire always tends to crop up in these discussions. Enoch Powell’s classical education allowed him to pinch the image of rivers foaming with blood from Virgil, but decades earlier there was the obsession of the French with the vast hordes of German barbarians lurking just over the eastern border, intent on destroying all (i.e. French) civilisation just as their ancestors had done, the obsession of the Germans with the vast hordes of Jewish and Slavic barbarians lurking just over the eastern, intent on swamping true (i.e. German) culture, and the obsession of almost everyone, British and American included, with the threat of the Inferior Races. The example of Rome showed what happened to a civilisation that allowed itself to be overwhelmed by aliens and/or corrupted from within by allowing aliens in.
What lay behind and constantly reacted upon all such causes of Rome’s disintegration was, after all, to a considerable extent, the fact that the people who built Rome had given way to a different race. The lack of energy and enterprise, the failure of foresight and common sense, the weakening of moral and political stamina, all were concomitant with the gradual diminution of the stock which, during the earlier days, had displayed these qualities.
(Tenney Frank, ‘Race mixture in the Roman empire’, American Historical Review 21 (1916).)
The last few decades of research into the later Roman empire has undermined the main planks of these accounts. Even leaving aside all the evidence that in most cases the transition from a loose federation of cities paying taxes to the Roman state to smaller but more tightly organised kingdoms paying taxes more locally was gradual and peaceful, how do we imagine that disorganised barbarian tribes, numbering a few hundred thousand at the most, swamped a population of 60 million? Either Roman culture was completely rotten and needed to be invigorated with an infusion of Germanic dynamism, as German historians and Nazi ideologues tended to argue in the first half of the twentieth century, or we’re thinking about the phenomenon of ‘culture change’ in completely the wrong way.
‘Yes, but Rome did fall.’ That’s the line of argument that worries me. At some point – quite possibly it’s already happened, but I can’t bear to read every racist screed about the threat of ‘Islamification’ – someone is going to say, yes, I accept that Muslims are a tiny minority – but Rome fell because of a tiny minority of barbarians, so we need to be even more afraid, and protect our culture ever more zealously. Rome as the archetypal empire, above all in its ending; ‘decline and fall’ appears to legitimise any dodgy political position you care to mention, even contradictory ones. The political organistion of the empire fell apart; that is taken to mean that the entirety of Roman Civilisation was destroyed, and then the alleged lessons of Rome’s fall are extended to contemporary Europe. Modern Muslims are the vast barbarian hordes that swamped the empire, and the sinister groups of outwardly civilised barbarians who undermined it from within – and the descendents of the Arabs who, according to the French historian Henri Pirenne, should take the real responsibility for destroying the empire’s unity in the eighth rather than the sixth century. They are to be seen as the great enemy, and we can find any number of dubious but powerful historical analogies to present them as such.
Tuesday 18 August 2009
The Empire Ball
In the 2008-9 academic year there was a small flurry of newspaper stories about students holding parties with dubious themes. First there was the Oxford Rugby Club, blacking up for a ‘Safari Bop’ and then issuing an invitation to ‘Bring a Fit Jew’; then the organisers of the May Ball at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, entitled it ‘The British Empire’ and invited guests to ‘experience the Pax Britannica and party like it’s 1899’. It was in online discussions of the latter, which generally divided between “it’s political correctness gone mad!” and “amazing how supposedly intelligent young people can be so bloody stupid”, that the Roman Empire was invoked.
You should have just had a toga party instead...oh wait, that would be celebrating the Roman Empire....imperialism boo! (source)
In much the same way that attending a toga party doesn’t mean you support throwing Christians to the lions (or any of the terrible things the Romans did), having the British empire as our ball theme doesn't mean that we think that the British empire was a good thing. (source)
For both these commentators, Rome is clearly a ‘safe’ theme. The Romans may have killed millions and reduced millions more to slavery, but it was so long ago that it carries no real emotional resonance. The odds are that almost everyone in Europe has ancestors who were butchered by the Romans – and probably a fair few had ancestors doing the butchering as well – but this is hardly an open wound. There are few contemporary political nightmares that can plausibly be blamed on the actions of the Roman Empire – I’m going to leave the Romans’ involvement in the history of Israel/Palestine to another time, largely because I suspect most students haven’t the first idea about that bit of history. Toga parties might not be to your taste, therefore, but it would be absurd to start objecting to students dressing up in sheets to get drunk.
However, both the commentators want to do something more with the analogy, and that’s where the example of Rome starts to get slightly dodgier. It’s absurd to feel guilty about Roman atrocities because it was so long ago: isn’t it time that we stopped feeling guilty about things that happened in the nineteenth century? (Yes, I know the British Empire didn’t stop in the nineteenth century, but that’s the widespread perception – and note the implication that the whole controversy is a matter of western liberal guilt rather than the possibility of giving offence). We can detach Roman culture from its atrocities: why aren’t we allowed to treat the British Empire as a source of context-free exotica? The comment of the organising committee, announcing that it was removing the word ‘empire’ from all publicity, was very revealing in this respect:
In choosing this setting for the ball, we have sought neither to excuse or dismiss any historical events, nor to support or challenge any interpretation now placed upon them. (source)
In other words, either they didn’t think or they chose not to think.
Rome is, as ever, the archetypal empire; anything which can be established about Rome is then subtly extended to other empires. Above all, the analogy legitimises the belief that empires can bring peace, prosperity, justice and civilisation to the regions they conquer; ‘what the Romans did for us’ is transferred to ‘what we did/do for the world’. The fact that no one is likely to take offence on behalf of their ancestors to a celebration of Roman power, but will tend to accept its positive image, is precisely why this example is anything but ‘safe’.
You should have just had a toga party instead...oh wait, that would be celebrating the Roman Empire....imperialism boo! (source)
In much the same way that attending a toga party doesn’t mean you support throwing Christians to the lions (or any of the terrible things the Romans did), having the British empire as our ball theme doesn't mean that we think that the British empire was a good thing. (source)
For both these commentators, Rome is clearly a ‘safe’ theme. The Romans may have killed millions and reduced millions more to slavery, but it was so long ago that it carries no real emotional resonance. The odds are that almost everyone in Europe has ancestors who were butchered by the Romans – and probably a fair few had ancestors doing the butchering as well – but this is hardly an open wound. There are few contemporary political nightmares that can plausibly be blamed on the actions of the Roman Empire – I’m going to leave the Romans’ involvement in the history of Israel/Palestine to another time, largely because I suspect most students haven’t the first idea about that bit of history. Toga parties might not be to your taste, therefore, but it would be absurd to start objecting to students dressing up in sheets to get drunk.
However, both the commentators want to do something more with the analogy, and that’s where the example of Rome starts to get slightly dodgier. It’s absurd to feel guilty about Roman atrocities because it was so long ago: isn’t it time that we stopped feeling guilty about things that happened in the nineteenth century? (Yes, I know the British Empire didn’t stop in the nineteenth century, but that’s the widespread perception – and note the implication that the whole controversy is a matter of western liberal guilt rather than the possibility of giving offence). We can detach Roman culture from its atrocities: why aren’t we allowed to treat the British Empire as a source of context-free exotica? The comment of the organising committee, announcing that it was removing the word ‘empire’ from all publicity, was very revealing in this respect:
In choosing this setting for the ball, we have sought neither to excuse or dismiss any historical events, nor to support or challenge any interpretation now placed upon them. (source)
In other words, either they didn’t think or they chose not to think.
Rome is, as ever, the archetypal empire; anything which can be established about Rome is then subtly extended to other empires. Above all, the analogy legitimises the belief that empires can bring peace, prosperity, justice and civilisation to the regions they conquer; ‘what the Romans did for us’ is transferred to ‘what we did/do for the world’. The fact that no one is likely to take offence on behalf of their ancestors to a celebration of Roman power, but will tend to accept its positive image, is precisely why this example is anything but ‘safe’.
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