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No Barbarians Necessary

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Re: No Barbarians Necessary

#41

Post by mncharity »

JoeDaDude wrote: post #34
_4gzn wrote: post #25

Everyone and their dog have a pet theory on the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Let me copy a previous comment of mine.[0] My dream is a book/blog explaining historic processes with Ishikawa cause-and-effect fishbone diagrams.[1] For history, the main branches of the fishbone could be: Military, Economy, Society, Politics, and Nature. So a tentative diagram explaining the fall of the Western Roman Empire would have…

I don't know if this scratches the itch, but there is an attempt to scientifically explain [1] (and maybe predict?) history from fundamental, quantifiable factors like population, economics, etc. This is the field of study known as Cliodynamics. Why these folks even have their own journal [2]! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliodynamics [2] https://escholarship.org/uc/irows_cliodynamics

With an on-topic book review[1] "Complexities of Collapse - A Review of Understanding Collapse: Ancient History and Modern Myths, by Guy D. Middleton (2017)".

[1] https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5bg8f4r1

Re: No Barbarians Necessary

#42

Post by throwaway894345 »

skybrian wrote: post #40
throwaway894345 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be taking one word in the parent's quote wildly out of context. Here's the full sentence: > To be Roman, and citizenry became quite broadly spread, during those few centuries, was to be free and safe. It's pretty plain here that the parent is arguing that Romans , not their slaves, were free and safe. Anyway, the idea that Rome is worse than its contemporaries because of slavery or some other failure to a…

I made no argument about whether they were better or worse than their contemporaries. However, I do think that by modern standards, all governments were terrible back then. Most of history is like that. It's mostly about cruelty and suffering.

> I made no argument about whether they were better or worse than their contemporaries.

I was only clarifying since you were responding to a comment comparing Rome to her contemporaries. No one argues that Rome was more enlightened or less brutal than modern first-world nations, but many do argue that Rome was relatively more backwards than her contemporaries on the basis that Romans practiced slavery and colonization (ignoring that her contemporaries did the same or would have done if they had the ability).

Re: No Barbarians Necessary

#43

Post by gumby »

ksdale wrote: post #26
gumby wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a strange tendency in modern scholarship to try to say, "actually the fall of Rome wasn't that bad". Not sure why that is particularly strange. In the age of overt empire, Gibbon wrote an explicitly cautionary tale, like the momento mori that accompanied a triumph. But we aren't in that same age. From a broader perspective, the nature of "structural" Rome, especially once Octavian (Augustus) took control,…

I think your comment and the parent are addressing slightly different points. Your assertion about the destruction and rebirth of companies/societies as good and necessary can be true at the same time as the assertion that that process is an absolute nightmare for the people involved. I think I agree with you about the Hayflick limit idea, but I also think it's useful to point out, as the parent does, that a scleroti…

> ... a sclerotic, moribund empire is probably a better place to live for the majority of people in it than not an empire, assuming there is trade and general stability.

Is it? It took a plague to launch a revolution in agriculture in Europe, leading to an increase in calories production, an expansion of human life span, and opening up an expansion in trade (which reflects an increased amount of consumption of goods beyond simple survival). The preceding periods of semi-stasis were ones of no expansion in human quality of life and punctured by the opposite when you happened to be in the wrong place during a struggle between elites.

In our concrete world: had Apple not been able to blow up the oligopoly where the phone carriers controlled what phones were available and what they could do, would we have the current explosion of software, tools, etc? In the US in particular the sclerotic phone oligopolies kept the mobile phone market at least a decade behind Europe and Japan.

Re: No Barbarians Necessary

#44

Post by mncharity »

_4gzn wrote: post #25

Everyone and their dog have a pet theory on the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Let me copy a previous comment of mine.[0] My dream is a book/blog explaining historic processes with Ishikawa cause-and-effect fishbone diagrams.[1] For history, the main branches of the fishbone could be: Military, Economy, Society, Politics, and Nature. So a tentative diagram explaining the fall of the Western Roman Empire would have…

> explaining other events and processes is left as an exercise to the reader

Does anyone know of any attempts at a "systems engineering" approach to teaching history?

So instead of a learning objective like "able to discuss the economic and political forces at work in the late Roman Empire", perhaps more like "has a feel for caloric restriction, starvation and famine in human history"? More human history as root causes analysis, than history as Trial Pursuit. And thus freed from the interminable obfuscating worry over just which particular measured mix of pervasive patterns of cause occurred in some trivially particular wherewhen. Fine for historians, but a distraction from introducing humanity as a system. More patterns of migration, than say Syrian migration in end Bronze Age collapse, or Mongols, or early 20th C, or early 21st, or etc. A more veterinary school approach to teaching history, focused on crosscutting patterns, because you've too many diverse critters to do old-style medical school's rote memorization of one critters's trivia. Any thoughts?

Re: No Barbarians Necessary

#45

Post by allemagne »

dragontamer wrote: post #17
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that they did invade Europe and while they were initially successful eventually failed. In part because the Europeans (if we can call them that at the time) improved their fortifications and had cavalry as well.

The Mongols successfully invading Europe would have been as impressive as the Romans invading China. (Didn't happen, but really, think about the logistics). That's a lot of land to cover. I think the long-range logistics of supporting an army thousands of miles away from your civilization centers was just too much to handle for Iron Age / Dark age civilizations. Even if one leader (Genghis Khan) could successfully le…

If the Romans had conquered all of Persia, Bactria, and Xinjiang, and were sending periodic raids down into the Gansu corridor then your analogy might make sense. You're right that it's difficult to imagine the logistics of Roman legions accomplishing that kind of feat.

On the other hand, the Mongols were already in Europe and had already conquered their way into Russia and Asia Minor. There's really no reason to think long-range logistics should be the limiting factor in, say, Poland, the Hungarian plain, or Vienna when it wasn't for Baghdad or Kyiv.

Long-range invasions over thousands of miles aren't easy, but they have been done since the Achaemenids, done over the silk road well into Central Asia since the Han, and done several times by nomadic confederations who appear suddenly from the mongolian steppe and dominate settled peoples. The Mongols were just the latest and the best at it, and Genghis wasn't even alive during the western conquests that could have taken Europe.

Re: No Barbarians Necessary

#46

Post by johnnycerberus »

jefftechentin wrote: post #36

Definitely agree that the fall of the West is best understood as a consequence of the civil instability/war. I also think it is probable the successor states where most likely better managed/fruitful economically (although I probably would not say that to a Briton who had just been conquered by the Angles). Would seem to be a step too far to not give the Germans due credit for the fall of the West though. The title I…

Just a correction, Germanic tribes, not Germans. Barbarians were of Germanic origin. As you don't call ancient Romans, Romanians.

Re: No Barbarians Necessary

#47

Post by ksdale »

gumby wrote: post #43
ksdale wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your comment and the parent are addressing slightly different points. Your assertion about the destruction and rebirth of companies/societies as good and necessary can be true at the same time as the assertion that that process is an absolute nightmare for the people involved. I think I agree with you about the Hayflick limit idea, but I also think it's useful to point out, as the parent does, that a scleroti…

> ... a sclerotic, moribund empire is probably a better place to live for the majority of people in it than not an empire, assuming there is trade and general stability. Is it? It took a plague to launch a revolution in agriculture in Europe, leading to an increase in calories production, an expansion of human life span, and opening up an expansion in trade (which reflects an increased amount of consumption of goods…

Are you asking whether the 50% of people in Europe who died from the plague, and the survivors would have preferred to not have the plague?

This is exactly the issue I'm talking about. It's very plausible that the world got much better after the plague, and that the plague was an important catalyst. But it also seems obviously true that absolutely no one alive at the time would choose the plague in order to cause that improvement.

Re: No Barbarians Necessary

#48

Post by jeffreyrogers »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #32
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's lots of disagreement about why the mongols failed. Not at all clear that it was just a succession crisis. And the Europeans were eventually able to counter mongol tactics.

Whatever reason for their withdrawal, the Mongols literally left Europe, and Europe being any good at resisting militarily was precisely none of those reasons

The Mongols started losing battles, so you're putting a bit too strongly.
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