How the Roman Empire destroyed its monetary system
The mighty Roman Empire, in it´s most powerful moment it had over 130 million people living in its borders, from the Middle East to England. This colossal machine builds 50 000 miles of roads, infrastructure, aqueducts, funded cities, ports and created a golden age for trade.
Trade was the main source of income for the Romans, metals, cereals, olives, wine, wood, marble, slaves, pottery, textiles, the list goes on and on.
The most valuable coins were those of silver (denarius) and gold (aureus), but this fact was troublesome because precious metals are finite, there was a limit to Roman mining engineering and plunder from foreign nations, in the long run, these would be shown in the value of the coins. As more coins were minted to pay for the soldiers in the Legion and the civil workers the coffers of Rome began to have less and less precious metal, as a consequence the coins were systematically changed and devaluated.
Silver was the most used coin to pay for soldiers, and as you can see, in the I AD century these coins were almost pure with 90% silver, 200 years later it was to 50%, and in the last legs of the Roman Empire, it went bellow 20% of silver. These led for the soldiers to ask more money for payment, and bigger and bigger inflation in the Roman financial system!
The addition of these coins with lower quality meant people had to pay more for services or goods like food, and even soldiers at times asked for an increase of salary of up to 50%. With less silver in its pockets, Roman Emperors only had one real option, increase taxes! The Inflation, higher taxes, and bad money made the trading system of Roman Empire stop in the III century and only local trade was used at that time, as a result, political crises started and civil wars, murder, and full blown anarchy started, 100 years later the barbarian tribes entered the borders of the weakened Empire to never leave it, and soon, the Empire was lost, only with the Eastern Roman Empire surviving in Constantinople!
Conclusion:
Was the complete destruction of the Roman monetary system the main factor for its demise? The answer is no, many other factors influenced, like bad farming years and famine, political turmoil, the fall of the borders and barbarian invasion, plagues and civil wars, but we would be fools not to believe in the bad repercussions of a bad monetary management as one of the causes of the fall of and Empire.
Hope you like this little post, more coming this week
Peace, Carlos
Rome was a complicated society and many internal and external factors contributed to its downfall. Currency inflation was a huge factor, but may have simply been a logical conclusion of the corruption and waste that first affected the empire. In the last 100 years we have see the same behavior in all governments.
I think it is reasonable to say, that the abandonment of the "Citizen Soldier" and dependence 100% on a paid professional military service was a large long term cause of Roman's downfall.
Once armed citizens were replaced by essentially a Mercenary Force, people not only lost a powerful military/political role, but also the shift in attitude from contributing to defending Rome against all enemies (domestic too), shifted to what can the empire do for me; free games, chariot races, feasts and of course the dole.
Professional soldiers were loyal to the rich general who paid their salaries and acted in the general's interest. The old citizen soldiers of the republic were loyal to the ideals of Roman and not any particular political/military figure. Citizens lost influence and power over the state when they lost their military role.
Although Italy was Romanized quite effectively, the conquered territories were allowed to keep their cultures and languages and remained separate peoples with their own interests. Although many would serve Rome, they were never true Romans. This was a huge mistake that would hasten the downfall of the empire.
Roman towns did spring up, like London, but this is more akin to what the Soviets did in their empire, relocating loyal citizens to other less loyal republics to better control and regulate conquered populations. The native populations never became Romans.
When the romans created a 100% profissional army was with Gaius Marius in the 2 century BC, it was necessary to boost the army by recruting in the jobless and poor people of Italy, and it helped shape the Roman army and then they expanded alot in territory, later when the mercenary forces started fighting along side the romans 400 years later it was more by desperation because they needed help to fight Atila and the Huns.
Thank you for the comment @clearshado
I enjoyed reading your post. I would like to mention that USA has become the biggest empire ever, due different factors such as its economy, army, cultural influence, etc. However, countries are not the real empires anymore.
The current rulers are corporations/lobbies such as FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet’s Google). They are using the double Irish arrangement to lower their taxes, buying their own stocks without adding value, selling private data of their users, writing laws that favor them, and convincing everybody that everything is good! If this trend keeps going in few years we will see how they buy each other.
Thank you @hassping for the comment, it´s true, nowadays the flag of empires is not of a nation and it´s ruler, is of mega corporations that take control of everything, the wrong side of capitalism is growing more and more, but just like with the Roman Empire, the control of the FAANG and mega banques wont las forever!
Peace, Carlos