Why did the governments of the distant past last longer than those of the present/recent past?
Upvote:-2
As pointed out by Karl Marx, technological and scientific progress will lead to economic and social changes, and economic and social changes will lead to political changes.
Technological and scientific progress, and accompanying changes in production and labour relations, have been much faster in the last few hundred years than in antiquity.
Upvote:5
In general, they didn't.
First off, some terms. Technically a nation is a coherent culture of people, so polyglot empires like Rome's or the Ottoman's don't qualify. It would probably be better to talk about Governments, or Sovereign States.
Let's look at Rome. It was around from 509BC to 1453AD by some accounts.
However, it wasn't at all the same government that whole period. In fact, its timeline of governments up until the fall of the western Roman Empire looks more like this:
- Prior to 509BC : Kingdom
- 509BC-387BC(122 years) : Oligarchic City-State Republic
- 387BC-90BC(297 years) : City-State Republic
- 90BC-25BC(65 years) : Republic
- 25BC-293AD (318 years) : Empire
- 293AD-476AD (183 years) : Dual Empire
Likewise, for the Ottomans:
- 1299AD-1603 (304 years) : Blood Tanistry Absolute Monarchy
- 1603-1839 (236 years) : Inherited Empire
- 1839-1922 (83 years) : Constitutional Monarchy
Note that some of the dates here are debatable, but the point isn't the exact dates, but rather that in no case did the state actually exist for longer than a bit over 300 years without having a major change in how its government functioned and how its leaders were selected.
If you look at the list of Egyptian Dynasties, you see the same story: the longest-lasting one was about 275 years, and very few broke the 200 year mark.
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