Quote: (10-26-2016 11:09 AM)Hell_Is_Like_Newark Wrote:
Quote: (10-26-2016 10:37 AM)Meat Head Wrote:
Did Ancient Japan and China have more stable economies compared to Rome? Apart from wars with Europe did East Asian kingdoms ever fall?
China had invasions (Mongols) and regime collapses. I am ignorant when it comes to Japanese history.
One item that made Rome prosperous was open trade (before the Empire went into steep decline). An example: The best pottery came from what is today England. High quality English dishware has been discovered all the way to North Africa and Syria. Roof tiles made from the same protected homes from the elements.
When Rome collapsed, the pottery market dried up (no more currency, no safe way to transport goods, roads fell apart) the advanced pottery skills were lost. Nobility during this time ate and drank using dishware that a Roman peasant would have rejected as 'junk'. Thatched roofs replaced durable (and fire resistant) tile roofs.
For an economic and 'comfort' perspective, check out this book
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019280...UTF8&psc=1
The author does a thorough job of describing the economic collapse and the loss of material comforts as the Western Empire descended into anarchy.
The author of the mentioned book is an archeologist and being faithful to his trade, he is simply concetrating on pottery, as it is easy to find its orgins.... it must be noted that ancient pottery functioned partly as a kind of universal package - pallets of antiquity, so to say. Researching pottery can be thus a proxy for researching trade volumes, and this is what Ward-Perkins has done.
His thesis is not so much that 'the advanced pottery skills were lost' but that the long-haul trade (eg. France to Africa) disappeared in the wake of the imperial collapse since security managment crumbled. Now you were trading just with your neighbouring cities/villages, not with someone on other continent. Without demand coming from trade, the great pottery plants in France and Spain lost their market and, yes, pottery skills for creating large amphorae were indeed lost.
However, the book is remarkable since it has broken a spell put on Late Antiquity studies by Peter Brown and his kin, historians of culture who have been usually stressing diffrent kinds of emerging novelty, new states, new religions, forms of life etc....instead of noticing decay or anything like that. Surely Brown is not concentraing on trade like Ward-Perkins; the former see the new cult of Christianity replacing old cults, hence evolution, the latter see nothing replacing the long-distance trade, hence decline and fall. Reading Peter Brown you get the impression that one civilization was more or less replaced by another civilization in generally fluid way, even if sometimes a bit turbulent; not too much about chaos or suffering. See, for example, this popular book of his, 'The World of Late Antiquity':
https://www.amazon.com/World-Late-Antiqu...+antiquity
For an example of such attitude ('
welcome the new, enjoy the new, notice the new') read a new review of Edward Luttwak 'Grand Strategy of Roman Empire' in the last
Times Literary Supplement : Luttwak is ciriticized, among other things, for his attitude to 'barbarians', too condescending it is.
