History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VIII

[Absolution]

A common assumption that is always brought up when talking about the early Medieval era and the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, is the newly agrarian society and the decline of the major cities as the dominant cultural and commercial core.
But I started wondering what it exactly means when it is said by history teachers or lightweight books - Is it possible that this is just a shift of zoom we have in our historical observation, from the core of the Roman civilisation towards the more agrarian Frankish, new masters of western Europe? Or did Gaul itself really change from an urban late Roman-like culture into a typical early Medieval European lifestyle we all know?
Basically - is it a matter of real change of the same societies and areas, or do we simply shift our zoom between different societies?

 

[Ajidica]

A common assumption that is always brought up when talking about the early Medieval era and the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, is the newly agrarian society and the decline of the major cities as the dominant cultural and commercial core.
But I started wondering what it exactly means when it is said by history teachers or lightweight books - Is it possible that this is just a shift of zoom we have in our historical observation, from the core of the Roman civilisation towards the more agrarian Frankish, new masters of western Europe? Or did Gaul itself really change from an urban late Roman-like culture into a typical early Medieval European lifestyle we all know?
Basically - is it a matter of real change of the same societies and areas, or do we simply shift our zoom between different societies?

It sounds like you are coming at this from the wrong angle. It is important to remember that Odoacer deposing Romulus Augustulus wasn't like some sort of light switch went off in Europe and everyone decided to give up brick houses for mud huts. The new "barbarian" kings continued existing comfortably within the Roman world. Odoacer, Clovis, and Theoderic all recognized the authority of the Emperor in Constantinople (although Clovis and Theoderic at times flirted with claiming the title of augustus) and maintained Roman institutions. In other words, exactly what you would expect from a small military aristocracy moving in and setting up shop. There had been some movement away from the cities during the Late Roman period, but noting readily identifiable in the archaeological record. It was only in the late 6th century do we really start to see a collapse of Roman urban society. That can largely be attributed to the wars of Justinian. Italy was devastated (Rome was sacked three times and all but depopulated), there were plagues, and the collapse of Italian urban society had knock-on effects throughout the rest of Western Europe. There was a shift away from urban society following the collapse of the authority of the Western Roman Empire, but it can't be attributed to some sort of preference by "barbarians" for mud huts and bogs.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

-Or to put it another way - a lot of that was just Roman society naturally evolving, meet the new boss, same as the old boss - not like in Gibbon with the foreign alien barbarian invaders. The Eastern Empire just didn't look like the empire of Augustus, and not merely because they were Greek, but because 1,400 years had passed.

 

[r16]

Actually a pretty good answer.

r16, I want you to know that I was following your stream-of-consciousness walls of text, thought I somewhat understood -yes; somebody was reading and trying to grok, really- and hate that the thread was locked. You have an interesting Turkish perspective. Respect!, sir.

thanks and blame Brexit and its aftermath .

What about the Mamluks? They didn't rule over a Circassian population. Nor did the Ayyubids rule over Turks.

but Serbians and Croats and Greeks and Bulgarians could become parts of the military power that ruled a kinda mostly Muslim and lately Turkic once a global empire . The "New Soldiers" of the Ottomans are part of the reason why we Turks are so much hated . Like because for every kid forcibly taken there was one given up by his family willingly . Wreaks havoc with so many narratives .

 

[Dachs]

A common assumption that is always brought up when talking about the early Medieval era and the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, is the newly agrarian society and the decline of the major cities as the dominant cultural and commercial core.
But I started wondering what it exactly means when it is said by history teachers or lightweight books - Is it possible that this is just a shift of zoom we have in our historical observation, from the core of the Roman civilisation towards the more agrarian Frankish, new masters of western Europe? Or did Gaul itself really change from an urban late Roman-like culture into a typical early Medieval European lifestyle we all know?
Basically - is it a matter of real change of the same societies and areas, or do we simply shift our zoom between different societies?

More of the first thing than the second thing. Cities got smaller at the end of the Roman Empire. The Empire was a highly complex organization that facilitated tremendous amounts of medium-range trade and required large administrative centers to control its far-flung territories. One doesn't have to agree with the most catastrophic explanations of the fifth century to agree that people had moved out of the cities and that their populations remained very low compared to what they were under Rome - although some cities got smaller at different rates, and in certain places they continued to grow until other catastrophes occurred. There was, unquestionably, real change. It's impossible not to be struck by Prokopios' accounts of the sieges of Rome during the Gothic War of the sixth century, in which the vast circuit of the walls of the city of Rome, built a few hundred years before, dwarfed the relatively small area that the few thousand inhabitants of the city actually lived in. (We still don't really know whether this change in population was accompanied by a decline in overall population. The estimates are very sketchy, and we of course have very few documents to go on.) It's possible to exaggerate the extent to which trade died in western Europe after Rome, because a lot of trade is necessarily invisible to us, but the big-deal stuff - the transportation of massive amounts of foodstuffs over significant distances - stopped being a thing. Without as much food, without as much trade, and without as much patronage by the state or wealthy individuals and institutions, the cities fell apart and people left in droves.

But it's not really true to say society was "newly" agrarian, either. Even before western Europe deurbanized, the overwhelming majority of people lived outside of cities. Even after Rome fell, some aristocrats remained in the cities. But there was a shift in emphasis; I think it's reasonably uncontroversial to say that many people that contemporaries thought were important moved out of the cities around the same time as the Roman Empire stopped being a thing in western Europe.

So, a little bit of column B, but mostly column A, I think.

 

[innonimatu]

Indeed during the final century of the Western Roman Empire the cities were already declining. Part of the problem was that the cities lost political control of the countryside. There were more barbarians on the move than the germans crossing the Rhine or the horsemen from the asian steppes.

Iberia was invaded several times by "moors", people from across the Mediterranean, north Africa, where roman administration also collapsed, failed to control the Atlas Mountains. This was kind of business as usual in the Mediterranean, had not the carthaginas recruited some of these people and conquered portions of the peninsula? Had not the romans been themselves people from abroad conquering and reorganizing the space?

I think that one possible theory to explain the decline of urban civilization is the fact that the new conquerors of the late 4th and 5th century did not succeed. It took a long time for somewhat stable kingdoms to replace imperial roman power and its administration. During that whole time the administrative functions of the cities just broke down. Had they been conquered, their structures would have been taken over and maintained by the conquerors, most likely. But the Empire instead lived through more than two centuries of near-anarchy. During that time the old roman authorities managed to resist in the cities, but they lost control of their hinterland. And the size of the cities inevitably declined.

Ancient cities, even early modern cities, were usually unable to replace their own populations. They made up for have higher mortality than births with immigration fro their hinterland (and sometimes from further away). If the political link between a city and its land is broken, if people cease moving into the city, the city would wither away. The buildings would still be there, but increasingly empty because who would want to move into a place that had ceased being able to extract and consume resources from the countryside, instead of living in smaller communities within that countryside? Who would want to enlist as soldier to the roman administration in the city if the city could no longer collect taxes, pay, and host well-supplied markets?

And perhaps the cultural changes brought over by both a new religion and new rulers (the barbarian officers) did place yet more barrier between the families outside the cities and those within. We know that the "barbarians" had different law systems, possibly more favorable to the common people. We know also that there were many religious persecutions during those centuries: against christians, then later against pagans, between christian sects... And we know that there were, apparently, peasant rebellions. All this severely weakened the city as administrative center, let to id gradually being deserted.
Where invaders were successful in consolidating political power, I'm thinking (for the Iberian Peninsula) of the Visigoth kingdom for a short time, and later the Al-Andaluz after arab conquest in the south that was far from the war zone, the ancient roman cities recovered. But in frontier areas, in areas subject to anarchy for a long time, they disappeared, were entirely abandoned.
I've read that in Italy the crisis did indeed come only with the byzantine failed reconquest and the anarchy it created. As for Gaul, it seems to have been in anarchy for longer under the merovingians and the franks before Charlemagne created a semblance of state, then was hit again by the vikings. Its urban decline also probably started sooner (that in Italy and Iberia) due to all the civil wars fought there.

I don't think this decline was a natural evolution of roman society. It was "natural" only in that it logical resulted from the breakdown of political stability. But that breakdown itself was not natural or preordained. It just happened, a product of many circumstances and accidents of history.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm fuzzy on how widespread the Arianism was among the Goths, but I recall the Visigoths in North Africa having a lot of trouble with ruling a Trinitarian population, and that being a common problem...

 

[Ajidica]

I'm fuzzy on how widespread the Arianism was among the Goths, but I recall the Visigoths in North Africa having a lot of trouble with ruling a Trinitarian population, and that being a common problem...

I'd have to check my copies of Heather and Halsall for information on the Visigoths, but as far as North Africa and the Vandals went, we know very little about them. Aside from what was written by Procopius we have only a handful of letters written by Catholic clergy living in North Africa. However, the level of butthurt those clergy were expressing towards the Vandals would indicate the Vandals were pursuing a conversion program and having some success with it too.

From what I can remember off the top of my head on the Visigoths, Arianism was pretty widespread among the Goths themselves, but it is important to remember there simply weren't that many Visigoths in the kingdom. Intermarriage with the Catholic landowners and urban elite was widespread, and the Visigoths themselves took a pounding from the Franks at the battle of Vouille. IIRC, Heather argued that as the Visigoths never really developed a strong "Visigothic" intelligentsia (to use a completely anachronistic phrase) religious thought and development was largely concentrated among the Catholic landowners and urban elite, so Arian rite churches and priests became less and less common. Some bits still hung around for a long time but by the time of the Muslim Conquests Arianism was virtually dead.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm fuzzy on how widespread the Arianism was among the Goths, but I recall the Visigoths in North Africa having a lot of trouble with ruling a Trinitarian population, and that being a common problem...

I'd have to check my copies of Heather and Halsall for information on the Visigoths, but as far as North Africa and the Vandals went, we know very little about them. Aside from what was written by Procopius we have only a handful of letters written by Catholic clergy living in North Africa. However, the level of butthurt those clergy were expressing towards the Vandals would indicate the Vandals were pursuing a conversion program and having some success with it too.

From what I can remember off the top of my head on the Visigoths, Arianism was pretty widespread among the Goths themselves, but it is important to remember there simply weren't that many Visigoths in the kingdom. Intermarriage with the Catholic landowners and urban elite was widespread, and the Visigoths themselves took a pounding from the Franks at the battle of Vouille. IIRC, Heather argued that as the Visigoths never really developed a strong "Visigothic" intelligentsia (to use a completely anachronistic phrase) religious thought and development was largely concentrated among the Catholic landowners and urban elite, so Arian rite churches and priests became less and less common. Some bits still hung around for a long time but by the time of the Muslim Conquests Arianism was virtually dead.

:EmbarrassedIMixedVisigothsAndVandals: Thanks.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Got another one for Owen -

I'm curious as to whether there was any relationship other than (eventually) living in "Germany" between the indigenes of the late Roman republic/early empire period and the later Goths coming in from parts east. What is known and/or can confidently surmised?

Seems unlikely the Goths wiped out every soul they found in place, or that there were no minglings, genetic or linguistic, but no need to trouble yourself nuking it completely from orbit, as I could only keep up with a moderate summary, and not all the fine details I'm sure you could command...

(I was thinking about a lot of dubious anti-German statements WWI veteran Robert Graves put into the mouths of Germanicus the Elder and Younger in I Claudius, and details in Claudius the God, and wondering if even granting the original name "Hermann" to Arminnius held any water...)

 

[Ajidica]

I'm curious as to whether there was any relationship other than (eventually) living in "Germany" between the indigenes of the late Roman republic/early empire period and the later Goths coming in from parts east. What is known and/or can confidently surmised?

Dealing with pre-modern material cultures in outer Europe is a bottomless well of "could be" and "not sure", but from what can be determined through linguistic and material culture remains, there wasn't any real relationship between "the Goths" and "the Germans". The Goths were located further east, in largely modern-day Poland and their expansion/development was located down the Vistula and Danube toward the Black Sea along the Amber trade routes.

 

[Lexicus]

It sounds like you are coming at this from the wrong angle. It is important to remember that Odoacer deposing Romulus Augustulus wasn't like some sort of light switch went off in Europe and everyone decided to give up brick houses for mud huts. The new "barbarian" kings continued existing comfortably within the Roman world. Odoacer, Clovis, and Theoderic all recognized the authority of the Emperor in Constantinople (although Clovis and Theoderic at times flirted with claiming the title of augustus) and maintained Roman institutions. In other words, exactly what you would expect from a small military aristocracy moving in and setting up shop. There had been some movement away from the cities during the Late Roman period, but noting readily identifiable in the archaeological record. It was only in the late 6th century do we really start to see a collapse of Roman urban society. That can largely be attributed to the wars of Justinian. Italy was devastated (Rome was sacked three times and all but depopulated), there were plagues, and the collapse of Italian urban society had knock-on effects throughout the rest of Western Europe. There was a shift away from urban society following the collapse of the authority of the Western Roman Empire, but it can't be attributed to some sort of preference by "barbarians" for mud huts and bogs.

As I understand it the urban population of the empire more or less never recovered to what it was before the crisis of 3rd century. I think you are right though; the Gothic Wars really depopulated Italy and then the Muslim conquests about a hundred fifty years later put the kibbosh on the Eastern empire's ability to maintain large urban populations using Egypt's grain.

 

[sophie]

Got another one for Owen -

I'm curious as to whether there was any relationship other than (eventually) living in "Germany" between the indigenes of the late Roman republic/early empire period and the later Goths coming in from parts east. What is known and/or can confidently surmised?

Seems unlikely the Goths wiped out every soul they found in place, or that there were no minglings, genetic or linguistic, but no need to trouble yourself nuking it completely from orbit, as I could only keep up with a moderate summary, and not all the fine details I'm sure you could command...

(I was thinking about a lot of dubious anti-German statements WWI veteran Robert Graves put into the mouths of Germanicus the Elder and Younger in I Claudius, and details in Claudius the God, and wondering if even granting the original name "Hermann" to Arminnius held any water...)

I seem to be unable to find my PGmc reference book at the moment, but from what I can gather from other (older) Historical Germanics texts I've looked through, outside a proposed merging of the East Germanic Language group (i.e. Gothic) and Old High German, there doesn't appear to be much of anything linguistically connecting them.

Specifically the similarities noted are these:

in pronouns:
[table=head]Gothic | Old High German | Old Saxon | Old English
is | er | he | he
weis | wir | wi | we
mis | mir | mi | me[/table]

Gothic retains the unvoiced sibilant s from Proto-Indo-European. In Old High German it rhotacized (i.e. moved from s -> r), and this change isn't reflected in the other Western Germanic Languages with which it is commonly associated (e.g. English and Saxon)

and in the preservation of a nasal [n] or [m] before the fricatives [f] or [θ] ([θ] -> [d] in OHG):
[table=head]Gothic | Old High German | Old Saxon | Old English
fimf | fimf | fif | fif
anþar | ander | aðar | oder
uns | uns | us | us[/table]

 

[Traitorfish]

Was there ever a serious prospect of a permanent partition of Germany in 1918 or 1945? That is, an actual attempt to disassemble "Germany" as a political entity, as opposed to the weird "two Germanies" situation that actually emerged out of WW2.

It seems a bit surprising to me that there wasn't an attempt to break up what was still a relatively novel entity, despite Germany and specifically Prussia being assigned so much of blame for the war by the Allies in both 1918 and 1945. It's not as if any principles of national self-determination were being too thoroughly upheld in either case, because Austria was specifically kept separate- not to mention Saarland, East Prussia, etc. And it's not as the Allies were over-concerned with continuity for continuity's sake, given that they went to the bother of legally obliterating Prussia.

So, was this ever actually on the cards?

 

[r16]

anglosaxons do not like the French at all , they wouldn't want to give them an easy border .

 

[Arakhor]

You may have heard of the Entente Cordiale - it's been a thing for over a century.

 

[r16]

yes and ı have utterly long and boring posts on how it was possible due to Germany rising far too fast and America just around the corner and Russia closely behind - so a "land war" involving the French and a much cheaper "sea war" involving the Brits and how all it ended in 1921 with this little thing called RAF placed on alarm to intercept inbound French bombers . It even involves disagreements against us Turks .

 

[Dachs]

Was there ever a serious prospect of a permanent partition of Germany in 1918 or 1945? That is, an actual attempt to disassemble "Germany" as a political entity, as opposed to the weird "two Germanies" situation that actually emerged out of WW2.

It seems a bit surprising to me that there wasn't an attempt to break up what was still a relatively novel entity, despite Germany and specifically Prussia being assigned so much of blame for the war by the Allies in both 1918 and 1945. It's not as if any principles of national self-determination were being too thoroughly upheld in either case, because Austria was specifically kept separate- not to mention Saarland, East Prussia, etc. And it's not as the Allies were over-concerned with continuity for continuity's sake, given that they went to the bother of legally obliterating Prussia.

So, was this ever actually on the cards?

In 1919, Germany was in the middle of a revolution and many observers considered the Soviet regime to be an existential threat to it, if not to Europe as a whole. It was hard enough for the French to push through the 100,000-man limit on the new Germany's military under the circumstances. An Italianized Germany would have been totally incapable of defending itself and would not have met minimum American and British security requirements.

Even relatively minor gestures toward separatism fizzled out. Tardieu and Clemenceau's somewhat halfhearted attempt to annex the Rhineland, or at least detach it from Germany as an independent republic, met with such opposition from the Anglo-Americans that it's hard to imagine the likes of something important like Bavaria getting to be independent.

The Germans, too, were unlikely to participate in particularist governments. The only thing vaguely like separatism that happened in Germany was the brief Bavarian Soviet Republic, which wasn't really a "Bavarian" thing so much as an admittance that Bavaria was the only place where the Communist Party had been able to take control of anything for any amount of time. The other problem was that the most obvious locus of separatist sentiment would have been the actual principalities, but those had just been destroyed in the course of the revolution. Of course, somebody could always have tried to create some new source of regional identity, but in practice that didn't really happen. Particularism was, ironically, associated with the failed Kaiserreich and was therefore at least partially discredited. There was always regional culture, of course - it was, after all, Germany - but not to the point of separatism.

So in 1919 at least, Germany wasn't broken up because nobody seemed that interested in doing so - not even the French - and the Germans weren't about to do it of their own volition.

1945's solution was more of a punt, an admittance that the United Nations had no idea what to do about Germany. They might have tried to break it up (although again I don't think it was particularly likely) but the exigencies of the Cold War intervened.

 

[Gen.Mannerheim]

The only thing vaguely like separatism that happened in Germany was the brief Bavarian Soviet Republic, which wasn't really a "Bavarian" thing so much as an admittance that Bavaria was the only place where the Communist Party had been able to take control of anything for any amount of time.

Did somebody say Bavaria!

 

[dutchfire]

Even relatively minor gestures toward separatism fizzled out. Tardieu and Clemenceau's somewhat halfhearted attempt to annex the Rhineland, or at least detach it from Germany as an independent republic, met with such opposition from the Anglo-Americans that it's hard to imagine the likes of something important like Bavaria getting to be independent.

I always had the impression that Bavaria was mostly inconsequential farmland until the end of WWII.