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| Home Front: WoT |
| The Fall of an Empire |
| 2006-08-30 |
| The Romans, when not engaged in civil war triggered by the loss of provincial security, were constantly looking for opportunities where they could meet the Germanic, Gothic, and Hunnic peoples on something approaching parity (with or without a set of Germanic and Hunnic allies). Given an even playing field, Roman military training, equipment, and logistics would slaughter opponents into oblivion. Size, to the invading peoples, was literally life. With so many domestic and security issues to address simultaneously, the western Romans simply never got the chance to apply their superiority in a way that balanced the overall risk. Attrition was the best that they could hope for. Once the German tribes were firmly across the Roman military frontier (taking advantage of Gothic invasions in Italy proper), they began a long period of movement in Gaul and Spain. Unlike the Goths, who had been stalled at the Straits of Messina in 410 and at the Straits of Gibraltar in 415 or thereabouts, the Vandals (and their allies the Alans) were able to fight their way down from Gaul, through Spain and across the Straits to north Africa in 429CE. Over the next ten years, they were able to capture and control the richest portion of the Roman western empire. Rich because of its agricultural and industrial productivity, and rich because it had only required a single legion for protection from the Berbers to the desert south. North Africa was the western empire's "cash cow" which had been successfully milked for centuries -- grain, olive oil, high quality pottery, the list was extensive. Roman pottery from what is now Tunisia has been found as far away as Iona off the west coast of Scotland. The overall story, then, was not of overwhelming Germanic or Gothic superiority -- a clash of titans -- but of a Roman system unable to convert its hinterland from a peace to a war footing before a welter of barbarians broke through to create utter chaos. Whatever treaties were made between Roman central authorities and invading groups were inevitably at the expense of local provincial land ownership and its prosperity. And as Ward-Perkins points out, what might have seemed like peaceable settlement of barbarians was usually matched by violent expansion from those settlements to neighbouring areas. When an armed community unified under a chieftain or king moves into an unarmed civilian population, the balance of power shifts immediately. The author concludes with a discussion of the painful adjustments that the Roman literati and land-owning class needed to make with the Ostrogothic and Visigothic overlords who were now in charge of most of the key provinces of the old western empire: "Some of the recent literature on the Germanic settlements reads like an account of a tea party at the Roman vicarage. A shy newcomer to the village, who is a useful prospect for the cricket team, is invited in. There is a brief moment of awkwardness, while the host finds an empty chair and pours a fresh cup of tea; but the conversation, and village life, soon flow on. The accommodation that was reached between invaders and invaded in the fifth- and sixth- century West was very much more difficult, and more interesting, than this. The new arrival had not been invited, and he brought with him a large family; they ignored the bread and butter, and headed straight for the cake stand. Invader and invaded did eventually settle down together, and did adjust to each other's ways -- but the process of mutual accommodation was painful for the natives, was to take a very long time, and, as we shall see ... left the vicarage in very poor shape." |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |