Was the Roman Empire a Weak State?

[Faeelin]

This is inspired by some of the periodic discussions we have about the Western Roman Empire holding onto North Africa, or retaking it in the 440s or 460s from the Vandals. Okay, yay, they take it.

But the Western Empire had periods of seeming resurgence time and again. Aetius, for instance, could plausibly have claimed to have revived the empire and restored some stability. But then something went wrong, and the barbarians carved off another piece of the empire. This suggests to me that the Roman state was weak, and that it had a hard time recovering from blows. Retaking North Africa from the Vandals just means the Visigoths seize it a generation later.

 

[Komnenos002]

It seems more like an inconsistent state when you describe it like that.

Perhaps because there wasn't much of a state bureaucracy, or even institutions of (relevant) power outside the Emperor and army? I think by this point, even the internal trade was starting to disappear.

When good fortune and a competent Emperor align, Rome can see resurgence and periods of success. However there isn't anything to fall back on, when this isn't the case.

 

[St. Just]

I'd say so, yes. No determined succession, no Chinese style bureaucracy to act as a stabilizing structure... it's kind of amazing the Empire weathered as much as it did over the years.

 

[profxyz]

How do you define a weak state?

If you define it as 'a hard time recovering from blows', then we should also bear in mind that you could argue that the Imperial Chinese state (which I guess was what you were juxtaposing Rome against) also suffered from this particular malady. Tang China never recovered from the An Shi Rebellion (instead fragmenting into various local warlords the central government never surmounted for about 150 years); the Zhou didn't recover from their collapse at Hao (instead collapsing into various warring feudal principalities for around 300 years); neither did the Han after the Yellow Turbans (again, collapsing into semi-independent warring powers for the last 30 years of its life) or the Song after the initial Jin/Mongol victories (the Southern Song never recovering lands lost to the Jin or to the Mongols).

In fact, it has been argued that in Chinese historiography, zhongxing (middle-period recovery) doesn't indicate a total recovery, only a partial one until the dynasty's inevitable demise [Mary Clabaugh Wright, the Tung Chi'h Restoration]. So I'd argue against using Imperial China as the only 'counter-example' to the Romans under that metric.

I would argue that the Roman Empire's woes were compounded by the fact that it was in a poor strategic position and was probably overstretched even during the Augustan Era. Being a hollow ring surrounding an often-difficult sea, the Roman military often had to transfer units from one frontier to another in order to meet localized threats. Trouble was, this would set off a cascading effect where lesser troop presence emboldened Roman enemies to act more aggressively. China didn't have this issue - most of the time, it really only had one frontier (the north).

The alternative - abandoning cordon defence and creating mobile field armies, as Constantine did - had to come at the expense of massive civilian suffering, which unsurprisingly would cause locals to question the utility of Roman rule.

EDIT: I should also mention that the comparatively vague nature of Roman succession, with its complex calculus involving dynastic, republican and military considerations, also created a more unstable 'transition period' for the Empire compared with Imperial China, leading to civil wars which served as catalysts for foreign invasion as frontier troops were drawn away to fight for imperial contenders. Of course, this arrangement didn't stop the Roman Empire much in its first two centuries...

 

[Abhakhazia]

I'm not sure how I would answer this.

First of all, I think that Rome was actually very competent at local government. The Roman Empire was always one of a various municipalities dotting territory conquered and later defended by legions. The municipalities were actually quite well governed, but had little ability to defend themselves.

Rome's provincial governments were in contrast, often loosely defined and controlled by an apathetic Senate or a military who required constant switches in leadership to prevent revolt.

However, Rome's ability to stay stable for so long is not surprising, due to its incredibly capable military. When that military turned on each other, that often resulted in disaster, especially when combined with poorly managed barbarian immigration.

The top of Roman government was often fairly competent. While the bureaucracy, as others have mentioned, was not huge, influential and hyper-competent. The problem towards the end was a lot of ignored problems coming to fruition violently, and the difficulty to organize thousands of municipalities into line very quickly.

 

[Faeelin]

I would argue that the Roman Empire's woes were compounded by the fact that it was in a poor strategic position and was probably overstretched even during the Augustan Era. Being a hollow ring surrounding an often-difficult sea, the Roman military often had to transfer units from one frontier to another in order to meet localized threats.

Surely the sea was a huge benefit to the Roman Empire? It let them move goods and troops far more rapidly than they could handle.

[quote[The alternative - abandoning cordon defence and creating mobile field armies, as Constantine did - had to come at the expense of massive civilian suffering, which unsurprisingly would cause locals to question the utility of Roman rule.[/quote]

What's the nature of this suffering? In the eastern empire it appears that the 4th and 5th centuries were as prosperous as ever; the same was true for parts of the Roman West for the 4th.

 

[darthfanta]

How do you define a weak state?

If you define it as 'a hard time recovering from blows', then we should also bear in mind that you could argue that the Imperial Chinese state (which I guess was what you were juxtaposing Rome against) also suffered from this particular malady. Tang China never recovered from the An Shi Rebellion (instead fragmenting into various local warlords the central government never surmounted for about 150 years); the Zhou didn't recover from their collapse at Hao (instead collapsing into various warring feudal principalities for around 300 years); neither did the Han after the Yellow Turbans (again, collapsing into semi-independent warring powers for the last 30 years of its life) or the Song after the initial Jin/Mongol victories (the Southern Song never recovering lands lost to the Jin or to the Mongols).

In fact, it has been argued that in Chinese historiography, zhongxing (middle-period recovery) doesn't indicate a total recovery, only a partial one until the dynasty's inevitable demise [Mary Clabaugh Wright, the Tung Chi'h Restoration]. So I'd argue against using Imperial China as the only 'counter-example' to the Romans under that metric.

I would argue that the Roman Empire's woes were compounded by the fact that it was in a poor strategic position and was probably overstretched even during the Augustan Era. Being a hollow ring surrounding an often-difficult sea, the Roman military often had to transfer units from one frontier to another in order to meet localized threats. Trouble was, this would set off a cascading effect where lesser troop presence emboldened Roman enemies to act more aggressively. China didn't have this issue - most of the time, it really only had one frontier (the north).

The alternative - abandoning cordon defence and creating mobile field armies, as Constantine did - had to come at the expense of massive civilian suffering, which unsurprisingly would cause locals to question the utility of Roman rule.

EDIT: I should also mention that the comparatively vague nature of Roman succession, with its complex calculus involving dynastic, republican and military considerations, also created a more unstable 'transition period' for the Empire compared with Imperial China, leading to civil wars which served as catalysts for foreign invasion as frontier troops were drawn away to fight for imperial contenders. Of course, this arrangement didn't stop the Roman Empire much in its first two centuries...

I have to say that the Roman Empire has recovered from heavy blows for at least once--it fractured into three parts during the Crisis of the Third Century and Aurelian reconquered the other two parts.Diocletian subsequently brought internal stability back on track.What they didn't fix however was the economy(their stop-gap solution was to introduce a planned economy,which patched things up on the short term,but made things far worst on the long term),population decline(which can be correlated with economic decline) and the political system(the tetrarchy brought some stability,but it was a pretty lousy system that relies on the assumption of selfless emperors willing to work with a number of other peers).

As for making a full recovery after a disaster in Chinese history,the Eastern Han Dynasty's restoration of power following Wang Mang is probably the only instance where a dynasty makes a complete recovery after a period of decline.

I do have to agree however that compared to Chinese Empires,quite a number of the institutions within the Roman Empire came from an ad hoc basis and lacked long term planning.

 

[Magnum]

Retaking North Africa from the Vandals just means the Visigoths seize it a generation later.

The Visigoths had enough problems as it was - they were still securing their hold over Spain, they were heavily engaged in Gaul and, after their first round of kings, suffered from enormous instability that would put 3rd century Rome to shame.

 

[Matteo]

This is inspired by some of the periodic discussions we have about the Western Roman Empire holding onto North Africa, or retaking it in the 440s or 460s from the Vandals. Okay, yay, they take it.

But the Western Empire had periods of seeming resurgence time and again. Aetius, for instance, could plausibly have claimed to have revived the empire and restored some stability. But then something went wrong, and the barbarians carved off another piece of the empire. This suggests to me that the Roman state was weak, and that it had a hard time recovering from blows. Retaking North Africa from the Vandals just means the Visigoths seize it a generation later.

It was not that much a weak State than a loose and decentralized system of governing a huge territory.

It held thanks to the absolute superiority of the imperial army, the union of the aristocracies of the various territories of the empire, the legal system and a system of taxation and contribution.

But the romans did not consider the empire as a weak State. Such a judgement is a modern point of view, for people like us who can compare past things with the level of control that are made possible with modern technologies and more powerful organizations.

 

[Agricola]

No, the roman empire was not a weak state. But it became one over the centuries. At least in the West. And if you follow the shock tehory of Peter Heather, even the West was strong until 406. The mother of all questions is, how the empire became weak and if it was inevitable?

Looking to buerocracy: the republican buerocracy was rather non existent. But during the principate things became much better. And if you add all the magistrates of the 2000 self-administrated cities, the numbers are perhaps more comparable to the chinese buerocracy. Anything else is not comparable. The 2 systems of administration are just too different. Lately I did a bit research about the education of chinese buerocrats. My idea was, that their training and qualification was perhaps a bit more appropriate than in the roman empire. The shocking answer was: Not at all! There is near to nothing, the romans could have learned from the chinese process to train buerocrats.

 

[darthfanta]

No, the roman empire was not a weak state. But it became one over the centuries. At least in the West. And if you follow the shock tehory of Peter Heather, even the West was strong until 406. The mother of all questions is, how the empire became weak and was it inevitable?

Looking to buerocracy: the republican buerocracy was rather non existent. But during the principate things became better. And if you add all the magistrates of the 2000 cities, the numbers are perhaps more comparable to the chinese buerocracy. Anything else is not comparable. The 2 systems of administration are just too different. Lately I did a bit research about the education of chinese buerocrats. My idea was, that their training and qualification was perhaps a bit more appropriate than in the roman empire. The shocking answer was: Not at all! There is near to nothing, the romans could have learned from the chinese process to train buerocrats.

I must say though that despite what the civil service exams in the Chinese Empires may indicate,they are far from meritocratic ,nor are they especially useful in finding good,highly competent officials.Quite often,only the rich has the means to be educated in Confucian texts.Another thing is that the curriculum they are educated with are highly impractical and stressed more on how the ideal world,with military service and trade being discouraged.It got to ridiculous levels in the Song Dynasty where civilian bureaucrats are sometimes given command of armies,under the belief that generals should not be trusted as they might rebel if they have full control of an army.Even when generals are given control of their armies,they are under either heavy restriction or civilian interference.

 

[Faeelin]

It got to ridiculous levels in the Song Dynasty where civilian bureaucrats are sometimes given command of armies,under the belief that generals should not be trusted as they might rebel if they have full control of an army.Even when generals are given control of their armies,they are under either heavy restriction or civilian interference.

The Song Dynasty, to be fair, saw history through the prism of the Tang Dynasty, which was taken down by angry generals. They saw them as a bigger threat than nomad invaders (which was true up until Genghis Khan).

 

[Russian]

No, the roman empire was not a weak state. But it became one over the centuries. At least in the West. And if you follow the shock tehory of Peter Heather, even the West was strong until 406. The mother of all questions is, how the empire became weak and if it was inevitable?

There are no strict rules in history.
Well, almost no rules. One of these rules is "don't have your army consist of barbarians". If you break this rule - you are done. The 'West Roman Empire' broke this rule - and they collapsed. The East Roman Empire walked on the edge of the razor - and they survived.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

This is inspired by some of the periodic discussions we have about the Western Roman Empire holding onto North Africa, or retaking it in the 440s or 460s from the Vandals. Okay, yay, they take it.

But the Western Empire had periods of seeming resurgence time and again. Aetius, for instance, could plausibly have claimed to have revived the empire and restored some stability. But then something went wrong, and the barbarians carved off another piece of the empire. This suggests to me that the Roman state was weak, and that it had a hard time recovering from blows. Retaking North Africa from the Vandals just means the Visigoths seize it a generation later.

It depends on which period you're talking about. By the fifth century, the Western Roman Empire was certainly pretty weak. I'd put the blame on two main factors, one short-term, the other more long-term.

In the short term, there’s the simple fact that the West had been on the losing side of two large-scale civil wars during the reign of Theodosius, meaning that much of the Western army had been killed. Consequently, the West barely had enough troops left to defend its frontiers; when one part of the Empire was threatened they wouldn’t have any real strategic reserves, but would have to weaken another section of their frontiers. (By contrast, the Eastern Empire was able to support two armies In Praesenti – that is, “in the presence [of the Emperor]” – around Constantinople, which could be dispatched to reinforce threatened frontiers without weakening another section of the borders.) When the Gothic leader Radagaisus invaded Illyria and Italy in 405, Stilicho had to bring in troops from the Rhine frontier to defeat them. This of course left the Rhenish frontier vulnerable, and sure enough large hordes of barbarians poured into Gaul in such numbers that the Empire was never able to expel them again.

In the longer run, though, I think the major issue facing the West was probably the sidelining of the Senate in the Imperial government. During the Early Empire, the major provinces and commands (with the exception of the Prefecture of Egypt) had generally gone to members of the Senatorial order; and, since the structure of the cursus honorum meant that such men spent a lot of their adult life in Rome, the Emperor was able to maintain his relations with them, monitor them for reliability, and so forth. The fact that a lot of the Empire’s biggest landowners were also members of the Senate helped as well, since that meant that Rome’s wealthiest and most influential citizens had an interest in the good functioning of the government.

Over the course of the third century onwards, though, the Senate had been gradually marginalised from the real centres of power: military commands now went to career soldiers rather than to Senatorial nobles, and the seat of government had moved from Rome so that the Emperors might be closer to the frontiers. Now, with a military establishment dispersed throughout the Empire, it was much harder for the Emperor to keep a close watch on his generals. The expansion of the Imperial bureaucracy, whilst on paper it should have made the Emperor more aware of what was going on, in practice often had the opposite effect, as there were now more layers of personnel between the Emperor and the actual situation on the ground. Moreover, the marginalisation of the Senate meant that the Empire’s great landowners (who owned a lot of land indeed; it’s estimated that twenty Senatorial clans controlled the majority of land in Gaul and Italy) no longer had as big a stake in the survival of the wider Empire. Whilst it would probably be an exaggeration to say that they stopped caring, it wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration: Senators in the West seemed to have engaged in tax evasion on a massive scale, so that, whilst on paper the Western Empire should have had little problem keeping those unwashed Germanics at bay, in practice the Western government was to strapped for cash to raise anywhere near an adequate number of soldiers.

In the East, by way of comparison, political power was much more centralised: army, Senate, bureaucracy, and Emperor were all based in Constantinople. This meant that government was much more cohesive, and hence that it was easier to keep an eye on potential disloyalty. Moreover, because the Senate wasn’t isolated from the real locus of power as it was in the West, the Eastern Empire’s wealthier citizens still felt that they had a stake in the government’s continued functioning, and accordingly were more likely to do their bit in terms of paying taxes and so on.

Incidentally, I wouldn’t put so much emphasis on the lack of a clear succession law as a direct cause of Imperial weakness during the fifth century. By then the period of constant usurpations had more or less come to an end, and there was much more respect given to the principle of supporting the established dynasty. Then again, since a lot of the conditions of the fifth century were the result of the Third Century Crisis, you could say that the lack of clear succession was an indirect cause of the Empire’s problems.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Surely the sea was a huge benefit to the Roman Empire? It let them move goods and troops far more rapidly than they could handle.

[quote[The alternative - abandoning cordon defence and creating mobile field armies, as Constantine did - had to come at the expense of massive civilian suffering, which unsurprisingly would cause locals to question the utility of Roman rule.

What's the nature of this suffering? In the eastern empire it appears that the 4th and 5th centuries were as prosperous as ever; the same was true for parts of the Roman West for the 4th.[/QUOTE]

Well, the field armies were mostly billeted on civilian populations, which is rarely a pleasant experience for said civilians. (Fun fact: when Louis XIV wanted to, ah, "encourage" the conversion of French Protestants to Catholicism, one of the techniques he used was to billet soldiers in Huguenot households.) There was also the issue of requisitions etc. to support the army, although I doubt that can be attributed specifically to the mobile nature of the field armies.

 

[SlyDessertFox]

It seems more like an inconsistent state when you describe it like that.

Perhaps because there wasn't much of a state bureaucracy, or even institutions of (relevant) power outside the Emperor and army? I think by this point, even the internal trade was starting to disappear.

When good fortune and a competent Emperor align, Rome can see resurgence and periods of success. However there isn't anything to fall back on, when this isn't the case.

I think this is important, because I believe it is the one distinction between the divergent paths of the west and eastern empires and perfectly describes why the west failed and the east lived on for many more centuries. Geographically speaking, aside from Constantinople, the east at first glance is much less defensible-Anatolia is vulnerable to attacks from the sea, both Anatolia and Syria are vulnerable to attacks through the Caucusus (as the Huns did at one point, raiding deep into Syria), the entire east of course is vulnerable to the Sassanians, and the Balkans is just a dumping ground for Germanic migrants and steppe hordes. And, again, the northern Balkan coast can be attacked from the Black Sea, and even at times Greece (as the Goths did in the 3rd century).

The west on the other hand, looks like it has a lot of strategic depth. The wealthy parts of the western empire are well protected from invaders-Spain of course is sheltered by Gaul and the Pyrrhenees, North Africa is separated by the Mediterranean, and Italy is protected to the north by the Alps and to the west and East by Gaul, Illyria, and Pannonia. Plus of course the two major borders are defended by natural boundaries, the Rhine and the Danube.

Yet it was the east that survived. That's partly because the east could survive weak emperors (at least during the 5th century) without much chaos and widespread civil war (see: Arcadius), and developed a focus more on diplomacy than on force. They couldn't beat Atilla with arms, so they paid him off, in increasingly large sums. From the Avars on, they would encourage steppe nomads and migrants beyond the frontiers (i.e. the Bulghars in the case of the Avars for example, and later on the Cumans and Pechenegs among others) to attack the major threat facing them on the Danube frontier.

The west never developed this focus. It looked like something similar might be developing under Aetius. Aetius recognized, for example, that defeating the Huns completely and utterly at Chalons would have been counter productive-a surviving Hun state would be useful to him and probably the better alternative than all those peoples under Attila's control breaking free and spilling over the border in search of more fertile and safer lands. And he was right. But Aetius of course was murdered.

 

[Agricola]

I'd put the blame on two main factors, one short-term, the other more long-term.

It is refreshing to read a competent analysis from someone, who is not blinded by single shortlived heroic leaders, but is looking to longterm processes in a society, which often overrule shorterm events.

 

[scholar]

If you define it as 'a hard time recovering from blows', then we should also bear in mind that you could argue that the Imperial Chinese state (which I guess was what you were juxtaposing Rome against) also suffered from this particular malady. Tang China never recovered from the An Shi Rebellion (instead fragmenting into various local warlords the central government never surmounted for about 150 years); the Zhou didn't recover from their collapse at Hao (instead collapsing into various warring feudal principalities for around 300 years); neither did the Han after the Yellow Turbans (again, collapsing into semi-independent warring powers for the last 30 years of its life) or the Song after the initial Jin/Mongol victories (the Southern Song never recovering lands lost to the Jin or to the Mongols).

Careful with some of these examples.

The Tang did recover from An Lushan's rebellion, but it adopted a more decentralized form of rule. The Warlords only became a problem when the Tang suffered a second decline, and rather than a solidified enemy that could be defeated the Warlords were many pocket emperors. Even then the Tang wasn't completely killed off until the Northern Invasions by proto-Mongols and proto-Manchurians.

More important than the Yellow Turbans would be the wave of migrations into China. While it is mostly on the periphery of the Chinese records and popular culture, millions of people from the north, west, and east were moving into China. Liang province was wartorn from the Qiang rebellions. Armies on the frontiers were at near constant war with these groups, and warlords increasingly compromised with them as the central government fell from one military leader to another until the establishment of Cao Cao who more or less settled the issue until after his dynasty collapsed with the Jin. After almost a century of fighting, the population of China went from 50-80 million people to about 15 million. The Yellow Turbans were not the catalyst for this, merely a reflection of the larger problems the empire had when dealing with the outside problems along with various droughts and famines. That 15 million may have even been a rise from a low point during the Three Kingdoms.

Ultimately though, the Jin went into another devastating civil war in the so called war of the 8 princes, which left China in ruins and the demographics were in such a sorry state that foreigners outnumbered Chinese. The Sinicized Xiongnu descended from a Xiongnu Khan and a Han Dynasty Princess then decided to make their bid for power, claiming to restore the Han Dynasty under themselves. However, because of cultural differences and the way the Han court looked upon him and his family (especially the maternal link to the old dynasty), the name was changed to Zhao and another civil war was ushered categorized by ethnic conflict. However, because of Chinese bureaucracy, the strength of the educated rural scholar gentry, and the dependence of a series of foreign dynasties on the Chinese themselves, the new groups became Chinese and the character of the conflict became one of Civil War rather than a foreign one. There was nothing systemic at any of these stages that would have prevented a recovery, simply that a confluence of greater factors caused them to continually domino until one last dynastic squabble and the rejection of a foreign dynasty as legitimate by the genty precipitated in two centuries of conflict.

The Song Dynasty actually forged an alliance with the Mongols and succeeded in crushing the Jin through a pincer movement. Mongols come from the North, the Song from the south. The two might even have kept the alliance for a bit, until the Song behaved in its xenophobic "I'm the ruler of the universe and you are secondary barbarians at best, and I deserve the land of the Jin that we agreed to split" that the two went to war as the Mongols were, in a way, even worse than the Song when it comes to tolerating a power not submitting to them. Nevertheless the Song state was powerful enough to continually resist the Mongols for the better part of half a century, and only truly met its end when the the Song dynasty became a headless state. The Mongols even almost entertained having a semi-permanent peace with the Song several times, only to be rebuffed. When Kublai began to see himself as the new Emperor of China in the Chinese sense the Song was doomed, if only because their own domestic guns could not protect them when the bureaucracy was increasingly fatalistic and thought burying the emperor's head in the sand and fighting over who gets to be empress and the next person to have his head buried in the sand took precedence. I would say that was the failure of the Southern Song, more even than its inability to accept an equal power dynamic with the Mongols - the court sought to above the problem by doing nothing about it. As I said, it took almost 50 years. Entire generations grew up with the Mongol threat on the horizon, and people trusted that the status quo would remain - or saw the end as inevitable.

However, I believe this is something of missing the point. While a new Dynasty in China is something of a new state, at the same time it was seen as the same country. The dyansty is what embodied the naming institution, but the undercurrent was more or less the same (with natural evolution with time). Rather than say that few Chinese Dynasties recovered, I would put forward that each new Dynasty was a recovery in and of itself.

 

[oshron]

all countries wax and wane. obviously, Rome was a really powerful state when it was at its peak under Trajan, but was considerably weaker when it had barbarian tribes pounding on the capital's gates