Mass
migrations, or more specifically mass culture replacement, is one of
the more troubling aspects of peak energy. Doubtlessly the
perspective of witnessing one’s civilization slowly declining is
nothing to be relished. It is not without its charms, however. Even though it
has been largely dethroned by the instant apocalypse meme, the theme
of decline was at the core of romanticism, the first modern revolt
against the industrial world and its disenchanted conception of
reality. It infuses, for instance, the work of Tolkien. Indeed, The
Lord of the Rings can be read as a long elegy upon the passing of the
old glories. It has always been a minority taste and I suspect the
rise of apocalyptic thinking has made it more so, but it has always
been present and it is likely that a significant part of those, who
care about Peak Oil share it. I surely do.
Envisioning
the complete erasure of one’s culture is another thing altogether. As social primates with a regrettable tendency to die before
our hundredth birthday, we often take some kind of collective as a
projection of our self toward eternity. The two most likely
candidates for this role are of course culture / nation and family.
We are aware that both can be changed beyond recognition by the
advent of peak energy, but as long as they survive, even if nobody
remembers us, the trace of our contribution to the history of
humanity lingers on.
We
know that culture replacement happens, and this knowledge has fed
apocalyptic fears of the Camps
des Saints variety, especially but not only in the far right.
Most of the time, they are the consequence of a rise in societal
complexity, whether it manifest through naked imperialism or through
the growth of trade networks. Periods of decreasing societal
complexity, however, often result in cultural fragmentation, with
previously well integrated areas developing their own autonomous
culture and identity, and the replacement of Roman political
authority by Germanic warlords during the fifth century did not
result in local versions of Latin dying out.
In
fact, it was the invaders’ languages and cultures, which
disappeared, sometimes very early. Gothic, Burgondian and Old
Frankish are all dead languages, while the inhabitants of what used to be
their kingdoms speak some form of (admittedly evolved) Latin. It is
easy to see why. The invaders did not move into a vacuum. Even though
the Empire was collapsing, at the provincial and local level, roman
institutions, and notably the Church, retained a lot of strength.
Even those barbarians which were not catholic (the Goths, Vandals and
Sueves, who followed a different brand of Christianity) were forced
to fit within post-roman society to control it (and harvesting its
not inconsiderable wealth). This doomed their cultures and languages
to extinction. Even the Franks, whose empire included Germanic
speaking populations, ultimately merged with their Romance speaking
subjects in what was to become France, probably during the ninth
century.
The
main exception, of course, was Britain. There, the invaders
(who were not really invaders as they had been hired) found not a
still functional post-roman society but a collection of tribal states
ruled by warlords. Roman institutions, including the Church, were
weak and the tribal conflicts frozen by the Roman occupation had
flared up again, leading to endemic warfare.
Of
those wars we know little but the ill-forts and the defensive
dykes,
which dot the West
A
few mercenaries became warlord themselves, setting up petty kingdoms
– Hengist,
for instance. Others remained loyal to whatever polity they served -
it seems it was the case of Aella, who according to the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle never assumed the title of king. Ethnicity appears to have
been pretty irrelevant to the politics of the time, however. It was
mostly a mater of tribal post-roman polities fighting each other on
old grudges and of powerful individual using the chaos to become
“kings by their own hands”.
Not
all of them were immigrants, by the way, and the early history of the
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms is replete with Welsh Kings. This was the case
of Wessex, the Kingdom which would later unify England (Cerdic,
Cynric,
Ceawlin,
Ceadwalla)
and of Mercia (Pybba,
Penda,
Peada). On
the other hands, Irish and Germanic warlords ruled what would later
become Celtic kingdoms. Stuart Laycock once suggested that the
legendary Arthur was in fact a Germanic mercenary called Earðhere, son of another Germanic mercenary named Uthere
Se non è vero è bene trovato,
as they say in Italian.
More
interesting is the case of Tewdrig ap Teithfallt. Twdrig, whose story
is related in the Book of Llandaff, was king of Glywysing, a petty
kingdom in South Wales during the sixth century. He had abdicated in
favour of his son Meurig and retired to live a hermitical life, but
came back to fight Saxon invaders. He was victorious but died a
short while after from his wound.
Curiously
for a Welsh saint, he had a fully Germanic name: Theodoric. So did
his father, Theodebald. Some people suggested he was a Goth, the
leader of a Visigoth fleet stranded in Britain after the fall of the
Kingdom of Tolouse in 507.
Nothing proves it, or disproves it for that matter. The only thing we
can say for sure is that he was some kind of Germanic warlord, who
had set himself up as the petty king of the Cardiff region.
Yet
the area was not germanized – no more than the neighboring Dyfed
and Brycheinog were gaelicized despite
having been founded by Irish warlords. The kingdom of Glywysing
endured until the Norman
conquest.
The
reason for that was probably that Wales had only superficially
romanized and was still a closely knit tribal society in which any
warlord had to fit if he
wanted to last. In the more romanized East, however, the eroded
tribal solidarity and the localized nature of the warlord’s power
meant that a culture shift could happen in a mere couple of
generation. There simply was no strong institution the native culture
could anchor itself on. Besides, the Saxons were mercenaries,
often of mixed tribal origins, which means they were quite welcoming
to any native boy able and willing to wield a sword., provided he
accepted the values of the band. That is probably what Cerdic and his likely numerous imitators did.
Immigrants,
even armed, powerful immigrants, are not conquering armies. They are
rather
In
a collapsing society, however, the best way to rise in ranks is to
use one’s community of family relationship as a leverage. This is
what the barbarian leaders of the fifth century, Ricimer for instance, did. They tried to
use their position in tribal societies to get charges within the
imperial power structure. Of course, in such a situation, playing down
one’s ethnic or tribal ties is counterproductive.
What
that means for us, fifteen century after the fall of the Western
Empire, is that culture shift is less dependent upon the number of
immigrants than upon the health of our society. Mass migrations are
pretty much unavoidable during the long descent which will follow
peak energy. As the USA and its vassals lose the power to prop them
up, the African and middle-eastern government dependent on them will
collapse, or at the very least lose the control of a great part of
their territory. At the same time European countries are bound will
be less and less able to stop the flow of refugees from the south.
The
goal of those immigrants will not be to create some kind of Islamic
Republic, but to better their lot. Of course, this will become more
and more difficult as the
economy contracts and the way to power and wealth becomes narrower
and narrower for those not born in them. It
will result in immigrants
choosing unpopular careers (which,
in France, includes the military) and
in sharpened competition between natives
and immigrants (and their
children) for low-paying jobs.
Naturally,
this will feed extremism on both sides, weakening the very fabric of
the society. In fact it already does: we
have had riots
near Paris after the Police checked a veiled woman, probably in
not so gentle a way. Needless to say, our elites’ behavior,
combining contempt for the lower class’ concerns, self-righteous
promotion of mostly irrelevant societal issues, and ambivalent
attitude toward the immigrants’ religiosity, doesn’t help.
We
may have islamic (if not downright islamist) warlords somewhere down
the road. We may also have anti-muslim pogroms or quasi-apartheid
policy. We may even have both, depending from the time or the area,
and both would be equally disastrous from the point of view of
cultural continuity.
Opening
wide
the gates of immigration in
this age of decline is
pretty stupid –
it makes the upper-middle classes feel good and
lowers
wages, which
explains why the idea is so popular among societal leftists and
laissez-faire
right-wingers are so fond of this idea. Now,
if you want to preserve some kind of cultural continuity –
and it certainly is a worthy goal – you
should better make easier for immigrants and
their descendants
to fit within your community. Their
chances of being ultimately absorbed will be greatly improved and
the skills they’ll bring will certainly help. Tewdrig’s
certainly did.
So
next time you’ll see an
immigrant
of north-african descent in a European street, remember King
Tewdrig... sorry, King Þeodoreiks
Þeobaldsunus,
in the hills
of Glamorgan, defending, sword in hand, his welsh fellow countrymen
against the Saxon hordes.
And
while you are at it remember that the leader of those Saxon hordes
may very well have been a native.
