North and South

[Kosmo]

The Roman Republic expanded around the Med in a region that shared, to a large extent, the same climate and ecology.

Wine, wheat and olives were the bases of food production areound the interior sea. The methods, refined by greeks, etruscans and carthaginians were largely the same, using irrigation to produce wheat and other cereals and hilly terrain to produce olives and grapes. The soil was also the same with small dry plains that could be used efficiently with irrigation and arid mountains. Fishing in the sea was also important as was cattle raising in the mountains. Even if the conditions varried considerably between Attica and the Nile Delta, the pattern was the same.

Romans expanded West, South and East around the sea in an area that had the same ecology (beside multiple political, economic, religious and cultural links)

It's no accident that the roman attack on the nearby Gaul was carried in the same time with that against distant Parthia. Syrian ecology was more familiar to romans that the ecology of inner Gaul.

With C. I. Caesar and O. Augustus and finally Claudius and Trajan the roman empire expands from the mediterranean to continental Europe.

Here, in Britain, Gaul, Germany, Pannonian plains, Northern Balkans, Dacia they find a different climate and less developed people. Here the rains were more abundent, and the plains extensive. Forest covered most of the soils from mountain tops to riverbeds. The agriculture in this areas was not sofisticated. Cattle raising could be made extensively, but the fodder for the winter was a serious problem.

The methods that the romans used around the Med could not be used around here. Irrigation was useless in areas where the rains coming from the ocean are abundent. Olives don't grow here and wine struggles.

The romans did their best to increase the productivity of this regions and they succeded to a limited extent especially in mining. This regions remained until the end of roman rule much poorer then those around the Med. Still, this provinces held most of the roman army and the army was the main expanse of the empire. Large amounts of money went to the army for payment, supply, veternas lots, colonies etc. This gradualy increased as the role of the army in the roman state augmented.

The North was poor and the South had to pay for the army and this benefitted the North. The army had to buy products from the North markets with money from the South.

To some extent the empire made a transfer of wealth from South to North.

Still, the roman experience in the North was unsuccesfull. After the Third Century Crisis the urbanisation it's seriously reduced. Barbarian raids take their toll on a population that have been moved by the romans from the safety of the hill forts to the defenceless roadside setllements.

But the biggest weakness of roman power in the North was the inability to promote an advanced agriculture suited for the conditions of temperate ecology. When the empire fell Europe was still largely a forest. The type of sophisticated agriculture romans had in the South was never duplicated to the conditions of the North until the Middle Ages.

If we compare how mediterranean agriculture evolved after the romans we don't see major improvements for a long time. In the North the agriculture improved on a slow, but steady pace until become more varied and productive. The efficient exploatation of the resources of the vast fields would have been great for the empire.

 

The ambitions of some emperors forced Rome in unfamiliar lands that could not be used with good profits and to keep an army there the romans had to transfer resources from the South.

The fall of the West can be seen as cost reduction, but it would have made more sense a fall of the North.

[Pertinax]

The trading economy of the East was the motive power behind the re-location of the heart of the Empire ,the wealth generated outweighed that which could be garnered from "the west".The Eastern Empire flourished to an apogee of wealth, confidence and virility. However, as I mention in a forthcoming review ,the hazard and chance of external events (plague) have (in the end) a greater impact on the fate of nations. The relatively backward north was obliged to experiment with the three field system of agricultural rotation (post 531 CE) given the paucity of agricultural labour caused by the Plague of Justinian , by great good fortune its climate was most suited to the production of hardy "poor weather" staples that responded to this system (which fixed nitrogen more effectively) . The frightful accident of the Plague set the economic scene for the nascent proto-nations of Northern Europe (one might perhaps say wandering tribal proto-nations to a degree), so that which militated against the longevity of the west eventually benefitted the north given that Italy proper was subjected to frequent military upheaval, relative depopulation,and a basic inability to actually function as a viable economic entity. I hadnt realised that the morbidity of the plague episodes ran for 200 years across the whole med and near east, destabilising Byzantium for a while and fatally undermining Sassanid Persia . For this period of time populations within the most developed urban areas were decimated , agriculture and military activity depended on the survival of viable numbers of generational cohorts ..and in many areas this viable level was not attained for several hundred years.

[Kosmo]

I can't wait to see your review because I'm really interested in this topic, but what I was trying to say it's that the productivity of the agriculture in the North was too small to allow the maintenance of a system that was born in the much productive South. The sophistication on Rome requiered a large surplus and that was absent in the poor North.

[Pertinax]

I can't wait to see your review because I'm really interested in this topic, but what I was trying to say it's that the productivity of the agriculture in the North was too small to allow the maintenance of a system that was born in the much productive South. The sophistication on Rome requiered a large surplus and that was absent in the poor North.

I fully agree with your position on this, agriculture being the needful bedrock of a prosperous "state" (howsoever expressed..tribal or ethnic group in a certain region for a resonable period of time) The ability to support and feed developing nodes of urban wealth/political sophistication was more readily achieved by the great yearning for trade even betwixt or via rival Empires.There is also the idea of the limits to Imperial expansion (recognised one might say by Hadrian) , whence attempts to push in to territory that could yield little (Scotland for example) had to be balanced by a need to protect local clients and maintain a semblance of order. The phrase i thought was very useful was the one as regards the Sassanids newly formed islamic enemies " too dangerous to ignore ,but pointless to conquer"...meaning a dispersed non or indeed anti urban population with a low overall density , greatly dispersed physically but capable of co-ordinated action and destructive activity.This phrase could be used to describe dispersed nomads and underdeveloped fringe societies in general, and we might suggest that Trajan pushed into these outer limits and left his successors with unforseen logistical and organisational problems.

[Ursus]

This phrase could be used to describe dispersed nomads and underdeveloped fringe societies in general, and we might suggest that Trajan pushed into these outer limits and left his successors with unforseen logistical and organisational problems.

 

 

Imperial overstretch, to use a term from geopolitics. At some point the cost of maintaining an empire outweighs its benefits. Augustus' warning not to expand the empire was rather sage.

 

I too look forward to your book review, Pertinax.

[docoflove1974]

Ok, big question, as I'm not familiar with this area of history (or, rather, I'm only vaguely knowledgeable): when you say "north" vs "south," do you mean of Italia? or Mediterranean vs. 'northern territories' of Germania, Celtic lands to the northwest (northern Gaul, Hispania, and the now-British Isles, etc.)? I ask because the same 'north v. south' economic disparity is seen in Italy and in many other Mediterranean areas.

[Kosmo]

Doc, I mean mediterranean vs continental. There are no clear cut borders but a gradual change in ecology. For example Spain has largely a mediterranean climate, but conditions differ widely. Carthaginians, romans, arabs, people accustomed with med conditions generally settled the East coast and the South when celts and germans settled the North and West. This was strikingly visible during the Reconquista when arabs made a high yield agriculture and large urban centers with a sophisticated culture in South and East while christians developed an agriculture based on cattle raising in the North and Center. But those christians benefited from medieval advances in continental agriculture.

 

I think that Augustus became wiser from bitter experiance. The imperial overstretch started with Caesar conquest of Gaul and greatly increased by Augustus expansion in Pannonia and Germany. He became wiser after Varus disaster. Claudius and Trajan only continued this tendition.

 

The bid made with this expansion was the roman ability to develop this regions, but after the Third Century Crisis, the North suvived only on subsidies and all pretexts had to be abandoned. When we see the great reduction of cities in the North in the same time with the great growth of Byzantium and the flourishing of Syria it's obvious that the crisis afected diferently various regions.

This Northern regions where not poor in an absolute manner because we see that later they acheived great development, rather the means and purposes of romans were inadequate being born in a different climate.

[docoflove1974]

Doc, I mean mediterranean vs continental. There are no clear cut borders but a gradual change in ecology. For example Spain has largely a mediterranean climate, but conditions differ widely. Carthaginians, romans, arabs, people accustomed with med conditions generally settled the East coast and the South when celts and germans settled the North and West. This was strikingly visible during the Reconquista when arabs made a high yield agriculture and large urban centers with a sophisticated culture in South and East while christians developed an agriculture based on cattle raising in the North and Center. But those christians benefited from medieval advances in continental agriculture.

 

That's what I thought you meant, but for some reason I just wasn't seeing it clearly. Yes, no question that the 'infrastructure' (not just the roads and towns, but the agricultural engineering) that the Romans put in place was neglected to a degree by the Gothic lords, such that when the Moors came into Hispania and could easily implement their advances; I've read some contemporary accounts where monks where almost happy to see the Moors come in and 'revamp' things to 'bring back splendor' which was seen as having been lost under Gothic rule.

[Pertinax]

Thank you for the phrase "Imperial Overstretch" Ursus. There are several useful points made in this thread, the odd "through the looking glass" inversion of them is that the very climatological/demographic factors that lead to overstretch were those favouring the "barren" areas . Oats for example were widely considered a weed, but if you have a cool damp climate and a three field system (because you may not have too many hands to spare) then they suddenly become a useful general field crop within a system of nitrogen efficient arable usage. So if we suggest that Hadrianic frontiers were an attempt to rationalise the overstretch , we find three field agriculture flourishing in the early medieval period in precisely those areas that were marginal to Rome.I have , however , to suggest that the sufficient re-population of the North (with subinfeudated landscapes within feudal nation states) had only reached a efficient level by the time of the Norman and Siculo-Norman "proto states".

[Kosmo]

The Iron Age agriculture was limited, but romans pushed the social structures to a high level including higher population without improving to much the economic base. When the subsides from the South ended the system collapsed. They fall from a high place. When population was back at roman level it was based on a much healthier local system thanks to improved agriculture.

The event that had cut the subsidies was The Third Century Crisis when usurpers and wars intercepted the money flow and the entire roman urban structure in the North fell to pieces having just a partial ulterior recovery before the final fall.