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The World Experiencing Two Things That Have Historically Brought Down Empires

Will we see empires fall this time around?

Grant Piper
5 min readNov 17, 2024
(By Thomas Cole — Explore Thomas Cole, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=183045)

People have spent centuries trying to figure out why empires crumble. Empires are interesting historical cases. They reach immeasurable heights. Empires throughout history have accumulated massive amounts of territory, assembled intricate bureaucracies, and become fabulously wealthy. Then, after they reach their peak, the invariably begin to decline until they collapse completely. This imperial cycle is endlessly fascinating. How can massively powerful empires like the Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, or British Empire fall apart?

Over the centuries, historians have pinpointed two things that often cause empires to fail: climate change and mass migration. These two things go hand in hand. The climate changes in one region through things like sea rise and drought, which causes the people in that region to pack up and move in mass to a different location. These events cause huge amounts of pressure on large states like empires.

Migrating people often clash with the natives of the region they are moving into. Even if these clashes are not military in nature, there are cultural, religious, and economic clashes that inevitably arise due to the mixing of diverse cultures.

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Grant Piper
Grant Piper

Written by Grant Piper

Professional writer. Amateur historian. Husband, father, Christian.

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