The fall of Rome has obviously been a topic of much interest and discussion. It is, after all, a conversation about the fall of civilization as we knew it.
If you read my blog you are probably aware that I lean toward a thesis of genuine and rapid fall. One of the most revelatory books I’ve read in the past 20 years is Bryan Ward-Perkins’ The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization. Ward-Perkins’ tale is an apocalyptic one. The material basis of Roman civilization the West collapsed. Perhaps the most relevant and evocative fact for me is that pollution due to manufacturing production in England did not match that of the Roman period until the industrial revolution. Though the Roman economy never achieved the industrial revolution’s gains in productivity, it did attain a level of Smithian efficiency and interdependence on the margins of the factors of production.
From a totally different perspective Peter Heather in The Fall of the Roman Empire broadly agrees with Ward-Perkins’ contention. The Roman Empire fell, and it fell fast, and the imperial elites didn’t see it coming. Remember, the Roman Empire was dismembered and disordered during the “crisis of the third century”. Under Diocletian and his successors in the 4th century it came back to health and strength before the distress of the 5th century in the West. But at the time contemporaries did not view the shocks and exigencies of these decades as any more distressing then the events of the 3rd century, and the Eastern Empire around Constantinople was reasonably robust.
Ultimately though 476 was a coup de grace to the Western Empire. The Gothic wars tore apart the fabric of the Italian peninsula in the 6th century, and the substantive reality of the old empire faded away. There was no going back. Of course I’m well aware of the argument that the Roman world evolved, that it did not collapse. And Late Antiquity and its continuities with the Classical world, and how it bridged itself to the Medieval world, are fascinating. But I do not accept that the preservation of Roman motifs and ideals in the courts of barbarian German warlords is evidence that substantively nothing changed.
Much of it depends on how you weight material vs. ideological parameters. The idea of Rome cast a shadow centuries beyond its substantive material integrity. After, the Byzantines called themselves Romans until the conquest of their city-stateless in 1453. But no matter the name, they were not Romans as the Romans were in 400 A.D.
The theoretical context of all this is that it strikes me cultures can go through rapid nonlinear shocks which induce very quick and unexpected changes. In the human past this would often entail collapses and regressions. The “Dark Age” after the chaos of the late Bronze Age is a case in point. In one generation the citadel society of Mycenanean Greece disappeared across much its extant range. The gap between 1966 and 1969 in much of the West was arguably greater than between 1956 and 1966.
The United States today is the most powerful nation in the world. And our cultural centrality and ascendency is such that we don’t challenge our implicit position as the premier power in the world. But I believe that we’ve become a inward looking involuted culture. There’s no point in litigating this, and obviously I may be wrong. But too often we confuse our own petty internecine squabbles with the concerns of the world. The world is passing us by….
That may be Peter Heather’s take, but what I took from the narrative of his book was that the Western Empire collapsed from a concatenation of stressors, each invasion killing soldiers or destroying farmland or inducing secession or cutting off supplies, so that Rome was weakened progressively until it could no longer cope well at all with the final attacks.
Perhaps I missed his point, but that was the impression I got.
“Inward-looking” and “involuted” is certainly the reputation American culture has in the wider world, and there’s lots of anecdotal (and hard) data to support the stereotype. I don’t think it’s a new one, either.
What struck me most, as a Canadian who lived in the USA for some time, was not just the lack of knowledge when it came to the world outside the USA’s borders, but the lack of curiosity — even among well-educated Americans. This will make for a rough adjustment, if or when the USA ever loses its top-dog position.
9/11 and our over-reaction in the Middle East may come to be seen as a turning point in our position as a global military power. What happened in the late 1960’s by contrast was an ideological collapse of “liberalism” in some sense. Then there have been our perennial trade and national deficits, which if Walter Russell Meade is correct, represents the financial collapse of the blue model welfare state. So if these are the principal components of the American collapse (assuming we cannot recover) it happened over 50 years, which is still pretty sudden.
“What struck me most, as a Canadian who lived in the USA for some time, was not just the lack of knowledge when it came to the world outside the USA’s borders, but the lack of curiosity — even among well-educated Americans. This will make for a rough adjustment, if or when the USA ever loses its top-dog position.”
This is nothing new. Americans in the nineteen-fifties were not any more engaged with the outside world than Americans are today. Critics complained that Americans only saw the world in terms of the Cold War and didn’t make any effort to see beyond that.
But Americans in the nineteen-fifties were far less trivial about their domestic concerns. Improving the material condition of all Americans was still a paramount concern rather than, say, identity politics. Important civil rights battles were being fought rather than the need to push for uni-sex bathrooms.
It was a more serious society and therefore better-equipped to handle serious problems, wherever those problems might come from.
“…there’s lots of anecdotal (and hard) data to support the stereotype…”
Do you have an example of hard data supporting this? I hear this charge a lot, and certainly the modal person from the USA doesn’t know much about world history, geography, current events, etc. but I’ve never seen a side-by-side comparison with the knowledge level of people from other parts of the world.
439 (the loss of Carthage and North Africa to the Vandals, and thus a loss beyond which even the shattered empire of the Third Century suffered) and 535 feel like more significant dates than 476, even if the latter was the final end of the Roman Emperors in the west. The social and economic structure of Roman Italy continued after 476 even if it was now being ruled by Gothic kings loosely allied to the eastern Emperors, and if you were a Roman aristocrat born after the sack of Rome in 455 you might very well have not noticed more than a gradual decline in Rome’s population (and your own personal wealth) over your lifetime. By the time Roman Italy was effectively destroyed in the Gothic Wars of the 530s-550s, nobody would have been alive to remember what Roman Italy would have been like before it entered that (in hindsight) terminal phase.
Is it quick if there’s no one alive at the beginning of the meaningful change who was there by the end of it? Contrast that with the collapse of Romanized Britain, where someone might very well have lived long enough to see Britain go from a fully Romanized society with cities and market towns, to a heavily depopulated, much more rural society where every aspect of that Romanized Britain (including the cities) had been lost (Britain in the early-to-mid-500s honestly sounds like a post-apocalyptic society in the descriptions).
@Jokah Macpherson — the hard data supports the “inward-looking” stereotype, as I mentioned — in that a majority of Americans do not have passports and thus are unable to travel outside the country. The state-by-state breakdowns are especially interesting.
I don’t know that there are ways to quantify knowledge about the outside world and compare to residents of other countries. Surveys I’ve seen focus specifically on relationships between the US and the outside world, and so aren’t generalizable.
I found this podcast about the fall of the Roman Empire very interesting and at a high academic level.
One particular episode – Why didn’t Rome rise again? – is particularly interesting, the type of historical theorising that is like catnip to me (and perhaps to other people as well)
By the time Roman Italy was effectively destroyed in the Gothic Wars of the 530s-550s, nobody would have been alive to remember what Roman Italy would have been like before it entered that (in hindsight) terminal phase.
this is the real date I think.
the loss of North Africa was bad, but remember that in the 3rd century they lost much of the east to Zenobia. they had recovered before.
too often we confuse our own petty internecine squabbles with the concerns of the world.
Our internecine squabbles may not be the concerns of the world until we force them upon the world (which we not infrequently do), but that doesn’t mean that they are petty. Terrorism is not an existential threat to the U.S., but these “internecine squabbles” absolutely are. If the U.S. cannot find a reliable way of securing governance by informed grown ups (not necessarily liberal ones), it could easily be the first country to decisively move from fully developed to developing and regress economically and by all reasonable standards of well being.
The U.S. does have different concerns that the rest of the world, much of which entirely or nearly entirely lacks social forces, political cultures and traditions that have great salience in the U.S. But, those forces are very important in the U.S. and will indirectly influence the entire world.
@Dany #8
I’ll second that. Patrick Wyman’s podcast series on the Fall of Rome is really good (and like Ward-Perkins, he definitely thinks the Roman Empire did fall).
Agreed that the Counterfactual episode is really good, too (same goes for that interview with Walter Scheidel he did).
They ran out of proper Romans. Some of the Germans and mixed race leaders did an adequate job for a while. It ended up being a group failure. The Franks, the elite anyway, tried like hell to be Romans and keep it going. It was just too heavy of a lift; higher levels of illiteracy in the ruling class; inadequate social capital.
Is it really wrong to compare the distress of the 5th century to the crisis of the 3rd century? The mistake seems to be failing to acknowledge how bad the crisis of the 3rd century was.
You sound like you are talking about using pollution in ice cores as a proxy for production. But that doesn’t isolate England, does it? Do you mean to compare Europe to Europe?
The ice cores show pollution peaking circa 1AD. That is centuries of industrial decline before the fall of Rome. Maybe the elites didn’t see it coming, but isn’t this an argument that they should have? (Or is this decline due to something else, like English mines being cleaner than Spanish? But I think we see this with two different metals.)
Nitpick: Ward-Perkins says that industrial pollution reached Roman levels not by the Industrial Revolution, but by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I haven’t read the survey he cites, but that looks right by the Hong et al ice cores. Their lead number for 1500AD exceeds all Roman numbers. Their number for 1000AD exceeds all but one outlier in 1AD. On the other hand, their noisier copper number might not catch up until the industrial revolution.
Many people misread Hong et al’s graph of production, as assessed from history, and confuse it with their graph of ice cores. The read history as saying that metal production did not catch up to Roman levels until the Industrial Revolution, but their ice cores don’t see to say that. But if that is what history says, why do people need to cite Hong et al for it? No one else reads history that way, do they?
Copper: history ice core.
Lead: both graphs
While the Fall of Rome is a very interesting topic, not sure how relevant it is. Empires can crumble without outside invasions, for example Han Dynasty China. USA’s fundamentals are in reality strong – a relatively well educated population living on a very large chunk of land in a temperate climate all speaking the same language.
China’s fundamentals are quite strong as well and its population is much higher so it’s inevitable (barring a catastrophe) that it will surpass the USA in terms of GDP and perhaps in other spheres as well, so the US will have to adjust to not being number one. It may make the culture less inward-looking
The US does seem to have a rather dysfunctional political system and political culture more generally. It has seen very large scale demographic changes which the political culture really hasn’t dealt with (neither blocking those changes or adjusting the institutions), and this points to a racially polarised, unstable political future.
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>I’ve never seen a side-by-side comparison with the knowledge level of people from other parts of the world.
And it’s not clear exactly what comparison would be apt.
I once had an conversation where a New Zealander complained about how little Americans knew about his little island, because we’re so parochial, ya know. I asked how much he knew about Cook County, IL. After all, we have a population and economy larger than that of New Zealand. What nation-state fetish should make knowledge of New Zealand more important than knowledge of Cook County? If Americans should have detailed knowledge of the various regimes and cultures of the EU, should Europeans be able to distinguish North Carolina barbecue from South Carolina barbecue? Should they know about Nebraska unicameralism or the role of Delaware incorporation in the world economy?
We’re a multicultural nation of 320 million, more of a global microcosm than any other nation.
This what always happens when power is lopsided. ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ Condecension is a defensive mechanism and it is hard over estimate the carnage possible without Pax Americana.
i read both of these books after reading the discussions on this blog. Good books! I don’t see any parallels to the US though. We aren’t an empire. There is no equivalent of the Persians to defend against. We can still innovate (fracking, electric cars, cell phones etc).
In fact since my childhood the economy is much bigger, crime is down, we are not dependent on other countries for energy, the soviet menace is gone, more countries have chosen market economies and representative government etc.
The only things that are worse are mental illness rates, education standards, and government debt. There are probably a few more items but can’t think of them right now.
The hand-wringing is necessary though to stay sharp.
the Western Empire collapsed from a concatenation of stressors, each invasion killing soldiers or destroying farmland or inducing secession or cutting off supplies, so that Rome was weakened progressively until it could no longer cope well at all with the final attacks.
For an expansion of this idea (albeit of the earlier centuries), see Luttwak’s “The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire.” Luttwak was, of course, much maligned (justly in several instances) by professional historians of the late Roman Empire, but the military strategic aspects of his discussion are excellent.
To summarize his ideas and to my add own two cents, here are the problems with the three broad defensive strategies the Romans pursued over the centuries.
1. Relying on client states on the borders. This was inexpensive and highly effective, but it was only possible when Rome had excess or “surge” military capacity and was expansionary – in other words, it had the force projection capability deep into hostile areas to exact punishment. This became more difficult as Roman resources became progressively constrained. Furthermore, it was an inherently unstable system that required constant maintenance of balance-of-power among client states and their rulers (neither too strong nor too weak) – something very difficult to do on a sustained basis and liable to break down easily during civil strife in either Rome or in the client states.
2. Defense-in-depth. As Rome began to absorb the client states into direct rule by the central government, it had to station legions and allied forces in layers on the empire’s perimeter. This was exceptionally expansive given the enormous size of the border. It was also politically dangerous given that it gave huge amount of power to the local commanders who were liable to revolt or engage in usurpations.
3. Mobile defense. On paper, this could be highly effective on the cheap. Skeleton border forces served as trip wires and the central government retained mobile armies ready to intercept and destroy invading hosts. However, it was remarkably poor at dealing with raids. The reaction forces were not quite mobile enough to catch and annihilate raiding parties that quickly retreated once they laid waste to the border areas. Rinse and repeat, and huge tracts of the border area became depopulated and economically non-viable, making it difficult to support even the less-effective border forces. In other words, this would result in the proverbial “death by thousand cuts.”
the loss of North Africa was bad, but remember that in the 3rd century they lost much of the east to Zenobia. they had recovered before.
Africa was the last remaining area producing large-scale agricultural surplus that supported the overgrown Roman cities. Rome as a world historical empire could not sustain the loss of this.
But I do not accept that the preservation of Roman motifs and ideals in the courts of barbarian German warlords is evidence that substantively nothing changed.
1. I think the premise of this is somewhat inaccurate – it’s not simply that Romanitas was preserved “in the courts of barbarian German warlords.” The Catholic Church still maintained the civil structure of the empire in its dioceses, conferred legitimacy to the German ruling elites as “the New Romans” so to speak, and provided cultural contiguity to some extent. Furthermore, Roman nobles and local magnates assimilated into the new ruling elites, frequently coexisting with and billeting the barbarian warriors on parts of their properties (a little more on this below), and intermarrying with them.
2. I do not agree with those revisionists who argue against “the Fall,” but “substantively nothing changed” is a bit of a straw man.
There is absolutely no disputing the significant decline in material and economic standards of living across the empire, particularly in the urban centers. As the authority of the central government of the empire collapsed, cities withered, interregional trade disappeared, and those who could retreated into fortified rural estates to live autarkically. These were all demonstrated by archaeology.
But the Roman cultural civilization didn’t die suddenly. Some (perhaps many) Roman regional elites survived and assimilated with the invaders/migrants. It’s been years since I looked at the primary sources, but as I recall, there is substantial documentation on how the late antiquity Romans, instead of being replaced wholesale by the barbarian elites, shared the produce of their lands and integrated themselves into the new regimes (some of the agreements have been preserved). So the situation wasn’t one of a sudden end and a new beginning, but a gradual replacement/assimilation of the old into the new after a series of initial convulsions.
And the continuing high prestige of the Roman-ness aided in the preservation of both some of the local Roman progeny and the emblems of their civilization. After all, carolus magnus was crowned imperator romanorum.
They ran out of proper Romans. Some of the Germans and mixed race leaders did an adequate job for a while.
This is silly. “Romans” themselves were an agglomeration different peoples, and continued to absorb others as they expanded. I suggest you look up the Social War and the lex iulia that came of it.
And Romans almost always went to war with a sizable allied force, usually half of its armies, but far more in crucial specialized arms (esp. cavalry and archers/slingers).
USA’s fundamentals are in reality strong – a relatively well educated population living on a very large chunk of land in a temperate climate all speaking the same language.
Materially, yes. But the whole thing is held together by “Americanitas,” which has frayed badly. The chance of this occurring is, of course, very low, and I pray that it never ever comes to this, but this country would fare rather badly in another civil strife. Even materially, the country’s major population centers are highly overpopulated and depend almost exclusively on distant sources for provisions sustained by a highly complex and likely brittle supply chains (as opposed to traditional cities that had agricultural inlands contiguous to them).
Disrupt that chain (and other necessities such as power/water/sanitation services) even for a few weeks/months, you will see significant die-offs, suffering, and resulting conflicts.
You don’t need a “zombie apocalypse” to break this country – just the breakdown in central authority for a bit. With strong Americanitas, it can be put together again even after catastrophic events. Without it, the country will fragment after disruptions in modern life’s necessities.
Well, I’ve got a fortified rural redoubt in a tightknit, highly defensible community. Good luck to the rest of you. 🙂
Well, I’ve got a fortified rural redoubt in a tightknit, highly defensible community. Good luck to the rest of you.
There’s an example of that civic nationalism that has served us so well over the years.
Humorless.
@Joe Q.
I can’t speak for Jokah, but I was hoping to see a source for hard data backing up your assertion, not just another assertion that hard data backs it up.
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Regarding threats to the USA, to me one of the biggest long-term ones is the Curley Effect at the federal level – https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/glaeser/files/curley_effect_1.pdf
“James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor.
As a consequence, Boston stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections. We
present a model of using redistributive politics to shape the electorate, and show that this model yields a number of predictions opposite from the more standard frameworks of political competition, yet consistent with empirical evidence.”
This is silly. “Romans” themselves were an agglomeration different peoples, and continued to absorb others as they expanded. I suggest you look up the Social War and the lex iulia that came of it.
yep.
the roman armies were fortified by a massive influx of germans in the 4th century revival.
a massive influx of germans in the 4th century revival.
Then, in the 5th century the collapse fell from the sky.
Then, in the 5th century the collapse fell from the sky.
you should shut you fucking on stuff you don’t know anything about. your comments on this thread would indicate you’re stupid and pedestrian in your thought on this topic. eg the real collapse happened in the 6th.
I have noticed, not just by you, but from others on the right, that looking at the current position of the U.S. as in some ways analogous to the fall of the Roman Empire is common. But it seems to me that is only one way for an empire to decline – the most catastrophic. We have plenty of other examples.
Look at, for example, the trajectory of the great powers of late 19th/early 20th century colonialism during the modern period. It is beyond question that the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan all suffered tremendous relative declines in power. Yet while all of them suffered from decades – and arguably generations – of troubles, they emerged from it at the end as diminished but still civilized nations. Indeed, they are more pleasant places to live today for the average person than when the nations were at the apex of their imperial reach. Arguably one can even see the same way forward for Russia within the next generation, but it’s fall was still relatively recent, so it remains to be seen.
Thus at least personally speaking, my null hypothesis is that the end of American hegemony may cause tremendous issues for the United States in the medium-term, but in the longer term there’s no reason to think we’re headed to semi-dystopia. Of course, as someone approaching 40, it’s not comforting to think things may only start to get better for the country when I am approaching old age. I have to live and work through this dark medium term. But I do have cautious optimism that the world my children with travel through as adults will be more open with possibility.
It is beyond question that the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan all suffered tremendous relative declines in power. Yet while all of them suffered from decades – and arguably generations – of troubles, they emerged from it at the end as diminished but still civilized nations. Indeed, they are more pleasant places to live today for the average person than when the nations were at the apex of their imperial reach.
The obvious retort would be that those nations suffered a relatively benevolent hegemon after their decline. It’s not preordained or guaranteed – or even likely – that a fallen United States would experience the same good fortune.
the roman armies were fortified by a massive influx of germans in the 4th century revival.
That replenished the very serious, seemingly perpetual manpower shortages the late imperial armies had been suffering. That always brings up an interesting question for me. Obviously the Roman Empire had an enormous population even after plagues and losses of territories. But whereas the earlier Republic could generate legion after legion of trained manpower from parts of Italy alone (even at the height of the Hannibal ad portas panic Rome had the urban legions as well as reserves of, albeit untrained, recruits – typically Rome enrolled two NEW legions each campaign season) and Augustus Caesar could command 25 or so legions at the peak of his power (28 before Teutoburg Forrest), the late empire struggled to muster single armies.
In other words, the change in the character and nature of the polity over the centuries seemed to have altered fundamentally the internal military mobilization capacity of the society for the worse. I’ve seen many propositions put forth to explain the dramatic decline in the usable military manpower, everything from the fertility arguments, economic/trade imbalance arguments, to “decadence” and such. What do you think were the main causal factors that led to the manpower collapse?
I’ve seen many propositions put forth to explain the dramatic decline in the usable military manpower
There were tens of thousands of men available for military service. It was just a matter of organization.
I read that from the time of Julius Caesar forward the legions were mostly composed of the conquered peoples with the centurions being Roman. Very early on the army had the auxiliaries.
I am not sure that we should look to the failure of the legions but rather to the failure to economically support the legions.
Apparently the training regime was not supported in the later years, which again points to lack of economic support.
“the late empire struggled to muster single armies.”
Was that really the case? I’m not a specialist for military history, but iirc Diocletian and Constantine in their reforms actually increased the size of the armed forces, so the 4th century empire might have had more soldiers on its payroll than the early empire (but of course in an environment where external foes had become much more dangerous). Manpower shortages only really became a problem for the western empire in the 5th century when the loss of territory and the resulting decrease of the tax base and population made new recruitment ever harder.
It’s of course true that over the course of imperial history recruitment shifted from Italy to more “barbarian” frontier provinces (consequently the military emperors during the 2nd half of the 3rd century like Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian and the Tetrarchs mostly had their roots in the Danube provinces of Illyricum).
in some ways analogous to the fall of the Roman Empire is common
I am not conservative or right wing.
If you think that Pax America is in collapse, which civilizational collapse would you look to for comparison?
Is it a decline or a collapse?
It’s of course true that over the course of imperial history recruitment shifted from Italy to more “barbarian” frontier provinces (consequently the military emperors during the 2nd half of the 3rd century like Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian and the Tetrarchs mostly had their roots in the Danube provinces of Illyricum).
this might explain some of
https://twitter.com/byzantinepower/status/883459102835396608
from what i call the % of italians in the legions was dropping by the reign of vespasian, and they were absent by 200 AD.
peter turchin would say something about asabiya.
“from what i call the % of italians in the legions was dropping by the reign of vespasian, and they were absent by 200 AD”
I don’t know if one can be absolutely sure about this, even though the general trend seems to have gone in the direction of more and more recruitment in the frontier provinces (iirc even quite early in the empire most of the soldiers in the Roman orient supposedly were recruited locally, so the soldiers who crucified Jesus probably were Syrians; only the centurions were sent from Italy). But of course there are significant problems with the sources which make any reliable quantification hard. When I studied ancient history, I once did a presentation about the inscriptions of a 4th century Roman military cemetery (in or near Aquileia in northeastern Italy iirc EDIT: at Concordia). And sure enough, there were lots of people with Germanic names buried among the Roman soldiers there. Also many however with Latin names…but of course it’s impossible to know whether those were “real” Romans from old Italian stock or more recent Germanic arrivals whose assimiliation into Roman civilization had already proceeded so far that they completely Romanized their names.
Back then (about ten years ago) my professor mentioned there was somewhat of a controversy if the old view of the scale of Germanization of Roman armies in the 4th century hadn’t been somewhat exaggerated…I haven’t followed up on the topic though, don’t know about the current state of research.
There were tens of thousands of men available for military service. It was just a matter of organization.
Based on what do you make this assertion? Both ancient writers and modern historians are in consensus that the Roman military suffered a serious and continuing shortages in manpower from the Third Century, A.D. and on, and some (e.g. Arthur Boak) argue that the shortages already started in the Second Century (Boak cites as one evidence Marcus Aurelius settling the defeated Marcomanni on imperial land in return for military service – something highly inadvisable unless there were serious manpower needs).
Starting with the Crisis of the Third Century, there was a very significant, some would say catastrophic, decline in the rural population that was the mainstay of army recruitment. This in turn started a downward spiral that negatively affected all manners of other manpower needs in the Roman Empire (agricultural workers, urban population, specialized workers, city councilors, etc.). Even AHM Jones who supports the idea of some recovery of population after the Crisis wrote that the heavy recruitment and taxation demands on the peasantry under Diocletian reduced rural fertility dramatically and laid the grounds for further demographic collapse shortly thereafter.
So the argument among historians is when, not if, on demographic and manpower decline.
Was that really the case?
Yes. For example, when Julian marched against the Alamanni at the Battle of Strasbourg in 357 AD, he could only muster 10,000-15,000 men and was likely significantly outnumbered (which made the complete victory all the more triumphant).
iirc Diocletian and Constantine in their reforms actually increased the size of the armed forces, so the 4th century empire might have had more soldiers on its payroll than the early empire
Diocletian increased the number of units, but his new legions were all considerably smaller and quite understrength (and many “new” cavalry units were cannibalized from existing legions). Still, he did increase recruitment overall, but most historians seem in agreement that his policies further denuded the already declining rural population and considerably worsened manpower shortages after his rule. In other words, it was a very shortsighted “surge” that exacerbated the already bad recruitment difficulties.
Another thing to keep in mind is that he separated the army into frontier guard forces (i.e. limitanei and riparienses) and mobile field forces (e.g. comitatenses, paladini, and scholae). There is a great deal of debate on the military effectiveness of the frontier forces, but it is now more-or-less clear that 1) the force eventually degenerated into a part-time farmer/soldier force of limited value and 2) never had the mobility and logistical support structure of earlier legions even from the beginning.
Constantine strengthened the mobile forces, but at the expense of the frontier units, so the overall recruitment likely did not increase. In any case, it’s clear that after Diocletian and Constantine the bottom fell out in manpower even further.
Manpower shortages only really became a problem for the western empire in the 5th century
This is not the case. Numerous Third and Fourth Century edicts and policies (e.g. mandating involuntary enrollment of sons of veterans, requirements for farmers and landowners to furnish recruits, etc.) demonstrate the central government was desperate for more military manpower and, when all else failed, eagerly settled and enrolled barbarians despite the obvious danger they posed. Roman rulers weren’t idiots. They knew the dangers of settling barbarians inside the empire in return for military service or even enrolling them directly into the army. But it appears that they had little choice.
But of course there are significant problems with the sources which make any reliable quantification hard.
You can say that again!
the inscriptions of a 4th century Roman military cemetery (in or near Aquileia in northeastern Italy iirc EDIT: at Concordia).
Aquileia was a major military garrison, base, production, and administrative center.
And sure enough, there were lots of people with Germanic names buried among the Roman soldiers there. Also many however with Latin names…but of course it’s impossible to know whether those were “real” Romans from old Italian stock or more recent Germanic arrivals whose assimiliation into Roman civilization had already proceeded so far that they completely Romanized their names.
Remember that the Antonine Constitution (Caracalla’s edict providing citizenship to all residents of the empire) was 212 AD. So by the Fourth Century, most recruits within the empire would have had Latinized names even if they weren’t Italians.
The other thing to keep in mind is that various Roman leaders settled their veterans in colonies all over the empire, including (perhaps especially) in border areas such as along the Danube. Since their progeny became liable for conscription, even provincial areas probably furnished not-so-insignificant number of recruits of “old stock.”
Back then (about ten years ago) my professor mentioned there was somewhat of a controversy if the old view of the scale of Germanization of Roman armies in the 4th century hadn’t been somewhat exaggerated…I haven’t followed up on the topic though, don’t know about the current state of research.
As I recall, at least one serious current view at the low end is that the so-called “Germanization” of the Fourth Century led to about 20% of Roman army being recruited among barbarians. But of course the remainder, “the Romans” probably contained a large number of ethnic Germanics, Celts, Illyrians, and Thracians.
Based on what do you make this assertion?
Based on the generality that there have been few, if any, times when there has been a shortage of men willing to kill other men for fun and or profit. The economic support, the organizational support or the political support might be missing at times.
I’m not sure if cascading is the correct term, but it’s the best I can think of.
Rome, as the Empire, had continual problems of legitimacy. Anyone with an army could take a shot at being the Emperor, or hive off and become a local area ruler. The on again, off again (often depending on the luck or lack of luck in how long emperors lived) strife to fill vacancies made it very difficult to keep the low overhead early empire running. Since nobility with power were rivals, bureaucracy expanded. If you add in a number of very negative externalities, what became a positive cycle toward power, became a negative feedback loop to collapse.
If you look at the United States, you might see something similar in the decisions made in response to the Vietnam War debt and the various external (oil embargo) shocks of the day. The use of debt at all different levels to refloat a stalling economy combined with an (usually) increased bureaucracy to keep things running.
Simplified? Yes. But it illustrates the way that healthy societies can kick the can down the road for a good long time, before the cascading set of problems catch up with it. At the point where they loose that ability, the end can come quickly.
@Twinkie: Thanks for your replies, very interesting. I’m still not totally convinced that the 4th century empire was demographically and economically in such a bad state (and iirc Ward-Perkins doubts that as well and emphasizes the prosperity of many regions throughout the 4th century, indeed in the Eastern Mediterranean until the huge Byzantine-Persian wars of the late 6th/early 7th century), imo it was more that its enemies had become so much more dangerous, with the rise of Sassanid Persia and the creation of larger tribal confederacies among the Germanic peoples, compared to the early empire. The demilitarization of large parts of the politically neutered population of the empire certainly isn’t in doubt however.
Based on the generality that there have been few, if any, times when there has been a shortage of men willing to kill other men for fun and or profit.
I am going to have to side with Mr. Khan here. You are being stupid. Your statement is the kind of inanity people with low IQ put forth to sound intellectual when they don’t have the specific knowledge on the subject in question, so that they too can put in their 2-cents.
Not only that, this pseudo-philosophy isn’t even true. Most men in civilizations actually have a great deal of aversion to killing people, let alone for “fun.” It’s indeed hard to recruit adult males and break/remake (in other words, indoctrinate) them to be killing machines for the military (you have to get them early in life as Jordan Peterson would say). Moreover, even men who “naturally” enjoy killing (of whom I am one) are keenly aware of the distinct lack of enjoyment in being killed in turn.
i think the correct word you are looking for is “trolling.” 🙂 it can be fun….
@Twinkie: Thanks for your replies, very interesting.
You are welcome. Thanks for giving it an ear.
I’m still not totally convinced that the 4th century empire was demographically and economically in such a bad state
Since accurate statistical information is unavailable, we have to rely on three things:
1) Contemporary reports: there are numerous mentions of difficulties in recruitment.
2) Government policies: the edicts mandating involuntary recruitment (which had been largely voluntary in the Principate). By the way, this isn’t just for the military – enserfment of tenant farmers, making urban specialized professions (even city councilors – who bore considerable administrative burdens) involuntarily hereditary, and allowing/forcing barbarians to settled vast tracts of untilled lands (that were previously farmed) all point to significant demographic decline.
3) Comparisons. Note that other regions of different (but still pre-modern) eras experienced similar demographic declines fairly long after the negative pressures ended (e.g. England after Black Death; China after civil wars, etc.). Typically after a steep decline due to plagues and civil wars, pre-modern populations continued to decline for at least a century or two more and sometimes even longer (e.g. Western Europe until the 9th Century) before making sustained recoveries.
(and iirc Ward-Perkins doubts that as well and emphasizes the prosperity of many regions throughout the 4th century, indeed in the Eastern Mediterranean
Just because there are overall demographic decline does not mean the said decline was universal. For example, even in the West, Africa continued to gain population throughout this period (not surprising given that it was the ONE area in the West that exported a large surplus of grain), and probably did not experience any decline until the Vandal conquest (and even then some scholars argue that decline, if any, was not significant).
Unevenness also cut across class lines. There was clearly a great deal of immiseration among vast hordes tenant farmers and small homesteaders during this period (with the declining rural fertility as a consequence), yet archaeological evidence shows that a good number of large and luxurious – frequently fortified – rural estates were built at the same time, which some assert as contraindication of decline.
imo it was more that its enemies had become so much more dangerous, with the rise of Sassanid Persia and the creation of larger tribal confederacies among the Germanic peoples, compared to the early empire.
1) Parthians were no jokes earlier either (e.g. Carrhae), but posed no existential threat earlier when the Roman Empire was internally more vigorous. Sassanids, too, were a very serious, but regional threat.
2) There is not much evidence that a) the Germanic peoples created LARGER tribal confederacies or that b) this led to them fielding larger armies. For example, the Vandal army that rampaged through Spain and North Africa could probably only muster around 10,000-20,000 warriors. Rome faced numerous such barbarian adversaries before. I side with those who argue that external threats (as difficult as they were at times) did not present anything new or different from earlier eras, but that Rome’s internal capacity to resist and defeat such challenges declined. To be simplistic, plagues and civil wars were probably primarily responsible, but central government responses during the supposed* Fourth Century recovery worsened the situation greatly in the long run.
*I do not mean to be completely negative about the recovery. It did, for example, see stabilization of currency, which had been ridiculously devalued under previous rulers (who relied on ascension and periodic donatives to troops to maintain loyalty, the money being raised by debasing the content of silver in currency). But, this too, still had negative repercussions. Army pay in money declined (good for the budget), but that increased in-kind requisitions, which both increased direct tax pressures on peasants and made the army more rapacious on the said peasants.
I guess the lesson here is that when a polity is in a downward spiral, almost every policy option is a bad one. It reminds me of when I learned how to defend against a carotid choke from a back mount. Just about every defensive-technique still could lead to some other dangerous position. I said to my instructor “None of these works very well – it’s just trading one bad position for another.” And he said, “The lesson is, don’t get your back taken in the first place,” that is, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
The demilitarization of large parts of the politically neutered population of the empire certainly isn’t in doubt however.
The “demilitarization” as such occurred long before this period. By late Republic-early Principate, military recruitment was almost entirely voluntary… which of course meant that certain wars drew more recruits than others (service in campaigns against Carthage earlier and Oriental cities later drew enthusiasm, because of expectations of easy victory and rich booty; service in, say, Far Spain was decidedly not, and some men had to be conscripted or otherwise went only because they were clients of the commanders).
By the way, even during the relative affluence of the early Principate, contemporary writers and leaders (e.g. Pliny the Elder) were harping about the precipitous decline in small-scale farmers (who, to repeat, formed the bedrock of army recruitment) as large-scale, often slavery-powered latifundia system gained steam. Various agricultural laws were enacted, unsuccessfully, to combat the trend.
Of course, unfortunately for even the rich absentee landlords of latifundia, slave population in the Roman Empire was not self-sustaining and slave population had to be re-furnished constantly by wars of conquest, which became rarer as time went on. This perhaps also explains the edicts that increased enserfment and actual enslavement of the hitherto freeborn under various legal transgressions (e.g. running off from hereditary obligations).
“Typically after a steep decline due to plagues and civil wars, pre-modern populations continued to decline for at least a century or two more and sometimes even longer (e.g. Western Europe until the 9th Century) before making sustained recoveries.”
Has it been explained in detail how such processes of continuous demographic decline after major disasters in pre-modern societies work? And since you mention early medieval Europe, do you know of any good studies about population history in those centuries?
I don’t have much to add regarding late antiquity, while total certainty about those issues is of course impossible, you certainly make a very convincing case for your position.
“Acquisition of monolingualism” seems like an odd way to describe 3rd Gen Latinos being able to speak Spanish at a higher rate than 3rd Gen Chinese can speak Chinese.
Whoa! Speaking of inanity and trying to sound like an intellectual, Matt has some interesting comments on the subject.
Not trolling Mr. Khan, just going for a better understanding.
You wrote fell, not falling.
You wrote civilization, not a civilization.
tone it down bro. u r a long time commenter so u have some slack. but just *some*
(this comment demands no response)
Has it been explained in detail how such processes of continuous demographic decline after major disasters in pre-modern societies work?
I suspect a number of different factors are at work. Offhand, I can think/remember that 1) habits formed by catastrophic events die hard (e.g. savings rate of people who experienced the Depression) and 2) labor was the primary input for production, including in agriculture in pre-modern times. After major population declines, it would take a while before sufficient labor force is built up again to increase production, which in turn allows for fertility gains. In the case of Western Europe, there was some productivity gain starting the 8-9th Centuries due to improvements in agricultural techniques as well (but this is REALLY outside my former area of expertise).
And since you mention early medieval Europe, do you know of any good studies about population history in those centuries?
J.C. Russell wrote several books and a number of articles on demography of late antiquity and medieval Europe, with a particular emphasis on Britain in one book I remember reading a couple of decades ago.
while total certainty about those issues is of course impossible, you certainly make a very convincing case for your position.
Thank you. I should note that I only have a moderate confidence in my own assertions on this topic since all data are secondary and deductive rather than primary and concrete (e.g. detailed census rolls). But that beats making random and nonsensical statements based on uninformed hunches and intuitions, eh? 🙂
Whoa! Speaking of inanity and trying to sound like an intellectual, Matt has some interesting comments on the subject.
Are you quoting things from other threads to make ad hominem now? I will address Matt’s remark where appropriate.
In the mean time, I leave you with this. I enjoy talking to people who are polite and well-informed. No explanation needed (I hope). I appreciate talking to people who are uninformed but polite, because I value goodness over knowledge. I tolerate talking people who are knowledgeable but ill-mannered, because I like to learn.
I see no point in corresponding with someone who writes stupid things and is impolite. I learn little of value from those whose ego gets the better of their level of knowledge or civility.
@Twinkie
“J.C. Russell wrote several books and a number of articles”
Googling produced “Late ancient and medieval population” and “British medieval population” by that author. Thank you, that’s coming on my reading list.