Story 16-Episode 3. Causes of the Fall of the Empire

 

Episode 3. Causes of the Fall of the Empire

The Goguryeo Empire, which had maintained peace through power as a single axis in Northeast Asia for 700 years, collapsed. Throughout history, empires have collapsed many times in world history. And there were various proximate and distant causes for their rise and fall. Before examining the collapse of the Goguryeo Empire, examining the collapse of several known empires would be interesting for those interested in history, and it would provide insight and a touchstone for correctly viewing the reality of our country or people, predicting the future, and examining the direction for survival.

 

The subject of examining the well-known causes of the fall of empires is, without a doubt, various studies on the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

In Edward Gibbon's <The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire>, the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire was

1). The relocation of the imperial capital by Constantine the Great.

Constantine the Great (reigned 306–337) moved the capital of the empire from Rome to Byzantium (Constantinopoli). It is now Istanbul, Turkey. He was the emperor who ended the oppression of Christianity by issuing the Edict of Milan in 313 and officially recognized Christianity as a religion against the Roman Empire. He also returned confiscated church property and organized the divided doctrines of the church through the famous Council of Nicaea. He was the emperor who created the framework that protected the Eastern Roman Empire for a thousand years until it was destroyed by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. However, Gibbon said that moving the capital of the empire was the cause of its destruction.

 2) The influence of Christianity

It was argued that the Roman Empire, which was flourishing and expanding, declined as Christianity was persecuted and changed from a secret heretical cult that resisted the Roman Empire to an official religion, and later became the state religion of the empire, and the leadership was weakened by the Christian ideology that taught humanity, tolerance, and equality rather than war worship and invasion and imperial expansion by force. This has remained a topic of debate for a long time. This is because even after the decline of Rome, at least the hegemonic nations in Europe were continued by Christian nations, and world hegemonies were also Christian nations such as the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and even Britain and the United States, which had Christian ideology as their foundation. In addition, the Eastern Roman Empire maintained its empire for another 1,000 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

3) Excessive expansion of the empire and invasion by barbarians

The Western Roman Empire's borders were approximately 2,500 km long, and it had 57 million residents in over 50 vassal states, which limited its rule and made it too vulnerable to effective defense against invasion by foreign tribes. This was pointed out as a geographical weakness, and at first glance, it seems like a correct analysis. However, it does not seem appropriate when viewed from the perspective of the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 AD). After Emperor Theodosius of Rome divided the Eastern and Western Roman Empires into two separate states in 395, the Western Roman Empire had a long border but no powerful national enemy. This was because the Eastern Roman Empire was blocking the Sassanid Persian Empire, a powerful empire in the east. The analysis that the fall of the Western Roman Empire was caused by the invasion of the Huns and Germanic tribes under the rule of each tribal chief rather than by the invasion of a royal state with a strongly organized regular military force seems to be a theory that is difficult to gain universal agreement.

Meanwhile, Fritz Heigelheim distinguished between secondary and essential causes in his <Roman History>.

As secondary and proximate causes, he cited the accidental events and barbarian invasions that occurred in the late Roman period as

i)             the sudden death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD and the failure of his successor, Commodus, to carry out his father's grand Germanic conquest, and

ii)             the incident in which Emperor Valens foolishly did not wait for reinforcements and died in an independent attack before the Battle of Adrianople in 378 AD. Commodus was the subject of the famous film Gladiator, in which Marcus Aurelius' general Maximus later became a gladiator.

iii)           The division of Eastern and Western Rome. He cited the fact that in 395, Emperor Theodesius divided Rome into eastern and western regions to be ruled by his two young sons, which prevented Rome from becoming a permanently unified country. He also cited the invasion and influx of the Western Romans into Rome as proximate causes.

He cited the following as fundamental causes:

First, the geographical structure of Rome, which had a border of 2,500 km between the Danube and Rhine Rivers compared to the Eastern Roman Empire

Second, the lack of manpower. Compared to the developed cities of the Eastern Roman Empire, there were not enough manpower to defend the countryside and the vast fields and areas.

This also caused the third cause, economic vulnerability, which was the rural manorial economy that had invaded and conquered, taken spoils, and imported slaves, and revealed economic vulnerability due to the decrease and cessation of wars of aggression.

The next causes were the corruption of aristocratic values ​​and the prevalence of corruption and injustice. In the midst of frequent invasions by barbarians, the struggle for power and the discord within the aristocratic society inevitably weakened the national power in order to internally usurp the insufficient internal economic resources. Naturally, the ruling class, the royal family and the aristocracy, were accustomed to a life of waste and could not help but have a productive and enterprising lifestyle.

On the other hand, Eastern Rome had a stronger national defense force than Western Rome, had a larger population, and its economic power did not depend solely on land, but expanded its economic base through commerce, trade with Eastern countries, the introduction of new technologies, and the invention of new technologies, so it was able to maintain its empire for another 1,000 years after the collapse of Western Rome.

In the big picture, it seems right to see that it was destined to collapse in the long term due to internal factors rather than external invasions.

Sparta is cited as an example of a country that collapsed in terms of population and economy. Japanese author Shiono Nanami, famous for her book <The Story of the Romans>, preached that “there is no example of a country that has neglected a declining birth rate and has recovered.” ‘Population decline leads to a decline in economic power due to a shrinking market, which in turn leads to a decline in national power, including military power,’ he said, simplifying the formula for the fall of Rome.

Sparta had a strong military and invincible power, but surprisingly, due to the internal enemy of “population extinction,” its national power gradually became smaller than that of Athens. During its heyday, the gap between the rich and the poor was not large, but from around the 3rd century AD, wealth became concentrated in a small number of people, and the number of land-owning families decreased to only about 100. As a result, it is said that poor Spartan citizens gave up having children because they had difficulty paying for childrearing.

Here, looking at the absurd collapse of the Goguryeo Empire that lasted for 700 years, it seems that it collapsed after the death of Gaesomun, who simultaneously held the position of Makriji, which allowed him to control the military power of the seven Malgal and Goryeo cities, and the administrative power of Daedaero, and brought in external forces to fight for power among his children.

However, if we go up a little further, the power struggle between the royal Go clan and the Gaesomun clan of the illegitimate lineage led to the monopoly of power by the Gae clan, which had ruled for generations from Alonza Kon to Tatar Khan, Buko Kon, Almujanna Kon, and Ansil Kon, and the internal power struggle resulting from the alliances and collusion of nobles led to the division and decline of national power, which led to the self-destruction of the great Goguryeo empire.

The diagram simply depicts the monopoly of power by the Gae family from generation to generation, starting from Tatar Khan (Makriji Moliji - Daedaero Daedaero Jayuja Yoo) → Buko Kon (Makriji Moliji - Daedaero Daedaero Taejo) → Almujanna Kon (Makriji Moliji - Daedaero Daedaero Gaesomun) → Ansil Kon (Taedaero Daedaero Namsaeng) → Etsis Kon (Taedaero Daedaero Namgeon) → Odu Kon (Taedaero Daedaero Namsan).

This was a natural and universal ending to the monopoly of power by noble families in Sparta and the Western Roman Empire, that is, the concentration of manors and lands in a small number of noble families, and the economic power soon shifted to a monopoly of wealth, power, and military power through the expansion of private soldiers and the increase of family power. The same trend was observed in the later Goguryeo period.

Today, not only Korea but also many advanced countries are facing population decline, wealth concentration, and impoverishment of the middle class, and there seems to be much to learn from the collapse of Sparta and the Western Roman Empire.

Historically, there has never been a country that has lasted long with a continuous monopoly of wealth and power, and today, in addition to the monopoly of wealth and power in the past, the monopoly of information, the monopoly of education, and the monopoly of technology are further deepening the gap between countries and between individuals, companies, and other groups within countries.