Chapter 1 raises the question of whether there was a decisive break in the nature of the city between Classical Antiquity and the post-Roman world of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. It is suggested that treating ‘the ancient city’ as typologically different from cities before or after obscures both the real degree of continuity and the perceptions of contemporaries of continuity. The chapter explores the historiography of the idea of the ancient city as a distinct type that goes back to Fustel de Coulanges, and has been identified by different schools of thought as religious, economic, political, and physical. Rather than thinking of ‘decline and fall’, or even ‘transformation’, a new approach is offered through resilience theory, that sees a continuous process of drawing on memories of the past and, through them, adaptation.

Returning to the recurrent theme of resilience, it is suggested that the ecological model of adaptive cycles helps to understand the responses of the post-antique world to crisis. Rather than rejecting the old model of civilisation based on cities, memories of the past are constantly used both as providing material for new adaptations, and as a way of associating contemporary realities with those of the classical world. The writings of the authors discussed in this book as seen as part of this process, of transmitting and adapting memories.

This chapter explores the rapid “coming apart” of white working-class communities across the American South as the New Age of Inequality (post-1980) settled in. As the economic doldrums took hold across swaths of the American South and its diaspora during the decades since 1980, social dysfunction emerged with a vengeance in white working-class communities, a phenomenon that captured national attention through J. D. Vance’s depiction in his best-selling Hillbilly Elegy (2016). Older industrial cites suffered and declined as the economy deindustrialized. The many challenges the faltering economy presented to white southern workers and their communities stimulated a visceral response from disaffected workers, a response manifest in angry efforts to reclaim white privilege and the aggressive championing of “traditional” values, and ultimately an unprecedented level of death and despair. The complex story of disruptive economic forces, lingering racial resentments, and fierce atavistic loyalties led white southern workers to choose clinging to cultural values over building alliances that might redress their economic grievances.

This an assessment of the main themes and arguments of the book. Looking back at Brexit, what is most striking is the subsequent economic decline of the UK – a consequence of Leave demagogues diverting voters’ attention from economic risks. Brexit’s populism was a manifestation of the Europe-wide rise of identitarian politics, the normalisation of national populism and the drift toward authoritarianism. These trends went with viewing the world as a collection separate sovereign nation states. A national population was imagined as a homogeneous mass, potentially embodied in a single sovereign leader. Seeing nations as separated entities brings a focus on foreign others, exemplified in the Brexiters’ fixation on immigration into the UK. Demagoguery, bound up with ‘post-truth’ culture, is used as an explanatory concept throughout this book, but requires redefinition in the age of mass media, data collection and psychological profiling. The most important conclusion is that Brexitspeak, Brexit policies and Brexit attitudes in government constitute threats to representative democracy, foreshadowed in the referendum process and actions by post-Brexit governments.

A short epilogue brings together the themes of the book, inviting us to look at the period not as a ‘Dark’ or ‘Golden Age’ but as a period of great complexity and transformation. As Gregory of Tours himself wrote: many things happened, both good and bad.

From Brexit to the rise of China, the deterioration of the special relationship with the United States and the return of war to Europe in Ukraine, this chapter will explore how the UK’s position in the world has faced both challenges and opportunities over the last fourteen years. The analysis will focus on how different Conservative premierships used or wasted these global changes, and how it has affected UK foreign policy and Britain as a whole (particularly Brexit’s influence on domestic policy and politics).

The NHS, the great survivor of the post-war consensus, faced a period of considerable uncertainty. This chapter will examine if, and how, the Conservatives have changed the NHS in the face of economic pressures, technological advances, demographic change, changing expectations and the pandemic. Any analysis of the health policy of a government is incomplete without examining the wider state of social care and its relation to healthcare policy.

In 1274, a monk by the name of Primat from the Parisian monastery of Saint-Denis completed his magnum opus, a chronicle in Old French titled the Roman des rois. As its name suggests, this composition dealt with Frankish and French history from the perspective of its kings. It worked its way from the Franks’ earliest origins in ancient Troy, through three royal dynasties, concluding with the reign of the great Capetian monarch, Philip Augustus (d. 1223).

This chapter outlines the secular convergence of Italy’s GDP. From the mid-1890s to 1913, the centuries-long economic decline was reversed. Institution-building and time-consistent policies of monetary stability and reduction of the debt-GDP ratio were among the main causes. The convergence record of the fascist years is mixed. As growth-reducing factors, we highlight “prestige policies” leading to an overvalued currency, and autarky. Postwar reconstruction was swift, followed by a quarter-century catch-up growth and cultural renaissance. The 1970s were turbulent years, marked by terrorism and inflation. Growth however continued to show unexpected resilience. Seeds of future weaknesses were nonetheless sown. Social tensions were eased by deficit-financed benefits. In the 1980s growth continued but the ratio of debt to GDP rose from 50 to almost 100 percent.

In 1995 Italy’s labor productivity was above that of the USA. In the following quarter-century Italian productivity almost stagnated. This long relative decline of an advanced country has no parallel in modern economic history. The slow adaptation to the second globalization and digital technology is ascribed to financial and political uncertainty. The chapter identifies the areas in which adaptation to the new global environment was too slow (education, R&D, reliance on SME, inefficient bureaucracy, and judiciary). We also emphasize social and political weaknesses resulting in the large public debt. Uncertainty held back domestic and foreign investments. A brief window of opportunity in the early 2000s showed Italy’s potential resilience, when economic decline could have been reversed.

During the Renaissance, central–northern Italy was both Europe’s intellectual and artistic hub and its most prosperous economy. From the seventeenth to early nineteenth century, the Italian economy drifted from center to periphery, in a long economic decline. During that decline, Italy was fragmented and subject to foreign occupations. Structural divides got deeper and a distance between citizens and public authorities emerged. We summarize the fruits of Italy’s “modern economic growth” since political unification through four periods in Italy’s transition from poverty to abundance: a) 1861–1896 slow growth and divergence from Western Europe’s leading economies, b) secular movement from “periphery” to the “center” of the developed world; 1896–1995 was a century of almost uninterrupted, if uneven, convergence with the world’s richest countries, c) 1995–2007 was a period of losing ground: slow growth and relative decline, d) 2008–2019 from relative to the absolute decline of the Italian economy.

The chapter is devoted to the economic, political, and social crisis of the early 1990s: a shock with long-lasting consequences. The crisis catalyzed the weaknesses of the previous political, social and economic fabric. The economic crisis had several components: a public finance crisis, an exchange rate collapse, and a fall in private investment. But the longer-lasting impact of the crisis came from the corruption scandals leading the judiciary to decapitate the main political parties that had run the country since 1945, as well as most of the industrial powerhouses. At a time when bold decisions were swiftly needed to adjust to the new economic and geopolitical landscape, the early 1990s left a legacy of political fragmentation and financial uncertainty.

The 1980s saw a revival of infrastructure as a theme in American politics. This reflected a decline in federal investment and inspired concerns about decline in the fate of America’s future. Soon after Ronald Reagan took office, politicians and experts took to the stage to make the case for renewed infrastructure investment. In the midst of our perennial debates over fiscal politics, many have looked to the New Deal as a source of inspiration, a reminder of the possibilities that lie in concerted government action in the public good. Infrastructure’s best centrist case as an object of public investment lies in economic growth and development, supplying a foundation or precursor to other activities that are considered valuable, such as innovation, trade, jobs, etc. social liberals will want to broaden the category of infrastructure in ways that fit within their vision of good government as an agent of advance. Fiscal conservatives, on the other hand, may worry that infrastructure is just a “gobbledygook” term for pork barrel, tax-and-spend politics, and a displacement of the private sector by government. The recent debate over President Biden’s infrastructure legislation reflects these dynamics.

This chapter studies the decline and disappearance of the ecumenical synods in late antiquity. As agonistic festivals were the raison d’être of the ecumenical synods, their fate was intertwined with that of the agonistic network. The fourth century ad saw a gradual unravelling of the festival circuit, due to financial problems, socio-political changes in the Greek poleis and changing mentalities and habits. As a result, evidence on the ecumenical synods declines sharply from the late third century on. Important sources discussed here are a tetrarchic rescript on the privileges of competitors, issued in response to a request of the two synods, and a long and complex inscription from ad 313 that was erected in the xystic synod’s headquarters and dealt with a donation by a rich family. This chapter refutes the opinion of some earlier scholars who argue that the synods were absorbed by the circus factions. Rather, it appears that they remained tied to the world of traditional Greek agonistics and that they disbanded when the last of the important Greek agones ceased to be held, that is by the 420s ad at the latest.

Why is the ecological potential of Sharia’not exploited for the protection of our planet today? This chapter reports the analyses of philosophers, economists and historians on the causes of the decline of one of the most important institution of the Sharia': the Waqf. From these analyses it is easy to understand why the environmental Waqf stopped functioning.

The story of the Australian light vehicle industry from the very first developments before World War I, through the era of importing vehicles, the imposition of import controls, the decision to create a fully fledged automotive industry, its growth, decline and end, as it lost control of its domestic market and never achieved sufficient export volumes in compensation. The principal reason for its demise is identified as lack of sufficient scale, compared to the global giants, rather than external factors such as labour costs. The impact of its going on the balance of trade and employment is identified as relatively modest. Some unrealistic proposals for reviving it are dismissed.