George Monbiot on the arc of History

There’s a simple view of history as series of pageants. Kings fight glorious  battles, heroes like Nelson and Genghis Khan kill lots of people,  talented artists like Michaelangelo gaily paint frescoes of the male nude all over the walls of some slightly dodgy cleric’s new palace  It’s interesting,  it’s fun, it excites podgy old men who have never been in a war to dress up in funny costumes. There’s only one problem with it, in fact,

It’s bollocks.

Starting slowly at first,  reading the works of much clever people like Professor Kennedy[2] [3] we realised that History is driven by deep slow moving inexorable forces: things like climate, infant survival rates and  technology. Britain rose because it was the first to develop modern commercial and industrial processes. It fell when other countries started to do those things better. Rome succeeded, for a while ,because it turned the Mediterranean Sea into a single trading zone in an epoch when sail was the most economic means of transport. It fell when plagues and climate change so decimated its population that it could no longer defend the frontiers of that zone. Above all it’s demographics, economics and logistics that determine the fate of nations, not battlefield heroics.

It is in this light that we present this article by George Monbiot of the Guardian. [1] For it attempts to address this single determining factor, both  in our lives-and those of the next four or five generations to come. It doesn’t matter if you love immigration, or hate it. Whether you thought everything would solved  by a rising population or a falling one, (as we used to).  See this more as advice from a wise accountant to a failing family firm “this much is in your coffers, therefore these will be your spending options” In world terms, the arc is very simple. The population will grow a little while longer. Then it will start to fall. Precipitously. All decisions on defence, finance culture, even our own little idées fixées like antibiotics and climate change, shall be made in the light of this simple, ineluctable fact.

We have followed Monbiot on many topics for years; his writings are always stark and cogent. We urge to you look him up and read more. But today, for now, we beg you to read this one, It should lend perspective like nothing else.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/12/europe-migrants-birth-rates-immigration-countries

  [2]Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987).

[3] Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017).

#history #population #demographics #immigration ##economics