Dagoth Ur

Banned
1% is absolutely nothing, some demographic scholars estimate far larger disparities in unmarried people between Western Europe and Eastern Europe in the early modern era.
It's not nothing, 1% fewer for 5 generations is a 4.9% decrease.
Yes...and aren't those disparities leading to the beginning of demographic collapse in Europe, to the point that hundreds of thousands of immigrants have to enter Europe each year to keep the population stable? Kind of leads credence to my numbers.
Far as I'm aware, that's nonsense. Putting aside the matter of 'Hellenism' not really being a thing, 'state declined because people became monks instead of doing X' explanations tend to have no real evidence in the sources.
Hellenic identity with huge religious component was a big enough thing that the religious figures of the late empire would rather submit to foreign heathen (to them) conquerors that wouldn't force them to convert, than accept aid from in exchange for vassalage to the (to them) semi-heathen Catholics who would force them to convert. If they cared more about their empire than their religion, it might have survived.
 
It's not nothing, 1% fewer for 5 generations is a 4.9% decrease.
Yes...and aren't those disparities leading to the beginning of demographic collapse in Europe, to the point that hundreds of thousands of immigrants have to enter Europe each year to keep the population stable? Kind of leads credence to my numbers.
You are assuming that childhood mortality or general mortality rates are the same. Also this supposed local decline doesn't matter when what determined population sizes was carrying capacity, so 1% fewer kids being born doesn't mean anything in the long run as people would try to maximize land usage and generally have as many children as they can.
 

Dagoth Ur

Banned
You are assuming that childhood mortality or general mortality rates are the same. Also this supposed local decline doesn't matter when what determined population sizes was carrying capacity, so 1% fewer kids being born doesn't mean anything in the long run as people would try to maximize land usage and generally have as many children as they can.
You're absolutely correct, but when a pre-space age population gets above carrying capacity people don't just have a big meeting and decide to have fewer children. The population either experiences more hunger and famine, or expands its control of resources, or both. The age of the vikings for example, was caused by the medieval warm period creating just good enough conditions in Scandinavia that more children could survive infancy and be fed...to a point. The land's carrying capacity couldn't handle it, so they went ahead and spread fairly far and wide with the new resources available. The Hellenes could have done the same, or at least had more people and resources available to support expansion of the borders and settlement of colonists in devastated Anatolia and the non-Hellenic Balkans, but instead many decided to become monks and nuns instead.
 
I've never read anything suggesting that there were so many people deciding to become monks and nuns that it lead to population problems before, so if you have a good source (in English, I'm afraid I can't read Greek) on this I would love to see it.
 
You're absolutely correct, but when a pre-space age population gets above carrying capacity people don't just have a big meeting and decide to have fewer children. The population either experiences more hunger and famine, or expands its control of resources, or both.
A 1% difference doesn't change that, Greeks were still fertility rate higher than replacement rates, if their land could support that then logically just as many kids should have survived to adulthood as in other places.
The age of the vikings for example, was caused by the medieval warm period creating just good enough conditions in Scandinavia that more children could survive infancy and be fed...to a point. The land's carrying capacity couldn't handle it, so they went ahead and spread fairly far and wide with the new resources available.
There were always population pressures, outside maybe a recent case of demographic decline, what changed in the Viking era is that the Norse got better ships that didn't have to hug coasts as much, the shock caused by the expansion of Charlemagne in Saxony and the higher Norse populations(after they recovered from the bad weather in the late antique period).
The Hellenes could have done the same, or at least had more people and resources available to support expansion of the borders and settlement of colonists in devastated Anatolia and the non-Hellenic Balkans, but instead many decided to become monks and nuns instead.
Again, you are talking about a mere 1% when in fact many demographic scholars estimate larger differences in birth rates for various pre-modern societies, this argument simply is not empirically sound, it's a purely ad hoc rationalization.
Also monks and nuns still served a function in society.
 
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Dagoth Ur

Banned
I've never read anything suggesting that there were so many people deciding to become monks and nuns that it lead to population problems before, so if you have a good source (in English, I'm afraid I can't read Greek) on this I would love to see it.
It's something I read years and years ago. It may have just been the opinion of a random internet poster.
A 1% difference doesn't change that, Greeks were still fertility rate higher than replacement rates, if their land could support that then logically just as many kids should have survived to adulthood as in other places.

There were always population pressures, outside maybe a recent case of demographic decline, what changed in the Viking era is that the Norse got better ships that didn't have to hug coasts as much, the shock caused by the expansion of Charlemagne in Saxony and the higher Norse populations(after they recovered from the bad weather in the late antique period).

Again, you are talking about a mere 1% when in fact many demographic scholars estimate larger differences in birth rates for various pre-modern societies, this argument simply is not empirically sound, it's a purely ad hoc rationalization.
Also monks and nuns still served a function in society.
You may well be right. I trust what you say about demographic scholars, but if an entire society has a decent amount of people retiring from society and breeding every generation, it can't not make an impact. But it is definitely possible it was not a significant impact.
 

Azrubêl

Banned
Hellenic identity with huge religious component was a big enough thing that the religious figures of the late empire would rather submit to foreign heathen (to them) conquerors that wouldn't force them to convert, than accept aid from in exchange for vassalage to the (to them) semi-heathen Catholics who would force them to convert. If they cared more about their empire than their religion, it might have survived.
If Hellenic identity was so important, then why did almost nobody identify as an Hellene?
 
Just my two cents on pre modern elite nationalism- a lot of times these elites who valorise their own ethnic customs would not have included the simple peasantry as part of that.

19th century nationalism, and the whole reason it's called nationalism, is that the entire "Nation" is better than everyone else, not just the educated, and in fact it's the uneducated,.simple folk that are seen to best represent the values and true culture of the nation, given that they're the majority.

Pre modern ethnic chauvinism is very often rooted in being part of a particular literary community that means you have access to and a connection to a given set of literary models and a society influenced by those models. The simple folk are thus at best only potential members of the "national" community, and they're really the same as the elite because of religious identity.
 

Dagoth Ur

Banned
If Hellenic identity was so important, then why did almost nobody identify as an Hellene?
Didn't they just call themselves Romans? By this point only the inhabitants of the city of Rome, and the Greeks, called themselves Romans, right?
 
and in fact it's the uneducated,.simple folk that are seen to best represent the values and true culture of the nation, given that they're the majority.
No, that's only in places where the local middle class or elites are assimilated in some foreign and possibly cosmopolitan culture.
 
No, that's only in places where the local middle class or elites are assimilated in some foreign and possibly cosmopolitan culture.
I mean I think that falls apart given the worship of the peasant in revolutionary France and during subsequent periods, given French culture was the cosmopolitan culture of the age.
 
By this point only the inhabitants of the city of Rome, and the Greeks, called themselves Romans, right?

And the Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. Not sure whether the German and Italian nobility - or indeed the Emperors themselves - consistently maintained that illusion.
 

Dagoth Ur

Banned
And the Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. Not sure whether the German and Italian nobility - or indeed the Emperors themselves - consistently maintained that illusion.
Oh yeah, that too. And in any case the self-etymology of Roman for the citizens of the city and of the emperors of the HRE are clearly different from, just homonyms of, the identity of the Byzantines.
 

Azrubêl

Banned
Didn't they just call themselves Romans? By this point only the inhabitants of the city of Rome, and the Greeks, called themselves Romans, right?
Yes, which is why I take what they called themselves seriously instead of saying they were 'Greeks' or 'Hellenes'.
 
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