In Depth: Western Dominance and the Decline of Civilizations
As we have seen in our examination of the forces that led to the breakup of the great civilizations in human
history, each civilization has a unique history. But some general patterns have been associated with the
decline of civilizations. Internal weaknesses and external pressures have acted over time to erode the
institutions and break down the defenses of even the largest and most sophisticated civilizations. In the
preindustrial era, slow and vulnerable communication systems were a major barrier to the long-term cohesion
of the political systems that help civilizations together. Ethnic, religious, and regional differences, which were
overridden by the confidence and energy of the founders of civilizations, reemerged. Self serving corruption
and the pursuit of pleasure gradually eroded the sense of purpose of the elite groups that had played a pivotal
role in civilized development. The resulting deterioration in governance and military strength increased social
tensions and undermined fragile preindustrial economics.
Growing social unrest from within was paralleled by increasing threats from without. A major factor in the fall of
nearly every great civilization, from those of the Indus valley and Mesopotamia to Rome and the civilizations of
Mesoamerica, was an influx of nomadic peoples, whom sedentary peoples almost invariably saw as barbarians
Nomadic assaults revealed the weaknesses of the ruling elites and destroyed their military base. Their raids
also disrupted the agricultural routines and smashed the public works on which all civilizations rested.
Normally, the nomadic invaders stayed to rule the sedentary peoples they had conquered, as has happened
repeatedly in China, Mesoamerica, and the Islamic world. Elsewhere, as occurred after the disappearance of
the Indus valley civilization in India and after the fall of Rome, the vanquished civilization was largely forgotten
or lay dormant for centuries. But over time, the invading peoples living in its ruins managed to restore the
patterns of civilized life that were quite different form, though sometimes influenced by, the civilization their
incursions had helped to destroy centuries earlier.
Neighboring civilizations sometimes clashed in wars on their frontiers, but it was rare for one civilization to play
a major part in the demise of another. In areas such as Mesopotamia, where civilizations were crowded
together in space and time in the latter millennia BCE, older, long-dominant civilizations were overthrown and
absorbed by upstart rivals. In most cases, however, and often in Mesopotamia, external threats to civilizations
came from nomadic peoples. This was true even of Islamic civilization, which proved the most expansive
before the emergence of Europe and whose rise and spread brought about the collapse of several longestablished civilized centers. The initial Arab explosion from Arabia that felled Sasanian Persia and captured
Egypt was nomadic. But the incursions of the Arab Bedouins differed from earlier and later nomadic assaults
on neighboring civilizations. The Arab armies carried a new religion with them from Arabia that provided the
basis for a new civilization, which incorporated the older ones they conquered. Thus, like other nomadic
conquerors, they borrowed heavily from the civilizations they overran.
The emergence of Western Europe as an expansive global force radically changed long-standing patterns of
interactions between civilizations as well as between civilizations and nomadic peoples. From the first years of
overseas exploration, the aggressive Europeans proved a threat to other civilizations. Within decades of
Columbus’ arrival in 1492, European military assaults had destroyed two of the great centers of civilizations in
the Americas: the Aztec and Inca empires. The previous isolation of the Native American societies and their
consequent susceptibility to European diseases, weapons, plants, and livestock made them more vulnerable
than most of the peoples the Europeans encountered overseas. Therefore, in the first centuries of Western
expansion, most of the existing civilizations in Africa and Asia proved capable of standing up to the Europeans,
except on the sea. With the scientific discoveries and especially the technological innovations that transformed
Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, all of this gradually changed. The unparalleled extent of the western
Europeans’ mastery of the natural world gave them new sources of power for resource extraction,
manufacture, and war. By the end of the 18th century, this power was being translated into the economic,
military, and increasingly the political domination of other civilizations.
A century later, the Europeans had either conquered most of these civilizations or reduced them to spheres
they controlled indirectly and threatened to annex. The adverse effects of economic influences from the West,
and Western political domination, proved highly damaging to civilizations as diverse as those of West Africa,
the Islamic heartlands, and China. For several decades before World War I, it appeared that the materially
advanced and expansive West would level all other civilized centers. In that era, most leading European, and
some African and Asian, thinkers and political leaders believed that the rest of humankind had no alternative
(except perhaps a reversion to savagery or barbarism) other than to follow the path of development pioneered
by the West. All non-Western peoples became preoccupied with coping with the powerful challenges posed by
the industrial West to the survival of their civilized past and the course of their future development.