How Empires Fall

Globalization is not new, and neither is its repercussions.

A little over a hundred years ago England stood at the center of the first truly globalized economy.  The British navy and the East India Company had conquered nearly a fifth of the world’s land mass, and Queen Victoria ruled over roughly a quarter of the world’s population.  Raw materials and raw wealth flowed into England from all over the world, and at any time somewhere in the world backs were bent in sweatshops and fields laboring in England’s behalf.  It was truly said that “The sun never set of the British Empire.”  

Such great empires require complex organizations, and it wasn’t enough to send out agents from England.  Local bureaucrats and managers had to be trained to read and write in English.  As the bureaucratic infrastructure became increasingly complex new center of power emerged in the colonies.  A new middle class appeared, raised to think of themselves as citizens of the English Empire.  In time, they began to wonder why they should not also share in the rights of Englishmen.  Pressures for self-rule became protests for independence as local leaders began to emerge in the colonies.

At the same time similar questions were arising at home.  Increasingly the wealth of the empire was flowing into the pockets of investors, insurers and merchants while nearly a quarter of the English population lived at or below the poverty line.  With the industrial revolution many workers lost their jobs to mechanization, and major industries like mining and ship building saw periodic cycles of unemployment.  While nineteenth century reforms gave householders and farmers the right to vote many of the poor were still excluded, as were all women, and an arcane electoral system resulted in unequal representation.

Through the end of the 19th century the two main political parties traded the government back and forth with relatively little disagreement over foreign policy or free trade.  Then in 1901 disagreements over the Boer War brought the conservatives back into power on a wave of nationalist sentiment, but the war proved expensive.  It soon became clear that Britain could no longer act unilaterally, but long decades as the world’s only superpower had left British politicians ill prepared to negotiate with allies.  As news spread of Boer women and children dying in unsanitary “concentration camps” the public turned against the war.  The conservative defended their actions as military necessities, but the elections in 1905 saw a liberal victory.

The start of the twentieth century saw the rise of progressive issues.  Women demanded the right to vote, and working parents demanded better education for their children.  The poor demanded better living conditions, prison reform and reform of the poor laws, and the public demanded higher taxes on the rich and tariffs on imports.  The liberal party introduced national insurance and unemployment support, but the party began to fracture over its embrace of free trade and its willingness to compromise with conservatives.  Radical progressives formed a socialist “labor” party, and by the 1920s they had replaced the old liberals.  

Faced with declining influence overseas and an insurgent working class at home, those in power struggled to maintain their hold.  Politics became increasingly volatile as old answers no longer met the new realities.  This is how empires fall—not because those at the top become soft and weak but because those who have labored to build the foundations become lean and hungry.  To resist their demands, or to capitalize on them, only widens the cracks in the social infrastructure.