Current (or semi-current) issues always make me think about their parallels in history. Immigration is one of them.

One of the more interesting areas of study in ancient history is trying to understand the so-called barbarian invasions of Rome more fully. (They weren’t called “barbarian invasions” as a recognized pattern when they were happening–this is a more recent term for a whole bunch of different movements.) There’s a growing group of scholars who are becoming convinced that calling them “invasions” is a misnomer. The purpose of invading an area is to establish dominance, to overthrow the current regime, or to accomplish a political or territorial goal. The purpose of the movements of many, if not most, of the barbarians was to get a piece of Rome to call their own–some fertile farmland, a part of the existing trade, that sort of thing. They mostly wanted, in short, to become settled Romans.

The handling of these barbarians by Roman proconsuls indicates how well Rome knew this. It would be dangerous to Rome’s political stability to allow an entire tribe with its own political system fully intact to just pick a chunk of the empire to call their own, never mind what the provincials already on that chuck would think. The skilled proconsul, then, would march an army out, defeat the invading/immigrating force (effectively removing its political cohesion), and then separate everybody into smaller groups for settling in low-population areas that are in Rome’s interests to have them live in (rather than in the first bit of fertile ground they run across). There, the new immigrants would settle down, intermarry, become good Roman provincials, and enlist in the army, where they helped to the same thing to the next group of barbarians.

Slowly, Rome slid into decadence, and unable to handle barbarians in the old manner, it began granting tracts of land to intact barbarian units. In some ways, this actually made things harder for the barbarians because they kept more of their old traditions and were more “barbarian” than “provinicial” for longer. Problems with maintaining population in the Roman Empire mean that there was a demographic and cultural shift–there were more barbarians and fewer “Romans” with every decade, and Rome was both dependent upon and fearful of these new arrivals for keeping the empire intact. (The populations estimates of 400 and 600 shown here show the demographic collapse that was already at the edge of beginning. despite massive immigration. As I’ve already mentioned, demographic collapse is bad for a society!)

Ironically, the barbarian Alaric’s sack of Rome was not at all an attempt to destroy Rome but should be much better viewed as a civil war symptomatic of the weakness of the western empire–and even more ironically, his first foe representing the legitimate power of Rome wasn’t a born Roman but another barbarian confederate general by the name of Stilicho, the guardian of the emperor who rather blatantly desired the empire for himself. Alaric was probably the most able of Rome’s generals at the time. With another pedigree, with the traditions of succession returned to those of 100 years before, and with the bad luck he seemed to encounter at every turn, he might have been the emperor to revive the Western Empire’s flagging fortunes. But then again, perhaps not. Much of the reasons of Rome’s growing weakness are poorly understood and hotly debated even now. If the root was primarily part of a long cold spell or successive droughts or increasing pestilence or many other things that societies are vulnerable (and there’s some evidence for many of these), everything he could have done might have been too little. And the economic/monetary situation may have been so screwed up that there was no saving it either, either. There are many “only ifs” in history, and a disproportionate number of them are in Roman history!

(Some classical scholars would even argue hotly with the declaration that Rome EVER “fell.” The people of AD 600 never would have thought so–or even 700 or 800. Charlemagne’s contemporaries did not find his title of emperor at all laughable or disingenuous–it was deadly serious and extremely significant. I’m of the camp that says that there was no single event that marked Rome’s fall, but Rome fell gradually, nevertheless, even if it was kept alive in people’s imaginations. And then comes the argument of what a government is, if not an idea in people’s imaginations… )