Just adding, not pinging, because, NTSA.
Posted on 09/15/2023 2:19:24 AM PDT by Chickensoup
I am listening to ANCIENT ROMANS by Thomas R Martin. Struck at how closely the fall of western civilization follows the fall of Rome. It is available through Blackstone audio using their Downpour app.
How MIGRANTS took over civilization and the outcome is the end of this fascinating book about the rise of Mediterranean civilizations. Not to be missed.
https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Rome-Justinian-Thomas-Martin/dp/0300198310
Just adding, not pinging, because, NTSA.
They had overthrown the ruling kings and established the Republic, and they were determined never to be ruled by a king again.
So when the word king--or rex--was avoided and called something else, they accepted it and accepted rule by a tyrant with absolute power.
Is there something familiar about this euphemism?
How about: "Liberalism"? "Progressive"? "War is Peace." "Freedom is slavery." "Love is hate." We hear these Orwellian paradoxes constantly every day. "the Democrat Party is the party of freedom, looking out for the 'little man.'" We're talking about the Party of slavery, lynching, infanticide, totalitarianism, racism, Jim Crow laws--the selling of America to the highest bidder--and government corruption!
So what have we got to lose? EVERYTHING! Remember:
The second Roman Emperor was the monster Tiberius. The third Caligula. The fifth Nero. This is what we're asking for when we accept decadence!
And remember their recent counterparts: Stalin, Mao, Hitler!
This is what's at stake.
“I have a book, a biography, on the great Cicero of Rome. He lived right in the time parallel to what seems like we are beginning. That is the fall of its Republic. I noticed some interesting parallels as well.”
I read some comments by Cicero about Rome and I couldn’t tell the difference between our welfare state and theirs.
The western empire had already been through a massive population collapse in the course of the fifth century (the 400’s). Trade, agriculture beyond subsistence, and administration had evaporated across Western Europe.
The imperial system and the culture that sustained it survived another 400 years. Or more, if you count the Eastern Empire/Byzantium, and you should.
well, I would dispute that - in 476 AD, the transition from "we got a Caesar in Rome" to "we owe our allegiance to the Augustus in Constantinople but he don't interfere in our Kynings rule here" was seamless
The loss of Spain and Italy to the Goths was pretty much just the tax collectors giving the taxes to someone else. The culture and material life remained the same
in briton things changed, in Gaul not so much
There was no societal collapse until the gothic wars
Now if you mean the population of ROME the city itself, yes it collapsed, but that was because they basically stopped handing out free food and entertainment. So people went to the countryside. Then the gothic wars (NOBODY expects the Gothic wars!) came
And the fall in the standard of living likewise resulted in a material condition well beneath even the pre-Roman era. -- in which areas??
I've actually got the book, just pulled it off my shelf and here's a rought critique:
Ok, I've gone on my little hobby horse - sorry about that
well there is a difference between empires collapsing and civilizations collapsing.
When the Western Roman empire fell, its civilization continued and continues today.
When the Roman empire as a whole fell (1453), it did collapse - replaced by Islamic civilization. Of course we could argue that 1453 was just the culmination of the long decline from about 1240.
British “civilization” didn’t collapse - it continues even in the legal code of India etc. - it morphed.
The Mayan civilization collapsed as did the Hittite, the Assyrian, the Khitan etc.
Dammit - you summarized it so much better than I did.
and excellent references
If the Roman empire had stuck together in say 535 AD, then it would have been limited to still the northern shore of the Mediterranean. MAYBE it would hold on to Tunisia and Morocco and Algeria in the face of the Arab invasions
Should add that what came out of the death of Roman administration of the western Mediterranean and Gaul was a big improvement in that the new society did NOT depend on slave labor. It was the widespread use of slaves by rich Senators that induced the death of the Roman Republic just before the birth of Christ.
BTW Gibbon, whose gigantic "Fall of the Roman Empire" influences some historians even today, was a rabid anti-Christian bigot. Keep that in mind.
But that would have been a stagnant empire -- resting on the laurels of its ancientness -- just as the Tang and later Song empire did. It would then have fallen whole to outsiders - just as the Song did to the Jin, Lui and then Mongols and Manchus
I am thinking of a very different book here.
The Fall of Rome, Ward-Perkins
A deep dive into the archeological record, potsherds and middens, postholes and roof slates, that sort of thing.
The collapse of material culture, and broadly speaking, its utter disappearance, point to a massive population collapse across Western Europe. Given what seems to have been a cataclysmic human disaster, its certainly wasnt just a matter of switching tax collectors.
The Battle of Manzikert between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Empire on 26 August 1071 was the point when the Byzantines lost Anatolia.
But the loss of EGYPT to the Arabs in 636 AD was the bullet that killed the Roman empire - it just took a long time to die.
When Gaul, Iberia and Italia were taken over by Germanic rulers, it didn't affect the economy of the Romans too much -- the bulk of the money was from the Greek east. When the Arabs took it over, it gutted 50% of the economy. An analogy would be if the entire lands that the USA won in the Spanish-Mexican war were lost to the USA - Texas, California, etc. gone
Egypt had been lost and recovered just a decade earlier (the Persians conquered Egypt briefly until Emperor Heraclius conquered it back (the reason for this was the stupid way in which Emperor Justinian II re-started a never-ending war with Sassanid Persia AND the way in which the Romans persecuted the Monophysite Copts/Syriacs/Armenians).
With the loss of Egypt, Rome became limited to Anatolia and the Balkans - halved in population and GDP.
With Manzikert, the loss of Anatolia meant the empire lost again 50% of its population and GDP.
The main causes were the weakness of the Byzantine state after death of Emperor Manuel in 1180. Series of coups and incompetent rulers led to separatism and fragmentation. Serbia and Bulgaria were already practically independent when the Third Crusade passed through. Also Armenians carved out a separate state. There was a rival Komnenian Emperor on Cyprus. This weakness was visible to Western Europeans (who importantly still seen it also as rich which is not a good combination with being weak).
By this time also the distrust and hostility between Latins and Romans had grown. Romans (Byzantines if one prefers) thought the westerners to be greedy barbarians with odd religious practices. On their part, westerners seen Byzantines as simply Greek (as opposed to Romans), cowards and ungrateful people. Westerners were also becoming more confident at the time.
Emperor Manuel also managed to come into conflict with Venetians, whose properties he confiscated in 1171. His successor Andronicus I massacred Pisans and Genoese in Constantinople.
This, the "Massacre of the Latins" pissed off the Venetians and they moved the Crusaders to support Alexios IV as claimant to imperial throne. They installed him in 1203 only to realise that the Empire, which lost a lot of its tax base due to separatism, could not pay what Alexios promised. He also did not have any effective army of his own (apart from still quite formidable Varangians).
Then in 1204 the Crusaders stormed the city.
This is the fragmented empire after the sack of 1204 -- Note that the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum was already huge
Chris Wickham speculates that:
“Had the events of 1203–1204 never occurred, it would be easy to imagine that a second Alexios I could have reunified the empire again and re-established its centrality as a European power which could have been more culturally integrated with those of the rest of Europe, possibly through the mediation of the Italian cities.(…) The Byzantine model might have become effective again, and maybe even more effective than it had been previously.”The Fourth Crusade did not necessarily cause the decline of the Byzantine Empire: but it certainly sped it up. The Empire had been in decline for the past quarter-century with the reformation of a Bulgarian state, the splintering of the Empire in Cyprus, the rapid distintegration of its ability to defend itself (exemplified first in the Norman sack of Thessalonica and then in the Latin conquest of Romania), all coupled with a series of internal issues. But it certainly administered the coup-de-grace to the Empire, after it which it could never really recover.
(Chris Wickham, “Medieval Europe” 2016).
The argument that the Roman empire continued in the form of the Byzantine empire headquartered in Constantinople is valid.I would say more than valid - the "Byzantines" called themselves Romans, they were called by their neighbors AND by the western Europeans as "Romans"
irishjuggler
The argument that the Roman empire continued in the form of the papacy is pretty weak.Correct, actually I'd say there is no argument - the bishop of Rome got the papal states only in the 8th century and was very weak until the collapse of central HRE power in the late middle ages or after.
The fall of Britain was at least partially caused by their elite’s expertise in brainwashing and propagandizing their own people.
It is both sad and frightening to watch the old pictures of young British lads smiling and frolicking—so proud of themselves—as they marched off to fight in World War I.
They had no idea what they were about to face....
.Gov is not your friend.
The Sumerian civilization didn’t collapse - the Sumerians merged with the Amorites to form the Akkadian-Sumerian and then just the Akkadian civilization which divided into Assyrian and Babylonian. Yet in both the “holy language” was Sumerian. The Sumerian gods were worshipped, the Sumerian script was followed, the Sumerian culture, technology was used.
After the Babylonians this was taken over by the Achaemenid - even though they were Persian, the capital and heart was in Mesopotamia. Culturally it remained mainly Sumerian-Akkadian but merged again with the Persian and Median.
The Persian civilization remained - it was a continuation of the Sumerian-Akkadian. This was through the Achaemenid period and the Greek-Seleucid period. Note that the Persians took Greek culture but merged it with their own, older culture.
Even more so - the Arabs conquered the Persians but were transformed by the Persians — the “Arab” higher culture was heavily Persian-Greek.
The collapse of the western Roman empire did not “set the modern world back to the Stone age” — that’s massive hyperbole.
In 500 AD the Western Europeans had not only Bronze but also Iron working, so definitely not “stone age”.
Western Europeans moved away from CENTRALIZED states - with massive bureaucracies directed from the centre.
Tiberius wasn’t a monster. Caligula was a power-mad youngster and Nero was a monster.
They don’t have any parallels with Stalin, Mao or Hitler.
Stalin, Mao and Hitler have parallels with the great centralized states of the Bronze age or early Iron age.
I have read Ward-Perkins and just pulled it down from my shelf today for another read (thanks to you! :) )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uNIfIe0wgE
25 minute Jordan Peterson analysis of the PSYCHOPATHS we have foolishly allowed to ascend to power. They are coming for YOU if they are not stopped.
PLEASE SHARE before Utube scrubs it.
WWI hastened the fall, but remember that by 1910
1. The USA was already on track to replace Britain as #2 economy
2. Germany had replaced Britain as #1 economy
3. The Brits had set themselves up as a “moral force” and that they were “civilizing the world” — so they were in a twist when British forces committed massacres such as in the Boer war (first concentration camps) or the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre (when Gen Dwyer fired on civilians)
IF WWI had not happened, the UK would still be where it was in the 1960s — the colonies were going to go away.
“What if” is always a tough sled....
World War I rewrote the map of Europe (and really the world) in so many ways—hard to figure out what might have happened if there was no war.
you’re right, though I do like speculating the what if :)
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