Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-180) and index.

Introduction: follow the money -- Part one. 1. Party like it's 399... -- 2. Empire and enrichment -- 3. East of the Rhine, North of the Danube -- 4. The power of money -- Part two. 5. Things fall apart -- 6. Barbarian invasions -- 7. Power and the periphery -- 8. Death of the nation? -- Conclusion: death of the empire?

"Why did Rome fall - and what can it teach us about the decline of the West today? A historian and a political economist investigate. Over the last three centuries, the West rose to dominate the planet. Then, suddenly, around the turn of the millennium, history reversed. Faced with economic stagnation and internal political division, the West has found itself in rapid decline. This is not the first time the global order has witnessed such a dramatic rise and fall. The Roman Empire followed a similar arc from dizzying power to disintegration - a fact that is more than a strange historical coincidence. In Why Empires Fall, historian Peter Heather and political economist John Rapley use this Roman past to think anew about the contemporary West, its state of crisis, and what paths we could take out of it. In this exceptional, transformative intervention, Heather and Rapley explore the uncanny parallels - and productive differences - between the two cases, moving beyond the familiar tropes of invading barbarians and civilizational decay to learn new lessons from ancient history. From 399 to 1999, the life cycles of empires, they argue, sow the seeds of their inevitable destruction. The era of western global domination has reached its end - so what comes next?"--Publisher's description.