Rodney Stark view on the end of the Roman Empire

I've recently read "How the West won" by Rodney Stark. I know, it's a bit passionate (and explicit) about restoring the old eurocentric view of european history. Some would say it's a piece of propaganda.

Anyway, let's put this aside, because reading the part about the fall of the Western Empire surprised me: Stark views it in a positive light, and describes the barbarians as more militarly advanced as the roman armies (which after the Diocletian reforms grew larger but less effective).

He also argues that the roman army relied less and less on infantry, making it less disciplined and protected (in the V century the roman soldier only had an helmet and maybe a breastplate), and at the same time cavalry grew more clad in armor.

Also, he describes the "barbarian tribes" as more advanced than we think, and argues that they introduced many innovations in the ex roman West: better river navigation, metallurgy (he says there are iron factories in Northern Europe), horse breeding, heavy plough, wind and water mills (which were known in the roman world but rarely used), horse collar.

He sees the urban decline as a mere shift to the North, because many cities were founded on the North Sea.

An interesting point he makes is that even during roman times there were developed markets in Northern Europe, even Sweden, which already had contacts with the East (in Helgo industrial complex there were coins, even a Buddha statue from India).

Stark argues that the Pirenne's thesis doesn't consider the shift from the Mediterranean to the Northern rivers.

So, after this long introduction, my question is: are there any books or sources about Northern Europe during and after roman times that challenge the classic view of the germanic polities (tribes or kingdoms) in the North?
 
Well, reading your sum-up definitly makes me think that this book is worth nothing and is totally biased for the probable reason that Stark identifies himself with the Germanic tribes. For the same reason that many german scholars spoke of the big migration of peoples instead of barbarian invasions because they considered their own modern nation as the heir of these barbarian half-germanic tribes.

The mere idea that these tribes were militarily or technologically more advanced than the romans is just counterfactual.

And having windmills is just the sign that you live in a region where there are strong winds. In other regions it's watermill that fits.

... etc

The one thing decisively positive in the fall of the WRE is the emerging frame of many States that competed with each other. This competitive frame was the key of european innovation and expansion.
 
Anyway, let's put this aside, because reading the part about the fall of the Western Empire surprised me: Stark views it in a positive light, and describes the barbarians as more militarly advanced as the roman armies (which after the Diocletian reforms grew larger but less effective).

This is a lie. If you go see the Roman record in the 4th and 5th century, you will see that they won most of the battles. What changed was the battle tactics and mentality.

Romans now preferred ambushes to pitched battles, because it allowed them to suffer less casualties.

What really destroyed the Empire wasn't the
barbarians as more military advanced
, if that would be truth then the East would also easily fall. What killed the West was constant civil war, that killed huge amounts of soldiers, and that forced the Emperors to develop weapons that would allow them to train larger amounts of men in little time. When Diocletian Reforms failed to provide enough men to the army they turned to mercenaries. Barbarian Mercenaries. Without native armies and being forced to really on mercenaries, that could be possible enemies, the West was vulnerable. The East had more people and more money and could recover faster, but even they resorted to diplomacy to save their lands.

He also argues that the roman army relied less and less on infantry, making it less disciplined and protected (in the V century the roman soldier only had an helmet and maybe a breastplate), and at the same time cavalry grew more clad in armor.

I could also argue that the roman discipline of the Principate was lower than that of the Republic, which according to some is true, but that didn't made the army less effective. They keep discipline for as long as they could, but after the army became more reliant on mercenaries, they were unable to force the mercenaries to accept the roman standards.

The infantry became less protected so that they could be faster and more mobile, the roman mentality and, after all, changed from open battles to ambushes. In one of my book, I read that before open battles only the first or the first two line would be the only ones wearing mail. The reason was because their shield was considered protection enough for the battle.

The West kept their infantry armies longer than the East. That was a mistake. As Adrianople showed cavalry was the new lord and master of the battlefield, but the West refused to change. Infantry was an important part of the army, but heavy cavalry replaced heavy infantry as the deciding factor in the battlefield. But it't true that the cavalry became more claded in armour than the infantry (the cavalrymen that had armour obviously), but it looks like you are implying that they took the armour from the inf. to give it to the cav. which is an hilarious idea, stupid but funny.

Also, he describes the "barbarian tribes" as more advanced than we think, and argues that they introduced many innovations in the ex roman West: better river navigation, metallurgy (he says there are iron factories in Northern Europe), horse breeding, heavy plough, wind and water mills (which were known in the roman world but rarely used), horse collar.

On the water mills.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbegal_aqueduct_and_mill

On metallurgy

Can't refuse what I can't claim to known but I have no doubt that MR. Stark gave some kind of prove, so you may give it to us so that we can discuss it's veracity.

Horse Breeding.

Ridiculous the idea that the Roman empire didn't knew this point.

Heavy Plough

The Romans achieved the heavy wheeled mouldboard plough in the late 3rd and 4th century AD, when archaeological evidence appears, inter alia, in Roman Britain.

Windmill

The windwheel of the Greek engineer Heron of Alexandria in the first century AD is the earliest known instance of using a wind-driven wheel to power a machine.[

The first practical windmills had sails that rotated in a horizontal plane, around a vertical axis. According to Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, these panemone windmills were invented in eastern Persia as recorded by the Persian geographer Estakhri in the ninth centuryy

The earliest certain reference to a windmill in Europe (assumed to have been of the vertical type) dates from 1185,
 
I've recently read "How the West won" by Rodney Stark. I know, it's a bit passionate (and explicit) about restoring the old eurocentric view of european history. Some would say it's a piece of propaganda.

Anyway, let's put this aside, because reading the part about the fall of the Western Empire surprised me: Stark views it in a positive light, and describes the barbarians as more militarly advanced as the roman armies (which after the Diocletian reforms grew larger but less effective).

He also argues that the roman army relied less and less on infantry, making it less disciplined and protected (in the V century the roman soldier only had an helmet and maybe a breastplate), and at the same time cavalry grew more clad in armor.

Also, he describes the "barbarian tribes" as more advanced than we think, and argues that they introduced many innovations in the ex roman West: better river navigation, metallurgy (he says there are iron factories in Northern Europe), horse breeding, heavy plough, wind and water mills (which were known in the roman world but rarely used), horse collar.

He sees the urban decline as a mere shift to the North, because many cities were founded on the North Sea.

An interesting point he makes is that even during roman times there were developed markets in Northern Europe, even Sweden, which already had contacts with the East (in Helgo industrial complex there were coins, even a Buddha statue from India).

Stark argues that the Pirenne's thesis doesn't consider the shift from the Mediterranean to the Northern rivers.

So, after this long introduction, my question is: are there any books or sources about Northern Europe during and after roman times that challenge the classic view of the germanic polities (tribes or kingdoms) in the North?

What a load of crap.Is this even peer-reviewed?
 
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Thanks for the replies; I think most of his points (the technological ones) state that the germanic tribes, more than inventing, have extensively adopted innovations that were not employed en masse during the late empire (because they were not convenient/presence of state institutions that hindered them).

I know some of his claims are biased, but i'm thinking about the stage of development of Northern Europe on a commercial level and its influence on Late Antique (or "Dark Ages", so to speak) Mediterranean or Europe in general.
 
... did you actually read the counterpoints or did you just see that there were a number of posts and some vague acusation that it is biased? ... can't tell
 
Thanks for the replies; I think most of his points (the technological ones) state that the germanic tribes, more than inventing, have extensively adopted innovations that were not employed en masse during the late empire (because they were not convenient/presence of state institutions that hindered them).

But all of the things that he's discussing were around. Waterpower in the late Roman Empire is pretty attested, to the point that we have poems about water-powered lumber yards on the Moselle. Wind mills are a Central Asian/Persian invention, and are referenced in 12th century sources about Byzantium.

So.
 
He used to be a pretty good sociologist of religion, but he seems to have slipped a bit off the deep end in the last few years- denouncing the dominance of the teaching of "Darwinism" in high schools, for example.

His recent books include

The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success
(2005)

God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades (2009)

The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion
(2011)

Plus the one you mentioned, so he may be a bit agenda-driven lately.
 
He used to be a pretty good sociologist of religion, but he seems to have slipped a bit off the deep end in the last few years- denouncing the dominance of the teaching of "Darwinism" in high schools, for example.

His recent books include

The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success
(2005)

God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades (2009)

The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion
(2011)

Plus the one you mentioned, so he may be a bit agenda-driven lately.

Reading those titles given a clear under standing of the message !

All this stresses anachronic ideologic interpretation of the past for a present political purpose. Like those claiming that the roman empire fell because of its so-called socialism ...
 
Reading those titles given a clear under standing of the message !

All this stresses anachronic ideologic interpretation of the past for a present political purpose. Like those claiming that the roman empire fell because of its so-called socialism ...

We all know that the true deathblow came from anarcho-syndicalism.
 
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