An argument I'd like to see a little more is one that argues that the Roman Empire actually 'fell' in the Crisis of the Third Century. This seems to account for many of the continuity arguments and catastrophe arguments at the same time (although my understanding is that the economic cataclysm actually happens relatively late--I'm sure this will be addressed in Part III, though): the post-Roman states are largely continuous with the post-Crisis Roman norms, although on a much smaller scale due to the loss of state capacity.
Isn't this addressed pretty early on in this essay?
"But here too, we have to be careful in defining what that governance meant, because the Roman Empire of August, 378 AD was not the Roman Empire of August, 14 AD."
"are we comparing [the decline of the fifth and sixth centuries] to the empire of Hadrian (r. 117-138) or the empire of Valentinian (r. 364-375)? Because most students are generally more familiar with the former (because it is was tends to be get focused on in teaching), there is a tendency to compare 476 directly with Rome under the Nervan-Antonines (96-192) without taking into account the events of the third and early fourth century."
It definitely didn't "fall" at that time in any real sense, but it seems to have started a terminal decline that continued all the way through the Early Middle Ages (with no clearly identifiable "fall" event, albeit the convention of picking 476 CE, being roughly at the midpoint, is arguably as good as any!). By the same standard, one could argue that recovery and renewed growth following this "decline" state began roughly in the Late Middle Ages and continued throughout the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period, essentially setting the stage for the Age of Exploration and Industrial Revolution as truly "disruptive" events from a long-run POV.
While there is no one event, the population collapsed, the security situation deteriorated, material conditions became dramatically worse and literacy rates plunged through the 5th and 6th centuries. Mass death and poverty combined with a collapse governmental capacity is more than just a "terminal decline" in my book.
The fall of Constantinople to Ottoman cannons in 1453 drew a line under the Roman polity, Politeia tōn Rhōmaiōn for good.
You can debate how Roman the empire was at that point, but it was still officially Basileía Rhōmaíōn, known informally as Rhōmania, and the people still called themselves Romaioi.
Ehh-sure, but also no? If we want to have fun with it, one can make a reasonable argument that the Catholic Church and today's nation-state of the Vatican City is the further continuation of the Western Roman Empire to this day. They still even speak Latin!
Historical labels are fun. The arguments mostly so when you're drinking.
Sure, but the Eastern Roman Empire isn't the Roman Empire, then, change my mind. (Said mostly unseriously, of course. Labels are just that.)
I did once take this dumb argument to the end that the Roman Empire never actually ended, it just ended up on an island with a different flag and then unceremoniously transferred itself to North America later. Then I learned Asimov had already done it.
> the Eastern Roman Empire isn't the Roman Empire, then, change my mind.
The Eastern Roman Empire is a historical fiction by western authors who have grown up in nations who had historically chosen to label the remaining territories of the Roman Empire as not the ‘real’ Rome for political purposes, and religious ones. It lent church and state an aura of legitimacy. Necessarily they had to deny that the inconveniently tenacious Rome in the east was really Rome.
Constantine moved his capital in AD 324. The Empire in the west had been declining, so the move east was hardly surprising. At that point, the Empire stretched from Britain to Egypt.
When the emperor Valens lost the battle of Adrianople in 378, along with his army and his life the empire effectively lost control of he situation in the west. But the Empire itself was not lost. At that point Rome still controlled the most populous and richest parts of the empire, including the capital the levant, and Egypt. They would continue to hold off, and hold on, for another thousand years.
Meanwhile Frankish and Gothic kings wanted the title of emperor for themselves to legitimise their rule and increase their standing. So too, the patriarch in Rome wanted to be the preeminence. Inconveniently, a Roman emperor still controlled the Roman capital and most of a wealthy and still powerful Empire. The pretenders needed to keep pretending, not only to the throne, but that the Empire didn’t exist.
Thus began the policy of calling the Roman Empire the ‘Empire of Constantinople’ or the ‘Empire of the East’, or the ‘Empire of the Greeks’. That way, Franks and Goths could claim to be the ‘real’ emperor, even when they only controlled the depopulated and impoverished remains of the west.
...Yes, I know these things. You get that I'm goofing around a little, right? (I don't know how much clearer than an Asimov reference one needs to get there!)
> but it seems to have started a terminal decline that continued all the way through the Early Middle Ages (with no clearly identifiable "fall" event, albeit the convention of picking 476 CE, being roughly at the midpoint, is arguably as good as any!)
This isn't really true. The Roman Empire recovered substantially during the 4th century; economic output and population (at least as well as we can measure them) stabilized at levels below those of the first two centuries C.E., but significantly higher than during the crises of the third century. It wasn't until the late 4th century that things really started going downhill.
I'm not sure it makes sense to argue that a state "falls" when it reorganizes its administrative structure, makes big changes to its currency and fiscal policies, and goes through a period of violent upheaval. By those standards, the United States "fell" in the late 19th and early 20th century with the civil war and the vast expansion of the role of the state.
I suspect this would be considered a valid thesis by future historians if the United States had existed in relatively stable prosperity for hundreds of years beforehand and the result of such changes was that the US reduced in power and wealth to the extent that it sat on the verge of succumbing to foreign invasion by the mid twenty-first century.
(At the other end of the scale there are people willing to argue that the Eastern Roman Empire was just an administrative reorganisation and consolidation so the Empire didn't really fall until 1453. Some people measure terminal declines from the peak, some people won't acknowledge falls until something finally ceases to exist)
> I suspect this would be considered a valid thesis by future historians if the United States had existed in relatively stable prosperity for hundreds of years beforehand and the result of such changes was that the US reduced in power and wealth to the extent that it sat on the verge of succumbing to foreign invasion by the mid twenty-first century.
But this isn't at all what happened with regards to the late Roman Empire. The Western Empire recovered substantially from the crisis of the second century. The administrative changes that were made weren't the root causes of what happened in the late 4th and 5th centuries; they were actually what allowed (most of) the 4th century to be such a success. It's also emphatically not true that the Roman Empire of, say, the 370s, "sat on the verge of succumbing to foreign invasion" (even if you accept the notion of "foreign," which doesn't really apply to Rome's military relationship with many of its "barbarian" neighbors).
