Re: History Lesson : Illegal Immigration
Posted by:
HistoryDoesntLie
()
Date: November 03, 2019 07:07PM
Nvhdrnitwp Wrote:
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> sjrdhfughji Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> >
> > Bottom line is Rome lost because they were
> > financially broke and couldn't afford a
> stronger
> > Army. Prior to the mass illegal influx, nobody
> > would even think about fucking with Rome.
>
> Bottom line is you don't know squat about history.
A lot to read...but:
The Germanic tribes did not want to destroy the empire but only to participate in its wealth and the protection it offered its citizens. Though living outside the empire’s borders, the Rhine and the Danube, for several hundred years, from roughly the first to the fifth century, they had been able to trade with Rome, and had grown much wealthier in the process. But wealthier meant more powerful. When the Huns appeared behind them out of the Asian steppes, the Germans became determined to get into the safety of the empire by any means. The Romans, for their part, were not opposed to their desire. On the contrary, Rome from its beginnings was an inclusive society and had always welcomed immigrants. It routinely gave them employment in the Roman army. But immigrants were welcome only under certain conditions. They had to assimilate. They had to disperse throughout the empire’s territory and not insist on remaining in their own groups or maintaining their own culture, but adopt Roman ways of living. Above all, the Romans admitted immigrants only when they could control the process militarily. Any time a tribe of immigrants were permitted to enter, Rome made sure that the empire’s armies outnumbered them by a wide margin, so that there could be no question as to who was in charge, and if the visitors should get obstreperous, they would quickly find themselves quelled.
But in the fifth century the Romans lost control of the immigration process. Armies were sent to the Middle East to counter a hostile, newly invigorated Persia, leaving the West open. The Germanic tribes were allowed in, but once inside the empire they were not assimilated but retained their cultural and political identities, eventually combining to form armies within its borders that the Romans could no longer overcome.
Even as Rome was under attack from outside forces, it was also crumbling from within thanks to a severe financial crisis. Constant wars and overspending had significantly lightened imperial coffers, and oppressive taxation and inflation had widened the gap between rich and poor. In the hope of avoiding the taxman, many members of the wealthy classes had even fled to the countryside and set up independent fiefdoms. At the same time, the empire was rocked by a labor deficit. Rome’s economy depended on slaves to till its fields and work as craftsmen, and its military might had traditionally provided a fresh influx of conquered peoples to put to work. But when expansion ground to a halt in the second century, Rome’s supply of slaves and other war treasures began to dry up. A further blow came in the fifth century, when the Vandals claimed North Africa and began disrupting the empire’s trade by prowling the Mediterranean as pirates. With its economy faltering and its commercial and agricultural production in decline, the Empire began to lose its grip on Europe.