Fall Of The Roman Empire Dbq Essay

While the fall of the Roman Empire is well known, the exact causes of why it fell can be difficult to pinpoint. Many historians believe that Rome 's downfall was due to poor leadership, weakened economics, or perhaps a combination of the two along with other seemingly unrelated factors. However, there is a string of evidence suggesting that there were three main components that took place to bring about the fall of the Roman Empire. These determinant attributes did not happen all at once, and there was a domino effect with each one directly influencing the others. The fall of Rome occurred after a series of preventable events, including unacceptable emperors, the heavy reliance on slaves, and the increasingly uncontrollable borders of Rome.

Additionally, emperors were focused on their own safety and public peace which corrupted their discipline. The emperors also spent more time dealing with religious conflicts and focused more on luxury. (Document 8) This means the emperors didn’t focus on bigger problems such as forces invading Rome.

Due to the mass amounts of civil war taken place on Roman land, farming and agriculture greatly suffered. Land was over worked and overused causing the land to become infertile. Soon food shortages and diseases caused the population to decrease. From the cumulations of lost money to war and farming the economy weakened and inflation became high. The gap between the rich and poor gradually increased and the economy weakened. Between civil wars, high taxation, and food shortages, citizens lost a sense patriotism that once flourished throughout society.

There were multiple things that contributed to the fall of the Roman empire. Rome was once a vast and thriving empire in Europe, Africa, and Asia. In 177 CE, Rome was at the apex of its rise and was the most powerful Empire in the world. Centuries later, The empire no longer remained. Some examples of the things that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire are as follow. Rome was overly sized, the emperors were constantly changing, and Christianity.

The reason that economic crisis contributed to the fall of the Roman empire was because the Roman empire didn’t have much gold to trade which means less money for the Roman empire to use to make improvements in their empire. The next reason is because according to document number 2 “People produced their own goods rather than trading them” because the Roman Empire was not safe to trade with. The 3rd reason is because tons of merchants that used to have trade routes for the Roman empire wasn’t safe for them because merchants were afraid that people were going to attack

In the blink of an eye a Roman emperor was assassinated, just like that, that's all it took. Document A, Roman emperors it declares that only 22 Roman emperors ruled over 50 your time and 13 were assassinated or killed, cloistered one by one. This reinforcement validates that the Roman military was bending over backwards to gate stability with their empire. Supplementary, it also put more compression on to whomever was ruling over Rome. In conjunction with defending the Roman ruler, the rulers were constantly wiped out by assassins.

The Roman Empire was one of the largest empires in history. Rome shifted from a republic to an empire and was under control of an emperor. They were able to successfully conquer several places and were undefeated for many, many years. How did such a strong, thriving empire fall so easily? There were several minor factors that led to the downfall, but the three primary reasons that caused the “fall” of Rome were disease, overexpansion, and invasion.

From about 700 BCE to 476 BC, the Roman Empire was the superpower of the Mediterranean world. During that time the empire's wealth, territory, and international status grew. Over two decades Rome shifted from being a republic, with elements of democratic control, to an empire with power in the hands of an emperor and the military. By the 5th century CE, when the city was sacked by outside invaders, Rome had been badly weakened by a number of problems. The main reasons for the destruction of Rome were political assassinations, natural disasters, and military problems.

Whether you prefer to say Rome fell due to the invasions or simply morphed into the oppressive and the corrupt government, economic policies of the emperors had a heavy impact on the lives of the citizens of Rome. The Roman Empire acquired money by taxation or by finding new sources of wealth, like land. However, it had reached its furthest limits, so land acquisition was no longer an option. As Rome lost territory, it also lost its revenue base.In doc# 4: we can see how the economy and citizens were taken advantage of and how the economy was not stable enough, led to the fall of Rome. The empire's main focus was on expanding and funding towards the military and politics. They did not think of the flaws that came with expanding and soon realized that to expand they had to gain military strength, and that costs a lot of money. Immediately the government created high taxes taking advantage of the citizens that leaned on the government welfare system, forcing them to basically pay for advances in the military. This affected small business and companies to crash because they could not afford these taxes, leaving the economy weakened. Therefore the economy could no longer help provide for the military expansion and lead to military weakening. And when the military and the economy was down due to this “internal decay” Rome was easy to conquer and lost all power and eventually fell. Doc# 3 also shows that due to the expansion and Rome wanting to be a world power, it caused a distraction and the economy was used to fund the military success and power, with high taxes. The more it expanded the more the taxes cost and the weaker the economy was. Due to the money that was taken from the economy, Wages being low, slaves disappearing, great estates growing, agriculture was being dominated, it

Many emperors died due to assassination most likely due to some citizens in disbelief of what the emperors truly were. The 12 emperors that died due to assassination is a very high amount showing how much all of Rome wasn’t in 100% agreement with each other, (Doc 3). With all the assassinations on the emperors, the city of Rome went into obvious unrest and wasn’t the most agreeing society.

But at war they were unloyal and would fight against Rome. One of Rome’s causes to fall was it grew to big to protect. The borders of Rome became hard to protect, and had grown to large for it to be protected at the level needed. According to Doc 2, “Borders became difficult to secure and the amount of gold needed to maintain roads and perform routine maintenance was never enough.”

As Rome became larger they became more dependent on soldiers who weren’t loyal to Rome. According to Doc 5, “Rome became reliant on hired, foreign soldiers to bolster their military, especially Germanics. Therefore, much of the military was not loyal to Rome, often switching sides in battle.” The Roman Empire started to decline due to the lack of people willing to fight for them. The less people fighting for them the more likely it was for them to be defeated, and if they

The end of the Roman republic was and very interesting point in time. This shows a period where there was neither any political or government stability throughout the civilization. From reading The book “ The Fall of The Roman Empire”, three reasons jumped out at me or the collapsing of this civilization. They were abuse of power , political corruption, and heavy military spending. The heavily military spending came from the Roman Empire capturing and invading other civilizations. In order for the Roman Empire to invade and conquer civilizations they would have to spend money to make sure that their soldiers are taken care of and that they are able to complete the task at hand. Most likely all of the soldiers in the roman army was not roman which means they had to recruit and deploy from rome of other lands of defenders and invaders. The romans expected the militia to protect their land and the land they have overpowered or captured. This requires a multitude of supplies and manufacturing of weaponry. The soldiers also had to have a place to sleep , they had to eat , and be supplied materials that can aid them when they were wounded or hurt. All of this spending on the military will lead to inflation of a civilization as it did the roman empire. Now the government will try to find a solution to this problem by raising taxes and making all types of laws that enables the citizens of rome to help sponsor the military. This will lead to riots and

As Rome increased in supremacy around the expanse of the Mediterranean Sea, various enemies were made that caused numerous invasions, increasing Rome’s vulnerability. The archeological record shows that the population on the outskirts of the Roman empire was increasing and this might have led to a scarcity of resources (Goldsworthy 2009). Due to the increased population and decrease in resources the barbarians attacked the empire frequently (Goldsworthy 2009). The first of these more devastating attacks were conducted by the Huns in central and eastern Europe in the years 376 A.D. and 405 A.D. (Heather 2005). Damages from these attacks as well as from other invaders caused massive amounts of revenue lost to

As Rome was facing attacks from the outside there was an even deeper problem happening from within and it was their economy. Rome’s constant war and overspending in building its empire was becoming costly. As their treasury depleted they decided to impose hard taxation to account for the new expense they were generating. Which actually caused many people who were apart of the upper class to move to the countryside to avoid the oppressive taxes(Andrews) . Another economic problem is that inflation began to occur. Marcus Aurelius increased the copper content of the silver coins and then after that there was even more severe inflation on it way(Starr 144-145). A third problem with the economy, also politically, was that there was an ever growing expansion of bureaucracy. The expansion of their government caused more and more officials to have to be paid. Not to mentions cities already were having a hard