What's Your Favourite Kind Of Rome?

What is your favourite kind of Rome?

  • Non-existent:

    Votes: 12 10.7%
  • Roman Republic:

    Votes: 30 26.8%
  • Imperial Wank:

    Votes: 26 23.2%
  • Byzantine:

    Votes: 26 23.2%
  • Germanic:

    Votes: 3 2.7%
  • Spartacist:

    Votes: 1 0.9%
  • Remnant:

    Votes: 6 5.4%
  • Other:

    Votes: 8 7.1%

  • Total voters
    112
Granted, though it probably happened already by the 16th or at latest 17th c.

Your schema is pointing to the early 19th c. instead. I'd say the breaking point happened a couple of hundred years earlier, the time difference after was required to reap the benefits and develop projection power.

Case in point: The Manchu Emperors wanted to improve their artillery arm. Who did they turn to? The Jesuits. And this is in the 1600s.

One could make the case that Europeans had passed the rest of the world technologically in the military sphere by the late 1400s. Mehmed II's chief gun-master at Constantinople in 1453 was a Hungarian, and he had to have European advisors teach his gun crews the best way to use the weapons.

Uzun Hassan (1423-1478) repeatedly tried to get the Europeans to give him firearms because he couldn't make his own, and he's the ruler of Persia! By this point the Europeans have been able to do it for 150 years.
 
Uzun Hassan (1423-1478) repeatedly tried to get the Europeans to give him firearms because he couldn't make his own, and he's the ruler of Persia! By this point the Europeans have been able to do it for 150 years.

Yeah - brings to mind another similar example. Earliest recorded Russian cannon (ca. 1378-1380) bears a Persian name and isn't any better than what the Horde uses.

By 1560 Russia's exporting cannon to Persia because Persia cannot make similar things nearly as cheap.

And this is Russia, which itself wasn't at the forefront of European warmaking in many respects, and didn't have the industrial capacity of Bohemia or the Rhine or Flandres.
 
I suggest you read The Great Divergance, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization and 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Especially the second book. The fact is is that Western Europe got where it is today by the following methods:


  • 1) It forced almost all Amerindians (well, those that survived the genocides and diseases of European invaders) and masses of Africans into lives of slavery and servitude, mainly in producing raw resources, essentially because no one wanted European manufactured goods; this is why India was colonized: No one would want to buy English wool cloth when Indian cottons were available.


  • 2) Europe accumulated superior Nonwestern science and technology; this was only possible due to the fact that TWO (eventually THREE (plus Australia)) continents were almost completely decimated by the European Genocides (not just their Afro-Eurasian diseases), enabling them to enslave the remaining people to produce such goods as silver for China, for example: No one wanted anything Europe had.


  • 3) Eventually, thanks to these methods, Europe became advanced enough that it could take on the rest of Eurasia, thus accumulating still more Nonwestern knowledge, resources and technology, until it finally reached the tipping point, surpassed other civilizations in every technological way and thus became Industrial and Modern.

No, Roman Paganism did not fix the problems you mention directly but it also did not create a disincentive to make improve life in the real world that Christianity did nor does it promote dogma and suppress debate on such a scale as Christianity did.

This is a very simplistic reading of history (not to mention highly factually incorrect). Technological transfer of many critical technologies, such as gunpowder, was not transferred through the purchase of guns and gunpowder with Amerindian silver, but through technological osmosis trough the Mongol conquests.

The introduction of many Eastern cultural mores and practices, likewise, from the Muslim world to the Christian World, likewise, was spurred far more by the Crusader states creating cultural contacts between the East and the West. Until the 13th century, and in real practice, until the 18th century, describing Europe as buying technology with silver is inaccurate because there were no direct connections between Europe and China/India, only a very loose trade route where silk and other luxury goods went one way, and money went the other.

Likewise, your post also fails to note that Amerindian silver specifically was primarily traded for silk and other Chinese luxury goods, something which would have been eminently useless for technological catchup (and in any case, was part of trade links which long pre-dated 1492). Technological transfer occurred primarily on these trade links, for which the Mongol invasions, which provided a single state encompassing much of Eurasia, is universally accepted as having far greater effect in establishing these trade links than a sudden overabundance of silver.

In addition, you also fail to note that the Chinese insistence of silver, which, while based on not wanting what Europe had, had less to do with already having everything, but more to do with a cultural superiority complex which presumed that they already had everything. This was not an unreasonable conclusion when the Chinese had a massive tech lead, but by the time Amerindian silver comes into play, it was eminently idiotic.

You also fail to note that Spain's (and that Spain had a literal monopoly on the New World silver) primary usage of Amerindian silver was not in a desperate attempt to source technology from China to support a dastardly plot to take over the world, but mostly to fund continental wars, at which point the silver was dispersed to a point that it did little more than cause inflation.

Finally, the main problem with this fallacy is that Europe, from the 5th century to the 15th century, was not technologically stagnant. As an agricultural society where the dominant economic sector was agricultural, it is unsurprising that the primary areas of technological development were agricultural, including the development of the heavy plow and the horse collar. This meant that very quickly, European agriculture became more efficient than Chinese agriculture. As much of European society was devoted towards the construction of epic monuments, European architectural technology also advanced beyond China's. China's technological developments tended towards areas such as gunpowder, printing, etc. because China's societal emphases were different, tending more towards technological inquiry as a result of an outgrowth of scholar culture.

PS: Your argument also fails to answer the question of why, until the Mongol Invasions, the Islamic World, which was, if anything, even more dogmatic and repressive than the Christian World, was miles ahead of the West in technology.
 
I suggest you read The Great Divergance, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization and 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Especially the second book. The fact is is that Western Europe got where it is today by the following methods:


  • 1) It forced almost all Amerindians (well, those that survived the genocides and diseases of European invaders) and masses of Africans into lives of slavery and servitude, mainly in producing raw resources, essentially because no one wanted European manufactured goods; this is why India was colonized: No one would want to buy English wool cloth when Indian cottons were available.

  • 2) Europe accumulated superior Nonwestern science and technology; this was only possible due to the fact that TWO (eventually THREE (plus Australia)) continents were almost completely decimated by the European Genocides (not just their Afro-Eurasian diseases), enabling them to enslave the remaining people to produce such goods as silver for China, for example: No one wanted anything Europe had.

  • 3) Eventually, thanks to these methods, Europe became advanced enough that it could take on the rest of Eurasia, thus accumulating still more Nonwestern knowledge, resources and technology, until it finally reached the tipping point, surpassed other civilizations in every technological way and thus became Industrial and Modern.
Quite honestly, the above does not adress your unsupported claim that Christianity stagnates nations, so it is pointless to the discussion. The post Roman Europeans were not unlike their Roman ancestors in that they improved upon and found practical uses for discoveries made elswhere. That said, Europe was making contributions to science and the arts well before colonialism, at a rate totally comperable with those in Asia and the middle east. As for colonialism benefitting the Europeans, not nearly so much as one might think. You also neglect central and eastern Europe, which did not colonize, but still were responsible for huge scale advancements, and were no less Christian in most cases.


No, Roman Paganism did not fix the problems you mention directly but it also did not create a disincentive to make improve life in the real world that Christianity did nor does it promote dogma and suppress debate on such a scale as Christianity did

Christianity did not create disincentive for fixing problems. This is a conclusion you have drawn solely based on the Christain belief in an afterlife, but which has no basis in fact. There were no fewer men of worldly ambition in Christian Europe than there were in Pagan Europe. The entire history of the Byzantine Empire was a cycle of failure, examination of said failure, and then implementing a means of fixing the problem. The sheer number of admnistrative and military reforms the state undertook in order to last 1,000+ was staggering.

Suppression of debate is something you will really need to source. Early Christianity was based on debate within the church to establish doctrine, and I have as yet seen no evidence that it attempted to dissuade people from debating other subjects. You might be surprised if you researched and found how much society under Christianity remained the same as it had ever been.
 
What is a Sparticist Rome? Imperator Karl Leibknacht and the Praetorian Gaurd Panzer Battalion rolling into Gaul in the Great Patriotic War?

It's where Spartacus wins the Third Serville Rome and somehow takes over Rome, however unlikely that may be.
 
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