The 200 to 250 Year Life Cycle Of Great Powers

Any theory of cycles of 200 to 250 years in the life of empires or nations immediately brings to mind China. If such a phenomenon exists, it would be China where it first became apparent, and where in fact it did first become apparent to historians. In successive states established in the same physical territory (dictated by the geography of a fertile wet agricultural plain united by waterways) with basically the same people, many other variables are taken out of the equation. This was noticed at least by the Ming Dynasty by Persian travelers observing China; again by Tytler and/or Detoqueville in the nineteenth century; and most recently by John Glubb in Fate of Empires.

It's often instructive to swap out the lenses we use to view various regions of the world's history. In this way, China might have followed Europe's path (of a single empire followed by splintered states that never quite regained the same territory.) Or conversely, China is a Europe where the Roman Empire fell only to be replaced by a continent-wide Frankish Empire, then a Norse Empire, then a Habsburg Empire. In fact, what we think of as the Roman Empire is regarded by historians as having two periods that are almost like separate civilizations, the earlier Principate and the later Dominate, separated by the Crisis of the Third Century. Each of those two periods was around 250 years.

The Ottoman Empire was once viewed as having reached its peak under Suleiman and then declined, but more recent scholarship has reached the consensus that the Empire underwent a partly-intentional transformation (starting prior to Suleiman's death, and not entirely a negative one.) This divides the Ottoman Empire's history into two halves. The second is roughly 300 years but extends well into the period when the Ottoman Empire was regarded as "the sick man of Europe."

If we take the Byzantine Empire as starting with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, then the first three dynasties take it to 711 (235 years) - the Leonid, Justinian and Heraclian families. (I avoid the use of "dynasty" because what we call a dynasty in Western empires is different than the way we use this word in Chinese history. In the Chinese sense, the Roman Principate and Dominate were dynasties, as was the Byzantine entity spanning the Leonid, Justinian and Heraclian periods.) You could argue reasonably for an earlier start to the Leonid dynasty in 457, to make this period 254 years.) This was followed by the Twenty Years Anarchy. During that period the proto-medieval structures which appeared going in the Roman Dominate matured into a smaller fully medieval state which emerged from the anarchy a very different civilization. In Western Europe, we find it a bit comical that the Pope and Charlemagne thought they were still Romans, even superficially. But just as with China's dynasties, we shouldn't take medieval Byzantium's claims to being the same political entity, just because it happened to still occupy some of the same territory.

It's very easy to cherry-pick history, once you have a Great Theory. And it's always easy to draw parallels between periods in history (here are five to the modern day), but a 200-250 year cycle is of obvious interest to American readers.