- [<] Status Log - created:: 2024-07-10 - status-updated:: - status:: draft - type:: article - [S] Marketing - purpose:: talk about immigration and assimilation thru the "safe" lens of Rome - desc:: - connections: [[Forum Discussions]] - https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,11850.0.html Back when I was teaching social studies, the curriculum placed a pretty heavy emphasis on the leadup to the battle of Adrianople. Wikipedia's summary is pretty succinct: [quote]In 376, the Goths, led by Alavivus and Fritigern, asked to be allowed to settle in the Eastern Roman Empire after being displaced by the invasions of the Huns. Hoping that they would become farmers and soldiers, the Eastern Roman emperor Valens allowed them to establish themselves in the Empire as allies (foederati). Once across the Danube and into Roman territory, however, the dishonesty of the Roman provincial commanders Lupicinus and Maximus led the newcomers to revolt after suffering many hardships.[/quote] The curriculum generally emphasized that the Hun invasions were likely ultimately caused by climate change and were therefore sort of inevitable and not the fault of human evil but rather natural circumstances. Regardless, the Goths were clearly 'pushed' toward Rome, through no fault of Rome's. Narratives tend to want to push for the idea that you reap what you sow, but so the subtext was pretty clearly meant to be: allowing the immigration was good, assimilating the Goths would have strengthened the Empire, and not being able to control the corruption of Lupicinus and Maximus led to Valens' downfall. Certainly, it seems like Rome had some own-goals, like treating Alaric like shit. [quote]Refused the reward he expected, which included a promotion to the position of magister militum and command of regular Roman units, Alaric mutinied and began to march against Constantinople.[/quote] This got me to remembering that one of the things people sometimes talk about when comparing Carthage and Rome is Carthage's reliance on mercenaries, and habit of not integrating conquered people into the citizenry... which was very different from how the (earlyish) Romans handled conquering new areas. Although they certainly prioritized the people who lived in literal Rome, I believe that got to be pretty multi-ethnic pretty early on, or at the very least not literally just the descendants of people who were citizens of Rome the city itself -- I'm given to understand that in the early conquering days they did a pretty good job with assimilation and giving client city citizens a reasonably good opportunity to integrate into the local culture and especially the military. Here's a random example from an article I just read about [url=https://mankind.substack.com/p/the-sicilian-warlord-who-invaded]the Sicilian Warlord who invaded Africa[/url] (note: paywalled). [quote]The defeat at Crimissus, like that at Himera in 480 BC, marked another watershed for Carthage. Its armies had proved incapable of beating Greek hoplites on the field with any regularity, so the Carthaginian senate pushed for even more intensive reliance on mercenary forces raised in Iberia, Libya and Numidia, as well as the Greek lands of Sicily and elsewhere, to the point that Carthaginian infantry may have been entirely banned from serving in Sicily after around 311 BC – after all, many if not most of the Greeks who kept beating the Carthaginians in Sicily were mercenaries themselves.[/quote] Some folks think that Carthage, Rome, and the Tang Dynasty shifting (at different points) to [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Carthage#Growth_of_Mercenary_Forces]a more mercenary army[/url] led to [url=https://derrychen.medium.com/fall-of-empires-reexamining-roman-and-tang-reliance-on-mercenaries-fe1e07060f04]their respective downfalls[/url]. [quote]For both empires, there is no clear definition of what is foreign and what is native, as they both encompassed expansive territories with large, diverse populations. As the cultural centers of their respective worlds, surrounding tribes and nations more often than not respected the cultural authority of these great empires, even after their downfalls. The “barbarian” tribes that overran the Roman empire in many instances preserved the civil and military institutions the Romans created, as they were crucial to governing the new states that were formed in the aftermath of the empire’s collapse ... recent literature suggests that past consensus on subjects of imperial decline is not as simple as it seems. As much as Rome was ravaged by its so-called barbarian neighbors, its very existence was also extended due to the unwavering loyalty of some critical non-Roman characters. Similarly, the Tang Dynasty’s border security was ensured in great part due to non-Han recruits, and its downfall can be attributed more to policy blunders.[/quote] Although it's unwise to overindex too much on the lessons of Rome when considering the future of America, this sort of thing [i]obviously[/i] has implications for America as we move from a drafted army to an increasing contracted army (although not yet a foreign one). So I suppose my question is: if the American cultural empire / hegemony were to continue on in a similar vein, what would that even [i]look[/i] like in the modern day?