Ex Unum, Pluribus — How to Dismantle an Empire Without Even Trying

Sovereignty is a fickle thing. Weak nations sometimes persevere for centuries through guile and diplomacy, or even rise from the grave centuries after being erased from the map. Great empires, on the other hand, inevitably collapse into a gaggle of successor states.

Many people living today can still remember when the Soviet Union collapsed, providing front-row seats to the end of an empire. All of a sudden, nations like Ukraine and Turkmenistan started popping up on world maps, arising from what had once been a giant Soviet blob. Americans will be familiar with our national motto: “E pluribus, unum”, which means “Out of many, one.” But what happens when a united empire becomes divided? And why does it happen?

Needless to say, every case is unique. There’s no single historical playbook for “collapsing empire”. But there are certain threads that run throughout. One of these threads is the absence of a united national identity. In and of itself, this is not a sufficient cause for the breakdown of an empire. The Roman Empire, for instance, was never truly united in a cultural sense, with the eastern half of the realm retaining its Greek character throughout the imperial era. On the other hand, the case of the Soviet Union is an excellent example of national identity dividing an otherwise-viable empire.

Now, some people might protest that its collapse had more to do with the evils of Communism than with any type of national spirit in the various Soviet republics. This simply does not compute. In fact, remaining in the Russian Federation did not mean condemnation to life under Communism. The Russian people were free to vote, and vote they did. They enjoyed a full decade of democracy under Yeltsin, before economic pain drove them to accept a more authoritarian leader in the form of Putin. But hindsight is 20/20. Nowhere was it written in 1991 that history had to go this way. The Russian Federation could just as easily have become a freedom-loving democracy akin to France, Sweden, or the US.

Similarly, leaving the USSR and becoming an independent, sovereign nation was no guarantee of freedom. For instance, Alexander Lukashenko has been ruling Belarus with an iron fist since 1994. Kyrgyzstan has been dealing with social and political upheaval since 1991. Turkmenistan remained under a Communist dictator from its independence in 1991 until 2006. This dictator, named Saparmurat Niyazov, might have been a Communist, but he was also a staunch nationalist. Among other practices, Niyazov banned operas for being “insufficiently Turkmen”. Even today, Turkmenistan remains a dictatorship under a new leader, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.

The one thing all these countries have in common, from democratic Kazakhstan to autocratic Belarus, is a strong sense of national identity. This sense of identity, of a shared experience, was what made them separate from other people. Such a shared identity is one difference between a nation and an empire. People in an empire might have shared interests, unified commerce, even a united defense, but they are, in some sense, still separate.

Take the example of the Roman Empire. During her time of dominance, Rome famously spread her culture and language throughout Western Europe. Even after Rome fell, her Latin language remained, and evolved into the French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese languages we know today. But Rome had no such influence in the eastern half of her Empire. From the Aegean through Anatolia, the Greek language remained prominent. Why is that?

Rome had gained control of the western Mediterranean by means of total war. From the mid-third through mid-second century BC, she conquered the Carthaginian Empire by the sword. Total population numbers are hard to come by, but suffice it to say that a large number of existing people in those lands were either killed or enslaved. The same is true for Julius Caesar’s conquest of the Gauls in the first century BC. Gauls either submitted, were killed, or were enslaved. Those who submitted were slowly assimilated to Roman culture over the course of generations.

Rome’s conquest of Greece, on the other hand, followed a somewhat different course. Rome conquered Greece during the course of four wars, called the Macedonian wars. To keep a long story short, the Greek city states were warring amongst themselves, as they usually did. This was causing instability in the eastern Mediterranean, which the Romans perceived as a threat. Over the course of decades, they absorbed one Greek city state after another through a combination of conquest and diplomacy. But this was not a war of annihilation. Greek temples were not razed to the ground. Greeks were not massacred or enslaved en masse. For lack of a better word, it was a “civilized” conquest.

In fact, it would be fair to ask whether Rome conquered Greece, or whether the conquest had happened the other way round. The Romans assimilated Greek literature, art, and poetry, which is one reason that historians are able to speak of one continuous classical era in the Mediterranean. The Greeks never gave up their treasured language, and Latin was only used for law and commerce. The Romans may have conquered Greece militarily, but the relationship between the two sides of the Empire was a symbiotic one.

Given the nature of this relationship, you would have expected the eastern half of the Empire to be the least cohesive, but ironically, it was the western half that collapsed first. In the late fourth century, waves of Gothic tribes settled inside the Empire. The Goths required land for their people, and ultimately united under a chieftain named Alaric to demand full citizenship, as well as a generalship for Alaric. Alaric ended up sacking the city of Rome itself in 410 AD, a disastrous event both for the empire and for Alaric himself. His people earned the right to settle, but never would he have the legitimacy he craved as a Roman general.

In a different world, it’s possible that the Roman Empire could have healed. Given a century of relative peace and stability, like the second century, the Goths could ultimately have been accepted as full citizens, and their chieftains would have stopped fighting amongst themselves. But this was not to be. Within two generations, Attila and his Huns were invading Italy, the second time in a century the Eternal City had fallen to invasion.

This time, the Roman Empire would not rise again. Tribal Ostrogothic and Visigothic kings, already well established in their power, now became fully independent. The emperor, already hardly more than a figurehead, now became a pawn, his authority limited to the region of Italy between Rome and Ravenna.

In only one more generation, even that small symbol of Imperial authority would disappear. In 476 AD, a Germanic warlord named Odoacer deposed the last emperor, the teenaged Romulus Augustulus. At this point, the title of “Augustus” was worth so little that Odoacer did not even claim it for himself. The Roman Senate sent the Imperial sigil and seal to Constantinople, and Romulus Augustulus would forever be known as the last Roman Emperor.

Colonial American clergyman Mather Byles once quipped, “Which is better — to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?” Byles’ point was clear: an American revolution would serve no purpose if it led to yet another autocracy. But as it turns out, many people would prefer any type of government if it gets them home rule. Don’t believe me? Ask the people of Turkmenistan or Kyrgyzstan.

At the same time, local nationalist sentiment can’t be sufficient in and of itself to break down an empire. Otherwise, empires would never form to begin with. Instead, as we have seen, empires fall apart when they no longer have anything to offer their constituent members. The Soviet Union, for instance, was a holdover from the old Tsarist Russia. Over the 18th and 19th centuries, the Tsars had conquered these lands, and while the Tsarist rule was autocratic, it made the central Asian steppes a safer neighborhood. In the late 20th century, there was no longer any need for this kind of imperial safety umbrella. When the empire weakened, the USSR’s central Asian republics left as eagerly as the Baltic states.

The same was true for the Roman Empire. In return for fealty to the emperor, the Empire had offered safe, stable commerce, and security from outside invasion. The Gothic migrations seeded the western Roman Empire with fractious, tribal cultures that were still not fully settled when the Huns arrived. Then, the Huns destroyed commerce and shattered the illusion of shared Roman security. There were no incentives left to tie the various Gothic nations together. The eastern half of the Empire, united by a shared Greek identity, lived on for centuries, long after the myth of Roman invincibility had turned to ashes.

Modern people often think of nations in simplified terms. They provide commerce and security, much like the empires of old. But nationhood, properly understood, also provides something far more meaningful: a sense of identity and belonging. When empires forget this, they collapse. As our own modern pandemic has proven, something as insignificant as a bat can depress commerce. And as we’ve seen throughout history, national security is nothing more than an illusion.

A sense of belonging to something bigger than yourself is something that cannot be destroyed. And that’s something an empire cannot provide.