Lecture 35: Long Trends—Disease and Malthusian Cycles

Long Trends—Disease and Malthusian Cycles ..............................

LECTURE

Tribute-taking states, we’ve seen, could encourage growth in several

ways, but they could also discourage it. So, their overall impact on

growth was rather contradictory. They stiÀ ed growth in many subtle

and not-so-subtle ways.

T

he previous lecture described some of the ways in which Agrarian

civilizations could stimulate innovation. Yet if this is true, why were

rates of innovation so much slower than in the modern world? Why

were there such regular famines, and why did entire civilizations seem

periodically to collapse? We will see that sometimes the same features

that stimulated growth and innovation could also act as checks to growth.

These factors help explain why ancient society did not show the productive

dynamism of the most productive of modern societies. Exploring these

features will eventually help us to better appreciate some of the distinctive

features of the Modern era.

Because we have been focusing on long-term trends, we have focused on

growth. But at smaller scales, and to thoughtful contemporaries, what stood

out more sharply was a pattern of rise and fall that made history seem cyclical

rather than directional. Peasants, too, were more aware of the cycles of the

seasons and of years of feast and famine than of the long-term trend toward

growth. Why did growth in this era always seem to be followed by collapse?

Two main types of collapse stand out: political collapse (such as the decline

of the Roman Empire) and demographic collapse (such as the Black Death),

and often the two went hand in hand.

Shelley’s poem Ozymandias, written in 1817, provides a powerful symbol of

political decline. As it happens, we know more or less who “Ozymandias”

was. Shelley wrote his poem after hearing of the imminent arrival in the

British Museum of a bust of Pharaoh Ramses II, “The Great,” who ruled

Egypt for much of the 13th century B.C.E. What factors tended to undermine

the power of rulers such as Ramses?