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war, disruption and economic decline 385
was badly hit by violent destruction during the troubles of the third
century, and yet in the fourth and fifth century the evidence from both
town and countryside suggests a period of unprecedented prosperity.
Europe in the ninth and early tenth century was devastated by Vikings,
Hungarians and Saracens: trading-towns were deliberately targeted and
destroyed, booty and tribute were extorted, and slaves were seized. Yet
there is no sign that in the long term the underlying growth of the
European economy was disrupted; indeed, the Vikings and Saracens were
quite rapidly absorbed into a growing international network of exchange
and commerce.
War and the disruption it brings will perhaps explain the precise moment
of decline, but it is likely that underlying causes will also be at work if the
decline persists. If not, why did western economic history in the fifth and
sixth century not follow the pattern of the ninth and tenth centuries, especially
given the remarkable cultural assimilation of the barbarians? And
why did Asia Minor in the seventh century not follow the example of
fourth-century Greece?
If we look again at the evidence of Noricum, we can note, as well as disruption,
the resilience of the traders of Batavis, who were ready to set up
their stalls once more, and the surprising fact that some oil was reaching
the upper Danube despite the appalling conditions. Why, when Lauriacum
and Batavis finally fell and perhaps found slightly improved political and
military conditions, did not these economic links continue and perhaps
grow? Probably because other factors were also at work and, in particular,
because neighbouring regions which once might have helped in the regeneration
of a devastated province were also going through hard times. We
learn, for instance – once again from the Life of Severinus – that during the
fifth century all pay from Italy stopped reaching the troops in Noricum: this
was the end of Roman financial involvement in Noricum and the end of
the redistributive power of the state, spreading the gold of interior regions
into the frontier zone. 68 A more secure and prosperous Italy might have
helped pull Noricum back into economic complexity and prosperity.
It may be wrong to view the relationship between military failure and
economic decline as a simple, one-way process. The ‘barbarians’, both the
Germans in the fifth- and sixth-century west and the Arabs in the seventhcentury
east, were unpaid part-time fighters, whereas the Roman army was
made up of professionals, and so depended for its strength on taxed wealth
and (ultimately) a healthy economy. Was the fall of the west in the fifth
century a consequence (as well as a cause) of economic decline? Can
Justinian’s reconquest of the west in the first half of the sixth century be
understood in part as the eastern Mediterranean flexing its new economic,
68 Vita S. Severini ed. R. Noll (Berlin 1963), cap. 20 (English trans. L. Bieler, 78).
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