What if the Roman Empire Never Fell?

with any state in western history ever compared to the Roman Empire it controlled a full quarter of mankind and ruled area stretching from Britain to Libya and from Spain to Iraq it dominated to region of the world for over 500 years and its empire was seen as a high-water mark of architecture administration cleanliness and peace but the Empire did fall and did so spectacularly the Western Empire fell in a series of barbarian invasions finally being done apart in 476 ad the eastern empire was slowly torn apart until it was destroyed a thousand years later in 1453 ad but what if this never happened what if the Roman Empire never fell remaining the dominant force in the region until the present how would that affect history culture borders and Wars until the present that is a question of this alternate history you before we start this video like all my videos will engender quite a bit of argument and discussion these comment sections are always horrifying Wars but if you like debating alter new story questions as I know all of you do then I have the best game for you I'm proud to be sponsored by the first alternate history card game ever Forks in the timeline a card game where you can open doors to different timelines in the multiverse and argue about the results I've played it multiple times you can safely say it's a lot of fun you had a card in a question like in a timeline or the Nazis in one World War two what secret cult would you have started or at a timeline in which everyone was communist to an America's favorite food be the person who makes the best argument wins you can play it up funnily logically seriously or whimsically with over a hundred different realities and a hundred different questions including the one that this scenario is based off there's so many different ways to go click on the link in the description and use the promo code what-if to order now the primary example that constructive to look at for what if the Roman Empire survived is China so every world civilization has a foundational Empire the old Empire United their civilization in the first place and they look back on as their parent in India it's the Maori ins for Islam it's the Umayyads and abbasids for Persia it's the Hakeem in heads and for Europe it's the Roman Empire however what all these empires have in common is they fell apart the one exception is China China has endured countless foreign invasions and humiliations changes in technology and internal divisions it remains at heart the same culture as a thousand years before the birth of Christ this is for very complex reasons that I'll probably get into in a future video but the best analog for a Mediterranean which the Romans survived would be China as the video progresses will continually reference China's history and culture as a guide so why did the Roman Empire fall although I could write a 400 page book on the subject the easy answer is a vicious cycle that started with a lack of legitimacy in the government we tend to view the Roman Empire as a hereditary monarchy that isn't entirely accurate the Roman emperors did everything they could to not be described as a monarchy they never used the Latin term Rex or King did a bad insinuations instead using Imperato or meaning he who gives orders print caps or first citizen or Augustus or honored one room wasn't a monarchy it was much closer to a fascist dictatorship say what you wanted on monarchies but the stable and clear succession line means that there doesn't have to be civil wars when one King succeeds another which is very good from the perspective of stability Rome never had this stability and never had a guaranteed line of succession it worked out as long as the army was honest but once the army became dominant by internal barbarians some areas like Gaul or the Balkans that didn't care at the Roman institutions themselves and the tribesmen who were part of the army just supporting their generals out of pay then the Empire collapsed into civil war upon Civil War dominating the Empire for 150 years after this room deviated too far into the other extreme the Emperor's Diocletian in constant you're able to reform the Empire by turning it effectively into an authoritarian militaristic command economy this kept the empire are going for another 100 years but was a deeply flawed model that ended up collapsing although Rome faced enormous issues including improving technology among barbarian peoples the Hunnish invasions climate change in plagues a room with quality leadership would have been able to face them if the Roman Empire could have reformed well it still had some energy they could have dealt with these issues and survived in this timeline that occurs in 238 AD during the Roman civil war that was occurring in that era the Emperor was technically Maximus Thrax who was a Balkan military thug that had seized the throne in the Italian nobility had grown tired of this recreated the Senate appointing universally respected aristocrats named ball - and poopie anus they actually defeated Maxima Ness but were both killed by the imperial Praetorian Guard in this timeline bel - and poopie anus purged the praetorian guard in the Italian aristocracy seizes power over the country this timeline isn't dependent upon these two gentlemen being geniuses I see little evidence of that however it is dependent on the aristocratic guy pulling the strings behind this being one he sets up the Senate at the dominant form of government and Rome becomes an aristocratic Republic like it was earlier or Great Britain after centuries of ruled by military dictators Romer verts back to aristocratic control there might be an emperor but he would still be a figurehead this would allow a stable transfer of power from regime to regime the big reason the Roman Empire fell was from 180 to 330 it was a chaotic bloody mess the results in the third of the population dying to keep the Roman Empire functioning various measures like hyper and fitting the currency over taxation hiring of barbarians to support the military creation of a brutal command economy over expansion the bureaucracy and creating a veritable caste system resulted in a demographic and economic stagnation that meant that Rome couldn't sustain a military that could hold off the barbarians this never happens in this timeline rather than the internal barbarian generals from areas like the Balkans or Gaul continually seizing power who didn't give a whit over the functioning of the empire the old Roman aristocracy stays in power the old Roman aristocracy wasn't perfect and had a lot of systemic issues but it had managed the Empire successfully for hundreds of years one of the most important elements of this timeline that I don't know how to pull off is never having the Roman aristocracy become pacified and replaced by first internal barbarians and then Germanic one rather than becoming a parasitic land owning class the Roman nobility remain active and war in politics with a centralized controlled form of leadership Rome would be able to deal with the foreign invasions and not have a completely destroyed Society the crisis of the third century where the violence that stretched between 180 and 330 destroyed much of the European section of the Empire and without that pulling them down the Roman Empire could have survived the main force that resulted in the fall of Rome in our timeline was the Hunnish invasions the new Rome built by Diocletian and Constantine had been capable of holding the frontier pretty well until the Huns from Central Asia smashed into Central Europe this resulted in a unified chain reaction of Germanic barbarians peoples striking into the empire once which destroyed it in this timeline the more effectively run Rome a room which is still capable of raising armies is able to effectively mobilize its population of 70 million to raise army after army to hold off the barbarians using some as mercenaries but later assimilating them the Huns are smashed in the Balkans somewhere in the unified Empire survives the political effects of this timeline get very difficult to predict past a certain range since we've just changed several centuries of Roman history however it is easy to see how several long-term trends that develop something minor that still gets to me is that when people in alternate history tend to envision a world in which the Roman Empire never fell they almost always show like the Roman Empire around the birth of Christ of more advanced technology this isn't true the Empire kept going for at least another 500 years and by the time Rome fell in 476 it was a completely different state pants had replaced togas gladiatorial games and slavery were definitely on the way out and no one prayed to Jupiter anymore the best way to envision this timelines Roman civilization and this is an oversimplification is as a huge Byzantine Empire unless they're one of the die-hard Byzantine fanboy crew it's not as sexy a big notion that dominates a lot of this video that many of you won't agree with is that the Roman Empire wasn't a part of Western civilization we get this notion from the Whig theory of history that our civilization started in Egypt and continually advanced through Greece Rome etc to get to the present anglo-saxon nations the more you spend with each of the world however the more you realize it's not just a foreign country but an entirely different continent one of the things I find very telling is that I was just reading a social history of the late Roman Empire and one of the things that came up was that the Romans had all sorts of intellectual and social concepts that were just completely alien to our current Western worldview that's not the case for the Middle Ages where even if we look down on them they view the world through a lens that we understand something that really struck me was that I heard a lot of these room and contents before just coming from modern China the modern Western civilization we have has grown out of the combination of the Catholic Church the barbarian kingdoms both heirs to Rome in their own way and neither would exist in this world Catholicism's relationship with the state is really weird and one of a kind in history in most states in history the church either dominated everything or as a stooge of the government Catholicism's relationship was strained and that after the fall of Rome there was no political force that was capable of conquering central Italy and crushing the Pope but the Pope had practically no real political power and a continent of warrior nobility is and so a delicate balance of power came to exist between the church and lay authorities which competed for centuries this allowed the creation of the separation of church and state that only really exists in the West in China the state is the representation of the Divine Will in India the clergy ran everything in Orthodox civilization the church was a stooge of the state and in Islam the religious and political leader were one in the same and this timeline the Catholic Church developed like the Orthodox Church and the Byzantine or Russian empires completely controlled by political forces it was part of this would basically make all of Christianity pretty similar to our timelines Orthodox Church structure the reason that the Roman Empire's social intellectual relations reminded me of China was that both states are pretty similar an large centralized empires pretty similar climates similar conditions appear in both Imperial Roman and Chinese society position and hierarchy was more important than individualism ability to network people skills and show deference to social superiors was seen as one of the most important traits to have wisdom and learning were highly respected although there is no expectation of technological or personal gain involved and the ideal society was based around each class in the hierarchy behaving in their socially prescribed manner the main distinguishing features of Western civilization were created since unlike most other civilizations after the fall of Rome no centralized Authority replaced it rather than another Empire forming soon afterwards Western Europe collapsed in the tiny states that were incapable of holding power this resulted in the church and the warrior elite gaining greater power over society the most definitive traits of Western civilization developed due to the collapse of central authority the emphasis on individualism comes out of a combination of Christianity becoming a dominant force in society and being able to assert itself over the late Roman hierarchy late Roman Christianity was very collectivist but with the fall of Rome and the collapse of our social systems Christianity took a more individualist direction this also became mixed with the Germanic notion of fry act in which a man was entitled to certain rights due to being part of the war bands and born free this is the start of our current word an idea freedom similarly the West is really interesting and being predominantly a guilt based culture and which individual action is driven by personal guilt rather than most of Asia which is honor and shame based this also took place due to Christianity replacing the late Roman social system that was shame based as we're going to see this time lines Roman Empire would be strikingly similar to Confucian China a learning aristocracy running the government with a muzzled collectivist religion a wealthy capitalist economy under control of the state and a largely peaceful homogeneous and stable internal population it goes without saying the Mediterranean European world would have a much greater degree of homogeneity than it did in our timeline nations like Spain France Italy Turkey etc would not exist as those nations formed in the ashes of the Roman Empire instead the vast majority of the citizens of the Empire would view themselves as Romani toss or Roman although in reality there would be a large division between the latin-speaking western part of the Empire in the Greek East there would also be many ethnic minorities like the Basques some Slavs and Berbers the Roman Empire ethically survive within these boundaries a mistake a lot of alternate history ins make is they think a single Empire can survive at the same borders for thousands of years this isn't true barbarian invasions internal civil wars governmental collapses happen with pretty regular frequency but in the long run if the borders make sense geographically the nation can survive keep in mind the Greek in Latin sections of the Empire or likely divide and reunite several times the reason that the Roman Empire made sense in the first place was since naval travel was far easier in this era than land and most of the population centers the Empire hugged the Mediterranean the Empire was also dependent on growing olive oil and wine thus the parts of the Empire that were north of the Mediterranean and olive wine country would gradually be whittled away from the Empire over the centuries Germanic barbarians would still take the north of France England the Rhineland and Austria from the Empire something very important that people rarely draw attention to with before the fall of Rome the Balkans are densely settled by the Thracians and illyrians or relatives of the modern-day Albanians both of these were good warrior people since made up the backbone of the Roman army supplying the empire with some very good at burrowers however Attila the Hun committed genocide against the illyrians thus diluting the region of population and opening up space for the Slavs to settle the region in this time on with Roman leadership capable of stopping the Huns that never happens the Balkan people survive and thrive there's actually a fair chance that either of these gaining more and more power inside the Peyer would split off as independent nations well the empire would be going through a weak phase we would see the Balkans in this timeline being unified military forces equal to the nations of Western Europe and our timeline like England's France or Spain for alternate histories that go on for hundreds or thousands of years the butterfly effect is really difficult to figure out those of you that don't know the butterfly effect is the idea that one slight change derails the rest of an alternate history in ways we can't imagine since everything's there connected you always wonder that if a person was removed from existence did the conditions of that era mean that someone very similar would have just taken their place this is where I come to Muhammad several hundred years of changes means that Muhammad himself would likely never be born however would something similar to Islam have developed anyway it's hard to say that I'm going to say no acciones you're generally monotheistic iron-age religions universally displaced the previous polytheistic ones but that had already happened in the near East between Christianity and Zoroastrianism although there were long term reasons Islam succeeded on such a massive level I'm going to make the call the timing for Islam was perfect striking when the Byzantine and Persian empires were very weak and thus if conditions had changed slightly it never would have existed having Islam never exists opens up a whole new can of worms that would double the length of this video however I've already made a video on this so click on the link in the description for what if Islam never existed having Islam never exists to result in a lot of shifts to European civilization firstly one of the most important side effects of Islam was splitting the Mediterranean dividing the Mediterranean north-south had several important effects the first of which was that North Africa had thrived during the Roman Empire becoming one of the richest provinces in the Empire due to trade with the northern side of the Mediterranean which has consistently had double the population by selling its agricultural produce to the great cities of northern Mediterranean with the Mediterranean split North Africa became significantly poorer this would never happen in this timeline North Africa would remain super wealthy in fact one of the wealthiest regions in the world with Carthage being one of the largest cities on the planet another important shift was when the Mediterranean split the center of European civilization moved from the Mediterranean to northern Europe Northern Europe still wouldn't be or in this timeline the soil is better than the south but with the Mediterranean as an integrated economic unit the north would always be subsidiary we would see a situation similar to what occurred in Asia and our timeline in which China was the Jupiter with all the surrounding nations revolving around it we would likely see a situation in Northern Europe similar to what occurred between China and the surrounding nations like Korea Japan Vietnam etc which all use alphabets governments and religions derive from the Chinese models but also have their own independent native cultures likely several northern European countries would be vassals to the Romans bringing them homage and tribute northern Europe would have a greater tendency towards unity with the enormous great power to their south Germany for example to remain a unified nation for its entire history due to the fear of the common Roman threat the Northwest Europeans and peoples like the French Germans and Hungarians would look up to Roman civilization but would also be great rivals the Romans a deal with fists by forming alliances in Eastern Europe the Romans would try to use Poland in Russia as allies against the states further west and Europe like our timeline with the Roman Empire's its greatest trading partner Russia would take quite a bit of influence from Rome Rome would be large enough that it could just swallow smaller groups that were capable of becoming pretty powerful in our timeline for example the Turks would be defeated by the much larger Roman Empire and if they did break through to the frontier would assimilate to Roman culture this is similar to China which assimilates barbarian invaders as a hobby a serious misconception that people have about agent Rome is that we view it as some paradise of technological progress this is mostly since we're in awe of Roman architecture which was there one point of advancement however for its thousand years the Roman Empire saw almost no technological progress in any field the counterpoint to this is that most people believe that medieval Europe with some den of decay and ignorance the opposite is true with the exception of the modern West medieval Europe was one of the most inventive societies in history and several hundred years medieval Europe saw vast advances in agriculture naval economic political and military abilities population size and enormous intellectual advancements the funny thing is that the Romans were very good administrators but not terribly inventive well medieval Europe was very inventive but were really bad administrators thus it really annoys and people say that in a world in which the Roman Empire never felt technology would be more advanced people are correlating how much education was valued in Roman society with technological progress the correlation that just isn't there for example Confucian society is like Japan and China have an have had the largest respect for education but we're in a huge technological slump for nearly a thousand years our timelines Western civilization was so successful to do the internal competition inside it in medieval Europe power was so decentralized between the church nobility merchants and monarchy that no one social class could gain power they all had to remain realistic and had to better themselves through competition on a geopolitical level the endless competition between different European powers created an atmosphere of military technological and political competition that Darwin Ely brought out the best in each society for example science and capitalism capitalism was able to thrive in the West since no political force was capable of muzzling the merchants and so the merchants were able to become politically powerful and continually grow their fortunes similarly no central intellectual elite whether like the Confucians in China were the priests in Islam or India were capable of controlling intellectual discourse which meant the West was able to search for the truth too much greater degree I've basically gotten rid of all these conditions Rome would be very politically centralized with a great degree of social centralization as well a certain degree of competition would come from Persia and the North European kingdoms but not enough to really justify the conditions that set Europe off in our timeline gunpowder would probably result in a decline of the empire for a century or two the introduction of black powder from China would disproportionately benefit north European states these states would be closer to our timelines European conditions than the Roman Empire also nation states universally do better with gunpowder warfare since most large multi-ethnic empires tend to recruit their warriors from the elite or internal barbarian tribes will disenfranchise in the peasantry this doesn't work well to large infantry armies needed for gunpowder and this is why the Ottoman Mughal King and Russian empires had trouble keeping up militarily with the Western powers even though they had a technological abilities to do so this is in fact the exact situation that occurred with the Ming Dynasty not being able to keep up with Japan in the 16th century militarily the Roman Empire would face a century or two of humiliation in Northern Europe's hands before being able to reform and deal with the issue in general the world would be several hundred years more technologically backwards in this timeline room in this timeline is pretty similar to the giant empires Europe dealt with in the Age of Exploration like the Chinese Persians Mughals and Ottomans that all the trouble modernizing its deeply unclear how much North Europe in this timeline would share with our timelines in northern Europe or how much it would be like Korea Japan or Vietnam a mix is probably the most probable option I guess it would be very ironic to those who lived through it but the fall of Rome or more accurately rooms inability to reform as an empire could be seen as one of the greatest technological accelerators in history what a fall test and thank you for watching congratulations on finishing my longest video ever at least that is if you don't count my seven and a half hours of live streams but if you like that video please comment like subscribe and stay tuned for more content alternatively check out the awesome card game forks in the timeline and the link to which is in the description or check out my patreon where I've got cool maps in the first three chapters of my history of the world or check me up on Twitter as always thank you for watching have a great day

Channel: Whatifalthist

Views: 487,980

Keywords: alternate history, whatifalthist, Rome, Atilla, Attila, Fall of Rome, Vandals, Goths, Byzantium, History

Id: lisdcxuGSgs

Length: 24min 52sec (1492 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 29 2020