Did Living Standards Decline After the Fall of Rome?

by I_H_T

Question for anyone here who might know about living standards in Roman Europe (or Asia minor and North Africa) and living standards in medieval Europe: Would it be accurate to say that there was some drop in living standards once the Roman Empire began to decline and eventually fell? I understand that many educated people detest the idea of a "Dark Age", and I most certainly do not mean to imply that Christianity or some other bogeyman caused such a dark age, but it does seem plausible to me that Europe suffered after the collapse of imperial authority.

For example, economic historians such as Peter Temin and Silver seem to suggest that there was a small amount of growth during roman times due to Roman institutions (the rule of law, contract enforcement, protection of commerce, etc.). This growth did not approach the scale of modern growth of course, but it did mean that Romans, specifically those on the Italian peninsula, enjoyed living standards significantly above subsistence. This seems to imply that, after Imperial authority and its institutions were swept away, life would have gotten worse for many people who used to live in the Roman Empire.

Am I missing something here? Did living standards decline along with Imperial authority, or am I unaware of important evidence? Thanks to anyone who can contribute something here.

anchaescastilla

Hello there. This is not the answer you are waiting for, but I am going to try help you framing it differently so it can be answered by more knowledgeable people.

Because the question, as it is, is very very difficult to answer, for several reasons:

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  • The processes you are asquing about happened very differently and with very different dinamics and consequences depending on the area of the west you are refering to: the process was totally different in places like England to what happened in the mediterranean coast. There just wasn't a "universal, suddden fall into obscurity" as the classical narrative repeated on and on. Plus, the political system in that era implied so much "subcontrating" that almost every city of the Empire had its own specific relationship with the State: generalizing is impossible even if you focus on one specific area, because it was a political process and, understandably, politics played differently in different places, if only for contingent reasons.

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  • It assumes a narrative of "decline and fall" of "Rome" in the V Century that is basically wrong. The V Century was not an era of decline, but the opposite: the fact that what happened in the IC in terms of growth wasn't repeated in subsequent centuries doesn't point to a "decline" in those centuries but to the exceptional nature of that said I Century. In fact, the IV and V Centuries were a time of consolidation and growth: the new monetary system created by Constantine remonetized the empire, and the new political rules laid by him made access to the elites easier for "middle class" rural citizens. The "fall" of "Rome" (AKA: when the city of Rome went from having a Roman representative ruling in the name of the Emperor in Constantinople to having a barbarian representative ruling in the name of the Emperor of Constantinople) had very little economic or material impact for the bigger part of the population: it's only the super rich class, having diversified land owning so much, that suffered the consequences of the "de-globalization" of the system.

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  • What happend in 476 was not the "total fall of a whole civilization by failure", it was just a political affair. Things didn't really change much for the bigger part of the population. What REALLY destroyed the Italian Peninsula was in fact another political happening: the Gothic Wars, when the Romans started a war of reconquering that left the whole area decimated, and the city of Rome destroyed; It remained in roman hands, actually (meaning,it was ruled from Constantinple, thru Ravenna), but the destruction caused by the gothic wars, and the Plage of Justinian gave the definitive hit by killing up to 1/3 of the population.

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  • More generally, it's imposible, and a big mistake, to analyze the past using modern theoretical frames and concepts. It's not really possible to study the "standard of living" in Rome without having a clear understanding of what "standard of living means" and, more importantly, whom it applies to. Rome was built, sustained and expanded on the backs of a HUGE slave population. Do they count when we meassure the "living standards"? Romans didn't, they weren't "people" in the same category, so what model do we follow, ours, that can't be applied to that kind of society, or theirs, that doesn't apply to our measssures? What about women, do we count them? Becase Romans did't.

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  • But even if we could compare both socioeconomic models: What are the indicatives of a "good" living standard? Does avoiding war count? Does avoiding anhilation of your whole culture count? Do we value more acces to matrial resources (a slave would have those) or do we value more not being a slave (thus, by yourself and having to look for work on a daily basis just to survive?), thus being free? Is being a citizen better than being a foreigner? Was being part of the council (free from the worst state humillations, but with the new job of cohercing your community and the responsability of paying up yourself if you didn't) better than being a soldier? Those questions need to be answered not from our contemporary frame, it's like trying to write a symphony with chiken wings: two different universes.

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And, on a more general persspective, I've come to realize that this kind of questions (please, say YES or NO to this very simplistic economic theory on the past that I will then use to make maximalist, sometimes ideologically charged statements about the present) don't do very well in this sub, for the reasons I explained at the beginning: the question is framed on such a way that none of the two answers you proppose (YES/NO) is really accurate.

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Tips for reframing the question:

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Focus on some specific geographic area, or ask for how the process worked in a geographic area that serves as a good example; that way someone who is specialized in that area can chime in and flood you with nice, more specific information.

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Try to write it in such a way the the answer is open. forcing a boolean conclusion (yes/no) on such a complicated topic makes it really impossible to answer in an in depth-way.

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Maybe its a good idea to conceptualize your question in a specific scenario and ask about that, those questions always work around here. For example: "I am Clodovert from "X", living in the year 1000 (whenever middleagish enough for you), and I'm quite happy with my life. This traveller came thru the village the other day and started talking about "romans". He told us of great deeds and richness so big everybody lived a wonderful life: he told us that life with the ancients was more pleasant, as their might allowed them to make every country on earth work for them so they could be iddle". Is that true?