The Empire Collapse Pattern

How the Mightiest Powers Fall

Rome lasted a thousand years. The Mongol Empire barely survived its founder's grandchildren. The British Empire won two world wars and lost everything. The Soviet Union imploded in two years.

Different centuries. Different continents. The same five fatal flaws.

The Empire Collapse Pattern examines history's mightiest political powers--from Rome to the Soviets--to uncover the recurring lifecycle that every empire follows to its own destruction: explosive growth, overextension, elite capture, loss of legitimacy, and collapse.

You'll discover:

• Why no empire has ever lasted forever--and why the reasons are always the same
• How the five fatal flaws appear in every empire studied, from the Mongols to the British
• Why the Byzantine Empire survived a thousand years longer than Rome--and why it still fell
• How Spain's gold from the Americas actually destroyed the Spanish Empire
• Why the Soviet Union--a nuclear superpower--collapsed in just two years
• The ten warning signs of imperial decline--and what they look like today
• Why empires that try to reform themselves almost always fail
• What happens after empire falls--and why the transition is often worse

Empires examined: Rome, the Byzantine Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Mughal Empire, and the Qing Dynasty.

This isn't an academic survey or a single-empire biography. It's a pattern-recognition guide to the most powerful political entities in human history--and why every one of them destroyed itself.

Includes: A timeline of major empire collapses, a scored imperial decline warning signs framework, a glossary of terms, and a curated further reading list.

Book 4 in The Collapse Pattern Series, from the author of The Collapse Pattern: How Great Civilizations Destroy Themselves.