What historical situation is comparable to what Europe is currently facing?

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I'm going to do a total long shot here, and provide a comparison that seems to fit all 4 points. However, as a larger picture, it's not necessarily a very good parallel since very little practical advice can be gleaned from it as far as what needs to be done.

USSR in the late 1980s till 1991 fits:

  • Decentralization forces driven by existence of historically-European-oriented Baltic republics, Caucasus republics, and Islamic Central Asian ones (Turcic and not). They were all very culturally different from each other AND from Russia proper.

  • Arguably, didn't face a major crisis since 1945.

  • A significant power (duh) - as evidence, it was basically the only power opposing USA world dominance during Cold War.

  • Unsustainable in the long-term economically, which is what drove Gorbachyov's reforms.

One more parallel that may be controversial is that the underlying cause of the crisis (sovereign debt crisis to be precise, driven by unsustainable social spending) is the same - redistributionist social welfare spending coupled with centralized economic planning (It's not surprising that the countries most on the brink of collapse are those closest to Socialism - Greece and Spain). To quote PM Thatcher, "sooner or later you run out of Other People's Money".

Upvote:-2

The middle ages obviously.

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As you can see, there is population movement from south to north during warm periods and vice versa, with peaking of southern empires during warmings. The peak of the Roman and Mayan empires coincided with a warming, and they then fell as the world cooled and northern populations invaded. A similar pattern occurs with the Vikings, Arabs, colonialism, and pretty much any empire you can think of.

The current migration pattern from south to north, and associated population change, is in accordance with historical climate relationships.

The other parts of the question are vague and meaningless, and can't be answered.

Upvote:3

Ancient Roman Empire once it had reached a period without sustained growth.

It covered a lot of the area and cultures that the EU now does too. It was large, had diverse cultures loosely coupled together without significant crises for long times. It was a waning power (but no large competitor was in place). Once it stopped expanding to new territories it was unsustainable.

You can probably tweak the timescales a bit as modern communications are a bit faster than ancient ones. You would also need to define what a crisis that effects the whole block would be.

The Roman Empire split into two and lost its more far flung territories. That might be something we could see happening again with the EU, where some member states (the ones politically and geographically furthest from the original founding nations) such as UK and Poland (and the potential Turkey) are less pleased with how things are.

We (UK Citizens and possibly other EU ones as well) have also heard in the recent past about the Lutheran vs. Mediterranean divide causing friction in financial conduct (errors must be paid for vs. admitting error meaning you do not need to repay). I think that may also relate back to the behaviours of the religious splits of East West (initially) Roman vs. Orthodox Catholic (related to the Roman Empire in part?) as well as the North South Lutheran (Protestant/Puritan) vs. Catholic split.

I am not a historian, I am a UK & EU citizen by birth and current residency. I base the above on what I have heard in news reports over the years and what little history I know (or think I know).

Upvote:6

Modern Europe's situation today is most similar to the period from roughly 400,000 BCE to yesterday.

Europe was filled with people organized into varying political units, all of whom experienced both (a) internal governance tension, characterized by diverse internal political agendas and (b) potential external conflict. Each of the governance units had to carefully consider the potentials of cooperation with regional partners or a range of competitive responses up to and including warfare.

The economics of the period was characterized by scarcity; none of the political units had sufficient resources to achieve their long term goals. More precisely each of the political units had set goals which exceeded the available resources. The ability to collect sufficient resources to achieve the goals was affected by (1) degree of internal coherence and alignment, (2) changing environmental factors (3) evolving technological changes.

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