Then the end of slavery in the Empire and and the start of serfdom, more efficient than slavery, after de Diocletian reforms killed the Empire. That's contradictory. And slavery was still a thing after those reforms, as other comments say.
Diocletian reforms, the corruption, civil wars and the inability of defend itself eroded and destroyed all the structures that made the Republic great all those are the reasons that made the Empire fall.
This is a bizarro statement than any historian would laugh at.
Slavery, in lots of different forms, flourished for nearly a millennium and a half throughout the world after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (including, quite conspicuously, in the Eastern Roman Empire for nearly another thousand years...) It's very strange to me that you consider slavery responsible for the downfall of Rome given how it was so prevalent everywhere for so long after.
In Southern Europe, if you consider serfs different from slaves (they were, but only to a small extent).
Slavery is extremely economically efficient in reality, especially if you have the power to force the slaves into utter servitude, like they did in the US South. The south, and the USA as a whole, would never have been as rich if they didn't have slavery at the right time. It was important enough that h he confederacy was willing to fight a war over it: they knew, and they were proven right, that losing slavery would plunge them into poverty, as it did.
Of course, this is not a defense of slavery: in all its forms, it is a disgusting, disturbing, inhuman institution that must always be fought against and dismantled. But this can only ever be done by the will of the people, against the economic interests of the slave masters. An unregulated free market will always seek to reintroduce slavery (just like it will converge to monopolies or at least oligopolies and many other undesirable traits).
cardanome|1 year ago
Astraco|1 year ago
Diocletian reforms, the corruption, civil wars and the inability of defend itself eroded and destroyed all the structures that made the Republic great all those are the reasons that made the Empire fall.
hn_throwaway_99|1 year ago
Slavery, in lots of different forms, flourished for nearly a millennium and a half throughout the world after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (including, quite conspicuously, in the Eastern Roman Empire for nearly another thousand years...) It's very strange to me that you consider slavery responsible for the downfall of Rome given how it was so prevalent everywhere for so long after.
tsimionescu|1 year ago
Slavery is extremely economically efficient in reality, especially if you have the power to force the slaves into utter servitude, like they did in the US South. The south, and the USA as a whole, would never have been as rich if they didn't have slavery at the right time. It was important enough that h he confederacy was willing to fight a war over it: they knew, and they were proven right, that losing slavery would plunge them into poverty, as it did.
Of course, this is not a defense of slavery: in all its forms, it is a disgusting, disturbing, inhuman institution that must always be fought against and dismantled. But this can only ever be done by the will of the people, against the economic interests of the slave masters. An unregulated free market will always seek to reintroduce slavery (just like it will converge to monopolies or at least oligopolies and many other undesirable traits).