by FRANCESCO SISCI
Now, as the imperial way regains appeal, China is the only potential 21st century empire that lacks a claim to divine authority
The old Western Empires fell to a new Western order – modern liberalism. Now, they are rising from the ashes, threatening liberalism. The US may be tempted to become an empire, too, but can it win when its adversaries are better at it? And can modernity survive without liberalism?
In 1918, three empires – the Holy Roman, Russian and Ottoman, spanning centuries of Mediterranean history and all claiming the legacy of the ancient Roman Empire – came to their ends.
They all asserted a special link with the divine. In Russia and Turkey, the czar and the sultan were also the heads of their faiths; in Austria, the emperor had a special tie with the Pope in Rome.
With their fall, Mediterranean politics definitively shattered an old, worn-out link with God, a system in which political power and the clergy were two distinct entities but had found convergence in the imperial person. That strong link had marked Mediterranean history for centuries. In fact, the long process from republic to empire started in Rome over 2,000 years ago.
The Western imperial rise
The drive for empire started with the end of the Punic Wars (264-146 BCE). Then the Roman republic was without peer challengers in the region, but its territory was far too extensive and it needed a professional standing army. Marius (157-86 BCE) was the first to push for it. However, a professional army carried the seed of the republic’s destruction.
Professional soldiers became loyal to their generals, not to the Roman res publica. This, in time, ushered in mighty generals who came to be the supreme military commanders of the Roman world – emperors.
Following the defeat of the Carthaginians, the vast and diverse Roman organization required long-term planning, a complex organizational structure and extensive standing armies that could be easily deployed. This implied the development of complex logistics, armories, and food supplies. They needed plans whose success or failure could be judged over the years. This, in turn, demanded trust and faith in a long-term leader – hence the emperor.
It was a massive philosophical move from the organization of a rowing boat or the legion, where each man was responsible for his oar or his shield within a unit of equals (see here). Yet the legion continued to exist; in fact, it remained the core of Roman victories. Boats in the treacherous Mediterranean Sea, with sudden changes of winds or a lack of wind altogether, were still reliant on coordinated rowing. Here, mistakes continued to be immediately visible and had to be immediately corrected.
These opposed elements may have also contributed to historical sedimentation in the imperial transformation of Rome. It promoted a new emperor but kept a separation of powers, with the old republican trappings and a religious entity distinct from the political one – a fairly separate religious entity, well fitted to a structure of split yet equal and balanced duties and rights. In a phalanx or in a boat, all are all equal but each has distinct requirements to fulfill.
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