(01-28-2017, 05:30 PM)beneficii Wrote:(12-09-2016, 04:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Thanks for your input, beneficii. I agree with your statement about the rise and fall of fascism.
Regarding the fall of Rome and the Huns, I'm not so sure. I think when the Visigoths invaded under Alaric in 410 and conquered and sacked Rome, the Empire was dead in all but name. The Huns just put the nail in the coffin.
It was a mix of factors perhaps: decline from within was certainly happening by all historical accounts. Authority was increasingly desperate and more tyrannical, most people were poorer and more miserable, and in the last century of Rome the people retreated more and more into a proto-medieval set up of lords and walls protection. It could be that these were the "islands in the ocean" referred to in your post. And the "barbarian" peoples were expanding and ready to fight more and more strongly and capably and take over.
Following up on the issue of Alaric the Visigoth sacking Rome as being evidence for Rome already being in an advanced state of decline. Kim disagrees, and in his other book, The Huns (Routledge, 2015), explains on pages 154-155 how in 395 a Hunnic invasion of Moesia province prompted the Visigoths under Alaric to unify their polity and to imitate Alanic and Hunnic practices. They shifted their emphasis to mounted warfare like that practiced by the Huns and were able to get a contingent of Huns to serve in their army. Because Hunnic military tactics were superior to Roman military tactics, this gave the Visigoths an advantage.
As mentioned elsewhere, the Roman army was not smaller than it was before and the Germanic soldiers serving there were no less loyal than the native Roman soldiers. Even before the arrival of the Huns, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths had the most complex societies of any Germanic peoples, and had already mixed quite a bit with the Alans.
So it wasn't so much that Rome declined, but rather it came to face new opponents it simply couldn't handle.
Keep in mind everyone, I have been dealing with on and off vertigo (sensation of moving, spinning) for the last few weeks. It is very difficult to read through a long book, or even to scan it to find a section I've read before. I had seen the section quoted above before and it took me more than an hour to look through the book to find it again as I struggled to focus my eyes on the page. It's also been difficult to carefully read and reread posts and articles on the Internet or otherwise concentrate. I am seeing a doctor tomorrow.
Because of this, there are definitely some aspects of his argument I'm missing. Unfortunately, I've already turned the book back in, so I may not be able to look through again for a while.
The first book I referenced (The Huns, Rome, and the Birth of Europe) was published by Cambridge University Press and the second book (The Huns) was published by Routledge, both reliable academic sources. They would not publish his books if he got any facts wrong.
Because of this, if you think you won the argument by knocking down my explanation, keep in mind you might very well have knocked down a strawman. My ability to concentrate and think about such issues in depth has been impaired of late, so I recommend checking the books out, getting them on interlibrary loan (free) if you have to.