What if the Roman Empire survived?

[daniel l.]

What would happen if Rome survived the things that destroyed it, Would it have become spacefaring within 1000 years of its historical golden era?

Edited April 1, 2016 by daniel l.

[Darnok]

What?

(490–570) asking Amr for the "books in the royal library." Amr writes to Omar for instructions, and Omar replies: "If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_the_Library_of_Alexandria

Empire was attacked by barbarians because they saw its weakness. Empires fall because all man wants to be free and independent and once you force many nations to became one-country they will want to have their own countries, laws and they will rebel.
We can't unite many nations, because many cultures, religions and ways of thinking disagrees with each other and that is good, this is main source of progress. Sadly from time to time we have some crazy people that forgets history and try to create multi cultural empires.

 

[Nibb31]

You've got your facts wrong. The sudden "fall of the Roman Empire" caused by barbarian invasions is a myth.

In reality, a multitude of political, social, and religious factors caused the influence of a central empire that covered most of Europe to be gradually replaced by local political entities. It also wasn't as much a "fall" as a political transformation that lasted several centuries.

[NuclearNut]

You definitely got the whole fall of the roman empire thing mixed up.  Rome did not fall because they were invaded by "barbarians" but they fell because of internal decay.  They had a rapidly changing leadership with rapidly changing priorities, they had corruption (obviously), they had fun with hyperinflation when investing in wars, they suffered slave rebellions and had an extreme dependence on slavery due to their agrarian economy (not something that would support advanced technology).  To put it simply, the reasons rome fell were internal decay, not external assault.  The external assault came more because the roman empire became weak.

[daniel l.]

1 minute ago, NuclearNut said:

You definitely got the whole fall of the roman empire thing mixed up.  Rome did not fall because they were invaded by "barbarians" but they fell because of internal decay.  They had a rapidly changing leadership with rapidly changing priorities, they had corruption (obviously), they had fun with hyperinflation when investing in wars, they suffered slave rebellions and had an extreme dependence on slavery due to their agrarian economy (not something that would support advanced technology).  To put it simply, the reasons rome fell were internal decay, not external assault.  The external assault came more because the roman empire became weak.

But what if it survived? How long would it take to overcome those negative cultural traits and expand further?

[NuclearNut]

Just now, daniel l. said:

But what if it survived? How long would it take to overcome those negative cultural traits and expand further?

I am not clairvoyant.  I cannot dig into the minds of those that lived in that age and why the held such asinine beliefs.  You can make inferences, yes, but even then it is hard.  Perhaps the best way to look at it would be to look at what happened in real life.  In the US slavery in the south did not end on it's own, it required the industrialized north to eliminate southern slavery.

The reason the north was willing to go without slavery was simple, it did not require it by any means, in fact it damaged it's economy.  In the south cheap labor was needed and bigotry was entrenched, thus people were willing to force others to work in atrocious conditions.  The conditions in the south would not change without someone moving it externally unless they became less dependent on agriculture, similarly to how slavery ended in the northern colonies and England.

In order to industrialize or variously feel the need to build such capital intensive equipment you would need a high demand for labor and a low supply of labor, something that the romans would never experience due to their massive empire and extensive food supply.  So to put it simply, rome would need to have a massive change in it's supply of labor to overcome it's backwards social ideas.

[RainDreamer]

The empire has other concerns than going to space. Furthermore, the empire operates on a slave economy, which would require even more war and conquest for slaves and profit, and that means they will eventually have to expand and get in a war with ancient China, which is an ancient superpower on its own. The result wouldn't be pretty for both sides.

[daniel l.]

5 minutes ago, RainDreamer said:

they will eventually have to expand and get in a war with ancient China

Wasnt China repeatedly getting conquered over time? Im not sure Rome would have had any major trouble.

[RainDreamer]

5 minutes ago, daniel l. said:

Wasnt China repeatedly getting conquered over time? Im not sure Rome would have had any major trouble.

The time of the roman empire was around the same time with the Han dynasty, which is one of the most powerful dynasty with a strong economy and military poweress. It wasn't until later that they fall from within due to political struggle.

Just for fun, here is a hypothetical war between Rome and China: https://www.quora.com/Assuming-they-were-geographically-close-who-would-win-in-a-war-between-the-peak-armies-of-the-Roman-Empire-and-the-Han-Dynasty-of-China

Edited April 1, 2016 by RainDreamer

[Darnok]

40 minutes ago, daniel l. said:

But what if it survived? How long would it take to overcome those negative cultural traits and expand further?

It was impossible, so far, for any empire to last longer than about 300 years, without major "renovation" of its laws and borders, what created wars and chances for its competition to grow stronger... you should look at this as on natural selection where few groups of animals are fighting for survival, each group is different empire.

Different cultures are competition, but that is not something negative, it is main reason why Europe was so strong 500 years ago... because many small countries were trying "to be better" and they learned from each other how to be better in faster and cheaper ways. Problems became to grow when those countries conquered lots of lands and created colonies... became empires and failed to manage multi cultural empires... again.

What we have today I would call stagnation in science, because we have only one way of thinking... "democracy good" and "anything else bad", same on economical layer, we see as good only one design for EVERY country, any other approaches are seen as dangerous to global economy.
Same in science "Albert good" "climate change good" and anyone that doesn't agree with this is bad.

While nature show us different approach, we have canguros in Australia and lions in Africa for a reason, if single solution would be good everywhere then we would have same animals on every continent. We should learn from nature and should have many different approaches on every layer of our life and natural selection would show which is best, just like in old days in Europe. Britain had more ships, than other countries, so for time when sea transport was much better solution than land transport Britain was strongest and richest country (sea transport is still great, so China and US today are two strongest economical powers).

In space exploration while US (single country) was trying to beat Soviet UNION(!), notice that Soviet union was multi cultural empire! And look where it is now? Gone? And lost race to Moon, for same reason Roman empire is gone.
Empires doesn't last long and they can't push development far... look how many inventions came from Germans... a single country, not a empire, that was trying to beat others, but once they expanded... and became multi cultural empire it didn't end well for them.

I wonder when people in US and EU will start to learn from history.

 

Edited April 1, 2016 by Darnok

[daniel l.]

8 minutes ago, Darnok said:

It was impossible, so far, for any empire to last longer than about 300 years, without major "renovation" of its laws and borders, what created wars and changes for its competition to grow stronger... you should look at this as on natural selection where few groups of animals are fighting for survival, each group is different empire.

Different cultures are competition, but that is not something negative, it is main reason why Europe was so strong 500 years ago... because many small countries were trying "to be better" and they learned from each other how to be better in faster and cheaper ways. Problems became to grow when those countries conquered lots of lands and created colonies... became empires and failed to manage multi cultural empires... again.

What we have today I would call stagnation in science, because we have only one way of thinking... "democracy good" and "anything else bad", same on economical layer, we see as good only one design for EVERY country, any other approaches are seen as dangerous to global economy.
Same in science "Albert good" "climate change good" and anyone that doesn't agree with this is bad.

While nature show us different approach, we have canguros in Australia and lions in Africa for a reason, if single solution would be good everywhere then we would have same animals on every continent. We should learn from nature and should have many different approaches on every layer of our life and natural selection would show which is best, just like in old days in Europe. Britain had more ships, than other countries, so for time when sea transport was much better solution than land transport Britain was strongest and richest country (sea transport is still great, so China and US today are two strongest economical powers).

In space exploration while US (single country) was trying to beat Soviet UNION(!), notice that Soviet union was multi cultural empire! And look where it is now? Gone? And lost race to Moon, for same reason Roman empire is gone.
Empires doesn't last long and they can't push development far... look how many inventions came from Germans... a single country, not a empire, that was trying to beat others, but once they expanded... and became multi cultural empire it didn't end well for them.

I wonder when people in US and EU will start to learn from history.

 

Out of curiousity, What country are you from? Just wanna know it doesnt really matter though.

Edited April 1, 2016 by daniel l.

[lajoswinkler]

There was an insiduous enemy within the empire that gradually crumbled it. It was lead exposure. Ancient Romans laced their food and beverages with sapa which is a concentrate of wine must, boiled down in lead vessels. Lead(II) acetate inside. It was a longterm, massive social exposure to a very quiet neurological poison causing, among other things, antisocial behaviour.

They never stood a chance with all that violence that never ceased.

[PB666]

1 hour ago, Nibb31 said:

You've got your facts wrong. The sudden "fall of the Roman Empire" caused by barbarian invasions is a myth.

In reality, a multitude of political, social, and religious factors caused the influence of a central empire that covered most of Europe to be gradually replaced by local political entities. It also wasn't as much a "fall" as a political transformation that lasted several centuries.

Basically correct, rome divided itself, then it moved its capital east and was actually paying the barbarians that attacked the west. The replacement  of the republic fortold the fall of the empire, it was ressurrectect under charlemane but fell agian as a cosequence if napoleonic rule. It was basically the aristocracy of europe that started wwi and indirectly to blame for wwii, and so now mostly they are gone or reduced to benign positions. Not competitve in the new world order.

[jwenting]

Rome had a partial slave economy, but it wasn't driven primarily by conquest. Most slaves were convicted criminals or people incapable of paying their debts reduced to slavery to compensate (usually temporarily).

Could the empire have survived (longer)? Sure. If they'd managed to get their internal strife and struggles under control that caused ever more resources to be diverted away from the periphery and into the core. The empire died from a combination of strategic overstretch and chronic mismanagement of its resources by various emperors (and the constant powerstruggles, coups, etc. that they had to endure).

The outer regions lost touch with the core, became ever more independent, to the point where they stopped paying attention to the core at all and were for all intent and purpose independent nations. Which sapped the core of even more resources, speeding up its slide into corruption and decay.

 

[Bill Phil]

The empire lost sway. The issue was decentralization and changing loyalties. In fact, the standard of living took a few centuries to decrease.

[PB666]

2 hours ago, jwenting said:

Rome had a partial slave economy, but it wasn't driven primarily by conquest. Most slaves were convicted criminals or people incapable of paying their debts reduced to slavery to compensate (usually temporarily).

Could the empire have survived (longer)? Sure. If they'd managed to get their internal strife and struggles under control that caused ever more resources to be diverted away from the periphery and into the core. The empire died from a combination of strategic overstretch and chronic mismanagement of its resources by various emperors (and the constant powerstruggles, coups, etc. that they had to endure).

The outer regions lost touch with the core, became ever more independent, to the point where they stopped paying attention to the core at all and were for all intent and purpose independent nations. Which sapped the core of even more resources, speeding up its slide into corruption and decay.

 

Every time there was a change in leadership they would split the empire amoung sons, then merge parts back together, it became an empire for the sake of emperors, were as the emperors origins (the generals) were fore the sake of the republic. When the seat was moved to constantinople this became a big snub of rome, when the romans asked for assistance Nova Roma half heartedly complied, eventually provided no assistence at all. Nova roma essentially threw rome to the Alans, Goths, or whatever the barbarian of the day was. And a 1000 years later when constantinople was in trouble, Rome threw them to the turks. bye-bye.

What is an Empire, its a collection of divergent states with a centralized control, but who is best at defending themselves, the central government or the people, ultimately the central government relies on people to defend themselves, so that if they remove the power from the people and take it upon themselves, they can only defend through isolated garrisons, and these are subject to corruption (i.e. Iraq) and the tiniest group of vandals can come along and topple them.

 

[Kerbart]

4 hours ago, Darnok said:

(...) In space exploration while US (single country) was trying to beat Soviet UNION(!), notice that Soviet union was multi cultural empire! (...)

You’re aware that “US” stands for United States, right? Had the Russians won the space race, one could equally argue that the US was the multistate empire and thus bound to lose...

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

You’re aware that “US” stands for United States, right? Had the Russians won the space race, one could equally argue that the US was the multistate empire and thus bound to lose...

The USSR won all but 1 round in various races into space and the Russians are the only one who can performed manned launches.  Nothing they learned in all their skill at rocketry could hold that empire together.

An easy answer to the question "is 1000 years enough for the Romans to get into space" would be "no."  Pretty much all the technological advances the Romans had were in Byzantine areas as well as traditionally Roman areas.  Constantinople survived until 1453, which is 1043 years after Alaric sacked Rome, the date I typically use for "Rome's Fall" (as mentioned above, the collapse was complicated).  The Byzantines didn't go into space.  The Ottomans didn't go into space.  If you want to argue that the Cyrillic/Orthodox following Russians used "[Eastern] Roman" skill to get into space, go ahead.  In the end, it took twentieth century tech to do it.

Most of the tech required to go into space isn't developed unless labor is at a premium and people are willing to sink time and effort to optimize labor.  The single most important aspect of rocketry is the harnessing of mind-boggling amounts of power (just to get into orbit).  In Roman society, there was almost no motivation to do so, for more output you simply bought more slaves.  While there *were* the occasional exceptions (huge milling projects), I suspect that such things were simply make work projects (somebody needed to sell a ton of slaves) to simply spend the huge taxes Rome was collecting.  Rome had some amazing technology, but it wasn't ever directed at the type of things that rockets need.

[HebaruSan]

For simplicity, I'll equate "spacefaring" with "Sputnik", and I'll assume that our alternate history branches off around the time of the generally recognized "fall" (however flawed that concept is in historical terms).

With those qualifications, the question becomes whether you can go from late Iron Age technology to orbital rocketry in ~700 years. Real-world Sputnik follows about that long after the Magna Carta. Framed that way, I'm tempted to change my answer to Yes; since I don't know of many major scientific or technological advances between 400 and 1300, why not skip that period completely? But it can't be that simple. That's the "Islamic Golden Age," which was less of a caretaking operation than a systematic maturation of the lauded Greek ideas. It's not that easy to go from Pythagoras to Newton to Tsiolkovsky without algebra and a workable numerical notation system, and somebody has to expend the resources to do that work. So I have to stick with my No; ultimately, it's too many centuries to cut out.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to close these tabs before Wikipedia lures me into another Civ marathon.

[KerikBalm]

The roman empire did last until 1100 AD... in fact it lasted until 1453 AD... although it was in continual decline.

Don't tell me the eastern Roman empire doesn't count... don't tell me that this doesn't count (the eastern Roman Empire ... or rather just Roman Empire as its sister ceased to exist, under Justinian)

If we looked at nations/empires the way biologists look at clades... when there is a split, each has equal claim to the lineage.

We are just as much the descendants of the common ancestor of ourselves and Chimps as Chimps are, even if chimps bear a greater resemblance to our common ancestor.

Also... regarding the barbarian thing... it was the romans who were the barbarians... and their frequent civil wars did not help their situation one bit. It fell to its own corruption. Unlike earlier greek civilizations, and the later italian states that patronized the likes of Da Vinci and Galileo (even if he ran into trouble with the church)... the romans didn't really make any contributions to science. I'll grant that they had impressive engineering, but it wasn't so much anything new, as just made bigger with more resources devoted to it.

So no, they wouldn't have made it to space anytime soon, getting rid of that ineffective political organization/government probably sped things up, even if there was a temporary setback when it ended in the west

Edited April 1, 2016 by KerikBalm

[fredinno]

9 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

You've got your facts wrong. The sudden "fall of the Roman Empire" caused by barbarian invasions is a myth.

In reality, a multitude of political, social, and religious factors caused the influence of a central empire that covered most of Europe to be gradually replaced by local political entities. It also wasn't as much a "fall" as a political transformation that lasted several centuries.

Also, the lack of technological innovation that would have improved the Roman Empire (they shunned steam engines, for example), it was pretty much doomed. All empires are, eventually.

9 hours ago, daniel l. said:

But what if it survived? How long would it take to overcome those negative cultural traits and expand further?

This is probably a better place to ask: http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/

8 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

There was an insiduous enemy within the empire that gradually crumbled it. It was lead exposure. Ancient Romans laced their food and beverages with sapa which is a concentrate of wine must, boiled down in lead vessels. Lead(II) acetate inside. It was a longterm, massive social exposure to a very quiet neurological poison causing, among other things, antisocial behaviour.

They never stood a chance with all that violence that never ceased.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/04/scienceshot-did-lead-poisoning-bring-down-ancient-rome

Quote

 Tap water from ancient Rome likely contained up to 100 times more lead than local spring water, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. While the lead contamination was measureable, the team says the levels were unlikely high enough to be harmful, ruling out tap water as a major culprit in Rome's demise. 

 

[Kerbart]

And now I have to deal with these images in my head of a wooden rocket with a nose-cone made of red clay tiles and "IMPERIVM ROMANVM" on the side. I hope somebody will mod the parts for it...

[Mitrae]

I answered no : indeed, the Roman Empire lasts until 1453, so we can confidently say they didn't achieve.

BTW, some historical assertions made on this post were more than inaccurate, purely false. Check your sources

[Bill Phil]

7 hours ago, Kerbart said:

You’re aware that “US” stands for United States, right? Had the Russians won the space race, one could equally argue that the US was the multistate empire and thus bound to lose...

An empire is when one culture military conquers other cultures and their land. The U.S. is thus not an empire. Anymore, at least. The United states bought most of its land. The land that Mexico ceded and the islands under US control weren't purchased, though. But the Louisiana purchase and Alaska are large portions of the U.S.' land. Mexico made the mistake of letting Americans into Texas and their other northern lands. This eventually led to the war between Mexico and the US. 

The U.S. didn't conquer other cultures, but was there when the majority were created. Not to say that it was an amazing nation. 

I don't about the USSR, though... I wouldn't call them an empire. A hegemony would be more accurate.

[Vanamonde]

Please keep away from modern politics, guys. That never ends well, which is why we have a forum rule about it.