B-29 Bomber
Prince
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2010
- Messages
- 381
What if Rome successfully invaded Germania? Would that had given the Romans the Buffer it would have needed against the Barbarian Invasions?
Alternate Roman History
- Thread starter B-29 Bomber
- Start date
citedon
Warlord
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2006
- Messages
- 227
I doubt that things would have changed much, just the timing would have been different. A big part of the barbarian "invasion" was simply people setting up housekeeping in Roman territory. A successful invasion of Germania by the Romans would have just given them another expensive territory to administer. The cost and problems of keeping a large empire contributed as much as anything to the fall of Rome. German tribes would have continued to be assimilated into the empire. Remember Alaric and a large part of his army that sacked Rome were "Roman" soldiers.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Rome did successfully invade Germania.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Please explain why in this alternate universe Rome would have successfully occupied most of the Germanic territories, or however much you think they would have.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Yeah, I'm not sure what the difference would be between having Federated tribes on the border and actually occupying these areas (aside from more cost for having soldiers). Probably wouldn't have dramatically changed things.
sophie
Break My Heart
Because in this AH we are playing Rome: Total War, and occupying a region is as simple as taking an army and besieging a couple of town.
I love how you see that phase as the 'simple' one, especially in Roman times
sophie
Break My Heart
It is in Rome: Total War.
Just capture the town, exterminate/enslave the population, and boom, Germany is yours.
OP: What, in your opinion, constitutes a successful invasion? Rome managed a successful invasion of 'Germania' multiple times and in multiple different ways. What they failed to do was hold onto part of it as formal provinces.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Oh well in that case, the only reason the Romans don't rule the world at the moment is because they were invaded by twenty Scythian armies every year.
SKILORD
Insurgent
I'm pretty sure that Rome had enough internal problems that even if they had butchered every German child they would still have fallen at about the same time. They would still have had to deal with crazy emperors and the growth of Christianity and all of the lead poisoning, they were already overextended to the East, that's why they split the empire, it was already so damn big it was ungovernable.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Out of interest, what was the relationship between the Romans and the native German rulers? I'm given to understand that Romans tended to groom client states along their borders, as in the British North between Britannia Inferior and Caledonia, so were there any similar attempts here?
SKILORD
Insurgent
I think the problem with the germans was that their power structures were more violatile and the groups were more migratory.
This post has a metric crapton of things wrong with it, except the central idea: Roman conquest here would not have had a clear effect on the longevity of the Empire. Maybe the Roman state ceases to exist earlier, rather than later, because, say, the control of trans-Rhenic Germania provides an extra base of operations for usurpers fighting destabilizing civil wars. Maybe it ceases to exist later, or not at all, due to certain grand-strategic benefits of ruling the territory. Who knows? This particular WI is even more of a die-roll than usual, because it's so very nonspecific.
As for "volatility" in Germania Magna (total nonsense) and "more migratory" (also total nonsense, but even less measurable)...no. Just no. Definitely no more than Pannonia or Dacia.
That's how Rome ran all of its frontiers. Client relationships were the rule along the Danube and the Rhine, punctuated by periodic offensive warfare on Rome's part to maintain said client relationships in the face of nebulous and inconstant personal politics. Indeed, the famous Gothic War that resulted in the Battle of Adrianople and the establishment of the Theodosian dynasty was chiefly a result of Roman client management gone horribly, destabilizingly wrong.
SKILORD
Insurgent
my apologies.
/flees world history forum
/flees world history forum
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Don't worry. Everybody on this forum has been Dachs-owned at least once. You, at least, have the sensibility of detecting that it happened.
There's a lot of interesting stuff out in the last few decades on the Roman frontier. Frontiers in general have gotten to be quite popular subjects, what with all of the transnational studies that are all the rage these days.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Would that then suggest that the Roman "failure" to annex any great portion of Germania Magna was through lack of inclination, rather than ability?
Both, really. They decided that the whole thing wasn't cost-effective to conquer because of some problems with the locals. So there's lack of inclination. But they were only disinclined to exert themselves in the first place due to, you know, actual important failures on the battlefield. The Varian disaster did matter, and it wasn't just a question of how wealthy the prospective provinces were.
In response to the OP I would probably second what Dachs said earlier in that if Rome had conquered the interior of Germany it would likely have facillitated an earlier fall, just because the sheer number of soldierly necessary to hold the province would have made for a lot of potential usurpers with military force to back it up. Or maybe they might have gone the 4th century route and divided up into like 8 provinces with 8 independent governers. But then maybe command would have been so divided any defense against, say, the Goths or an Alamanni rebellion would have been doomed. Just read a pretty good work on the subject, made a lot of sense to me. http://www.amazon.com/How-Rome-Fell-Death-Superpower/dp/0300164262/ref=pd_sim_b_3
Similar threads
