Would the Roman empire be more advaced than us if their empire didn't fall?

If the roman empire didn't fall would they be more advanced than we are today?


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You conflate rather different cases here. Scythia is hugely more remote and vast than Germania or Mesopotamia, and I would never dare argue that Classical Rome may conquer and hold it. As it concerns Germania, there was no such thing as constant pressure of Central Asian nomads on it. That kind of breakthough only occurred once every few centuries at the very most. To lose Mesopotamia weakens Persia considerably and nets Rome a much more defensible border.

As I understand the term Scythia, it can be used in a variety of contexts. I'm mainly talking about your contention that Rome can expand up to the Vistula-Dniester; the eastern part of this area beyond the Carpathians I would call Scythia. Am I mistaken? In any case, the entire belt of territory from Frisia across the North European Plain and southeast to the Black Sea is hugely remote from the center of Roman power in the Mediterranean. In fact, "Scythia" would probably be easier to exert control over than Germania. To say this is a more defensible border is taking into account just the geographical length. The time and effort required to transport troops and settlers this far away from Rome compounds the problem. The regions that Rome expanded into OTL were already at least moderately populated. These new regions are almost totally empty at this stage, and the Roman demographic base is not bottomless. The best Rome can expect to achieve across the board is probably a loose network of trading and military outposts such as existed in northern Britain OTL. Certainly Romanization will have hardly started by the time it must inevitably close down due to internal decay of the Empire.

The civil wars that steadily plagued the Roman state are going to put additional immense pressure on Rome to abandon these largely useless regions. It's also a given that the large number of legions in these provinces will be incredibly prone to revolt due to their distance from Rome. It's basically a massive reservoir of troops for any general with the compunction to march on Rome and take power away from a weak Emperor.

To hold Germania mostly empties the demographic pool of unassimilated Barbarians, apart from the nomad breakthroughs that only came twice a millennium or so, and net Rome a much more defensible border. The notion of remoteness and sheer size of Mesopotamia is laughable, and Germania is similar in size to areas Rome successfully conquered and assimilated.

There will always be pools of barbarians on Rome's borders. If anything, a more successful Rome means more developed barbarians as all that economic prosperity will spill over into unconquered territory. This happened OTL. In the days of Augustus the tribes in Germania were incredibly primitive and thin on the ground, but within a few centuries they had fed off contact with the Empire to become an incredibly threatening enemy. The same will happen to any barbarian group on the borders of a thriving civilization. How do you think the Romans got where they were?

There is no overextension when you move from a less defensible position to a more defensible one that is within the same general area.

Defensible from external enemies, perhaps, but what you fail to realize is that the bigger the empire the less "defensible" it is internally from the internal stresses which are the real killers. A shorter border isn't going to save Rome when rogue generals are taking it apart piece by piece at its core. It'll help even less when the currency of the financially exhausted Empire is totally devalued, and the economy broken and decayed to OTL Dark Age levels.

Invasion at home ? Excuse me, apart from the Germanic tribes and Persia, and the steppe nomads that came once in 400 years, who's going to invade Rome ? Native Americans ? By the time the Norse are scheduled to come, Germania and Mesopotamia shall be as Roman as Gallia or Anatolia.

Apart from the northern barbarian tribes, Persia, and the inevitable waves of nomads, no one. But to think that Rome can eliminate any of these threats by these extra conquests is misguided. For the reasons I have stated above, Rome will decay all the faster for having so much dead weight on its shoulders sapping its military and economic resources. As decay sets in, no amount of uber-defensible border fortifications are going to prevent its enemies from breaking the dam and storming through.

When the Qin Dynasty first expanded into Southern China (e.g. Guangdong, Fujian, Hunan, etc), the existing population was not "Chinese". They were Baiyue who spoke Tai languages. While they never threatened the Imperial rule itself they were able to make governing the area challenging. It took well until the Tang Dynasty almost a thousand years later to fully assimilate the area, and even to this day traces of the Baiyue remain in the language and culture of southern China (e.g. spoken words in Cantonese which cannot be expressed using proper Chinese writing).

So it certainly is possible for the Roman Civilization to gradually "Romanify" Germania and Mesopotamia over centuries, though it's probable one of those regions will pull a Vietnam and break off, develop its identity distinct from the Romans before it had been fully assimilated. Given that Germania is much more flat and accessible than the Lingnan region of China it's probable that it will assimilate faster than its Chinese cousin. Scythia, however, is too far for any empire with its core on the Mediterranean.

Even Rome OTL managed to Romanize large parts of Western Europe that were within its logical historical range. With a stronger demographic base, and a more stable strategic position China was able to go quite far. From the Yellow River valley to all of what we consider the Han region today is quite a leap, but China was essentially pre-destined to expand this far by the regional geography and its advantages over the tribal groups who lived in the assimilated regions.
 
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Apart from the northern barbarian tribes, Persia, and the inevitable waves of nomads, no one. But to think that Rome can eliminate any of these threats by these extra conquests is misguided. For the reasons I have stated above, Rome will decay all the faster for having so much dead weight on its shoulders sapping its military and economic resources. As decay sets in, no amount of uber-defensible border fortifications are going to prevent its enemies from breaking the dam and storming through.

Something that the "Byzantines' show fairly well, in both aspects.

The Byzantines in their days of vigor were formidable even as a state with precious little in the way of convenient frontiers except for possibly Armenia and the Danube (which is not exactly impenetrable).

But as 1060-1080 shows, when that system rotted, so did imperial security.
 
The problem isn't annexing the places. The problem is holding them and handling ruling them.
In that respect the Qin (and the Han and all its successors) did very well. Perhaps by the year 500 Germania will be viewed as central to the Roman civilization as Sichuan is to the Chinese counterpart.

And this is a sign Romanization of territories even further removed than Gaul will work?

That Rome is not going to be a Western China (in the sense destroyed only to be reformed)?
Germania is no more further removed from Rome than Gaul is. And I don't believe it's possible for the Roman civilization to continue without a Chinese-style dynastic cycle. Yes, this will certainly mean renegade legions or barbarians taking advantage of internal crises to divide, fight over, and eventually unite the Empire under a new banner. Doesn't make it any less Roman, though.

Rome doesn't need a Great Wall. It needs something to deal with its internal threats, not its external ones.
The Great Wall of China was excellent at physically preventing external invaders, but failed when internal instability weakened the wall's effectiveness, and obviously did nothing every time a dynasty collapses thanks to internal issues. For some reason no Barbarians claimed to be the heirs to the Roman Civilization and unite the Roman Empire, which would have started a Chinese-style dynastic cycle. But if they did, it's hard not to believe they would follow their Chinese cousins and allow their homelands to be "Romanified". And anyway I don't believe Roman dynasties will not make an effort to defend its long and flat eastern border. In OTL China, astute rulers pacified the northern frontier by a mixture of bribery, divide-and-rule, marriages, and sometimes force. A similar system will definitely exist in OTL western Russia.
 
In that respect the Qin (and the Han and all its successors) did very well. Perhaps by the year 500 Germania will be viewed as central to the Roman civilization as Sichuan is to the Chinese counterpart.

Or perhaps it will be written off as not worth the costs because it is an underpopulated wilderness which gives Rome nothing in exchange for the costs and risks.

Since Rome had more than enough trouble with what it had without adding Germania, that it will do as well as the Qin and Han and etc. is unlikely even if Germania isn't written off as not worth it.

Germania is no more further removed from Rome than Gaul is. And I don't believe it's possible for the Roman civilization to continue without a Chinese-style dynastic cycle. Yes, this will certainly mean renegade legions or barbarians taking advantage of internal crises to divide, fight over, and eventually unite the Empire under a new banner. Doesn't make it any less Roman, though.
It may not be further removed in a straight line, it may not be that far distant as the legions march, but its even less in the Roman sphere until the Empire has been decaying in the west from within too badly to absorb it.

The problem is that the odds (looking at how it didn't happen OTL - even the "Holy Roman Empire" is the work of the pope to claim he could make someone emperor, not the Franks claiming to be claimants to the throne) seem fairly poor that any such barbarians will call their state "Rome", or that either they or rebellious legions (not renegade, just on the side that isn't currently holding the throne) will be able to conquer and claim the whole of Romania (for want of a better word).

Which brings up a problem. Rome's longest lasting dynasties don't hit the two century mark, and most of the examples of enduring dynasties - counting the Adoptive Emperors as one dynasty for convenience - are after 476. China has several exceeding it (Han, Tang, Song to name the easiest examples). This didn't happen because Romans died younger.

The Great Wall of China was excellent at physically preventing external invaders, but failed when internal instability weakened the wall's effectiveness, and obviously did nothing every time a dynasty collapses thanks to internal issues. For some reason no Barbarians claimed to be the heirs to the Roman Civilization and unite the Roman Empire, which would have started a Chinese-style dynastic cycle. But if they did, it's hard not to believe they would follow their Chinese cousins and allow their homelands to be "Romanified". And anyway I don't believe Roman dynasties will not make an effort to defend its long and flat eastern border.
And as internal instability is the way Rome was brought down, this will do no good at all.

Also, how is Rome even going to summon the resources to build such a monstrosity? It doesn't have the Chinese beuacratic infrastructure in its Classic Days, and by the point those develop in the ERE the West is lost for good.

As for defending the long and flat eastern border: The point is that Rome doesn't need to push that border even further away from the area an emperor based in Rome can keep control of. Defending it from external aggression is the least problematic reason for why its a bad idea.

People who think Germania is a reasonable conquest need to play less Civilization and less Risk, because the idea that the Empire will benefit from that is based on those games, not on Rome's history.

Some day, I'd like to see someone write a POD where a smaller Roman Empire (and not "Byzantine") survives to the present day, one way or another, instead of how Rome ever-lasting means Rome ever-expanding.

A Roman Empire controlling Gaul, Italia, Iberia, North Africa, and the Balkans would be an interesting state, with the Empire handling its issues from within even if it isn't at its territorial greatest.
 
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Or perhaps it will be written off as not worth the costs because it is an underpopulated wilderness which gives Rome nothing in exchange for the costs and risks.

Since Rome had more than enough trouble with what it had without adding Germania, that it will do as well as the Qin and Han and etc. is unlikely even if Germania isn't written off as not worth it.

It may not be further removed in a straight line, it may not be that far distant as the legions march, but its even less in the Roman sphere until the Empire has been decaying in the west from within too badly to absorb it.

The problem is that the odds are fairly poor that any such barbarians will call their state "Rome", or that either they or rebellious legions (not renegade, just on the side that isn't currently holding the throne) will be able to conquer and claim the whole of Romania (for want of a better word).

Which brings up a problem. Rome's longest lasting dynasties don't hit the two century mark. China's regularly exceed it. This didn't happen because Romans died younger.

And as internal instability is the way Rome was brought down, this will do no good at all.

Also, how is Rome even going to summon the resources to build such a monstrosity? It doesn't have the Chinese beuacratic infrastructure in its Classic Days, and by the point those develop in the ERE the West is lost for good.

As for defending the long and flat eastern border: The point is that Rome doesn't need to push that border even further away from the area an emperor based in Rome can keep control of. Defending it from external aggression is the least problematic reason for why its a bad idea.

People who think Germania is a reasonable conquest need to play less Civilization and less Risk, because the idea that the Empire will benefit from that is based on those games, not on Rome's history.

1) During the days of Qin Shi Huang the Lingnan region was also a wilderness which provided the court with no rewards and plenty of risks. He was seen as a foreign conqueror by the peoples of the non-Qin Chinese states, let alone by the Baiyue. And he wasn't a nice guy either: Mao Zedong bragged that he was even more brutal than Qin Shi Huang was.

2) If Rome was able to develop a stable bureaucracy on the lines of China's (perhaps needing an analogy of Confucianism as an ideological guide), it would make Romanifying Germania easier. Qin Shi Huang sent over a hundred thousand men (soldiers, settlers, prisoners, etc) to modern day Guangdong and intermarry with the Baiyue. Their descendants are now the Cantonese.

3) In OTL, Charlemagne was crowned the Empire of the Romans by the Pope, and the Holy Roman Empire (based in Germany) claimed to be the legitimate successor to the Roman Empire. And besides, barbarians and rebellious generals fought to unite China countless times over the years. At one point after the fall of the Tang Dynasty there were 10 kingdoms in China each claiming to be the legitimate ruler of all under heaven.

4) The Roman dynasties are not comparable to the Chinese ones. Dynastic change in Rome meant coups in the palace. Dynastic change in China meant mass uprisings and revolution. The comparison is not justified.

5) Internal instability plays a huge part in the fall of all empires. This doesn't mean they won't think about external threats (even if excessive military spending is often a huge factor in internal issues). If Rome had a Chinese style bureaucracy then the emperor's ability to project his power would have been better. That would have large consequences to this day.

I guess we can agree that the ultimate question is how could Rome develop a Chinese-style bureaucracy.
 
1) During the days of Qin Shi Huang the Lingnan region was also a wilderness which provided the court with no rewards and plenty of risks. He was seen as a foreign conqueror by the peoples of the non-Qin Chinese states, let alone by the Baiyue. And he wasn't a nice guy either: Mao Zedong bragged that he was even more brutal than Qin Shi Huang was.

1) Are we talking a wilderness to the level of Germania (which is about as far from developed civilization as anything in the Known World), or just barbarian land, in the sense of oh Gaul which actually had some level of development?

2) If Rome was able to develop a stable bureaucracy on the lines of China's (perhaps needing an analogy of Confucianism as an ideological guide), it would make Romanifying Germania easier. Qin Shi Huang sent over a hundred thousand men (soldiers, settlers, prisoners, etc) to modern day Guangdong and intermarry with the Baiyue. Their descendants are now the Cantonese.
And Rome doing so would require a complete rebuilding of the old system, which would take quite a lot given how any emperor trying to build such a bureaucracy is going to have to last, and his successors last and continue the work until its done. Not a situation favorable to that happening while trying to do everything else, including more conquest.

And sending a hundred thousand Romans to Germania wouldn't make up for a lack of roads, settlements of any size, agriculture...anything. How are you going to afford that? Rome is going to run into financial troubles trying that.

3) In OTL, Charlemagne was crowned the Empire of the Romans by the Pope, and the Holy Roman Empire (based in Germany) claimed to be the legitimate successor to the Roman Empire. And besides, barbarians and rebellious generals fought to unite China countless times over the years. At one point after the fall of the Tang Dynasty there were 10 kingdoms in China each claiming to be the legitimate ruler of all under heaven.
Exactly. It was by the pope - not the Franks. And the HRE as the Roman Empire was never taken as meaning a rebirth of the Roman state by even the rest of Latin Europe, and failed to be united and strong enough to even hold together as one state in the end.

This is a worse (for the idea of the never-ending-always-restored polity) situation than China.

4) The Roman dynasties are not comparable to the Chinese ones. Dynastic change in Rome meant coups in the palace. Dynastic change in China meant mass uprisings and revolution. The comparison is not justified.
Dynastic change in Rome meant coups in the palace and/or civil war.

More the latter in the Classic period, more the former in the Byzantine period.

Either way, the point is that Roman dynasties are not holding on to power as long as Chinese ones.

That the emperors are not able to rely on the loyalty of the army to suppress rebellion but have to deal with rebellion from the army as the problem is going to be a very bad thing for Rome.

5) Internal instability plays a huge part in the fall of all empires. This doesn't mean they won't think about external threats (even if excessive military spending is often a huge factor in internal issues). If Rome had a Chinese style bureaucracy then the emperor's ability to project his power would have been better. That would have large consequences to this day.
Its not a matter of not thinking about external threats, its about how the solutions all the Classic Rome fans are offering ignore that the external threats are the very least of Rome's problems and how building such a bureaucracy would be an immense task.

I guess we can agree that the ultimate question is how could Rome develop a Chinese-style bureaucracy.
Personally, I think the ultimate question should be why people think Classic Rome's OTL performance is not the best of all possible worlds for such a state, and want to have a Romania from the Atlantic to the Ukraine in defiance of logistics and internal politics and economics and everything else.

Rome didn't develop a Chinese-style bureaucracy because it wasn't a Chinese-style state in a China-like situation.

For some reason people are obsessed with the idea that Rome fell through flukes rather than fate.

It lived by the sword, and it died by the sword. Appropriately, the last Western emperor was deposed, and the WRE erased by internal affairs. External foes didn't destroy it, its own politics did.

I'm not against a surviving (Western-based) Roman Empire. But its very tiresome that people think classic Rome - of gladius wielding heavy infantry and paganism and togas and the rest - was something which would last any more than Macedon or Prussia.

The states that did last and did endure the trials and turmoils all states are subject to are the states that were something else entirely from what Rome already was as of Augustus.

The Habsburg Empire (Austria+Hungary+Croatia+Bohemia), for instance. Yes, that state none of the empire lovers here respects.

P.S. http://tppserver.mit.edu/esd801/readings/AncientLeaders.pdf
 
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Not to mention that there aren't a hundred thousand Romans in the entire Empire to be sent to Germania...

How so?

Looking at this in the period before "Roman" was used so broadly as to mean "any citizen/subject" it seems, but even in the early days of the empire (say up to AD 100 or so) that sounds low.

Then again, since not even all male Romans (as in the city of Rome) are Romans...
 
As far as I'm concerned "empires breed stasis" is an Eurocentric determinism utter idiocy. For the vast majority of its history, Imperial China was the most technologically dynamic place on Earth.
Take all the technological progress in China since 200 BC to 1500 AD and it won’t be too great.
Actually it was surprisingly slow.
With such speed they would reach today’s technological level in five thousand years (at best).

And one little thing: during long history of China there were numerous non-imperial periods of ‘warring states’ which were extraordinary fruitful.
Just for example: the greatest (ever!) discovery of gun powder and actual development of firearms took place in non-imperial China.

Even the famous Great Wall of China was ‘invented’ in warring states period. Empire just finished it.

Imperial China was good at spectacular use of these inventions and discoveries for a certain period of time and then came a prolonged decay or a swift violent collapse.
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Besides, look at the territories which Rome did conquer: Gaul before the Roman conquest was a Celtic region and even today the French language contains much more Celtic and Germanic influence than Italian or Spanish.

But the Celts had an entirely different culture than the Germanic tribes. The Gauls had at least some measure of centralization and infrastructure, at least according to Caesar.
But the German tribes lived in what were effectively shacks- they didn't rely on major centers of power, and so can't really be 'Romanized' in the conventional sense. The closest you're going to get is the sort of thing that happened with the Franks and the Ostrogoths- 'barbarians' adopting Roman systems of taxation, and hybridized systems of law.
 
There will always be pools of barbarians on Rome's borders.
Tangerine, I enjoyed your posts, especially this one. And agree with your reasoning on many issues.

But there is a point where I do not quite follow you:
In the days of Augustus the tribes in Germania were incredibly primitive and thin on the ground, but within a few centuries they had fed off contact with the Empire to become an incredibly threatening enemy.
As a matter of fact the Germans were the formidable enemy before Augustus. Ariovistus’ germans were the main force in non-roman Gallia, which Julius Caesar had to fight. Maybe Julius Caesar exaggerates the strength of the germans especially the suebi in his ‘Gallic Wars’, but they do not look benign and harmless to me.

And even if he did dramatize the situation to make his victory over the Germans look more glorious then we should remember the Cimbris and Teutones long before Caesar’s time.

These guys were not flower children :) before Augustus, during his lifetime and after.

 
But there is a point where I do not quite follow you:
As a matter of fact the Germans were the formidable enemy before Augustus. Ariovistus’ germans were the main force in non-roman Gallia, which Julius Caesar had to fight. Maybe Julius Caesar exaggerates the strength of the germans especially the suebi in his ‘Gallic Wars’, but they do not look benign and harmless to me.

And even if he did dramatize the situation to make his victory over the Germans look more glorious then we should remember the Cimbris and Teutones long before Caesar’s time.

These guys were not flower children :) before Augustus, during his lifetime and after.

Oh I agree completely, they were formidable enemies in Caesar's time as well. They did, after all, largely beat back the Roman attempts to penetrate across the Rhine. However, in terms of political organization they were still organized in small tribes and not yet a major existential threat to Roman rule in Gaul and elsewhere. A major change of later centuries was the development of muscular tribal confederations like the Alemanni and the Franks on the Rhine frontier... not to mention the arrival of the Goths, Burgundians, Vandals etc. from further east. Compared to the relatively primitive and disorganized Germanics around the turn of the millennium, these were a very robust threat.

It's noteworthy that the change from small tribes to large tribal confederations - as well as changes in Germanic military tactics and technology - came about mainly because of trade, military and diplomatic contact with Rome. The Empire's success fueled the development of the rivals who would eventually destroy it.
 
However, in terms of political organization they were still organized in small tribes and not yet a major existential threat to Roman rule in Gaul and elsewhere.
Oh, I see. But still disagree.
The Cimbris and Teutones originated far from Roman borders. But they were quite a threat. I would say even existential.

And if you remember Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars said that the further the european barbarians are from the Roman civilisation - the tougher they get.
And barbarians near the roman borders are softer and weaker (from his experience and observations).

In Germany the Suebi were organised in tremendous confederation not because Rome or against it. It was against their 'barbarian' neighbours.
 
I'm going to agree with Elfwine, Rome had too many problems to survive unless a massive, massive overhaul of the entire system was made.

Personally, I don't see how such an overhaul could be done.

Expansion, for sure, would not be the answer. I think the biggest problems, in order of importance, are:

-The Rebelliousness of the Army
-The Economic Crumbling of the Empire
-Stupid Emperors
-Barbarians at the Gates

To be honest, I have no idea how to fix the army unless you recalled every general and slit their throats, but somehow I don't think this would make the situation better. :p

I can't begin to fathom the technological level of present-Day Imperial Rome without knowing how such an entity would look. I can only imagine it perhaps shrunken down, withdrawing from certain areas and focusing on the core, and maybe that would help solve some problems, but I doubt it.

Sorry I can't answer the question.
 
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