Rome, from its inception as a monarchy to its transition to a republic and then an empire, has set patterns in government, religion, and technology for later civilizations. In its prime, Rome dominated the Western world, controlling trade, taxes, and agriculture throughout the Mediterranean. Eventually, due to many internal and external issues, the Roman empire transitioned from a time of prosperity during the Pax Romana and the early days of the empire to an age of chaos, war, and fear. Like any empire, Rome fell, leaving starving and vulnerable people in its wake. With little resources, destroyed cities, and lack of government and law enforcement, the people were left to fend for themselves, creating a system that shaped Western Europe and …show more content…
The barbarian invaders left the Roman Empire fragmented, broken into small kingdoms ruled by separate leaders. Feudalism began to thrive as peasants needed protection from the common attacks of invaders. In exchange for protection, the peasants, known as serfs, worked the land and payed taxes to their lieges. This economic, social, and political system resulted in the continued fragmentation and interregional disputes among Western Europe. As a result, continental trade decreased because feudal manors were self-sufficient. Because trade was scarce, Western Europeans had little contact with each other and the surrounding world during the early Middle Ages. There wasn’t much cultural diffusion, meaning that new ideas concerning technology, law, education, and art were scant. The lack of technology affected serfs the most, as they were the people who cultivated the land without the efficiency of advanced agricultural equipment. The only organized authority with a clear hierarchy during the Middle Ages was the Church. The Church, although arguably corrupt, provided foundation and religious unity to Western Europeans. Monasteries preserved Greek and Roman texts, which were later combined with Christian principles in a philosophy called scholasticism. Art was centered around Christian images such as Jesus, …show more content…
The Muslim Empire expanded westward from the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa and Spain until the Umayyads were thwarted by Charles Martel in the Battle of Tours, stopping the Muslim invasion into Western Europe. The Abbasids moved the Muslim capitol from Damascus to Baghdad and established it as a center of learning. Baghdad became a center of learning and established the House of a Wisdom, an academy of scholars dedicated to the advancement in fields of philosophy, math, and medicine. Intellectuals from all over the world came to the House of Wisdom and it was the best center of learning since the Hellenistic era and the university of Alexandria. Meanwhile, Cordoba, Spain built legendary mosques and impressive aqueducts and studied agricultural science. China had recovered from its fall during the Han dynasty, ruling eighty million people over four million square miles during the Tang dynasty. The Tang dynasty is known for its art and poetry while its successor, the Song dynasty invented and perfected many products. The Song dynasty was an important figure in commerce, trading silk, metal, and porcelain. The abundance in trade of China caused a shortage of metal for coins, prompting the empire to invent paper money. Along with paper money, the Chinese invented gun powder, a weapon that led the
Government, city life, and infrastructure were all affected in Western Europe by Rome's fall. The Roman Empire’s fall was caused by a series of both external and internal actions. The size of the Roman Empire had become a major issue with due to Rome’s ignorance of the problems that could come with their immense size. The growth in Rome made it much more difficult to control, as well as a great deal harder to protect from invasions.
Three major civilization composed the classical empire. Classical Rome, Han China, and Gupta India all thrived at one point during this era, but with success also eventually came the fall of these three empires. Taking place at different times and due to different reasons, all three started to decline and eventually were too weak to defend themselves. The fall of the Roman Empire seemed to be more complex and due the many more little problems, by they all three fell apart due to unrest and problems created that could not be solved before it was ultimately too late.
The Roman Empire was so vast that it strangled its citizens with taxes and still failed to keep its borders protected. In fact, it is those very taxes that started the snowball effect that is the fall of Rome. Because of the taxes many Romans were plunged into a hopeless economic plight that when combined with the corrupt politicians’ systematic elimination of the Roman citizens political responsibilities
The Roman Empire was one of the greatest empires around it’s time period. They ruled their region with an overpowering military force. They also had compelling agriculture and religion. Much of their music, clothes, and other agriculture continued on throughout other empires. They shaped the world with their beliefs and ideas and without this empire the world would be very different. There were strong Roman emperors and also horrible emperors who ruined the empire. Caesar and Constantine were among the most popular emperors of Rome. Constantine ruled later in the Empires lifetime while Caesar earlier. The death of Caesar had a huge impact on this empire. Constantine gave the Roman Empire the main religion of Christianity. This questioned the original beliefs of the Romans. They totally changed their culture. Towards the fall of the Roman Empire, the empire was split into two parts. This weakened their strong military force and led to an invasion. Evidently this caused Rome’s fall. The Roman Empires fall was due to the death of Caesar, mass poverty among Rome’s citizens, rise of Christianity, split of empires, and the invasions of the barbarians.
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
The Roman Empire was a time when the government was ruled by emperors and there were boarders around that distinguished which land belong to the Romans and which did not. It encompassed the coastland and people of three continents: Africa, Asia and Europe. Many like to remember it was “the last and greatest of the Hellenistic empires, with all of the cultural variety that the term connotes” (Andrea & Overfield, 2014, p. 300). Because of the characterization of “The Fall of the Roman Empire” many have had a misconception of it. It did not collapse, what happened was that it was a work in process that seemed to have caught up. There are many causes to the fall of the Roman Empire. The lands that were ruled in by the Roman Empire began to embrace new cultures and over a period there was new civilizations that were formed: Byzantium, Western (or Latin) Europe, and Islam. Because of these knew civilizations, there was a lot of change that was going to come to Europe.
In the later half of the fourth century the Western Roman Empire fell after nearly a five hundred years of dominance and is still widely considered the world’s greatest superpower (Andrews). Many people attribute the crumbling of the empire to multiple different reasons, like corrupt and insane leaders to overspending and inflation. As J.B Bury said once “the fall of the roman empire was a series of contingent events. In this paper we are going to cover the three main reasons. Political and Economical problems plus problems with the military(Wood).
The Roman Empire was or could be one of the greatest empires to have ever existed to this day. Just like many empires the Roman Empire fell to betrayal, religion, and war. Lasting from 27BC to 1453 the Roman Empire to me is the most interesting empire to talk about. When you take any history class that explores times outside the US, you hear about the Roman Empire being involved some way or somehow. The Roman Empire history can go on for days. I will pack most of the history into a small 5 page essay and if you don’t know anything about the Roman Empire, You will have a better understanding and will more than likely see why I believe the Roman Empire was one of the greatest of all time.
The fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late fifth century plunged Europe into a long period of darkness and barbarism. This era until the dawn of the ‘age of discovery’ in the sixteenth century was later termed to be the ‘Middle Ages’. While this epoch of European history is labeled as ‘middle’ or even ‘dark’, it was during this time that many social, political and cultural developments took place. The obliteration of the great Roman Empire left Europe prey for disunity and continuous foreign invasion and migration. From Scotland to the alps of Sicily a prayer emerged in the ninth century, “Save us, O God, from the violence of the Northmen”. Now known as Vikings, these northmen were pagan Germanic people from Norway, Sweden and Denmark that often went on raids and harassed isolated monasteries and villages throughout the continent. Similarly peoples known as Magyars from central Europe looted settlements took captives and forced leaders to pay tribute to prevent further attacks. Muslims from North Africa already ruled most of Spain and continued northward towards central Italy and southern France. The expansion of Islam continued on into the tenth and eleven centuries during the times of the Fatimid Caliphate and the Seljuk Turks. The centuries before the first crusade were one of terror and chaos from a European or Christian perspective. People were frightened that their world was slowly coming to an end, overrun by pagans and Muslims. This fear combined with
Ancient Rome was an empire so dominant, wealthy and economically- stable which came to a dramatic fall in the period of 250AD- 500AD. Ancient Rome faced unexplained unfortunate events which crumbled the Great Empire from the affluent empire to a impoverished society. For centuries historians have timelessly theorised and analysed many debates and research in relation to the Fall of the Roman Empire. What really caused the predominate Roman Empire to fall? Did Rome fall naturally? Was disease, such as malaria a major contributor to the Fall of the Empire, Was man -made infrastructure a problem during Ancient Roman times? Was the fall a natural event? Was the climate changing causing natural disasters? Maybe, perhaps, all the theories interweaved with each other at the same time causing a catastrophic downfall, defeating the Ancient Roman Empire. Edward Gibbon (Gibbon, 1909, pp 173-174.) quoted,
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.
The culture of Medieval Western Europe focused on education and logical reasoning with faith. Education inspired the construction of
The Roman Empire includes most of what would now be considered Western Europe. They don’t concord in one day but by a group of people known the Latin's or Romans, but the empire was concord by the Roman army and the wealthy Romans became wealthier from the taxing and looting of conquered lands, and many in the lower classes continued to work hard for very little, despite the prosperous empire. The territories concord by the Roman Republic , 218 to 44 BCE, was The Italian peninsula,the Mediterranean region after deleted the Carthage by a series of tree war called the Punic Wars, they concord the Sicily, Sardinia, the city of Carthage and Corsica. After this war, Rome conquered Macedonia, Greece, Anatolia, Judea,Gaul and Syria. Later, as a Roman
The Roman Empire is known as one of the strongest empires in history, due to their advanced technology, strong military leaders, and republican government. As the empire started to expand, so did their power. However, after years have gone by, the Roman Empire started to fall. Their fall may have been caused by political reason, such as the empire being just too much to handle, Diocletian splitting the territory in half, and their government corruption.
This essay will look at some of the factors leading up to the decline of the Roman Empire and the effects it had on the early Christian Church. A brief history of how the Roman Empire came about and what lead to the total divide in the religions that had somewhat coexisted for hundreds of years. It will look at the effects of the persecutions of the Christians, the political struggles for status and power lead to the fall of the Roman Empire.