Monthly Archives: February 2021

Guest Article: In Defence of Colonialism

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by

R. Hallpike*

One of the certainties, not to say dogmas, of modern culture is that colonialism was very, very wicked. As a result, it requires grovelling apologies from all the nations that were guilty of it. Having observed it at first hand in Papua New Guinea and Ethiopia fifty years ago, this moralistic certainty strikes me as naive and ignorant. Why? I will now explain.

*

The situation of Man over the last five thousand years or so has increasingly been one of advanced civilisations, large, complex societies organized into centralized states at one extreme, and small, illiterate tribal societies with very primitive technologies at the other. In this ancient confrontation a frequent course of events was the domination or conquest of the tribal societies by the empires. Nineteenth- and twentieth century European colonialism was a special episode in this history because the contrasts between their scientific, technological, cultural and political development and that of the tribal societies they dominated was the most extreme of all time, The consequences were global.

Tribal societies are small-scale and inward-looking. Based largely on kinship and without political centralization, in them people mix mainly with those they know and strangers are rare. Technology is primitive, economies barely rise beyond the subsistence level, and violence endemic. Each tribe had its own religious rituals and speaks its own particular language which may only have a few hundreds or thousands users. Early states, however, in some cases developed into large, wealthy civilisations and empires, such as those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and the Graeco-Roman world, with much more advanced technology, arts, crafts, and architecture, writing, and professional armies. They were also the major centres of inventions that, especially through trade and navigation, spread widely throughout the world. At the other extreme sub-Saharan Africa, despite its size and diversity of cultures, contributed virtually nothing to world civilisation. No writing; no technological inventions; no significant architecture; a generally low level of craftsmanship; and no systems of political or religious thought.

This inequality between what I shall call imperial and tribal cultures became ever greater through developments in Europe. Meaning, the Renaissance and the development of navigation; the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century; the Enlightenment; and the growth of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Throughout these centuries large areas of the world, such as Oceania and Australia, sub-Saharan Africa, and large parts of the Americas remained populated by small tribal societies. Often with high levels of internal and external violence (violence against women specifically included), low levels of technology, and subsistence economies. To be sure, here and there some particularly powerful tribe succeeded in developing into what, for lack of a better term, I shall call a proto-state. However, they too remained at an illiterate and primitive level of culture.

A number of European nations had been trading with Africa and other areas such as the East Indies for centuries: the Portuguese, for example, had reached the coast of West Africa by 1485. But as the nineteenth century proceeded they began colonising these backward areas of the world and, as they did so, imposing a series of revolutionary changes on them. If only because power is always abused, the process involved considerable brutality, oppression and exploitation; but that was part of the price indigenous societies had to pay. The Romans too were brutal, but their rule in Britain resulted in the longest period of peace that country would enjoy until the Tudors.

Come the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The colonisers, having taken over, amalgamated numbers of tribes into larger national units. Complete with centralised government, administrative systems, codes of laws, judicial systems to settle disputes, police and armed forces to maintain order and put down communal violence, and schools to teach literacy and one of the world languages such as English or French. They also introduced currency to facilitate trade and payment of taxes; developed the economy and cash crops; abolished inhuman practices such as slavery, cannibalism, infanticide, and human sacrifice; introduced hospitals and medical services; and built roads, railways, and telecommunications, water projects, irrigation, and sanitation. Not least, missionaries spread one of the world religions, usually Christianity which, like English or French, allowed people to begin sharing a common culture above and beyond that of their limited tribal world.

These revolutionary developments could never have been produced from within the indigenous tribal societies. Instead, they had to be forcibly imposed by outsiders. The motives of the colonisers varied. Some no doubt loved power; others went out to the colonies to become rich; and still others did what they did because they thought they were doing good. But the motivations of the colonisers were irrelevant. Historically speaking, all that counted was the effect in pushing civilisation and causing it to spread.
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Starting at least as far back as Rousseau, there has long been a tradition that idolises “the noble savage,” If only he had been left alone, so the thinking goes, he would have been much happier. Having lived in tribal societies I know that this a fantasy of the intelligentsia. People who would not survive a week if they had to live in these societies as they used to be in pre-colonial days; surrounded by violence, sickness, famine and starvation, the fear of witches and evil spirits, and grinding physical hardship which their primitive technology could not mitigate.

Modern propaganda also sugests that the propensity to enslave defenceless peoples is engrained in the psyche of Westerners. In fact slavery is one of the oldest and most widespread of human institutions. It was normal in much of the Islamic world. Also, and especially, in Africa, where powerful kingdoms such as Dahomey, Ashanti, Benin and Ghana of West Africa earned huge profits by rounding up and selling the European slave-traders what they needed. In East Africa the Arabs and the Ethiopians had been enslaving black Africans since before the time of Christ. In Saudi Arabia, slavery was only abolished in 1962. Especially in the Americas and the Caribbean during the 17th and 18th centuries, slavery and colonialism went together. Not so in the 19th when the movement for the abolition of slavery meant that Britain, and eventually other Western nations, used colonial rule as a means of abolishing it.

But there is a further consequence of colonialism which is seldom appreciated. It was only when tribal societies were combined into modern nation states, with law and order, literacy and schooling, and the ability to speak one of the world languages with access to modern communications and technology, that they could finally take their place in the global community of nations and make themselves known to the rest of the world. International aid schemes and health projects in particular would have been quite impossible in societies still at the tribal level of development.

*

To sum up,it was colonialism which laid the essential foundations of the modern world of independent nations. The latter could never have come into existence without that prior stage of colonial nation-building. That this revolutionary process involved considerable hardship and cruelty no one doubts. However, that is in the nature of revolutions; in the end, colonialism vastly improved the lives of its subjects. Its demise which started in 1945, was also the first time in history when powerful colonial empires voluntarily gave freedom and independence to their imperial subjects. Often. As it turned out, before they were ready to enjoy it and, as a result, relapsed into anarchy or despotism.

 

* C. R. Hallpike is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. He studied anthropology at Oxford and conducted extensive fieldwork in Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea. He has published many books, including The Foundations of Primitive Thought and Bloodshed and Vengeance in the Papuan Mountains, and regards political correctness as the greatest danger in our time to academic research and freedom of thought generally.

 

Happy Anniversary, My Blog

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The first time on which this blog went online was on 9 April 2013 and has never missed a week since. Today’s post is number 250; time to celebrate, I think. My way of doing so will be to re-post a piece I first posted two years ago. Except for the first sentence, which I have deleted, word for word.

*

No, my site has not drawn very large numbers of readers and has not developed into the equivalent of the Huffington Post. And no, I do not do it for profit; though at times I was tempted by offers to open the site to advertising, in the end I rejected them all. As a result, never did I receive a single penny for all the work I have been doing (normally, about two hours per week). More, even: since I am not very computer literate, I rely on my stepson, Jonathan Lewy, to run the site for me. But for him it would not have been possible. So let me use this opportunity to thank him from the bottom of my heart.

What I have received and am receiving is feedback. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Some people have used the appropriate button on the site to say what they think of my work or simply in order to get in touch. Others suggested that they write for me or else responded to my request that they do so. Others still have asked, and received, my permission to repost my work on their own sites. A few have even taken the trouble to translate entire articles into their native languages. Except for a few yahoos who ranted and swore, almost all my contacts with the people in question, many of whom were initially complete strangers, have been courteous, informative, and thought-provoking. Thank you, again, from the bottom of my heart.

Most of the ideas behind my posts are derived from the media. Others have to do with my personal experiences; others still, such as the series on Pussycats, have to do with the research I am currently doing or else were suggested by various people. Perhaps most important of all, I often use my posts as what Nietzsche used to call Versuche. By that he meant attempts to clarify his thoughts and see where they may lead. The most popular posts have been those which dealt with political and military affairs. Followed by the ones on women and feminism, followed by everything else. Given my background and reputation as a longtime professor of military history and strategy, that is not surprising.

At one point I tried to enlist the aid of a friend to have the blog translated into Chinese and make my posts available in that language too. No luck; I soon learnt that the Great Chinese Firewall did not allow them to pass. Why that is, and whether my work has fallen victim to some kind of dragnet or has been specifically targeted I have no idea. Thinking about it, the former seems more likely; to the best of my knowledge I have never written anything against China. But one never knows.

That brings me to the real reason why I write: namely, to exercise my right to freedom of thought. And, by doing so, do my little bit towards protecting it and preserving it. My heroes are Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. The former because he has exposed a few of the less decent things—to put it mildly—out dearly beloved governments have been saying and doing in our name. The latter, because he has shown how vulnerable all of us are to Big Brother and called for reform. Both men have paid dearly for what they have done, which is another reason for trying to follow in their footsteps as best I can.

Freedom of speech is in trouble—and the only ones who do not know it are those who will soon find out. The idea of free speech is a recent one. It first emerged during the eighteenth century when Voltaire, the great French writer, said that while he might not agree with someone’s ideas he would fight to the utmost to protect that person’s right to express them. Like Assange and Snowden Voltaire paid the penalty, spending time in jail for his pains. Later, to prevent a recurrence, he went to live at Frenay, just a few hundred yards from Geneva. There he had a team or horses ready to carry him across the border should the need arise. Good for him.

To return to modern times, this is not the place to trace the stages by which freedom of speech was hemmed in in any detail. Looking back, it all started during the second half of the 1960s when it was forbidden to say, or think, or believe, that first blacks, then women, then gays, then transgender people, might in some ways be different from others. As time went on this prohibition came to be known as political correctness. Like an inkstain it spread, covering more and more domains and polluting them. This has now been carried to the point where anything that may offend anyone in some way is banned—with the result that, as Alan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind has shown, in many fields it has become almost impossible to say anything at all.
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Let me give you just one example of what I mean. Years ago, at my alma mater in Jerusalem, I taught a course on military history. The class consisted of foreign, mostly American, students. At one point I used the germ Gook. No sooner had the word left my mouth than a student rose and, accused me of racism. I did my best to explain that, by deliberately using the term, I did not mean to imply that, in my view, the Vietnamese were in any way inferior. To the contrary, I meant to express my admiration for them for having defeated the Americans who did think so. To no avail, of course.

And so it goes. When the Internet first appeared on the scene I, along with a great many other people, assumed that any attempt to limit freedom of speech had now been definitely defeated. Instead, the opposite is beginning to happen. Techniques such as “data mining” made their appearance, allowing anything anyone said about anything to be instantly monitored and recorded, forever. All over Europe, the thought police is in the process of being established. Sometimes it is corporations such as Facebook which, on pain of government intervention, are told to “clean up” their act by suppressing all kinds of speech or, at the very least, marking it as “offensive,” “untrue,” and “fake.” In others it is the governments themselves that take the bit between their teeth.

Regrettably, one of the governments which is doing so is that of the U.S. Naively, I hoped that Trump’s election would signify the beginning of the end of political correctness. Instead, he is even now trying to prevent people in- and out of the government from discussing such things as global warming and the need to preserve the environment. Not to mention his attacks on the media for, among other things, allegedly misreading the number of those who came up to witness his inauguration. Should this line continue and persist, then it will become imperative to do without him and go against him. Not because of what he has to say about both topics is necessarily wrong, but to ensure the right of others to think otherwise.

This won’t do. That is why I promise my readers, however few or many they may be, one thing: namely, to go on writing about anything I please and go on speaking the truth as I see it. The English poet W. H. (Wystan Huge) Auden, 1907-1973, might have been referring to blogging when he wrote:

I want a form that’s large enough to swim in,

And talk on any subject that I choose.

From natural scenery to men and women

Myself, the arts, the European news.

Writing Dialogue

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As all of you readers know, I am not a novelist but a historian. Not just a historian, but an academic one. Which means that, over the fifty years since I got my first academic post I have never written dialogue. Except, perhaps, for some sketch at a family party; although, to be honest, I cannot remember doing even that.

The way academia sees it, and the constant call for “dialogue” between A and B and C and D and E and F and G and H apart, there are two things to be said about written dialogue. First, literature and drama are full of it. Some of it is excellent and deserves to be studied as if it were holy writ; as with the works of Aeschylus, Plato, William Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, and God knows how many others. The rest is trash and can safely be ignored. Second, worried lest they would come up with trash, modern academics themselves seldom write dialogue. Neither of the intellectual type nor of the dramatic one. It has its place, to be sure. But not within the hallowed halls where serious, meaning that it is provided with footnotes, work is done.

I, however, have just published The Gender Dialogues which is dialogue from beginning to end. A special kind of dialogue, mind you; the kind that takes place in an interview, with which I have plenty of experience. How did it all start? When a young lady from Kingman, Arizona, contacted me and asked me to do an interview for her podcast. The topic was my 2013 book, The Privileged Sex. In it I argue that the conventional wisdom is wrong. The advantages of being female are at least as great as the advantages. Everything considered, perhaps a little greater.

So she sent me some questions. And I sent her some of my own that I thought would be worth discussing. And so we exchanged views until we had enough material to talk about and did the interview. A very pleasant one, I hasten to add. By now you can find it on the Net (at https://andyoverthinks.com/womenhaveitbetter/).

As I wrote down the answers to her questions, more questions presented themselves. As I answered those, the process started repeating itself. Soon enough the material expanded. Until it became necessary to divide both questions and answers into sections, each one dealing with a different aspect of the problem. At first the sections were numbered, but later they received titles too. Until they expanded into a book 40,000 words long.

However, neither the contents of the book nor the details of its eventual publication are what I want to write about today. Rather, what I do want to write about is the dialogue form itself. Originally dictated by the interview, I found it a challenge. As well as great fun. A challenge, because I had never done anything like it before. Fun, because it enabled me to ignore the usual rules of academic writing. After half a century of doing the latter, it set me free.

Apart from reading Plato, Cicero, and a few others I have never studied how to write dialogue. Nor did I ever take a “creative writing” course. Instead I went my own way. Searching, trying, erasing, discarding, and re-writing. Thank God for word processing; Plato, it was said, re-wrote the first sentence of The Republic twelve times. As I went along I learnt, or thought I’ve learnt, a few lessons others beside myself might find interesting.

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First, for a reader to follow a very large number of questions and answers is hard. It requires the kind of concentration and memory not everyone is capable of. Sometimes that may even include the author himself. So it you have more than twenty or so of each, better divide your work into sections. Preferably such as have titles rather than mere numbers.

Second, make sure to allow the side whose argument you want to refute to present it in as strong a form as possible. Why? Because he who answers a fool risks becoming one. Galileo in his famous Dialogue of The Two Chief World Systems named one of his characters, Simplicio. In my view that was a bad mistake. Why should anyone want to argue with what a fool has to say? Better follow Plato all of whose characters, though not necessarily very sympathetic, are smart and well spoken.

Third, allow your interlocutors to make life difficult for each other. Easy questions, resulting in easy answers, are boring. For the same reason they should also be allowed to change places from time to time. If only to show that the matter is well in hand, each should express the views of the other. 

Fourth, don’t go too far in putting your learning on display. Goethe’s dictum, mastery is knowing where to stop, applies. More so, perhaps, in a dialogue than in some other kinds of text.

Fifth, spoken language tends to be simpler and less cumbersome than its written equivalent. This fact should be reflected in the dialogue you write. Select the simplest, most succinct, forms of expression you can think of. Write isn’t, not is. Don’t, not do not. Use idioms: make peace, instead of reconcile. Unless, of course, you want to bring out the character of one of the speakers. Such as learning (real or fake), pomposity, etc.

Sixth, and for the same reason, make your sentences as simple and short as you can. They should not sound like a machine gun, which in the kind of dialogue I am writing about is out of place. However, on the whole short ones are clearer and easier to understand. There is an essay by Hugh Trevor-Roper, a one-time Oxford Don famous for his style, about how to write good English. Using the “find” function of my word processor, I checked the average length of his sentences: 18 words. I think that, writing dialogue, you should be able to do better than that.

I could go on and on. However, from this point you are on your own.  Why should you have my laurels free of charge?

How the Republic Collapsed

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No more than anyone else, and in spite of having written Seeing into the Future: A Short History of Prediction, do I have any idea as to the way the current U.S turmoil may end. If, indeed, there is such a thing as an “end.” I am, however, a little familiar with the history of Rome, the empire with which the US is often compared. Hardly a US city of any size and importance where buildings in Graeco-Roman style may not be found. To say nothing of a certain institution known as the Senate (ultimately derived from the Latin word senex, old). So I thought a little timeline of the way Rome turned from a free republic into a slavish empire might not be out of place.

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205-146 BCE. Following a series of successful wars against foreign enemies, enormous amounts of booty as well as tax money flow into Rome. Including tons and tons of bullion, many hundreds of thousands of slaves, and countless objects d’art of every kind. As always, most of the wealth in question sticks to the hands of the upper classes which provide the republic with its rulers and senior commanders. Whereas the poor, repeatedly conscripted to do long periods of service abroad, neglect their farms and grow poorer still. Inequality reaches unprecedented heights. A few own enormous farms, worked by slaves; most hardly have a stone to rest their heads on. While not new, from this point on this kind of inequality will play a critical role in the events that ultimately led to the fall of the republic.

133 BCE. Following four centuries of near complete domestic peace—perhaps the longest of its kind in the whole of history—an elected popular tribune, Tiberius Gracchus, is beaten to death by a group of Senators. Their leader is none other than the chief priest, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, a diehard conservative and a former consul. The background? A controversy over Tiberius’ “Leftist” (as it would be called today) plan to confiscate some of the land of the rich in order to distribute it among the plebeian poor.

121 BCE. For the first time, the Senate passes a Senatus consultum ultimum. No translation needed! The purpose? To grant the elected consul, Lucius Opimius, emergency powers to defeat the partisans of Gaius Gracchus who had been following in his dead older brother’s footsteps. Gaius is killed.

107 BCE. Gaius Marius, one of Rome’s most experienced and finest soldiers with strong plebeian sympathies, is elected consul. He uses the opportunity to reform the military; opening what had previously been a citizen army that only existed when there was an enemy to fight into a standing force made up of full time professionals. He also passes some other military reforms, but these do not concern us here. More and more, the soldiers look to their commanders, rather than to the Senate, for pay, promotion, and benefits. Including, above all, land to settle on after their discharge.

105-101 BCE. Marius inflicts a series of heavy defeats on the Germanic tribes in the north. Or about three hundred years thereafter, all serious military threats to Rome will be internal rather than external.

100 BCE. Marius is serving as consul for an unprecedented sixth time. A popular tribune, Lucius Apuleius Saturninus takes up the Gracchis’ cause by proposing the distribution of land to Marius’ veterans. The outcome is envy and resentment among the Roman proletariat. To push his measures through, Saturninus has an opponent, the consular candidate Gaius Memmius, assassinated in the midst of the voting for the consular elections for 99 BCE, leading to widespread violence. The Senate orders Marius, as consul, to put down the revolt, This he does. Saturninus and his chief colleague are killed.

91-88 BCE. Rome’s unfranchised allies in Italy engage in open warfare against their mistress. Though little is known about the so-called Social War, it seems to have been waged with great ferocity. Militarily the forces answerable to the Senate are successful, but politically the war ends with a victory for the allies. They obtain the vote as well as other privileges associated with Roman citizenship.

88 BCE. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the principal Roman commander in the Social War, serves as consul. He prepares to fight Rome’s enemy, king Mithridates VI of Pontus (in today’s Turkey). Behind his back Marius and the Senate reverse his appointment as commander in chief in that theater. Whereupon Sulla, having narrowly escaped with his life, leaves Rome. He raises six legions (approx. 35,000 men in all) and marches on the city, violating the traditional ban that prevents armies from entering it. He purges the Senate of its “left wing” members and declares Marius and his supporters, several of whom are killed, public enemies.

87 BCE. Now it is Marius’ turn to escape. Going to Africa, long a Roman province, he raises new armies. Making use of the fact that Sulla is away, again preparing a campaign against Mithridates, he invades Italy. He enters Rome for the second time and sets out to kill Sulla’s supporters in the Senate. He declares Sulla’s reforms and laws invalid, officially exiles him, and has himself appointed to his rival’s eastern command as well elected consul for 86 BCE. Two weeks later he dies, leaving Rome under the control of his colleague to the consulate, Lucius Cornelius Cinna.

85 BCE. Sulla, who has been warring against Mithridates, concludes a treaty with him. Now he has his hands free to return to Rome.

83-78 BCE. Sulla and his army land in Italy. They proceed to Rome where they proscribe and kill thousands of their opponents. That done, Sulla has the Senate declare him a dictator with unlimited powers. He increases the number of Senators from 300 to 600. He puts into effect various measures designed to prevent any further challenges from the populist “Left” and takes away some of the popular tribunes’ authority. That done, in 79 BCE he resigns. A year later he dies.

78 BCE. No sooner has Sulla died than another commander, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, marches on Rome in attempt to reverse the late dictator’s reforms. In this he fails.
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78-70 BCE. Sulla’s reforms to turn the clock back notwithstanding, by now the authority of the central government in Rome (i.e the Senate) has been decisively weakened. Any number of wars break out both in the provinces and in Italy where the slave revolt, with Spartacus at its head, has to be put down. Out of the confusion and the bloodshed there emerges, as the victor, a single General: Gnaeus Pompeius, soon to be nicknamed Magnus. Vaguely associated with what we today would call the Right, in 70 BCE he violates the constitution by being elected consul without going through the prescribed, much less important, offices first.

70-63 BCE. Now a pro- (meaning, ex) consul, Pompey turns to the east. Waging war first on the pirates of Cilicia (in modern Turkey), then on Mithridates, then on the Seleucids in Syria, and finally in Palestine where he deposes the reigning Hasmonean dynasty. On the way he annexes most of the eastern Mediterranean. Often without so much as informing the Senate of the measures he is taking.

63 BCE. In Italy, a “Lefty” Senator by the name of Lucius Servius Catilina, having failed to be elected to the consulate, twice tries to have the consuls murdered and take over power himself. Or so his opponents, led by the famous orator and consul (in 63 CE) Cicero, claimed. However, his small army was defeated and he himself killed while fighting at its head.

60-57 BCE. Having returned to Rome, Pompeius celebrates an enormous triumph. Next he forms an alliance with two other generals, Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Licinius Crassus, intended to secure their joint rule over Rome. In 59 BCE Caesar, his term as consul over, leaves for Gaul where he spends ten years fighting until the local tribes are finally subjugated. In 57 BCE Crassus, making war against Persia, is defeated and killed. This leaves Pompeius and Caesar in sole control.

49-48 BCE. Caesar, his conquest of Gaul completed, fears what his enemies, with Pompeius at their head, may be doing in Rome. With his army, he crosses the Rubicon, the river marking the border between Cisalpine (meaning, “nearer”) Gaul and Italy. Marching straight on the capital, he forces Pompeius and his followers to flee to Epirus (present day Albania). Caesar turns to Spain, where Pompeius has some supporters, and defeats them. Next he follows his enemy to Epirus. Their armies meet at Dyrrhachium and Pompeius is defeated. He flees to Egypt, which was not yet part of the Roman Empire. As Caesar follows him there, he commits suicide.

48-44 BCE. When Caesar arrives in Egypt the country’s eighteen-year old queen, Cleopatra, throws herself at him and becomes his mistress (he himself is fifty-one years old). Next he defeats the rest of Pompeius’ supporters in Africa and Spain. On 15 March (the “Ides of March”) 44 BCE he is assassinated by a group of Senators who fear he is about to proclaim himself king.

44-43 BCE. It is discovered that Caesar, in his will, has appointed his great-nephew, the nineteen-year old Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, as his successor. Octavianus joins forces with Caesar’s most important general, Marcus Antonius, and with another general named Aemilius who is Marcus Aemilius Lepidus’ son. Together they form a triumvirate for governing Rome. They purge Caesar’s opponents in the capital. Among the dead is Cicero. Next they make war on the conspirators. Defeated, the latter are forced to withdraw to Epirus.

42 BCE. Octavianus and Antonius defeat the conspirators’ army at Philippi, in present day Albania.

33-32 BCE. Octavianus and Antonius, having pushed Lepidus aside, divide the empire between them. The west, Italy included, goes to Octavianus; the east, to Antonius and his wife, who is none other than Queen Cleopatra of Egypt.

30 BCE. Agrippa, Octavianus’ admiral, defeats Antonius at the naval battle of Actium (in western Greece). Antonius and Cleopatra flee to Egypt, where both kill themselves.

28 BCE. Octavianus adds “Augustus” to his name. His title, as supreme ruler, is princeps (first prince). His reign is by no means as bad as that of some of his successors. However, what twenty or so generations of Romans understood as libertas finally comes to an end.

*

Some believe that history, with its infinitely numerous and infinitely complex details, never repeats itself and hence can tell us nothing about the future. Others, that it always repeats itself; socio-economic inequality, as well as tensions generated by the fact that some have rights others do not, leads to conflict. The military and the police are divided like anyone else. New leaders emerge and put themselves at the head of the contending factions. Prolonged and horrific bloodshed ensues. The final outcome is dictatorship.

Which one will it be?