Feelings at the Fall of the Republic, Ancient and Medieval Living Standards
acoup.blog
acoup.blog
In context though, I wonder if serfs really had it better. They still had no freedom to move, and in the early Middle Ages there was no appeal granted to serfs under a tyrannical lord.
Many societies continued to have slaves after the introduction of Christianity, including Britain before the Norman conquest.
There was a religious reform movement around the time of the conquest that if I understand correctly gradually eliminated slavery over a few generations to a few centuries.
The Catholic Church was very particular about this in making sure to only ban the enslavement of Christians while explicitly condoning the slavery of non Christians.
It's a classic example of ingroup vs outgroup bias.
I think the in the US slavery is associated with the virulent Slavery in the United States where slaves were literal property every bit as much as a horse and a wagon were property.
Might be that Romans would have considered the difference between their slaves and medieval surfs as a distinction without a difference. And possibly be horrified by the US variant. Your slave doesn't have the right to marry and own property? WTF?
There was nothing especially virulent about slavery in the US compared to slavery in other places.
> Your slave doesn't have the right to marry and own property? WTF?
It's actually true that American slaves were generally legally forbidden from marrying. This didn't matter, though; marriage was not just not suppressed but actively encouraged by slaveholders.
It's not true that American slaves didn't have the right to own property. They did.
The just-in-time supply chains that keep the lights on and food and other goods in the stores would fall apart within a couple of weeks.
Medieval starvation was local. Areas were largely self-sufficient in the bare essentials - except in bad years, which happened regularly enough to keep a lid on population growth, but not so regularly they caused widespread depopulation.
Trade was mostly for useful extras.
That's very much not true today. Everything is specialised and interdependent, and not even farming areas are truly self-sufficient.
This was - and possibly still is - the biggest risk from a pandemic. It's hard to calculate the exact tipping point, but when you have a certain percentage of the population unable to work for a couple of weeks or so, essential systems start breaking down.
Eventually, some black swan event will happen and we'll have a systems collapse it will be very hard to recover from - because so little of the population will have baseline skills. Thankfully this pandemic wasn't it, but it doesn't seem to have woke up TPTB to the problem.
However i agree with you and i think even the US govt agrees with you. Thats the reason farming subsidies exist
If 50% of Canadians died next week, you think what, Canada would cease to exist?
It’s possible. Canada’s nearly broken up* in recent memory over regional differences. 50% of a population dying is a massively destabilizing event that could undo even a comparatively wealthy nation.
* or at least its second largest province narrowly decided to stay in Confederation.
The Romans learned this from the celts early on, and went on to conquer the Mediterranian.
Against the heavy knights of the Medieval period, swords were pretty useless for infantry, though. And at the end of the Middle Ages, when pikes had regained the dominant position for the infantry, armor had become so effective that regular swords would have trouble penetrating. During the 14th anc 15th century, halberds and poleaxes and specialist greatswords would would fill the role that the gladius had 1500 years before, ie that of being able to decisively defeat the pikes after closing in. (Although, until gunpowder weapons took over, pikes were still the most frequent weapon, as the defence against cavalry was still necessary).
At the time, the Romans were basically using the same weapons and tactics as the Greeks, but they had trouble when fighting the Celts when the Celts managed to breech their lines.
In 390 BC, the celts sacked Rome [3]. In response, Rome was fortified and the the Romans would be training and organizing in ways intended to withstand the Celtic charge. Most importantly, that meant improving cohesion and discipline to the point where they could hold the line.
Gradually, though, the Romans would also incorporate Celtic arms and armor, both from Gaulic Celts and Iberian Celts, perhaps most famously the Gladius [4].
Eventually, Rome started to push the Celts back, but there were setbacks, such as when Hannibal employed large numbers of Celtic soldiers during the Punic Wars [5].
Eventually, the Roman military came out if these conflict as a much stronger force when it had started, and ended up as a force that was even able to match the Macedonian phalanxes (partly because the Macedonians did not employ cavalry with the skill that Alexander had).
While Rome was busy conquering the Mediterranean, Germanic tribes were pressuring the Celtic tribes that had occupied modern day Germany, partly replacing them and partly subjugating them.
The Cimbrian war started in 113BC (the Cimbrians themselves may have been Germanic or Celtic, but the Teutons supporting them were definitely Germanic, and the German name for Germany (Deutschland) is taken from them).
Initially, the barbarians were on the offensive, but in the end the Romans under the leadership of Gaius Marius were able to push them back.
In response to the weakness against the Germanics, Marius would institute his "Marius Reforms", replacing the citizen army with a much more capable professional army. [7]. These soldiers are the most famous incarnation of the Roman Legions, armed with Pila, Scuta and and Gladii.
Those reforms, incidentally, paved they way for the Fall of the Republic.
[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisalpine_Gaul [2]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts [3]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Allia#Aftermath,... [4]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladius [5]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War [6]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimbrian_War [7]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_reforms
If you are trained well enough to be effective with metal armor, you're probably trained well enough to be effective without it in close quarters.
Heavy plate requires mounted cavalry, but largely negates the maneuverability of horse, and can be brought down with foot trained with pikes or heavy spears.
Maybe the metal was best used elsewhere.
And here a different one in English: https://web.archive.org/web/20180401081044/http://mygeologyp...
In Poland, peasants actually were freer in the Middle Ages then they were in later centuries. Serfdom became more of a thing with the rise of the wealthy landed magnates whose greed increasingly bound the peasants to production. Poland was, among other things, the breadbasket of Europe, and in the preindustrial era, agriculture was a major source of wealth, and so among its exports to Western Europe, grain was a major source of revenue. The nobility in Poland was quite large (around 10%, as opposed to the ~2% in a country like France), but over time, a part of that nobility managed to become fabulously wealthy and maintained private armies that I believe could rival the army of the Polish Crown in size, and owned hundreds of villages, towns, and even cities. Eventually, Poland's last king, Stanislaus II Augustus, placed the peasants under the protection of the State.
Slavery was unfortunately very much a thing in Anglo Saxon England.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain#2
Pre the migration of the Saxons into England (not long after the Romans left leaving the inhabitants unprotected) they would raid coastal areas and carry off slaves back across the sea. Later, Viking raiders would do the same…
Each individual war was shorter and less bloody but there were many more of them as the barons were feuding constantly in the absence of central authority. Also roving bands would periodically loot and burn while passing by. If you look at the time and effort invested into castles and city walls in the period it tells you all you need to know about how safe people felt at the time.
I think a large part of the author's point that this is a long period of time (even if we restrict it to 800-1300, that's about the same length of time as between Columbus' voyage and today), covering a large area (even if we restrict it to Western Europe), and it's difficult to come up with a single criteria of comparison.
> English peasants likely didn’t work more than 120-150 days a year. That’s about 215-245 days off a year.
From https://www.fodors.com/news/news/you-wont-believe-who-got-mo...
Growing or foraging and preparing food (especially manually milling grain); making (starting from raw plant/animal fibers), patching, and cleaning clothing; building hedges, fences, walls, and thatched roofs; making pottery; making and maintaining tools; taking care of animals; .... are extremely labor intensive.
To get some idea what life was like for Stuart-period English farmers (and life was much the same in preceding centuries), see the BBC show Tales from the Green Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_historic_farm_series
My brain short circuited a bit when reading this sentence. Just to clarify, you are saying that "wars in medieval times where shorter and less bloody then(sic) before and after" medieval times?
I'm not convinced the two are separable. One important virtue in a republic is self-restraint, the ability to see an opportunity to enrich or empower yourself at the cost of the republic, and refrain from exploiting it. A self-indulgent people will find it hard to preserve the systems that comprise the republic.
As for tyrant-resistance, I would go so far as to say that the US just had a tyranny stress test, and the results were deeply concerning.
The system is made out of people.
Yes, and a people system has serious vulnerabilities. Consider marketing, or the impact of a handful of vaccine misinformation bloggers had on a huge segment of the population.
or:
>“. . .it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
Those admirable qualities you mention have been not been forgotten by accident. We've been made to forget, because people without them are easier to manipulate.
It's extremely hard to prevent this, because those who perpetrate it have much to gain directly, while those who prevent it do not. Consider any environmental protection law that is costly to a business - if you benefit financially you can put resources/lobbyists/marketing against it, than the volunteers who seek to protect it can. For strictly economic reasons, in the long run, the people lose.
You can't really rely on "people". The vulnerabilities need to be patched.
It is. Moreover, the most pressing problems we face are in fact systems level problems. At the root of this exists a fallacy of composition where the argument is that if each individual is virtuous, then the whole[system] is virtuous. Are there other sources than the Roman republic for more optimistic instances where this dynamic played out?
I think it is the opposite really. Materialistic thinking is the baseline in modern society and in many ways the tendency to dismiss the unquantifiable as non-existent is one of the greatest weaknesses of modernity. It is certainly far easier to quantify the average temperature in a region using Antarctic or Greenland ice core data and use that to determine how that may affect agricultural production in a historic time period or analyze average skeleton height sizes to assess quality of life metrics than to analyze how cultural changes affected problems.
>At the root of this exists a fallacy of composition where the argument is that if each individual is virtuous, then the whole[system] is virtuous
The Romans may not have worded it correctly but it should not be surprising if we replace the word 'virtue' with 'social norms' and re-analyze how changes in social norms can affect social trust, how institutions are structured and even how families are structured(e.g. a change in norms from the religious change from paganism to Christianity meant a change from the city focused philanthropy of euergetism to the poor/sick focused ecclesiastical charity).
Social trust, for example, is very important as it greatly reduces transaction costs yet and its core much of it relies upon the concept of common shared knowledge (in the form of traditions, values and principles) that is difficult to quantify. Yet at its core, the change in social norms would be deeply related to changes in 'virtues' as virtues, in practice, are ideals that society pressures individuals to follow. So, the Romans may not have the scholarly data on material changes in the environment to be sure but they also have a better intuitive understanding of the importance of virtues than their modern successors.
The laws, etc., help a lot, but they are built by people and can be dismantled by people. The founders could have built an authoritarian government; IIRC Washington was offered much more power than he took, and his resignation after two terms was his choice to put democracy first.
The system promotes the worst for office: as presidents , senators or house.
Washington came in to office at great risk and sacrifice to himself and his family.
For as long as US politicians are able to enrich themselves and leave high office richer than they started, we shouldnt be surprised that we attract the worst kind of people to politics.
This is easily solvable with the right laws but we need a small miracle to get another washington elected first
Proof is the US has outlasted and bettered most other systems by a substantial margin.
Same as switzerland
I'm not as confident as you are that the American system is intact. I think some important elements have been discarded, in large part because the people did not understand their value. For example, the reorganization from the state militias to the largely federalized National Guard, along with the imposition of a large standing army, removed the general population of the states from the defense and federal law enforcement roles, allowing both to get out of the people's control. There are numerous other examples.
Well I'm not gonna lie, it is x)
Malthus has had a big comeback in the theory of economic growth over the past couple of decades.
I thought it was 1. people have lots of kids because lots of them die, 2. progress in terms of stopping babies and children dying means more adults than expected survive to adulthood, 3. Those adults then adjust to the new reality and start having less kids.
This is a good reminder of the democracy of the Republic. I had forgotten that Magistrates had powers such as these. Popular press and film concentrate on the Senators, (and Emperors for post republic stories) but the magistrates, like the tribunes, were elected by the plebs (populace) into a government with some separation of powers. In fact it might be better to consider the roman Senate more like the UN Security Council: all countries are equal but de facto some countries are more equal than others, so there is some structure for focusing and constraining them.
And do not forget that those with political ambitions (like Gaius, who came from and old but minor patrician family, the Julii, through a cadet Caesar branch) started out by being elected a Tribune by the plebs, even if the objective was Senatorial rank and a generalship.
Since the Reagan era at least the US has seemed in the thrall of the same disease that afflicted the patricians of the roman republic. It's no surprise major biographies of Cicero appeared in the late 90s and early 20th century. The philosophy (as described in the article "tendency of Roman elites to think in terms of the virtue of individuals rather than the tendency of systems" afflicts the analysis today. I value my individualism and don't want government telling me what to do, but I also recognize the value and function of community (whether taxes, volunteering, speed limits, or vaccination). Rome (in all of royal, republican, and imperial times) was far more atomized and organized around families than most people realize today and that was ultimately its weakness. Though there was a doctrine of "civis romanus sum", the reality was that too much power remained in the patrician houses, enough to permit essentially continuous civil war once the republic was de facto gone.