Tag Archives: History

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention) (11) Roman-Persian Wars

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Rock face relief at Naqshe-Rostam, depicting the victories of the Sassanid Persian emperor Shapur I over the Roman Emperors Valerian and Philip the Arab. Do you want emperors captured by Persians? Because that’s how you get emperors captured by Persians…

 

(11) ROMAN-PERSIAN WARS

 

The first world war, fought intermittently on the frontier between successive Roman and Persian polities over almost seven centuries.

No, seriously. Well, half seriously.

The Roman-Persian Wars were a world war, or war between two different worlds – that might have been fought on the frontier between them, a little like the Western Front writ large (and long) but had ramifications or repercussions throughout both empires that extended across Eurasia from Britain to India.

And that comparison to the First World War’s Western Front writ large and long stands. Despite seven slugging centuries of grinding war, the Roman-Persian border remained remarkably stable.

“One has the impression that the blood spilled in the warfare between the two states brought as little real gain to one side or the other as the few meters of land gained at terrible cost in the trench warfare of the First World War.”

That is, until the last dramatic phase of the wars, the Byzantine-Sasanian War of 602-628 – which might be compared to the similarly abrupt and dramatic reversals of fortune in 1917-1918 that ultimately saw the end of the First World War. However, even that last war of the Roman-Persian Wars effectively ended with the restoration of the status quo (and border) between the two empires.

The Roman-Persian Wars are an interesting contrast to those other Persian Wars of antiquity, the Greek-Persian Wars, in lacking the same existential stakes or outcomes – with the Greek city-states desperately defending themselves from outright conquest by the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the classical Greek-Persian Wars, and Alexander the Great conquering that same empire outright in his Macedonian-Persian Wars.

The latter always struck me as incredible in contrast to the failure of the Romans, more powerful and commanding more resources than either Alexander or their own Persian adversaries, to achieve anything like Alexander’s decisive defeat and conquest of Persia. That is despite the Romans, at least emperors Caracalla and Julian, expressly seeking to emulate Alexander. The reality seems to have been that for the most part neither side did little more than essentially raid each other over the frontier, with the Romans famously sacking the Persian capital Ctesiphon numerous times.

The Roman-Persian Wars might be classified into four phases, corresponding to three successive Roman polities and two Persian ones – not to mention Armenia bouncing back and forth between the two empires as client state or protectorate.

First, there was Roman Republic against the Parthians – initiated by the invasion of Mesopotamia by Roman general Crassus, which saw one of the Republic’s most crushing defeats at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC. However, the Parthians did nothing to exploit this defeat or the subsequent civil wars of the Republic with one notable exception, as they generally sought to remain on peaceful terms with the Romans. That notable exception was their support of the so-called Liberators – the assassins of Julius Caesar – and invasion of the Roman eastern provinces after the Liberators’ defeat. The Romans defeated the Parthian invasion, but the Parthians then defeated the retributive campaign by Mark Antony against them.

Second, there was the Roman Empire against the Parthians, which saw five major wars between them, mostly to the defeat of the Parthians with their capital Ctesiphon sacked three times and four Roman emperors claiming the title of Persicus Maximus. Those wars were the Roman-Parthian War of 58-63 AD (with the Roman campaign led by the general Corbulo under emperor Nero), Trajan’s campaign into Parthia, the Roman-Parthian War of 161-166 AD under Roman emperor Lucius Verus (the co-emperor of Marcus Aurelius), the campaign of Roman emperor Septimius Severus in 195-197 AD, and finally the Parthian War of Caracalla in 216-217 AD.

Third, there was the Roman Empire against the Sassanids or Sasanians, successors to the Parthians. The Sassanids were very different to the Parthians in hostile character towards Rome – in the words of Youtuber Tominus Maximus, “Sassanid Persia was like Parthia…on cocaine and mixed with crystal meth”. Most famously, there were the Sassanid incursions deep into the Roman eastern provinces during the Crisis of the Third Century, after fighting between them during the reign of Roman emperor Severus Alexander.

However, the Romans subsequently defeated the Sassanids, sacking Ctesiphon a further two times in campaigns led by Roman emperors Carus in 283 AD and Galerius (with Diocletian holding his hand) in 298 AD. The latter was the most decisive Roman victory against the Sassanids, enduring for decades until hostilities resumed in the Perso-Roman Wars of 337-361 AD under Roman emperor Constantius III and the ill-fated expedition by Roman emperor Julian.

Surprisingly, the Sassanids mellowed in the fifth century, remaining mostly peaceful with the Roman Empire while the latter’s western half fell to barbarian invasions. In part that was due to the Sassanids facing off their own barbarian threats, but it was instrumental in the survival of the eastern Roman Empire. Which brings me to…

Fourth, there was the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire against the Sassanids or Sasanians. While the Persians were only peer state the Romans had as adversary, the classical empire had the advantage in population and resources, albeit that advantage was diluted by more far-flung commitments. After the fall of the western empire, the eastern empire and the Sassanids were much more closely matched.

Not surprisingly then, this saw the most dramatic and mobile phase of the Roman-Persian Wars from the preceding centuries of effective stalemate – with the Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602-628. First the Sassanids almost decisively defeated and conquered the eastern empire, even besieging Constantinople, but were then decisively defeated in turn by a near miraculous eastern Roman recovery under emperor Heraclius – albeit the eastern Roman empire was too weakened to exploit its victory other than regaining its lost territory and effectively restoring the status quo between them.

The ultimate futility of the Roman-Persian Wars came in their aftermath with the event that decisively ended them altogether – the Arab conquests, achieved in large part from both empires being so weakened fighting each other that they were unable to resist their new adversary, with one being completely conquered and the other barely surviving defeat as well as the loss of much of its former territory.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention) (10) Germanic & Gothic Wars

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Do you want naked Germans humping your statues? Because this is how you get naked Germans humping your statues. Sack of Rome in 410 painting by Joseph-Noel Sylvestre (1890)

 

(10) GERMANIC & GOTHIC WARS

 

“Give me back my legions!”

The Roman-Germanic Wars – the longest wars fought by the Roman Republic, Roman Empire and eastern Roman Empire, both in space and time, the wars of the crisis and fall of the classical empire.

In space, they were fought along Rome’s northern frontier from the Rhine through the Alps to the Danube. I’ll see Turner’s Frontier thesis about the frontier defining American history and raise it with the Roman-German frontier defining world history.

In time, they exceeded even the seven centuries of Roman-Persian Wars, extending both before and after the latter if you count them extending through the Gothic Wars and Lombard Wars fought by the eastern empire.

And yes – I’ve effectively featured Roman-Germanic and Roman-Gothic wars in my special mentions for the Crisis of the Third Century as well as the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, with the Goths playing the leading role in the latter. It’s not overstating it to attribute the fall of the Roman Empire to the Goths, even if as Youtuber Tominus Maximus quips, they’d didn’t mean to do it.

However, the Roman-Germanic wars date back before the empire to the republic, prior to the Republic’s wars with Persia, with the Cimbrian War in 113-101 BC – a war often overlooked for the more glamorous Punic Wars, despite a Roman defeat in the Battle of Arausio exceeding that at Cannae and the first threat to Italy or Rome itself since the Second Punic War.

The Republic saw more Roman-Germanic Wars with Caesar’s Gallic Wars – which despite being primarily directed at the conquest of Gaul also had campaigns against Germanic tribes such as the Suebi or across the Rhine, even if the latter weren’t much more than skirmishes compared to the subsequent wars.

When it comes to the classical empire, the Roman-Germanic Wars might be classified as falling into three phases.

The first phase was essentially when the Roman Empire held the initiative against the Germans – to the extent that there was the serious possibility of the empire incorporating Germania as a province or provinces, potentially pushing the imperial border from the Rhine to the Elbe or Weser. Famously that possibility was lost with Varus and his three legions in the Roman defeat at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest at the hands of Arminius, German turned renegade from his Roman citizenship.

Despite this defeat, the Roman Empire still (mostly) held the initiative against the Germans, although they used it more for pre-emptive or punitive expeditions, not least to avenge the defeat at Teutoburg Forest, rather than imperial expansion.

The second phase might be considered as one in which the initiative oscillated between the Romans and the Germans in clashes at and over the frontier. The Romans were mostly robust enough to retain both the initiative and frontier, but from the Marcomannic Wars in 161-180 AD onwards Germans and Goths were able to make substantial incursions within the empire – as in the Crisis of the Third Century or the invasions of the western empire fought by Julian or Valentinian.

The third phase is that of the decline and fall of the classical empire, when the Germans – particularly the Goths – increasingly held both the initiative and territory within the empire itself, from the Gothic War of 376-382 and the Roman defeat at the Battle of Adrianople in 378 onwards. Ultimately, the western empire and Rome itself fell to the Germans and Goths.

The fall of the classical or western empire wasn’t the end of Roman-Germanic and Roman-Gothic Wars, as the eastern empire continued fighting them – against the Vandals in north Africa, against the Visigoths in Spain, and above all against the Ostrogoths in the Gothic Wars of 535-554 in Italy.

The Byzantine-Gothic Wars were initially very successful against the odds under the leadership of Belisarius, but bogged down with an impressive revival by the Ostrogoths and ultimately ended with a Pyrrhic victory for the Romans – (re)conquering Italy from the Ostrogoths but then left desperately clinging on to increasingly small parts of it against a new Germanic invader, the Lombards.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention) (9) Crisis of the Third Century

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Battle between Romans and Goths on the Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus dated to 250-260 AD

 

(9) CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY (235 – 284 AD)

 

Before the Fall came the Crisis…

With the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire deserving first special mention, is it any surprise that the Crisis of the Third Century, that dress rehearsal of the fall, is far behind?

The Crisis of the Third Century – also known as the Military Anarchy or Imperial Crisis – had much the same scope as the decline and fall. Indeed, the Crisis of the Third Century was part of the decline, even if the empire narrowly forestalled its fall for another two centuries. Many of the fundamental problems of the empire from the Crisis endured to the fall, even when in muted form.

Narrowly forestalled its fall, that is, as in the empire “nearly collapsed under the combined pressure of repeated foreign invasions, civil wars, and economic disintegration” – “at the height of the crisis, the Roman state had split into three distinct and competing polities”, the so-called Gallic Empire and Palmyrene Empire vying with the central Roman Empire in its western and eastern provinces respectively.

Indeed, had it collapsed – or fragmented – it is hard to imagine the eastern half of the empire enduring in quite the same durable form as it did two centuries later. For one thing, the empire was divided into thirds rather than halves – with what was to become the eastern empire, that is, apart from the Palmyrene Empire, more resembling a quarter than half, albeit not unlike the eastern empire after it had rebounded from Arab conquests. It also lacked the capital founded by Constantine – Constantinople, with its nigh impenetrable defenses against all but the most overwhelming siege – or indeed the seat of imperial government founded as its own distinctive new Roman empire.

Although mind you, the eastern empire pulled off its own near miraculous recovery from crises – note that plural, crises – to rival that of the third century, like it looked back at the classical empire’s direst crisis and said hold my beer.

Two things saved the classical empire in the Crisis of the Third Century, even if it went from classical to late empire.

The first was that, as fearsome as the foreign invasions were, they lacked the ability or even intent to conquer territory or form their own states within the empire, rather than raiding it for plunder albeit on a larger scale than ever before. Even the Sassanid Persian Empire – the closest adversary the Roman Empire had to a rival peer state – for all its successes only raided Roman provinces and moved its border slightly away from its capital.

The second was a series of soldier emperors or barracks emperors – mostly the so-called Illyrian emperors originating from that region as the then heartland of the Roman army – who managed to hold the line and turn the tide to restore the empire, “an accomplishment many historians regard as about as unlikely and impressive as any of Rome’s Golden Age achievements in building the empire in the first place”.

Foremost among them of course was Aurelian – Restitutor Orbis or Restorer of the World, who reunited the empire by defeating the rival Palmyrene and Gallic Empires – but he built on the achievements of the emperors who came before him, Claudius Gothicus and arguably also Gallienus, and had successors who consolidated his achievements, notably Probus and the emperor who is credited with finally ending the Crisis, Diocletian.

At the core of the Crisis was the political instability of imperial succession (and usurpation) suggested by the other names used for the Crisis (Military Anarchy and Imperial Crisis).

Tacitus had observed that the ‘secret of the empire’ had been exposed with the succession crisis after Nero in the first century – “that emperors could be made elsewhere than in Rome”, a secret that excited “all the legions and their generals”.

Despite this observation, those legions and their generals had mostly followed the various imperial dynastic successions for the first two and a half centuries of empire – its founding Julio-Claudian dynasty, the Flavian dynasty, the adoptive succession of the Five Good Emperors, and the Severan dynasty.

In the Crisis, however, the legions and their generals had become very excited indeed – as one so-called barracks emperor succeeded another, usually by usurpation. And that’s just the line of imperial succession generally regarded as legitimate – beyond that there were literally countless usurpers, some of which we are still discovering through archaeology or coins.

Indeed, it often seems from the Crisis that where even the most minor commanders of a legion or legions had even the barest degree of military success (or were just left outside or stranded by the ebbing tide of imperial authority), they would proclaim themselves as emperor – or their legions would.

Not surprisingly, with Roman commanders and their legions marching either to advance their own imperial claims or against those of others, that saw them abandon the defense of the empire’s borders.

That was compounded by drain on population by the Cyprian Plague that raged through the empire, and which struck military barracks or manpower particularly hard – indeed the capture of Emperor Valerian by the Persians, the first time an emperor was captured by foreign forces, was attributed to his army being laid waste by plague.

The population decline of the empire also compounded its economic instability, characterized by the collapse of its currency and trade.

Through the gaping holes left in the imperial borders poured the empire’s recurring foreign enemies to raid it – further compounding the empire’s economic decline as the empire’s problems became an intense feedback loop as each problem cranked up the others.

Foremost in notoriety as the empire’s recurring enemies were the German barbarian tribes – who had grown in military capability (and relative population) through two centuries of contact with the empire, although they were not yet as capable as they were when they brought about the fall (and mostly replaced those Roman commanders and their legions vying within the empire).

The capabilities of the Germans were increased by forming new tribal coalitions or confederations – particularly the Franks, who raided across the Rhine through Gaul as far as Spain, and the Alemanni, who raided through the Alps into Italy, even threatening the city of Rome itself (the first external threat the city had faced for centuries) and giving Aurelian himself pause, inflicting his only defeat before he rallied to victory against them.

And across the Danube came the Germans who were ultimately to do more than anyone else to bring about the fall of the empire – the Goths, raiding as far as Greece and even Asia Minor because they managed to get themselves a fleet and there’s nothing worse than barbarians with boats.

All these German raiders paled in comparison to the Sassanid Persians – which as I noted was the only state on Rome’s borders that came close to being Rome’s peer – as they raided deep into Rome’s eastern provinces, particularly Syria.

As was typically the case, Rome’s worst enemy was itself as it fractured into three rival empires fighting among themselves. The core empire remained around Italy, fortunately including the Illyrian military heartland of the empire and its breadbasket in north Africa – but it lost its western provinces to the Gallic Empire led by usurpers, and its eastern provinces to the Palmyrene Empire, essentially a client state that had loyally led the defense against the Sassanid Persians but had gone rogue under its queen Zenobia.

Fortunately, along came Aurelian – breathing two centuries of life into the empire before the fall.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention) (8) Peloponnesian War

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Destruction of the Athenian army at Syracuse – illustration from John Steeple Davis, The story of the greatest nations, from the dawn of history to the twentieth century, published 1900 (public domain image used in Wkipedia – “Pelopponesian War”)

 

(8) PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404 BC)

 

Greek against Greek – Athens vs Sparta.

There was a point when I cracked during the film 300. It was when Leonidas spoke about the necessity of Sparta fighting Persia because even “those boy-loving philosophers” in Athens were fighting Persia. “Screw you, Leonidas”, I yelled “the Peloponnesian War isn’t over!” And after the ushers bounced me from the cinema, I ruminated on this slur on the Athenians. There was of course the fact that they were the true Greek heroes of the Persian Wars.

But there was also, you know, the Peloponnesian War of Athens against Sparta (or Peloponnesian Wars, as there was first and second war with a brief peace between them).

And we’re still fighting it, in that the war between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta underlies the grand ideological conflict in Western civilization. Few things may actually have an ideal Platonic form, but Sparta did – Plato’s Republic, with its philosopher-kings or guardians who perceive the Forms of the true reality, trained from childhood to govern in the interests of the polity (by physical and moral regimen) and bound by stricter rules than the rest of the populace.

It has been argued that Plato’s Republic was a dystopian satire rather than a utopian ideal, but it is difficult not to see it intended as the latter – or worse, as Plato’s distaste for his own democratic Athens (which after all, executed his beloved teacher and philosophical mouthpiece Socrates) and idealization of a philosophical version of Athens rival, Sparta, although he and his ideas didn’t do too well when put into practice with attempts at a philosopher-king in Syracuse.

And so we are still fighting the Peloponnesian War against Plato’s mystical fascism or totalitarian Spartanism as it has recurred throughout Western political ideology – the General Will of Rousseau, the dictatorship of the proletariat and its revolutionary vanguard in Marxism or communism, the Fuhrerprinzip of fascism or Nazism, and so on.

Of course, I know this is mostly my projection. I’m not sure if Western political ideology has actually been influenced by Sparta or even Plato and his Republic to that extent (or how much Sparta and Plato influenced each other for that matter). But I’m not the only one to see such parallels and I’m sticking with it – it has a certain mythic resonance. Hence its god-tier special mention entry second to the Trojan War, which might otherwise seem extravagant for a war between Greek city-states.

And what about, you know, the historical Peloponnesian War, you ask? To paraphrase Martin Prince’s sneer from The Simpsons, I’m aware of its work – namely, that Sparta won, with a little help from their Persian friends, albeit to be humbled later by Thebes, before the Macedonians and Romans swept over all the Greek city states.

And that Athenian political ideas didn’t work too well in Syracuse either, with the disastrous Athenian Syracuse Expedition sometimes likened to the American experience in Vietnam, only a lot worse for the ultimate defeat of Athens in their not so cold war against Sparta.

As I said previously, Plato’s ideas – and Plato himself – didn’t fare too well in Syracuse, when he came closest to implementing his Republic and its philosopher-kings in practical reality through Syracuse and its tyrant. Closest that is, as in not at all, founding the time-honored tradition of how intellectuals fare when courting people in power or political tyranny – running afoul of tyrants and narrowly avoiding execution or literal slavery and imprisonment.

Of course, history is a lot messier than our black and white projections of it. Lest we think of the Spartans too much as the bad guys, while their allies wanted Athens destroyed and its population enslaved after its defeat, it was the Spartans with their warrior code of honor who declined to do so – particularly as they regarded that all of Greece owed Athens a debt of honor for its role in the Persian War. And screw you, Thebes and Corinth! I’ve got a letter for the Corinthians and this time there’s no love in it. I’m an Athenian fan.

And for that matter, even the Spartanism or mystical fascism of Plato in my projection may be more nuanced than that, given it has a recurring appeal to or arguments for it. Even I’m a fan of one of the many pop culture versions of Plato’s Republic – Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One. Mega-City One is essentially Plato’s Republic in twenty-second century America, with the Judges as its philosopher-kings or guardians and the Law as its Forms. Judge Dredd – he is the Forms!

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention) (7) Bronze Age Collapse

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Sea Peoples in their ships during battle with the Egyptians – relief from the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu (public domain image – Wikipedia “Late Bronze Age Collapse”and “Sea Peoples”)

 

(7) BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE

 

Styled as World War Zero by some historians.

The Bronze Age Collapse – or more precisely Late Bronze Age Collapse – was the widespread societal collapse of Mediterranean Bronze Age civilization in the 12th century BC, argued to be worse than the collapse of the western Roman Empire or even the worst case of societal collapse in human history.

Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece – the Greeks of the Trojan War – were among the most famous casualties, ushering in the Greek Dark Ages for a few centuries.

However, they are among about a dozen ancient civilizations that collapsed or declined – foremost among them the Hittite Empire that collapsed in Anatolia, while Egypt’s New Kingdom and the Assyrians clung on by the skin of their teeth, in decline or weakened. “Almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again.”

I don’t know much about the finer details of the Bronze Age Collapse, but then neither does anyone else ultimately, as it remains the subject of argument and theory.

However, war is often cited as the main culprit, typically at the hands of the mysterious and to some extent still hypothetical “Sea Peoples”, seaborne raiders to rival the more usual horse blitzkrieg of nomadic herding tribes in civilization-crushing effect.

I certainly think war played a major part, hence this special mention, although am less clear whether it was the cause of the collapse or an effect – with the latter involving the Sea Peoples and others effectively moving into the void left by collapsing civilizations.

Interestingly, the Sea Peoples are proposed to include a number of ethnic groups – one of which is identified as the ancestors of the Philistines faced by the Israelites in the Bible. The Israelites themselves rose in the vaccuum left behind by the retreat or collapse of Hittites, Egyptians and Assyrians – so that the Bible itself has origins in the Bronze Age Collapse, as does that other landmark of western culture, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Apart from Sea Peoples and war, other causes are proposed for the collapse – political fragmentation or rebellion within societies, drought or famine, natural disasters such as earthquakes or volcanic eruption, plagues, and the collapse of trade for manufacture of bronze (or the emergence of iron among adversaries).

Or a combination of all of these – “the civilizations could have endured any one disaster, but not multiple at the same time, especially not when they were feeding into one another”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention) (6) Chinese Revolution & Civil War

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Chairman Mao Zedong proclaiming the People’s Republic of China on 1 October, 1949, colorized (public domain image)

 

(6) CHINESE REVOLUTION & CIVIL WAR (1911-1949)

 

That’s right – it’s the other definitive communist revolution, and arguably the true model of communist revolution or insurgency in the Global South.

The fourth of the four revolutions I rank as the god-tier revolutions of history and include in my special mentions for my top ten wars from sheer scale and impact – but also in this case as it was more civil war than revolution.

It naturally follows on from my special mention for the Russian Revolution and Civil War, not least because of the role Soviet assistance played in it but also because it replayed many of the same beats, albeit over a much more protracted period – in at least two phases, or three if you count the initial warlord period.

Of course, the original Chinese Revolution – of which both the two largest warring parties in the civil war, the Communists and the Nationalists or Kuomingtang (KMT) saw themselves as the true successors – the one led by Sun Yat-sen (or Sun Yuxian) that overthrew the Qing dynasty as China’s last imperial dynasty, was in 1911-1912 and hence preceded the Russian Revolution in 1917.

However, as was often the case with the collapse of central state authority in China (or the mandate of heaven), it devolved into the usual competing warlords or warring states from 1916-1927 – in an exotic multi-party battle royale that might be compared to the Russian Civil War at the height of all its chaotic glory.

It even had foreign intervention, albeit on a smaller scale than the Russian Civil War. The Soviets assisted the main warring party, the Nationalists seeking to reunify China under their Republic, as the Soviets saw them as the necessary prelude to socialism. Intriguingly, the Germans also assisted the Nationalists – and more intriguingly, that assistance continued from the warlord period to the first genuine phase of the Chinese Civil War, by both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany.

It is intriguing to ponder how world history might have turned out if Nazi Germany had continued to support Nationalist China, but they swapped to the foreign power that ominously loomed over China to exploit its weakness and ultimately was the one to intervene most decisively of all – Japan.

The warlord period is generally considered to have transitioned to the first phase of the Chinese Civil War proper from 1927 “when Chiang Kai-shek led the Socialist-Nationalist two thirds of the KMT’s military forces against Wang Jingwei’s Socialist-Communist/Internationalist third…the first time in the Republic’s history that two organisations with sufficient bases of popular support and military-economic power to potentially unify the country had fought one another”.

Wang Jingwei was subsequently eclipsed by the new Chinese communist leader who became virtually synonymous with the Chinese Civil War and for whom Chinese communist ideology was named – Mao.

However, the Chinese communists did not do too well in this first phase, with effective control of less than a twentieth of the population (compared to the third controlled by Chiang’s Nationalists) and were on the brink of complete extinction. “Their doom was, historians agree, imminent and inevitable” – until they were effectively saved by the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937.

The Japanese had already indirectly given the Chinese communists some much needed reprieve with their invasion of Manchuria in 1931. In an episode which also showed that some of the warlord period chaos lived on in the Nationalists, the Xian Incident, two of Chiang’s generals kidnapped him to force him to form a united front with the communists against the Japanese.

Chiang subsequently reneged on the united front with renewed hostilities against the communists but the Sino-Japanese War from 1937 forced his hand again to put those hostilities on hold for a second united front against Japan, even if both he and the communists increasingly paid lip service to it in preference to the inevitable renewal of civil war against each other.

Despite the united front, Chiang’s Nationalists bore the brunt of Japan’s war in China, which arguably dealt them their mortal wound in China’s civil war. In 1944, Japan launched its last major offensive, Operation Ichi-go – the last successful offensive by it or any Axis power towards the end of the Second World War and yet largely unknown outside specialist historians – which severely weakened Chiang’s forces (as well as an economy increasingly ravaged by hyper-inflation). In general, “the demands of fighting the war essentially destroyed the KMT’s capacity to function as an administration”.

The civil war resumed “as soon as it became apparent that Japanese defeat was imminent” (at the hands of the Americans) “with the communists gaining the upper hand in the second phase of the war from 1945 to 1949, generally referred to as the Chinese Communist Revolution”.

This again saw foreign intervention along predictable Cold War lines – the Soviets on the side of the Communists and the Americans on the side of the Nationalists.

The Americans were notoriously cautious in their intervention – subsequently giving rise to accusations of “losing” China and communist infiltration of the American government. What is interesting is that the Soviets were equally cautious in their own intervention, perhaps from Stalin’s intuition that a united communist China would be their rival in the long term. Hence the Soviets consistently urged restraint on Mao to accept the north-south partition that was all the vogue in Cold War Asia – between a Communist north and a Nationalist south.

Mao ignored this and the Communists gained control of mainland China anyway, proclaiming the People’s Republic of China. However, the Communists ultimately had to accept a residual partition of a different kind with the Nationalists retreating to the island of Taiwan to proclaim their Republic of China there, as the Communists had no means to pursue them – particularly after the US gave their naval support to Taiwan. That partition of course continued even until today, remaining as a source of tension with no armistice or treaty signed between them.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention) (5) Russian Revolution & Civil War

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Montage of photos made during the Russian Civil War – from Wikipedia “Russian Civil War” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

(5) RUSSIAN REVOLUTION & CIVIL WAR (1917-1922)

 

That’s right – it’s the communist revolution, as in THE communist revolution. The origin or archetype of all subsequent communist revolutions, which in turn have made the word revolution itself virtually synonymous in modern history with communist revolution.

“Civilization is being completely extinguished over gigantic areas, while Bolsheviks hop and caper like troops of ferocious baboons amid the ruins of cities and corpses of their victims.”

I’ve included the two great eighteenth century revolutions or revolutionary wars – the wars of the American Revolution and the French Revolution – in my god-tier special mentions as wars that made the modern world.

However, they are only two of the four revolutions I rank as the god-tier revolutions of history pursuant to adding the two definitive twentieth century revolutions. I was going to reserve the latter two revolutions for my top ten revolutions but consider that they simply have too great a scale and impact, particularly in the fascinatingly convoluted civil wars fought because of them, to omit from special mentions for my top ten wars.

So following on from my special mentions for the American and French Revolutions, this is my special mention for the third of my four great revolutions or revolutionary wars – the Russian Revolution and Civil War, evolving from and overlapping with the Eastern Front of the First World War.

Whereas the American Revolution and French Revolution had been the vanguard of modern liberalism and nationalism, the Russian Revolution was the vanguard of modern Marxist socialism – literally in the ideology of its chief revolutionary Lenin, for which its strand of socialism came to be named as Marxist-Leninism.

Or in other words, communism, although technically communism was its professed theoretical end state – or rather, end-statelessness, since Marxism proclaimed its ‘temporary’ authoritarian state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, would wither away.

However, the Marxist authoritarian state proved much more durable than Marx had anticipated, particularly the new communist government or Soviet Union that emerged from the Russian Revolution and Civil War.

It also proved to provoke much more fervor, both for and against it, in a manner similar to Marx’s opiate of the masses, religion. I sometimes like to quip about the four great evangelizing or missionary religions in history – Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Marxist-Leninism. And of the other three, the Bolshevik revolutionaries in the Russian Revolution and Civil War most closely resembled the militancy of Islam – as observed by Paul Johnson, although Johnson also thought Lenin even closer to Jean Calvin, “with his belief in organizational structure, his ability to create one and then dominate it utterly, his puritanism, his passionate self-righteousness, and above all his intolerance”.

It tends to be forgotten that there were in fact two revolutions in the Russian Revolution, resulting in one of my pet peeves of history with the popular misconception that the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian monarchy of the Tsar.

They did not. The first revolution or February Revolution did, instituting the new Provisional Government in the style of a parliamentary republic and closer to the liberalism or nationalism of the American and French Revolutions.

What the Bolsheviks overthrew, in the second revolution or October Revolution that is generally remembered as the Russian Revolution, was the first revolution’s Provisional Government – capitalizing (heh) on that Government’s single biggest weakness, the continuation of Russia’s war effort in the First World War.

Surprisingly, the Bolsheviks did this by mostly bloodless coup – at least at the outset. The resistance to their revolution and their reaction to that resistance proved very bloody indeed. The new Bolshevik regime, which ultimately became the Soviet Union, pulled out of the world war but fought a far-flung civil war on an even larger scale. It always seemed to me ironic that Russian war-weariness from the casualties of the First World War played such a large part in the revolution led by the Bolsheviks, only for the Bolsheviks to fight a civil war which involved even more casualties in the former Russian empire than the First World War.

And it’s that civil war which is particularly fascinating, albeit incredibly convoluted, as far removed from the more straightforward civil wars fought (at least largely) between two opposing sides. Instead, the Russian Civil War was what Wikipedia describes as a “multi-party civil war” and what I would describe as an all-out battle royale or pile-up.

Sure, there were the two largest combatants – the Bolsheviks or Reds, and the so-called Whites, “the loosely allied forces” in opposition to the Bolsheviks. Beyond the opposing Red and White Armies, there were the Blacks or anarchist forces, particularly those led by Makhno in Ukraine, and the non-ideological Greens or nationalist forces. Not to mention a Blue Army in there somewhere, rival militant socialists, village peasant factions, Baltic and Caucasian nationalist separatists, Poland, and more.

And beyond them were the foreign forces – the Allies intervening for the Whites or against the Red Army, “whose primary goal was re-establishing the Eastern Front of World War 1” and the Central Powers, chiefly Germany, intervening for the Reds or “rivalling the Allied intervention with the main goal of retaining the territory they had received in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Soviet Russia”.

While the Allied intervention extended to a dozen or more nations depending on how you reckon them, it is another one of my pet peeves of history when people, usually left wing, bring this up as an indictment of capitalist states going all-out attempting to crush “the revolution”. While the Allies no doubt hoped to reopen the Eastern Front and therefore opposed the Reds, they were even less united than the Whites they ostensibly supported, and with a few notable exceptions never committed forces on any decisive scale – mostly more in the nature of a few guys as advisors or sitting around docks to protect them or the materiel they had shipped to their former Russian ally.

Ultimately the Bolsheviks or Reds won against all other combatants, among other things from their greater unity and fanatical purpose, as well as a greater ability to make promises and break them later – particularly the longstanding ability of communists to stab anarchists in the back. “Some historians have determined that the Black Army saved the entire war from the Whites at several points…However, they were betrayed three separate times by the Bolsheviks and defeated finally when they could turn their full force onto them”

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Roman Empires (Special Mentions – Complete)

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Apotheosis of Empire by Hermann Wislicenus – fresco in the German Imperial palace of Goslar in 1880 (public domain image)

 

But wait – there’s more Roman Empires!

That’s right – we haven’t come close to the bottom of our Roman Empire iceberg, as we follow the iceberg all the way down through wilder and more esoteric claimants to the succession of the Roman Empire.

As my usual rule, I have twenty special mentions for each top ten – and to my surprise, I was able to compile twenty special mentions for my Top 10 Roman Empires, as there was no shortage of claimants for succession to the Roman Empire. That is, there’s no shortage of polities or states claiming succession from the Roman Empire as a whole or from one of its western or eastern halves.

I might even have squeezed out some more – or at least a couple more, with the short-lived state of Dalmatia held by the surviving former emperor Julius Nepos until 480 AD, or the Despotate of the Morea holding out in revolt against the Ottomans until 1460.

“The continuation, succession, and revival of the Roman Empire is a running theme of the history of Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. It reflects the lasting memories of power and prestige associated with the Roman Empire. Several polities have claimed immediate continuity with the Roman Empire, using its name or a variation thereof as their own exclusive or non-exclusive self-description. As centuries went by and more political ruptures occurred, the idea of institutional continuity became increasingly debatable”.

As the above quote indicates, the claimants to the succession of the Roman Empire reflected in my special mentions become increasingly tenuous, to the point of metaphor at best and delusions of grandeur at worst.

However, there are some exceptions to the general rule – my first god-tier special mention is very much an exception to the other claimants to succession from the Roman Empire albeit still involving a line of succession with the empire, while my second god-tier special mention does involve a line of succession from the empire but in a unique sense.

My next top-tier three special mentions are for “the most enduring and significant claimants of continuation of the Roman Empire”.

My high-tier special mentions may not be as “enduring and significant” but at least could made their claims from a position of having control or possession of either Rome or Constantinople – or close enough for the purposes of the ranking.

And the balance of special mentions is where things get wild – as tends to be the case in my special mentions where I have some fun with the subject category and splash out with some wilder entries – hence their consistent wild-tier ratings.

 

 

The Roman Republic and its provinces on the eve of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC – by TheDastanMR for Wikipedia “Roman Republic” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

(1) ROMAN REPUBLIC (509 BC – 27 BC)

 

Some might argue for this as the real Roman Empire or true Pax Romana – the Roman Republic as imperial republic, a recurring political model with surprising frequency in Western history.

Certainly, when many people think of the Romans, they are thinking of the Romans of the Republic rather than the Romans of the Empire.

As I said for the eastern Roman Empire, there seem to be two recurring arguments among Roman history enthusiasts – whether one ranks the Roman Republic over the Roman Empire, and whether one ranks the Byzantine Empire over the Roman Empire.

While the Roman Republic predates the formal institutions of empire founded by Augustus, it essentially laid almost all the foundations for the subsequent empire, not least in its Mediterranean supremacy and imperial core territory. And perhaps even more so in the values or virtues, martial or otherwise, fostered by the Republic in its citizens and institutions – such that it might be (and has been) argued that the further one gets into its history, the more the Empire is running on fumes from the Republic.

The Republic also saw some of the most definitive events and figures of Roman history – not least Julius Caesar, who lent his name to the title of emperor and is perhaps the figure most identified with the Empire, although it was his heir Augustus who actually founded the empire in the wake of Caesar’s assassination. Like a good car salesman, Augustus just slapped the formal institutions of empire on the pretense of authority of the Republic or Senate, and said this baby can fit a millennium and a half in it.

Obviously, it is the one exception to my special mentions as successors to the Roman Empire – but not from the line of succession itself, except that for the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire claimed succession from it rather than the other way around.

And while we’re on the subject of line of succession, I can’t give special mention to the Roman Republic without a shout-out to the Republic’s legendary predecessor, the Roman Kingdom.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

(2) ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH / VATICAN CITY

 

The most enduring successor of the Roman Empire, indeed the one which can “actually trace its origin to the Roman era” and endures to the present day – inheriting the capitol, the pontifex and the imperial language of Latin, as well as many of the trappings and much of the mystique of the western empire.

It’s a successor in a somewhat unique sense. It was not a direct political successor or successor in terms of the military institutions of empire – as it lacked the latter other than those it could enlist from leaders or states owing it allegiance – but instead, dare I say it, a spiritual successor.

I gave it away with that reference to leaders or states owing it allegiance – it was the surviving institution from the western empire most retaining allegiance, or cultural and moral authority or legitimacy, reinforced by its effective monopoly status as ‘international’ institution transcending tribes or kingdoms, reflected in the catholic part of its name, connoting universality

Indeed, it had started to eclipse the empire in moral authority even prior to the fall of the western empire, best demonstrated by Pope Leo I as imperial envoy to Attila the Hun to persuade him to turn back after his invasion Italy and not sack Rome, armed with little else other than moral authority – which by some miracle worked, with Attila withdrawing from Italy, never to return to the empire (and dying shortly afterwards, possibly from papal mojo).

For much of its history, the Church was somewhat broader than the present Roman Catholic Church, including as the Orthodox Church in the eastern empire – but ironically the Orthodox Church remained in the shadow of the eastern imperial government, while the Roman Catholic Church emerged as the shadow empire because of the very absence of any political state to rival it in reach after the fall of the western empire

Of course, the Church was able to convert (heh) its moral authority to claims for political succession of the Roman Empire, becoming effectively the ’empire-maker’ (or more precisely emperor-crowner) – not for itself, except in so far as it was able to secure control of Rome and other Italian territory as the Papal States, but for my next special mention.

On the subject of the Papal States, they too have endured to the present day, albeit very much in residual or substituted form as the state of Vatican City in its enclave within Rome, the smallest nation in the world.

The continuation of the empire in the Church tends to be one of bases for the argument that “the empire never ended” – albeit usually in a trippy way, as in the works of SF writer P.K. Dick.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER – WHAT ELSE?)

 

 

Map of the Carolingian in 814 AD – Wikipedia “Holy Roman Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

(3) HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE (800 / 962-1806)

 

It may be most remembered today by Voltaire’s famous quip – neither holy nor Roman nor an empire – but it remains the most enduring and significant claimant to the continuation or succession of the western Roman empire, hence ranking in my top tier of special mentions.

Of course, that claim does feel somewhat like Pope Leo III pulling a fast one on the eastern Roman Empire, opportunistically using a woman on the eastern imperial throne – the horror! – to effectively claim Empress Irene as a nullity and crown Charlemagne as Roman emperor, in Rome no less, over three centuries after the last western Roman emperor. Charlemagne’s realm henceforth was styled simply as the Roman Empire – the holy part of its title came a few centuries later or so.

In fairness, the claim to Roman emperor or empire had some force to it under Charlemagne. After all, he had achieved the largest unified polity in western Europe since the Roman Empire, including a substantial part of the former territory of the western Roman empire, effectively including Rome itself – although his father Pepin had donated that to the papacy in what would become the Papal States. Possession of one of the two Romes – the original first Rome or the ‘second Rome’ of Constantinople – is my foremost criteria for ranking special mentions above my wild tier of claimants to succession from the Roman Empire.

Historians tend to identify the empire of Charlemagne as the Frankish or Carolingian Empire, as distinct from the Holy Roman Empire proper. Charlemagne’s empire was divided between his sons. From that division, Germany emerged as a separate realm from the Frankish Empire, largely originating from the eastern Frankish empire, and it was from Germany that the Holy Roman Empire truly arose, with Otto I as the first Holy Roman Emperor in 962, even if that cuts down the so-called thousand year Reich (from Charlemagne’s coronation in 800) to a mere 844 years.

Again, the claim to Roman empire had some force to it under Otto and his successors, even if it oscillated between that idea as reflected in its title as Roman Empire and the reality as reflected in its title as Empire or Kingdom of the Germans. The actual term Holy Roman Empire began to be used only during the reign of Friedrich or Frederick Barbarossa two centuries and two dynasties later, under whom the claim also had some teeth to it (as well as transforming him into a legendary figure) and continued to do so until his grandson Friedrich II, who attempted to run an Italian-German empire from Sicily.

From there however the empire and its claim to succession from Rome devolved into the sorry state reflected by Voltaire’s quip – or that of Marx, that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce – until Napoleon Bonaparte did away with the whole dog’s breakfast of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. Hence 1806 is occasionally proposed as a date for the fall of the Roman Empire, albeit often with tongue in cheek.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

Map of Ottoman Empire in 1683 by Chamboz for Wikipedia “Ottoman Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

 

(4) OTTOMAN EMPIRE (1453-1922)

 

“Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople

Been a long time gone, Constantinople”

 

The first of the two most enduring and significant claimants of continuation of the eastern Roman Empire – and the one which had the force of right of conquest to it, something the Byzantines themselves might have recognized as part of their own imperial doctrine, as well as substantially overlapping with the territory of the eastern Roman empire at its height under Justinian the Great.

It also had my foremost criteria for a top-tier or at least high-tier claimant to succession from the Roman Empire – possession of one of the two Romes, Rome or Constantinople, once Constantinople fell to Ottoman conquest in 1453.

“After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II declared himself Roman Emperor: Kayser-i Rum, literally “Caesar of the Romans”, the standard title for earlier Byzantine Emperors in Arab, Persian and Turkish lands… Mehmed’s claim rested principally with the idea that Constantinople was the rightful seat of the Roman Empire, as it had been for more than a millennium”.

Indeed, Mehmed apparently took a swing at the first and original Rome itself, emulating Justinian the Great and “reuniting the Empire in a way it hadn’t been for nearly eight centuries” – starting a campaign in Italy with the invasion of Otranto in 1480 but which was cut short by his death in 1481. His successors didn’t follow up on that but instead ” repeatedly (albeit never successfully) attempted to conquer the capital of the rival contenders to the Imperial Roman title” with their sieges of Vienna. Those rival contenders of course being the Habsburgs as claimants for the Holy Roman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire also had the “additional though questionable claim of legitimacy” from past alliances between the Ottoman dynasty and the Byzantines through marriage.

Hence one of the dates proposed on occasion (albeit also often tongue in cheek) for the fall of the Roman Empire is 1922, the end of the Ottoman Empire.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

(5) RUSSIAN EMPIRE (1472-1917)

 

The second of the two most enduring and significant claimants of continuation of the eastern Roman Empire – and the one which managed to pull it off without conquest or even any of the same territory of the former empire (except for the most far flung parts at its greatest extent in the Crimea and the Caucasus).

Indeed, it didn’t even have my foremost criteria for top-tier or high-tier claimant to succession from the Roman Empire by having either Rome or Constantinople, instead breezily styling Moscow as the third Rome – a lesson in audacity for any claimant as heir to the Roman Empire. Just style your capital as the fourth Rome. What next? London? Tokyo? Canberra, seat of the Tsar of all the Australias?

In fairness, the Russian Empire did set its sights on Constantinople in its foreign policy – and more to the point, did have a tenuous claim to dynastic succession from the eastern Roman Empire. “Ivan III of Russia in 1472 married Sophia (Zoé) Palaiologina, a niece of the last Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI” and styled himself Tsar, adapted from Caesar. It also claimed a more abstract succession as the new Orthodox empire, champion of that religious denomination elsewhere.

So now we can add another date to those proposed for the fall of the Roman Empire – 1917, when the last ‘Roman’ emperor fell to the ultimate plebeian revolt in the Russian Revolution.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

Map of the Kingdom of Odoacer in the year 476 following the usurpation of Emperor Romulus Augustus and Odoacer’s declaration as “Rex Italiae” by Shuaaa2 for Wikipedia “Odoacer” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

(6) KINGDOM OF ITALY (476-493 AD)

 

The immediate successor to the western Roman Empire in Italy and neighboring territory in the Balkans, commencing as it did with its Germanic ruler Odoacer deposing the last western Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD, the date traditionally seen as marking the end of the western Roman Empire.

It therefore ranks as a high tier claimant to the succession of the Roman Empire, not only for its immediate continuity with the western Roman empire but also for my foremost criteria of possession of Rome, as well as the actual imperial capital at the time, Ravenna.

Odoacer did not purport to have any imperial authority beyond his kingdom and indeed expressly represented himself as the client of the eastern Roman emperor Zeno, ruling his kingdom on behalf of the eastern empire under the title of duke of Italy (dux Italiae) bestowed on him by Zeno. To that end he sent back to Zeno the imperial regalia of Romulus Augustulus.

And really it seemed like business as usual for the Romans in Italy. Odoacer simply abandoned the pretense of the succession of puppet emperors to German leaders. Romulus Augustulus was himself a child emperor, little more than a frightened figurehead for his father, possibly much relieved at avoiding the hot seat of the western imperial throne – and apart from deposing him, Odoacer left him to peaceful retirement.

Odoacer also left the Roman Church alone, despite being of the Arian Christian faith pronounced to be heresy by the Church. In addition, he ruled with the loyal support of the Roman Senate in Ravenna – in part probably because the Senate no longer had to contend with their own emperor.

Indeed, while the former empire west of Italy went its own way, Roman Italy itself doesn’t seem too distinct for the next couple of centuries or so from internal strife within the former empire – except instead of Roman generals contending with each other, it was barbarian German warlords contending with each other, or with Roman generals from the eastern empire after its resurgence under Justinian.

Odoacer’s reign of almost seventeen years was relatively peaceful when compared to other periods of Roman internal strife in Italy – until it wasn’t, which brings me to my next special mention entry…

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

 

(7) OSTROGOTHIC KINGDOM (493 – 553 AD)

 

The immediate successor to Odoacer’s Kingdom of Italy in my previous special mention – the Ostrogoths led by Theodoric the Great took over the kingdom after killing and replacing Odoacer. The kingdom itself carried on much the same as before, including in territory – it’s the same picture as one might observe of maps of the two kingdoms.

That understates the brilliant ploy of the eastern Roman Emperor Zeno that lay behind it – a classic illustration of winning without fighting by having others do your fighting for you. In this case, having the Ostrogoths fight Odoacer.

The Ostrogoths had settled within the eastern empire in the usual manner of German allies or foederati – except that they retained more independence than the Romans preferred. If anything, the eastern empire was at some risk of becoming an Ostrogothic colony – with large numbers of Goths entering service in the Roman army, as well as comprising “a significant political and military power in the court of Constantinople”.

“The thought occurred to Zeno and his advisors to direct Theodoric against another troublesome neighbour of the Empire – the Italian kingdom of Odoacer”

That suited everyone at the time, except of course Odoacer – who despite being Zeno’s nominal viceroy in Italy, was menacing eastern Roman territory (among other things), although not any more once Theodoric was done with him.

Theodoric the Great assumed a similar position to Odoacer, nominally a subject of the eastern Roman emperor and ruling from Ravenna as their viceroy in Italy. “In reality, he acted as an independent ruler, although unlike Odoacer, he meticulously preserved the outward forms of his subordinate position”. An Ostrogothic Augustus, one might say – similarly appeasing the eastern roman empire as Augustus did the Senate by keeping up appearances of their rule. Speaking of the Senate, they continued to function mostly as before, as did the Roman administration, law, church and elite.

I have a soft spot for the Ostrogothic Kingdom ever since their starring role in L. Sprague de Camp’s SF novella, Lest Darkness Fall, in which the time travelling protagonist finds himself stranded there and seeks to stave off the pending Dark Ages.

We are accustomed to thinking of the Dark Ages kicking in with the fall of the western Roman Empire, but that is arguably premature of us, at least in Italy – with Roman Italy carrying on much as before until the destruction of the Ostrogothic Kingdom by the Byzantines in the Gothic Wars, which truly turned Italy into the Dark Age wasteland we see in our mind’s eye.

The Gothic Wars came about for Theodoric’s successors, when the Ostrogothic Kingdom’s relations with the eastern empire – always somewhat strained, even under Theodoric – finally ruptured into war and the eastern empire under Justinian the Great sought to reclaim the western half of the empire, a war fought for about two decades and that led to my next special mention entry…

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

Exarchate of Italy 600 AD – map by Shuaaa2 for Wikipedia “Exarchate of Ravenna” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

 

 

(8) EXARCHATE OF RAVENNA (584 – 751 AD)

 

Yes – this special mention entry is literally the Roman empire rather than some separate entity, as it’s the province of the eastern Roman Empire after their reconquest of Italy. However, the exarchate of Ravenna (also called the exarchate of Italy) seems sufficiently distinct – as well as tenuous, albeit enduring for two centuries – for its own special mention, as well as a segue between my previous special mention and the next one. Also in fairness, it does meet my foremost criteria for high-tier special mention by actually having Rome in it.

The exarchate of Ravenna emerged from the Gothic War, a slogging match for almost two decades from 535 and 554 between the eastern Roman Empire and the Ostrogothic Kingdom, in which the Romans found themselves the victors of a proverbial Pyrrhic victory in Italy.

Sure – they defeated the Ostrogothic Kingdom and recaptured Italy after fighting off yet more invasions by the Franks and Alemanni, but an Italy devastated and depopulated by war, and worse, with the eastern Roman Empire so exhausted that they found themselves incapable of resisting an invasion by the Lombards, yet another German invader.

So the exarchate of Ravenna, founded in 584 AD, was tenuous from its very inception – presiding over territory snaking across central Italy to Rome itself and mostly clinging to the coastal cities and southern parts of Italy, as the Lombards were ensconced in the hinterland of the peninsula. (The eastern Roman imperial territory in the Italian islands – Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica – was separately governed).

And it was also tenuous in presiding over increasingly fractious and fragmented territories, nominally subject to the exarch in Ravenna as the representative of the emperor in Constantinople, but in reality asserting their own sovereignty even before being swallowed up by the ever-encroaching Lombards (until the Lombards in turn were swallowed up by the Franks in the Carolingian Empire, the origin of the Holy Roman Empire).

The exarchate crumbled away, with the last exarch in Ravenna killed by the Lombards in 751. As for Rome itself, it had been administered as the Duchy of Rome within the Exarchate, but the Duchy was increasingly supplanted by the papacy, culminating with the papal states under the patronage of the Carolingian or Holy Roman Empires.

However, the eastern Roman empire retained territory in southern Italy that was reorganized as the Catapanate of Italy, which endured in dwindling form until conquered by the Normans in 1071, finally extinguishing five centuries of the eastern Roman empire in Italy.

So there’s yet two more tongue-in-cheek dates for the fall of the Roman Empire – 751 and 1071. And the Exarchate of Ravenna did lead in a way to my next special mention entry.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

The Republic of Venice with its Domini de Terraferma and Stato da Mar – its main territories in Italy and overseas by Ariel196 for Wikipedia “Venice” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

(9) VENETIAN REPUBLIC (697 – 1797 AD)

 

Venice may have laid its claim as an assassin using the Fourth Crusade as its weapon, but it did lay claim to be “lord of a fourth part and a half of the whole Empire of Romania” – or three eighths of the eastern Roman Empire – after Constantinople fell to the Crusade in 1204 AD, extending to a significant part of the occupation of Constantinople itself and hence my primary criterion for high-tier ranking.

Venice had a weird love-hate symbiotic-parasitic relationship with the eastern Roman Empire – evolving from an imperial province and vassal in the empire’s reconquest of Italy, to ally and close associate of the empire effectively as its navy and trading house, and ultimately to rival and perfidious adversary in the Fourth Crusade.

In some ways, that symbiosis involved Venice as almost the inversion of Constantinople – the heart of a mercantile empire which waxed and rose, sucking from the blood of the latter as it waned and fell. Although ironically, Venice found its fortune to be little more symbiotic with Constantinople than it would have liked after all – declining as it faced the Ottoman Empire more directly once the Ottomans captured Constantinople, and not coincidentally, the decline of Mediterranean trade relative to the Atlantic, although it endured until 1797 when it finally fell in the face to the French under Napoleon.

Venice was also somewhat antagonistic to Rome – even as it resembled the latter’s classical republic, down to it also being an imperial republic, albeit more in the classical Greek model of a maritime colonial empire with a focus on its naval power and trade. Of course, the world had moved on from when a single city state could dominate first the Italian peninsula and then the whole Mediterranean like the Romans did – although Venice did punch remarkably above its weight, going toe-to-toe with the Ottoman Empire for four centuries or so of Ottoman-Venetian wars.

Venice is reputed to have been settled by refugees from the Huns and Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire seeking the safety of its islands. It was founded as the Duchy of Venetia within the eastern Roman Empire’s Exarchate of Ravenna – its leader’s title of Doge originating from the Latin for dux (or duke) as an imperial provincial title. It became increasingly independent as the Exarchate of Ravenna crumbled, until effectively achieving de facto independence because of an agreement between the Holy Roman Empire and the eastern Roman Empire.

Venice remained nominally subservient to the eastern Roman Empire but abandoned even that over the next century. However, it remained closely associated with Constantinople, by way of trade and as an ally – essentially gaining exclusive privileges in the former in exchange for the use of its navy in the latter, firstly against the Normans in Italy and then against the Turks. Significantly, Venice acknowledged its homage to the empire against the Normans, but not subsequently against the Turks – reflecting the decline of the eastern Roman empire and the rise of Venice.

The rise of Venice (and its role as creditor to the empire) ultimately saw it become the empire’s rival and adversary, which bore bitter fruit when Venice played that instrumental role pulling the strings of the Fourth Crusade to divert it to capture Constantinople instead, leading to my next special mention entry…

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

 

The Latin Empire and eastern Roman successor states after the Fourth Crusade by LatinEmpire for Wikipedia “Empire of Nicaea” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 

(10) LATIN EMPIRE (1204 – 1261 AD)

 

Probably the most ignominious of my high tier successors to the Roman Empire – the state established by the Fourth Crusaders after conquering Constantinople in 1204 – but it did occupy Constantinople after all, hence qualifying for my foremost criterion for high-tier ranking, the occupation of either that city or Rome itself. Also hence why 1204 is yet another date proposed for the fall of the Roman Empire.

It was certainly one of the more precarious. Nominally, according to the treaty or treaties among the Crusaders to partition the eastern Roman Empire among themselves, it was awarded direct control of a quarter of the former empire, with its vassals receiving a further three eighths – and the balance of three eighths going to Venice.

In reality, the Latin Empire was just another Crusader state – or more precisely Crusader states – in which the Crusaders never controlled most of the former empire, as three successor states of the empire arose to challenge it, with the most substantial, the Empire of Nicaea, recapturing Constantinople and reviving the former empire in 1261.

The Latin Empire consisted of not much than Constantinople itself, with only the neighboring territory on either side – although it had various vassal states through most of Greece and the Greek islands. Its vassal states actually did better and endured longer than the Latin Empire itself, which fell when Constantinople was recaptured – although the Latin imperial line persisted in exile for a century or so afterwards.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

Map of First Bulgarian Empire (in German!) under Simeon I in 927 AD (public domain image)

 

(11) BULGARIAN EMPIRE (913-927 AD)

 

The Bulgarian Empire – one of my two high-tier special mention entries that stopped well short of occupying Constantinople but came close enough to earn high tier ranking, wiping the Byzantines out of most of their Balkan territory.

That’s the First Bulgarian Empire and those dates are not the dates of that empire itself, which endured for about three and a half centuries, but the dates of its imperial claim (and height of its power) under its ruler Simeon the Great, when he took a swing at crowning himself emperor, conquering Constantinople and creating a joint Bulgarian-Roman state.

Well, one out of three ain’t bad, as Simeon was crowned “Emperor and Autocrat of all Bulgarians and Romans” by the Patriarch of Constantinople and the imperial regent – particularly when it set the trend for rulers styling themselves with the title of a Roman emperor, down to the usage of the Bulgarian word tsar standing in for Caesar.

As for the other two, what Simeon got was the bitter Byzantine-Bulgarian War from 913 to 927, with Simeon’s imperial claim ending with his death in 927, although the Byzantines had managed to backpedal it to basileus, effectively a sub-emperor position as “Emperor of the Bulgarians” – which continued to Simeon’s successor and was bolstered by dynastic marriage.

So how did that work out for you, First Bulgarian Empire? Not too well – once Emperor Basil II, henceforth known as the Bulgar Slayer, switched it around completely to conquer the Bulgarian Empire, creating that joint Bulgarian-Roman state after all.

The Bulgars didn’t go anywhere but ultimately struck back (after regaining independence) with the Second Bulgarian Empire from 1185 to 1396 – which strutted around calling its capital as the successor to both Rome and Constantinople, pre-empting Russia’s Third Rome.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

 

Map of the Sultanate of Rum by Swordrist – Wikipedia “Sultanate of Rum” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

(12) SULTANATE OF RUM (1077-1308 AD)

 

Sadly that’s not a sultanate of the liquor in the style of Wallace Stevens’ poem The Emperor of Ice Cream – the Rum in this case is the Turkish word synonymous with the eastern Roman Empire and its peoples.

Its claim for the eastern Roman Empire was, like the Ottomans after them, one of conquest, albeit stopping well short of Constantinople itself or the complete defeat of the empire – but close enough for high-tier ranking, the second of two such special mention entries after the Bulgarian Empire. Their conquest was of the empire in most of the Anatolian peninsula, after the empire’s (in)famous defeat by the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.

The Sultanate was a breakaway state that seceded from the Great Seljuk Empire in 1077, ironically only six years after Manzikert. They succeeded in secession – reaching the height of their power in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, but weakened by the Crusades, succumbed to the Mongols in 1243 and finally leaving behind many smaller states, one of which emerged as the Ottoman dynasty, which truly fulfilled the Sultanate’s dream of claiming itself to be the successor to the Romans.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

 

 

 

(13) SERBIAN EMPIRE (1346-1371 AD)

 

Okay, this empire and its claim to the Roman Empire came down to the man who made both, the Serbian emperor (Stefan) Dusan the Mighty. He was succeeded by his son Usok the Weak, but you can guess how well it all went after that by comparing their two epithets.

Dusan proclaimed himself Emperor – once again Tsar from Caesar – not only of the Serbs but of the Greeks or Romans as well, a title signifying a claim to the succession of the Byzantine Empire, then in the last century or so of its existence.

In fairness, he did put his money where his mouth was, having “expanded his state to cover half of the Balkans, more territory than either the Byzantine Empire or the Second Bulgarian Empire in that time” – including substantial territory conquered from the former in Greece.

Like the Bulgarian Empire or the Sultanate of Rum, it did not achieve my foremost high-tier ranking criterion of occupying Constantinople, but came close enough in the conquests for its claim to rank in high tier. And also like them, at least it staked its claim while the empire was still alive, albeit in its last century or so of life – ranking it above my wild-tier special mention entries who staked their claim to the empire’s corpse in the West…

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

 

Coat of Arms of Charles I of Spain – reproduced by Heralder for Wikipedia “Succession of the Roman Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 

 

(14) SPAIN?

 

Hola, Caesar! Or is that ole, Caesar!

Here we are, starting my wild tier successors to Rome, those states that tenuously staked their claims more to the myth or metaphor of Rome in nationalist terms rather than any continuity with the Empire. We’re at the bottom of the Roman succession iceberg here, people.

Of these wild and tenuous claims, I was surprised to find Spain has the most depth to theirs, arguably making it the least wild and tenuous of these wild tier claims (or higher up the iceberg). Don’t worry – we’ll get increasingly wild and tenuous as we go.

If nothing else, at least Spain gave us the term Latin as a substantial label for ethnicity – as well as for geography with Latin America, claiming one continent and a large part of another.

Firstly, there was its loose dynastic claim of succession, starting with Spain’s succession from the Visigothic monarchy as heirs or successors to the Roman Empire in Spain. Subsequent Spanish monarchs apparently used the title Imperator totius Hispaniae to assert equality with the eastern and Holy Roman Empires.

Those claims of succession became a little more concrete firstly when “the last titular holder heir to the rank of Eastern Roman emperor, Andreas Palaiologos” purported to bequeath what he saw as his imperial title and domains in Greece, themselves pretty tenuous claims on his part (particularly as he’d already purported to sell them to another special mention entry), to the ‘Catholic Monarchs’ of the now unified Spain, Ferdinand II and Isabella I, by his will written in 1502.

It gets a lot messier than that – with dynastic claims to the Crusader vassal states to the Latin Empire in Greece and the Spanish crown’s territories in Italy thrown in to the mix. Preempting something of a recurring meme in history, Andreas apparently had grandiose dreams of a Spanish crown crusade from its territories in Italy to reconquer the imperial claims in Greece and ultimately Constantinople itself. Sadly however, the Spanish monarchy ignored “its Byzantine imperial titles”, although it did gain the title of “King of Jerusalem” from the pope and square off in war with that other claimant of Roman succession, the Ottoman Empire.

With Charles I, the Spanish monarchy also succeeded to the title of Holy Roman Emperor in 1519 – “the first time, since the coronation of Charlemagne in 800, in which the Romano-Germanic and Byzantine crowns coincided in the same person”, albeit that seems to me more like historical sleight of hand for both Charles and Charlemagne.

Anyway, Spanish claims to the succession of the Roman empire go on from these dynastic claims to include more broadly geopolitical and cultural claims – dare I say it, themes and memes of Roman empire – including the Spanish empire in the Americas.

“With all of this history in the Spanish Monarchy, Spanish nationalism claims that there is a legitimate ideological-dynastic (titles of Emperor of Constantinople and King of Jerusalem in the Spanish Crown, also in the past have been Holy Roman Emperor), geostrategic (kingdom of Naples and Sicily together, the conquests of North African plazas in Barbary, like Melilla, Ceuta, Mazalquivir, Oran, Bugia and Peñón of Algiers) and cultural basis (being a Latin country) to claim the inheritance of the Roman Empire.”

“This claim is also reinforced by the history of Spanish colonization of the Americas, which a lot of Hispanists claim is the definitive proof that Spain is the most accurate heir of Rome’s imperial legacy, as Spain was important for the culture of a continent, America (the New World), like Rome was to Europe (the Old World), some even claim that Spain surpassed Rome, since it also knew how to unify diverse peoples for centuries and maintaining cultural unity despite the imperial collapse. Even today there are opinions in which Philip VI of Spain is considered the nearest heir of Rome.”

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

Imperial Coat of the Arms of the French First Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte – reproduced by Sodacan for Wikipedia “Emperor of the French” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

 

(15) FRANCE?

 

Well, the French monarchy did snap up the title of Emperor of Constantinople from Andreas Palaiologos in his imperial title garage sale to Charles VIII in 1494 prior to him bequeathing it to Spain, for what it was worth.

Spoiler alert – it was worth nothing, although surprisingly the French monarchy apparently used the title until Charles IX could no longer keep a straight face about it in 1566.

And there it lay, until Napoleon Bonaparte, never one to lack for audacity, claimed the mantle of the Roman Empire at his imperial coronation as Emperor of the French in 1804 – albeit through the heritage of the Frankish and Carolingian Empires, as the founders of the Holy Roman Empire.

He imitated Charlemagne’s coronation as Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope, down to having Pope Pius VII at the ceremony. Although unlike that pansy Charlemagne, Napoleon crowned himself rather than having the pope crown him (embellished in historical legend as Napoleon snatching the crown from the Pope).

In fairness, Napoleon did at least achieve what is otherwise my high-tier ranking criterion of occupying Rome itself, which places his claim somewhat above other wild tier claims.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

Imperial coat of Arms for Austrian Empire – by Sodacan for Wikipedia “Austrian Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

(16) AUSTRIA?

 

Yeah, Austria picked up the Roman succession ball through the Holy Roman Empire, which had essentially become a title held by the Austrian Habsburg monarchy while everyone else played along with it.

That is, until Napoleon Bonaparte came along and told them to drop it in 1806 – but the Austrians still ran with it for their own empire, borrowing from the imagery and symbolism of the Holy Roman Empire, not least with the imperial eagle as symbol, even after Austria became a republic.

That’s it, though – but arguably still not the wildest or most tenuous of my wild-tier special mentions.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

(17) GREECE?

 

Probably not too surprising that modern Greece would claim the mantle of the eastern Roman Empire as its former heartland.

Indeed, after Greece won its independence from the Ottoman Empire, it developed the “Megali Idea” or Great Idea “of recreating the Byzantine Empire, understood as an ethnic-Greek polity with capital in Constantinople”, or the “Greece of Two Continents and Five Seas” (Europe and Asia, the Ionian, Aegean, Marmara, Black and Libyan seas, respectively)”.

Apparently, the idea popped up in political debates in 1844, although of course it had older roots. And Greece took a swing at it in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 when the opportunity seemed to present itself with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. That didn’t work out too well for them, as while the Ottoman Empire was gone, the new republic of Turkey was not as down and out as everyone had first thought.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

 

(18) ITALY?

 

Well you had to see this one coming – although the Roman Empire may have shifted east, the city of Rome remained in Italy after all. I remember an internet meme to that effect, something about God punishing the Romans by turning them into Italians…

So naturally Rome became the focus of modern Italian nationalism, along with concepts of the revival of the Roman Empire or at least the revival of Rome with respect to a unified Italy – and beyond to a colonial empire and Mediterranean supremacy.

Italian nationalists such as Giuseppe Mazzini even promoted the notion of the Third Rome, although Mazzini substituted the papacy for Constantinople as the Second Rome – “After the Rome of the emperors, after the Rome of the Popes, there will come the Rome of the people.”

“After the Italian unification into the Kingdom of Italy, the state was referred to as the Third Rome by some Italian figures. After unification, Rome was chosen as capital despite its relative backwardness as it evoked the prestige of the former Empire. Mazzini spoke of the need of Italy as a Third Rome to have imperial aspirations, to be realized in the Italian Empire. Mazzini said that Italy should “invade and colonize Tunisian lands” as it was the “key to the Central Mediterranean”, and he viewed Italy as having the right to dominate the Mediterranean Sea as ancient Rome had done.”

And so the new Italy set about acquiring the crappiest of the eight modern major European colonial empires, partly because it was a latecomer from its unification in 1871 – and it was the only European power to be decisively defeated by one of its targets in Africa, Abyssinia or Ethiopia, at the Battle of Adwa in 1896.

Infamously, Mussolini also evoked the Roman Empire, referring to his regime as the Third Rome or New Roman Empire – perhaps most embarrassingly out of all my special mention revivals of the empire, not unlike an elderly relative trying to replicate some feat of their youth at a family gathering to look cool

In fairness, he did manage to avenge the Italian defeat at the Battle of Adwa, (briefly) conquering Ethiopia, but if anything, this and other territory that he acquired such as Albania made his empire even crappier. The crown jewel of the Italian colonial empire, Libya, didn’t even have oil as they hadn’t discovered it then (and I recall reading even if they had it was beyond the contemporary drilling technology, although those two things probably overlap) – an irony that might have struck Rommel and his fuel-starved Afrika Korps had they known they were driving over some of the world’s largest oil reserves. That’s what happens when you try for a Mediterranean empire at least half a millennium or so after the world’s economic center of gravity had moved on from the Mediterranean.

Also in fairness, I should point out that Italy, even under Mussolini’s Roman empire no one wanted, did have Rome in it – my foremost criterion for high-tier ranking. So we might add another year for the fall of the Roman Empire – 1943, for the Italian surrender to the Allies in the Second World War. I have actually seen this proposed, although the person proposing it clearly had their tongue firmly in their cheek.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

(19) GERMANY?!

 

Similarly to Austria, Germany picked up the Holy Roman Empire ball and ran with it when unified under the Prussian monarchy as the German Empire in 1871, styled as the Second Reich after the Holy Roman Empire’s First Reich and with the same imperial title of kaiser derived from Caesar.

Hence the title of Third Reich for Germany’s subsequent and most infamous regime, also touted to last a thousand years like the First Reich (spoiler – it lasted only twelve) – although apparently that was downplayed later as the Holy Roman association was a little too cosmopolitan and not quite, well, German enough.

In fairness, that last Reich did technically meet my high-tier ranking criterion by occupying Rome, if only for less than a year. It also had one of the most recognizable eagle standards, adapted from the Reichsadler of its imperial predecessors.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

(20) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?!

 

Pax Americana. Washington DC – the Fourth Rome!

Friends, Romans, countrymen – we’re at the bottom of the Roman Empire iceberg here!

I’m joking. The United States has never claimed succession from the Roman Empire, nor has even the most tenuous basis for doing so – although “Americans have been comparing their country to Rome since its foundation” and “in shaping the new country, the Founding Fathers consciously hoped to copy the strengths of the Roman Republic and avoid its eventual downfall”.

Unless you accept such metaphysical fantasy claims as in the Percy Jackson series or in John Crowley’s “Little, Big” that the realm of Olympus or the Holy Roman Empire has transferred to it.

However, as usual I’m joking and I’m serious. It is a claim that is so often made for it, not least by Americans themselves, that it has become something of a trope – often overlooking that the same trope was also used for the British Empire and its Pax Britannica. (Now people tend to deflect to the British or Europeans being the Greek predecessors to the American Romans).

In his preface to “The Fall of the West: The Death of the Roman Superpower”, Adrian Goldsworthy laments that “at certain sorts of parties” the discovery that he is an ancient historian “almost inevitably prompts someone to remark that ‘America is the new Rome'” – “more often than not this is followed by a smug, ‘Of course, they don’t see it.'”

As Goldsworthy opines, “any close look at the Roman Empire will soon reveal massive differences from any modern state, including the United States” – although of course there remains the point of comparison that the United States “is overwhelmingly the strongest country in the world and in this sense its position mirrors that of Rome”.

Bonus points for having as the most recognizable eagle standard in popular culture – and arguably that most closely resembling the Roman eagle in visual design (as opposed to species).

Also bonus points that it, like the latter-day Visigoths or Vandals that preceded and were driven out by it, the United States did technically meet my high-tier ranking criterion by occupying Rome from June 1944 in the Second World War.

And while on the subject of American connections to latter-day Italy, if nothing else the United States did give the world the Italian-American film Caligula in 1979 (produced by Bob Guccione and Penthouse) – which along with Suetonius (on which it is largely based) I take as gospel about the reign of Caligula and has influenced my perceptions of the Roman Empire in perpetuity ever since. No – this is not a subject in which I will entertain my debate. And yes – I strive where I can to reserve my final special mention for some kinky entry where the subject permits. I believe I’ve fulfilled that obligation.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

TOP 10 ROMAN EMPIRES (SPECIAL MENTION) – ROLL CALL RECAP

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

(1) ROMAN REPUBLIC

(2) ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH / VATICAN CITY

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(3) HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

(4) OTTOMAN EMPIRE

(5) RUSSIAN EMPIRE

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(6) KINGDOM OF ITALY

(7) OSTROGOTHIC KINGDOM

(8) EXARCHATE OF RAVENNA

(9) VENETIAN REPUBLIC

(10) LATIN EMPIRE

(11) BULGARIAN EMPIRE

(12) SULTANATE OF RUM

(13) SERBIAN EMPIRE

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

(14) SPAIN?

(15) FRANCE?

(16) AUSTRIA?

(17) GREECE?

(18) ITALY?

(19) GERMANY?!

(20) USA?!

 

 

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Roman Empires (Special Mention) (20) USA

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(20) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA??

 

Pax Americana. Washington DC – the Fourth Rome!

Friends, Romans, countrymen – we’re at the bottom of the Roman Empire iceberg here!

I’m joking. The United States has never claimed succession from the Roman Empire, nor has even the most tenuous basis for doing so – although “Americans have been comparing their country to Rome since its foundation” and “in shaping the new country, the Founding Fathers consciously hoped to copy the strengths of the Roman Republic and avoid its eventual downfall”.

Unless you accept such metaphysical fantasy claims as in the Percy Jackson series or in John Crowley’s “Little, Big” that the realm of Olympus or the Holy Roman Empire has transferred to it.

However, as usual I’m joking and I’m serious. It is a claim that is so often made for it, not least by Americans themselves, that it has become something of a trope – often overlooking that the same trope was also used for the British Empire and its Pax Britannica. (Now people tend to deflect to the British or Europeans being the Greek predecessors to the American Romans).

In his preface to “The Fall of the West: The Death of the Roman Superpower”, Adrian Goldsworthy laments that “at certain sorts of parties” the discovery that he is an ancient historian “almost inevitably prompts someone to remark that ‘America is the new Rome'” – “more often than not this is followed by a smug, ‘Of course, they don’t see it.'”

As Goldsworthy opines, “any close look at the Roman Empire will soon reveal massive differences from any modern state, including the United States” – although of course there remains the point of comparison that the United States “is overwhelmingly the strongest country in the world and in this sense its position mirrors that of Rome”.

Bonus points for having as the most recognizable eagle standard in popular culture – and arguably that most closely resembling the Roman eagle in visual design (as opposed to species).

Also bonus points that it, like the latter-day Visigoths or Vandals that preceded and were driven out by it, the United States did technically meet my high-tier ranking criterion by occupying Rome from June 1944 in the Second World War.

And while on the subject of American connections to latter-day Italy, if nothing else the United States did give the world the Italian-American film Caligula in 1979 (produced by Bob Guccione and Penthouse) – which along with Suetonius (on which it is largely based) I take as gospel about the reign of Caligula and has influenced my perceptions of the Roman Empire in perpetuity ever since. No – this is not a subject in which I will entertain my debate. And yes – I strive where I can to reserve my final special mention for some kinky entry where the subject permits. I believe I’ve fulfilled that obligation.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Roman Empires (Special Mention) (19) Italy

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(19) ITALY?

 

Well you had to see this one coming – although the Roman Empire may have shifted east, the city of Rome remained in Italy after all. I remember an internet meme to that effect, something about God punishing the Romans by turning them into Italians…

So naturally Rome became the focus of modern Italian nationalism, along with concepts of the revival of the Roman Empire or at least the revival of Rome with respect to a unified Italy – and beyond to a colonial empire and Mediterranean supremacy.

Italian nationalists such as Giuseppe Mazzini even promoted the notion of the Third Rome, although Mazzini substituted the papacy for Constantinople as the Second Rome – “After the Rome of the emperors, after the Rome of the Popes, there will come the Rome of the people.”

“After the Italian unification into the Kingdom of Italy, the state was referred to as the Third Rome by some Italian figures. After unification, Rome was chosen as capital despite its relative backwardness as it evoked the prestige of the former Empire. Mazzini spoke of the need of Italy as a Third Rome to have imperial aspirations, to be realized in the Italian Empire. Mazzini said that Italy should “invade and colonize Tunisian lands” as it was the “key to the Central Mediterranean”, and he viewed Italy as having the right to dominate the Mediterranean Sea as ancient Rome had done.”

And so the new Italy set about acquiring the crappiest of the eight modern major European colonial empires, partly because it was a latecomer from its unification in 1871 – and it was the only European power to be decisively defeated by one of its targets in Africa, Abyssinia or Ethiopia, at the Battle of Adwa in 1896.

Infamously, Mussolini also evoked the Roman Empire, referring to his regime as the Third Rome or New Roman Empire – perhaps most embarrassingly out of all my special mention revivals of the empire, not unlike an elderly relative trying to replicate some feat of their youth at a family gathering to look cool

In fairness, he did manage to avenge the Italian defeat at the Battle of Adwa, (briefly) conquering Ethiopia, but if anything, this and other territory that he acquired such as Albania made his empire even crappier. The crown jewel of the Italian colonial empire, Libya, didn’t even have oil as they hadn’t discovered it then (and I recall reading even if they had it was beyond the contemporary drilling technology, although those two things probably overlap) – an irony that might have struck Rommel and his fuel-starved Afrika Korps had they known they were driving over some of the world’s largest oil reserves. That’s what happens when you try for a Mediterranean empire at least half a millennium or so after the world’s economic center of gravity had moved on from the Mediterranean.

Also in fairness, I should point out that Italy, even under Mussolini’s Roman empire no one wanted, did have Rome in it – my foremost criterion for high-tier ranking. So we might add another year for the fall of the Roman Empire – 1943, for the Italian surrender to the Allies in the Second World War. I have actually seen this proposed, although the person proposing it clearly had their tongue firmly in their cheek.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)