Collapse Studies Perspective

[Erik Andrus]

Is it true that forum rules prohibit the comparison of the Roman experience with other cultures in other times and places? If so I'm sure I don't belong here, that's most of what I'm interested in.

 

I'll let the moderators answer directly, but in general, it is a Roman history forum.

 

I find the subject quite fascinating. Can it not be tailored to an exclusively Roman experience?

 

I've tried to keep my remarks pertinent to the Roman experience. But since we are not Romans, and we look at the past through a lens anyway, we need tools to interpret what we observe. Comparison with other societies' experience is one tool.

 

The thread was intended to discuss Tainter's theory of collapse and how it applies to ancient Rome. This theory applies to all complex societies, including our own, which must inevitably confront diminishing returns on societal investments in complexity. But Rome is one of the best examples in human history, since it is so much more thoroughly documented than, say, Easter Island or the Mayas. That's why I find it so fascinating.

 

I've also tried to define my terms as best I can while being respectful of the amount of space I take up, though maybe I've done a poor job of it. "Complexity" for instance is a huge heading and includes just about everything you or I can observe in our cultures in our daily lives. It also includes just about every aspect of ancient Roman culture that's discussed on this forum (art, politics, military, economics, architecture).

 

So in response to your question, which again, maybe I've done poorly, I have introduced examples from other cultures and periods in the belief that these examples are germane to the topic and might help us better understand the Roman collapse and add to the discussion. If this is disallowed I'll certainly stop doing so.

 

Another issue, maybe not directly spoken, is that this forum is maybe, as I've read elsewhere, a romanophile forum. Maybe some aspects of my argument, for instance the idea that collapse might have left the citizenry better off in certain cases, might not be favorably received by those who strongly identify with Rome and her culture.

Edited December 15, 2011 by Erik Andrus

[Kosmo]

Is it true that forum rules prohibit the comparison of the Roman experience with other cultures in other times and places?

 

The only prohibition is against silly comparisons like Centurion vs. Ninja. We had some issues with analogies between Romans and the Han dynasty, but the main reason why comparisons with other cultures, especially exotic ones, should be made with care is that most people here have a good knowledge of Roman history but not necessary of all cultures in human history. So, for example a comparison made between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the collapse of Mayans would be useless for me as I don't know much about Mayans.

 

Returning at the topic, could we make a summary comparison of the Late Empire and a barbarian kingdom like the Franks under the Merovingian dynasty to see if the social structure was really simplified?

[Erik Andrus]

Is it true that forum rules prohibit the comparison of the Roman experience with other cultures in other times and places?

Returning at the topic, could we make a summary comparison of the Late Empire and a barbarian kingdom like the Franks under the Merovingian dynasty to see if the social structure was really simplified?

 

You could probably do so. The Merovingian dynasty set out to rebuild empire in the ashes of the Roman west. Probably even at that dynasty's peak it didn't exhibit the level of complexity that the late Roman empire had. But also by this point in history collapse had run its course and complexity was beginning more or less anew. There are plenty of reasons why complexity is adopted by human cultures. One of the most seductive is that it allows for military conquest of neighbors and plundering of their accumulated surpluses. This strategy worked great for Rome's expansion.

 

But getting at the heart of your very reasonable question, how is societal complexity best measured? Social stratification is one measure. So too is the level of spending on defense, public works, civil services, art, monumental architecture, and the like as a percentage of overall GDP. And I know this is not conclusive proof, but the architectural legacy left behind by the Merovingians in no way compares to Rome's. So maybe we can infer that the Merovingian rulers were not able to leverage surpluses from their subjects sufficient to build great castles, roads, churches/temples, and aqueducts that compare to the Roman Empire's. Therefore they were probably less complex overall.

 

I would bet that someone on this forum knows a lot more about the Franks and Merovingians than I do and could give a better answer. But I also understand the Merovingians to be a kind of federation of mini-kingdoms (or chiefdoms) rather than a centrally-controlled communication-intensive economic and military empire like Rome's. This is inherently an arrangement of lower social complexity, and runs largely off the loyalty of warriors to their village chief, village chiefs to their regional warlord and so on up, rather than the ability of a distant treasury to pay them in minted coin.

[Erik Andrus]

Sorry, one more thing. Settlement pattern is another thing to measure. You can count the people in the national capital, or the number of people living in cities generally, and that's a great barometer of complexity. Urban settlement can't exist absent complex arrangements to reallocate food from the countryside to the metropolis. The bigger the city the more complexity required to support it, as a general rule. I think most urban centers within the borders of the Merovingian Empire were generally much smaller in population than they were during the late Roman Empire, and this phenomenon of the withering of Roman urban centers has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

 

As one example, Trier (Augusta Trevororium) went from 80,000 in the 4th century to 5,000 at the beginning of the 6th century, partly from the ravages of invasion but also because the former citydwellers of the Roman Empire were dispersing into the countryside in order to subsist. This was I guess one of the largest settlements in the Merovingian Empire?

[caldrail]

Actually all of the factors you listed fall under the heading heading of problems associated with increased complexity.

Well that's the problem. Simply saying it's al because of complexity is a generic over simplification. It remains an observation, not a diagnosis, nor for that matter, any meaningful explanation of what happened. It is, frankly, philosophy posing as history

 

1. You mentioned increased stratification (minority patrician power-brokers versus the immigrant and slave majority). This is a chief aspect of complex societies.

Immigrant and slave dexcendants I said. Which means they replaced the older patrician families and must therefore have introduced different cultural values to some extent, but then, static cultures become prone to ritual behaviour and inability to deal with crises. You would class that as complexity. I would class it as decreasing societal vigour.

 

2. Economic losses due to increasing expenses (on societal complexity) and dwindling supplies of precious metals with which to back up those government debts

Complexity and costs are not necessarily or automatically linked. That's the problem with clever sounding theories. They simplify the situation so much that adherents fail to question.

 

3. Inability to defend the frontier because the military was too expensive for the state to field and spread too thin. The level of military spending needed to pacify an incredibly long frontier became increasingly unaffordable. Costs of complexity again.

Wrong. It wasn't possible for the Romans to adequately enforce their border because it wass too big. Rome had already addressed that problem by adoption of straegies designed to allow for that situation, offset by poorer performance and motivation of the troops involved. The problem at that stage was that their neighbours had learned how to cope with Roman politics and warfare and had become more confident and daring in their approach to siphoning off Roman resources. In other words, your precise model does not represent the situation at all, since assumes a closed system.

 

4. Polarization of communities, I don't understand exactly what this refers to. Maybe you could elaborate.

I could indeed. I will however take the opportunity to point out that your clever theory does not enable your understanding of this part of ancient history. Putting all your eggs in one basket is not a good policy in study.

 

But - since you ask - communities were becoming functionally independent of the state, seeing to their own welfare and defence. Before you immediately mention complexity, it means that these communities were abstaining from their part of your theoretical system and since they had removed themselves from Roman control, they cannot be classed as a more complex part of it

[Erik Andrus]

Well, I can't take any credit for the theory. It's Joseph Tainter's, and is a highly acclaimed one in contemporary cultural anthropology. Myself, I'm no academic, just a farmer, but I find Tainter very compelling and don't understand the rationale of most of your counterarguments, caldrail. I take the view that collapse is such a frequent event in human history that there ought to be identifiable patterns to it, and I don't buy the argument that Western Rome is a one-off, totally unique, and not comparable to other collapses in any way. So maybe we don't have much left to discuss. But maybe some others can offer their views?

 

I would just like to add that the splintering of central control (I thought that was what "polarization" referred to, but wasn't sure) is not in itself a symptom of increasing compexity. It is an attempt of these regions to break away from highly complex societal arrangements. So for instance you had an independent pretender Western Empire comprising Gaul, Spain, and Britain from 260-274, attempting to see to its own welfare and defense, exactly as you said. The mere fact that these regions were able to hold their own against Rome for so long suggests that Rome was powerless to prevent it, and indeed at the time the tenure of emperors was very short and insecure and the amount of silver in the denarius was dropping off a cliff. However the Empire wasn't dead yet, and it reconquered these regions and imposed more severe control upon them under the Dominate.

 

I find it really interesting that the ultimate fate of the western roman provinces was in fact collapse, and not the creation of smaller, stable, independent states maintaining the culture and complexity of Rome. It seems that this latter was something that was attempted (as in the breakaway Gallic Empire) but that it was doomed to fail, being not strong enough to stand head-to-head to a Rome that had its military act back together under Aurelian. The Gallic Empire also never resolved the economic imbalances that led to the crisis of the 3rd century in the first place, so even if Rome had left it alone it would probably have fallen to the barbarians and collapsed anyway.

 

Maybe another way of saying this is that the most interesting thing about the breakaway provinces is that they failed--failed to break completely and permanently from central control, and failed to avert collapse. Collapse occurred anyway.

Edited December 16, 2011 by Erik Andrus