Immigration & the Fall of Rome

hello everyone today i'd like to talk about immigration again yes specifically immigration's capacity to destroy civilizations and we're going to be talking about one particular civilization that was destroyed by immigration and that is nazi germany how's that for a plot twist and so early in the video as well so let's talk about how immigration caused the downfall of nazi germany at the end of the 1930s germany was resurgent after struggling for many years with an economy in recession and a worthless currency the government initiated numerous public building projects to stabilize the economy and put its citizens back to work the military was greatly expanded and a combination of diplomacy and military action secured many of the adjacent provinces to germany and put them under direct german rule by the early 1940s the vast majority of europe was controlled either directly by nazi germany or by an ally eventually though they ran into a problem and that problem is one that has failed many great civilizations throughout history immigration immigrants were attracted to nazi germany from all over in the east great swarms of russian immigrants crossed the border into german territory and from the uk immigrants from a great many nations made the dangerous channel crossing often in small unsafe boats and their sheer number overwhelmed the german border forces and who were these immigrants well they certainly weren't a representative section of wider society there were hardly any women children or elderly no they were mainly young military-aged males who made absolutely no attempt to integrate into the culture of nazi germany in fact they were frequently involved in violent clashes with german security forces which put a great strain on the state as well as carrying out various terrorist bombing campaigns to frighten the populace and destroy vital german infrastructure germany proved completely unable to handle the sheer scale of the migrant crisis and eventually they were overwhelmed completely and their civilization was destroyed now then what was all that rubbish i just said well i want to make two points about it the first is it was all nonsense obviously sort of a pointless misleading bunch of gibberish the second thing i want to say about it though is that technically actually nothing that i just said was untrue as long as we don't mind stretching certain definitions of words to the breaking point anyway because that was the problem with what i just said the actual events did happen as stated but the terminology that i used to describe them happening was obviously incorrect and misleading the immigrants were actually foreign soldiers loyal to governments that were at war with nazi germany they were only migrants in the sense that they went from one place to another the point of my nazi germany example there is to show how misleading contemporary political terminology with all its associated implications can be if we apply it to events from the distant past you see we're all of course familiar on some level with the events of the second world war it being relatively recent so my deceptive language there really stood out modern audiences will be less familiar with events from ancient history though the fall of rome for instance which is what this video is actually about so we'll try and keep that in mind going forward when someone points to the ancient world to make a point about the modern one don't take what they say at face value because it might be just as misleading as my little history of world war ii right there so then with that in mind did immigration caused the fall of rome this video is sort of a companion piece to my previous video about rome which was a response to stefan molyneux's claims that loose morality women's rights taxation and various other things were the cause of the fall of rome and starting out here i'll repeat a few things to be considered from that video firstly when people say the fall of the roman empire they usually mean the fall of the western roman empire because the eastern half kept on going for another thousand years until someone invented a cannon strong enough to bring down the walls of constantinople which in itself highlights the more practical and tangible reasons that empires often fall not due to some degradation of morality or national spirit but instead because someone invented a really big gun and shot them with it virtue and spirit are all well and good but they're not going to stop a 600 pound cannonball so anyway we're going to be talking about the fall of the western roman empire which most historians date to 476 a.d when a chieftain called odo acer revolted against the empire and deposed romulus augustolus the last emperor of the west and i see two approaches online when someone's attempting to pin the fall of the roman empire onto one singular event or concept with the aim of making a modern political point the first is one of direct comparison the roman empire is the eu and the germanic tribes who fought against rome are directly analogous to modern migrants and asylum seekers for instance now this approach is easily foiled by simply pointing out the many differences in the two situations ravenna fell because it was captured by a military loyal to a rebellious enemy king for an actual direct historical comparison to be legitimate we'd need to see something like an army of former syrian say allies revolting against the eu and then invading europe and occupying brussels or something this reclassification of an enemy armed force to simply immigrants is every bit as misleading as my nazi germany example now the other approach you see is the more interesting one the one that acknowledges the differences between given historical and contemporary situations but makes the case that there are enough similarities to justify the comparison and that's a little more interesting to talk about for instance in 376 a.d 100 years before the fall of ravenna rome did have to deal with a migrant crisis which led to a costly war the gothic war during a precarious time in roman history when the empire could ill afford costly wars and it is this crisis that various clever clogs who know their roman history often cite when making the argument that immigration led to the fall of rome and so we'll also be talking about that migrant crisis today but before we get to that specifically however i'd like to talk about a few relevant events from throughout roman history which i think are key to understanding exactly how and why the gothic war started and i'd like to kick off by asking a question and it's quite a big one um what actually did cause the fall of the roman empire and the interesting thing about the various singular reasons we could cite here is that since roman history covers such a huge amount of time and rome itself existed under so many varying forms of organization and government it is invariably an alternate example from roman history that counters any one reason by itself now for instance we could look at the fall of rome strictly militarily rome fell because it was defeated in battle in a very practical sense but then we can look through rome's history to all the other times it was defeated in battle the carthaginian general hannibal for example inflicted a string of costly defeats upon the romans during the second punic war he defeated rome in the battle of trebia the battle of lake trazamine and the battle of kanye which was one of the costliest defeats rome ever suffered and one of the bloodiest battles in human history with up to 70 000 romans killed or captured in a single day including a sitting console for that year and up to 80 senators rome was also no stranger to losing battles against the various germanic peoples in one of the other great losses in roman history the battle of the chuterberg forest three entire roman legions were ambushed and destroyed by an alliance of germanic tribes now rome did not fall after these defeats rome's great military strength was not necessarily that they were invincible on the battlefield although of course they were very strong it was their ability to absorb and recover from defeats the sheer size of the empire as well as its organization and logistics meant that rome could handle the occasional military loss here which was a rare thing in the ancient world look at the rebellion of buddhica for instance um buddhica's rebellion defeated the romans at kamala dunham they sacked the city they destroyed the ninth legion they sacked londinium they sacked pharalamium and then they lost one battle to the romans and the rebellion was broken and boudicca committed suicide for most ancient military forces this was how it went that being defeated meant just that you were defeated for the romans though if a legion was defeated they just sent another legion rome's enemies usually had to win every single time whereas rome often only had to win once so rome was clearly no stranger to military losses and was always previously able to recover and so at the end of the empire we have to ask what happened to that ability why didn't rome recover the final time what was different and this is where we have to look beyond strictly singular reasons that rome felt because any one reason can't tell us the whole story clearly so by the time it fell rome had lost its ability to recover from military defeats the way it had in the past but it had lost other important abilities too for instance the ability to make and maintain allies so let's talk about that for a while and to introduce this concept we're going to read a little of the annals of tacitus um this section chronicling a debate in 48 a.d in the roman senate during the reign of emperor claudius who is my favorite emperor being a very interesting character and a historian himself so he knew his stuff the debate was to answer whether or not rome should allow gauls to be appointed to public office in rome gaul being roughly the territory covered by modern day france which had at this point being conquered by rome now gauls being provincials had certain rights in the roman political system but were ineligible to run for public office or see it as senators in rome and i quote in the consulship of orles vitellius and lucius phippstarnus the question of filling up the senate was discussed and the chief men of galia kamata as it was called who had long possessed the rights of allies and of roman citizens sought the privilege of obtaining public officers at rome there was much talk of every kind on the subject and it was argued before the emperor would fearment opposition italy it was asserted is not so feeble as to be unable to furnish its own capital with the senate once our native-born citizens sufficed for peoples of our own kin and we are by no means dissatisfied with the realm of the past to this day we cite examples which under our old customs the roman character exhibited as to fowler and renown is it a small thing that the vanetti and inseries have already burst into the senate house unless a mob of foreigners a troop of captives so to say is now forced upon us what distinctions will be left for the remnants of our noble houses or for any impoverished senators from latium every place will be crowded with these millionaires whose ancestors of the second and third generations at the head of hostile tribes destroyed our armies with fire and sword and actually besieged the divine julius at alicia these are recent memories what if there were to rise up the remembrance of those who fell in rome's citadel and a heralta by the hands of these same barbarians let them enjoy indeed the title of citizens but let them not vulgarize the distinctions of the senate and the honours of office so that's how tacitus recounts the opposing side of the argument there and it goes that rome does not need foreigners to fill its senatorial ranks and admitting them would vulgarize the office also mentioned are events from the gallicores such as julius caesar being besieged at alicia as well as the sack of rome in or around 390 bc by a gallic tribe the cenones the gauls were relatively recent enemies of rome it was argued and thus should not be granted full rights and let's keep reading and see claudius's response these and like arguments failed to impress the emperor he at once addressed himself to answer them and thus harangued the assembled senate my ancestors the most ancient of whom was made up once a citizen and the noble of rome encouraged me to govern by the same policy of transferring to this city all conspicuous merit wherever found what was the ruin of sparta and athens but this that mighty as they were in war they spurned from them as aliens those whom they had conquered our founder romulus on the other hand was so wise that he fought as enemies and then hailed as fellow citizens several nations on the very same day strangers have reigned over us that friedman's sons should be entrusted with public officers is not as many wrongly think a sudden innovation but was a common practice in the old commonwealth but it will be said we have fought with the cenones i suppose then that the volsky and aqui never stood an array against us our city was taken by the gauls well we also gave hostages to the etruscans and passed under the yoke of the sam knights on the whole if you review all our wars never has one been finished in a shorter time than with the gauls thenceforth they have preserved an unbroken and loyal peace united as they now are with us by manners education and intermarriage let them bring us their gold and their wealth rather than enjoy it in isolation everything senators which we now hold to be of the highest antiquity was once new plebeian magistrates came after patrician latin magistrates after plebeian magistrates of other italian peoples after latin this practice too will establish itself and what we are this day justifying by precedence will be itself a precedent so what is claudius saying that well in this section here he first lists a gallic tribe that was at war with rome but then two italian ones and he's saying yes the gauls were at war with us but so too were the cities we now control in italy we suffered defeats at the hands of the gauls but we've also suffered defeats at the hands of italians and we should welcome the defeated as allies lest we face the same fate as athens or sparta in short those opposing the goals being admitted into the senate said hey we don't need these foreigners coming over here telling us how to run things and claudius responds well half of us sitting here were also wants foreigners to roam so maybe chill out about it a bit and it'll be fine it loses something in translation like that but there you go and what i'd like you to take away from that little scene there is that for claudius uh one of rome's great strengths was its ability to turn former enemies into allies like goku and i'd like to elaborate a little on a conflict from roman history involving some of the italian tribes mentioned by claudius there from 91 to 88 bc the roman republic fought the social war also known as the war of the allies which saw several italian city-states rise up in revolt against rome and the reasoning behind this conflict is especially noteworthy here so then prior to the social war rome had effective control of the whole italian peninsula they had defeated or allied with the other tribes and city-states and had the ability to both tax and demand military aid from them and this was not an insignificant thing by the second century bc rome's italian allies comprised a majority of its military forces but even though the allies were being taxed by rome as well as being made to fight in rome's wars they received a disproportionately small share of the spoils and land and they did not have roman citizenship rights and the allies were increasingly ticked off about this any americans listening will know the term no taxation without representation well this was kind of one of those situations now a roman politician called marcus livius drewsus attempted to address this problem in 91 bc by introducing reforms that will grant the allies roman citizenship which would probably have been a smart move given they were on the verge of open rebellion the response of the roman senate however was to ignore the problem and have truces assassinated and as a result the social war broke out almost immediately so good move there roman senate rome eventually won the social war but they did not have an easy time of it by any means uh suffering several losses and notably they were forced to offer a major concession to the allies to get them to stop fighting full roman citizenship which is what the allies wanted in the first place so why am i telling you about the social war well first off it's a time in roman history when they had to learn an important lesson the hard way do not as claudius says treat those you've conquered as aliens or at the very least don't give increasing amounts of military power to people with no political power because before long they will use the former to take the latter the other reason i mentioned the social war is that odoace's rebellion centuries later the one that deposed the last roman emperor was triggered in much the same way odo asa was a military leader who in the summer of 476 a.d visited ravenna and asked orestes who was the father of the teenage emperor romulus augustulus to make good on various promises you see orestes had himself deposed the previous emperor julius nepos and he had promised odoes's soldiers land on which to settle if they supported his rebellion however when it came time to grant the land for the soldiers orestes reneged on his promise now a more forward thinking man might have questioned the logic of refusing to pay a mercenary army a mercenary army that clearly have no qualms about overthrowing a roman emperor given that they'd just done that exact same thing to the last guy so arrestees really super incredibly should have paid them predictably odo acer and his men didn't like not being paid and broke into open revolt and they sacked a bunch of cities defeated orestes in the field took ravenna deposed young romulus augustulus and that's all she wrote for the western roman empire now it's not a direct one-to-one comparison by any means but both the social war and odoace's rebellion have a few similarities non-roman armies fighting for rome but being refused what they feel is an equal share of the spoils military power being in the hands of people with limited political power and both situations show the danger of mistreating your allies when they make up the majority of your military forces you see in the latter days of the empire especially rome increasingly relied upon mercenaries to fight their battles for them which works perfectly fine right up until you don't pay them like orestes found out there are also stories of people fighting rome who didn't necessarily want to both conflicts were entirely avoidable you know the italian allies wanted rights and odous troops wanted payment and land on which to settle but they only rebelled when denied those things that they felt their military service had earned for them and notably these peoples wanted to be part of roman society they wanted to live on roman land and have roman rights and it's an interesting thing for many being in the empire was seen as a benefit and that's how it had to be it would be impossible for rome to hold its whole empire by military force alone for most provinces in the empire particularly the interior provinces um seeing a roman legion at all let alone a battle would be a very rare occurrence rome's forces were most often found on its frontiers and the empire was far too large and populous for the legions to hold it all if everyone decided to rebel at once now they didn't rebel because for the most part anyway they wanted to be in the empire and migration into the empire occurred throughout its whole history for instance emperors diocletian and constantine both resettled tribes from outside to inside the empire with the aim of negating the threat they posed as outsiders as well as providing more people to work pay taxes and be recruited into the legions in the 1st century ad a roman governor of malaysia was recorded as transferring 100 000 people of those living across the danube into the empire with i quote their wives children chiefs and kings and this was recorded in a dedication to him as one of his great achievements and that's something you wouldn't see today is a politician bragging about bringing a hundred thousand migrants into the country so rome did have a history of successfully and peacefully managing migrations into the empire and so now we come to the gothic war which i mentioned earlier the war that followed a migration of gothic tribes into the empire and so we have to ask what went wrong what was done differently in that case to distinguish it from the successful migrations so in 376 a.d a large number of gothic peoples arrived on the danube river which was the border of roman territory and asked if they could settle inside the empire the goths were fleeing from the huns who were currently riding around on horseback shooting arrows of people and generally just being menacing the goths sent envoys the eastern roman emperor valens saying hey can we move in with you please and phelan said okay that sounds neat you know i can tax you you can join the legions let's do it i'm streamlining the actual historical record here if you hadn't noticed now this correspondence took some time as phelans was off preparing for a campaign against the susana empire in the east now firstly since the emperor was preparing for war on another front he had left only a skeleton crew manning the danube border and secondly since the correspondence took a while the goths had thousands of people all sitting put on a riverbank for a very long time and they started to run out of provisions so when they began crossing the river into rome they were coming as a hungry and desperate people who outnumbered the roman border force and they were armed too in the relevant section of the decline and fall of the roman empire historian edward gibbon notes that one of the various ways this migration differed from the previous migrations was that the goths managed to keep hold of their arms via a series of extravagant bribes to corrupt roman officials and those bribed roman officials turned a blind eye and did not disarm the incoming migrants as was the standard practice so the goths were armed desperate hungry and locally at least outnumbered the roman military kind of a precarious situation but however not one that necessarily had to lead to violence i mean the goths wanted to be part of the roman empire and they'd come in peace as long as the romans weren't actively antagonistic towards the goths there's no reason they couldn't have been resupplied apportioned some land and set to work churning out taxes and soldiers enter lupikinus a roman lieutenant of emperor valens who was in charge of the military government in the area where the goths were crossing the border and i will now read you his entire wikipedia article lupiquinus was a roman lieutenant of valence in frace in the late 4th century a.d his reputed poor treatment of the ferrovingai goths under fritigen led to the gothic wars and the battle of adrian opal wonderfully shortened to the point there now if we click through the battle of adrian opal is an upcoming battle between the goths and the romans which is an overwhelming defeat for the romans and in which the emperor of valence dies furthermore from wikipedia the battle is often considered the start of the process which led to the fall of the western roman empire in the 5th century so if you're the kind who likes playing historical dominoes this guy lupiquinus caused the downfall of the western roman empire what a jerk so what did he actually do that was so bad it started a war um well upon encountering the masses of hungry and desperate goths lupiquinus and the rest of the roman board forces saw the roman equivalent of dollar signs they sold the goth's food at exorbitant prices quickly stripping them of their wealth and valuables and when the goths ran out of things to trade for food the romans started accepting as payment gothic children who were then sold into slavery and i'll quote roman soldier and historian amionis marcellinus here talking about the greed of the roman commanders and their treacherous covetousness was the cause of all our disasters four to pass over other matters in which the officers of four said or others with their unblushing connivance displayed the greatest profligacy and their injurious treatment to the foreigners dwelling in our territory against whom no crime could be alleged this one melancholy an unprecedented piece of conduct which even if they were to choose their own judges must appear wholly unpardonable must be mentioned when the barbarians who have been when the barbarians who had been conducted across the river where in great distress from wants of provisions those detested generals conceived the idea of a most disgraceful traffic and having collected hounds from all quarters with the most insatiable rapacity they exchanged them for an equal number of slaves among whom were several sons of men of noble birth it's a bit of a mouthful that but that took a few takes and no mistake um and what did it say well the romans forced the goths to sell their children into slavery for dog meat which is pretty rubbish behavior frankly and i just want to point out and make clear marcelino's places to blame for what is about to happen squarely on the greedy roman commanders rather than the migrant goths so anyway the goths were pretty ticked off at this children for dog meat scam the romans were running to put it somewhat lightly and i'm sure one or two of them probably started doing a little mental arithmetic and possibly noticing that there were a lot more of them than there were roman guards and so grumbling turned into shouting and shouting into fighting now lupiquin is uh correctly fearful that he was about to have a full-blown revolt on his hands decided to help speed things along a bit by inviting a bunch of the gothic leaders to a banquet and then when they were there executing their guards and imprisoning them which is very odd behavior maybe he was an ancient accelerationist who knows anyway after lupiquinus red wedding to bunch of their chiefs a war was unavoidable obviously and though rome would technically win it would be only a pyrrhic victory with the later battle of adrian opal being particularly costly for the romans it also changed how rome dealt with barbarian tribes going forward the huge difficulty the empire had in winning the gothic war exposed it as something of a paper tiger and migrating groups were now able to negotiate with rome on their own terms and as a result people like the visigoths were able to settle inside the empire while remaining a unified people loyal to their own leaders rather than the emperor they were living in the empire but they had not integrated into the empire all this brings me to my main point so often the expectation to integrate is placed entirely on the migrant people however that isn't how integration works integration is a two-way street the gothic war was the result of rome's failure to integrate the goths it was just one more of rome's abilities that they had lost near the end of the western empire rather than turning enemies into allies rome was now instead turning potential allies into enemies and this next point is shamelessly stolen from mike duncan's history of rome podcast which you should listen to if you haven't because it's great um in the conclusion to his series duncan wonders what the western roman empire could have been had it successfully integrated the various germanic peoples you see increasingly near the end of the western roman empire the most powerful and capable leaders were of germanic origin however rome's unwillingness to see a german as emperor imposed a ceiling on the political power they could attain and that's why at the end we start seeing puppet emperors you know emperors of the correct birthplace and from the correct families placed onto the imperial throne to act as proxies for the germanic generals who had the real military power duncan asks us to consider why we never saw an emperor atheist or an emperor stiliko who were two such capable leaders who were not able to become emperor and it was only a matter of time before someone like odoasa came along took power and just neglected to appoint a puppet emperor and you see this is the interesting thing about roman history i can look at the exact same chain of events that someone might use to claim that migrants caused the fall of the empire and instead conclude that it was rome's increasing xenophobia and mistreatment of migrants that caused the fall of the empire you know rome didn't fall because of migration there had always been migration and for most of its history rome understood that when handled intelligently and compassionately migration is a benefit rome fell in part anyway when it started acting against this knowledge and i'd like to wrap up here with the thought if we simplify the armed force that took ravenna and opposed to the last emperor to just immigrants then yes immigration in a silly and misleading sense caused the fall of the western roman empire however by that exact same logic immigration created the roman empire because romans setting out from rome immigrated throughout the mediterranean taking over cities and civilizations and filling them with roman buildings and roman people and roman legions so if you're a fan of the romans then immigration is good right yeah do you catch my drift i've like i've flipped it i've turned the argument back on itself it's clever that isn't it anyway thanks a lot for watching everyone like subscribe leave a comment all the usual things let me know what you feel about me doing just a straight history video if i bored everyone to death i apologize also before i go i need a name for my youtube channel um it was called sean and jen but jen isn't involved in the youtube videos at all anymore though don't worry jen fans you can still find her over on twitch anyway i've taken jen's name off the youtube channel but i can't just have a youtube channel called sean can i i don't know anyway so if anyone has any bright ideas please leave them in a comment below this video i'm very excited to see what you come up with also a big thank you as always to all my supporters over on patreon who also as always are scrolling by right now feeling all smug and satisfied that they're in the credits um and if you'd like to be up there with them consider pledging me a dollar or two anyway thanks a lot and see you next time folks

Channel: Shaun

Views: 592,431

Keywords: immigration, rome, fall of rome, shaun, shaun jen

Id: WqCCx4wj79o

Length: 33min 16sec (1996 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2017