World-System (0-500) Why Did the Roman Empire Collapse?

 

The extent of the Roman Empire went from England in the North to Africa in the South (see the green shaded area in the graphic above). From a statistician's standpoint, it is the first point in time (0-500) when we start to get data on the World-System thanks to the work of Angus Maddison. As "every school boy knows," the Roman Empire declined during this period and eventually fell. The historiography of the period, primarily qualitative, has given plenty of room for pseudo-intellectual speculation. The two most prominent current right-wing pseudo-intellectuals to use the Collapse of the Roman Empire for their own purposes are Steven Bannon and Elon Musk (a recent discussion of their positions can be found here). 

The two culprits in the decline and fall scenario are declining morals (Steve Bannon) and declining birthrates (Elon Musk). These supposed lessons of history are being used by the MAGA movement and the Trump Administration to justify pronatalist policies and bans on Gay Pride Culture. The argument is that if we don't follow these right-wing policies, America will also decline and fall.

From a World-System perspective, individual-level explanations (people's morals and procreation decisions) are inadequate for explaining a system-level event such as the collapse of Rome. The graphic above shows the dominant components of the W_RE (World, Roman Empire), the EE_RE (Eastern Europe) and the WE_RE (Western Europe) models. Clearly, well before the final days of Rome (500 AD), Western Europe was collapsing. From the graphic at the start of this post, Western Europe was at the Center of the Roman Empire. It's collapse would have split the Empire in half and made communication between the North and South impossible.

Your primary question at this point should be "Why did Eastern Europe Collapse?" There is a simple answer (Barbarian Invasion) and I investigate it further here. Returning to the US, this conclusion is ironic because the barbarian invasion in the US is not Latin American immigration but rather the MAGA movement itself. One of the key MAGA strategies (stolen from Karl Marx, of all people) is to blame others for what you are doing.

There are probably still more lessons for the World-System in the collapse of Rome. I'll speculate on those in future posts. For the time being, if you would like to work with the W_RE, EE_R and WE_RE models you can find and run  the computer code here. If you would like more background on the models, the Boiler Plate is here.

Notes

As a technical matter, the ungrounded speculation about the Fall of Rome happens because conventional histories do not take causality seriously. It is one thing to establish what events happened and when. It is an entirely different matter to explain why. Yes Elon, the birth rate fell during the Fall of Rome, but it fell because of the Barbarian Invasion. Yes, the US might collapse, but it is not because of declining birthrate, illegal immigration or declining morals. It is more about the MAGA Barbarians at the gate who have finally broken into government with the Trump Administration making it impossible to govern the country..

CHatGPT (here) lists six reasons for the Decline of Rome: (1) Political Instability, (2) Economic Troubles, (3) Military Issues, (4) Barbarian Invasions and (5) Over-expansion. Somehow, declining birthrate and declining morals didn't make the list.