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Feelings at the Fall of the Republic, Ancient and Medieval Living Standards
- brodo 5y agoGood article. When it comes to living standards, it is worth mentioning that there was a more equal wealth distribution after the fall of Rome which made it impossible for medieval nobles to finance large armies. This meant that wars in medieval times where shorter and less bloody then before and after. Also slavery disappeared from Europe, except for Spain. For an everyday normal person in western Europe living around the year 800-1300 was probably better then during antiquity. Early modernity was pretty bad compared to that period too. (witch trials, 30 year war…)
- felipemnoa 5y ago>>This meant that wars in medieval times where shorter and less bloody then(sic) before and after. My brain short circuited a bit when reading this sentence. Just to clarify, you are saying that "wars in medieval times where shorter and less bloody then(sic) before and after" medieval times?
- dmos62 5y agoAre you saying that the phrasing is incorrect? Medieval times is some period and there's periods before and after that. I don't see what you're saying.
- vijayr02 5y agoNot OP, I think it's a pedantic point being made. WW1 and WW2 were both after medieval times.
- williamdclt 5y agoProbably meant "wars in medieval times were* shorter and less bloody than* before and after"
- true_religion 5y agoYes, somehow when it comes to slave states, people tend to focus on the lifestyle of the slave masters rather than the great heap of humanity living in squalor to support them. In context though, I wonder if serfs really had it better. They still had no freedom to move, and in the early Middle Ages there was no appeal granted to serfs under a tyrannical lord.
- brodo 5y agoYes although there where also some free farmers. As I understand it, the serfs had more power in the high middle ages than before and after, because the lords also lacked the resources for strong police forces. There was not a lot of metal around, so most soldiers did not have shields or armor. You and your serf buddies could realistically resist the local lord with some forks and knives. Plus the catholic church was also protecting serf's rights to an extend.
- zrail 5y agoAlso keep in mind that during that period the Black Plague killed 30-60% of the population. Serfs had more power because there were dramatically fewer of them.
- varjag 5y agoOn the other hand if it took a plague to improve the standards of living it is fair to agree the baseline was quite abysmal.
- zrail 5y agoOh no doubt!
- rufus_foreman 5y agoI don't think that argument makes sense. What's the country with the highest standard of living today? This says it's Canada: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-r.... If a plague wiped out 50% of the population of Canada, and wages went up afterwards, would that mean that the current standard of living in Canada is quite abysmal?
- mwaitjmp 5y ago> Also slavery disappeared from Europe, except for Spain Slavery was unfortunately very much a thing in Anglo Saxon England. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain#2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain#2 Pre the migration of the Saxons into England (not long after the Romans left leaving the inhabitants unprotected) they would raid coastal areas and carry off slaves back across the sea. Later, Viking raiders would do the same…
- bnralt 5y agoThere were plenty of long and bloody wars during the High Middle Ages (such as the Albigensian Crusade and the Anarchy, just to name a couple). I think a large part of the author's point that this is a long period of time (even if we restrict it to 800-1300, that's about the same length of time as between Columbus' voyage and today), covering a large area (even if we restrict it to Western Europe), and it's difficult to come up with a single criteria of comparison.
- tonmoy 5y agoDo you have any sources for either of these claims? This goes against my general intuition (which could itself be wrong)
- tarsinge 5y agoI don’t have a source for this whole question but regarding that intuition: > English peasants likely didn’t work more than 120-150 days a year. That’s about 215-245 days off a year. From https://www.fodors.com/news/news/you-wont-believe-who-got-more-vacation-days-than-you https://www.fodors.com/news/news/you-wont-believe-who-got-mo...
- watwut 5y agoThat assumes there is no work out of season. So, no making of bed sheets, no matter king of cloth, candles, fixing tools, no animal care out of season and no work related to small children. No storage maintenance, no baking/cooking.
- jacobolus 5y agoPeasants everywhere work full time, all through the year. For people who are just managing to survive, there is always something that needs doing. Growing or foraging and preparing food (especially manually milling grain); making (starting from raw plant/animal fibers), patching, and cleaning clothing; building hedges, fences, walls, and thatched roofs; making pottery; making and maintaining tools; taking care of animals; .... are extremely labor intensive. To get some idea what life was like for Stuart-period English farmers (and life was much the same in preceding centuries), see the BBC show Tales from the Green Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_historic_farm_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_historic_farm_series
- zeteo 5y ago> wars in medieval times where shorter and less bloody then before and after Each individual war was shorter and less bloody but there were many more of them as the barons were feuding constantly in the absence of central authority. Also roving bands would periodically loot and burn while passing by. If you look at the time and effort invested into castles and city walls in the period it tells you all you need to know about how safe people felt at the time.
- thrownblown 5y agoLol. Slavery certainly did not disappear to everywhere but Spain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_slave_trade https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_slave_trade
- mc32 5y agoRussia had serfs till late 1800s. They were tied to the land of their lord, so effectively, they were slaves.
- zz865 5y agoWhen talking about living standards, it must always be pretty nice living on the Mediterranean, drinking your wine with fresh fish, rustic bread and olive oil etc. Got to be great compared to the guys freezing their butts off in Northern Europe eating pickled turnips in the snow.
- CRConrad 5y agoWe don't eat pickled turnips. It's the herring, not the turnips we pickle. So we eat frozen turnips with pickled herring.
- andrepd 5y ago>it must always be pretty nice living on the Mediterranean, drinking your wine with fresh fish, rustic bread and olive oil Well I'm not gonna lie, it is x)
- mistrial9 5y agocompare freezing your butts off to thirty percent loss of population via plague, mentioned above?
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- dash2 5y agoSuper interesting. One point about living standards: at this point the world is in the Malthusian equilibrium, so living standards are rather decoupled from technology. (Whenever technology raises your living standards, you have more children, and average GDP per head returns to subsistence level.) Malthus has had a big comeback in the theory of economic growth over the past couple of decades.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago> Whenever technology raises your living standards, you have more children, and average GDP per head returns to subsistence level. I thought it was 1. people have lots of kids because lots of them die, 2. progress in terms of stopping babies and children dying means more adults than expected survive to adulthood, 3. Those adults then adjust to the new reality and start having less kids.
- gelert 5y agoHowever, people in many countries around the globe are having fewer children and not due to reaching "subsistence level". Some of the biggest impacts in birth rates are education, particularly for women, and birth control, both things are the product of technology raising living standards. Birth rates are not declining today because of Malthusian cycles.
- dash2 5y agoRight, that's correct. "At this point" was in reference to the article, i.e. in ancient and medieval Europe. I should have been clearer.
- JasonFruit 5y ago> Overall the various Romans who contemplated reform were in a way hindered by the tendency of Roman elites to think in terms of the virtue of individuals rather than the tendency of systems. I'm not convinced the two are separable. One important virtue in a republic is self-restraint, the ability to see an opportunity to enrich or empower yourself at the cost of the republic, and refrain from exploiting it. A self-indulgent people will find it hard to preserve the systems that comprise the republic.
- davedx 5y agoCompare with the US: a system of laws, checks and balances can prevent the most determined tyrants from seizing power. So far.
- sologoub 5y agoA lot is changing in the US society and some not for the better - if you compare to even 80s/90s, the strength of the institutions has eroded and the trust is all but gone. The “so far” may not last much longer.
- NationalPark 5y agoJust to put some data behind it, Monmouth found in June that 63% of Republican-identifiers and Republican-leaners believe Joe Biden only won the 2020 election because of voter fraud. Seems bad, but how does it stack up to faith in institutions historically?
- dTal 5y agoMy first thought was that the US in particular suffers from the same disease. It's a highly individual-focused culture that tends to credit people with their successes and blame them for their failures. Criminal justice reform, or harm reduction for drug users, is fiercely opposed on the grounds that it's their fault they got into that situation. A persistent fiction is that if only the right individual becomes President, everything will be fixed. Systems level thinking is unpopular. As for tyrant-resistance, I would go so far as to say that the US just had a tyranny stress test, and the results were deeply concerning.
- gumby 5y ago> a magistrate would convene the senate and pose a question This is a good reminder of the democracy of the Republic. I had forgotten that Magistrates had powers such as these. Popular press and film concentrate on the Senators, (and Emperors for post republic stories) but the magistrates, like the tribunes, were elected by the plebs (populace) into a government with some separation of powers. In fact it might be better to consider the roman Senate more like the UN Security Council: all countries are equal but de facto some countries are more equal than others, so there is some structure for focusing and constraining them. And do not forget that those with political ambitions (like Gaius, who came from and old but minor patrician family, the Julii, through a cadet Caesar branch) started out by being elected a Tribune by the plebs, even if the objective was Senatorial rank and a generalship. Since the Reagan era at least the US has seemed in the thrall of the same disease that afflicted the patricians of the roman republic. It's no surprise major biographies of Cicero appeared in the late 90s and early 20th century. The philosophy (as described in the article "tendency of Roman elites to think in terms of the virtue of individuals rather than the tendency of systems" afflicts the analysis today. I value my individualism and don't want government telling me what to do, but I also recognize the value and function of community (whether taxes, volunteering, speed limits, or vaccination). Rome (in all of royal, republican, and imperial times) was far more atomized and organized around families than most people realize today and that was ultimately its weakness. Though there was a doctrine of "civis romanus sum", the reality was that too much power remained in the patrician houses, enough to permit essentially continuous civil war once the republic was de facto gone.