Autumn of the Empire

A fantastic and sweeping essay offering several viewpoints, sourced books, and themes to explain three recurring phases of empire. An examination of past empires and the final financialized stage of the current US empire. You may or may not agree, but you won't be disappointed.

Most striking and most dramatic is the discovery that each of these long centuries has itself been divided into three phases, choreographically consistent: a merchant phase based on trade, followed by a phase of industrial expansion, and finally a period of financialization, in which economic vitality moves to the banking sector. It is a febrile vitality indeed, burning hot and fading away; the shift to finance is always, in Braudel’s lovely phrase, “a sign of autumn.” And when the finance era runs its course, so does the empire.

This spiral grows, with China possibly in the middle phase of industrialization. Will the 21st century see an ascendant China?