(Not so much these days as in earlier times, though. Today
there are many commentators on the Web who hold their audiences to higher
standards than the standards of traditional journalists in the mainstream media.)
Histories are jam-packed with events that parallel those of
today. Modern empires act much the same as empires have always acted. Not much
has changed. The “folk wanderings” of the Celts and Saxons, Mongols and Huns –
all of them were similar to the current “migrant invasions” of Arabs and
Africans. Even the impetus is the same – warfare in the homelands, and
expulsion by other invaders.
Right from their beginning in the 7th Century, Moslem
empires’ treatment of their conquered peoples was similar to the Romans’
treatment of theirs Centuries before and to NATO’s treatment of its victims
Centuries after. The European commercial empires (French, British, Portuguese,
Spanish, Dutch) were greater in scope than those of ancient Egypt, China, India
and the American Aztecs and Incas, but the same principles applied. It’s not so
much that the later ones were copy-cats: rather, that all commercial expansions
are similar in nature.
Halliburton and Blackwater didn’t model themselves on any of
the European East India Companies; but the same commercial arrogance drove
them. We of today despise the managers and operatives of the two murderous US
companies, while the distance of centuries give their predecessors the gloss of
romance. Robert Clive in India and Cecil Rhodes in Africa are historical
heroes; Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are perceived as monsters. At least,
they are now; they will become heroes when enough time has passed.
It’s a matter of timing. One of my ancestors (born George
Gawler in 1764) trafficked illegal drugs from India to China, and retired an
honoured man. His modern equivalents – minor traffickers in Central America and
South-East Asia – are international pariahs. (The British Army and its government
agents aided and abetted the export of opium from their territories in India,
and the US Army and its agents supervise shipments of the same drug from the
poppy-fields of Afghanistan to the streets of Chicago. Some things don’t change…)
I have written [Uncle
Charles and the Boko Haram, October 2014] about Charles Barlow, who
slaughtered his nation’s tribal enemies in 1903 with the same ruthlessness as
ISIS officers apply to their enemies
today. Charles was honoured with medals from the British Government; his ISIS
counterpart is damned to eternal hellfire – at least, in the West. The British
Army won in Nigeria: ISIS will lose in Syria. It is the winners who write the
histories.
The Roman Empire eventually collapsed in a welter of
currency depreciation, military entanglements in the outlying provinces, and corruption in the ruling caste. Despite those handicaps, Rome’s momentum
staved off the collapse for ten or twelve generations. Things happen faster
these days, but the general pattern is the same.
The current US Empire has been declining for maybe two
generations from its peak, under the exact same pressures. It too is being
betrayed by its ruling caste. Rome’s Imperial butchers were neither more nor
less repulsive than the monsters in present-day Washington and Tel Aviv.
In olden days, imperial rulers had monuments erected in
their names, and cities re-named for them – even, calendar months, occasionally.
In modern times, the best they can
hope for is the occasional warship or a bridge over a hometown river. Today, we
live in democracies, so the names engraved on stone war-memorials are those of urban
peasants rather than of their social superiors who ordered their deaths.
I wonder how long this new custom will last. Only time will
tell.
