Thoughts for July 10, 2022

Good afternoon. Today’s topics are depopulation in Rome, family life in the Middle Ages, and the 5000 Year myth.

Depopulation in the late Roman Empire

I have come to the end of Philip Daileader’s lecture series on the early Middle Ages. It was quite good, and I am looking forward to his series on the High Middle Ages and the late Middle Ages. In the last lecture, Daileader returns to the question that underlies the whole time period: why did the western Roman Empire fall apart?

Daileader highlights a leading underlying cause: depopulation. From the second century, the territory of the Roman Empire was decreasing in population, a trend that would continue until after the traditional date of 476 of the end of the western empire. He singles out the Antonine Plague, which first struck in the AD 160s, as a major cause. This trend of depopulation would have made it increasingly difficult, and eventually impossible, to sustain the agriculture and commercial economy that underpinned the empire. It also made it impossible to staff the army indigenously, leading emperor Valens to invite the Goths in 376 to settle in the empire and join the army, a decision that would ultimately have severe political consequences for the empire.

In contrast to contemporary times, demography of the ancient world is full of uncertainty and guesswork, leading to uncertainty of even the basic course of events. This 1948 article finds that depopulation occurred in Greece from 200 BC and Italy from 150 BC. But on Italy in particular, the population might have either decreased or increased in the first century BC. This article, which leans toward the higher estimates of Italian population in late Republican/early imperial times, goes deep into the debate and the causes for uncertainty.

The city of Rome itself was probably a demographic sink within Italy (had subreplacement birth rates and was sustained by migration from outside the city), but the paper also goes into uncertainty regarding the demographic figures. Rome’s population peaked around one million in the first century, and declined to the low tens of thousands at the time of Justinian’s Gothic War. Only after that, when the city came under the control of the papacy, did the decline stabilize.

It is more firmly established that the territory comprising the Roman Empire had fallen into demographic decline, probably starting around the 2nd century, and as Daileader notes, disease is a leading suspect, with this article and this article and this article giving credence. According to the theory, the troubles began with the Antonine Plague, the first round of which was AD 165-180 and was most like the introduction of smallpox. Outbreaks would recur over the coming centuries. In the third century, the empire was struck by the Plague of Cyprian, which might have been measles. The significance of this event, which receives less attention from historians than the Antonine Plague, is discussed here. See also this article, which deals more with the later Plague of Justinian but also addresses the Antonine Plague, disputing that it was as important an event in the fate of the empire as some other historians believe.

Environmental history has become fashionable, and I would suggest this article (noted above with the Plague of Cyprian) as a readable introduction to the topic as it pertains to late antiquity Rome. It documents that Romans tended to be less healthy than their Iron Age predecessors and their Dark Age successors, based on skeletal observations. It rules out that a Malthusian catastrophe, understood in the classic sense of population outstripping food supply, is to blame for the decline. But perhaps to salvage the Malthusian label for this most quintessential of civilizational collapses, they identify vulnerability to disease, which resulted from the empire’s extensive trading network, as another Malthusian factor. This paper also finds, most paradoxically to modern readers, that health tended to correlate negatively with wealth, population levels, and diet.

Kyle Harper’s popular book deserves much of the credit (or blame) for introducing the public to the notion that climate change, by facilitating the spread of disease and disrupting agriculture, is a major factor in Rome’s decline. There was indeed a period of cooling in late antiquity, but I noted some dispute of this importance of this above, and will note some more here and here.

Of course, the topic of depopulation cannot pass without considering birth rates. Here too, uncertainty leaves us with as many questions as answers. It is a myth that, prior to the 20th century, people has no way of regulating family size and thus all pre-industrial societies lived on the edge of a Malthusian catastrophe. This book chapter discusses contraception and abortion in the Roman empire, but notes debate as to how widespread these practices were. This paper finds that infanticide was common enough in the Roman empire to be a major factor behind demographic decline, though it notes some other papers that dispute this conclusion. (It was accepted practice in the Roman empire for families to reject newborns; if this was done, the baby would usually die from exposure.) And of course there is abstinence and timing of sex to avoid periods of maximum fertility.

This paper, not very convincingly, attributes falling birth rates to infertility induced by bathing practices, and it also cites the now mostly rejected lead poisoning theory. But this one generally disputes the idea that low birth rates explain demographic decline. In a modern country with good health care, the replacement level is around 2.1, which means that adult women must have, on average, 2.1 children to maintain a stable population (the point one accounts for deaths that occur in childhood). According to Wikipedia, the replacement level in the Roman Empire would have been around 4.5-6.5, accounting for a death rate that was appallingly high by modern standards and perhaps high by ancient standards.

By the Crisis of the Third Century, and perhaps well before, the Roman Empire had spiraled into a severe cycle of dysfunction, as documented here and here and here and here and a great many other sources. Demographic decline would have existed alongside an excessively sized bureaucracy, economic overregulation and mismanagement, and elite competition to the point of frequent civil wars, as serious and ultimately unmanageable problems. The more I know about the problems, the less surprised I am that the western empire collapsed, and the more I am that the eastern empire survived for so long. The barbarian incursions of the fifth century would have been the least of their problems.

It is tempting to read into Roman history a demographic transition that is analogous to the Contemporary Demographic Transition. There are, at the very least, substantial differences between the two, and our understanding of Roman demography is marred by severe data limitations. One should be ever vigilant against the risk of reading contemporary issues into ancient history, and instead be willing to accept the past on its own terms.

Family Life in the Early Middle Ages

I would like to discuss another fascinating topic that came out of Daileader’s series, and that is the evolution of the family and how many of the norms that we today recognize characterize family life developed during this period.

During late antiquity, family life was shaped by sets of norms from Roman culture and from barbarian culture. There were important similarities between these norms, but differences from modern norms. One is that both cultures regraded families as much more extensive than we do today, including spouses and children, and also distant relatives, slaves, and servants. Both gave the head of the household extensive power, including rejection of newborns. Both accepted concubinage. Among the differences, dowry went from the bride’s family to the groom’s family under Roman custom, and in the opposite direction among barbarians. Barbarians accepted polygamy and Romans did not. Roman custom held that both parties needed to freely consent for a marriage to be valid; barbarians had no such rule.

(Here I am following Daileader’s use of the term “barbarian” to describe the Germanic cultures of late antiquity, and do not intend to invoke the negative connotations typically associated with the word.)

As antiquity gave way to the medieval period, Germanic norms often won out over Roman norms, and as the church grew in political power, it was generally the Church and theologians who set the norms. Daileader’s list of norms established in this way include the following:

• Endogamy (marriage within a kin group) was more stringently prohibited. Roman and barbarian cultures had their incest taboos, but generally encouraged cousin marriage. In the early Middle Ages, the list of prohibited martial relations eventually extended to sixth cousins.

• Divorce, infanticide, and adoption were discouraged and became much harder as the Middle Ages went on.

• Remarriage after the death of a spouse was discouraged.

• Concubinage went from being an accepted norm to a discouraged practice.

To explain the Church’s position, Daileader discusses the work of two anthropologists. One of them, Jack Goody (review of a relevant book) presents these changes as an assertion of the Church’s political authority, and in particular to weaken the financial position of family clans so as to increase the flow of money to the Church. For example, rejection of newborns, adoptions, and remarriage would all be techniques for a family to produce male heirs and thus keep property within the family.

The other is David Herlihy, who, as Daileader explains, takes the Church’s explanations of evolving norms more at face value.

In this book Sapiens, Yuval Harari presents a highly simplified view, termed breakdown of the family, whereby family structure, which had been stable from Neolithic times to the Industrial Revolution, ceded key functions to the mass institutions of governments and corporations. For example, social insurance for old age shifted from one’s own children to state- and company-run pension systems.

Regardless of whether Goody or Herhily is more right, the above review should indicate that the transformation of family life, and its subordination to mass institutions, began well before the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, the more I understand history, the more convinced I become that the Middle Ages, including the early Middle Ages, are a crucial period in which the institutions of modernity were laid down.

In contemporary parlance, the phrase “breakdown of the family” refers to the nuclear family in particular, and the phenomenon of children being raised without a biological mother and/or father. This should be seen not just as a 20th century phenomenon, but as an advanced stage of a trend that has been ongoing for centuries. Certain dystopian, though not entirely plausible, extensions of this pattern envision an immerse Internet displacing marriage and ectogenesis replacing natural childbirth.

The 5000 Year Myth

While we’re on the subject of history, I want to address a topic which comes up an annoys me periodically. At some point you have probably heard a story like this:

China has a proud, 5000 year history of unbroken civilization, in contrast to Western upstart nations like the United States. Thus the Chinese think strategically and on a centuries-long time scale, while Western politicians cannot think beyond the next election and corporations cannot think beyond the next quarterly report.

Problems with this trope abound. First off, as this article documents, the problem starts with the “5000 years”. We can go back no more than 4000 years before descending into mythology, and the Chinese state certainly has not been continuous over that time. If we consider the age of ancestor civilizations, China is no older, and even a bit younger, than the civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia. As the article documents, this myth has consequences in the form of muddled political thinking, such as that the rest of the world should be patient on China adopting standards of human rights.

Problem 2 comes in referring to China in such a singular way. Foreign Policy documents the myth of Chinese homogeneity, that all Chinese people think the same way. Certainly, the Chinese Community Party has an interest promoting homogeneity to downplay ethnic strife and political dissent. Some China hawks in the West also play up the myth, desiring to spur fellow citizens out of complacency by presenting a scary image of some sort of billion+ person Chinese hivemind. See also this article outlining how the idea of an ethnically integrated China is a creation of 19th century nationalism.

Problem 3 is the notion that the Chinese somehow have a unique talent at long range planning, which might be a function of their civilization’s supposed age. This article debunks that notion, documenting major strategic mistakes in recent population, environmental, and economic planning. Again, an ugly political subtext can be seen: that democracy, capitalism, and pluralism are hindrances to long-term planning that an authoritarian, homogeneous state can overcome. History has been very unkind to such pretensions. See also “The Myth of Chinese Strategic Genius”.

It’s not just the CCP that indulges these myths. Falun Gong plays on the 5000 year trope as well. Falun Gong is a religious movement from the 1990s, responsible also for Shen Yun and The Epoch Times. They use persecution by the CCP and anti-communist credentials to gain sympathy and induce people to overlook the fact that they are, in fact, a Scientology-like cult with some very strange beliefs. They have no better claim on however many years of historical inheritance than the CCP.

The foregoing is not discussed to disrespect Chinese culture. There is nothing respectful about baseless myth-making.