Imperial Trauma: The Case of the Arabs

The symposium theme, "imperial trauma: the powerlessness of the powerful," has a nice paradoxical ring to it. The obverse would be something like "obedient health: the powerfulness of the powerless," which sounds equally enticing, but what precisely might it be? It is well known that empires are often weaker than they look in various respects, but that hardly amounts to cases of trauma. The leading essay in the first installment speaks of "practical and ideological traumas" in connection with the constraints and burdens that empires place on their bearers—the costs of empire, in short, but in a sense going far beyond economics.¹ This is certainly a subject worth attention, but even here "trauma" seems too strong a word as long as the constraints and burdens are of the type required to keep the empire running. Besides, are they examples of powerlessness? I can only think of one situation in which the expressions "imperial trauma" and "imperial powerlessness" fit effortlessly together, and that is the one in which empire builders find themselves transformed by their acquisition of empire at such speed that they are conscious of losing their cherished ways, indeed their very selves, yet cannot stop or reverse the process.

It is a situation familiar to the Central Asian conquerors of China. Time and time again, they tried to square the circle of how to lay their hands on the wealth and power of China without being transformed by Chinese culture, only to find that the sole way to remain themselves was to stay "in the forests of Ötüken," as a Turk advised in the famous Orkhon inscriptions (c. 700 AD).² All creators of empires have to cope with the transforming effects of new wealth and power, but upstart societies conquering rich lands with ancient civilizations are more likely to lose their ancestral ways than most, and members of simple societies such as those adapted for life on the steppe are the most likely of all to do so. Whatever the nature of the two parties, though, it is a general rule that the few cannot conquer the many without becoming more like them and eventually merge with them, in some way or other, if the relationship continues for long enough (however "long enough" may be). The Romans provide another example, and the Arabs provide a third.

Briefly to remind the reader of the Roman development, the many problems that the Romans faced as a result of their expansion included that of preventing the wealth and political opportunities in the conquered lands from undermining the social and political organization of the metropole, the Roman city-state. Ultimately, it proved impossible. The republic collapsed in civil war, to be replaced by the principate of Augustus (27 BC–14 AD). Already by then, however, it had long been clear that there was a cultural analogue to this problem, namely how to prevent the ways of the conquered peoples from undermining those of Rome. In the long run, that too proved impossible. According to Cato (d. 149 BC), Rome would lose her empire when she became infected with Greek letters: one can follow the progress of the infection in the patient's complaints. "Through conquering we have been conquered. We are the subject of foreigners," Pliny (d. 79 AD) said, with reference to the popularity of Greek doctors.³ Juvenal (d. c. 130) could not stand "a Greek city of Rome," let alone that Greeks were only "part of the dregs" one encountered there: "The Syrian Orontes has long since flowed into the Tiber, bringing with it its language and its habits," he said; prostitutes from all over the Mediterranean were "ready to worm their way in the houses of the great and become their masters"; meanwhile, dishonest easterners, experts in flattery, and furthermore promiscuous, were taking over the city with their money, so that "here in Rome the son of free-born parents has to give the wall to...