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If not for the Black Plague, would Justinian have successfully re-united the territories of Rome and prevented its collapse? Discuss.
Even though that was his dream to reunite the empire it probably would not have happened.. He had too many adversaries to deal with on many fronts. To his east he always had to front a large army to guard against the Persians. To his west he had the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Frankish Kingdom in France, the Visigoths in Spain, the Lombards in Germany and trying to mop up the war with the Vandals and emerging Berbers in North Africa to his south.
Nope as i believe the west was too far gone whether the plague happened or not in my opinion.
When the Plague is mentioned, people normally think of the Plague in the 1340's..However, the Plague in Justinian's time killed over 100 million people and was probably responsible for the end of slavery due to the demand for labor.
Two books by William Rosen give the full story and consequences of it:
"Justinian's Flea:The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire"
and "Justinian's Flea: Plague,Empire and the Birth of Europe"
But the Western Empire was already dead.
We are talking here of the invasion of Justinian of Italy and a eastern strip of Visigothic Spain, etc..
Byzantines were viewed as foreigners...
Well, if it weren't by the pest, they could possibly have regained Italy...
But by then the society was already Medieval (early medieval), 6th Century...
The barbarians, even Ostrogoths, were almost "Romans"...
Too late, I guess...
Even though that was his dream to reunite the empire it probably would not have happened.. He had too many adversaries to deal with on many fronts. To his east he always had to front a large army to guard against the Persians. To his west he had the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Frankish Kingdom in France, the Visigoths in Spain, the Lombards in Germany and trying to mop up the war with the Vandals and emerging Berbers in North Africa to his south.
Nope as i believe the west was too far gone whether the plague happened or not in my opinion.
When the Plague is mentioned, people normally think of the Plague in the 1340's..However, the Plague in Justinian's time killed over 100 million people and was probably responsible for the end of slavery due to the demand for labor.
Two books by William Rosen give the full story and consequences of it:
"Justinian's Flea:The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire"
and "Justinian's Flea: Plague,Empire and the Birth of Europe"
What's interesting about the two plague's is that the first (Justinian) 540 A.D. seemed to bring about the ''Dark Ages'' as europe went backwards after it until Charlemagne in 800 A.D. where as the second plague (Black) 1350 A.D. seemed to bring about the ''Renaissance'' and the ''Reformation'' in europe from the 1350's to the 1650's.
I believe that the dark ages began when Islam occupied the southern border of the Mediterranean. Until then, (according to some historians), the remnants of the Empire held quite well under a common language and religion. Trade and cultural exchanged did not change much after the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476.
By the VIth Century, barbarians in Western Europe had lost much of their identity and they were not very different from Galo-Romans, Hispano-Romans, etc.
For example, in Spain, by the Conversion of Recaredo, Visigoths adopted Catholicism and began marrying Hispano-Romans and rejecting their law, by that time they already had lost their language.
This period is quite obscure, but it seems that the Hispano-Roman aristocracy preserved their power in every sense. In fact, Visigoths were divided in two groups. Gardingos (Wardens) or armed Aristocracy that ruled Hispania in a non-hereditary monarchy, Aesdingos, or Gothic peasants, not very different from common Hispano-Romans. The "Equites" and Senatorial class, Hispano Romans, were as rich as before.
So, returning to Justinian (that had a strip of land in Spain's eastern coast) woud have found a sort of "almost" consolidated society, a "Nation".
A new nation was born, different from the Roman Province of the 1st Century, but not very different from Hispania of the 3rd and 3rd Century.
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