History is one damn thing after another, and any attempt to make sense of it necessarily leads to leaving out lots of important stuff. Thus making sense of it by looking at it in one way does not necessarily falsify making sense of it by looking at it in another way.
The trend from around fourteen hundred AD to the present has been for states to become ever stronger. On the other hand, was not the trend from four hundred AD to one thousand AD. Of course, it might be a bad idea to bet against a trend that has been running strong for well over six hundred years, but here is why I am betting against it: (more…)