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Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

friedkielbasa.substack.com

31–40 of 62 posts

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Catholic church is an institution of the Roman Empire, and it's still around. That puts things in perspective, I find, and makes me wonder if 100 thousand years from now, historians will just lump the Romans and us into the same bucket.

I've always thought of the USA as the east Roman Empire of the British Empire. The seat of the throne moved to the white house, but the USA is still culturally close to the UK. Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

This is a really interesting idea. I'd never put this together myself, but its really compelling. It really shows the value of the phrase "history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme".

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#32

One of the engines of collapse of Rome was the corrupt financial elite extending to the government that designed rules to extract maximum wealth for the elites, ignoring the long-term health of the economy. By the end, the government was essentially squeezing a dry sponge. Seems like civilisation has learned nothing.

You'd think that an army full of oppressed Roman citizens would've overthrown them right.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#33
post #4

This makes an important point, and is important to think about, but I'm also interested in how societies go to that brink and come back. I suspect there's a bit of bias in this, as you don't hear as much about the nations that come to the point of collapse and then somehow immediately recover, you hear more about those that disintegrate into decades of chaos and disorganization. The essay also points to something els…

The best answer may well be some time in the 1500s. Recall that as the era shifts from the late Classical to early Medieval, all of these people are still speaking the Roman language (Vulgar Latin, which evolves into the various Romance languages), following the Roman religion (Christianity), obeying Roman legal codes, and in many aspects, still following Roman customs and experience the same Roman economic and administrative system. In the case of the Byzantines, there is continuous institutional survival until the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Now, what that Roman society looks like in the 500s is very much not the same Roman society we conceptualize of in the 100s, but there is largely no clean break [1]. There is political disunity, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't a recognized commonality of culture (cf. China, where similar major periods of disunity are still categorized as all being part of China).

The major rupture is the Protestant Reformation, where the split between Protestant and Catholic Christianity proves irreconcilable, and results in the end of the notional idea of a unified Christendom. This is also when you start to see an end towards the practice of writing in the literate language of Christendom (i.e., Latin) and instead move towards working in the vernacular, especially in endeavors like scientific research.

[1] The major exception is Britain, where the end of Roman rule is very abruptly realized, and there is a distinct clear horizon between sub-Roman Britannia and Anglo-Saxon Britain. But the British experience is largely the exception, not the rule.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#34
post #4

This makes an important point, and is important to think about, but I'm also interested in how societies go to that brink and come back. I suspect there's a bit of bias in this, as you don't hear as much about the nations that come to the point of collapse and then somehow immediately recover, you hear more about those that disintegrate into decades of chaos and disorganization. The essay also points to something els…

Can you give any examples of societies that went to the brink and reversed course? I can't think of any, but I'd be fascinated to learn more about examples who have.

There are many examples in anquity. Greek had a flowering in the Bronze age, then a dark age, before classical Greek took over. The Hittites had a major disaster including the destruction of their capital before they recovered in a great way (until their final demise at the end of the Bronze age). Egypt had several dark periods where they recovered from, until they fell prey to Greek and Roman imperialism.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#35
post #4

This makes an important point, and is important to think about, but I'm also interested in how societies go to that brink and come back. I suspect there's a bit of bias in this, as you don't hear as much about the nations that come to the point of collapse and then somehow immediately recover, you hear more about those that disintegrate into decades of chaos and disorganization. The essay also points to something els…

The best answer may well be some time in the 1500s. Recall that as the era shifts from the late Classical to early Medieval, all of these people are still speaking the Roman language (Vulgar Latin, which evolves into the various Romance languages), following the Roman religion (Christianity), obeying Roman legal codes, and in many aspects, still following Roman customs and experience the same Roman economic and admin…

"The major rupture is the Protestant Reformation, where the split between Protestant and Catholic Christianity proves irreconcilable, and results in the end of the notional idea of a unified Christendom."

The Christendom ceased to be unified a whole lot earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In ancient times, wealth was based on controlling farmland and extracting food from peasants. Modern economies don’t work like that, so what you can learn from historical analogies is limited.

They're still based on controlling shares and extracting profits from workers. Very similar.

Oddly, for some companies, the money comes from advertisers. When this started becoming a thing, I figured it would be a bubble and eventually businesses would wise up, but they've kept on paying for decades now.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#37

I do not get the obsession with fall of Rome being a bad thing. Look at taxation, look at big part of population being in slavery. Their military machine, roads and civilisation was basically just to crash rebelions! Today we have taxation around 30 to 70 percent. Imagine if taxes would be at 10% and we would not have to sponsor all sort of "adventures".

That's an interesting point and worth discussing. I'm not sure why you got down voted. Maybe people are perceiving some subtext that I'm not.

> I'm not sure why you got down voted. Maybe people are perceiving some subtext that I'm not.

Probably because the vast majority of politicians who attack taxation do so specifically to destroy social programs and quality of life multipliers, instead of the war machine or any other area of bearucratic waste, inefficiency, or corruption.

For example "No new wars" becomes "No, new wars!" and all the people who screamed about government spending clap as the military spend doubles, or feign disgust but fall in line eventually because "the other guy would've done the same" as admitting they were wrong or conned is inconceivable.

Also, literally nobody is paying a 70% effective tax rate anywhere. I'd be surprised if you could find anyone paying more than 50% without misinformation. Even when taxes were 90% for a short period of time, for an extreme minority, there were loopholes that meant none of them ever paid anything close to 90%.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best answer may well be some time in the 1500s. Recall that as the era shifts from the late Classical to early Medieval, all of these people are still speaking the Roman language (Vulgar Latin, which evolves into the various Romance languages), following the Roman religion (Christianity), obeying Roman legal codes, and in many aspects, still following Roman customs and experience the same Roman economic and admin…

"The major rupture is the Protestant Reformation, where the split between Protestant and Catholic Christianity proves irreconcilable, and results in the end of the notional idea of a unified Christendom." The Christendom ceased to be unified a whole lot earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism

Yes, there's a rupture between Eastern and Western Christianity, but Western Christianity still accepts the authority of the pope to speak on behalf of Christianity, and there's still a sense that they're still part of the same Christendom, just disputing who is going to come out on top. You might compare it to the modern "One China Policy" in that both Taiwan and China see themselves as the legitimate government representing all of China. Note that the Holy Roman Emperor and the Byzantine Emperor both titled themselves as Emperor of the Romans--they're still claiming heir to the same unified Christendom.

(And also note that the latest Byzantine Emperors repeatedly tried to mend the schism to secure Western aid in stabilizing their empire.)

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Catholic church is an institution of the Roman Empire, and it's still around. That puts things in perspective, I find, and makes me wonder if 100 thousand years from now, historians will just lump the Romans and us into the same bucket.

I've always thought of the USA as the east Roman Empire of the British Empire. The seat of the throne moved to the white house, but the USA is still culturally close to the UK. Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

> The seat of the throne moved to the white house, but the USA is still culturally close to the UK

> Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

This underestimates how Germanic, Irish, Italian, and Hispanic America is.

For example - Hot dogs, Hamburgers, Budweiser, Chrysler, Rockefeller, Disney, the New York Times, Christmas Trees, Lutheran congregations, Mennonite congregations, etc are all German.

And having stayed in the UK for extended periods for work, it is significantly different culturally speaking than much of the US.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#40
post #26

Ironically enough, the thing that really did Roman Italy it was Justinian’s reconquest. The Gothic War was absolutely devastating. Yersinia pestis didn’t help either, of course.

And similarly, the cruzader conquest of the East
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