The fragmentation, simplification and localization of the post-Imperial era offers us lessons we ignore at our peril.
There is an entire industry devoted to “why the Roman Empire collapsed,” but the post-collapse era may be offer us higher value lessons. The post-collapse era, long written off as The Dark Ages, is better understood as a period of adaptation to changing conditions, specifically, the relocalization and simplification of the economy and governance.
As historian Chris Wickham has explained in his books Medieval Europe and The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000, the medieval era is best understood as a complex process of social, political and economic natural selection: while the Western Roman Empire unraveled, the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) continued on for almost 1,000 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the social and political structures of the Western Roman Empire influenced Europe for hundreds of years.
In broad-brush, the Roman Empire was a highly centralized, tightly bound system that was remarkably adaptive despite its enormous size and the slow pace of transport and communication. Roman society was both highly hierarchical–the elites claimed superiority and worked hard to master the necessary tools of authority– slaves were integral to the building and maintenance of Rome’s vast infrastructure–and open to meritocracy, as the Roman Army and other classes were open to advancement by anyone in the sprawling empire: every free person became a Roman Citizen once their territory was absorbed into the Empire.
When the Empire fell apart, the model of centralized control/power continued on in the reigns of the so-called Barbarian kingdoms (Goths, Vandals, etc.) and Charlemagne (768-814), over 300 years after the fall of Rome. (When the Ottomans finally conquered Constantinople in 1453, they also adopted many of the bureaucratic structures of the Byzantine Empire.)
Over time, however, the feudal model of localized fiefdoms nominally loyal to a weak central monarchy replaced the centralized model of governance. This adaptation fit the highly fragmented nature of European societies in this era.
But centralized influence never went away. The Christian churches based in Rome and Constantinople continued to exert centralized influence in politically fragmented regions, and monarchies continued to exist, in various states of strength and weakness. The Holy Roman Empire–as Voltaire is reputed to have observed, “neither Holy, Roman or an Empire”–had an enormously complex history in Germany and the rest of Europe. The monarchies in England and France remained in place, and the city-states of northern Italy wielded influence via trade and shifting alliances.
In other words, the Medieval era was ultimately a complex competition between overlapping models of governance and sharing resources, a competition between centralized and localized (what Wickham calls “cellular”) nodes of power and the various ways that rulers and those they ruled dealt with each other.
Throughout the era, the legitimacy of rulers ultimately flowed from public assemblies, a tradition inherited from Rome that manifested in aristocratic courts and the church’s leadership (bishops, etc.) and eventually, in parliaments. This tension played out in the sharing of costs and resources and the general direction of the state.
As a general rule, when monarchs consolidated too much power, they engaged in catastrophically costly and doomed wars (The Hundred Years War) because they were able to override or ignore the cautious counsel of elite assemblies.
Understood as a selective process of adapting to changing circumstances, this history offers us valuable lessons and templates for our future.
Once the centralized power of Rome fragmented, economic, social and political power simplified and relocalized. Trade volume shrank and trade routes vanished. Once the bureaucratic and military structures dictated by Rome collapsed, regions and localities were on their own.
Elites naturally sought out the best means to consolidate and expand their power, and residents (as a general rule, the peasantry and town-dwellers) sought to improve their own lives by reducing costs and securing access to resources.
The immense geographic, cultural, social and economic diversity of Europe was in effect freed to play out. This diversity is still evident; the European Union may have unified the European financial system, but cultural and social divisions have not dissolved.
Wickham distinguishes between two primary sources of income and wealth accessible to elites and governments: land and taxes. Collecting taxes requires an immense bureaucracy to identify and assess property owners, tenant farmers, merchants, collect duties on trade flows, etc. Taxes are the only reliable way to fund professional armies and the stupendous bureaucracy required to manage a complex centralized empire. The Byzantine Empire survived multiple rivals, invasions, etc. largely due to its competent tax collection bureaucracy, and European monarchies could only fund long, costly wars once they established tax collection bureaucracies.
Wealth from land–surplus skimmed from the labor of peasants–was adequate to fund highly localized nobility (many of which had one or two castles and a small fiefdom), but it wasn’t reliable enough or large enough to support professional armies or vast centralized states.
