The Roman Empire was weakened by many things: loss of population from plagues, debasement of currency, the idle welfare class etc. But Rome fell because of stupid self-serving decisions: letting in barbarians and then mistreating them, legalizing Christianity and then persecuting "pagans", the romanizing of christianity leading to "Christians" killing Christians over dogma and centralized control, the isolation of the Emperor at Ravenna from the consequences of decisions. More but out of space.
Yeah. That's what the talk was about. But it wasn't "stupid". It was entirely rational from the perspective of Roman faction fighting even if it happened to lead to disaster.
"Polarizing rhetoric" fails as an explanation. Any explanation for the "fall of the Roman Empire" must also explain the survival of the Roman Empire in the east until the fifteenth century.
Disagreed. What we have is a series of highly contingent events. If things had happened differently maybe The Eastern Empire would have collapsed and The Western survived. I agree that it is extremely weird that The Battle of Adrianople, a catastrophe in The East, eventually brought down The West, but weird =/= impossible.
@@alanpennie8013 > series of highly contingent events. J.B.Bury's (1890s?) assessment, and yes, most follow his lead. > If things had happened differently maybe The Eastern Empire would have collapsed and The Western survived. Absolutely true. If Theodosius sent Honorius to rule in the East instead of Arcadius, then it is very likely that they would have collapsed. Honorious is listed in the sources as "feeble-minded", and his **Edict of 418** practically hands over Gaul to the Barbarians that invaded ~10 years earlier. This single act begins the process of legitimizing the Barbarian invaders while acknowledging and accepting the loss of Roman territory. And as more territory gets lost, so does the tax revenue, which, as we know, is required to pay for an adequate army. > he Battle of Adrianople, a catastrophe in The East, eventually brought down The West It is very understandable when you research what was happening in the West from 383 onwards, as it was a mess. Magnus Maximus (usurper) comes over from Britain (probably taking troops), invades Gaul, kills Emperor Gratian, becomes Emperor, but Gratian's brother Valentinian II retained Italy. (General Arbogast, a Frank, controlled Valentinian II as a puppet). Shortly after Maximus invades Italy (387), but gets beat back and killed by Theodosius. (In the view of some historians, his death marked the end of direct imperial presence in Northern Gaul and Britain). General Arbogast, more than likely then killed Valentinian in 392, (hanged under unknown circumstances). Arbogast puts Eugenius on the throne, but then Theodosius elevates his son Honorious as Emperor of the West, and Theodosius invades the West and knocks out Arbogast in 394. By 402, Stilicho is desperate to defend Italy, pulling troops out of Britain and off the Rhine, and by 406/7 the Vandals, Alans, and Suebi crossed over into Gaul, and 10 years later in 418 getting legitimized by Honorius. Sure, Aleric, an Eastern Barbarian General, acts like a Barbarian (as the video explains) and threatens and sacks the city of Rome. But he was only on a quest to get the land and resources that were promised for his people. The rest of the history is a set of dominoes, that knocks down the house cards, which was all that remained of the Western Roman Empire.
@@alanpennie8013 Bullshit. All these new approaches to this issue are mainly for political reasons: liberal historians equate barbarians with immigrants, so they have reshaped the narrative of the fall of Rome. Vid."Movers and Shakers" or historians as "picturesques" as Guy Halsall; really check it out... This is presentism in its worst version: with political agenda.
Individualism weakened the Western Roman empire and then its enemies killed it. Examples: Political instability caused by various rebel emperors; One emperor attacking first at the battle of Adrianople for personal fame; The marriage proposal to Attila the Hun; Payouts to legions upon coming to the throne; Someone threw open the gates to the Goths at the seige of Rome at the expense of everyone else in the city; Few wanted to sacrifice their lives to defeat the barbarians in battle unlike the Roman Italians fighting Hannibal who were glad to join and die if necessary; People in one part of the empire (the east) didn't care what happened to another part of the empire (the west); I'm sure there are more examples. Any collective impulse that remained was directed towards Christianity and not "the Empire". Romans may have been willing to die for Christ but they were not willing to die for the Empire. The Christian collective superceded the Roman collective. The Eastern Romans were fighting Muslims and Zoroastrians which is why they were still willing to die in battle.
The interesting thing about the fall of Rome is that it took a series of failures and invasions to destroy the empire and then Rome itself. Alaric did sack Rome in 410, it recovered and the last Roman emperor was Romulus Augustulus 476 who's seat was in Ravenna and not Rome. This was replaced by Theodoric the Great who ruled Italy from 493-526 who was a Germanic King and ruled the Western part of Mediterranean, and had the Franks as vassals and was a relatively stable economy despite prior contraction of the economy. It was the Germanic version of the Roman Empire and it stood for another 30 years. It had all the trapping of roman rhetoric, religion and culture; but without the empire. Instead ruled by a king. What really killed off Rome was the crisis of succession driven by Theodoric's death, as he had no proper male heir and this crisis was taken advantage of by Justinian I, who led his Italian campaign from 535 - 554 that destroyed the Italian peninsula with over 20 years of war between the Byzantines and the Ostrogoths, you could compare this campaign to the disastrous war in Iraq in 2003 that destroyed that nation 1500 years later. Rome was barely a husk after the Italian Campaign and was transformed into a periphery of Constantinople, with power moving from the West Roman to the East Roman and laying the foundations for the Carolingian Empire to follow in 800 AD.
@ wicksinn... YES...!!! You win the prize! The real fall of the Western Roman Empire was the emergence of Byzantium. It is in fact, the Byzantines who persuaded Thiudareik to invade Rome and to dispose of Audhawakr. (I use the Germanic form of their names because it's more fun). Some of the Goths had settled the Gulf of Salonika in Greece and Emperor Zeno in an attempt to move some of them onward helped Thiudareik to establish himself in Italy. And you're also right about Justinian I and Belisarius. Their war with what was left of the Goths pretty much destroyed Italy. But even before this, the decline of Rome in the face of the growing Constantinople could be seen right after Constantine founded the city. Yes, I know that technically "Byzantium" was the Eastern Roman Empire but truthfully, the two cultures were never the same.
Justinian did not lead the Italian campaign (General Belisarius did). There was no such thing as a Byzantine, so the fighting was between the Romans and the Ostrogoths. Both sides understood Justinian's legions to be the Romans. Iraq has not been destroyed since 2003, and has survived much worse in its long history. A major outbreak of plague, comparable to the more famous outbreak in the 14th century, was probably a contributing factor to the Western Empire's demise or failure to reconstitute, depending on how you see it in this period. This was part of a larger pattern from the third century of new diseases shrinking the population enough to create manpower shortages. Political power had already shifted to the east during the reign of Diocletian, and economic power had shifted even earlier. The fact that no one has been able to recreate for a sustained period of time an empire encompassing approximately the same territory as the Roman Empire, or even just the western half of the Empire, highlights how remarkable Rome's accomplishment really was, and how the true mystery might be not why did Rome fall but how did it sustain its empire for as long as it did.
As far as the Romans were concerned a barbarian would be someone who didn't live in an urban culture and/or couldn't speak Latin they didn't have to look like Conan.
Adrian Bingham stop the Eurocentrism. the word barbarian held the same meaning . Germanics never lived in Civilization. Eurocentric apologist narratives always clean up a messy objective past
In the late Empire, once all subjects had been made citizens (for tax purposes), Barbarian became a geographical descriptor for everyone from outside the borders. And barbarians became essential for the defense of the Empire because Roman citizens were legally bound to join their father's profession (which is how the medieval guild system began), meaning they couldn't volunteer to join the army anymore, unless their father was a soldier, and not all serving soldiers were allowed to marry.
he literally talked about how there are hundreds of interpretations of the fall of rome and the specific influences on his own interpretation etc. there will never be one true factual account, there will always only be interpretations. the fall of rome is simply far too complex to be reduced to a simple cause and effect.
History is to learn from the past so we can better understand the present, and predict what may come in the future. In do so, you may discover something that may "save the world", as your simplistic, juvenile, empty -headed statement suggests. In other words, you're an idiot.
Because it is happening today,and it will follow the similar script unless lesson is learned or, there may be a heavy bloody price paid for temporary delay and transfer towards more Orwelian scenario. Not many governments are dedicated to saving the planet and civilisation at the moment.
This makes the error of so many presentations. Let me first bore you to death with a bunch of stuff you will not really understand the relevance of until later, about things scholars debate about but no one walked into the room concerned about or interested in, and then only later, much later, in the most obtuse way possible, let me get to my new big idea and thesis with the catchy seminar title that you were interested in, when I have lost my audience (figuratively or literally, as in walked out or quit watching the video, and nobody really cares anymore. Some profs and scholars have no clue how to present material, and this is one of the best demonstrations of this I have ever seen.
'Give a dog a bad name.....' hey. Accidental Suicide = Law of Unseen Consequences. That is a political lesson that can drawn from Rome's experience and applied today. The problems and tragedies we see today in the Middle East are the consequences of 100 years of misguided policies from all sides based on expedience and the Law of Unseen Consequences. And it continues. A good lecture (that requires concentration). and well spoken and well presented, thank you. But even so it was one of THE factors in the downfall, and maybe the MAIN factor. But many factors will give the background and setting that makes the 'Accidental Suicide' successful rather than just scaring.
The standard explanation is, the 4th century Roman Empire became so riven with divisions that it became unable to repel outsiders who decided to take by force what they couldn't get through the system. The new wrinkle here, I guess, is that the divide between "Roman" and "barbarian" wasn't that great -- indeed, close to nonexistent -- until about the 4th century. But after "barbarian" started meaning something, "barbarians" found they couldn't work through the system, and so started challenging the system itself.
But the 4th century had the legions defeating every foe that tried to cross the border, and also succeeded in many many offensive actions in foreign territory. At the end of the 4th century, crisis and defeat came.
Pretty much. The trick was to walk the line between Roman and Barbarian in a way to advance your career. You usually came a cropper eventually but occasionally you could keep it up for decades. Aetius and Gaiseric managed it though only the second got to die in bed.
I find Joseph Tainter's "The collapse of complex societies" (1988) more convincing. ua-cam.com/video/H-FIpz53iVA/v-deo.html Increasing the complexity is a problem solving strategy, but is comes at a certain costs - in the end it is a higher energy need to feed and power the whole more complex society. Due to marginal diminishing returns of complexity, this strategy comes to an end, while the reserves for problem resolution are reduced (plagues, famines, invasion from others, internal unrest, etc.).
Maybe it's because I am not a native english speaker or maybe it is because my understanding of this time period is lacking, but I am utterly confused by his talk. In my opinion there are two ways to employ complex language, the first one is to be very precise and to minimise misunderstandings, the second one is to leave a lot of room for interpretation and disguising it by sounding very intellectual. I'm not too proud to admit that the former is often misidentified as the latter by people who are not educated enough about a subject to distinguish them, so that might be the problem. But I get the impression that he is not making stringent arguments at all. What exactly does it mean in practise to be the barbarian? How exactly did his approach differ from tactics used by other generals in previous centuries? Was he really percieved as fundamentally different than other generals before him by his contemporaries, and if so in what way? Were there people trying to implement such a strategy before? Isn't it much more likely that the material conditions and not some way of thinking inside of the empire made such an approach viable? And the most important Question, if there was a gap between rhetorics and political reality how would this make an antagonistic stance towards the empire viable? I can imagine that the political implications to be smeared as a barbarian would diminish under such circumstances, but how exactly does this make actually being an enemy of the state advantageous? One would assume that opposition to actual military and political tactics wouldn't have any significant relation to rhetorics, or am I wrong? He really hasn't presented a single convincing argument (or an argument at all???) why his actions can only be explained by these binary rhetorics. I am opent to the idea that these developments in rhetorics migh have played a minor role, but if you make grand statements like he does you better back it up with serious evidence . Maybe I sound like an idiot to people who have a better understanding of the period for even asking these questions... But that said, I have learned nothing. What a waste of time.
That's a pity because I think he's really on to something. Attacking Alaric as a barbarian was a rhetorical strategy employed against Alaric by the court of Ravenna and it was extremely effective in preventing him from mustering reliable support in Italy. What it could not do was save the city of Rome from a sack. In the end both sides were losers though Alaric's soldiers did eventually emerge as winners.
The lecture begins at around the 29 minute mark. His position is that the military forces which partitioned off the western provinces in the late 4th and early 5th centuries were not barbarian outsiders, but native roman armies engaging in socio-political self-promotion through civil war. He argues that the so called gothic army of Aleric was as native roman as Gallic or Hispanic or African provincial romans, however the imperial administrative bureaucracy broke down somewhat in the Balkans around the period of Fritigern with the result that advancement for roman army officers in the Balkans to better commands in the wider empire was not as seamlessly integrated as it had been decades earlier, and still was in the Gallic, Hispanic, African provinces. This resulted in roman army officers in the Balkans being treated as a second class tier of officers during Aleric's time subordinate in status to armies in the other provinces with limited upward mobility. Aleric the Balkan roman, frustrated at being denied advancement in the wider empire, engages in civil war to secure his advancement within his native roman empire. He then sets the precedent for civil war as a tool for ambitious roman military officers to push for socio-political advancement. Where members of the senatorial class once mentioned their blue blood italic ancestors and led campaigns beyond the frontier to propel them into senior political positions, roman military officers now capitulated to the ethnic slurs being thrown around in public discourse and led campaigns within the body of the empire to power themselves upward into the political establishment. Over several decades this resulted in imperium moving from a central emporer to regional generals, giving rise to the successor states. This wasn't the age of the barracks emporers, it was the age of the anti-imperial roman generals, the anti-establishment fake "outsiders".
In my opinion it was the privatisation of the military (The introduction of the magister militum) together with a bad economical situation that eventually caused a desintegration of the government. Local warlords with private armies or warrior clans roamed through Europe (aka the "migration" period) and Rome eventually failed to keep all of them in check.
I didn't think this was "new". It has been widely known that the "barbarians" were actually Arian christians, and a lot were Romans and, or had fought together. The sacking of Rome includes agreements with the Nicean christians about what would be destroyed and who would not be killed, and where. Good to see some coverage, of this subject that is uncomfortable for christians.
Very true. In some ways the Arianism of the barbarians was just an historical accident but it did suit people who wanted to alternate between identifying as Roman and Barbarian, being Christianity "but not as we know it".
Gen Alleric sounds like he might have some parallels with George Washington in their being stuck as second class officers in the Imperial officer corps.
" . . . an equestrian managerial attitude working on behalf of a new totalizing discourse " (around or about 27:00) ahh yes, Fascism in reverse, just change "working on behalf of" to "using" and the medium becomes the message.
(1) 17:55 -- Rhetoric doesn't determine policy, policy determines rhetoric. (2) 18:02 -- The Roman empire didn't collapse within 30 years; it had been declining for almost 2 centuries. (3) 19:04 -- The Roman empire was not stable during the 4th century. Rebellions, invasions, wars between Roman armies were commonplace and had been throughout the previous century. (4) 19:10 -- The Empire was destined to fail. It was too big, too complicated, and too expensive to maintain and defend. Hence the reforms of Aurelian and Diocletian, including Diocletian's tetrarchy and splitting of the empire. The Roman generals had learned that they could become emperor by force, and that created almost perpetual warfare inside the empire -- in addition to the routine rebellions and barbarian incursions. The Antonine plague also didn't help. Commerce began to decline, so the emperors struggled ever more desperately to raise money in order to sustain an empire that was too big for the resources that were available. (Hence Caracalla made all freemen Roman citizens -- in order to render them subject to Roman taxation. Diocletian tried to fix prices.) (5) 36:00 -- The image is that of general Stilicho and his wife and son. His father had been a Vandal serving in the Roman army. The real question is not "Why did the Roman empire fall?" but "Why did it last so long?" -- especially considering the perpetual civil wars, rebellions, invasions, assassinations, corruption, incompetence, cruelty, etc. It was very badly run and badly organized -- they just muddled through for centuries. Only the Greek Polybius seems to have given any substantial thought to how it was organized, and his analysis was faulty.
@@alanpennie8013 Care to explain why it's "nonsense"? I found the original comment to be quite well argued. I think at the very least the burden is on you to provide a counter argument to some of these points.
Someone who describes the foundation of all Western civilization as "badly run and badly organized" has no idea what they are talking about. Tangibly, the eastern portion of the empire lived on for another thousand years, and yet it completely baffles you how the Roman empire "lasted so long". What a fraud. I can't believe people pay you to fill soft minds with this ignorant trash.
@@nottiredofwinning3736 -- You're completely ignoring the long record of assassinations in the Western part of the Empire (Caligula, possibly Claudius, Nero, Galba, ... ) and in the Eastern part (Constans II, Justinian II, Leo V, Michael III, ... ). There were incessant revolts. (Wikipedia has a partial list of them: List of Roman civil wars and revolts) The Eastern Empire may have outlasted the Western Empire by a thousand years, but largely as a rump state -- the Arab Muslims conquered much of it and the Turks conquered the rest. There was the hyperinflation of the third century A.D. There may have been a few hours of stability during its existence, but otherwise it's survival was the product of civil servants and local officials who kept their governments alive despite the chaos.
Didn't Theodoric pack Roman emperor's symbols of power (crown, mantle, scepter and orb) and send them to the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople?
Some thoughts, FWTW: The Western Empire continued to function in much the same way after Romulus Augustulus (?) was deposed by the Ostrogoths in the 5th century, thanks to the remnants of that deeply entrenched professional bureaucracy, thanks to the commercial and personal ties that continued to exist. And, Justinian almost put the Western Empire back together in the late 6th century, reconquering North Africa, Italy, etc. The Western Empire died, according to the great historian Henri Pirenne, when its most important territories were conquered by the Muslims, beginning in the 7th century, and trade and contact largely came to an end.
One sentence summary: Rome fell because they did not use sufficiently politically correct language, and by using politically incorrect language they thought about issues in the wrong way and made big mistakes. Hats off for the new theory, but it seems suspiciously tailored to please peers at the university faculty meeting.
This comment should be pinned at the top to save people wasting their time on this superficial lecture that hides behind florid language and avoids engaging in any of the concrete problems faced by the late empire.
Brian S R - exactly, the "broken" language merely exposed the broken system. I love using fancy words as much as the next guy, but politeness doesn't override reality.
His use of the word rhetorical so often is quite distracting (honestly) as a man from England/UK why he couldn't use other synonyms is very striking. Thanks 🇺🇲😊🇬🇧
A very interesting take on the issue that I had not thought of before. Also quite relevant given current political trends and domestic unrest resulting from polarizing rhetoric.
In the US: Uniformity through Ivy League Nonsense is in vogue on all levels!! Not just Law in subversion of Traditional US Constitutional principles but culturally on politically correct allowable expressions. Couple that with the sexual decadence of modern pop cultural Gender bending(also present in Rome)!! You generate a cultural mess!! Love this mans use of political "Binary Rhetoric!!" concept. In US culture it has run amok!! Political forces seek to exploit the "binary" to their advantage.
so just to sum up: The Roman / Barbarian paradigm as a cause of the Empire's collapse is analogous to the Dinosaur / Bird paradigm as a cause for their extinction... the Roman polity incorporated barbarian ethnicities into its administrative and political structure and simply flew away...
Roman empire fell for the same reasons all empires fall. They become more and more cruel and eventually fall under the increasing weight of their evil. That is what it is at a high level. These historians work on the detail. But alas how wrong they are much of the time.
Very intriguing thesis, but at the same time I have the impression that there are no big news in there. He still says that the collapse was caused by the barbarians, and still does not explain (at least not clearly enough to me) WHY the empire was so weak not to be able to hold them back. But probably that was due to time constraints.
***** The problem with his thesis is that it is heavily based on the fact/assumption that the empire could not accomodate the barbarians that wanted to be part of it -- that's what he says happened to Alaric --, meaning that the empire was already in bad shape, economically speaking. All his idea of totalizing rhetoric is thus merely a surface manifestation of much deeper problems. It is not a cause of the fall of the empire, but merely a background circumstance that facilitated this fall to be the way it was.
tchuncly dude I will try to explain why the empire was so weak at that time.. In terms of military, Rome was still strong, but, in terms of social issues, there were many of them . Rome grew thanks to conquest and thanks to the memory of morality and pride of ANCIENT ROME (Rome was already more than a thousand years old), the idea of the ancient pride and ROMANITY was the real engine of conquests. When the idea of Rome was substituted by Christianity, the mechanism of pride and glory badly finished. Many roman historians wrote about the decadence of Rome and the loss of ancient moral and austerity. The Empire was to rich and decadent to give the good example to the Romans, they were dominated by emperors from across the Empire who didn't care a lot about morality and social issues, they only were interested in their own power. Romans had lost their symbol... before it was ROME, then was the Emperor, Christ, God etc.
He only answers half the question though. Why wasn't the Roman system worth preserving? One could only derive benefit from changing the way power was established if the underlying structure made the Empire not worth preserving. So I agree with you that the central question still remains. Why was the structure in such a state that it was cast aside?
I ll share with you. REPEATED ISLAMIC RAIDS AND FROM N. AFRICA islamic raids and under-handed Jewish SPIES working For ARAB POWER against ROME. Against The HOLY ROMAN CHRISTIAN EMPIRE. now we see what happened. But then - could they see ?
@@sancho6059 I find the explanation that Christianity substituting the morality and pride of Rome being the cause of the fall highly dubious. The Empire itself almost collapsed during the third century under the pressure of civil wars and external invasions .The western Empires fall was an almost exact repeat. Only this time the Germanic kingdoms who were nothing but opportunistic thugs got lucky and the empires leadership dropped the ball in a spectacular fashion. In short its luck had run out and the cracks present in the roman system from the very beginning were exposed.
The dictionary definition of a "Pagan" is a person who dwells in the Forest. This fact presented to you by Prof. Alan M. Dobriansky Ph.D., Ph.D., Crown Prince of Dobrigia, the last sovereign Pagan Nation to be invaded by Pope Innocent 1st now the Dobrusia province of Romania. Dobrigia was founded in 400BC by my ancestor General Dobrius of Mesopotamia leader of King Nebecanessar 2nd's Military. And YES we are both Atheists & Forest-dwellers to this very day!
The language of Dobrigia has been Russian since the founding of the Empire of Greater Scythia & the induction of Dobrigia as Scythia the Lesser according to Greek Historian Strabo. My grandfather the late King John of Dobrigia spoke 7 different languages including Russian, Ukrainian. Polish, German, French, Austrian, & English.
The Alans, a fierce gang of Barbarian horsemen occupied all the land between the Black Sea & the Caspian Sea, from the southern border of Greater Scythia to the northern border of Persia & was a major force in the combined militia comprised of the Visigoths, Vandals, & the Alans who stopped the northeast progression of the Roman Empire into Greater Scythia. The final battle which the Romans lost marked a line from the Arctic Sea to the center of the Black Sea.
I think he should better explain or give examples of the whole "totalizing rhetoric" thing as I'm kinda still fuzzy as to exactly what point he was trying to make or central idea. I mean I think I get the jist of what he was saying but yeah...he should probably "dumb it down" a tish...LOL! That said I still think he's not fully appreciating the mass migratory changes that were going on that even the most open and adaptive society would not have possibly sustained.
Those who succeeded in Fourth Century politics were those who could present themselves as True Romans and their opponents as heretical barbarians. You did also need an army which could win battles but the guys with the swords preferred to follow True Romans (though less so in The Fifth Century than in The Fourth).
De omnibus dubitandum est is a book written by Søren Kierkegaard (about the pseudonym Johannes Climacus), which translates to "everything must be doubted". It was published posthumously.[1] The book portrays the existential consequences of assuming Cartesian doubt, the method of modern philosophy, to its last consequences. The themes portrayed by this book are followed in the subsequent books written by Kierkegaard under the name of Climacus: Philosophical Fragments and its Concluding Unscientific Postscript. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_omnibus_dubitandum_est de omnibus dubitandum Phrase Meaning: be suspicious of everything / doubt everything Comment Attributed to the French philosopher René Descartes. It was also Karl Marx's favorite motto and a title of one of Søren Kierkegaard's works, namely, De Omnibus Dubitandum Est. If this is an illness I'm sure I have it, terminally.
It wasn’t the burning cities or the hoards of murderous tribes sacking and looting the empire with impunity which were the problem. It was the totalising rhetoric which really put the nail in the coffin.
After that nice initial review of various historians' theories of the reasons behind the "fall of Rome" as reflections of trends in the contemporary world of the historians themselves, we are given yet another example of such theorizing in this new "totalizing rhetoric" account of what drove Rome's decline. Is it too much to point out that recent decades have shown unusual polarization of political opinions and the rhetoric through which they express themselves in the West? And having listened to this new theory, I find it tenuous in the extreme. The background given by Michael Kulikowsky himself of what makes his "totalizing rhetoric" account work is after all the growth of the Roman state, ever expanding bureaucracy, and foreign war adventures under the Emperors, factors which bring us back to far more tangible circumstances promoting decline than a cleverly worked out scheme of how Rome tripped over its own "totalizing rhetoric", given the example of Alaric.
My simple view is that the Roman empire got too big and was unable to sustain the Pax Romana or protect its acquired wealth and civilisation for that reason. Gibbon , a preVictorian Christian, said it fell apart because of moral decline."The centre cannot hold: the falcon cannot hear the falconer"
Besides offering a single-reason, contemporary-parallels theory, the speaker fails to show any proof that speech shapes action or reality. If he suggests that for a century "barbarian" was a mere label, why did it not shape the reality of just one generation, about 15-20 years after it appeared? Why did it stay recognized as rethoric term stably over generations, and only a century later it became a real distinction? The answer is, of course, the all other reality that sadly is not mentioned at all. Although, was interesting to know that barbarians were part of the army.
You don't know your Roman history. Alaric could convincingly pose as a barbarian because "The Goths" had been only partially Romanised in the aftermath of the disaster at Adrianople. They served as auxiliaries rather than regular Roman soldiers. This is what made Alaric different from (say) Arbogast.
If you're talking about the agri deserti then Heather (2005) pp. 110-115 imho convincingly argues the opposite, citing Tchalenko's discoveries and work stemming from them.
More than likely the Roman empire dwindled due to a climatic shift that occurred after 2 very large volcanic eruptions about 250AD. Ksudak in the Kamchatka peninsular in northern Russia and Taupo in New Zealand. Both were Krakatoa sized events. Rome, it is said, did not fall until 470AD which was just after another massive eruption, Ilopango in central America, in 450 AD. which left an 11km wide caldera. If too much pressure is put on the ability to grow food then the political structure that is reliant on it will crumble.
You can see this factor in to today's politics. Making being a proud American or being a strong male seem like its a bad thing. Being the "outsider" going against the "established patriarchy" or "white privilege"and being multi-cultural is so cool is a factor in politics today. So they are actively playing "The Barbarian" in order to get ahead. Thank goodness those that hold true to the foundations of the Republic are fighting back. "The Barbarians" were the ones getting ahead by destroying Rome's core values that made it strong to begin with, as can be seen in today's politics.
Indeed. At some point in time those same white males serving in the army, police forces and such will start to wonder why should they defend such a State. Why not just form militias and defend those who love them or at least respect them. And the same goes to the "current year barbarians" running around.
ok. a thesis. Adjusting the taxonomic category of an event and assuming, that adjustment will create a new framework for coping with the event, rather than merely allow for rationalization, is to mistake representation for reality. Solipsistic reductionism is evidence of existence in a cultural bubble, and will hardly stand the cruel blow of a gentle zephyr let alone the violent shock of cold water. Relativize this!
Eight years to come up with an explanation for the fall that makes no mention of economics? It was all down to words? I hope this postmodernist claptrap helped advance his career because it did not advance anyone's understanding of the subject matter.
What is Barbarian word? Ancient Vedic name from Indus v.and Sanskrt language.bara bara question question.Nomad culture who quest of foods life resorts when come on new geography.
The Western Roman Empire declined collapsed in the 4th/5th Century because the Roman Army began losing wars to its client states or Barbarians. Reasons Gibbon gave a classic formulation of reasons why the Fall happened. He began an ongoing controversy by attributing a significant role to Christianity in the Western Roman Empire's fall, which is no longer accepted by some modern Roman historians.[8] However, he did give great weight to other causes of internal decline as well and to the attacks from outside the Empire. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigour of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians. - Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, "General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West", Chapter 38 Alexander Demandt enumerated 210 different theories on why Rome fell, and new ideas have emerged since.[9][10] Historians still try to analyze the reasons for loss of political control over a vast territory (and, as a subsidiary theme, the reasons for the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire). Comparison has also been made with China after the end of the Han dynasty, which re-established unity under the Sui dynasty while the Mediterranean world remained politically disunited. Harper identifies a Roman climatic optimum from about 200 BCE to 150 CE, when lands around the Mediterranean were generally warm and well-watered. From 150 to 450, the climate entered a transitional period, in which taxes were less easy to collect and bore more heavily on the working population. After about 450, the climate worsened further in the Late Antique Little Ice Age.[11] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire Other fundamental problems contributed to the fall. In the economically ailing west, a decrease in agricultural production led to higher food prices. The western half of the empire had a large trade deficit with the eastern half. The west purchased luxury goods from the east but had nothing to offer in exchange. To make up for the lack of money, the government began producing more coins with less silver content. This led to inflation. Finally, piracy and attacks from Germanic tribes disrupted the flow of trade, especially in the west.
Mr Kulikowski askews previous theories about the Fall of the Rome as reflections of modern contemporary political discourse - right up to and including Peter Heather and Bryan Ward-Perkins’ recent works. But it strikes me that his own thesis of ‘totalising rhetoric’ is exactly the same thing. ‘Totalising rhetoric’ is a nice phrase; a very apt description of today’s hyperbolic political discourse. It also represents a ‘retreat’ to the literary sources after the archaeology-based thesis of Ward-Perkins, in particular. To my mind, MacMullen's 'Corruption' and Ward-Perkins' Fall of Rome (both cited in this video) are still the best guides. I would also recommend Burn's 'Barbarians within the Gates of Rome'. That said, any new theory about the period is cool.
Fascinating hypothesis and crystal clear analysis. But was this the best lecture room and setting at W&L Uni at the time? Cramped, badly lit. Poor camera skills. And for the speaker: could have covered double the material if he would not doggedly insist to say everything twice all the time...
Oh the 'how Rome fell' industry, like some zombie franchise always worth tweaking. Fact is, & this is for nothing, the Rhine-Danube frontier is simply impossible to hold as a static border as soon as the garrison eventually weakens & the barbars consolidate & amalgamate, & it's much easier to be a looting barbar than a Roman tradesman trying to meet his next tax return.
barbarians paid MORE TAX had LESS RIGHTS. roman law brought UNIFIED CIVIL CODE TO WEST. Not to mention NUMEROUS INVENTIONS Like a bath with pipes in SECOND CENTURY. what are you smoking bud
rhetoric killed the empire. well can't complain about you trying to think outside the box at least. I think you are way off in your conclusions though. Keep reading, keep studying, keep thinking, and keep talking.
It is funny that he says that the explanation for Roams fall has changed, depending on the prevailing political situation . And then you start talking about the need for non-binary ways to look at the situation. lol. and it was the binary thinking that got it all wrong.
I really struggled with this. I consider myself reasonably educated and literate, yet found his presentation unnecessarily ‘wordy’. I love big words and have no problem stopping a video and learning a new word. I welcome it! I enjoy it! But something was a little ‘off’ for me with Mr Kulikowski. I hate to be cruel, not even sure if it was just my imagination... but it felt like he was being intentionally unaccessible to make himself sound more impressive. I feel bad saying that, but after really enjoying other talks and presentations on UA-cam by equally esteemed professors and lecturers... this one felt overly complicated and not very well paced or edited.
It's informal. I would expect a more professional stage than what's been provided, as well as the podium's placement being well visible or altogether offstage. That said, I tend to consume these as a dialogue a-la the writings of Seneca et. al. rather than as a traditional lecture. I listen through, make mental notes of the framework of what's being discussed then return at a later time to rewatch and make detailed fishtail notes. That may be helpful for you and other people who feel the same. And don't feel uneducated or illiterate if the actual findings are difficult to grasp (if that is the ultimate reason you struggled). A tiny gap in your recall of related information from your youth or other experiences with this topic can cause total confusion as easily as no pre-existing knowledge of this topic. Try scanning a summary of the Roman Empire's collapse and significant events, and then come back to this presentation. You may honestly just have limited recall from being preoccupied by other, completely unrelated subjects recently.
@@harmonyqueue That's right. It made perfect sense to me because I already know a lot about the topic. But you need to know a lot already about later Roman rhetoric, the Battle of Adrianople, and the reign of Theodosius The Great, to get much out of this.
This would have been better without the editorializing and hyperbole. When someone's political leanings are so shoehorned into an historical presentation, the audience can't invest the same trust.
Why no mention of the Getica by Jordanes...? The Gothic chronicler mentioned that the Goths were the ancient Getae. I find it funny that professional historians avoid that topic like the plague. Also, Alareik was from Dobrogea in Romania. They all just sit there like it's hard to say "Romania". ...LOL... You can do it... Say it now...! R O M A N I A
One thing for sure America saved him from a language change, after Britains collapse from world domination or empirism. Is this the same thing Britain tried and failed to do.
The collapse of Rome is one of the most complex civilizational collapse. It is remarkable that in his book "Collapse", Jared Diamond chose to skip that most important collapse. I am not surprised. It is a hard on to encapsulate in a nutshell explanation. I find Prof. Kulikowski idea intriguing: it is also very contemporary. Our failure to integrate immigrants (Muslims), may bring our downfall or a horrible civil war precisely because we will be in a "us vs them" situation.
What a load of postmodernist nonsense. This sounds more like Derrida or Foucault than like well thought out history. The Senatorial class had been displaced already during the Julio-Claudian period, when there was much grousing about the importance of favored freemen in the imperial household. Nor was it unusual to have a series of emperors from the same part of the Roman Empire long before the period we can associate with "the fall". You can find plenty of complaints about imperial administration at the very beginning of the Empire in histories we have that were almost universally written by people from the senatorial class. While it's certainly true that the level of bureaucracy in the empire increased in the late period (especially under Dioletian), why think that the negative effect on this is some ethereal "totalizing rhetoric" as opposed to a great increase in the tax rate and economic meddling (price fixing, hereditary jobs) at a time when imperial population was stagnant or even in decline? People ceased to care what the central government wanted because the central government was too expensive and not competent at protecting the people it was taxing. At the same time emperors could not rely on the loyalty of their own troops at any time, and just in times of great stress or perceived imperial failure as before. The fall had concrete causes. Did rhetoric have some role in this? Perhaps. But the idea that regional magnates became independent because they were offended by imperial rhetoric and not because the imperial authority had already collapsed is silly. It's true that Alaric was not brought into the Roman Army as Arminius had been centuries earlier is true, but it ignores the huge fact that the Visigoths were not conquered by Rome in their home territory - they migrated en-mass into the Empire to escape the Huns, and the Empire could not properly deal with them. The Empire was too weak to keep the Visigoths out, too poor to pay them properly, and (contrary to Kulikowski's focus on the empire becoming more "universal") too disunited to treat Alaric and his tribe in a consistent manner.
ON METHOD. It's interesting to analyse the rhetorics of stigmatization in a society, but dealing with the fall of Rome, one cannot ignore the genesis of the texts we have inherited. They all came from the upper classes. They, by definition, explained the weaknesses of the Empire with the axiom that it was eternal and basically better than all alternatives. Why? Because that reinforced the ruling strata's own privileged position within society. And thus all crises inevitably had to "stem" from "incomplete Romanisation". So all the facts they noted were picked in order to give antiexplanations. Working with such an empirical base, we have a choice: 1. Repick some of the facts from the manuscripts to fit into a paradigm that is the reverse of the authors' mindset . Which means, understand the decay of Rome AND accept that our own current system is mortal. Which is uncomfortable. 2. Or to accept that our current system is the best of all possible worlds AND that Rome's fall was accidental. A mistake of Nature or God. Which is contrafactual. It DID fall. Deal with it, if you can. Unsurprisingly, the second class of theories dominates and they compete in the ways they throw overboard the basics of scientific analysis, while simulating the trappings and trefilia of science. ON SUBSTANCE. So what is the unwritten history of Rome? Very simple. As with all organisms, the very source of it's own growth ultimately killed it. Rome's economy was based upon slavery. By expanding, it exhausted the usual source of slaves - alien cities and tribes. So it gradually turned on it's own free plebeians. Thus it consumed the main pillar of social cohesion. The vast majority lost interest in reinforcing or protecting the system. The power structure became vulnerable to invasions, rebellions, or a mixture of both. Rome could not conscript really loyal soldiers from the underclass it's own society was creating. It had nothing to offer to them except bribes. And the army soon realised that it's better to conquer the treasury itself, instead of faraway, rarely populated areas. Does this remind you of something familiar?
1. If you need more slaves, you can always breed them from existing stock. 2. Your theory does not explain the survival of the Eastern Empire. Something about the West had to make it more vulnerable than the East.
The past is constant. Living humans change during their life. Consequently when someone says their views have changed about Rome’s fall it is NOT based on fact - it’s based on the claimant’s changing of perception with age. In sum, this guy doesn’t know any more than other schmucks with the title “historian”. The lessons for Americans is: Rome DID FALL. Some factors present preceding its fall have appeared in our society over the past few decades. What will do to remedy them, while we still have the power to do it? My observation after being alive for 59 years is, there is little interest in changing how we manage our barbarian invasion. That by itself has the power to destroy us - soon. Remember, in a democratic based government, when 51% agree that barbarians should be allowed to invade at will, you don’t have a country anymore - it’s GAME OVER. OTOH we are living in the best times for humans ever. Safety, commerce, wars, disease, technology, life expectancy - all these make a human’s life in 2019 infinitely better than those who preceded us. I would hate future generations to read their history and wonder how such an advanced population let it get away from them when all the signs were present before them.
This is how you get ahead in Academic life - you have to push a conjecture out to the max to stand out. Even just to get a higher degree, you have to research something new, or from a new angle, or you have to come up with a new argument about an old question.
At 22:34 the speaker states that Caracalla granted citizenship to almost of of Rome's inhabitants. This is wrong by half. Think about it. Think real hard. It's almost like half the population of the world is invisible. Let's be accurate.
a prophet no few knew of has come once again a few years later his roman diagnosis is displayed by the west oh the irony we truly most be rome falling again
this narrative also mirrors contemporary thinking? The rethoric of the West once created social cohesion during the Cold War. In the context of terrorism, the universal binary of good and evil dissociate elements of opposition to state rule. Integration of diverse cultural elements and interests becomes less feasible thus weakening the state.
Ok, so the once flexible roman republican hegemony, once pretty like the European colonial powers, became more and more despotic, buerucratic, uncompromising. Romanizing the once diverse empire. That could finally lead to the (partial) collapse of the whole Mediterranean antiquity, but on the other hand that's why almost whole of Western Europe has this kind of Roman identity now. That's why Europe is a kind of unity.
@ John... I'm not an American but I've noticed the exact same thing about America. The left-wing radicals became the "cultural normal" sometime during the 1990s. Now we're seeing the emergence of right-wing radicals with the alt-right pushing back against these ideals. The consequence being the complete polarization of American society.
This is quite an excellent presentation. Thank you for making it available!
I have read a never ending multitude of explanations as to Rome's decline and fall within UA-cam, and I must say yours's is by far the best.
! Good info - talk about the ISLAMIC invasion and how it was pushed out of Europe.
Stuart Donnelly the vandals conquered North Africa after stilichos death
I think you’re thinking of aetius m8
The Roman Empire was weakened by many things: loss of population from plagues, debasement of currency, the idle welfare class etc. But Rome fell because of stupid self-serving decisions: letting in barbarians and then mistreating them, legalizing Christianity and then persecuting "pagans", the romanizing of christianity leading to "Christians" killing Christians over dogma and centralized control, the isolation of the Emperor at Ravenna from the consequences of decisions. More but out of space.
Yeah.
That's what the talk was about.
But it wasn't "stupid".
It was entirely rational from the perspective of Roman faction fighting even if it happened to lead to disaster.
"Polarizing rhetoric" fails as an explanation. Any explanation for the "fall of the Roman Empire" must also explain the survival of the Roman Empire in the east until the fifteenth century.
@Stuart Donnelly Also, the Vandals were a menace in the Mediterranean whenever they didn't have a Roman friendly ruler in place.
Disagreed.
What we have is a series of highly contingent events.
If things had happened differently maybe The Eastern Empire would have collapsed and The Western survived.
I agree that it is extremely weird that The Battle of Adrianople, a catastrophe in The East, eventually brought down The West, but weird =/= impossible.
@@alanpennie8013 > series of highly contingent events. J.B.Bury's (1890s?) assessment, and yes, most follow his lead.
> If things had happened differently maybe The Eastern Empire would have collapsed and The Western survived.
Absolutely true. If Theodosius sent Honorius to rule in the East instead of Arcadius, then it is very likely that they would have collapsed. Honorious is listed in the sources as "feeble-minded", and his **Edict of 418** practically hands over Gaul to the Barbarians that invaded ~10 years earlier. This single act begins the process of legitimizing the Barbarian invaders while acknowledging and accepting the loss of Roman territory. And as more territory gets lost, so does the tax revenue, which, as we know, is required to pay for an adequate army.
> he Battle of Adrianople, a catastrophe in The East, eventually brought down The West
It is very understandable when you research what was happening in the West from 383 onwards, as it was a mess. Magnus Maximus (usurper) comes over from Britain (probably taking troops), invades Gaul, kills Emperor Gratian, becomes Emperor, but Gratian's brother Valentinian II retained Italy. (General Arbogast, a Frank, controlled Valentinian II as a puppet). Shortly after Maximus invades Italy (387), but gets beat back and killed by Theodosius. (In the view of some historians, his death marked the end of direct imperial presence in Northern Gaul and Britain). General Arbogast, more than likely then killed Valentinian in 392, (hanged under unknown circumstances). Arbogast puts Eugenius on the throne, but then Theodosius elevates his son Honorious as Emperor of the West, and Theodosius invades the West and knocks out Arbogast in 394.
By 402, Stilicho is desperate to defend Italy, pulling troops out of Britain and off the Rhine, and by 406/7 the Vandals, Alans, and Suebi crossed over into Gaul, and 10 years later in 418 getting legitimized by Honorius. Sure, Aleric, an Eastern Barbarian General, acts like a Barbarian (as the video explains) and threatens and sacks the city of Rome. But he was only on a quest to get the land and resources that were promised for his people. The rest of the history is a set of dominoes, that knocks down the house cards, which was all that remained of the Western Roman Empire.
@@alanpennie8013 Bullshit. All these new approaches to this issue are mainly for political reasons: liberal historians equate barbarians with immigrants, so they have reshaped the narrative of the fall of Rome.
Vid."Movers and Shakers" or historians as "picturesques" as Guy Halsall; really check it out...
This is presentism in its worst version: with political agenda.
Individualism weakened the Western Roman empire and then its enemies killed it.
Examples: Political instability caused by various rebel emperors; One emperor attacking first at the battle of Adrianople for personal fame; The marriage proposal to Attila the Hun; Payouts to legions upon coming to the throne; Someone threw open the gates to the Goths at the seige of Rome at the expense of everyone else in the city; Few wanted to sacrifice their lives to defeat the barbarians in battle unlike the Roman Italians fighting Hannibal who were glad to join and die if necessary; People in one part of the empire (the east) didn't care what happened to another part of the empire (the west); I'm sure there are more examples.
Any collective impulse that remained was directed towards Christianity and not "the Empire". Romans may have been willing to die for Christ but they were not willing to die for the Empire. The Christian collective superceded the Roman collective. The Eastern Romans were fighting Muslims and Zoroastrians which is why they were still willing to die in battle.
hey he was my western civ professor at the 'University of Tennessee!
The interesting thing about the fall of Rome is that it took a series of failures and invasions to destroy the empire and then Rome itself. Alaric did sack Rome in 410, it recovered and the last Roman emperor was Romulus Augustulus 476 who's seat was in Ravenna and not Rome. This was replaced by Theodoric the Great who ruled Italy from 493-526 who was a Germanic King and ruled the Western part of Mediterranean, and had the Franks as vassals and was a relatively stable economy despite prior contraction of the economy. It was the Germanic version of the Roman Empire and it stood for another 30 years. It had all the trapping of roman rhetoric, religion and culture; but without the empire. Instead ruled by a king.
What really killed off Rome was the crisis of succession driven by Theodoric's death, as he had no proper male heir and this crisis was taken advantage of by Justinian I, who led his Italian campaign from 535 - 554 that destroyed the Italian peninsula with over 20 years of war between the Byzantines and the Ostrogoths, you could compare this campaign to the disastrous war in Iraq in 2003 that destroyed that nation 1500 years later. Rome was barely a husk after the Italian Campaign and was transformed into a periphery of Constantinople, with power moving from the West Roman to the East Roman and laying the foundations for the Carolingian Empire to follow in 800 AD.
@ wicksinn...
YES...!!!
You win the prize!
The real fall of the Western Roman Empire was the emergence of Byzantium. It is in fact, the Byzantines who persuaded Thiudareik to invade Rome and to dispose of Audhawakr. (I use the Germanic form of their names because it's more fun). Some of the Goths had settled the Gulf of Salonika in Greece and Emperor Zeno in an attempt to move some of them onward helped Thiudareik to establish himself in Italy.
And you're also right about Justinian I and Belisarius. Their war with what was left of the Goths pretty much destroyed Italy.
But even before this, the decline of Rome in the face of the growing Constantinople could be seen right after Constantine founded the city. Yes, I know that technically "Byzantium" was the Eastern Roman Empire but truthfully, the two cultures were never the same.
Justinian did not lead the Italian campaign (General Belisarius did). There was no such thing as a Byzantine, so the fighting was between the Romans and the Ostrogoths. Both sides understood Justinian's legions to be the Romans. Iraq has not been destroyed since 2003, and has survived much worse in its long history. A major outbreak of plague, comparable to the more famous outbreak in the 14th century, was probably a contributing factor to the Western Empire's demise or failure to reconstitute, depending on how you see it in this period. This was part of a larger pattern from the third century of new diseases shrinking the population enough to create manpower shortages. Political power had already shifted to the east during the reign of Diocletian, and economic power had shifted even earlier. The fact that no one has been able to recreate for a sustained period of time an empire encompassing approximately the same territory as the Roman Empire, or even just the western half of the Empire, highlights how remarkable Rome's accomplishment really was, and how the true mystery might be not why did Rome fall but how did it sustain its empire for as long as it did.
@@michaels4255 the population of the roman empire did decrease
This is about the fall of the Roman empire not about the fall of Italia or the city of Rome.
As far as the Romans were concerned a barbarian would be someone who didn't live in an urban culture and/or couldn't speak Latin they didn't have to look like Conan.
Or greek for that matter.
Adrian Bingham stop the Eurocentrism. the word barbarian held the same meaning . Germanics never lived in Civilization. Eurocentric apologist narratives always clean up a messy objective past
They didn't look like Conan. They looked like me... :)
In the late Empire, once all subjects had been made citizens (for tax purposes), Barbarian became a geographical descriptor for everyone from outside the borders. And barbarians became essential for the defense of the Empire because Roman citizens were legally bound to join their father's profession (which is how the medieval guild system began), meaning they couldn't volunteer to join the army anymore, unless their father was a soldier, and not all serving soldiers were allowed to marry.
@@frater7576 lol
Brilliant, until one realises economical factors are entirely missing.
True, but it is a very good look at one factor in the fall of Rome.
he literally talked about how there are hundreds of interpretations of the fall of rome and the specific influences on his own interpretation etc. there will never be one true factual account, there will always only be interpretations. the fall of rome is simply far too complex to be reduced to a simple cause and effect.
It was a delight to stumble on this, Bardzo Dziekuje Pan Kulikowski! not just for the content but the crystal clear delivery
These videos are inspiring. I hope to be a professor in Medieval History.
Read as much as you can. Go for it and good luck.
good for you
Why not move forward and let old things be? and try to save the world instead :)
History is to learn from the past so we can better understand the present, and predict what may come in the future.
In do so, you may discover something that may "save the world", as your simplistic, juvenile, empty -headed statement suggests.
In other words, you're an idiot.
Because it is happening today,and it will follow the similar script unless lesson is learned or, there may be a heavy bloody price paid for temporary delay and transfer towards more Orwelian scenario. Not many governments are dedicated to saving the planet and civilisation at the moment.
very insightful presentation
2,000 years from now, some historian will be giving a speech on the "accidental fall of western civilisation"
This makes the error of so many presentations. Let me first bore you to death with a bunch of stuff you will not really understand the relevance of until later, about things scholars debate about but no one walked into the room concerned about or interested in, and then only later, much later, in the most obtuse way possible, let me get to my new big idea and thesis with the catchy seminar title that you were interested in, when I have lost my audience (figuratively or literally, as in walked out or quit watching the video, and nobody really cares anymore. Some profs and scholars have no clue how to present material, and this is one of the best demonstrations of this I have ever seen.
Ted Johnson thanks for the warning.
'Give a dog a bad name.....' hey.
Accidental Suicide = Law of Unseen Consequences. That is a political lesson that can drawn from Rome's experience and applied today. The problems and tragedies we see today in the Middle East are the consequences of 100 years of misguided policies from all sides based on expedience and the Law of Unseen Consequences. And it continues.
A good lecture (that requires concentration). and well spoken and well presented, thank you. But even so it was one of THE factors in the downfall, and maybe the MAIN factor. But many factors will give the background and setting that makes the 'Accidental Suicide' successful rather than just scaring.
Law of Unseen Consequences? Does that mean, whatever we do are doomed to fail on the long run?
The standard explanation is, the 4th century Roman Empire became so riven with divisions that it became unable to repel outsiders who decided to take by force what they couldn't get through the system. The new wrinkle here, I guess, is that the divide between "Roman" and "barbarian" wasn't that great -- indeed, close to nonexistent -- until about the 4th century. But after "barbarian" started meaning something, "barbarians" found they couldn't work through the system, and so started challenging the system itself.
kingbeauregard best explanation.. a great summary of an otherwise rather convoluted presentation
But the 4th century had the legions defeating every foe that tried to cross the border, and also succeeded in many many offensive actions in foreign territory. At the end of the 4th century, crisis and defeat came.
Pretty much.
The trick was to walk the line between Roman and Barbarian in a way to advance your career.
You usually came a cropper eventually but occasionally you could keep it up for decades.
Aetius and Gaiseric managed it though only the second got to die in bed.
I find Joseph Tainter's "The collapse of complex societies" (1988) more convincing.
ua-cam.com/video/H-FIpz53iVA/v-deo.html
Increasing the complexity is a problem solving strategy, but is comes at a certain costs - in the end it is a higher energy need to feed and power the whole more complex society. Due to marginal diminishing returns of complexity, this strategy comes to an end, while the reserves for problem resolution are reduced (plagues, famines, invasion from others, internal unrest, etc.).
Maybe it's because I am not a native english speaker or maybe it is because my understanding of this time period is lacking, but I am utterly confused by his talk. In my opinion there are two ways to employ complex language, the first one is to be very precise and to minimise misunderstandings, the second one is to leave a lot of room for interpretation and disguising it by sounding very intellectual. I'm not too proud to admit that the former is often misidentified as the latter by people who are not educated enough about a subject to distinguish them, so that might be the problem. But I get the impression that he is not making stringent arguments at all. What exactly does it mean in practise to be the barbarian? How exactly did his approach differ from tactics used by other generals in previous centuries? Was he really percieved as fundamentally different than other generals before him by his contemporaries, and if so in what way? Were there people trying to implement such a strategy before? Isn't it much more likely that the material conditions and not some way of thinking inside of the empire made such an approach viable? And the most important Question, if there was a gap between rhetorics and political reality how would this make an antagonistic stance towards the empire viable? I can imagine that the political implications to be smeared as a barbarian would diminish under such circumstances, but how exactly does this make actually being an enemy of the state advantageous? One would assume that opposition to actual military and political tactics wouldn't have any significant relation to rhetorics, or am I wrong? He really hasn't presented a single convincing argument (or an argument at all???) why his actions can only be explained by these binary rhetorics. I am opent to the idea that these developments in rhetorics migh have played a minor role, but if you make grand statements like he does you better back it up with serious evidence
.
Maybe I sound like an idiot to people who have a better understanding of the period for even asking these questions... But that said, I have learned nothing. What a waste of time.
That's a pity because I think he's really on to something.
Attacking Alaric as a barbarian was a rhetorical strategy employed against Alaric by the court of Ravenna and it was extremely effective in preventing him from mustering reliable support in Italy.
What it could not do was save the city of Rome from a sack.
In the end both sides were losers though Alaric's soldiers did eventually emerge as winners.
The lecture begins at around the 29 minute mark. His position is that the military forces which partitioned off the western provinces in the late 4th and early 5th centuries were not barbarian outsiders, but native roman armies engaging in socio-political self-promotion through civil war.
He argues that the so called gothic army of Aleric was as native roman as Gallic or Hispanic or African provincial romans, however the imperial administrative bureaucracy broke down somewhat in the Balkans around the period of Fritigern with the result that advancement for roman army officers in the Balkans to better commands in the wider empire was not as seamlessly integrated as it had been decades earlier, and still was in the Gallic, Hispanic, African provinces. This resulted in roman army officers in the Balkans being treated as a second class tier of officers during Aleric's time subordinate in status to armies in the other provinces with limited upward mobility.
Aleric the Balkan roman, frustrated at being denied advancement in the wider empire, engages in civil war to secure his advancement within his native roman empire. He then sets the precedent for civil war as a tool for ambitious roman military officers to push for socio-political advancement. Where members of the senatorial class once mentioned their blue blood italic ancestors and led campaigns beyond the frontier to propel them into senior political positions, roman military officers now capitulated to the ethnic slurs being thrown around in public discourse and led campaigns within the body of the empire to power themselves upward into the political establishment.
Over several decades this resulted in imperium moving from a central emporer to regional generals, giving rise to the successor states. This wasn't the age of the barracks emporers, it was the age of the anti-imperial roman generals, the anti-establishment fake "outsiders".
Yeah.
Gaiseric was the one who really succeeded in this strategy, dying in his bed as king of Carthage and living to be over 80.
Well done him.
In my opinion it was the privatisation of the military (The introduction of the magister militum) together with a bad economical situation that eventually caused a desintegration of the government. Local warlords with private armies or warrior clans roamed through Europe (aka the "migration" period) and Rome eventually failed to keep all of them in check.
Alter Kater No,
your argument nonsense
amazing lecture!
I didn't think this was "new". It has been widely known that the "barbarians" were actually Arian christians, and a lot were Romans and, or had fought together. The sacking of Rome includes agreements with the Nicean christians about what would be destroyed and who would not be killed, and where. Good to see some coverage, of this subject that is uncomfortable for christians.
Very true.
In some ways the Arianism of the barbarians was just an historical accident but it did suit people who wanted to alternate between identifying as Roman and Barbarian, being Christianity "but not as we know it".
How was the situation in Anatolia?
It was fine.
Better than in the west for most of the fall.
definitely a lack of chocolate sprinkles caused this one
Gen Alleric sounds like he might have some parallels with George Washington in their being stuck as second class officers in the Imperial officer corps.
Good analogy.
" . . . an equestrian managerial attitude working on behalf of a new totalizing discourse " (around or about 27:00)
ahh yes, Fascism in reverse, just change "working on behalf of" to "using" and the medium becomes the message.
(1) 17:55 -- Rhetoric doesn't determine policy, policy determines rhetoric.
(2) 18:02 -- The Roman empire didn't collapse within 30 years; it had been declining for almost 2 centuries.
(3) 19:04 -- The Roman empire was not stable during the 4th century. Rebellions, invasions, wars between Roman armies were commonplace and had been throughout the previous century.
(4) 19:10 -- The Empire was destined to fail. It was too big, too complicated, and too expensive to maintain and defend. Hence the reforms of Aurelian and Diocletian, including Diocletian's tetrarchy and splitting of the empire. The Roman generals had learned that they could become emperor by force, and that created almost perpetual warfare inside the empire -- in addition to the routine rebellions and barbarian incursions. The Antonine plague also didn't help. Commerce began to decline, so the emperors struggled ever more desperately to raise money in order to sustain an empire that was too big for the resources that were available. (Hence Caracalla made all freemen Roman citizens -- in order to render them subject to Roman taxation. Diocletian tried to fix prices.)
(5) 36:00 -- The image is that of general Stilicho and his wife and son. His father had been a Vandal serving in the Roman army.
The real question is not "Why did the Roman empire fall?" but "Why did it last so long?" -- especially considering the perpetual civil wars, rebellions, invasions, assassinations, corruption, incompetence, cruelty, etc. It was very badly run and badly organized -- they just muddled through for centuries. Only the Greek Polybius seems to have given any substantial thought to how it was organized, and his analysis was faulty.
Your post is nonsense.
It's been several years but I thought I'd point that out.
@@alanpennie8013 Care to explain why it's "nonsense"?
I found the original comment to be quite well argued.
I think at the very least the burden is on you to provide a counter argument to some of these points.
@@a.wenger3964
Nothing "declines" for two centuries.
The Roman Empire was the second most stable and enduring empire in world history after China.
Someone who describes the foundation of all Western civilization as "badly run and badly organized" has no idea what they are talking about. Tangibly, the eastern portion of the empire lived on for another thousand years, and yet it completely baffles you how the Roman empire "lasted so long". What a fraud. I can't believe people pay you to fill soft minds with this ignorant trash.
@@nottiredofwinning3736 -- You're completely ignoring the long record of assassinations in the Western part of the Empire (Caligula,
possibly Claudius,
Nero,
Galba,
... ) and in the Eastern part (Constans II,
Justinian II,
Leo V,
Michael III, ... ). There were incessant revolts. (Wikipedia has a partial list of them: List of Roman civil wars and revolts) The Eastern Empire may have outlasted the Western Empire by a thousand years,
but largely as a rump state -- the Arab Muslims conquered much of it and the Turks conquered the rest. There was the hyperinflation of the third century A.D. There may have been a few hours of stability during its existence, but otherwise it's survival was the product of civil servants and local officials who kept their governments alive despite the chaos.
Didn't Theodoric pack Roman emperor's symbols of power (crown, mantle, scepter and orb) and send them to the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople?
Odoacer did. He was Theodoric's predecessor, whom Theodoric slew.
@@histguy101
Poor Odoacer.
Trapped in Ravenna, forced to surrender, and put to death by the ruthless Theodoric.
There’s a reason why Paul places romans 2 where it is. It’s as he saw it.
"It's a very effective way of excluding someone from power, is getting them killed" - oh, is that so? ;)
Some thoughts, FWTW: The Western Empire continued to function in much the same way after Romulus Augustulus (?) was deposed by the Ostrogoths in the 5th century, thanks to the remnants of that deeply entrenched professional bureaucracy, thanks to the commercial and personal ties that continued to exist. And, Justinian almost put the Western Empire back together in the late 6th century, reconquering North Africa, Italy, etc. The Western Empire died, according to the great historian Henri Pirenne, when its most important territories were conquered by the Muslims, beginning in the 7th century, and trade and contact largely came to an end.
One sentence summary: Rome fell because they did not use sufficiently politically correct language, and by using politically incorrect language they thought about issues in the wrong way and made big mistakes. Hats off for the new theory, but it seems suspiciously tailored to please peers at the university faculty meeting.
This comment should be pinned at the top to save people wasting their time on this superficial lecture that hides behind florid language and avoids engaging in any of the concrete problems faced by the late empire.
Brian S R - exactly, the "broken" language merely exposed the broken system. I love using fancy words as much as the next guy, but politeness doesn't override reality.
His use of the word rhetorical so often is quite distracting (honestly) as a man from England/UK why he couldn't use other synonyms is very striking. Thanks 🇺🇲😊🇬🇧
A very interesting take on the issue that I had not thought of before. Also quite relevant given current political trends and domestic unrest resulting from polarizing rhetoric.
I hate conference when the speaker obviously does nothing more that read his notes...
Brilliant!! Kulikowski is talking about where the European Union is at AND where North America including the US is headed!!
In the US: Uniformity through Ivy League Nonsense is in vogue on all levels!! Not just Law in subversion of Traditional US Constitutional principles but culturally on politically correct allowable expressions. Couple that with the sexual decadence of modern pop cultural Gender bending(also present in Rome)!! You generate a cultural mess!! Love this mans use of political "Binary Rhetoric!!" concept. In US culture it has run amok!! Political forces seek to exploit the "binary" to their advantage.
so just to sum up: The Roman / Barbarian paradigm as a cause of the Empire's collapse is analogous to the Dinosaur / Bird paradigm as a cause for their extinction... the Roman polity incorporated barbarian ethnicities into its administrative and political structure and simply flew away...
Roman empire fell for the same reasons all empires fall. They become more and more cruel and eventually fall under the increasing weight of their evil. That is what it is at a high level. These historians work on the detail. But alas how wrong they are much of the time.
If only Rome "drained the swamp", it might still be around today.
Just goes to show that empires come and go. But the Roman Empire was definitely the greatest. So much influence and impact it left.
If Trump had really drained the swamp he'd still be POTUS!
Rome was built on a swamp.
Very intriguing thesis, but at the same time I have the impression that there are no big news in there. He still says that the collapse was caused by the barbarians, and still does not explain (at least not clearly enough to me) WHY the empire was so weak not to be able to hold them back. But probably that was due to time constraints.
***** The problem with his thesis is that it is heavily based on the fact/assumption that the empire could not accomodate the barbarians that wanted to be part of it -- that's what he says happened to Alaric --, meaning that the empire was already in bad shape, economically speaking. All his idea of totalizing rhetoric is thus merely a surface manifestation of much deeper problems. It is not a cause of the fall of the empire, but merely a background circumstance that facilitated this fall to be the way it was.
tchuncly dude I will try to explain why the empire was so weak at that time.. In terms of military, Rome was still strong, but, in terms of social issues, there were many of them . Rome grew thanks to conquest and thanks to the memory of morality and pride of ANCIENT ROME (Rome was already more than a thousand years old), the idea of the ancient pride and ROMANITY was the real engine of conquests. When the idea of Rome was substituted by Christianity, the mechanism of pride and glory badly finished. Many roman historians wrote about the decadence of Rome and the loss of ancient moral and austerity. The Empire was to rich and decadent to give the good example to the Romans, they were dominated by emperors from across the Empire who didn't care a lot about morality and social issues, they only were interested in their own power.
Romans had lost their symbol... before it was ROME, then was the Emperor, Christ, God etc.
He only answers half the question though. Why wasn't the Roman system worth preserving? One could only derive benefit from changing the way power was established if the underlying structure made the Empire not worth preserving. So I agree with you that the central question still remains. Why was the structure in such a state that it was cast aside?
I ll share with you.
REPEATED ISLAMIC RAIDS
AND
FROM N. AFRICA islamic raids
and under-handed Jewish SPIES working
For ARAB POWER against ROME.
Against The HOLY ROMAN CHRISTIAN EMPIRE.
now we see what happened. But then - could they see ?
@@sancho6059 I find the explanation that Christianity substituting the morality and pride of Rome being the cause of the fall highly dubious. The Empire itself almost collapsed during the third century under the pressure of civil wars and external invasions .The western Empires fall was an almost exact repeat. Only this time the Germanic kingdoms who were nothing but opportunistic thugs got lucky and the empires leadership dropped the ball in a spectacular fashion.
In short its luck had run out and the cracks present in the roman system from the very beginning were exposed.
The opening of this talk is really entertaining XD
A nice mix of politics and academia...
In other words all the for-mention hypothesis had a bit to do with the empire collapsing, as they all contributed towards the end of it.
The dictionary definition of a "Pagan" is a person who dwells in the Forest. This fact presented to you by Prof. Alan M. Dobriansky Ph.D., Ph.D., Crown Prince of Dobrigia, the last sovereign Pagan Nation to be invaded by Pope Innocent 1st now the Dobrusia province of Romania. Dobrigia was founded in 400BC by my ancestor General Dobrius of Mesopotamia leader of King Nebecanessar 2nd's Military. And YES we are both Atheists & Forest-dwellers to this very day!
The language of Dobrigia has been Russian since the founding of the Empire of Greater Scythia & the induction of Dobrigia as Scythia the Lesser according to Greek Historian Strabo. My grandfather the late King John of Dobrigia spoke 7 different languages including Russian, Ukrainian. Polish, German, French, Austrian, & English.
The Alans, a fierce gang of Barbarian horsemen occupied all the land between the Black Sea & the Caspian Sea, from the southern border of Greater Scythia to the northern border of Persia & was a major force in the combined militia comprised of the Visigoths, Vandals, & the Alans who stopped the northeast progression of the Roman Empire into Greater Scythia. The final battle which the Romans lost marked a line from the Arctic Sea to the center of the Black Sea.
I think he should better explain or give examples of the whole "totalizing rhetoric" thing as I'm kinda still fuzzy as to exactly what point he was trying to make or central idea. I mean I think I get the jist of what he was saying but yeah...he should probably "dumb it down" a tish...LOL! That said I still think he's not fully appreciating the mass migratory changes that were going on that even the most open and adaptive society would not have possibly sustained.
Those who succeeded in Fourth Century politics were those who could present themselves as True Romans and their opponents as heretical barbarians.
You did also need an army which could win battles but the guys with the swords preferred to follow True Romans (though less so in The Fifth Century than in The Fourth).
Emmet Scott has an interesting take on the fall of Rome in Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited.
"De omnibus dubitandum !"
De omnibus dubitandum est is a book written by Søren Kierkegaard (about the pseudonym Johannes Climacus), which translates to "everything must be doubted". It was published posthumously.[1] The book portrays the existential consequences of assuming Cartesian doubt, the method of modern philosophy, to its last consequences. The themes portrayed by this book are followed in the subsequent books written by Kierkegaard under the name of Climacus: Philosophical Fragments and its Concluding Unscientific Postscript. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_omnibus_dubitandum_est
de omnibus dubitandum
Phrase Meaning: be suspicious of everything / doubt everything
Comment Attributed to the French philosopher René Descartes. It was also Karl Marx's favorite motto and a title of one of Søren Kierkegaard's works, namely, De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.
If this is an illness I'm sure I have it, terminally.
It wasn’t the burning cities or the hoards of murderous tribes sacking and looting the empire with impunity which were the problem. It was the totalising rhetoric which really put the nail in the coffin.
After that nice initial review of various historians' theories of the reasons behind the "fall of Rome" as reflections of trends in the contemporary world of the historians themselves, we are given yet another example of such theorizing in this new "totalizing rhetoric" account of what drove Rome's decline. Is it too much to point out that recent decades have shown unusual polarization of political opinions and the rhetoric through which they express themselves in the West? And having listened to this new theory, I find it tenuous in the extreme. The background given by Michael Kulikowsky himself of what makes his "totalizing rhetoric" account work is after all the growth of the Roman state, ever expanding bureaucracy, and foreign war adventures under the Emperors, factors which bring us back to far more tangible circumstances promoting decline than a cleverly worked out scheme of how Rome tripped over its own "totalizing rhetoric", given the example of Alaric.
My simple view is that the Roman empire got too big and was unable to sustain the Pax Romana or protect its acquired wealth and civilisation for that reason. Gibbon , a preVictorian Christian, said it fell apart because of moral decline."The centre cannot hold: the falcon cannot hear the falconer"
Besides offering a single-reason, contemporary-parallels theory, the speaker fails to show any proof that speech shapes action or reality. If he suggests that for a century "barbarian" was a mere label, why did it not shape the reality of just one generation, about 15-20 years after it appeared? Why did it stay recognized as rethoric term stably over generations, and only a century later it became a real distinction? The answer is, of course, the all other reality that sadly is not mentioned at all.
Although, was interesting to know that barbarians were part of the army.
YOU MAKE NO SENSE .
You don't know your Roman history.
Alaric could convincingly pose as a barbarian because "The Goths" had been only partially Romanised in the aftermath of the disaster at Adrianople.
They served as auxiliaries rather than regular Roman soldiers.
This is what made Alaric different from (say) Arbogast.
The fall of Rome was demographic. The population of the Empire decreased precipitously over a period of three centuries .
If you're talking about the agri deserti then Heather (2005) pp. 110-115 imho convincingly argues the opposite, citing Tchalenko's discoveries and work stemming from them.
@@philipmarsh2172
Yeah.
You always get these You Tube posters still pushing theories from 20 or 30 years ago.
More than likely the Roman empire dwindled due to a climatic shift that occurred after 2 very large volcanic eruptions about 250AD. Ksudak in the Kamchatka peninsular in northern Russia and Taupo in New Zealand. Both were Krakatoa sized events. Rome, it is said, did not fall until 470AD which was just after another massive eruption, Ilopango in central America, in 450 AD. which left an 11km wide caldera. If too much pressure is put on the ability to grow food then the political structure that is reliant on it will crumble.
Very interesting.... a very plausible argument.
You can see this factor in to today's politics. Making being a proud American or being a strong male seem like its a bad thing. Being the "outsider" going against the "established patriarchy" or "white privilege"and being multi-cultural is so cool is a factor in politics today. So they are actively playing "The Barbarian" in order to get ahead. Thank goodness those that hold true to the foundations of the Republic are fighting back. "The Barbarians" were the ones getting ahead by destroying Rome's core values that made it strong to begin with, as can be seen in today's politics.
Indeed. At some point in time those same white males serving in the army, police forces and such will start to wonder why should they defend such a State. Why not just form militias and defend those who love them or at least respect them.
And the same goes to the "current year barbarians" running around.
Wow! This rings all very much like what the european union is doing.
It's the new Rome.
ok. a thesis. Adjusting the taxonomic category of an event and assuming, that adjustment will create a new framework for coping with the event, rather than merely allow for rationalization, is to mistake representation for reality. Solipsistic reductionism is evidence of existence in a cultural bubble, and will hardly stand the cruel blow of a gentle zephyr let alone the violent shock of cold water. Relativize this!
We only find something classical in the books nowadays , isnt incredible?
Eight years to come up with an explanation for the fall that makes no mention of economics? It was all down to words? I hope this postmodernist claptrap helped advance his career because it did not advance anyone's understanding of the subject matter.
Exactly! This is no science, it's more like a pile of crap!
@@andreyche193
Don't be silly.
interesting subject if you can get past how many times this man says 'binery'
NICE PEDANTIC WORD EXTRUSION.
What is Barbarian word? Ancient Vedic name from Indus v.and Sanskrt language.bara bara question question.Nomad culture who quest of foods life resorts when come on new geography.
Word bharata is also sanskrt word -Inus v.In mikro local language Slovenia this word exist today./Sn te bara \ mean -
Im ask you.
The Western Roman Empire declined collapsed in the 4th/5th Century because the Roman Army began losing wars to its client states or Barbarians. Reasons
Gibbon gave a classic formulation of reasons why the Fall happened. He began an ongoing controversy by attributing a significant role to Christianity in the Western Roman Empire's fall, which is no longer accepted by some modern Roman historians.[8] However, he did give great weight to other causes of internal decline as well and to the attacks from outside the Empire.
The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigour of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.
- Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, "General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West", Chapter 38
Alexander Demandt enumerated 210 different theories on why Rome fell, and new ideas have emerged since.[9][10] Historians still try to analyze the reasons for loss of political control over a vast territory (and, as a subsidiary theme, the reasons for the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire). Comparison has also been made with China after the end of the Han dynasty, which re-established unity under the Sui dynasty while the Mediterranean world remained politically disunited.
Harper identifies a Roman climatic optimum from about 200 BCE to 150 CE, when lands around the Mediterranean were generally warm and well-watered. From 150 to 450, the climate entered a transitional period, in which taxes were less easy to collect and bore more heavily on the working population. After about 450, the climate worsened further in the Late Antique Little Ice Age.[11]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire
Other fundamental problems contributed to the fall. In the economically ailing west, a decrease in agricultural production led to higher food prices. The western half of the empire had a large trade deficit with the eastern half. The west purchased luxury goods from the east but had nothing to offer in exchange. To make up for the lack of money, the government began producing more coins with less silver content. This led to inflation. Finally, piracy and attacks from Germanic tribes disrupted the flow of trade, especially in the west.
Mr Kulikowski askews previous theories about the Fall of the Rome as reflections of modern contemporary political discourse - right up to and including Peter Heather and Bryan Ward-Perkins’ recent works. But it strikes me that his own thesis of ‘totalising rhetoric’ is exactly the same thing.
‘Totalising rhetoric’ is a nice phrase; a very apt description of today’s hyperbolic political discourse. It also represents a ‘retreat’ to the literary sources after the archaeology-based thesis of Ward-Perkins, in particular.
To my mind, MacMullen's 'Corruption' and Ward-Perkins' Fall of Rome (both cited in this video) are still the best guides. I would also recommend Burn's 'Barbarians within the Gates of Rome'. That said, any new theory about the period is cool.
all you dogs licking hands.
Try listening for once.
GREAT VIDEO.
Does he ?
Simply because YOU say so.
Right. 👍
Fascinating hypothesis and crystal clear analysis. But was this the best lecture room and setting at W&L Uni at the time? Cramped, badly lit. Poor camera skills. And for the speaker: could have covered double the material if he would not doggedly insist to say everything twice all the time...
so funny to see all the commenters who absolutely prove his point
Interesting. Peter Turchin's excess elites and counter elites.
Was Alaric an ancient Martin Luther. Rome was already corrupt. It extolled Christian virtue but lived luxury and self-aggrandizement.
Good God that intro... I needed a dictionary and a thesaurus for this lecture.
GREAT VIDEO !
Oh the 'how Rome fell' industry, like some zombie franchise always worth tweaking.
Fact is, & this is for nothing, the Rhine-Danube frontier is simply impossible to hold as a static border as soon as the garrison eventually weakens & the barbars consolidate & amalgamate, & it's much easier to be a looting barbar than a Roman tradesman trying to meet his next tax return.
barbarians paid MORE TAX
had LESS RIGHTS.
roman law brought UNIFIED CIVIL CODE TO WEST.
Not to mention NUMEROUS INVENTIONS
Like a bath with pipes in SECOND CENTURY.
what are you smoking bud
Fair summary on the usual models for the collapse of the Western Empire, but, "idle welfare class"; can you explain this one?
Alas it was apathy that demolished Rome. The citizenry took it for granted and it died.
Excellent video... so subtle an argument.. eerily applicable to today..
Grand Solar Minimums are the times when empires fall, as we are seeing now with Eddy
Make Rome great again. MRGA.
😅
One can argue that America is an extension of Rome
@@LeMatt87n Or the European Union.
@@LeMatt87n one hog left one hog
@@levijatan12 game ig🤭
Inspiring!!
rhetoric killed the empire. well can't complain about you trying to think outside the box at least. I think you are way off in your conclusions though. Keep reading, keep studying, keep thinking, and keep talking.
Your comment killed this comment.
? Uglybaby ?
It is funny that he says that the explanation for Roams fall has changed, depending on the prevailing political situation . And then you start talking about the need for non-binary ways to look at the situation. lol. and it was the binary thinking that got it all wrong.
I really struggled with this. I consider myself reasonably educated and literate, yet found his presentation unnecessarily ‘wordy’. I love big words and have no problem stopping a video and learning a new word. I welcome it! I enjoy it! But something was a little ‘off’ for me with Mr Kulikowski. I hate to be cruel, not even sure if it was just my imagination... but it felt like he was being intentionally unaccessible to make himself sound more impressive. I feel bad saying that, but after really enjoying other talks and presentations on UA-cam by equally esteemed professors and lecturers... this one felt overly complicated and not very well paced or edited.
It's informal. I would expect a more professional stage than what's been provided, as well as the podium's placement being well visible or altogether offstage.
That said, I tend to consume these as a dialogue a-la the writings of Seneca et. al. rather than as a traditional lecture. I listen through, make mental notes of the framework of what's being discussed then return at a later time to rewatch and make detailed fishtail notes.
That may be helpful for you and other people who feel the same. And don't feel uneducated or illiterate if the actual findings are difficult to grasp (if that is the ultimate reason you struggled). A tiny gap in your recall of related information from your youth or other experiences with this topic can cause total confusion as easily as no pre-existing knowledge of this topic. Try scanning a summary of the Roman Empire's collapse and significant events, and then come back to this presentation. You may honestly just have limited recall from being preoccupied by other, completely unrelated subjects recently.
@@harmonyqueue
That's right.
It made perfect sense to me because I already know a lot about the topic.
But you need to know a lot already about later Roman rhetoric, the Battle of Adrianople, and the reign of Theodosius The Great, to get much out of this.
IM JUST SAYING
THAT'S THE WAY SOME PEOPLE THINK
AN TALK
I say old boy, jolly well done.
Oh dear, the EU is now doing the same thing.
This would have been better without the editorializing and hyperbole. When someone's political leanings are so shoehorned into an historical presentation, the audience can't invest the same trust.
Aliens did it.
Was Constantine a Byzantium ?
He looks Greek.
He was an Illyrian army brat, which doesn't necessarily mean he was Illyrian, but grew up in the Illyrian legions.
@@histguy101
Yeah.
Not certainty but probably.
Which makes him a Westerner, though from the east of The West.
Why no mention of the Getica by Jordanes...? The Gothic chronicler mentioned that the Goths were the ancient Getae. I find it funny that professional historians avoid that topic like the plague. Also, Alareik was from Dobrogea in Romania. They all just sit there like it's hard to say "Romania". ...LOL...
You can do it... Say it now...!
R
O
M
A
N
I
A
G
Y
P
S
Y
Romania was not a place like it is today..... not back then
One thing for sure America saved him from a language change, after Britains collapse from world domination or empirism. Is this the same thing Britain tried and failed to do.
The collapse of Rome is one of the most complex civilizational collapse. It is remarkable that in his book "Collapse", Jared Diamond chose to skip that most important collapse. I am not surprised. It is a hard on to encapsulate in a nutshell explanation.
I find Prof. Kulikowski idea intriguing: it is also very contemporary. Our failure to integrate immigrants (Muslims), may bring our downfall or a horrible civil war precisely because we will be in a "us vs them" situation.
What a load of postmodernist nonsense. This sounds more like Derrida or Foucault than like well thought out history. The Senatorial class had been displaced already during the Julio-Claudian period, when there was much grousing about the importance of favored freemen in the imperial household. Nor was it unusual to have a series of emperors from the same part of the Roman Empire long before the period we can associate with "the fall". You can find plenty of complaints about imperial administration at the very beginning of the Empire in histories we have that were almost universally written by people from the senatorial class.
While it's certainly true that the level of bureaucracy in the empire increased in the late period (especially under Dioletian), why think that the negative effect on this is some ethereal "totalizing rhetoric" as opposed to a great increase in the tax rate and economic meddling (price fixing, hereditary jobs) at a time when imperial population was stagnant or even in decline?
People ceased to care what the central government wanted because the central government was too expensive and not competent at protecting the people it was taxing. At the same time emperors could not rely on the loyalty of their own troops at any time, and just in times of great stress or perceived imperial failure as before. The fall had concrete causes. Did rhetoric have some role in this? Perhaps. But the idea that regional magnates became independent because they were offended by imperial rhetoric and not because the imperial authority had already collapsed is silly. It's true that Alaric was not brought into the Roman Army as Arminius had been centuries earlier is true, but it ignores the huge fact that the Visigoths were not conquered by Rome in their home territory - they migrated en-mass into the Empire to escape the Huns, and the Empire could not properly deal with them. The Empire was too weak to keep the Visigoths out, too poor to pay them properly, and (contrary to Kulikowski's focus on the empire becoming more "universal") too disunited to treat Alaric and his tribe in a consistent manner.
ON METHOD. It's interesting to analyse the rhetorics of stigmatization in a society, but dealing with the fall of Rome, one cannot ignore the genesis of the texts we have inherited. They all came from the upper classes. They, by definition, explained the weaknesses of the Empire with the axiom that it was eternal and basically better than all alternatives. Why? Because that reinforced the ruling strata's own privileged position within society. And thus all crises inevitably had to "stem" from "incomplete Romanisation". So all the facts they noted were picked in order to give antiexplanations.
Working with such an empirical base, we have a choice: 1. Repick some of the facts from the manuscripts to fit into a paradigm that is the reverse of the authors' mindset . Which means, understand the decay of Rome AND accept that our own current system is mortal. Which is uncomfortable. 2. Or to accept that our current system is the best of all possible worlds AND that Rome's fall was accidental. A mistake of Nature or God. Which is contrafactual. It DID fall. Deal with it, if you can.
Unsurprisingly, the second class of theories dominates and they compete in the ways they throw overboard the basics of scientific analysis, while simulating the trappings and trefilia of science.
ON SUBSTANCE. So what is the unwritten history of Rome? Very simple. As with all organisms, the very source of it's own growth ultimately killed it. Rome's economy was based upon slavery. By expanding, it exhausted the usual source of slaves - alien cities and tribes. So it gradually turned on it's own free plebeians. Thus it consumed the main pillar of social cohesion. The vast majority lost interest in reinforcing or protecting the system. The power structure became vulnerable to invasions, rebellions, or a mixture of both. Rome could not conscript really loyal soldiers from the underclass it's own society was creating. It had nothing to offer to them except bribes. And the army soon realised that it's better to conquer the treasury itself, instead of faraway, rarely populated areas. Does this remind you of something familiar?
1. If you need more slaves, you can always breed them from existing stock.
2. Your theory does not explain the survival of the Eastern Empire. Something about the West had to make it more vulnerable than the East.
The past is constant. Living humans change during their life. Consequently when someone says their views have changed about Rome’s fall it is NOT based on fact - it’s based on the claimant’s changing of perception with age. In sum, this guy doesn’t know any more than other schmucks with the title “historian”.
The lessons for Americans is: Rome DID FALL. Some factors present preceding its fall have appeared in our society over the past few decades. What will do to remedy them, while we still have the power to do it?
My observation after being alive for 59 years is, there is little interest in changing how we manage our barbarian invasion. That by itself has the power to destroy us - soon. Remember, in a democratic based government, when 51% agree that barbarians should be allowed to invade at will, you don’t have a country anymore - it’s GAME OVER.
OTOH we are living in the best times for humans ever. Safety, commerce, wars, disease, technology, life expectancy - all these make a human’s life in 2019 infinitely better than those who preceded us.
I would hate future generations to read their history and wonder how such an advanced population let it get away from them when all the signs were present before them.
MrQ1941 no one on the side of these globalist/multiculturalists appreciates true diversity.
The right wing corporate servants are largely to blame. They chose to loot the country rather than govern sensibly.
Hes not a " SCHMUCK " you racist troll.
Clearly - you need more " ME " time. Good luck.
The past is ?
Stop.
The fall is way too complex to pin it on this poorly exampled conjecture...
This is how you get ahead in Academic life - you have to push a conjecture out to the max to stand out. Even just to get a higher degree, you have to research something new, or from a new angle, or you have to come up with a new argument about an old question.
Indeed a few concrete examples would have been nice especially given the, ahem, creativity of the thesis
Another TROLL.
At 22:34 the speaker states that Caracalla granted citizenship to almost of of Rome's inhabitants. This is wrong by half. Think about it. Think real hard. It's almost like half the population of the world is invisible. Let's be accurate.
Don't be coy. Say what you mean. Women weren't citizens. ---Yep, I'm here two years later because I have a bad memory.
@@annwood6812
Should have said all the families.
Though it wasn't quite all.
There were groups like the laeti who still weren't citizens.
a prophet no few knew of has come once again a few years later his roman diagnosis is displayed by the west oh the irony we truly most be rome falling again
Gruesome.
To answer the question... What did the barbarians look like?
The "barbarians"/Goths looked like me...! :)
this narrative also mirrors contemporary thinking? The rethoric of the West once created social cohesion during the Cold War. In the context of terrorism, the universal binary of good and evil dissociate elements of opposition to state rule. Integration of diverse cultural elements and interests becomes less feasible thus weakening the state.
Oh
History seems to be a Rorschach test.
Michael,I am sorry, but you are speaking about the EU of today, not about the Roman Empire. Wake up !
Ok, so the once flexible roman republican hegemony, once pretty like the European colonial powers, became more and more despotic, buerucratic, uncompromising. Romanizing the once diverse empire. That could finally lead to the (partial) collapse of the whole Mediterranean antiquity, but on the other hand that's why almost whole of Western Europe has this kind of Roman identity now. That's why Europe is a kind of unity.
It seems to me that "totalizing rhetoric" has become increasingly common right here in the USA. Perhaps we should abandon it.
@ John...
I'm not an American but I've noticed the exact same thing about America. The left-wing radicals became the "cultural normal" sometime during the 1990s. Now we're seeing the emergence of right-wing radicals with the alt-right pushing back against these ideals. The consequence being the complete polarization of American society.