In the United States of America, immigration reform
is a term widely used to describe proposals to maintain or increase
legal immigration while decreasing illegal immigration, such as the guest worker proposal supported by President George W. Bush, and the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization or "Gang of Eight"
bill which passed the U.S. Senate in June 2013. Illegal immigration is
an extremely controversial issue in the United States that has received
a lot of attention in recent decades without any forward action in
response to the issue.
Proponents of greater immigration enforcement argue that illegal
immigrants tarnish the public image of immigrants, cost taxpayers an
estimated $338.3 billion (however, opponents claim that this figure is
erroneous and misleading assertions and state that published studies
vary widely but put the cost to government at a small fraction of that
total), and jeopardize the safety of law enforcement officials and citizens, especially along the Mexican border.
Since early 2013, the term immigration reform has been
applied to efforts to "overhaul" the broken immigration system in the
United States. In his November 20, 2014 speech on immigration, U.S.
President Obama summarized the need for revision to immigration laws and
procedures as follows:
Today, our immigration system is
broken, and everybody knows it. Families who enter our country the right
way and play by the rules watch others flout the rules. Business owners
who offer their workers good wages benefits see the competition exploit
undocumented immigrants by paying them far less. All of us take offense
to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on
the responsibilities of living in America. And undocumented immigrants
who desperately want to embrace those responsibilities see little option
but to remain in the shadows, or risk their families being torn apart.
Critics of Obama's immigration positions and actions have
nevertheless also called for policy changes. "Standards for immigration
reform" announced in January 2014 by Congressional Republicans are
mostly compatible with the Obama administration's legislative proposals,
except that the Republicans favor step-wise implementation (rather than
a package approach) with border security and interior enforcement
preceding "paths" to legal status. Journalist and immigration critic Roy Beck
supports portions of this agenda involving "immigration reduction":
specifically endorsing bills to limit family-sponsored immigration to
spouses and children, to end "birthright citizenship", and to tighten
"interior enforcement" and employer verification requirements. Another Obama critic, Congressman Tom Tancredo,
has been an "outspoken" advocate "for immigration reform" in the sense
of stricter controls on illegal entries (though he also attends
naturalization ceremonies to support new citizens "doing it the right
way"). These examples are indicative of the broad spectrum of potential
and proposed changes encompassed under "immigration reform."
In November 2015, U.S. House of Representatives speaker Paul D.
Ryan indicated that the House majority would not try to work further
with the Obama administration on immigration reform. This, the New York Times concluded, meant "effectively pushing off the issue to at least 2017". Although Ryan blamed President Obama's "go it alone" executive orders
for the legislative impasse, refraining from efforts at immigration
overhaul—until after the 2016 national elections—also seemed consistent
with the new speaker's view that Congressional Republicans should be
clearer about what they "can and cannot achieve."
Under the administration of Donald Trump, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA) program, started by the Obama administration, has come under
increased scrutiny. Trump's January 2018 Immigration "Framework"
proposal includes replacing DACA with a "path to citizenship" for DACA
recipients, and allocating $25 billion for expanded border
infrastructure consistent with Trump's Executive Order 13767.
Immigration reform in the United States, 1986–2009
The most recent major immigration reform enacted in the United States, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986,
made it illegal to hire or recruit illegal immigrants. The law did not
provide a legal way for the great number of low-skilled workers wishing
to enter the United States. Following this 1986 law, almost 12 million
undocumented workers came illegally across the U.S. border. It was
estimated that this illegal workforce made up about five percent of the
U.S. workforce. It was also estimated that about 70 percent of those
illegal workers were from Mexico.
Former Mexican president Vicente Fox
wrote that, in 2001, President George W. Bush and the leadership of
both parties of Congress were ready to pass significant immigration
reform legislation benefiting Mexican emigration to the U.S. The immigration reform which Bush and Fox hoped for was put on hold after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
In 2009, immigration reform became a hot topic again since the Barack Obama administration signaled interest in beginning a discussion on comprehensive immigration reform before that year's end. The proposed comprehensive immigration reform plan had bipartisan
support as one of its goals, and included six sections designed to have
"something for everyone". These six sections were:
to fix border enforcement,
"interior enforcement", such as preventing visa overstays,
preventing people from working without a work permit,
creating a committee to adapt the number of visas available to changing economic times,
a program to provide a path to legal status for illegal immigrants, and
programs to help immigrants adjust to life in the United States.
Individual states can regulate or produce immigration policies.
Effect of media coverage on public opinion
A
2010 study examining the years 1992 to 2009 found that when immigration
issues receive national media attention (as estimated by the number of
mentions of immigration by CBS, ABC and USA Today), established
residents living in places that have seen influx of new immigrants
suddenly become much more politicized against immigration. The study
reported that during a period of high national attention to immigration,
anti-immigration attitudes among established residents in fast-changing
counties increase by 9.9%. The study's author said that ethnic and
racial surroundings appear to affect Americans' political attitudes far
less than previously thought: "Those who live near larger proportions of
immigrants do not consistently exhibit more negative attitudes."
Rather, the author concludes, "day-to-day encounters can be shaped by
salient national issues." The study's conclusions are still only tentative.
Effects on the US economy
Other
studies suggest that immigration reform which includes legalization of
unauthorized immigrants might add considerably to U.S. Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) over 10 years, and increase wages for workers generally.
Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, founding director of the North American
Integration and Development Center at the University of California, Los
Angeles, has estimated that in just the first three years following
legalization for undocumented immigrants, the "higher earning power of
newly legalized workers translates into an increase in net personal
income of $30 to $36 billion, which could generate $4.5 to $5.4 billion
in additional net tax revenue. Moreover, it is estimated that an
increase in personal income of this scale would stimulate consumer
spending sufficient to support 750,000 to 900,000 jobs."
A 2013 study by the Workers Defense Project and the University of
Texas sampling construction sites in five Texas cities, found half of
construction workers there were undocumented.
Broken families
The
U.S. immigration system determines who enters the country, and how
many, either by order or under certain circumstances. It also decides
who can apply for permanent visas for family and relatives. Advocates of
increased admission of family members characterize the current system
as "broken," for preventing family reunification. They argue that family
reunification will reduce waiting lines and conflicts over the number
of visas of children and spouses. Approximately 5,100 children with a detained or deported parent were in the public child welfare system in 2011.
Advocates for reducing immigration have, however, argued that making
family reunification migration easier would tend to erode important
distinctions between citizens and non-citizens, and lead to higher
overall immigration levels.
Arizona SB 1070
In 2009, services provided to illegal immigrants, including incarceration, cost the state of Arizona an estimated $12.7 billion.
Citing Congress' failure to enforce U.S. immigration laws, the
state of Arizona confronted reform and on April 23, 2010 Republican
Governor Jan Brewer signed the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe
Neighborhoods Act (Arizona SB 1070)-- the broadest and strictest immigration reform imposed in the United States.
The SB1070 Arizona immigration law directs law enforcement
officials to ask for immigration papers on a "reasonable suspicion" that
a person might be an illegal immigrant and make arrests for not
carrying ID papers in keeping with federal requirements.
Previously, police could not stop and check identification papers on a
mere suspicion that someone might be an illegal immigrant. Police could
only ask about an individual's immigration status if they are suspected
of involvement in another crime.
On July 6, 2010, the US Department of Justice filed suit against
Arizona. The intent of the suit is to prevent Arizona from enforcing the
law and asks the court to find certain sections of the legislation null
and void.
Being the first state to pass such legislation, Arizona has set a
precedent for other states, but this legislation has also caused
Arizona to carry a large burden. Arizonans have faced boycotts and
protests from their commercial businesses to sporting events and
concerts. Although the response has cost the state between $7 million
and $52 million, some in the state still feel that this outcome will
outweigh the initial cost.
Due to conflict and protest, the week after Governor Brewer
signed SB 1070, the Arizona legislature passed House Bill 2162 (HB 2162)
amending text in the original document. HB 2162 includes that race,
color, and national origin would not play a role in prosecution; in
order to investigate an individual's immigration status, he or she must
be "lawfully stopped, arrested or detained."
Opponents of the law say that it will ultimately cost the state
"$26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state
product and approximately 140,024 jobs" if all illegal immigrants are
removed from the state.
Revision of H-1B Visa
President
Donald Trump signed the "Buy American, Hire American" executive order
in April 2017 that would direct U.S. agencies to propose rules to
prevent immigration fraud and abuse in the program. They would also be
asked to offer changes so that H-1B visas are awarded to the
"most-skilled" or highest-paid applicants.
Immigration Court reform
In
the absence of comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level,
many advocacy groups have focused on improving the fairness and
efficiency of the immigration court system.
They propose incremental steps the executive branch can take to stop an
"assembly line approach" to deportation proceedings. These groups have
identified several issues that threaten the due process rights of
immigrants, including reliance on low quality videoconferencing to
conduct hearings, inadequate language interpretation services for
non-English speakers, and limited access to court records. They also
focus on problems arising out of the recent increase in immigration law
enforcement without a commensurate boost in resources for adjudication.
Immigration Judges and DHS Trial Attorneys are overworked, and the pro
bono community has been unable to meet the demand for representation:
49% of individuals facing removal proceedings in 2011 were
unrepresented. Other calls for reform include increased transparency at
the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) and more diversity of experience
among Immigration Judges, the majority of whom previously held positions
adversarial to immigrants.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
program President Obama announced on June 15, 2012, is an example of
the incremental reform sought by such groups. Under the program, illegal
immigrants who were brought to the U.S. before age fifteen can apply
for a work permit and a two-year deferment from deportation proceedings.
The policy expands the Department of Homeland Security's prosecutorial
discretion policy, focusing finite resources on criminals and other
threats to public safety.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removal proceedings
Since
President Obama took office in 2008, more than two million unauthorized
immigrants have been deported. Most of these people were not a danger
to society. In the fiscal year 2013 ICE removed 151,834 individuals who didn't have a criminal conviction. In 2013, ICE released thirty-six thousand individuals with criminal records, including 193 found convicted of murder and 426 convicted of sexual assault. Additionally, ICE encountered about sixty-eight thousand aliens with criminal records who they did not prosecute.
If immigration reform becomes law, many of those who entered the
country illegally would likely be able to remain in the United States.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE, has
enforcement priorities that involve: apprehension of terrorists, violent
criminals, gang members, which are categorized under three priorities.
The first and highest priority is to remove aliens who pose a danger to
national security or a risk to public safety. Second priority is recent
illegal entrants; those who have recently violated immigration control
at the border such as overstay visas. The third priority is aliens who
are fugitives or otherwise obstruct immigration control, for instance,
reentries after prior order of deportation. ICE resources are limited;
an estimated 400,000 aliens can be removed per year, but that is less
than 4 percent of the illegal population in the United States.
In 2014, the number of individuals apprehended at the border was
up 16 percent from the previous fiscal year, and the number of
deportations from within the United States dropped 24 percent from the
previous fiscal year. That year, Operation Streamline was ended.
The number of individuals deported by the Obama Administration up
through 2014, was lower than that of any previous administration.
High cost
Immigration
enforcement has increased rapidly since the 1990s. The U.S. Border
Patrols's annual budget has increased by 714 percent. The cost went from
$362.2 million in the fiscal year of 1992 to $2.7 billion in the fiscal
year of 2009. Also the U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement has
grown 73 percent, from $3.3 billion since its inception to $5.9 billion
in 2014.
Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013, or S.744
The policies envisioned by the Senators include the following provisions:
A citizenship
path for illegal immigrants already in the United States contingent on
certain border security and visa tracking improvements. The plan
provides for permanent residence for illegal immigrants
only after legal immigrants waiting for a current priority date receive
their permanent residence status and a different citizenship path for
agricultural workers through an agricultural worker program.
Business immigration system reforms, focusing on reducing current
visa backlogs and fast tracking permanent residence for U.S. university
immigrant graduates with advanced degrees in science, technology,
engineering or math also known as the STEM fields.
An expanded and improved employment verification system for all employers to confirm employee work authorization.
Improved work visa options for low-skill workers including an agricultural worker program.
In April 2013, according to Congressional Quarterly,
the existence of a bipartisan group of lawmakers working to reform
immigration was revealed during a question and answer session at a Ripon Society event with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).
On April 16, 2013, the "Gang of Eight" in the United States
Senate introduced S.744, the long-awaited Senate version of the
immigration reform bill proposed in congress.
The bill was a product of bipartisan cooperation among Senate
lawmakers, business groups, labor unions, agricultural interests, and
immigration advocates, who negotiated many compromises resulting in an
architecture for reform – including a path to citizenship for eleven
million illegal immigrants, a temporary worker program, increased visa
numbers for skilled foreign workers, and a nationwide employment
eligibility verification system.
The border crisis
in 2014 where thousands of children alone or with their mothers crossed
the border and turned themselves in to the Border Patrol has been seen,
in part, as a result of ambiguous US immigration policies. Numbers
arriving in the first part of 2014 were at a pace more than double that
of a year earlier. Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic
Policy Council, acknowledged in June 2014 "rumors and reports, or
suggestions, that the increase may be in response to the perception that
children would be allowed to stay or that immigration reform would in
some way benefit these children," but added that "it seems to be quite
clear that what is driving this is what's happening in their home
countries." Mexico and Central American countries have since taken
measures to try to reduce the flow, the U.S. border patrol has sought to
speed apprehensions, and the Obama administration has requested
additional funding for screening and deportation, and tougher penalties
on smugglers. Arrivals of children at the U.S. borders slowed from in
August 2014, compared to May and June.
President Obama's executive actions and efforts to legalize Undocumented immigrants
On November 20, 2014, in a televised address from the White House, President Barack Obama
announced a program of "deferred action" which would allow roughly 45%
of illegal immigrants to legally stay and work in the United States.
The largest prior deferral action, in 1990, during the administration
of President George H.W. Bush, affected 40% of undocumented immigrants
then.
Up to 3.7 million undocumented parents of individuals who are U.S.
citizens, or who have been legal permanent residents in the country for
at least five years, are eligible for the new deferrals, as are about
300,000 immigrants who arrived as children before January 2010. Members
of this second group would be eligible by expansion of the existing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which previously covered 1.2 million people, the expansion bringing the new coverage total to 1.5 million.
The new deferrals would be granted for three years at a time.
Supplemental executive actions also announced include an end to the Secure Communities
program, increased resources for border enforcement, and new procedures
for "high-skilled immigrants". These other "parts of the president's
plan" could provide "protection from deportation" for roughly "an
additional one million people". President Obama's actions were clearly
presented as a response to Congress having been unable in recent years
to agree on a general legislative overhaul of U.S. immigration policy.
Obama indicated:
[By] acting where Congress has failed ... [I hope] to
work with both parties to pass a more permanent legislative solution.
And the day I sign that bill into law, the actions I take will no longer
be necessary.
By January 26, 2015, the number of states participating in the lawsuit had grown to 26.
On February 12, testifying before the House of Representatives,
officials from Ohio and Kansas stated that, due to the actions of the
Obama Administration, it was difficult to determine whether illegal
immigrants had registered to vote.
The Senators claimed that, despite the rigorous repercussions for
falsifying registration information, a considerable number of still
illegal immigrants might take advantage of the ongoing and adapting
bureaucratic efforts on the part of those filtering the applications.
The illegal immigrants seeking to gain the right to vote in America were
alleged to be facilitated not only by the new and large influx of
legitimate applications, but also by the ready availability of the
necessary registration forms, which could be obtained by anyone with
access to a local DMV, a shopping mall, or one of a growing number of
"curbside registration drives".
On February 16, 2015, Judge Andrew S. Hanen, of Federal District Court in Brownsville, Texas, issued a temporary injunction against the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability
(DAPA) program. On February 17, 2015, just one day before undocumented
immigrants were set to begin applying for work permits and legal
protections, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced a delay in implementing the DAPA program, but also said that the district court ruling would be appealed. USA Today noted the expectation of Cornell University law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr
that the appeal will likely eventually succeed since federal courts
generally give "the president broad authority to shape the enforcement
and implementation of immigration laws".
The appeal was heard on an expedited basis by three judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
on July 10, 2015. On November 9, the divided circuit court affirmed the
preliminary injunction of February 2015, and ordered the case back to
the district court in Texas for trial. Judge Jerry Edwin Smith, joined by Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod agreed with the district court that Texas has standing because of the cost of issuing drivers licenses to aliens, and that President Obama's order violated the rulemaking requirement of the Administrative Procedure Act. The majority made a new finding that the Immigration and Nationality Act "flatly does not permit" deferred action. Judge Carolyn Dineen King dissented, arguing that prosecutorial discretion makes the case non-justiciable, and that there had been "no justification" for the circuit court's delay in ruling. On 20 November 2015, the United States Department of Justice appealed directly to the United States Supreme Court. On January 19, 2016, the Supreme Court agreed to review the case. In United States v. Texas, the Supreme Court deadlocked 4–4 on June 23, leaving in place the appeals court ruling blocking Obama's executive actions.
On June 15, 2017, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly announced
that the order establishing the DAPA program was rescinded.
President Trump's framework on immigration reform and border security
On April 16, 2015, Donald Trump suggested that a wall be built on the Mexico-United States Border to prevent people from entering the country illegally.
According to a report released by the Trump administration in 2017, the
construction of the proposed border wall would take around three and a
half years and cost between $21.6 billion and $25 billion. In January 2018, President Donald Trump
announced a "Framework on Immigration Reform and Border Security" which
proposed replacing DACA with a "path to citizenship for approximately
1.8 million individuals."
The "framework" plan would also reduce family immigration, abolish the
"lottery visa" and establish a $25 billion trust fund for an expanded
"border wall system." This proposal has been met with a mixed reception,
but immigration featured prominently in the president's 2018 State of
the Union speech. On February 15, 2019, President Trump declared a national emergency in order to move military funding towards building the wall.
This was met with significant criticism and backlash from the media and
members of both major political parties. Throughout 2019, President
Trump has maintained his stance on immigration, promising that his plan
will prioritize the "jobs, wages, and safety of American workers" and
"promote American values."
Desolation, from The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole (1836).
Societal collapse (also known as civilizational collapse) is the fall of a complex human society characterized by the loss of culturalidentity and of socioeconomic complexity, the downfall of government, and the rise of violence.
Possible causes of a societal collapse include natural catastrophe,
war, pestilence, famine, and depopulation. A collapsed society may
revert to a more primitive state, be absorbed into a stronger society,
or completely disappear.
Virtually all civilizations have suffered this fate regardless of
size or complexity. But some revived and transformed, such as China and
Egypt, while others never recovered, such as the Mayan Empire and the
civilization on Easter Island. Societal collapse is generally a quick process, but rarely abrupt. Yet some have not collapsed but have only gradually faded away, as in the case of the British Empire since 1918.
Anthropologists, (quantitative) historians, and sociologists have
proposed a variety of explanations for the collapse of civilizations
involving causative factors such as environmental change, depletion of
resources, unsustainable complexity, decay of social cohesion, rising
inequality, secular decline of cognitive abilities, loss of creativity,
and misfortune.
However, complete extinction of a culture is rare; in most cases, the
new societies that arise from the ashes of the old one are evidently its
offspring, despite a dramatic reduction in sophistication. Moreover, the influence of a collapsed society, say that of the (Western) Roman Empire, may linger on long after its death.
Joseph Tainter frames societal collapse in his The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988), which is a seminal and founding work of the academic discipline on societal collapse. He elaborates that 'collapse' is a "broad term," but in the sense of societal collapse he views it as "a political process."
He further narrows societal collapse as a rapid process (within "few
decades") of "substantial loss of sociopolitical structure," giving the fall of the Western Roman Empire as "the most widely known instance of collapse" in the Western world.
Others, particularly in response to the popular Collapse (2005) by Jared Diamond and more recently, have argued that societies discussed as cases of collapse are better understood through resilience and societal transformation, or "reorganization", especially if collapse is understood as a "complete end" of political systems, which according to Shmuel Eisenstadt has not taken place at any point.
Eisenstadt also points out that a clear differentiation between total
or partial decline and "possibilities of regeneration" is crucial for
the preventive purpose of the study of societal collapse.
Societal longevity
Social scientist Luke Kemp analyzed dozens of civilizations—which he
defined as "a society with agriculture, multiple cities, military
dominance in its geographical region and a continuous political
structure"—from 3000 B.C. to 600 A.D. and calculated that the average
life span of a civilization is close to 340 years. Of these, the most durable were the Kushite Kingdom in Northeast Africa (1,150 years), the Aksumite Empire in Africa (1,100 years), and the Vedic Civilization in South Asia and the Olmecs in Mesoamerica (both 1,000 years), while the shortest-lived were the Yuen-Yuen Dynasty (30), the Nanda Empire in India (24), and the Qin Dynasty in China (14).
A statistical analysis of empires by complex systems specialist
Samuel Arbesman suggests that collapse is generally a random event and
does not depend on age. This is analogous to what evolutionary
biologists call the Red Queen Hypothesis, which asserts that for a species in a harsh ecology, extinction is a persistent possibility.
Contemporary discussions about societal collapse are seeking resilience by suggesting societal transformation.
Causes of collapse
Because
human societies are complex systems, common factors that may contribute
to their decline—economical, environmental, demographic, social and
cultural—can cascade
into another, building up to the point that could overwhelm any
mechanisms that would otherwise maintain stability. Unexpected and
abrupt changes, what experts call non-linearities, are some of the danger signs. In some cases a natural disaster (e.g. tsunami, earthquake, pandemic, massive fire or climate change) may precipitate a collapse. Other factors such as a Malthusian catastrophe, overpopulation or resource depletion
might be contributory factors of collapse, but studies of past
societies seem to suggest they alone were not the causes of collapse.
Significant inequity and exposed corruption may combine with lack of
loyalty to established political institutions and result in an oppressed
lower class rising up and seizing power from a smaller wealthy elite in
a revolution. The diversity of forms that societies evolve corresponds to diversity in their failures. Jared Diamond suggests that societies have also collapsed through deforestation, loss of soil fertility, restrictions of trade and/or rising endemic violence.
Any society has periods of prosperity and hardship. But when
decline from the height of civilization is so dramatic, one can safely
talk about its having collapsed. However, in the case of the Western Roman Empire, some argued that it did not collapse but merely transformed.
Natural disasters and climate change
The Indus Valley Civilization likely declined because of a long-lasting drought.
The Thirty Years' War devastated much of Europe and was one of the
many political upheavals during the General Crisis of the Seventeenth
Century, causally linked to the Little Ice Age.
Archeologists identified signs of a mega-drought for a
millennium between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago in Africa and Asia. The
drying of the Green Sahara not only turned it into a desert but also
disrupted the monsoon seasons in South and Southeast Asia and caused
flooding in East Asia, thereby preventing successful harvest and the
development of complex culture. It coincided and may have caused the
decline and fall of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilization. The dramatic shift in climate is known as the 4.2 kiloyear event.
The highly advanced Indus Valley Civilization
took roots around 3000 B.C. in what is now Pakistan and collapsed
around 1700 B.C. Since the Indus script has yet to be deciphered, the
causes of its demise remain a mystery, though there is some evidence
pointing to natural disasters.
Signs of a gradual decline began to emerge in 1900 B.C., and two
centuries later, most of the cities had been abandoned. Archeological
evidence suggests an increase in inter-personal violence and in
infectious diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis.
Historians and archeologists believe that severe and long-lasting
drought, and a decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia, caused the
collapse of this culture.
Evidence for earthquakes has also been discovered. Sea level changes
are also found at two possible seaport sites along the Makran coast
which are now inland. Earthquakes may have contributed to decline of
several sites by direct shaking damage, by sea level change or by change
in water supply.
Volcanic eruptions can abruptly influence the climate. During a large eruption, sulfur dioxide (SO2)
is expelled into the stratosphere, where it could stay for years and
gradually get oxidized into sulfate aerosols. Being highly reflective,
sulfate aerosols reduce the incident sunlight and cool the Earth's
surface. By drilling into glaciers and ice sheets, scientists can access
the archives of the history of atmospheric composition. A team of
multidisciplinary researchers led by Joseph McConnell of the Desert
Research Institute in Reno, Nevada deduced that a volcanic eruption
occurred in 43 B.C., a year after the assassination of Julius Caesar
in the Ides of March (March 15) in 44 B.C, which left a power vacuum
and led to bloody civil wars. According to historical accounts, this was
also a period of poor weather, crop failure, widespread famine, and
disease. Analyses of tree rings and cave stalagmites from different
parts of the globe provided complementary data. The Northern Hemisphere
got drier while the Southern Hemisphere became wetter. Indeed, Greek
historian Appian
recorded that there was a lack of flooding in Egypt, which also faced
famine and pestilence. Rome's interest in Egypt as a source of food
intensified, while the aforementioned problems and civil unrest weakened
Egypt's ability to resist. It came under Roman rule after Cleopatra's
suicide in 30 B.C. While it is difficult to say for certain whether
Egypt becoming a Roman province would have happened if Okmok volcano (in modern-day Alaska) had not erupted, the eruption likely hastened the process.
Global
average temperatures show that the Little Ice Age was not a distinct
planet-wide time period, but the end of a long temperature decline that
preceded recent global warming.
More generally, recent research pointed to climate change as a key
player in the decline and fall of historical societies in China, the
Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. In fact, paleoclimatogical
temperature reconstruction suggests that historical periods of social
unrest, societal collapse, and population crash and significant climate
change often occurred simultaneously. A team of researchers from
mainland China and Hong Kong were able to establish a causal connection
between climate change and large-scale human crises in pre-industrial
times. Short-term crises may be due to social problems, but climate
change was the ultimate cause of major crises, starting with economic
depressions.
Moreover, since agriculture is highly dependent on climate, any changes
to the regional climate from the optimum can induce crop failures.
The Mongol conquests corresponded to a period of cooling in the
Northern Hemisphere between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
when the Medieval Warm Period
was giving way to the Little Ice Age, causing ecological stress. In
Europe, while the cooling climate did not directly facilitate the Black
Death, it did cause wars, mass migration, and famine, making it easier
to diseases to spread.
A more recent example is the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century
in Europe, a period of inclement weather, crop failure, economic
hardship, extreme inter-group violence, and high mortality. It was due
to the Little Ice Age, caused by a period called the Maunder Minimum
when sunspots were exceedingly rare. Episodes of social instability
track the cooling with a time lap of up to 15 years, and many developed
into armed conflicts, such as the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648).
It started as a war of succession to the Bohemian throne. Animosity
between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire (in
modern-day Germany) added fuel to the fire. Soon, it escalated to a huge
conflict involving all major European powers that devastated much of
Germany. By the war's end, some regions of the Holy Roman Empire saw
their population drop by as much as 70%.
But not all societies faced crises during this period. Tropical
countries with high carrying capacities and trading economies did not
suffer much, because changing climate did not induce an economic
depression in these places.
Moreover, by the mid-eighteenth century, as global temperatures started
to rise, the ecological stress faced by Europeans also began to fade.
Mortality rates dropped and the level of violence fell, paving the way
for a period known as Pax Britannica,
which witnessed the emergence of a variety of innovations in technology
(which enabled industrialization), medicine (which improved hygiene),
and social welfare (such as the world's first welfare programs in
Germany), making life even more comfortable.
Barbarian invasions played an important role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
A mysterious loose confederation of fierce maritime marauders known as the Sea Peoples was identified as one of the main causes of the Late Bronze Age Collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean.
It is possible that the Sea Peoples were themselves victims of the
environmental changes that led to widespread famine and precipitated the
Collapse. After the Battle of Kadesh against the Egyptians in 1285 B.C., the Hittite Empire
began to show signs of decline. Attacks by the Sea Peoples accelerated
the process while internal power struggles, crop failures, and famine
were contributory factors. The Egyptians, with whom the Hittites signed a
peace treaty, supplied them with food in times of famine, but it was
not enough. Around 1200 B.C., the Sea Peoples seized a port on the west
coast of Asia Minor, cutting off the Hittites from their trade routes
from which their supply of grain came. Hattusa the Hittite capital was
destroyed. While some Hittite territories survived, these were captured
by the Assyrians in the seventh century B.C.
The Minoan Civilization, based on Crete, was based around religious rituals and seaborne trade. In around 1450 B.C., it was absorbed into Mycenaean Greece. Mycenaean Greece itself went into serious decline around 1200 B.C. due to various military conflicts, including the Dorian invasion from the north and attacks from the Sea Peoples.
In the third century B.C., a Eurasian nomadic people called the Xiongnu
began threatening China's frontiers, but by the first century B.C.,
they were completely expelled. They then turned their attention westward
and displaced various other tribes in Eastern and Central Europe,
leading to a cascade of events. Attila rose to power as leader of the Huns and initiated a campaign of invasions and looting and went as far as Gaul
(today's France). Attila's Huns were clashing with the Roman Empire,
which had already been divided into two halves for ease of
administration: the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire. Despite their decisive victory at the Battle of Chalons in 451 A.D., the Romans were unable to stop Attila from attacking Roman Italy.
Northern Italian cities, like Milan, were ravaged. The Huns never posed
a threat to the Roman Empire again after Attila's death, but the rise
of the Huns also forced the Germanic peoples
out of their territories. These groups pressed their way into parts of
France, Spain, Italy, and even as far south as North Africa. The city of
Rome itself came under attack by the Visigoths in 410 and was plundered by the Vandals in 455.
A combination of internal strife, economic weakness, and relentless
invasions by the Germanic peoples pushed the Western Roman Empire into terminal decline. The last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was dethroned in 476 by the German Odoacer, who declared himself King of Italy.
In the eleventh century A.D., North Africa's
populous and flourishing civilization collapsed after exhausting its
resources in internal fighting and suffering devastation from the
invasion of the Bedouin tribes of Banu Sulaym and Banu Hilal. Ibn Khaldun noted that the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become completely arid desert.
Vietnam under Emperor Minh Mạng, superimposed on modern political maps.
In 1206 a warlord achieved dominance over all Mongols with the title Genghis Khan
and began his campaign of territorial expansion. The Mongols' highly
flexible and mobile cavalry enabled them to conquer their enemies with
efficiency and swiftness. In the brutal pillaging that followed Mongol invasions during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the invaders decimated the populations of China, Russia, the Middle East, and Islamic Central Asia. Later Mongol leaders, such as Timur, destroyed many cities, slaughtered thousands of people and did irreparable damage to the ancient irrigation systems of Mesopotamia. These invasions transformed a settled society to a nomadic one.
In China, for example, a combination of war, famine, and pestilence
during the Mongol conquests halved the population, a decline of around
55 million people.
The Mongols also displaced large numbers of people and created power
vacuums. The Khmer Empire went into decline and was replaced by the
Thais, who were pushed southward by the Mongols. The Vietnamese, who
succeeded in defeating the Mongols, also turned their attention to the
south and by 1471, they began subjugating the Chams. When Vietnam's Later Lê Dynasty went into decline in the late 1700s, a bloody civil war erupted between the Trịnh family in the North and the Nguyễn family in the South. More Cham provinces were seized by the Nguyễn warlords. Finally, Nguyễn Ánh emerged victorious and declared himself Emperor of Vietnam (changing the name from Annam) with the title Gia Long and established the Nguyễn Dynasty. The last remaining principality of Champa, Panduranga (modern-day Phan Rang, Vietnam), survived until 1832, when Emperor Minh Mạng (Nguyễn Phúc Đảm) conquered it after the centuries long Cham–Vietnamese wars.
Vietnam's policy of assimilation involved the force-feeding of pork to
Muslims and beef to Hindus, which fueled resentment. An uprising followed, the first and only war between Vietnam and the jihadists. It was crushed.
Famine, economic depression, and internal strife
In around 1210 B.C., the New Kingdom of Egypt
shipped large amounts of grains to the then disintegrating Hittite
Empire, meaning there had been a food shortage in Anatolia but not the
Nile Valley. But this soon changed. Although Egypt managed to decisively deliver a final defeat to the Sea Peoples at the Battle of Xois,
Egypt itself went into steep decline. The collapse of all the other
societies of the Eastern Mediterranean disrupted established trade
routes and caused widespread economic depression. Government workers
went underpaid, which resulted in the first labor dispute in recorded
history and undermined royal authority.
There was also political infighting between different factions of
government. Bad harvest due to reduced flooding at the Nile led to a
major famine. Food prices rose up to eight times their normal values,
and occasionally even reached twenty-four. Runaway inflation followed. Attacks by the Libyans and Nubians made things even worse. Thus through the course of its rule the Twentieth Dynasty
(∼1187–1064 B.C) saw Egypt devolving from a major power in the
Mediterranean into a deeply divided and weakened state that later came
to be ruled by the Libyans and the Nubians.
The time between 481 B.C. and 221 B.C. was the Period of the Warring States in China, which ended when King Zheng of the Qin Dynasty succeeding in defeating six competing factions, thereby becoming the first Chinese Emperor, titled Qin Shi Huang.
A ruthless but efficient ruler, the Emperor raised a disciplined and
professional army, and introduced a significant number of reforms,
unifying the language, and creating a single currency and system of
measurement. In addition, he funded dam constructions and began building
the first segment of what was to become the Great Wall of China
to defend his realm against northern nomads. However, his empire fell
part when he died in 210 B.C. due to internal feuds and rebellions.
In the early fourteenth century A.D., Britain had unusually heavy
rainfall, flooding and suffered repeated rounds of crop failures. Much
livestock either starved or drowned. Food prices skyrocketed. While King
Edward II attempted to rectify the situation by imposing price
controls, vendors simply refused to sell at such low prices. In any
case, the act was abolished by the Lincoln Parliament in 1316. Soon,
people from commoners to nobles were finding themselves short of food.
Many resorted to begging, criminality, and eating animals they otherwise
would not eat. People in the North of England had to deal with raids
from Scotland. There were even reports of cannibalism. In Continental Europe, things were at least just as bad. This Great Famine of 1315–1317 coincided with the end of the Medieval Warm Period and the start of the Little Ice Age. Some historians suspect this change in climate was due to Mount Tarawera in New Zealand erupting in 1314.
The Great Famine was, however, only one of the calamities striking
Europe that century, as the Hundred Years' War and Black Death were soon
to follow. Recent analysis of tree rings complemented historical records: the summers of 1314–16 were some of the wettest on record over a period of 700 years.
Disease outbreaks
The angel of death striking a door during the plague of Rome; engraving by Levasseur after Jules-Elie Delaunay (1828–1891).
Historically, the dawn of agriculture led to the rise of contagious diseases.
Compared to their hunting-gathering counterparts, agrarian societies
tended to be sedentary and had higher population densities, were in
frequent contact with livestock, and were more exposed to contaminated
water supplies and higher concentrations of garbage. Poor sanitation, a
lack of medical knowledge, superstitions, and sometimes a combination of
disasters exacerbated the problem.
Journalist Michael Rosenwald wrote, "...history shows that past
pandemics have reshaped societies in profound ways. Hundreds of millions
of people have died. Empires have fallen. Governments have cracked.
Generations have been annihilated."
From the description of symptoms by Greek physician Galen,
which included coughing, fever, (blackish) diarrhea, swollen throat,
thirstiness, modern experts identified the probable culprits of the Antonine Plague (A.D. 165–180) to be smallpox or measles. The disease likely started in China and spread to the West via the Silk Road.
Roman troops first contracted the disease in the East before returning
home. Striking a 'virgin population', the Antonine Plague had dreadful
mortality rates; between one third to a half of the population, 60 to 70
million people, perished. Roman cities suffered from a combination of
overcrowding, poor hygiene, and unhealthy diets. They quickly became
epicenters. Soon, the disease reached as far as Gaul and mauled Roman
defenses along the Rhine. The ranks of the previously formidable Roman
army had to be filled with freed slaves, German mercenaries, criminals,
and gladiators. It ultimately failed to prevent the Germanic tribes from
crossing the Rhine. On the civilian side, the Antonine Plague created
drastic shortages of businessmen, which disrupted trade, and farmers,
which led to a food crisis. An economic depression followed and
government revenue fell. Some accused Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Co-emperor Lucius Verus, both of whom victims of the disease, of affronting the gods while others blamed Christians. Yet the Antonine Plague strengthened the position of the monotheistic religion of Christianity
in a heretofore polytheistic society as Christians won public
admiration for their good works. Ultimately it was the Roman army, Roman
cities, the size of the empire and its trade routes, without which
Roman power and influence would not exist, that facilitated the spread
of the disease. The Antonine Plague is considered by some historians as a
useful starting point for understanding the decline and fall of the
Western Roman Empire. It was followed by the Plague of Cyprian (A.D. 249–262) and the Plague of Justinian (541-542). Together, they cracked the foundations of the Roman Empire.
In the sixth century A.D., while the Western Roman Empire had
already succumbed to attacks by the Germanic tribes, the Eastern Empire
stood its ground. In fact, thanks to a peace treaty with the Persians,
Emperor Justinian the Great was able to concentrate on re-capturing territories belonging to the Western Empire. His generals, Belisarius and Narses, achieved a number of important victories against the Ostrogoths and the Vandals. However, their hope of re-establishing the Roman Empire was dashed by the arrival of what became known as the Plague of Justinian (541-542). According to Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea,
this epidemic originated in China and Northeastern India and reached
the Eastern Roman Empire via trade routes terminating in the
Mediterranean. While modern scholarship was able to deduce that it was
caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis,
the same one that would later bring the Black Death, the single
deadliest pandemic in human history, it remains uncertain how many
actually died because of it. Current estimates put the figure between
thirty and fifty million people, a significant portion of the human population at that time. The Plague arguably cemented the fate of Rome.
It also devastated the Sassanid Persian Empire. Caliph Abu Bakr seized the opportunity to launch military campaigns that overran the Sassanians
and captured Roman-held territories in the Caucasus, the Levant, Egypt,
and elsewhere in North Africa. Before the Justinian Plague, the
Mediterranean world had been commercially and culturally stable. After
the Plague, it fractured into a trio of civilizations battling for
power: the Islamic Civilization, the Byzantine Empire, and what became
known as Medieval Europe. With so many people dead, the supply of
workers, many of whom were slaves, was critically short. Landowners had
no choice but to lend pieces of land to serfs who work the land in
exchange for military protection and other privileges. Thus sowed the
seeds of feudalism.
There is evidence that the Mongol expeditions may have spread the bubonic plague across much of Eurasia, helping to spark the Black Death of the early fourteenth century. Italian historian Gabriele de’ Mussi
wrote that the Mongols catapulted the corpses of those who contracted
the plague into Caffa (now Feodossia, Crimea) during the siege of that
city and how soldiers transported from there brought the plague to
Mediterranean ports. However, this account of the origin of the Black
Death in Europe remains controversial, though plausible, because the
complex epidemiology of the plague. Modern epidemiologists do not
believe that the Black Death had a single source of spreading into
Europe. Research into the past on this topic is further complicated by
politics and the passage of time. It is difficult to distinguish between
natural epidemics and biological warfare, both of which are common
throughout human history.
Biological weapons are economical because they turn an enemy casualty
into a delivery system and as such were favored in armed conflicts of
the past. Furthermore, more soldiers had died of disease than in combat
until recently.
In any case, by the 1340s, Europe faced a combination of overpopulation
and famine. As a result, many had weakened immune systems, especially
those living in squalid conditions. Whatever its origins, the Black Death killed around one third of the population in medieval Europe, or about 200 million people. The widening trade routes in the Late Middle Ages helped the plague spread rapidly. It took the European population more than two centuries to return its level before the pandemic. Consequently, it destabilized most of society, and likely undermined feudalism and the authority of the Church. In parts of England, for example, 80% of the population living in poverty were killed. Economic deprivation and war followed. In England and France, for example, a combination of the plague and the Hundred Years' War killed about half the population.
With labor in short supply, workers' bargaining power increased
dramatically. Various inventions that reduced the cost of labor, saved
time, and raised productivity–such as the three-field crop rotation
system, the iron plow, the use of manure to fertilize the soil, and the
water pumps–were widely adopted. Many former serfs, now free from feudal
obligations, relocated to the cities and changed profession to crafts
and trades. The more successful became the new middle class. Trade
flourished as demands for a myriad of consumer goods rose. Society
became wealthier and could afford to fund the arts and the sciences. The Black Death marked the end of the Middle Ages in Europe; the Renaissance had begun.
Aztec victims of smallpox, from the Florentine Codex (1540–85)
Encounters between European explorers and the Amerindians exposed the
latter to variety of diseases of extraordinary virulence. Having
migrated from Northeastern Asia 15,000 years ago, the Amerindians were
hitherto not introduced to the plethora of contagious diseases that
emerged after the rise of agriculture in the Old World. As such they had
immune systems that were ill-equipped to handle the diseases that their
counterparts Eurasia had grown resistant to. When the Europeans arrived
in the Americas, in short order, the indigenous populations of the
Americas found themselves facing smallpox, measles, whooping cough, and the bubonic plague, among others. In tropical areas, malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, river blindness, and others appeared. Most of these tropical diseases were traced to Africa. Smallpox ravaged Mexico in the 1520s, killing 150,000 in Tenochtitlán alone, including the emperor, and Peru in the 1530s, aiding the European conquerors.
A combination of Spanish military attacks and evolutionarily novel
diseases finished off the Aztec Empire in the sixteenth century. It is commonly believed that the death of as much as 90% or 95% of the Native American population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases, though new research suggests tuberculosis from seals and sea lions played a significant part.
Similar events took place in Oceania and Madagascar. Smallpox was externally brought to Australia. The first recorded outbreak, in 1789, devastated the Aboriginal
population; while the extent of this outbreak is disputed, some sources
claim that it killed about 50% of coastal Aboriginal populations on the
east coast.
There is an ongoing historical debate concerning two rival and
irreconcilable theories about how the disease first entered the
continent - see History of smallpox.
Smallpox continued to be a deadly disease, killing an estimated 300
million people in the twentieth century alone, though a vaccine—the
first of any kind—had been available since 1796.
As humans spread around the globe, as human societies flourish
and become more dependent on trade, and because urbanization means that
people leave sparsely populated rural areas for densely populated
neighborhoods, it has become much easier for infectious diseases to
spread. Outbreaks are frequent, even in the modern era, though medical
advances have been able to alleviate their impacts.
In fact, even though the human population grew tremendously in the
twentieth century, as did the population of farm animals, from which
diseases could jump to humans,
in the developed world and increasingly in the developing world, people
are presently less likely to fall victim to infectious diseases than
ever before. For instance, the advent of antibiotics, starting with penicillin
in 1928, saw to it that hundreds of millions of people were rescued
from death due to bacterial infections between then and now. But there
is no guarantee this would continue because bacteria are becoming
increasingly resistant to antibiotics, so much so that doctors and public health experts such as former Chief Medical Officer for England Sally Davies
have warned of an incoming "antibiotic apocalypse." The World Health
Organization warned in 2019 that the anti-vaccination movement was one
of the top threats to global health because it has led to the return of
almost forgotten diseases such as measles.
Demographic dynamics
Writing in The Histories, Greek historian Polybius, largely blamed the decline of the Hellenistic world
on low fertility rates. He asserted that while protracted wars and
deadly epidemics were absent, people were generally more interested in
"show and money and the pleasures of an idle life" rather than marrying
and raising children. Those who did have children, he said, had no more
than one or two, with the express intention of "leaving them well off or
bringing them up in extravagant luxury." However, it is difficult to estimate the actual fertility rate of
Greece at this time because Polybius did not provide any data for
analysis. He only gave a narrative that likely came from his impression
of the kinds of Greeks with whom he was familiar, namely the elites
rather than the commoners. Otherwise the population drop would have been
abrupt. Nevertheless, the Greek case parallels the Roman one.
But since more
plenteous honor has come to planes that yield a sterile shade, than to
any three, we fruit-bearers (if as a nut tree I am counted among them)
have begun to lexuriate in spreading foliage. How apples grow not every
year, and injured grapes and injured berries are brought home: now she
that would seem beautiful harms her womb, and rare in these days is she who would be a parent.
Ovid, Nux
By around 100 B.C. the notion of romantic love
started becoming popular in Rome. In the final years of the Roman
Republic, Roman women were well known for divorcing, having
extra-marital affairs, and reluctance to bear children.
Viewing this as a threat to the social and political order, and
believing that the Roman upper-class was becoming increasingly
cosmopolitan and individualistic, upon the establishment of the Roman Empire, Caesar Augustus introduced legislation designed to increase the birthrate.
Men aged 20 to 60 and women aged 20 to 50 were legally obliged to
marry; widowed or divorced individuals within the relevant age range
were required to remarry. Exemptions were granted to those who had
already had three children in the case of free-born people and four in
the case of freed slaves. For political or bureaucratic office,
preference was given to those with at least three legitimate children.
Diminished inheritance rights awaited those who failed to reproduce.
In a speech to Roman nobles, the Emperor expressed his pressing concern
over the low birthrates of the Romans elite. He said that freed slaves
had been granted citizenship and Roman allies given seats government to
increase the power and prosperity of Rome, yet the "original stock" was
not replacing themselves, leaving the task to foreigners. Roman poet Ovid shared the same observation.
But Augustan pro-natal policies proved unsuccessful.
All they did was fueling nostalgia and disdain for the present; they
went no further than reaffirming the past-oriented, rural, and
patriarchal values of Imperial Rome. Like their Greek counterparts, Roman elites had access to contraception—though
this knowledge was lost to Europe during the Middle Ages and the Early
Modern Period—and as such were able to enjoy sexual intercourse without
having to rear additional children. In other words, people of high
socioeconomic class of the Greco-Roman world were able to control their
own fertility. Not only that, this ability likely trickled down to the
lower classes. In any case, the result was predictable. Due to the
absence of modern medicine, which could extend life expectancy, their
numbers started shrinking. Moreover, population decline coincided with
people being less religious and more questioning of traditions,
both of which contributed to falling fertility as more and more people
came to the conclusion that it was up to them, rather than the gods, how
many children they had.
Other population imbalances may occur when low fertility rates coincides with high dependency ratios or when there is an unequal distribution of wealth between elites and commoners. Both characterized the Roman Empire.
Several key features of human societal collapse can be related to population dynamics. For example, the native population of Cusco, Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest was stressed by an imbalanced sex ratio.
There is strong evidence that humans also display population cycles.
Societies as diverse as those of England and France during the Roman,
medieval and early modern eras, of Egypt during Greco-Roman and Ottoman
rule, and of various dynasties in China all showed similar patterns of
political instability and violence becoming considerably more common
after times of relative peace, prosperity, and sustained population
growth. Quantitatively, periods of unrest included many times more
events of instability per decade and occurred when the population was
declining rather than increasing. Pre-industrial agrarian societies
typically faced instability after one or two centuries of stability.
However, a population approaching its carrying capacity alone is not
enough to trigger general decline if the people remained united and the
ruling class strong. Other factors had to be involved, such as having
more aspirants for positions of the elite than the society could
realistically support (elite overproduction),
which led to social strife, and chronic inflation, which caused incomes
to fall and threatened the fiscal health of the state.
In particular, an excess in especially young adult male population
predictably led to social unrest and violence, as the third and
higher-order parity sons had trouble realizing their economic desires
and became more open to extreme ideas and actions. Adults in their 20s are especially prone to radicalization.
Most historical periods of social unrest lacking external triggers,
such as natural calamities, and most genocides can be readily explained
as a result of a built-up youth bulge. As these trends intensified, they jeopardized the social fabric, thereby facilitating the decline.
Theories
Historical analysts have proposed a myriad of theories to explain the rise and fall of civilizations.
Such theories have evolved from being purely social and ethical, to
ideological and ethnocentric, and finally to where they are today,
multidisciplinary studies. They have become much more sophisticated.
Cognitive decline and loss of creativity
Anthropologist Joseph Tainter theorized that collapsed societies essentially exhausted their own designs, and were unable to adapt to natural diminishing returns for what they knew as their method of survival. It matches closely with historian Arnold J. Toynbee's idea that they were confronted with problems they could not solve.
For Toynbee, key to civilization is the ability to solve problems and a
society declines when its ability to do so stagnates or falls. Philosopher Oswald Spengler argued that a civilization in its "winter" would see a disinclination for abstract thinking.
Psychologists David Rand and Jonathan Cohen theorized that people
switch between two broad modes of thinking. The first is fast and
automatic but rigid while the second is slow and analytical but more
flexible. Rand and Cohen believe this explains why people continue with
self-destructive behaviors when logical reasoning would have alerted
them of the dangers ahead. People switch from the second to the first
mode of thinking after the introduction of an invention that
dramatically increases the standards of living. Rand and Cohen pointed
to the recent examples of the antibiotic overuse leading to resistant
bacteria and failure to save for retirement. Tainter noted that
according to behavioral economics, the human decision-making process
tends to be more irrational than not and that as the rate of innovation
declines, as measured by the number of inventions relative to the amount
of money spent on research and development, it becomes progressively harder for there to be a technological solution to the problem of societal collapse.
Social scientists Edward Dutton and Michael Woodley of Menie make the case in their book At Our Wits' End (2018) that to the extent that intelligence is heritable, the tendency of the cognitive elite to produce relatively few children, that is, the negative correlation between intelligence and fertility,
observed once a society reaches a certain level of development and
prosperity precipitates its decline. These authors argue that, in
multiple historical societies, such as Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome,
Ancient China, and the Islamic Civilization, the more intelligent
individuals not only had access to contraception but were also more
likely to use it effectively. While measuring the level of general intelligence (the g-factor)
in periods for which there is no psychometric data is problematic, the
authors suggest that one could estimate it via proxies, such as the
number of innovations per century per billion people.
Social and environmental dynamics
During the 9th century AD, the central Maya region suffered major political collapse, marked by the abandonment of cities
What produces modern sedentary life, unlike nomadichunter-gatherers,
is extraordinary modern economic productivity. Tainter argues that
exceptional productivity is actually more the sign of hidden weakness,
both because of a society's dependence on it, and its potential to
undermine its own basis for success by not being self limiting as demonstrated in Western culture's ideal of perpetual growth.
As a population grows and technology makes it easier to exploit
depleting resources, the environment's diminishing returns are hidden
from view. Societal complexity
is then potentially threatened if it develops beyond what is actually
sustainable, and a disorderly reorganization were to follow. The
scissors model of Malthusian
collapse, where the population grows without limit and resources do
not, is the idea of great opposing environmental forces cutting into
each other.
The complete breakdown of economic, cultural and social
institutions with ecological relationships is perhaps the most common
feature of collapse. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,
Jared Diamond proposes five interconnected causes of collapse that may
reinforce each other: non-sustainable exploitation of resources, climate
changes, diminishing support from friendly societies, hostile
neighbors, and inappropriate attitudes for change.
Energy return on investment
Energy has played a crucial role throughout human history. Energy is
linked to the birth, growth, and decline of each and every society.
Energy surplus is required to the division of labor and the growth of
cities. Massive energy surplus is needed for widespread wealth and
cultural amenities. Economic prospects fluctuate in tandem with a
society's access to cheap and abundant energy.
Thomas Homer-Dixon and Charles Hall proposed an economic model called energy return on investment (EROI), which measures the amount of surplus energy a society gets from using energy to obtain energy.
While it is true that energy shortages drive up prices and as such
provide an incentive to explore and extract previously uneconomical
sources, which may still be plentiful, more energy would be required, in
which case the EROI will not be as high as initially thought.
There would be no surplus if EROI approaches 1:1. Hall showed
that the real cutoff is well above that, estimated to be 3:1 to sustain
the essential overhead energy costs of a modern society. The EROI of the
most preferred energy source, petroleum,
has fallen in the past century from 100:1 to the range of 10:1 with
clear evidence that the natural depletion curves all are downward decay
curves. An EROI of more than ~3, then, is what appears necessary to
provide the energy for socially important tasks, such as maintaining
government, legal and financial institutions, a transportation
infrastructure, manufacturing, building construction and maintenance and
the life styles all members of a given society.
Social scientist Luke Kemp indicated that alternative sources of
energy, such as solar panels, have low EROI because they have low energy
density, meaning they require a lot of land, and require substantial
amounts of rare earth metals to produce.
Charles Hall and his colleagues reached the same conclusion. While
there is no on-site pollution, the EROI of renewable energy sources may
be too low for them to be considered a viable alternative to fossil
fuels, which continue to provide the majority of the energy consumed by
humanity (60–65% as of 2014). Moreover, renewable energy is intermittent
and requires large and expensive storage facilities in order to be a
base-load source for the power grid (20% or more). In that case, its
EROI would be even lower. Paradoxically, therefore, expansions of
renewable energy require more consumption of fossil fuels. For Hall and
his colleagues, whereas human societies in the previous few centuries
could solve or at least alleviate many of their problems by making
technological innovations and by consuming more energy, contemporary
society faces the difficult challenge of declining EROI for its most
useful energy source, fossil fuels, and low EROI for alternatives.
Mathematician Safa Motesharrei and his collaborators showed that
the use of non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels allows
populations to grow to one order of magnitude larger than they would
using renewable resources alone and as such is able to postpone societal
collapse. However, when collapse finally comes, it is much more
dramatic.
Tainter warned that in the modern world, if the supply of fossil fuels
were somehow cut off, shortages of clean water and food would ensue, and
millions would die in a few weeks in the worse-case scenario.
Homer-Dixon asserted that declining EROI was one of the reasons
why the Roman Empire declined and fell. Historian Joseph Tainter made
the same claim about the Mayan Empire.
Models of societal response
According to Joseph Tainter
(1990), too many scholars offer facile explanations of societal
collapse by assuming one or more of the following three models in the
face of collapse:
The Dinosaur, a large-scale society in which resources
are being depleted at an exponential rate and yet nothing is done to
rectify the problem because the ruling elite are unwilling or unable to
adapt to those resources' reduced availability: In this type of society,
rulers tend to oppose any solutions that diverge from their present
course of action. They will favor intensification and commit an
increasing number of resources to their present plans, projects, and
social institutions.
The Runaway Train, a society whose continuing function depends on constant growth (cf.Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis): This type of society, based almost exclusively on acquisition (e.g., pillage or exploitation), cannot be sustained indefinitely. The Assyrian, Roman and Mongol Empires, for example, both fractured and collapsed when no new conquests could be achieved.
The House of Cards, a society that has grown to be so large
and include so many complex social institutions that it is inherently
unstable and prone to collapse. This type of society has been seen with
particular frequency among Eastern bloc and other communist
nations, in which all social organizations are arms of the government
or ruling party, such that the government must either stifle association
wholesale (encouraging dissent and subversion) or exercise less authority than it asserts (undermining its legitimacy in the public eye).
By contrast, as Alexis de Tocquevilleobserved,
when voluntary and private associations are allowed to flourish and
gain legitimacy at an institutional level, they complement and often
even supplant governmental functions: They provide a "safety valve" for
dissent, assist with resource allocation, provide for social
experimentation without the need for governmental coercion, and enable
the public to maintain confidence in society as a whole, even during
periods of governmental weakness.
Tainter's critique
Tainter
argues that these models, though superficially useful, cannot severally
or jointly account for all instances of societal collapse. Often they
are seen as interconnected occurrences that reinforce each other.
Tainter's position is that social complexity is a recent and
comparatively anomalous occurrence requiring constant support. He
asserts that collapse is best understood by grasping four axioms. In his
own words (p. 194):
human societies are problem-solving organizations;
sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance;
increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita; and
investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response reaches a point of declining marginal returns.
With these facts in mind, collapse can simply be understood as a loss
of the energy needed to maintain social complexity. Collapse is thus
the sudden loss of social complexity, stratification, internal and
external communication and exchange, and productivity.
Toynbee’s theory of decay
In his 12-volume masterpieceA Study of History (1934–1961), British historian Arnold J. Toynbee
explored the rise and fall of 28 civilizations and came to the
conclusion that civilizations generally collapsed due mainly to internal
factors, factors of their own making, though external pressures did
play a role. He theorized that all civilizations pass through several distinct stages: genesis, growth, time of troubles, universal state, and disintegration.
For Toynbee, a civilization is born when a "creative minority"
successfully responds to the challenges posed by its physical, social,
and political environment. But the fixation on the old methods of the
"creative minority" leads it to eventually cease to be creative and
degenerate into merely a "dominant minority"
(that forces the majority to obey without meriting obedience), failing
to recognize new ways of thinking. He argues that creative minorities
deteriorate due to a worship of their "former self", by which they
become prideful, and fail to adequately address the next challenge they
face. Similarly, German philosopher Oswald Spengler discussed the transition from Kultur to Zivilisation in his The Decline of the West (1918).
He argues that the ultimate sign a civilization has broken down is when the dominant minority forms a Universal State, which stifles political creativity. He states:
First the Dominant Minority
attempts to hold by force - against all right and reason - a position of
inherited privilege which it has ceased to merit; and then the Proletariat
repays injustice with resentment, fear with hate, and violence with
violence when it executes its acts of secession. Yet the whole movement
ends in positive acts of creation - and this on the part of all the
actors in the tragedy of disintegration. The Dominant Minority creates a
universal state, the Internal Proletariat a universal church, and the
External Proletariat a bevy of barbarian war-bands.
He argues that, as civilizations decay, they form an "Internal
Proletariat" and an "External Proletariat." The Internal proletariat is
held in subjugation by the dominant minority inside the civilization,
and grows bitter; the external proletariat exists outside the
civilization in poverty and chaos, and grows envious. He argues that as
civilizations decay, there is a "schism in the body social", whereby abandon and self-control together replace creativity, and truancy and martyrdom together replace discipleship by the creative minority.
He argues that in this environment, people resort to archaism (idealization of the past), futurism (idealization of the future), detachment (removal of oneself from the realities of a decaying world), and transcendence
(meeting the challenges of the decaying civilization with new insight,
as a prophet). He argues that those who transcend during a period of
social decay give birth to a new Church with new and stronger spiritual
insights, around which a subsequent civilization may begin to form after
the old has died. Toynbee's use of the word 'church' refers to the
collective spiritual bond of a common worship, or the same unity found
in some kind of social order.
Historian Carroll Quigley expanded upon this theory in The Evolution of Civilizations (1961, 1979).
He argued that societal disintegration involves the metamorphosis of
social instruments, set up to meet actual needs, into institutions,
which serve their own interest at the expense of social needs.
However, starting from the 1950s, Toynbee's approach to history, his
style of civilizational analysis, faced skepticism from mainstream
historians who thought it put an undue emphasis on the divine, which led
to his academic reputation declining, though for a time, Toynbee's Study remained popular outside academia. Interest revived decades later with the publication of The Clash of Civilizations (1997) by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington.
Huntington viewed human history as broadly the history of civilizations
and posited that the world after the end of the Cold War will be a
multi-polar one of competing major civilizations, divided by "fault
lines."
Systems science
Developing
an integrated theory of societal collapse that takes into account the
complexity of human societies remains an open problem.
Researchers currently have very little ability to identify internal
structures of large distributed systems like human societies. Genuine
structural collapse seems, in many cases, the only plausible explanation
supporting the idea that such structures exist. However, until they can
be concretely identified, scientific inquiry appears limited to the
construction of scientific narratives, using systems thinking for careful storytelling about systemic organization and change.
In the 1990s, evolutionary anthropologist and quantitative historian Peter Turchin
noticed that the equations used to model the populations of predators
and preys can also be used to describe the ontogeny of human societies.
He specifically examined how social factors such as income inequality
were related to political instability. He found recurring cycles of
unrest in historical societies such as Ancient Egypt, China, and Russia.
He specifically identified two cycles, one long and one short. The long
one, what he calls the "secular cycle," lasts for approximately two to
three centuries. A society starts out fairly equal. Its population grows
and the cost of labor drops. A wealthy upper-class emerges while the
life for the working class deteriorates. As inequality grows, a society
becomes more unstable with the lower-class being miserable and the
upper-class entangled in infighting. Exacerbating social turbulence
eventually leads to collapse. The shorter cycle lasts for about 50 years
and consists of two generations, one peaceful and one turbulent.
Looking at United States history, for example, Turchin was able to
identify times of serious sociopolitical instability, 1870, 1920, and
1970. He predicted that in 2020, the U.S. would witness a period of
unrest at least on the same level as 1970 because the first cycle
coincides with the turbulent part of the second in around 2020. He
announced this prediction in 2010. He also warned that the U.S. is not
the only Western nation under strain.
But Turchin's model can only paint the broader picture and cannot
pinpoint how bad things can get and what precisely triggers a collapse.
Mathematician Safa Motesharrei also applied predator-prey models to
human society, with the upper-class and lower-class being the two
different types of "predators" and natural resources being the "prey."
He found that either extreme inequality or resource depletion
facilitates a collapse. But a collapse is only irreversible if a society
experiences both at the same time, as they "fuel each other."
Examples of civilizations and societies that have collapsed
By reversion or simplification
During the course of the 15th century, nearly all of Angkor was abandoned
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