The Fall of Civilization
By While wandering Duck of Minerva, I happened to click on this, a book called The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins. The Amazon summary reads:
Was the fall of Rome a great catastrophe that cast the West into darkness for centuries to come? Or, as scholars argue today, was there no crisis at all, but simply a peaceful blending of barbarians into Roman culture, an essentially positive transformation? In The Fall of Rome, eminent historian Bryan Ward-Perkins argues that the “peaceful” theory of Rome’s “transformation” is badly in error. Indeed, he sees the fall of Rome as a time of horror and dislocation that destroyed a great civilization, throwing the inhabitants of the West back to a standard of living typical of prehistoric times. Attacking contemporary theories with relish and making use of modern archaeological evidence, he looks at both the wider explanations for the disintegration of the Roman world and also the consequences for the lives of everyday Romans, who were caught in a world of economic collapse, marauding barbarians, and the rise of a new religious orthodoxy. The book recaptures the drama and violence of the last days of the Roman world, and reminds us of the very real terrors of barbarian occupation. Equally important, Ward-Perkins contends that a key problem with the new way of looking at the end of the ancient world is that all difficulty and awkwardness is smoothed out into a steady and positive transformation of society. Nothing ever goes badly wrong in this vision of the past. The evidence shows otherwise.
This struck me as a bit overstated, especially given these posts by Erik and Dave regarding the conservative appropriation of the historical record. Now, in fairness, ancient history is a hobby for me and not a profession. I haven’t read the book. Dr. Ward-Perkins may have a very good set of reasons for believing that modern historiography has gotten Rome wrong and given the barbarians too much credit. Nevertheless, given the language of the blurb above, the character of some of the reviews, and the bizarre attraction that some right wing cranks have for the ancient world, I’m somewhat skeptical.
First, I’m wondering whether the blurb is actually an accurate description of the contents of the book. The aforementioned right wing cranks will buy anything that purports to debunk “political correctness”, and I could imagine that the blurb is just part of a marketing strategy directed at increasing book sales.
If the blurb is accurate, then I really have to wonder about what the author is arguing against. It has been relatively uncontroversial since, oh, Edward Gibbon that the fall of Rome in the West was a gradual affair that involved the slow but sure replacement of a Romanized elite with a Germanic elite. The synthesis of these two cultures brought us Western feudalism. I’m not really the best read guy on the subject, but I’m not aware of a lot of material suggesting that life got better in the West when Rome fell. One of the Amazon reviews claims that Ward-Perkins sees himself as attacking a Marxist interpretation of history which claims that life got better for the underclass after the fall of the Empire. If this is so, Ward-Perkins brutally misunderstands the Marxist view of history. Curiously, that same review says that Ward-Perkins claims to be a materialist, which really would be odd when combined with an anti-Marxist agenda.
Really (and stating again that it’s possible I’m being completely unfair to Dr. Ward-Perkins) this looks to me to be less about Rome and more about contemporary politics and academia. Lousy lefty politically correct multicultural academics want to go and complicate the fall of Rome by, you know, describing it in some detail. They have to be stopped. Viewing the Romans and the Germans as different cultures is wrong; viewing the Romans as the superior culture (by some standard not, apparently, referring to their warfighting prowess) is correct, and these darned lefties would understand that if they pulled their heads out of their asses. Some cultures are right and good, while others are bad and evil.
Now, I’m not even hostile to many elements of the argument. I agree that material prosperity was greater under the Empire than in the Dark Ages or the medieval period. Technologically, the Romans were significantly more advanced than those that followed them. Living under barbarians probably did suck, although living under the Caesar’s was no picnic, either. What I don’t see is the point of politicizing any of this. But, again, it’s possible that I’m just being paranoid, and that the book is a very solid piece of scholarship and not a hatchett piece.
Speaking of hackwork, I’m really uncertain what to say about this. I genuinely believe that Jonah Goldberg is smarter than the title of this book implies. Given that, it’s clear that he’s writing it just to piss people on the left off. So, I’m uncertain whether we should grant him the satisfaction of getting pissed off about it. I suppose that I’ll limit my commentary to the following:
The fascist parties of Europe are notable not for their commitment to universal healthcare and progressive taxation, which they share with just about every political party in Europe of the time and of today, but by their commitment to virile, violent masculinity and hyper-patriotism, two qualities which modern conservative commentators most often criticize American leftists for lacking. Although American leftists are far too willing to toss around the words “fascist” and “Nazi” when describing the American right, they at least are correctly identifying a meaningful similarity between the political position of American conservatives and European fascists.
I will attempt to refrain from further commentary upon publication.