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The Decline of the Roman Power in Western Europe. Some Modern Explanations1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Norman H. Baynes
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Extract

It is the purpose of this paper to consider a few of the more outstanding contributions towards the solution of this familiar problem propounded since the publication in 1898 of Sir Samuel Dill's book on Roman Society in the last century of the Western Empire (2nd edn., 1899). It may well appear somewhat surprising that I should venture to speak on such a topic, since my own work, such as it is, has been concerned rather with the history of the Byzantine Empire. And yet for a student of Byzantine history the problem has a special interest: he is forced to consider that problem not merely as a West European issue, but rather to compare and contrast the historical development in the western and eastern provinces of the Empire. He is compelled to raise the question: why was it that the Roman Empire failed to survive in Western Europe while it endured for a further millennium in the East ? The very fact that he is primarily interested in the history of the Byzantine Empire enables him to approach the Western problem from a different angle and to treat that problem in a wider setting and not in isolation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 1-2 , November 1943 , pp. 29 - 35
Copyright
Copyright ©Norman H. Baynes 1943. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

1

Read at the Joint Meeting of the Hellenic and Roman Societies on Friday, 4th September, 1942. This paper originally formed part of the Sir Samuel Dill Memorial Lecture delivered in Belfast on 27th January, 1933.

References

2 Political Science Quarterly xxxi (1916), 201–243Google Scholar.

3 Towards the Understanding of Jesus (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), pp. 84–139Google Scholar.

4 On climatic change and the evidence of treegrowth, cf. Huntington, Ellsworth, ‘The Secret of the Big Trees,’ Harper's Monthly Magazine cxxv (American Edition), lxiv (European Edition), 292–302 (July, 1912)Google Scholar; id., ‘Climatic Change and Agricultural Exhaustion as Elements in the Fall of Rome,’ Quarterly Journal of Economics (Harvard University Press) xxxi (February, 1917), 173–208; Carnegie Institute of Washington, Publication No. 192 (1914, pp. vi, 341)Google Scholar; Ellsworth Huntington, with contributions by Schuchert, Charies, Douglass, Andrew E., and Charles J. Kullmer, ‘The Climatic Factor as illustrated in arid America’; Publication No. 289 in three volumes:Google Scholar Douglas, A. E., ‘Climatic Cycles and Tree Growth. A Study of the Annual Rings of Trees in relation to Climate and Solar Activity’ (vol. i, 1919, pp. 127,Google Scholar Bibliography 124–7; vol. ii, 1928, pp. vii, 166, Bibliography 159–166); ‘Climatic Cycles and Tree Growth’ (vol. iii, 1936, pp. vii, 171, Bibliography 166–171); Publication No. 352 (1925)Google Scholar on ‘Quaternary Climates’, Ernest Antevs, ‘The Big Tree as a Climatic Measure’ 115–153, Bibliography 150–3.

5 ‘Race Mixture in the Roman Empire,’ American Historical Review xxi, 1916, 689Google Scholar ff.; see also by him An Economic History of Rome 1927, 207 ff., 211 ff.