Dark Age Revisionism: has it gone too far?

[Guest Raidne]

[quote name='Zabzy' post='1667423' date='Jan 29 2009, 18.13']I give a shit. While the Marxist school of history has produced some truly unreadable tomes, there are equally important works that, in fact, do focus on what life was like for people who weren't your Kings and Princes, Dukes and Earls. A good writer with good research can make the three-field system sound interesting (I've found that it is, in fact). Knowing the components and motivations of the labor force is essential to understanding the economic and socio-political structure of a time. Diet, life expectancy, living conditions, etc. all round out our picture of what the world looked like in prior times. You say that "the plight of the commonfolk is only relevant insofar as it influenced [great people, historical forces or institutions]." The point is that the life of the "common people" ALWAYS influences these things.[/quote]

I, actually, find this stuff to be [i]a lot[/i] more interesting than whatever the nobility was up to.

[quote name='CelticBrennus' post='1667516' date='Jan 29 2009, 19.23']And the entire concept of racism is only about 400 or so years old. So much for progress then huh?[/quote]

And I have to agree with that too. Great point. Slavery is as old as society, but making it race-based, as a natural condition of a certain race? Oh, that's a modern invention. We don't always move in a straight line forward, but I do have to say that it seems like the general trend reaches toward progress.

Zabzy, I more than any other book would recommend Richard Popkin's The History of Skepticism. It's not medieval - it starts with Erasmus, but it deals with how the earliest ideas of the modern age, starting with the early Renaissance, came about. All the properly medieval books I have are pret-ty dry, except that Radding book I mentioned upthread. Popkin is just fascinating stuff though, and the extent to which I've ripped him off will be pretty evident, too.

And again, I have to plug Montaigne's Essais. The guy wrote in the late 16th century, but he's like someone you wish was your best friend. He transitions seamlessly from philosophy to making jokes about his lamentably small penis. Great reading.

You know - one more thought? I was all thinking, so, gee, why [i]didn't[/i] the west get more information out of Byzantium earlier? And then I remembered, right we did have contact in organizing the crusades, but then the Catholics sacked the city. That explains that. I had forgotten all about all that. Crazy bastards.

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Aemon Stark' post='1667462' date='Jan 29 2009, 17.35']I'd counter that the history of the vast majority of the human population at any time is more than relevant - it's crucial. Fixating on monarchical lineages and notable battles is interesting, but is of comparably minor importance. For one thing, it makes a rather big difference whether said peasants are tenant farmers, serfs, or slaves. "Historical forces", generally speaking, consist of what large groups of people do in aggregate, and the fall of the Western Empire has considerably less to do with "great men" than with mass migrations and changes in the population structure. You can't very well attempt to explain the phenomenon of deurbanization without considering what was happening in the countryside at the time.[/quote]

Fair enough. To Zazby too. I probably overstated this point a bit. I think my objection is tied to the notion that the peasant's plight has much inherent value or holds any interest on its own disconnected from other factors. I accept that there's merit in studying them for the purpose of divining how their conditions and lifestyle may have affected the direction of history and as Zabzy stated, they affect history all the time to varying degrees. But only so long as the historian makes the study of their historical influence the ultimate, primary end instead of studying them as an end unto itself. Cause that quite frankly bores the living shit out of me. What kind of diet did the average peasant have? Who gives a shit. But 'This was their diet, which likely indicates this, which indicates that, which led to the fall of rome'...that's worthwhile shit.

[quote]I'm still not clear on what was lost specifically by the fall of the Western Empire.[/quote]

Didn't we already cover this? Knowledge, trade, writing, education, bureaucracy, institutions, agriculture, engineering, building, etc. Of course it was a slow, gradual decline, it didn't suddenly pop into being the moment the last emperor was deposed. But these things were far more prevelant under Rome than after Rome.

[quote]what further "progress" of humanity was provided by the Crisis of the 3rd Century or Diocletian's Great Persecution? That there were a few philosophers around is, I'd argue, irrelevant.[/quote]

Who the hell knows. (I'm addressing the question as if it were 'What further progress could be derived from the continuation of a Rome that implemented all that shit you mentioned) What we do know is that great knowledge, infrastructure, and expertise was lost. It took centuries for it to be relearned and much longer to be surpassed in most areas. (both geographically and in breadth of subject matters) If Rome persisted or if there was a less devastating transition to something different, we may have developed a variation of our modern society centuries earlier. We may also have stagnated and retarded humanity's overall progress. No idea.

[quote]Once again, what kind of security was available in the Late Empire? Trade had been severely disrupted by the civil wars of the 3rd Century, and never recovered - this may have helped cause the Empire's fall, but it certainly wasn't an explicit result of it (and many have noted here that, contrary to what you're saying, trade got along fine after the Empire's formal collapse). To use a modern example, the British Empire didn't formally end in any sense until after WWII, but it was on a pretty negative trajectory well before that thanks to WWI.[/quote]

Those many who have noted are wrong. Trade did not get along fine post empire. Sure it was declining as the empire declined, but it all but disappeared on any significant scale after the empire. Trade didn't begin to revive til the Vikings got involved. As for security, a weakening central authority with professional armies is better than none.

[quote]"Your average peasant" is furthermore not literate in the first place - why would he notice? The essential problem with the Dark Ages is the lack of any kind of singular cataclysmic collapse - it took a long, long time, and while it may formally have occurred via Germanic invasions, the Germanic migrations into Gaul and the Iberian peninsula began long before that.[/quote]

This is only a problem because you decided it must be one. Really alot your post seems concerned with what to do with the gray area rather than any actual objection to the existence of a dark age. As you well note, it was a decline rather than an abrupt fall. Like much of history we can't definitively point to a time when things coalesced from civilization to barbarism. But we did have civilization than some time afterwards we had a period of primitive barbarism.

[quote]That said, the whole process of segregating history into "civilizations" and "ages" is retarded, anyway. The world is made up of fluid populations of humans, not isolated groups who act in unity.[/quote]

Classification is practiced in just about every field of study in existence. Most of the distinctions are artificial, but hardly arbitrary. Its almost always useful and typically necessary.

[quote]There are times and places in the past that were less racist than others, too. We have technological advances, but even those aren't necessarily stable; [b]mostly I just see change, not progress[/b].[/quote]

And I see a plague of post-modern relativism. Which I guess proves you right...not all change is progress. :)

[Guest Raidne]

EHK, call me a big nerd, but I'm just interested in the life of the "common" person for its own sake.

But I agree with you about the plague of post-modernism on history, [i]to an extent[/i]. For me, it's that nobody will give an opinion about basically anything. Anthropology has infected history and it won't be going back any time soon.

[Shryke]

It's more the infection of some sort of crazy super-relativism. The inability of anyone, anywhere to assign value to anything.

[Aemon Stark]

Well, as a digression, I think we know what a [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXHw714pBuU"]21st Century Rome[/url] would look like.

[Shryke]

Not enough robot slaves.

[Watcher]

[quote name='DanteGabriel' post='1664840' date='Jan 27 2009, 19.08']I suppose part of the question is: how good was daily life for the vast ruck and run of Europeans [i]before[/i] the fall of Rome? Were Gaulish or German peasants better off? And I'm also curious how daily life was for citizens of Rome after the empire fell apart? Did civil services stop working? I am frankly very ignorant of those fields of study, and that speaks either to my education or to the lack of written records that EHK mentioned.[/quote]

This is a very interesting thread. I don't have to time to read it all right now. One quick comment about life after Rome fell. The city of Trier had between 60,000 to 80,000 residence, a coliseum, running water, public baths and all the other accessories of modern life in the 400's. Within a hundred years the population plummeted to a couple of thousand as the Germanic hordes ravished the city and its surrounding area. Things were looking slightly better by the 800s when Charlemagne as in his prime, but then the city was destroyed by the Vikings. It slowly recovered and had around 12,000 inhabitants by the 14 century.

[Guest Raidne]

[quote name='Shryke' post='1667653' date='Jan 29 2009, 21.11']It's more the infection of some sort of crazy super-relativism. The inability of anyone, anywhere to assign value to anything.[/quote]

Yes, exactly, thank you.

ETA: Naturally, I have the most relativistic sig in the [i]world[/i] right now as I write that. :lol:

[Shryke]

Yeah, I think your sig just flamed you Raidne.

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Watcher' post='1667665' date='Jan 29 2009, 20.25']This is a very interesting thread. I don't have to time to read it all right now. One quick comment about life after Rome fell. The city of Trier had between 60,000 to 80,000 residence, a coliseum, running water, public baths and all the other accessories of modern life in the 400's. Within a hundred years the population plummeted to a couple of thousand as the Germanic hordes ravished the city and its surrounding area. Things were looking slightly better by the 800s when Charlemagne as in his prime, but then the city was destroyed by the Vikings. It slowly recovered and had around 12,000 inhabitants by the 14 century.[/quote]

To add to this, Rome at its height had over a million people. At 361AD it had 150,000. At 500AD, 100,000. Dwindling to under 50,000 and less shortly thereafter. By contrast Constantinople hovered between 250,000 to 400,000 throughout that period and by 1000AD Cordoba in Muslim Spain reached 450,000 thousand, both becoming the largest city in the world at various points. Along with places like Antioch, Alleppo, and Alexandria that would reach 100-150,000+ throughout this 500 to 1000 period.

Throughout that time the largest urban centers in Dark Age Europe barely approached 20,000. London was at 5-10,000 from its 60,000 or so Roman high centuries earlier. (it had dwindled a ton once the Romans pulled out and more still after the empire's complete fall) Paris was still at around only 20,000 by 1000AD. It wasn't til the 13th century or so when any non-Byzantine/Muslim European cities started to surpass 100,000 again and almost all of those were in Italy.

Also found this bit from a paper that makes tries to tie the economic resurgence of Europe from 1000 to 1300AD to the standardization of medieval Latin.

[url="http://www.hss.caltech.edu/media/from-carthage/filer/360.pdf"]http://www.hss.caltech.edu/media/from-carthage/filer/360.pdf[/url]

Interesting stuff. Provides ammunition for both sides. In particular it notes how the post-Charlemagne reemergence of writing allowed many of the agricultural techniques commented on here as medieval/dark age improvements to actually be implemented on any significant scale. (for those who asked the question 'Why would farmer Joe miss writing?') And it catalogs the role of the monks and monasteries in spreading these writings and knowledge. It suggests that the return of an educated, literate notary in Italy allowed for written contracts to replace oral, helped to facilitate its economic boom. There's more inside. Its worth a skim.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

[quote name='Shryke' post='1667653' date='Jan 29 2009, 21.11']It's more the infection of some sort of crazy super-relativism. The inability of anyone, anywhere to assign value to anything.[/quote]Is it the historian's role to assign value to history?

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1667761' date='Jan 29 2009, 22.15']Is it the historian's role to assign value to history?[/quote]

Yes.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1667797' date='Jan 30 2009, 00.04']Yes.[/quote]Are you in search for history or historiography? Do you want objective facts or just qualitative assessments?

[Shryke]

I think it would be more accurate to say that the study of history shouldn't PRECLUDE assigning value.

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1667825' date='Jan 29 2009, 23.21']Are you in search for history or historiography? Do you want objective facts or just qualitative assessments?[/quote]

What's wrong with both?

[The Progressive]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1667755' date='Jan 29 2009, 20.12']To add to this, Rome at its height had over a million people. At 361AD it had 150,000. At 500AD, 100,000. Dwindling to under 50,000 and less shortly thereafter.[/quote]

That's simply because the massive slave-dependent agricultural system that Rome depended on for its foods failed.

[quote]By contrast Constantinople hovered between 250,000 to 400,000 throughout that period and by 1000AD Cordoba in Muslim Spain reached 450,000 thousand, both becoming [b]the largest city in the world[/b] at various points.[/quote]

Minor correction, the largest city in the world all through this time has always been in China.

[Shryke]

China doesn't count. Asians are short and therefore count for only 2/3rds of a person.

[The Progressive]

[quote name='Raidne' post='1667240' date='Jan 29 2009, 13.06']This is no doubt true, but something I don't know all that much about. In what sense do you think? That the invaders saw what was to be had in a more advanced civilization and were inclined to want to better theirs? Or that ideas were transmitted during the time that the invasion forces were semi-permanently settled there? Or just that the Templars came back with so much loot they were able to lend enough money to allow for rapid improvements?[/quote]

Agree with the first two points, but I think the Italian city-states which brokered passages to the Holy Land were the ones who capitalized the most from the Crusades, certainly expanding their territories and sphere of influences at the cost of the Byzantine empire.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1667840' date='Jan 30 2009, 00.38']What's wrong with both?[/quote]One is the realm of objectivity while one is not.

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt' post='1667846' date='Jan 29 2009, 23.48']Minor correction, the largest city in the world all through this time has always been in China.[/quote]

No it wasn't. China always had some cities near the top, but for two distinct periods Constantinople than Cordoba were the largest cities in the world.
[url="http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm"]http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm[/url]
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large...oughout_history[/url]

(although to be fair, alot of that stuff is educated guesswork when you've got cities that are fairly close)