Chapter 15 Chapter Eleven: The End of Classical Civilization
During the classical period, the great civilizations of Greece, Rome, India and China ruled behind the Eurasian core.However, nomads in remote areas eventually trampled these civilizations, thus fundamentally changing the course of world history.Beneath the seemingly solid veneer of these empires lurks the bane that is bound to lead to decline and eventual collapse.The stagnation of technology and the hindrance of productivity caused classical civilization to be violently attacked by barbarians from the 3rd to the 6th centuries.
The impact of nomadic invasions varies from place to place.North China and India, though ravaged, retained their own distinct civilizations; South China and India, spared by their distance from the nomads; Byzantine and Persian empires were powerful enough to repel the invaders; However, the West has been repeatedly invaded by Germans, Huns, Muslims, Magyars, and Vikings for a long time. Therefore, its old order has been destroyed to a greater extent than other parts of the Eurasian continent.However, the irony is that it is precisely this kind of destruction that has become the basic reason why the West has been at the forefront of the world in modern times.Because out of the ruins of an old civilization, a new civilization can emerge, a civilization better suited to the needs of a changing world.This chapter will describe the meaning of classical civilization and its decline, and explain how and why the West began to move towards world domination.
To be clear, classical civilization, like ancient civilization, is based on class differentiation.In the final analysis, they all depend on the labor of the peasant masses, and it is the labor of the peasant masses that provides the surplus product that keeps the ruler alive.
The civilized regions of Eurasia, although differing from each other in details, have a similar general social structure.At the top of society are kings and emperors who rule everything.The next level is the nobility and senior officials - senators in ancient Rome, warrior nobles in Iran, princes in India, and princes and ministers in China; another privileged class is the priesthood, such as: Brahmans in India, Zoroastrianism in Iran Zeng, Christian priests and Confucian secular literati.The next level is the traders and merchants all over the country, engaged in manufacturing, mining, wholesale and retail trade, transportation and usury.At the bottom of this pyramid, there are agricultural laborers and handicraftsmen who account for the vast majority of the population. Some of them are freemen, and the rest are serfs or slaves. The proportion of the two varies with regions and times. .
Greece was initially an exception to this general pattern, consisting of small city-states without elected magistrates and a government based on town assemblies and parliaments.Herodotus contrasted these republican city-states with the contemporary Persian empire, which was ruled by despots with governors over the provinces.However, this Greek exception was short-lived.Indeed, Xers failed to conquer Greece, Alexander conquered Persia.But this did not mean the victory of the Greek city-states, because Alexander and his successors adopted the methods, methods and institutions of Persian autocratic rule.Likewise, in Rome, despots replaced republicans, and they built a vast imperial bureaucracy through the Hellenistic kingdoms, modeled on Persia and Egypt.During the time of Constantine, the Roman Empire was more like the Persian Empire than Pericles' Athens or Cicero's Rome.
Closely related to the formation of social classes is the formation of economic differences.The disparity between rich and poor abounds.The privileged class is extremely extravagant, while the working people in urban and rural areas are poor and miserable.The following passage is selected from an essay in the Han Dynasty of China in the 1st century AD. It is a typical and true portrayal of the poverty of the peasants in the classical civilized countries at that time:
We might as well compare the difficult and poor life of the people with the affluent life of the rich described in the following article, which is adapted from a source in the Han Dynasty:
In civilizations two very different standards of living necessarily mean two very different cultures.With the advent of ancient civilizations, the low culture of the countryside and the high culture of the schools, temples, and courts of the cities replaced the same Neolithic culture (see Chapter 6, Section 1).During the period of classical civilization, when cultural divisions continued, the core of all high culture in Eurasia was the "sacred books"--Iranian "Yaveda", Indian "Veda", Buddhist scriptures , Chinese classics, and the Christian "Old and New Testaments".Since these scriptures are the basis of knowledge, they rule an education that is often characterized by rote learning and rutality.Chinese examinations, Indian debates, Hebrew and Christian teacher-student dialogues are all used to test the degree to which students have mastered a given body of knowledge.
These holy books were also used to instill loyalty and obedience in people.Any act of refusing to accept official instructions or opposing the social system is considered an unforgivable crime and will be punished in this life and the next life.In all high cultures, "hell" occupies a prominent place, a permanent concentration camp for those who dared to oppose secular or religious leaders.Generally speaking, the threat of punishment in an afterlife is extremely effective in maintaining the social status quo.But jokes from farmers everywhere show that not all are blind believers.There is a popular saying in northern India: "There are three vampires in the world: fleas, bugs, and Brahmans."
The low culture of classical civilization is basically the same as the culture of ancient civilization; the empirical knowledge related to the daily work of farmland, workshop and family is still basically the same.Similar rituals, ceremonies, and superstitions are everywhere performed to appease or control monstrous supernatural forces that have little to do with the formal religious beliefs of high culture.For example: Indian peasants know nothing of the philosophical fantasies of fiction, but all know of cruel monsters, flesh-eating vampires, and nocturnal demons that breathe fire and devour dead flesh.Similarly, a scholar who studies Chinese religion commented:
A page from an early manuscript of the Compendium of Roman Law compiled by the Visigoth king Arakle II.This page shows a barbarian, a bishop, an earl, and a duke.A codification of statutes like this helps to uphold the principles of Roman law.
This incident clearly explains the reason why various classical civilizations have been preserved until modern times.It was only because of Western divisive expansionism that the philosophical, religious, and social institutions of the classical period began to decline in various parts of Eurasia.Even so, these religions, philosophies, and social systems are still full of great vitality today. The continuous vitality of Roman law and the Roman Catholic Church in the West, Hinduism, and the system of seedlings in India just illustrates this point.
The reason why the classical civilizations can maintain their identity is that they are all agricultural civilizations.Or in other words, for thousands of years, they have been in a state of stagnant production technology.John Maynard Keynes detected and highlighted this stagnation:
Keynes's argument is entirely justified.In fact, in the Neolithic period before civilization, technology was clearly mature.It was during this era that people invented the wheeled cart, sailboat and plow, discovered metallurgical chemistry, calculated the exact Gregorian calendar, and learned how to use animal power and wind power.After the urban revolution, this rapid development was immediately stalled.In the following millennia, only three inventions were as significant as the earlier ones: iron, the alphabet, and coinage.Significantly, all three were invented not in the ancient centers of civilization in the valleys of the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates, but in less constrained fringes, namely: the fringes of the Caucasus Mountains and the commerce of the Aegean coast. city.
With the exception of these three inventions, the progress of this period was based on early discoveries, but only further improved the original technology or expanded its application range.Although these small improvements can yield great benefits, they are still overlooked in many cases.For example: the harness used to tie cattle in ancient times was used to tie horses at that time. In this way, the horse was easy to suffocate when pulling heavy objects, and at least two-thirds of the horse's energy was wasted as a result.It wasn't until the Middle Ages that a sensible, practical harness was invented.Before this time, horses were only used to carry lighter goods, while heavy goods were hauled by people.This is evidenced by the scenes of thousands of people moving stones in ancient carvings depicting the construction of pyramids and pylons.For another example, in the 1st century BC, water mills appeared in Asia Minor and China.This invention could have been a great labor-saving device for women and slaves who worked long hours milling rice.However, watermills were not built in Rome until the 4th century, and even then they were relatively rare.
Significantly, only the impetus provided by the war could somewhat offset this general technical depression.The Greeks invented ingenious catapults with ratchet devices, wheeled siege engines driven by pulleys, and the so-called "Greek fire" (8th century AD), an effective way to burn enemy ships and siege cities. Mechanical petrol burner.But these inventions clearly cannot create wealth and cannot solve the basic economic problems of ancient civilizations.
Since new inventions do not increase labor productivity, wealth can only be increased by reclaiming wasteland, or by conquest and exploitation.However, the uncultivated land is limited after all; the fertile and vast Mediterranean Basin is no longer a major grain-producing area due to increasingly serious and large-scale soil erosion.Similarly, it is impossible for the empire to expand infinitely, because there are some strict boundaries that cannot be broken through with their military technology level.Thus, when military and bureaucratic booms put too much pressure on productivity, diminishing returns are bound to ensue.As mentioned above, a vicious circle started then, especially at the time of the decline of the Han Dynasty and the Roman Empire, which is more attested.Increased taxes and poverty aroused riots in town and country, which led to barbarian invasions.In the end, either the internal uprising succeeds, the external aggression succeeds, or both.As a result, the history of modern prehistoric empires has been repeated.A historian analyzes the reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire, concluding by highlighting its technological backwardness.He said:
History clearly shows that this vicious cycle can only be broken by developing technology that provides the necessary economic foundation for the Empire State Building.But technology is on the verge of collapse. The fundamental reason is that the ruling groups in various places only know how to exploit existing wealth, but do not know how to develop new productive forces and create more wealth.In terms of the large amount of manpower and material resources consumed in the construction of pyramids, tower temples, Catholic churches and palaces, it is obvious that the rulers squeezed a large amount of surplus value from the peasants.But technical revolutions require something more important than powerful organization and coercion, and all agricultural civilizations have failed to achieve this important thing, which is why they remain in the agricultural stage.
The prevalence of slavery was one of the reasons for technological stagnation.Using slaves for labor is generally simpler and cheaper than designing and manufacturing new machines. Therefore, inventors at that time made certain new devices not to save labor, but for entertainment or to facilitate religious ceremonies.In the 1st century AD, Hiero used his knowledge about steam power to build a device that could open the door of the temple.In the same century, the Roman Emperor Vespasian banned the use of a cheap machine for erecting stone columns, saying: 'Feed the people! ’ In spite of all the grandeur, it was in fact this view that made the imperial cities of the classical period into rural parasites rather than centers of industry.
Additionally, slavery’s negative attitude towards labor also prevented the development of technology.Since labor is the work of slaves, free people are ashamed of it.Even in civilized lands, where slavery is not very prevalent, this contempt for labor persists.In China, people are keen to grow long nails is an example.The stratification of social classes naturally led the upper classes to despise labor and contempt for laborers, and slavery only further strengthened this conception.As Aristotle puts it in his Politics: "In the best governed city-states . A good reputation runs counter to it." In AD 65, the Roman philosopher Seneca expressed the same contempt for manual labor in a letter to Lucilius, arguing that manual labor should "bow your head and look down, respectful ’, he wrote:
It was this separation of philosophers and craftsmen that prevented the technological development of Eurasian civilizations, and it was the interaction between the methodical thinking of philosophers and the practical experience and traditional knowledge of craftsmen that made the West The great scientific and industrial revolutions have been completed in modern times, thus making outstanding contributions to the development of mankind.But due to the apparent social fragmentation, and the resulting social conceptions, this interplay was impossible in the classical civilizations, because the high-brow intellectuals had no interest and the lower-class artisans lacked motivation.
This technological stagnation explains why the history of Eurasian empires has been repeated for thousands of years before modern times.The rise and fall of the empires was basically the same.No empire could break through to a new level of development.The resulting repeated cycles are thus very different from the dynamics of modern industrial society. W. W. Rostow describes the common features of agricultural civilizations before Britain's epochal and pioneering "take off" beginning with the Industrial Revolution in the following passage:
From the 3rd to the 6th centuries, the Eurasian continent was generally invaded by humans, and the invasions at this time were no less than the invasions using bronze and iron weapons in the 2nd millennium BC.Just as the invasion in the second millennium BC completed the transition from ancient civilization to classical civilization, the invasion in the 3rd to 6th centuries ended classical civilization and heralded the coming of medieval civilization.
The migration direction of nomads is generally from east to west, because the geographical slope of the Eurasian steppe makes the western part of the steppe more abundant in water and more fertile, attracting nomads from the east (see Chapter 6, Section 2).The main invasion routes all started near Beijing, along the steppe corridor across central Eurasia, and ended in the Hungarian plain in Central Europe.This is why so many nomads stopped moving around after arriving in what is now Hungary.Based in Hungary, they attacked the surrounding European countries.
Terracotta Statues of Hunnic Central Asia: Equestrians.This statue is in a private collection in Paris, and it may represent the leader of the Huns, Attila himself.
The Viking ship "Osberg", unearthed in 1904, is the best preserved Viking ship in the world, and is now displayed in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway.
The increasing interaction of nomads with surrounding centers of civilization was the basic cause of the invasion.In many centers of civilization, nomads were used as slaves or mercenaries, and this was often the cause of military coups within imperial capitals, or invasions by fellow tribesmen of barbarian mercenaries.The gradual settlement of nomadic peoples near the frontiers of the empire was another factor leading to the invasion.The transition from nomadic life to agricultural life usually resulted in an increase in population and economic and military power; this economic and military power was always employed when the weakness of the empire offered the hope of victory for the invasion.Aggression is also often the end result of a chain reaction of shocking forces.The failure of the Great Wall of China, or the formation of aggressive tribal confederations in Mongolia, tended to cause the nomads, with their gentle impact, to weave westward, eventually forming a crossing of the Oxus, Danube, or Rhine. barbarian invasion.
Since the scope of aggression spread throughout the Eurasian continent, so many peoples suffered aggression.The Han Dynasty in China, the Gupta Dynasty in India, and the Sasanian Dynasty in Iran were all attacked by Turks and Mongols; the Turks and Mongols are often called Huns.Because the Roman Empire was located at the western end of this invasion route, it was often attacked by various ethnic groups along the route and surrounding barbarians.These invaders included Germanic tribes, Iranians, Baltic-Slavs, Vikings, as well as Turks and Mongols.
The consequences of aggression are as diverse as the elements of the aggressor.In China, the Han Dynasty was finally defeated by Turkic-Mongol invaders in 222 AD and split into three kingdoms: Wei to the north of the Yangtze River, Wu to the south, and Shu to the west.After fighting for decades, the state of Wei defeated its rival and established a new dynasty, the Jin Dynasty, in 265.The Jin Dynasty unified the whole of China. In 316, a group of new invaders occupied the northern half of China. The Jin royal family fled south and arrived in Nanjing, where they ruled the Yangtze River Valley and the southern area where the Han people lived.Since then, China has been divided into two parts until the Sui Dynasty reunified China in 589.
Chinese historians call these centuries "troubled times".The southern half was ruled successively by Chinese emperors; the northern half was ruled by various Turkic-Mongol conquerors.The Chinese regarded the southern emperors as the legitimate successors of the Han dynasty, while denying the northern rulers the title of emperor.In fact, in the past few centuries, both the north and the south were fragmented, but the north was the most severely damaged due to continuous barbarian aggression for a long time. "Under the impact of the barbarians," said an authoritative source, "it is not difficult to imagine that the animal husbandry economy may replace the agricultural economy in northern China, and the Altaic language may replace Chinese."
We will see that the Western Roman Empire, similar to China, did undergo this fundamental change.However, this change did not occur in northern China, mainly because the number of Chinese here far outnumbered the barbarian invaders.At that time, the north was the most densely populated area in China. Even if nomads flooded in, there would be no fundamental changes.In fact, during these turbulent centuries, many Chinese migrated from the north to the south in order to escape the plunder of the barbarians.Therefore, not only is the north still the north of China, but the south has also been sinicized.In this way, in 589, when the Sui Dynasty reunified the country, China resumed its normal historical process, that is, a unique Chinese-style historical process like the Han Dynasty.
As for India, the time of invasion was much later: when China was in "troubled times", the Gupta Dynasty was at its peak.Then, in the fifth century, the Eastern Huns, the so-called "White Huns," crossed the Oxus River and pushed southward to India, while the Western Huns crossed the Russian plains and advanced into Europe.The Gupta Dynasty collapsed in the first half of the 6th century under the fierce attack of the Huns.Little is known about the latter half of the century.But it can be speculated that there may have been many wars, and there may have been further invasions.
In the first half of the 7th century, the feudal lord Julisha used both diplomatic and military means to successfully unify most of northern India, thus temporarily lifting the veil of ambiguity in Indian history.However, the Holisha Empire was loosely organized and consisted of some independent and powerful vassals; the reason why they recognized the suzerainty of Holisha was not so much their submission to the imperial power, but their respect for him personally.Therefore, after 41 years of wise rule, after the death of Holisha in 647, his crumbling empire also fell apart, and the history of India was once again covered with a veil of ambiguity until the Muslim Turks appeared in the 13th century and gradually ruled by force. most of India.
These centuries have been characterized by recurring aggressions and divisions.There were no empires with huge bureaucracies like the Mauryas or the Guptas, only ephemeral clan hegemonies or kingdoms based on what individual people did.In addition, immigrants to India were immigrated on a large scale in sufficient numbers to form new cultural and social groups.The most prominent of these are the Rajrut, a brave and strong people for whom the Rajputana district in northwestern India is named.The Rajputs belonged to the military aristocracy and were soon absorbed into the Indian Kshatriya caste, the warrior aristocracy.They took great pride in believing in Hinduism and once ruled northern and central India.In fact, they remained an outstanding people until the nineteenth century, and arguably even today.
The significance of the Rajput experience helps to explain why India has not fundamentally changed despite long centuries of turmoil and aggression.The invaders were assimilated by the prevailing caste system, rather they adapted to Indian civilization, not the other way around.Therefore, like China, India reappears in the course of history after a period of turmoil, and the civilization formed in the classical period has undergone slight changes, but has not undergone fundamental changes.
In Europe, however, the opposite is the case, where fundamental rather than minor shifts have taken place.The invaders in this area were the most numerous, the Germans, who occupied central and eastern Europe, that is, from the Baltic Sea to the Danube, from the Rhine to the Russian Plain.The Germanic peoples consisted of several tribes, the more important of which were the Franks, Vandals, Lombards, Ostrogoths and Visigoths.These tribes generally have the same religious beliefs and social systems, use very similar languages, and can understand each other.But thankfully for the Romans, the sense of unity among these tribes was very tenuous.They fought against each other as against the Romans, and thus kept the Roman Empire alive for so long.
The institutions and customs of these Germanic peoples deserve attention because, after the collapse of the Roman Empire, they were destined to become an essential part of the emerging civilization of the West.The Roman historian Tacitus of the time described the Germanic peoples as pastoral peoples who estimated their wealth by the number of livestock.In fact, stealing cattle is the main cause of their internal strife.The Franks who settled along the Rhine were the first to complete the transition from animal husbandry to agriculture, so their population and overall strength grew the fastest.On the contrary, the Visigoths distributed in the lower reaches of the Danube still lived on livestock to a large extent.However, this gave them greater mobility, at least initially making up for the lack of numbers.
The social structure of these tribes consisted of three major groups: the uppermost class consisted of hereditary nobility, usually large landowners.Most of the Germanic people were free people, and generally those who owned their own small plots of land but had no land had to work as tenant farmers and work for the nobles.At the bottom are those who are neither freemen nor slaves, who are bound to the land but cannot be sold individually.This form of slavery is similar to the slave farming system of the Roman Empire, and was the forerunner of the serfdom that prevailed in Western Europe in the Middle Ages.
The Tribe derives its primary power from the Freedmen's Assembly.If there is a "king", the "king" is elected by the popular assembly.The same is true for the emergence of military leaders who command battles.Tacitus points out that the Germanic peoples usually elected "kings" on the basis of succession, but military chiefs were elected on the basis of their valor and ability on the battlefield.The main weapon of the Germanic people is a long, straight, wide-tipped double-edged sword, which is mostly used for cutting rather than stabbing.After a formal ceremony, young people obtained the right to saber, which is the origin of the medieval promotion ceremony from squire to knight.Every eminent warrior chief had a retinue of young men, a retinue, who stood by his side in time of war, loyal to him, and obeyed him; who supplied them with arms, supplies, and a share of trophies.This system contributed to the formation of feudalism later, because feudalism was based on the loyalty of knights to feudal lords.
On the one hand, Tacitus described the Germans as greedy eaters, rough drinkers and life-threatening gamblers. On the other hand, he praised their high moral standards and regarded them as a model for the Romans.He also emphasized the generosity and hospitality of the Germanic people.In severe winter, the Germanic people like to go from house to house in groups and stay from house to house until they eat up all the food in the host's house.This is reminiscent of the medieval scene where, as part of feudal entitlements, the king or nobleman was invited to a banquet held in his honor and his entourage for many consecutive days.The Germans know how to weave cloth and make metal utensils and carts on wheels, but not how to write, and this is their general level of culture.
As early as the 1st century BC, these Germanic peoples began to push the frontiers of the Roman Empire.However, the Roman legion was very strong at that time, and it was easy to hold the border.With the decline of the empire, the army was weakened, and the Romans' control of the frontier was frequently strained.Therefore, diplomacy had to be resorted to, inciting one tribe against another.But out of desperation, groups of Germanic warriors had to be stationed inside the Roman border as a reward for their opposition to other tribes outside the border.This policy lasted as long as the Romans could control their allies. In the 4th century, when they could no longer control their allies, the floodgates were thrown open.
The attack was launched by a new and feared invader, unknown to Europeans - the Huns.Their terrible appearance and their well-thought-out terrorism terrorized the Romans and Germans alike.The Roman historian of the time, Ammianus Marcellinus, described them as people "almost glued to horses," "grotesque in figure; and so hideous in appearance that one could not help thinking that they were biped beasts. … ..."
Apparently, it was a newly minted alliance that forced the Huns to leave their native pastures of Central Asia, move westward, and cross the Volga in 372.On the Russian plains they quickly defeated the easternmost Germanic Ostrogoths.Then, they coerced the neighboring Visigoths to cross the Danube and enter the territory of the Roman Empire to seek refuge.Two years later, in 378, the Visigoths, annoyed that they had been mistreated by Roman officials, defeated the Roman army at the Battle of Adrianople, killing the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, thus breaking the Roman Empire. The myth of invincibility.In the following decades, the iron hooves of Germanic and Hun invaders trampled on Italy, Gaul and the Balkans.
Under the leadership of Alaric, the Visigoths marched into Italy, sacked the city of Rome in 410 (an event that shocked the entire empire at the time, and happened again shortly afterwards), and finally set up camp in southern Gaul and northern Spain, and established The first Germanic kingdom in the Roman Empire.Following in the footsteps of the Visigoths, the Huns established a base in the Hungarian Plain, from which they attacked the eastern and western provinces of the Roman Empire. In 452 they suddenly appeared at the undefended gates of Rome, led by their formidable leader Attila.It is said that Pope Leo I persuaded the leader of the Huns, and the city of Rome was spared.Although this is unbelievable, in any case, Attila did not attack the city and turned around and headed north.One morning a year later, he was found dead of a ruptured artery, with the German princess who had married him the day before lying beside him.After Attila's death, his empire collapsed and the Huns disappeared from European history.
However, the massive destruction of the Huns shattered the Roman Empire's control over the western provinces. In fact, at this time, Germanic tribes were free to cross the border and immigrate to the territory of the Empire.The Vandals moved across the Rhine, through Gaul and Spain, across the Strait of Gibraltar, into North Africa, where they established a kingdom.From their new base they turned to attack by sea, and in 455 an expedition sacked the city of Rome.At the same time, the Burgundians occupied the Rhone valley; the Franks were expanding in northern Gaul and took root there; The Tetes quickly invaded the area.Local Celtic residents fled into the mountains of Scotland and Wales, and Anglo-Saxons have since become the main ethnic group in England.It was under the control of these successively rising Germanic kingdoms that the Western Roman Empire collapsed. In 476, the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the Germanic leader Odoacer, an event that marked the end of the Western Roman Empire (see Chapter 8, Section 8).
The development of events in Europe is now well known to the world.The Western Roman Empire, like the Han Dynasty and the Fado Dynasty, eventually succumbed to the barbarians.Moreover, the collapse of the empire in the sixth century seems to have had the same consequences in the West as in China. In 589, the Sui Dynasty finally unified China, and around the same time, the Frankish kings and Eastern Roman emperors also seemed to be reunifying Europe.
The Franks originated in the lower Rhine and migrated to northern Gaul in the 5th century.They played only an insignificant role in this turbulent history, until the Merovingian kings became the most powerful people in the West.The most outstanding king of the Merovingian dynasty was Clovis (481-511). He united the tribes of the Franks, defeated the Romans, Byzantines and Visigoths, and brought the country from the Pyrenees to Gaul. , to the large territories of Germany combined to form the Kingdom.The main reason for Clovis's success was; his conversion to Catholicism, which not only won him the support of the Pope, but also the assistance of the local Gallo-Romans.The Merovingian dynasty seemed likely to reestablish the Western Roman Empire, and by increasing the territory of the Franks east of the Rhine.Expand the territory of the empire.
A 15th-century French gold clay manuscript describing the sack of Rome by Alaric and the Goths in 410 AD.In the upper left corner of the illustration, St. Augustine is seen dedicating his book The City of God to the Pope.It was the sacking of Rome by the Goths that prompted Augustine to write this masterpiece.
Monarch, ruler of Constantinople, also had ambitions to restore the empire.While the Western Roman Empire fell apart, the Eastern Roman Empire survived thanks to a powerful navy, rich resources, and the natural strength of its capital, which was situated on the headland of the strait between the two continents of Europe and Asia.Although the barbarian invasion destroyed the city of Rome, Constantinople was spared.In fact, it survived another 500 years before being conquered by the Turks in 1453.During these centuries, the Eastern Roman Empire developed a unique civilization, a civilization composed of Greek, Roman, Christian and Eastern elements.To emphasize this uniqueness, the Eastern Roman Empire is often called the Byzantine Empire, so named because the capital, Constantinople, was established on the basis of the ancient Greek colonial city of Byzantium.
After the western provinces became Germanic kingdoms, the Byzantine emperor's suzerainty naturally focused only on the eastern half of the former Roman Empire, namely: the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt.This restriction was unacceptable to Justinian the Great (527-565).Zha Shangdingni is an Illyrian in blood, but a Westerner in his feelings.He speaks and thinks in Latin, and is determined to recover the western territories and restore the original Roman Empire.One of his generals, Belisarius, led a well-equipped army of Xiaowen, and within a year occupied the kingdom of the Vandals in North Africa.He also recaptured southeastern Spain from the Visigoths; after 18 years of hard work, he conquered the Ostrogoths in Italy.In this way, within 20 years, almost the entire Mediterranean became a Roman lake.Justinian said he hoped that "God will grant us that part of the empire that the Romans lost to indolence."
Contrary to expectations, the West did not follow in China's footsteps. On the contrary, a new wave of aggression shattered the fragile imperial structure that the Franks and Byzantines had just formed, and plunged the West into chaos and division again.Yet another alliance of the Mongols forced the refugee nomadic tribes westward along the route of the invasion of Europe.These Avars began to become known to the West, and they, like the former Huns, based on the Hungarian plains, launched raids in all directions.
These attacks led to mass migrations with far-reaching consequences.The Avars brought the Germanic Lombards to Italy (568); the Lombards drove the Byzantines from most of the Apennines, shattering Justinian's dream of restoring the original Roman Empire .The Avars also forced the Slavic tribes south into the Balkans; the Slavs drove the Latinized Illyrians and Dacians there into isolated mountainous regions.The newly arrived Slavs, as agricultural laborers, took root in the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula, and the expelled Illyrians and Dacians disappeared into obscurity. It was not until modern times that they reappeared as Albanians in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula. The Romanians reappeared on the north bank of the Danube.Therefore, in the 7th century, the ethnic distribution on the Balkan Peninsula has formed the current pattern: Greeks in the south, Albanians in the west, Romanians in the northeast, and Slavs live in a vast area from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. .
In the 8th century, the Carolingian dynasty replaced the Merovingian dynasty and achieved a series of stunning victories, rekindling hopes for the restoration of imperial unity in the west.克洛维的继承者们命运悲惨，他们被称为“庸王”，即“一事无成的国王。“然而，身居“大宰相”要职、意志坚强的宫相们却维持着王国的团结。其中以查理·马特最为杰出。 “马特“意即“铁锤”，他从714到741年，一直在幕后执政。他的最大功绩是，在图尔战役中打败了侵占北非和西班牙，并已挺进法兰西南部的穆斯林军队（见第三章绍三节）。
马特的儿子矮子丕平，不甘充任“一事无成”的国王的宫相，于751 年废黜墨洛温王朝末代国王，创建了所谓的加洛林王朝；加洛林王朝以丕平之子查理曼的名字命名。查理曼是这一家系中最著名的国王，在765到814年的长期统治中，他不断征战，扩充疆域，征服了德意志西北部的撒克逊人，打败了匈牙利的阿瓦尔人，吞并了意大利的伦巴第人王国，迫使穆斯林退回到比利牛斯山脉以南地区。到8世纪末，其帝国已从北海扩展到比利牛斯山脉，从大西洋扩展到斯拉夫人诸国，查理曼成为西方无可争辩的征服者。800年圣诞节，教是利奥三世为他举行加冕称帝仪式，以承认他的最高地位。据查理曼的书记和传记作者叙述，加冕那天，集会的民众大声高呼：“生命和胜利，永远属于伟大上帝的受冕者，罗马人温和的皇帝查理·奥古斯都！”
这一情景说明，人们仍抱有恢复帝国统一的梦想，但这也只能是梦想。查理曼死后不久，来自南方、东方和北方的新侵略浪潮又淹没了整个欧洲。在南方，穆斯林海盗和冒险者征服了克里特岛和西西里岛，袭击了地中海沿岸所有地区，给海上贸易以严重破坏。在东方，来自中亚的另一支游牧部族马扎尔人，于895年到达匈牙利平原，他们仿效前匈奴人和阿瓦尔人，侵袭了周围各国。
北欧人，即维金人的侵略范围最广，他们是与陆上游牧民相同的海上游牧民。维金人制造了一种船代替马匹，这种船吃水浅，速度快、灵活性强。挪威的维金人正是乘这种船向西航行，到达冰岛、格林兰岛和北美洲的。他们和从丹麦来的同胞一起，袭击了不列颠群岛和欧洲西海岸，甚至强行渡过直布罗陀海峡，劫掠了地中海两岸。由于瑞典东面临海，这里的维金人渡过波罗的海，到达俄罗斯一些河流，并顺流而下，经入海口，进入里海和黑海。
伦敦考陶尔德学院珍藏的9世纪的绘画：查理曼。
这样，整个欧洲被这些大胆的侵略者团团围住。起初，8 世纪末和9世纪，他们只是一味掠夺，并摧毁了无数寺院和城镇。北欧人乘坐那种吃水浅的船，能溯河而上，进入遥远的内地，因此，很少有地区幸免于难。当时的教堂里，常可听到这样的祈祷：“啊，上帝，把我们从这些北方人的惩罚下拯救出来吧！”到10、11世纪时，维金人开始在海外地区定居下来，占领并统治了法兰西北部大半地区和不列颠群岛。但无论他们定居何处，最终都被现存的基督教国家所共吞。例如，法兰克国王为进一步防止维金人的劫掠，于911年承认他们的首领，并授予他所谓的诺曼底公爵的称号，诺曼底一词源于定居那里的北欧人。第一任诺曼底公爵罗伦的后代之一，就是征服者威廉，他于1066年成功地侵占了英格兰。
与此同时，加洛林王朝在穆斯林、马扎尔人和维金人的三面夹击下土崩瓦解，西欧再次成为屠宰场。10世纪为最不佳时期。自罗马帝国灭亡以来，欧洲似乎从未有过如此悲惨的现状，面临如此凄凉的前景。
纵观这些标志着古典时期向中世纪过渡的侵略活动，很明显，欧亚大陆各地区所受的影响迎然不同。由于地理上相隔遥远，侵略者鞭长莫及，中国南方和印度南方均未受到侵扰。拜占廷帝国因擅长外交，财源丰富，海军强大，几个世纪内成功地击退了一批又一批入侵者——日耳曼人、匈奴人、阿瓦尔人、斯拉夫人、波斯人和阿拉伯人。波斯在萨珊王朝时期，反对外来侵略也很成功，公元226年，萨珊王朝取代帕提亚人王朝。萨萨尼亚人唤起波斯民族的自尊心，恢复琐罗亚斯德教为国教，组织穿戴沉重的铠甲的骑兵部队，统一了全国。因而，波斯能击退奥克苏斯河沿岸游牧民的进攻浪潮；但同拜占廷的战争，弄得双方两败俱伤，使即将到来的穆斯林阿拉伯人的掠夺易如反掌。
如前所述，中国北方和印度北方的遭遇并非太好。两者均遭到蛮族的蹂躏，不过都保存了各自在古典时期形成的独特文明。因此，一个生活在公元前1世纪汉代的中国人，若在公元5世纪初复活，他一定会感到非常舒适、自在。他将发觉当时的唐朝与过去的汉朝大致相同，他会注意到两朝民族相同、语言相同、儒家学说相同、祖先崇拜相同以及帝国行政管理相同，等等。
这使西方历史发展的独特性显得更为突出。如果公元前1 世纪的罗马人，于1000年、15O0年或18O0年在欧洲复活，他将会为居住在这一古老帝国许多地区的诸日耳曼民族，为崭新奇特的生活方式而大吃一惊。他将会发现有几种新的日耳曼语和罗曼语取代了拉丁语，上装和裤子代替了古罗马人的宽外袍，新兴的基督教接替了古罗马诸神；他还会发现，罗马的帝国结构已为一群新的民族国家所替代，古老的谋生之道正受到新的农业技术、新的贸易、新的行业的挑战；这种新贸易是与世界上一向无人知晓的地区进行的贸易，而种种新行业则是使用一些无需传统的人力畜力驱动、可节省劳动力的奇特机器。
这无疑说明，只有西方的古典文明被永久湮没，被一种崭新的东西所代替。欧亚大陆其他地区的文明，或是免遭侵略（如印度南方和中国南方），或是击退了入侵者（如拜占廷和波斯），或是遭受侵略，但却幸存下来（如中国北方和印度北方）。唯独在西方，古典文明被砸得粉碎，无法复原，尽管在这几个世纪内，曾多次有人力图恢复，但也无济于事。
恰恰是这一独特性，使西方在近代跑到了世界的前列，因此，它的起因必须予以重视。如本章第二节所述，技术停滞不前是诸古典文明结构上的一个主要弱点。那么，既然所有的古典文明都具有这一弱点，为什么唯独西欧的文明会垮掉呢？
只要把西欧的制度及经历与欧亚其他地区如中国作一比较，就能得出这样一些结论：首先，古典时期，西欧并不象中国那么富饶。适应农作物生长的夏季几个月里，季风给东亚大部分地区带来了充足的雨水；而在欧洲，雨水多半集中在草木不生的冬季几个月里。由于这一原因，加上纬度较低的地区能获得较多的太阳热，因此，东亚具有较长较集中的耕作期，许多地方一年二熟。而且，东亚的主要农作物稻米，比起西方种植的小麦、黑麦和其他粮食作物，每英亩产量要高得多。据估计，单位面积里生产的稻米所含的热值，是小麦所含热值的五倍。结果，中国的生产率大大高于西方，中国的人口，自农业出现至今，也相应地比西方稠密。生产率及人口上的优势，转而又使能中国更好地维持帝国的官僚机构和军事机构，更有力地抗击蛮族侵略者，必要时，还能同化他们。
其次，西方缺乏可与中国相媲美的文字系统，也没有中国的科举制度。这种文字系统提供了文化上持久的同一性，而这一科举制度使中国的行政提高了效率，增强了稳定性。最后，罗马帝国边境上的敌人更难对付。由于地处入侵路线的最西端，欧洲几乎在各游牧民族的每次进攻中首当其冲。此外，罗马帝国邻近的日耳曼人，比中国西北边境上的游牧民族人数更多，而且，与帝国相邻的波斯人和阿拉伯人，也比中国的蛮族近邻更为先进，军事威胁更大，更长久。因此，这些侵略在西方拖延的时间，远远超过在欧亚大陆其他地区持续的时间。
人们不会忘记，中国北方曾一度面临畜牧业取代农业，阿尔泰话语言代替汉语的危险。隋朝重新统一中国，恢复了正常秩序，才使这一危险化为乌有。但在西方，侵略活动连绵不断，阿瓦尔人摧毁了查士丁尼和克洛维建立的功绩；穆斯林、马扎尔人和维金人推翻了查理曼帝国。因而，西方出现了独特的结局——帝国结构及其古典文明无可挽回地消亡了。
这一结果意义十分重大，被认为是世界历史的一个重要转折点。之所以如此，是因为大规模的消亡为早应发生的技术革命扫清了道路。一位历史学家最近对罗马帝国的灭亡作了如下结论：“总而言之，侵略给盛极之后停滞不前，似乎注定消亡的文化以致命的打击。这使我们联想起当今世界残酷的轰炸，它摧毁了摇摇欲坠的古老建筑，正因如此，我们才有可能重新建起更为现代化的城市。”这里所说的“文化”，与欧亚大陆其他地区的文化并无差异。因为欧亚大陆其他地区的文化也处于“停滞不前”的状态，只是它们能设法从这些侵略中幸存下来，得庆重生。但是，这仅是旧生命的延续，而西方，在罗马帝国灭亡之后，却能获得新生，出现一个崭新的开端。
回顾历史，这一崭新开端的重要性便十分明显。古代时期，中东曾是创始力的中心，几千年中，许多主要发明由此传播出去。到了古典时期，大部分发明创造出自欧洲、印度和中国，中东却远远落在后面。其原因恰恰因为中东的古代文明在公元前二千纪的侵略中得以幸存下来，边缘地区的古代文明却被毁灭，从而为新的开端——新的古典文明的出现——扫清了道路。
古典文明向中世纪文明的过渡也是如此。但这一次，所有地区的文明都幸存下来，唯有西方例外。因此，只有西方能毫无束缚地朝新的方向奋进，在中世纪发展起新的技术、新的制度、新的观念，简言之，新的文明。到了近代，这种新的文明，如早期农业文明必然战胜部落文化—样，远远胜过欧亚其他地区乃至全世界的“停滞不前”的文明，显示出了它的优越性。
A page from an early manuscript of the Compendium of Roman Law compiled by the Visigoth king Arakle II.This page shows a barbarian, a bishop, an earl, and a duke.A codification of statutes like this helps to uphold the principles of Roman law.
This incident clearly explains the reason why various classical civilizations have been preserved until modern times.It was only because of Western divisive expansionism that the philosophical, religious, and social institutions of the classical period began to decline in various parts of Eurasia.Even so, these religions, philosophies, and social systems are still full of great vitality today. The continuous vitality of Roman law and the Roman Catholic Church in the West, Hinduism, and the system of seedlings in India just illustrates this point.
The reason why the classical civilizations can maintain their identity is that they are all agricultural civilizations.Or in other words, for thousands of years, they have been in a state of stagnant production technology.John Maynard Keynes detected and highlighted this stagnation:
Keynes's argument is entirely justified.In fact, in the Neolithic period before civilization, technology was clearly mature.It was during this era that people invented the wheeled cart, sailboat and plow, discovered metallurgical chemistry, calculated the exact Gregorian calendar, and learned how to use animal power and wind power.After the urban revolution, this rapid development was immediately stalled.In the following millennia, only three inventions were as significant as the earlier ones: iron, the alphabet, and coinage.Significantly, all three were invented not in the ancient centers of civilization in the valleys of the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates, but in less constrained fringes, namely: the fringes of the Caucasus Mountains and the commerce of the Aegean coast. city.
With the exception of these three inventions, the progress of this period was based on early discoveries, but only further improved the original technology or expanded its application range.Although these small improvements can yield great benefits, they are still overlooked in many cases.For example: the harness used to tie cattle in ancient times was used to tie horses at that time. In this way, the horse was easy to suffocate when pulling heavy objects, and at least two-thirds of the horse's energy was wasted as a result.It wasn't until the Middle Ages that a sensible, practical harness was invented.Before this time, horses were only used to carry lighter goods, while heavy goods were hauled by people.This is evidenced by the scenes of thousands of people moving stones in ancient carvings depicting the construction of pyramids and pylons.For another example, in the 1st century BC, water mills appeared in Asia Minor and China.This invention could have been a great labor-saving device for women and slaves who worked long hours milling rice.However, watermills were not built in Rome until the 4th century, and even then they were relatively rare.
Significantly, only the impetus provided by the war could somewhat offset this general technical depression.The Greeks invented ingenious catapults with ratchet devices, wheeled siege engines driven by pulleys, and the so-called "Greek fire" (8th century AD), an effective way to burn enemy ships and siege cities. Mechanical petrol burner.But these inventions clearly cannot create wealth and cannot solve the basic economic problems of ancient civilizations.
Since new inventions do not increase labor productivity, wealth can only be increased by reclaiming wasteland, or by conquest and exploitation.However, the uncultivated land is limited after all; the fertile and vast Mediterranean Basin is no longer a major grain-producing area due to increasingly serious and large-scale soil erosion.Similarly, it is impossible for the empire to expand infinitely, because there are some strict boundaries that cannot be broken through with their military technology level.Thus, when military and bureaucratic booms put too much pressure on productivity, diminishing returns are bound to ensue.As mentioned above, a vicious circle started then, especially at the time of the decline of the Han Dynasty and the Roman Empire, which is more attested.Increased taxes and poverty aroused riots in town and country, which led to barbarian invasions.In the end, either the internal uprising succeeds, the external aggression succeeds, or both.As a result, the history of modern prehistoric empires has been repeated.A historian analyzes the reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire, concluding by highlighting its technological backwardness.He said:
History clearly shows that this vicious cycle can only be broken by developing technology that provides the necessary economic foundation for the Empire State Building.But technology is on the verge of collapse. The fundamental reason is that the ruling groups in various places only know how to exploit existing wealth, but do not know how to develop new productive forces and create more wealth.In terms of the large amount of manpower and material resources consumed in the construction of pyramids, tower temples, Catholic churches and palaces, it is obvious that the rulers squeezed a large amount of surplus value from the peasants.But technical revolutions require something more important than powerful organization and coercion, and all agricultural civilizations have failed to achieve this important thing, which is why they remain in the agricultural stage.
The prevalence of slavery was one of the reasons for technological stagnation.Using slaves for labor is generally simpler and cheaper than designing and manufacturing new machines. Therefore, inventors at that time made certain new devices not to save labor, but for entertainment or to facilitate religious ceremonies.In the 1st century AD, Hiero used his knowledge about steam power to build a device that could open the door of the temple.In the same century, the Roman Emperor Vespasian banned the use of a cheap machine for erecting stone columns, saying: 'Feed the people! ’ In spite of all the grandeur, it was in fact this view that made the imperial cities of the classical period into rural parasites rather than centers of industry.
Additionally, slavery’s negative attitude towards labor also prevented the development of technology.Since labor is the work of slaves, free people are ashamed of it.Even in civilized lands, where slavery is not very prevalent, this contempt for labor persists.In China, people are keen to grow long nails is an example.The stratification of social classes naturally led the upper classes to despise labor and contempt for laborers, and slavery only further strengthened this conception.As Aristotle puts it in his Politics: "In the best governed city-states . A good reputation runs counter to it." In AD 65, the Roman philosopher Seneca expressed the same contempt for manual labor in a letter to Lucilius, arguing that manual labor should "bow your head and look down, respectful ’, he wrote:
It was this separation of philosophers and craftsmen that prevented the technological development of Eurasian civilizations, and it was the interaction between the methodical thinking of philosophers and the practical experience and traditional knowledge of craftsmen that made the West The great scientific and industrial revolutions have been completed in modern times, thus making outstanding contributions to the development of mankind.But due to the apparent social fragmentation, and the resulting social conceptions, this interplay was impossible in the classical civilizations, because the high-brow intellectuals had no interest and the lower-class artisans lacked motivation.
This technological stagnation explains why the history of Eurasian empires has been repeated for thousands of years before modern times.The rise and fall of the empires was basically the same.No empire could break through to a new level of development.The resulting repeated cycles are thus very different from the dynamics of modern industrial society. W. W. Rostow describes the common features of agricultural civilizations before Britain's epochal and pioneering "take off" beginning with the Industrial Revolution in the following passage:
From the 3rd to the 6th centuries, the Eurasian continent was generally invaded by humans, and the invasions at this time were no less than the invasions using bronze and iron weapons in the 2nd millennium BC.Just as the invasion in the second millennium BC completed the transition from ancient civilization to classical civilization, the invasion in the 3rd to 6th centuries ended classical civilization and heralded the coming of medieval civilization.
The migration direction of nomads is generally from east to west, because the geographical slope of the Eurasian steppe makes the western part of the steppe more abundant in water and more fertile, attracting nomads from the east (see Chapter 6, Section 2).The main invasion routes all started near Beijing, along the steppe corridor across central Eurasia, and ended in the Hungarian plain in Central Europe.This is why so many nomads stopped moving around after arriving in what is now Hungary.Based in Hungary, they attacked the surrounding European countries.
Terracotta Statues of Hunnic Central Asia: Equestrians.This statue is in a private collection in Paris, and it may represent the leader of the Huns, Attila himself.
The Viking ship "Osberg", unearthed in 1904, is the best preserved Viking ship in the world, and is now displayed in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway.
The increasing interaction of nomads with surrounding centers of civilization was the basic cause of the invasion.In many centers of civilization, nomads were used as slaves or mercenaries, and this was often the cause of military coups within imperial capitals, or invasions by fellow tribesmen of barbarian mercenaries.The gradual settlement of nomadic peoples near the frontiers of the empire was another factor leading to the invasion.The transition from nomadic life to agricultural life usually resulted in an increase in population and economic and military power; this economic and military power was always employed when the weakness of the empire offered the hope of victory for the invasion.Aggression is also often the end result of a chain reaction of shocking forces.The failure of the Great Wall of China, or the formation of aggressive tribal confederations in Mongolia, tended to cause the nomads, with their gentle impact, to weave westward, eventually forming a crossing of the Oxus, Danube, or Rhine. barbarian invasion.
Since the scope of aggression spread throughout the Eurasian continent, so many peoples suffered aggression.The Han Dynasty in China, the Gupta Dynasty in India, and the Sasanian Dynasty in Iran were all attacked by Turks and Mongols; the Turks and Mongols are often called Huns.Because the Roman Empire was located at the western end of this invasion route, it was often attacked by various ethnic groups along the route and surrounding barbarians.These invaders included Germanic tribes, Iranians, Baltic-Slavs, Vikings, as well as Turks and Mongols.
The consequences of aggression are as diverse as the elements of the aggressor.In China, the Han Dynasty was finally defeated by Turkic-Mongol invaders in 222 AD and split into three kingdoms: Wei to the north of the Yangtze River, Wu to the south, and Shu to the west.After fighting for decades, the state of Wei defeated its rival and established a new dynasty, the Jin Dynasty, in 265.The Jin Dynasty unified the whole of China. In 316, a group of new invaders occupied the northern half of China. The Jin royal family fled south and arrived in Nanjing, where they ruled the Yangtze River Valley and the southern area where the Han people lived.Since then, China has been divided into two parts until the Sui Dynasty reunified China in 589.
Chinese historians call these centuries "troubled times".The southern half was ruled successively by Chinese emperors; the northern half was ruled by various Turkic-Mongol conquerors.The Chinese regarded the southern emperors as the legitimate successors of the Han dynasty, while denying the northern rulers the title of emperor.In fact, in the past few centuries, both the north and the south were fragmented, but the north was the most severely damaged due to continuous barbarian aggression for a long time. "Under the impact of the barbarians," said an authoritative source, "it is not difficult to imagine that the animal husbandry economy may replace the agricultural economy in northern China, and the Altaic language may replace Chinese."
We will see that the Western Roman Empire, similar to China, did undergo this fundamental change.However, this change did not occur in northern China, mainly because the number of Chinese here far outnumbered the barbarian invaders.At that time, the north was the most densely populated area in China. Even if nomads flooded in, there would be no fundamental changes.In fact, during these turbulent centuries, many Chinese migrated from the north to the south in order to escape the plunder of the barbarians.Therefore, not only is the north still the north of China, but the south has also been sinicized.In this way, in 589, when the Sui Dynasty reunified the country, China resumed its normal historical process, that is, a unique Chinese-style historical process like the Han Dynasty.
As for India, the time of invasion was much later: when China was in "troubled times", the Gupta Dynasty was at its peak.Then, in the fifth century, the Eastern Huns, the so-called "White Huns," crossed the Oxus River and pushed southward to India, while the Western Huns crossed the Russian plains and advanced into Europe.The Gupta Dynasty collapsed in the first half of the 6th century under the fierce attack of the Huns.Little is known about the latter half of the century.But it can be speculated that there may have been many wars, and there may have been further invasions.
In the first half of the 7th century, the feudal lord Julisha used both diplomatic and military means to successfully unify most of northern India, thus temporarily lifting the veil of ambiguity in Indian history.However, the Holisha Empire was loosely organized and consisted of some independent and powerful vassals; the reason why they recognized the suzerainty of Holisha was not so much their submission to the imperial power, but their respect for him personally.Therefore, after 41 years of wise rule, after the death of Holisha in 647, his crumbling empire also fell apart, and the history of India was once again covered with a veil of ambiguity until the Muslim Turks appeared in the 13th century and gradually ruled by force. most of India.
These centuries have been characterized by recurring aggressions and divisions.There were no empires with huge bureaucracies like the Mauryas or the Guptas, only ephemeral clan hegemonies or kingdoms based on what individual people did.In addition, immigrants to India were immigrated on a large scale in sufficient numbers to form new cultural and social groups.The most prominent of these are the Rajrut, a brave and strong people for whom the Rajputana district in northwestern India is named.The Rajputs belonged to the military aristocracy and were soon absorbed into the Indian Kshatriya caste, the warrior aristocracy.They took great pride in believing in Hinduism and once ruled northern and central India.In fact, they remained an outstanding people until the nineteenth century, and arguably even today.
The significance of the Rajput experience helps to explain why India has not fundamentally changed despite long centuries of turmoil and aggression.The invaders were assimilated by the prevailing caste system, rather they adapted to Indian civilization, not the other way around.Therefore, like China, India reappears in the course of history after a period of turmoil, and the civilization formed in the classical period has undergone slight changes, but has not undergone fundamental changes.
In Europe, however, the opposite is the case, where fundamental rather than minor shifts have taken place.The invaders in this area were the most numerous, the Germans, who occupied central and eastern Europe, that is, from the Baltic Sea to the Danube, from the Rhine to the Russian Plain.The Germanic peoples consisted of several tribes, the more important of which were the Franks, Vandals, Lombards, Ostrogoths and Visigoths.These tribes generally have the same religious beliefs and social systems, use very similar languages, and can understand each other.But thankfully for the Romans, the sense of unity among these tribes was very tenuous.They fought against each other as against the Romans, and thus kept the Roman Empire alive for so long.
The institutions and customs of these Germanic peoples deserve attention because, after the collapse of the Roman Empire, they were destined to become an essential part of the emerging civilization of the West.The Roman historian Tacitus of the time described the Germanic peoples as pastoral peoples who estimated their wealth by the number of livestock.In fact, stealing cattle is the main cause of their internal strife.The Franks who settled along the Rhine were the first to complete the transition from animal husbandry to agriculture, so their population and overall strength grew the fastest.On the contrary, the Visigoths distributed in the lower reaches of the Danube still lived on livestock to a large extent.However, this gave them greater mobility, at least initially making up for the lack of numbers.
The social structure of these tribes consisted of three major groups: the uppermost class consisted of hereditary nobility, usually large landowners.Most of the Germanic people were free people, and generally those who owned their own small plots of land but had no land had to work as tenant farmers and work for the nobles.At the bottom are those who are neither freemen nor slaves, who are bound to the land but cannot be sold individually.This form of slavery is similar to the slave farming system of the Roman Empire, and was the forerunner of the serfdom that prevailed in Western Europe in the Middle Ages.
The Tribe derives its primary power from the Freedmen's Assembly.If there is a "king", the "king" is elected by the popular assembly.The same is true for the emergence of military leaders who command battles.Tacitus points out that the Germanic peoples usually elected "kings" on the basis of succession, but military chiefs were elected on the basis of their valor and ability on the battlefield.The main weapon of the Germanic people is a long, straight, wide-tipped double-edged sword, which is mostly used for cutting rather than stabbing.After a formal ceremony, young people obtained the right to saber, which is the origin of the medieval promotion ceremony from squire to knight.Every eminent warrior chief had a retinue of young men, a retinue, who stood by his side in time of war, loyal to him, and obeyed him; who supplied them with arms, supplies, and a share of trophies.This system contributed to the formation of feudalism later, because feudalism was based on the loyalty of knights to feudal lords.
On the one hand, Tacitus described the Germans as greedy eaters, rough drinkers and life-threatening gamblers. On the other hand, he praised their high moral standards and regarded them as a model for the Romans.He also emphasized the generosity and hospitality of the Germanic people.In severe winter, the Germanic people like to go from house to house in groups and stay from house to house until they eat up all the food in the host's house.This is reminiscent of the medieval scene where, as part of feudal entitlements, the king or nobleman was invited to a banquet held in his honor and his entourage for many consecutive days.The Germans know how to weave cloth and make metal utensils and carts on wheels, but not how to write, and this is their general level of culture.
As early as the 1st century BC, these Germanic peoples began to push the frontiers of the Roman Empire.However, the Roman legion was very strong at that time, and it was easy to hold the border.With the decline of the empire, the army was weakened, and the Romans' control of the frontier was frequently strained.Therefore, diplomacy had to be resorted to, inciting one tribe against another.But out of desperation, groups of Germanic warriors had to be stationed inside the Roman border as a reward for their opposition to other tribes outside the border.This policy lasted as long as the Romans could control their allies. In the 4th century, when they could no longer control their allies, the floodgates were thrown open.
The attack was launched by a new and feared invader, unknown to Europeans - the Huns.Their terrible appearance and their well-thought-out terrorism terrorized the Romans and Germans alike.The Roman historian of the time, Ammianus Marcellinus, described them as people "almost glued to horses," "grotesque in figure; and so hideous in appearance that one could not help thinking that they were biped beasts. … ..."
Apparently, it was a newly minted alliance that forced the Huns to leave their native pastures of Central Asia, move westward, and cross the Volga in 372.On the Russian plains they quickly defeated the easternmost Germanic Ostrogoths.Then, they coerced the neighboring Visigoths to cross the Danube and enter the territory of the Roman Empire to seek refuge.Two years later, in 378, the Visigoths, annoyed that they had been mistreated by Roman officials, defeated the Roman army at the Battle of Adrianople, killing the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, thus breaking the Roman Empire. The myth of invincibility.In the following decades, the iron hooves of Germanic and Hun invaders trampled on Italy, Gaul and the Balkans.
Under the leadership of Alaric, the Visigoths marched into Italy, sacked the city of Rome in 410 (an event that shocked the entire empire at the time, and happened again shortly afterwards), and finally set up camp in southern Gaul and northern Spain, and established The first Germanic kingdom in the Roman Empire.Following in the footsteps of the Visigoths, the Huns established a base in the Hungarian Plain, from which they attacked the eastern and western provinces of the Roman Empire. In 452 they suddenly appeared at the undefended gates of Rome, led by their formidable leader Attila.It is said that Pope Leo I persuaded the leader of the Huns, and the city of Rome was spared.Although this is unbelievable, in any case, Attila did not attack the city and turned around and headed north.One morning a year later, he was found dead of a ruptured artery, with the German princess who had married him the day before lying beside him.After Attila's death, his empire collapsed and the Huns disappeared from European history.
However, the massive destruction of the Huns shattered the Roman Empire's control over the western provinces. In fact, at this time, Germanic tribes were free to cross the border and immigrate to the territory of the Empire.The Vandals moved across the Rhine, through Gaul and Spain, across the Strait of Gibraltar, into North Africa, where they established a kingdom.From their new base they turned to attack by sea, and in 455 an expedition sacked the city of Rome.At the same time, the Burgundians occupied the Rhone valley; the Franks were expanding in northern Gaul and took root there; The Tetes quickly invaded the area.Local Celtic residents fled into the mountains of Scotland and Wales, and Anglo-Saxons have since become the main ethnic group in England.It was under the control of these successively rising Germanic kingdoms that the Western Roman Empire collapsed. In 476, the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the Germanic leader Odoacer, an event that marked the end of the Western Roman Empire (see Chapter 8, Section 8).
The development of events in Europe is now well known to the world.The Western Roman Empire, like the Han Dynasty and the Fado Dynasty, eventually succumbed to the barbarians.Moreover, the collapse of the empire in the sixth century seems to have had the same consequences in the West as in China. In 589, the Sui Dynasty finally unified China, and around the same time, the Frankish kings and Eastern Roman emperors also seemed to be reunifying Europe.
The Franks originated in the lower Rhine and migrated to northern Gaul in the 5th century.They played only an insignificant role in this turbulent history, until the Merovingian kings became the most powerful people in the West.The most outstanding king of the Merovingian dynasty was Clovis (481-511). He united the tribes of the Franks, defeated the Romans, Byzantines and Visigoths, and brought the country from the Pyrenees to Gaul. , to the large territories of Germany combined to form the Kingdom.The main reason for Clovis's success was; his conversion to Catholicism, which not only won him the support of the Pope, but also the assistance of the local Gallo-Romans.The Merovingian dynasty seemed likely to reestablish the Western Roman Empire, and by increasing the territory of the Franks east of the Rhine.Expand the territory of the empire.
A 15th-century French gold clay manuscript describing the sack of Rome by Alaric and the Goths in 410 AD.In the upper left corner of the illustration, St. Augustine is seen dedicating his book The City of God to the Pope.It was the sacking of Rome by the Goths that prompted Augustine to write this masterpiece.
Monarch, ruler of Constantinople, also had ambitions to restore the empire.While the Western Roman Empire fell apart, the Eastern Roman Empire survived thanks to a powerful navy, rich resources, and the natural strength of its capital, which was situated on the headland of the strait between the two continents of Europe and Asia.Although the barbarian invasion destroyed the city of Rome, Constantinople was spared.In fact, it survived another 500 years before being conquered by the Turks in 1453.During these centuries, the Eastern Roman Empire developed a unique civilization, a civilization composed of Greek, Roman, Christian and Eastern elements.To emphasize this uniqueness, the Eastern Roman Empire is often called the Byzantine Empire, so named because the capital, Constantinople, was established on the basis of the ancient Greek colonial city of Byzantium.
After the western provinces became Germanic kingdoms, the Byzantine emperor's suzerainty naturally focused only on the eastern half of the former Roman Empire, namely: the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt.This restriction was unacceptable to Justinian the Great (527-565).Zha Shangdingni is an Illyrian in blood, but a Westerner in his feelings.He speaks and thinks in Latin, and is determined to recover the western territories and restore the original Roman Empire.One of his generals, Belisarius, led a well-equipped army of Xiaowen, and within a year occupied the kingdom of the Vandals in North Africa.He also recaptured southeastern Spain from the Visigoths; after 18 years of hard work, he conquered the Ostrogoths in Italy.In this way, within 20 years, almost the entire Mediterranean became a Roman lake.Justinian said he hoped that "God will grant us that part of the empire that the Romans lost to indolence."
Contrary to expectations, the West did not follow in China's footsteps. On the contrary, a new wave of aggression shattered the fragile imperial structure that the Franks and Byzantines had just formed, and plunged the West into chaos and division again.Yet another alliance of the Mongols forced the refugee nomadic tribes westward along the route of the invasion of Europe.These Avars began to become known to the West, and they, like the former Huns, based on the Hungarian plains, launched raids in all directions.
These attacks led to mass migrations with far-reaching consequences.The Avars brought the Germanic Lombards to Italy (568); the Lombards drove the Byzantines from most of the Apennines, shattering Justinian's dream of restoring the original Roman Empire .The Avars also forced the Slavic tribes south into the Balkans; the Slavs drove the Latinized Illyrians and Dacians there into isolated mountainous regions.The newly arrived Slavs, as agricultural laborers, took root in the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula, and the expelled Illyrians and Dacians disappeared into obscurity. It was not until modern times that they reappeared as Albanians in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula. The Romanians reappeared on the north bank of the Danube.Therefore, in the 7th century, the ethnic distribution on the Balkan Peninsula has formed the current pattern: Greeks in the south, Albanians in the west, Romanians in the northeast, and Slavs live in a vast area from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. .
In the 8th century, the Carolingian dynasty replaced the Merovingian dynasty and achieved a series of stunning victories, rekindling hopes for the restoration of imperial unity in the west.克洛维的继承者们命运悲惨，他们被称为“庸王”，即“一事无成的国王。“然而，身居“大宰相”要职、意志坚强的宫相们却维持着王国的团结。其中以查理·马特最为杰出。 “马特“意即“铁锤”，他从714到741年，一直在幕后执政。他的最大功绩是，在图尔战役中打败了侵占北非和西班牙，并已挺进法兰西南部的穆斯林军队（见第三章绍三节）。
马特的儿子矮子丕平，不甘充任“一事无成”的国王的宫相，于751 年废黜墨洛温王朝末代国王，创建了所谓的加洛林王朝；加洛林王朝以丕平之子查理曼的名字命名。查理曼是这一家系中最著名的国王，在765到814年的长期统治中，他不断征战，扩充疆域，征服了德意志西北部的撒克逊人，打败了匈牙利的阿瓦尔人，吞并了意大利的伦巴第人王国，迫使穆斯林退回到比利牛斯山脉以南地区。到8世纪末，其帝国已从北海扩展到比利牛斯山脉，从大西洋扩展到斯拉夫人诸国，查理曼成为西方无可争辩的征服者。800年圣诞节，教是利奥三世为他举行加冕称帝仪式，以承认他的最高地位。据查理曼的书记和传记作者叙述，加冕那天，集会的民众大声高呼：“生命和胜利，永远属于伟大上帝的受冕者，罗马人温和的皇帝查理·奥古斯都！”
这一情景说明，人们仍抱有恢复帝国统一的梦想，但这也只能是梦想。查理曼死后不久，来自南方、东方和北方的新侵略浪潮又淹没了整个欧洲。在南方，穆斯林海盗和冒险者征服了克里特岛和西西里岛，袭击了地中海沿岸所有地区，给海上贸易以严重破坏。在东方，来自中亚的另一支游牧部族马扎尔人，于895年到达匈牙利平原，他们仿效前匈奴人和阿瓦尔人，侵袭了周围各国。
北欧人，即维金人的侵略范围最广，他们是与陆上游牧民相同的海上游牧民。维金人制造了一种船代替马匹，这种船吃水浅，速度快、灵活性强。挪威的维金人正是乘这种船向西航行，到达冰岛、格林兰岛和北美洲的。他们和从丹麦来的同胞一起，袭击了不列颠群岛和欧洲西海岸，甚至强行渡过直布罗陀海峡，劫掠了地中海两岸。由于瑞典东面临海，这里的维金人渡过波罗的海，到达俄罗斯一些河流，并顺流而下，经入海口，进入里海和黑海。
伦敦考陶尔德学院珍藏的9世纪的绘画：查理曼。
这样，整个欧洲被这些大胆的侵略者团团围住。起初，8 世纪末和9世纪，他们只是一味掠夺，并摧毁了无数寺院和城镇。北欧人乘坐那种吃水浅的船，能溯河而上，进入遥远的内地，因此，很少有地区幸免于难。当时的教堂里，常可听到这样的祈祷：“啊，上帝，把我们从这些北方人的惩罚下拯救出来吧！”到10、11世纪时，维金人开始在海外地区定居下来，占领并统治了法兰西北部大半地区和不列颠群岛。但无论他们定居何处，最终都被现存的基督教国家所共吞。例如，法兰克国王为进一步防止维金人的劫掠，于911年承认他们的首领，并授予他所谓的诺曼底公爵的称号，诺曼底一词源于定居那里的北欧人。第一任诺曼底公爵罗伦的后代之一，就是征服者威廉，他于1066年成功地侵占了英格兰。
与此同时，加洛林王朝在穆斯林、马扎尔人和维金人的三面夹击下土崩瓦解，西欧再次成为屠宰场。10世纪为最不佳时期。自罗马帝国灭亡以来，欧洲似乎从未有过如此悲惨的现状，面临如此凄凉的前景。
纵观这些标志着古典时期向中世纪过渡的侵略活动，很明显，欧亚大陆各地区所受的影响迎然不同。由于地理上相隔遥远，侵略者鞭长莫及，中国南方和印度南方均未受到侵扰。拜占廷帝国因擅长外交，财源丰富，海军强大，几个世纪内成功地击退了一批又一批入侵者——日耳曼人、匈奴人、阿瓦尔人、斯拉夫人、波斯人和阿拉伯人。波斯在萨珊王朝时期，反对外来侵略也很成功，公元226年，萨珊王朝取代帕提亚人王朝。萨萨尼亚人唤起波斯民族的自尊心，恢复琐罗亚斯德教为国教，组织穿戴沉重的铠甲的骑兵部队，统一了全国。因而，波斯能击退奥克苏斯河沿岸游牧民的进攻浪潮；但同拜占廷的战争，弄得双方两败俱伤，使即将到来的穆斯林阿拉伯人的掠夺易如反掌。
如前所述，中国北方和印度北方的遭遇并非太好。两者均遭到蛮族的蹂躏，不过都保存了各自在古典时期形成的独特文明。因此，一个生活在公元前1世纪汉代的中国人，若在公元5世纪初复活，他一定会感到非常舒适、自在。他将发觉当时的唐朝与过去的汉朝大致相同，他会注意到两朝民族相同、语言相同、儒家学说相同、祖先崇拜相同以及帝国行政管理相同，等等。
这使西方历史发展的独特性显得更为突出。如果公元前1 世纪的罗马人，于1000年、15O0年或18O0年在欧洲复活，他将会为居住在这一古老帝国许多地区的诸日耳曼民族，为崭新奇特的生活方式而大吃一惊。他将会发现有几种新的日耳曼语和罗曼语取代了拉丁语，上装和裤子代替了古罗马人的宽外袍，新兴的基督教接替了古罗马诸神；他还会发现，罗马的帝国结构已为一群新的民族国家所替代，古老的谋生之道正受到新的农业技术、新的贸易、新的行业的挑战；这种新贸易是与世界上一向无人知晓的地区进行的贸易，而种种新行业则是使用一些无需传统的人力畜力驱动、可节省劳动力的奇特机器。
这无疑说明，只有西方的古典文明被永久湮没，被一种崭新的东西所代替。欧亚大陆其他地区的文明，或是免遭侵略（如印度南方和中国南方），或是击退了入侵者（如拜占廷和波斯），或是遭受侵略，但却幸存下来（如中国北方和印度北方）。唯独在西方，古典文明被砸得粉碎，无法复原，尽管在这几个世纪内，曾多次有人力图恢复，但也无济于事。
恰恰是这一独特性，使西方在近代跑到了世界的前列，因此，它的起因必须予以重视。如本章第二节所述，技术停滞不前是诸古典文明结构上的一个主要弱点。那么，既然所有的古典文明都具有这一弱点，为什么唯独西欧的文明会垮掉呢？
只要把西欧的制度及经历与欧亚其他地区如中国作一比较，就能得出这样一些结论：首先，古典时期，西欧并不象中国那么富饶。适应农作物生长的夏季几个月里，季风给东亚大部分地区带来了充足的雨水；而在欧洲，雨水多半集中在草木不生的冬季几个月里。由于这一原因，加上纬度较低的地区能获得较多的太阳热，因此，东亚具有较长较集中的耕作期，许多地方一年二熟。而且，东亚的主要农作物稻米，比起西方种植的小麦、黑麦和其他粮食作物，每英亩产量要高得多。据估计，单位面积里生产的稻米所含的热值，是小麦所含热值的五倍。结果，中国的生产率大大高于西方，中国的人口，自农业出现至今，也相应地比西方稠密。生产率及人口上的优势，转而又使能中国更好地维持帝国的官僚机构和军事机构，更有力地抗击蛮族侵略者，必要时，还能同化他们。
其次，西方缺乏可与中国相媲美的文字系统，也没有中国的科举制度。这种文字系统提供了文化上持久的同一性，而这一科举制度使中国的行政提高了效率，增强了稳定性。最后，罗马帝国边境上的敌人更难对付。由于地处入侵路线的最西端，欧洲几乎在各游牧民族的每次进攻中首当其冲。此外，罗马帝国邻近的日耳曼人，比中国西北边境上的游牧民族人数更多，而且，与帝国相邻的波斯人和阿拉伯人，也比中国的蛮族近邻更为先进，军事威胁更大，更长久。因此，这些侵略在西方拖延的时间，远远超过在欧亚大陆其他地区持续的时间。
人们不会忘记，中国北方曾一度面临畜牧业取代农业，阿尔泰话语言代替汉语的危险。隋朝重新统一中国，恢复了正常秩序，才使这一危险化为乌有。但在西方，侵略活动连绵不断，阿瓦尔人摧毁了查士丁尼和克洛维建立的功绩；穆斯林、马扎尔人和维金人推翻了查理曼帝国。因而，西方出现了独特的结局——帝国结构及其古典文明无可挽回地消亡了。
这一结果意义十分重大，被认为是世界历史的一个重要转折点。之所以如此，是因为大规模的消亡为早应发生的技术革命扫清了道路。一位历史学家最近对罗马帝国的灭亡作了如下结论：“总而言之，侵略给盛极之后停滞不前，似乎注定消亡的文化以致命的打击。这使我们联想起当今世界残酷的轰炸，它摧毁了摇摇欲坠的古老建筑，正因如此，我们才有可能重新建起更为现代化的城市。”这里所说的“文化”，与欧亚大陆其他地区的文化并无差异。因为欧亚大陆其他地区的文化也处于“停滞不前”的状态，只是它们能设法从这些侵略中幸存下来，得庆重生。但是，这仅是旧生命的延续，而西方，在罗马帝国灭亡之后，却能获得新生，出现一个崭新的开端。
回顾历史，这一崭新开端的重要性便十分明显。古代时期，中东曾是创始力的中心，几千年中，许多主要发明由此传播出去。到了古典时期，大部分发明创造出自欧洲、印度和中国，中东却远远落在后面。其原因恰恰因为中东的古代文明在公元前二千纪的侵略中得以幸存下来，边缘地区的古代文明却被毁灭，从而为新的开端——新的古典文明的出现——扫清了道路。
古典文明向中世纪文明的过渡也是如此。但这一次，所有地区的文明都幸存下来，唯有西方例外。因此，只有西方能毫无束缚地朝新的方向奋进，在中世纪发展起新的技术、新的制度、新的观念，简言之，新的文明。到了近代，这种新的文明，如早期农业文明必然战胜部落文化—样，远远胜过欧亚其他地区乃至全世界的“停滞不前”的文明，显示出了它的优越性。