Another book thrown out by the University's library and picked up by this bookworm is Henri Pirenne's "Mohammed and Charlemagne". His thesis is that the decay of the West after the collapse of Rome was caused by Sarazen encirclement: the Saracens ruled the Mediterranean and cut off Europe, lands vulnerable to sea-razzias were abandoned, the Arabs were pressing North from Spain and raiding Paris. The West decayed into poverty and ignorance. European demand for Oriental products like textiles, papirus, olive oil, condiments, etc. was supplied by Syrian and Jewish
negotiatores. Europe produced nothing so it paid with gold and silver, what explains the scarcity of money during the Middle Ages. After the money was gone, the only European export were blond slave girls and eunuchs.
In the sixth century Pope Gregory the First witnessed blond-haired, blue-eyed English boys awaiting sale in a slave market in Rome. Inquiring of their origin, the Pope was told they were Angles. Gregory replied,“Non Angli, sed Angeli”(“Not Angles, but Angels”). Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony reduced the price of Saxon slaves less than animals. The continuous warfare ensured an abundant supply of mechandise, part of which was forwarded to the consumer markets in the Orient. Europe had descended to African levels.
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I don't think they were called "English" then.
They were probably called Anglecynn. Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, a Scandinavian people.
The Pirenne thesis has been influential, but it is not universally accepted. The historian Robert Lopez showed in the 1960's that textiles, papyrus, etc. were actually beginning to disappear in Gaul as early as the third or fourth century C.E. as the Roman empire faced crises and its hold on its possessions weakened. That is not the only objection that has been raised, and archaeological evidence (to which Pirenne did not have access) has not all been supportive. That said, it's a shame the library is throwing the book out. It is well-written, and it is worth studying for the questions it raises as well as its place in historiography.
The Angles were not Scandinavian. They may have originated around what is now called the Jutland peninsula, but they did not play a formative role in the ethnogenesis of the Scandinavian peoples. They really fall in the continental Germanic orbit along with the Saxons (quelle surprise).
The Middle Ages, depends how you define it. Population density in the High middle Ages was not matched again until modern industrial times (the plague ended that). Look at the cathedrals built at that time and think if that is a society at "African levels." Most modern science and learning has its origin in this time, not in the Renaissance. There was a period right after the fall of the WESTERN Empire (the Eastern held on and prospered) when things were very bad but remember that the Arabs at the height of their power could not take nearby Constantinople and were very quickly stopped in the West by a militia at Poitiers. It was the "African" Europeans who somehow managed, at what you say is the lowest point, to ship armies from England to the Middle East and take over land in the heart of the Caliphate and hold it for centuries.
White slavery has always existed and still does, raids on Russian steppe settlements by Tatars and Turks were common until the 1700's. Indeed the Arab slave trade was very big and it's not emphasized by historians for the obvious reasons. But this has more to do with the difficulty of protecting far-lying settlements in premodern times than it does with any geopolitical balance of power problems. By 1100 the Normans had taken over southern Italy and Sicily. Remember even in the case of the Ottomans, they were defeated at the height of their power in 1571 by southern European states that were already in decline.
(The point is that Arab and Muslim prowess should not be overemphasized. If Persia and Byzantium hadn't weakened each other in a decades-long war and been wrecked by plague, the Arab conquests would have been nipped in the bud. Persia alone could have made short work of them.)
Social breakdown. What is now England completely collapsed to a central african social/political model.
So it can happen again and again. Nothing is set. We usually don't appreciate how fragile civilisation is. After prolonged hedonistic orgies usually collapse comes. After short ones the system can correct itself by a change of direction towards more austere morals.
Interesting that from the depth of the breakdown they raised again. Far stronger then Roman Britain or its barbaric predesesor ever were.
Russia is a similar case I think.
Human tribes taken to the brink of extinction, brought down to the animal level by external forces. The force of the counterattacks is mind boggling. They crushed everything in their pass. And for the last 200 years - might talk about 300 but it becomes more complex - they are more or less alone in the fight for supremacy. Of course challengers showed up but didn't survive long in the octogon.
Toynbee touches the subject. The stronger the challenge, the stronger the riposte.
And the blonde northerners from britain or eurasian north faced the strongest challenge of all. Thei societies collpsed otr were obliterated. And they were hunted down or treated like animals.
Fast forward to our days.
The counterattack is going on for tens of generations. All enemies were obliterated. And they still can't stop.
I think wisdom in modern era can be resumed to : Don't go against Anglos or Russians. And especially don't go against both of them. There are less painful ways of committing suicide.
The collapse of the Roman Empire was such a catastrophe that Europe regressed to African levels. Everything was forgotten. It is frightening to think that it could happen again.
It is chilling... in Ravenna is situated the tomb of Theodoric. This was the grandest monument that he could have built for himself in the 6th century and it is not very grand, especially compared to the Pantheon built 400 years earlier. It is about the size of a small house - maybe 10M in diameter. Theodoric wanted something done in the style of a Roman temple. Stacking blocks of stone was not that hard so the bottom part is a fair (if somewhat crude) approximation of a Roman style building. But when they got to the roof they were stumped - they no longer knew how to make concrete or form a dome (they never did figure this out - the Gothic cathedrals have wooden roofs). So they found a really big rock and they made the top as a single piece. The size of the Pantheon dome was not exceed until they built the Duomo in Florence a 1,000 years after Theodoric. Poured concrete was not rediscovered until the 19th century.
K
You can see this phenomenon trying to emerge in the "New South Africa"; just as soon as they get rid of one illiterate thug (Malema), another one emerges to lead the ANC Youth League; this one thinks the black man will never be fully emancipated til the mines are fully nationalized, the land confiscated without compensation and the economy wrested from the hands of the Whites.
Unfortunately, there are some places, even perhaps many places, where the demographics, the biology and the culture conspire to render genuine democracy unsustainable.
South Africa was dismantled not by Blacks but by Whites, like FW deKlerk and his cabinet, The Hilary Clintons of this world, and Tony "African Renaissance" Blair.
Zimbabwe is the Jewel in their Crown.
Anon.
There were no Dark Ages to begin with. The Dark Ages propaganda is usually bruited about by Protestants wishing to claim that civilisation began with them. The The Roman Empire had its hands full fighting the barbarians. Try fighting Goths, Visigoths, Magyars, Huns, Saxons, Vikings and what not in succession for centuries on end. The millennial long civilising process of these barbarians was undertaken and successfully completed by the Roman Catholic Church and no one else, while keeping the Saracen hordes at bay.
Ivan
Maybe the Dark Ages were not as dark as they were made out to be, but they were pretty dark. Roman gold coins stopped circulating in Britain in the 5th century and there were no fresh ones minted for 1,000 years. BTW, gold coins stopped circulating again in the West in the early 20th century (1933 in the US) - the beginning of the 2nd Dark Age?
There was an editorial today in the NYTimes saying that the economy was not recovering (enough to ensure Obama's re-election) and that therefore we needed more government spending to complete the recovery. This is like an 18th century doctor saying that the patient has not been bled enough to be cured and that what is needed now is some more bleeding.
K
Forget about democracy, which is a rare and fragile flower. There are many places where circumstances are such that even the vestiges of modern civilization cannot be sustained - things like electricity and basic sanitation that even dictatorships can manage sometimes. Most of these places are in Africa but if they system of international trade continues to deteriorate (see Somali pirates) other areas could fall back into a state of nature as well. Some places (Afghanistan) are sustained only by American aid which cannot last forever.
K
K,
In place of gold coins, silver coins circulated. It was not the case that minting technology was lost or that all trade ceased. Rather, the value of individual coins fell to fit the value of the individual transactions, which was less than in the era of long-distance trade facilitated by the Pax Romana and access to the Mediterranean. The flip side is that the Middle East and North Africa also experienced economic decline before and during the Arab conquests. That part of the world was not nearly as wealthy in the 8th century as it had been in the 2nd century.
That's the point - there was no more long distance trade, no more silks from China and marble from Africa. For trading cows and bundles of wool and such, pennies were sufficient and they were the only coinage for the next 900 years. Even the American Indians had their wampum.
K
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