"A 99-per-cent view of history suggests that empires and great power structures were rarely good for their subjects, and that their disappearance doesn’t create general chaos, but simply a battle of the few to regain power. Migration was not a horrible thing: it helped us navigate the disasters and collapses of the past. History isn’t a story of progress due to hierarchy and technology. And not all collapses need to be lamented with tragic poems." https://aeon.co/essays/the-great-myth-of-empire-collapse