Historians have long been puzzled about the Bronze Age Collapse, the sudden annihilation of every major political empire from the Near East and the implosion of international trade into an 'ancient dark age' of village self-sufficiency; followed by major depopulation and the sack and ruin of some of the largest cities in the world, many of which would never again be inhabited. Various theories have been put forward, from Sea-based invaders, to Indo-European conquest to Earthquakes. However, one suggestion I have never seen put forward is what seems the most obvious to me: economic disruption.
This probably stems from the fact that most historians know little about economics and tend to equivocate large, centralized empires with high civilization. But it seems obvious to me that when you have a huge, interdependent section of the world all subjected to centralized, bureaucratic parasites engaged in constant warfare with one another that any sudden political and economic imbalances can bring the whole thing to ruin and civil war; leaving it open to exploitation by barbarians. We saw it in Alexander's time, at the fall of the Roman Empire and, in another form, in World War 2. We also see exactly this in the 'Dark Ages', such as the sack of Illium; where a bunch of bandito 'kings' out of Attica and the surrounding regions wrecked and looted major cities in West Anatolia.
What do you guys think? Could war and interventionism be the most likely candidate for the Bronze Age Collapse? Note that this doesn't exclude other factors - a variety of invading barbarians and an inability to cope with natural disasters is exactly what we expect from bankrupt empires; and precisely this trend is shown not only in the West but in China, also. Does anyone know if any historian has even considered this explanation?
How does this explain the ripple effect of multiple empires failing in a very short period of time? Was the international trade that important (e.g., was its volume comparable to the city of Rome depending on wheat from Egypt)? Or perhaps the barbarians used the power of a single conquered empire to topple the rest?
Historians have pointed to economic disruption as the root cause, but in a different way: that there was perhaps some temporary climatic effect (drought etc.) that caused disruption in a certain geographic area (Central Europe?) which in turn led to the violent migration of peoples. This then caused further disruption and violent migrations.
As for your thesis - certainly the interventions of the Bronze Age governments kept the majority of the population in poverty, but I'm not sure that there is anything in this that would point to a collapse at that specific time across the entire Eastern Mediterranean. Remember that international trade was extremely small compared to today and was mostly in luxury/state goods.
I think it was a similar situation to the Roman Empire - once one 'barbarian' group was able to make inroads against one of the centralised empires, the other barbarian groups sensed weakness and dogpiled to crush the empire, invading with their most powerful forces at the empire's weakest points. The two big empires that we're talking about are those of Egypt and the Hittites. The latter was relatively small and essentially centered around one particular city with the rest as subjects. It was therefore certainly susceptible to a wave of invaders. Egypt was able to fend off many of the invaders but eventually succumbed after some centuries - and then this was ultimately to the Libyans (later the Nubians) who may have initially taken power due to their influence in the army. The Mycenaeans were only city-states and had relatively poor means of defence (in fact they may have become Sea Peoples themselves).
Remember that the invaders are said to be expert pirates and seafarers, while the Egyptians and Hittites essentially had no experience in naval warfare and their ship-building technology was very basic at this time. Look at what the poor, barbarian Vikings were able to achieve simply through superior naval technology and tactics - I think the success of the Sea Peoples was for similar reasons.
@Andris
How does this explain the ripple effect of multiple empires failing in a very short period of time?
Looked at the middle east lately? Once the social and economic effects of one imperial collapse/civil war begins it makes things worse for the neighbours as well as spreading an ideology of revolt and resistance; causing the other imperial powers to clamp down even harder. However, as they are already bankrupt it's nothing doing and they just end up in a vicious spiral until they all implode.
Was the international trade that important (e.g., was its volume comparable to the city of Rome depending on wheat from Egypt)?
Hugely important, especially as regards food and, perhaps more importantly, the products of specialists to the outlying agricultural regions. Once you lose the fine crafted tools, transportation devices, horses, etc. your agricultural and military base begins eating itself up for want of complementary production goods.
Or perhaps the barbarians used the power of a single conquered empire to topple the rest?
That can be possible, but one would have to decide that on a case-by-case examination.
@Aristippus
That certainly makes some sense, but it doesn't explain the sudden weakness. Greeks lost more ship technology in the Dark Ages than they gained; and it's not as though the Illians or Romans suddenly forgot how to poke people with spears in their inland empire. I think to explain this sort of thing you have to ask why they couldn't deploy their forces to at least defend their traditional strongholds; and this points to a lack of capital. A new technology or technique can help you make sudden ground; but if it weren't for the economic derth caused by the parasitical system of imperial rule it seems like a fairly swift adoption of the new techniques or at least a recovery and rehabitation would have occured. I mean, huge waves of barbarians don't explain massive depopulation across the entire Near East; that has to be an economic collapse. Something similar happened in Babylon, too. One theory I've heard is that the incessent warfare drained the population and resources necessary to keep the irrigation systems repaired.
Your discussion of the vikingr actually makes me point: the vikingr rapidly settled down into their own little prosperous kingdoms, and eventually the northern countries were able to organize and repel them and did not suffer in any kind of 'dark age'; despite the myths to the contrary.
I really think you're overstating international trade here. Even during the height of the Roman Empire (c.100 CE), there were only a few cities so large that they required imports of food to prevent famine. The Bronze Age cities were much, much smaller. In any case, why can it not be the case that the trade routes were disrupted by invading tribes? This is in fact what happened to Rome - its final economic collapse was due to the invaders' carving up of the empire. What is clear both from archaeology and ancient records is that there was a great deal of warfare and violent destruction of cities.
If we then try to form a hypothesis for a long causal chain for the population loss during the Bronze Age collapse we could say: famine/new technology (iron)/? - invasions - disruption of trade/warfare - economic collapse - greater ratio of supernumeraries - mass loss of population. But you have to take into account that the civilisations of Egypt and the Near East collapsed and flourished at many different periods - the Bronze Age collapse certainly was on a slightly larger scale but it was nothing unprecedented.
What do you mean about Greeks losing more ship technology than they gained?
I'm not sure what you're talking about with the Illians and Romans. The former were likely the inhabitants of a city-state, probably a subject of the Hittites - the latter did not yet exist. The Hittite empire essentially broke up into the city-states of which it was formed, which continued to exist for a few centuries afterward - some of them, of course, collapsed.
I agree about the Vikings and that is in fact what historians argue about the Sea Peoples - that they settled into their own kingdoms, e.g. the Philistines, Dorians, various tribes of Asia Minor etc. - they simply looted the crap out of their enemies first.
I'm not sure what you're talking about with the Illians and Romans.
I'm making comparisons, not being anachronistic. And yes, Illians were probably subjects of the Hittite empire; but it seems that their client kingdom could retreat inland instead of trying to hold out against seafairing tribes. Inner Anatolia is not exactly easy to invade except from the extreme east.
My point would be that it's certainly not incoherent to say that crop failures, earthquakes or invaders destroyed them as a proximate cause. However, the ultimate cause would have to explain why these megalithic empires who far out-stripped all their neighbours in technical prowess and military size were suddenly unable to repel barbarians the equivalents of which they had easily subjigated some few hundred years ago. And it seems the very existence of these large empires is why these highly civilized people were unable to muster the money and organized manpower to repel what were essentialy roaming Crips.
Very appealing theory. An interesting offshoot of is that history is cyclical, with decentralization creating wealth, creating aggregation, culminating in empires that crumble, going back to decentralization. If China wouldn’t bail out the EU it’d be nice to witness this real-world test of the theory.
I wouldn't say it's 'cyclical' just that certrain trends in human psychology and social organization make them vulnerable to exploitation; and if they get rich to begin with the exploiting classes can then parasitize the surrounding peoples. The USA is doing the same thing.
Poor people still usually have despots, but the despots are sort of kept in check by their own tyranny; they'll never accumulate enough capital to do more than harass villagers.
@Aristipus: It's not just international trade that suffered, but internal trade that suffered - partly from extensive civil wars. Even if Egypt and the Hittites weren't trading a lot, you can bet Hattsus was trading with Syria.
I wouldn't say that the more advanced civilisations were necessarily able to repel invaders previously: Looking at the Bronze Age, the Hyksos took over Egypt, the Elamites Mesopotamia. The Hittite empire was not that large, and if the invaders - as maurading tribes searching for booty and homes - were fighting a much more desperate war than Egypt had been (the Hittite-Egyptian wars were decided over set-piece battles), I don't see why these invaders could not have overthrown the Hittites, even if the latter were at their height. The barbarians may have even had superior military technology, being a warlike people. Of course by the time the invaders arrived, the Hittites were already in decline - were the reasons for this due to intervention? Well, they were certainly due to the use of political means.
I think the best explanation is that the invading Sea Peoples saw the wealth of these states and went on a looting spree - you don't have to be Murray Rothbard to know what the effects of that are, especially on civilisations heavily subject to Malthusian pressures.
Sure, I don't disagree with that. Same with the Alexandrian empire.