Barbarians at the gates, incompetent leaders and banditry across the country. It’d be easy to talk about the fall of Rome or Weimar Germany this Christmas, but we should broaden our horizons.
Many parallels exist between what’s going on in New Zealand – and in the Western world in general – and the fall of the Han Dynasty (c. AD 184-220) in China. Back then, as today, the government that ruled by statute did not rule in truth. China was run not by the emperor or by local governors, but by an invisible bureaucracy of mandarins led by a bunch of eunuchs in the capital Luoyang.
In the Three Kingdom period, high office was awarded not by merit, but to reward friends and allies, resulting in the all-too-familiar crisis of competence. Most people working for the government were terrible at their jobs. The ancient Chinese sometimes ascribed almost magical powers to a certain class of people for the state of their genitals, giving them high government offices for that fact alone. In China, these were the eunuchs. Today, homosexuals and transgendered people are placed into positions of power for much the same reason.
These corrupt government officials would use their office to empower themselves instead of discharging their duties. Their method was to level false charges to extort a bribe. Today, it’s getting your kids no-show jobs and solving crimes that you instigate.
Everyone saw this corruption, but the folk sent by the common people to the capital to fix the problems always seemed to be bribed, slandered, falsely arrested or assassinated. Obviously, assassination doesn’t happen in New Zealand (yet). A noble named Yuan Shao attempted to end the corruption and slay the eunuchs. But he failed to follow through and was ultimately betrayed and abandoned by “allies” looking to enrich or protect themselves. With friends like these…
Despite the huge amounts of energy spent on political intrigue at the capital, very little of consequence was done and few promises were kept. In a democracy, low poll numbers are indicators that a government has lost the Will of the People. In China, natural disasters were seen as losing the Mandate of Heaven. In both cases, any attempt to correct the problems tended to be shot down by the permanent bureaucracy.
The worst consequence of this Brehznevian sclerosis was a civil war that claimed more lives than World War I. No single kingdom was strong enough to win that conflict, but that didn’t stop them all from dashing themselves against the rocks (so much for the “wisdom” of Eastern warfare). The civil war also decimated the managerial class since local governors were suddenly caught between different warlords. Pick the wrong one, and you would soon be separated from your head.
Fury at the corruption simmered long before open rebellion began. At one point, local governments simply stopped obeying Imperial decrees and eventually began expelling tax collectors. When Liu Bei was still a local official, his sworn brother, Zhang Fei, publicly flogged a visiting dignitary for trying to extort a bribe. Given this, I would like to know if Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown owns a cat o’ nine tails. If he doesn’t, it would make a great Christmas present. He might need one soon.
In the more serious parts of government, military officials saw conflicts not as bloody contests to be won quickly, but as opportunities for graft and political advancement. Many countermanded their orders in order to further their own agendas. People who had never been in a battle were bizarrely given command of thousands of troops. And when they entered battle against the Yellow Turban peasants, the imperial casualties were astronomical due to the poor training and equipment of the troops.
The Yellow Turban Rebellion was a peasant uprising which should never have stood a chance against the Han Empire. But because of the corruption, the peasants wiped out entire Han armies. The combat results were so unexpected that some contemporary accounts credit the peasants’ victories to magic. The Yellow Turban Rebellion was eventually put down by freshly levied troops led by local officials who actually knew how to fight.
Throughout this period, banditry was common across China. A corrosive lack of faith in the government emboldened the criminals since they knew they would get away with it. When locals asked the capital for help, the eunuchs shrugged and denied there was any problem with criminal activity at all or retorted that the crime was the fault of the locals who had failed to support the “poor” or encourage good family upbringing. Sound familiar?
Border incursions were also a regular occurrence. These border incursions were mostly barbarian tribes looting, taking slaves and kidnapping nobles for ransom. Like the banditry, this disruption was also downplayed or ignored so long as it never affected the capital, or the bandits avoided hurting anyone well-connected.
Chinese officials during the period saw officiating as a power game instead of the burden of responsibility to run the country. People at all levels of society switched sides regularly when it suited them. Most notable was Lu Bu, who stabbed two of his benefactors in the back…literally. The first time he betrayed a friend was so that he could rise to a higher position. The second time was so he could have sex with a Chinese spy (seriously, her name was Diao Chan).
This endemic corruption eventually reached a point of no return and China took centuries to recover. China’s next golden age would not come until the Tang Dynasty in AD 690, 410 years after the unification under Jin (for reference, Plymouth Colony was settled 402 years ago).
In the 36 years between the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the abdication of Emperor Xian, the conservative factions in China focused blindly on winding back the clock to the glory days of Han, not correcting the course and moving forward. In fact, Shu Han, the kingdom founded by Liu Bei, kept trying to restore the Han Dynasty until its conquest by Sima Zhang in AD 263, almost 30 years after the death of the last Han emperor. The liberals, as usual, wanted to burn it down and rule over the ashes.
Today has plenty of parallels with the Three Kingdom period. But the Fall of Rome and Weimar Germany are also worth adding to this mix. Especially in two key areas.
First, Caesar appointed a bunch of Gauls to the Senate in about 30 BC, which was one of the reasons the nobles assassinated him. I still think the appointments were a mistake, but Caesar never actually wanted to be “king”. He just wanted to help Rome. Caesar had everything taken from him in his youth due to Rome’s corruption and it clearly affected him for the rest of his life.
The people were unhappy when Caesar was killed. After all, the one guy that was helping them – a war hero to boot – was assassinated by the corrupt Patrician class. Caesar’s nephew received his name and went on to take power with the full support of the Roman public no matter how autocratic he was. The desire for a strong man to “clean up” is a common trend in history.
Second, when the first signs of hyperinflation hit the Weimar Republic in early 1921, the national mood was not one of fear or dread, but mass excitement and hope. Everyone thought they were getting rich. People sold their houses for twice what they had bought them for just months earlier. The stock market exploded in value to the point where even janitors were sharing stock tips. People were selling their furniture because it doubled in value overnight.
The nation was convinced the economy had recovered from the recent cataclysm (WWI) entirely. This zeitgeist lasted until the end of 1922 when 500,000 Marks were suddenly equal in value to $1 US dollar and everyone who sold their furniture, invested in German stocks or sold their house was dead broke. Often, with an emphasis on “dead.”
Rome wasn’t sacked in a day. It takes years of breathtakingly moronic decisions motivated by mindless greed, vicious partisan hatred, blind ideological dogmatism and a total unwillingness to think about the long-term consequences of short-term decisions, to bring a civilisation down.
History follows a cyclical pattern of rise and fall. Unfortunately, people don’t read history anymore. What’s worse is that while people say they read history, they only read books written after WWI, which means they aren’t reading history, they are reading propaganda.
History is not a set of facts but an interpretation of patterns. If you don’t see the patterns, you won’t see the problem. Maybe it’s time to notice some patterns.