According to the history I have read, the native Britons (Bretons), after a few Germans (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) had migrated to Britain from the Jutland Peninsula, actually invited mass immigration to help drive out the Roman Empire (which was already showing signs of weakening).
It was not an unfriendly “invasion.”
(Source: a 20th-century British historian named “Holt” as I recall.)

Thanks for the great article “How Empires Really End.”

Another reason to “keep moving” rather than “withdraw to the mountains” is the increasing role of technology. Technology obsoletes static things, like mines. Today’s new materials obsolete old metals, for example. Biotechnology and nano-technology will be another example. There’s only one direction, and that is forward. And to move forward, one must be engaged. The core problem for a successful entrepreneur is to preserve his capital, given the proclivity of all governments to clip their coins.

“In the old days” of the Wild West, if someone stole one of your cattle, you would just shoot the perpetrator. Today, we have grown perhaps too refined. Our rule of law and social values now require us to stand there and watch as the government or other thieves — perhaps permitted or encouraged by government — steal our cattle. Maybe the resulting feeling of stress is one reason why the Bill Bonners of the world want to retreat. But I ask, “retreat to where?” Going to a country with less economic and political freedom (Nicaragua, Panama, etc.) looks like a recipe for disaster.

The author discusses how the victors wrote the history for the Romans. But this was also true of the Greeks. How can one not conclude that the lusty Greeks of the Illiad and Odyssey were nothing more than pirates robbing and stealing their way around the wine dark Mediterranean Sea. This applies particularly to Alexander The Greek, hero of many childhood dreams. Because the writings of the Greeks were recovered, preserved or just not destroyed, they became the heroes of that time period.

Thanks again,

John Dunbar
Texas

It is likely that Rome was economically out-competed by it’s barbarian rivals. Slavery, which was endemic to Roman society is normally uneconomic & became even moreso with the development of the horse collar which undercut human muscle power.

Nonetheless DNA & blood group evidence show that the population of eastern England are not the descendents of locals who happily adopted the germanic language that developed into old English as a way of living tax free. They are very closely related to the peoples of the Netherlands & north germany. This must have involved ethnic cleansing.

It may well be that the population of Rome had been in a long term decline because of epidemics over the previous 2 centuries, a culture that accepted contraception & infanticide, a new religion that encouraged chastity & slavery, which makes family life very difficult.

It may thus be that there was a major degree of free immigration but the DNA record shows there must also have been ethnic cleansing. The comparison with the current Europo/American culture should not be stretched but there is a very strong correlation with the state in Kosovo, where the change was initially brought about by immigration & differential population growth but is being finished off by invasion & genocide.

Joe Scarborough has a new book titled “Rome wasn’t BURNED in a day”.

Of course the romans were far more efficient.

They didn’t have elections between two indistinct candidates in various flawed election stations settled by judges at various levels and ultimately certified by a group of just over 500 people who vote only for whom they are told.

The Roman Emperors’ succession was less tidy, but also involved far less pretense.

A good little article, even considering how much this Decline and Fall of the Romans has already been covered here at Mises, at Cato.org and elsewhere.

I want to quibble a little based on some of my armchair dabbling in British archaeology: I seem to recall that the post-Roman era is marked by an almost complete disappearance of certain items such as high-quality pottery and stone buildings. These are handy and comfortable items to own, not to mention lucrative trades. I gather that these kinds of activities dwindled away because the cash economy was destroyed (by relentless overtaxation, currency debasement and political chaos). I believe that coins were not minted again in Britain with any consistency for many generations after this. No money means no trade, except “in kind” – and even that was hindered by the silting of harbors and canals, the prevalence of pirates on the unpatrolled seas, and the blocking of roads by local warlords.

While there were undoubtedly some great business opportunities for some during this era, the vast majority of people became feudal serfs, which is the very image of the Middle Ages. There is a story around one of these Libertarian/Austrian web sites which relates that many Roman citizens actually sold themselves into slavery as some kind of desperate “career move”.

So far from offering a lot of “opportunities”, a dark age could instead offer a huge decline in most people’s standard of living, and severely diminished economic opportunities for many years.

Good points, Paul.

I read once that in France, many hundreds of village names are apparently descended from the names of the Celtic-Roman villa owners around whose farms the villages grew. Which indicates that probably there was substantial continuity of ownership and without the reversion of farmland into wilderness which evidently happened in large parts of southern England.

Speculating about the demise of the British Empire, it was obviously a non-event for highly anglicized colonies such as Canada and Australia, a great boon for India as they were given the sovereignty and economic control which they were clearly ready to assume, and a great disaster for the African colonies. But, the African disaster may have less to do with the disappearance of British government, than with the continuing willingness of the “civilized world” to bankroll the incompetent, murderous thugs in these countries with billions of dollars of loans and subsidies.

And how will the retreat of the American tide affect the rest of the world? I would worry most about the Far East. There are still a lot of grudges arising from the period 1900-1953 which many of the participants seem to be itching to “correct”. One travelogue of China that I read, commented on how many Chinese stated that “those little people [the Japanese] should be taught a lesson.” And it is very obvious that people with too much military power and too little accountability to their populace would love nothing better than to “correct” the “problems” of Korea and Taiwan.

Africa and Latin America could benefit greatly from an American decline, assuming that Asia is not stupid enough to take over the current U.S. role of using the IMF and World Bank as promoters of socialist big-government mega-projects. I have no doubt that the people of these countries will discover the joys of private property and entrepreneurship, if they are given half a chance (i.e. get their government off their backs)

Europe and Canada will suffer their fate on their own, no matter what happens to the American Empire. Europe will become “Eurabia” – pretty much a done deal given demograpic trends. Canada seems to be headed to the rocks and will break up, due to the unsustainability of its whole premise as some kind of artificial “anti-American America”. All that silliness was previously bankrolled by redistributing the industrial wealth of one province (Ontario) but now that all those jobs have been outsourced, don’t expect to see “Team Canada” dominating hockey tournaments for much longer.

That’s how I see it …