Historical Inevitability and United States History
Usually historical inevitability means the king is great, the empire will last forever and I want to keep my job. The counter story, Noah, Gilgamesh or Ur, is that when you live on a delta surrounded by mountains things may change, someone building a boat in the middle of a plain may not be ridiculous and you should be nice to the hill kids. The first to directly disagree with inevitability as permanence was Adam Smith. Smith liked explanations. Smith said empires inevitably fall because they are inefficient. He attempted to convince England to abandon empire, particularly the American colonies. Wealth of Nations , Smith’s book, is not taught despite its central place in political and economic philosophy. I think the fall of civilizations is more basic. I was in Cahokia, Illinois at the Native American trash heaps. The museum said that this town only lasted about two or three hundred years and they didn’t know why. Two or three hundred years is a decent run. How long can pe...