The End Of History

If you are of a certain age, you may recall a book named The End of History and The Last Man by Francis Fukuyama (Author's note:  I have not read the book, but have heard it discussed).  The point, said Fukuyama, is that the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 represented "not just..the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such:  That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

The title is the striking part , is it not? This concept that there was "an end" and that the debate was over, that history now was really an ascendancy of progress in an arc that has been predicted since the Renaissance (but, sadly, never reached).

In reality, there have been many "ends" to history.  The Tokugawa Shogunate "ended" in the Meiji Restoration of 1868;  however, many samurai that had cheered the Emperor's rise found nothing for themselves in this new world and a new end of history - The Satsuma Rebellion of 1876-1877 - ended history for them in another way.  For the Byzantine Empire, history ended twice:  the first in 1204 with the invasion of the Fourth Crusade, and then the second in 1453 when the city fell to the Ottoman Empire - which in turn had it's own history end in 1922.  The Austrian Empire "ended" in 1868 after an almost 600 year run, only to replaced by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which lasted a scant 50 years after that.  The Aztec Empire lasted from 1428 to 1521 and had the misfortune to be overtaken by the Spanish Empire on the upswing, which effectively did not end until 1976.

History ends, and has always done so.

You may recall in the past that we have discussed the difference between a nation and a state, that a nation is a body of people with three things:  a shared language, a shared culture, and a shared national origin story (for example, the Finns with the Kalevala, Iceland with its shared Book of Settlements and Sagas, the Hungarians with the Great Conquest under Arpad); while a state is a body of territory which has land and authority within that land.  You can have nation-states, Finland or Iceland being extreme examples, or you can have states with many nations, such as Switzerland or the former Czechoslovakia or the former Yugoslavia, or you can have nations without states, such as the Kurds of Iraq/Iran/Syria/Turkey or the Basques of Spain and France.

But what happens when these states or nation states no longer have the shared items that would hold them together, territory or authority or shared language/culture/origin stories?

You have the end of history.

An end of history in our own day - a rather shocking one - was the Yugoslav dissolution of 1991-2001. This represented the most violent outbreak of civil war in the West since the end of WW II (not counting the Soviet occupations of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, which were pale things at best compared to this).  This had all the complications of nations (people groups) and states within a state (in this case, historically existent areas which had been associated with those people groups).  By the time everything was over, 140,000 people had been killed, several genocidal killings had been committed, and neighbors which had existed sided by side for hundreds of years seethed across borders.

It is a useful instruction because Yugoslavia was a "created" country out of parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire (A Martian No-Prize if you knew the original name of the Kingdom of the Southern Slavs!) without a shared culture, a shared language, or a shared origin story except belonging to Austria-Hungary and then being set free.  This lasted, of course, until a representative of one of those constituent groups (Slobodan Milosovic, a Serb) tried to tilt the country towards more of a nation (a greater Serbia) than a greater state (Yugoslavia).  At that point, all bets were off.

(Note: If you want to read about living through such a thing as the Siege of Sarajevo and what a civil war society in the West looks like, I highly recommend Selco Begovic's posts.  He used to have his own site but now writes at The Organic Prepper.    You might not always agree with him, but he certainly merits your pondering).

So where is this all going, you might ask?

The End of History - at least, perhaps, our End of History - may be upon is.  The bonds of shared language, shared culture, and shared origin story throughout the West have gradually washed away and are in the midst of crumbling. This should not surprise us: this always happens to great empires be they physical or cultural where there are no more boundaries to expand into and no more great untapped markets and the initial reason for its existence seems to have disappeared.  Where energy is not directed outward, it becomes directed inwards.  Where energy gets directed inward, it finds every nook and cranny where differences appears and can be exploited by the unscrupulous some of all sides and all beliefs.

Does such an End of History have to be violent?  Not always, says history:  the Czech and Slovak republics peaceful separated in 1992 without incident , and Scotland partially devolved from the United Kingdom with much less fanfare than when it was forcibly added in 1707.  And the former Soviet Union "dissolved" - perhaps not as well as it could have but certainly without the civil war that brought it into existence.  Sometimes real, thinking people realize that the End of History is upon them, that the shared bonds no longer really exist or matter, and it is simply time to call it a day and turn the page.

Endings of all things happen, whether by choice or circumstance.  It is how we handle those endings that determines whether we will meet them with grace and success or with something far less desirable.