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The Collapse Of Rome: The Fall Of The Roman Empire

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Students, teachers, and even famous historians around the globe speculate about the major causes of the fall of the Roman Empire. There are dozens of possible theories leading to the ultimate collapse of the once-envied civilization, but it seems that the economic reasons dominate over all other themes of its downfall. To begin, inflation played a major role in the final years of the Roman Empire. The silver and gold content in all coinage was lowered until inflation reached 100 percent. With overexpansion of Roman territory and the divide between the wealthy and poor reaching all-time highs, the Roman currency became more and more worthless. In addition, not many people wanted to work, and that caused a giant surge in unemployment levels. Slavery became the cheap solution to labor-intensive work, and caused a major chain reaction in …show more content…

A decrease of working farmers forced government subsidization, which then caused a big blow to the Roman economy. The last reason for the ruination of the economic side of the Empire was the costs of military funding and the effects of trading. The spread of pacifistic beliefs throughout the Empire led to a decrease in the amount of willing legionnaires, pressuring the government to allow barbarian tribes to work for their military. As the two sides of the Empire drifted apart, they started to fight over valuable resources and made enemies with each other. The failing economy of the Roman Empire eventually grew to be the most significant cause of its monumental disintegration.
The developing problem of inflation contributed to ancient Rome’s economic downfall. The debasing of coinage from the period of the emperor, Trajan in 117

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One important reason for the fall of Rome was natural disasters. In document F it shows that the population decreased from a million people to two hundred and fifty thousand because of the plague. This problem helps explain why Rome fell because it shows that thousands of people died, meaning there were less people. With less people in Rome many jobs are not being

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One of the biggest reasons Rome fell is because the military. The military started to become sluggish and weak. Since this happened soldiers fought the goths without any protection for their chests and heads (doc B.) This made it so soldiers were easily killed in battle by archers. Adding on to that Soldiers were exposed to wounds because they have no armour so they would think about running and not fighting (doc B.) Senators, bureaucrats, clergymen, cooks, bakers, and slaves all avoided the draft not giving enough people into to military (doc B.)

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It is true that there are other reasons that explain Rome’s decline. For example. Political assassinations and natural disasters. However the three reasons above - foreign invasion, legal injustice, and especially military problems - provide the best explanation why Rome finally crumbled in the 5th century

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Mia Hoffman The author, Bruce Bartlett, was born October 11, 1951. He has an education from both Rutgers University and Georgetown University. He studied under Lloyd Gardner for American diplomatic history at Rutgers and studied under Julius Davis at Georgetown. He researched much of the Pearl Harbor attack, doing a master's thesis for it at Georgetown, the thesis was later published as Coverup: The Politics of Pearl Harbor, 1941-1946.

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One of the main reasons that caused the Roman empire’s downfall was due to their financial strains. This can be shown in the text where it says, “There was a noticeable decline in trade and small industry, and the labor shortage caused by the plague affected both military recruiting and the economy. Armies were needed more than ever, but financial strains made it difficult to pay and enlist more soldiers. By the mid-third century, the state had to hire Germans to fight under Roman commanders.” (Document 1).

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Crassus invaded Jerusalem and stole the temple treasure while war broke out between Caesar and Pompey. The economic causes had a great impact on the Roman Empire crashing. Rome's government was not very organized and Rome's leaders had expensive lifestyles. Wars were occurring in the empire and the movement simply manufactured more coins to support it.

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There were many different causes for the fall of the Roman empire, not just one. The Roman Empire was very strong, but eventually broke down over time for a multitude of reasons. Most of those reasons had to do with changes in Rome’s identity. Some of these changes in Rome’s identity led to the fall of Rome because they were so sudden; only portions of the Roman population were prepared for the change. Other times, citizens got into arguments because they were, in a way, too prepared.

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Another reason Rome fell is because Rome grew too large. Rome included so many different lands and people, it started to add even more problems for Rome's economy. When Rome's expansion slowed, other conquered lands and people couldn't be part of the Empire, making them not under Rome's control. When the Emperor tried so solve the problem by raising taxes, normal living citizens couldn't pay for them and became poor. Soon Rome became too big and couldn't pay for itself, so when it couldn't pay for itself, it couldn't control itself.

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Rome was a very powerful empire, but eventually fell because of one thing, weak political leadership. Weak political leadership was the main reason why Rome fell and it was more of a chain because when there is bad leadership then there is bad military and more invaders. The invasions got more effective and hurt the empire a lot more than it should have at that time. First of all Rome went from a republic to a empire with all the power and rights from the people slowly slipping away to the all powerful emperors at the end. Emperors did not want to share any power with the people which was very bad because they only paid attention to power, for example how Julius Caesar get kill/assassinated on March 15, 44 BCE in Rome, Italy.

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This loss of population made it hard to find laborers and soldiers for war. This caused the empire to pay Germanic soldiers to fight for them. The need to pay for troops created a large debt for the Romans. Another reason that led to the decline of the Roman Empire was their water source coming in through lead pipes. Many people believed this poisoned the Romans which also led to low population.

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Legions started to demand higher pay resulting in raised taxes. Also the desire for goods from outside the empire grew making less economic growth within Rome. As more products were shipped to Rome pirates started to steal more and more items making stores go out of business back on the mainland. High tariffs were placed on imported goods in a desperate attempt to get money flowing back into Rome. Furthermore the lack of new conquests also instigated the decrease of money flow into Rome because they were not stealing gold.

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How did an empire so big and powerful fall apart after all of the work and planning that was put into it? The once powerful Roman Empire fell apart for various reasons, such as the over expansion of land and military overspending which led to inadequate man power to cover all of the frontiers and insufficient funds. Also, the corrupt government system of the empire and the instability of its politics for an empire so large, the government was not fit to control

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While that was happening a civil war was going on. The military was in bad shape and was interfering with the politics. The three Major causes of the the Fall of Rome were Economic Problems, Socico-Politcal problems, and external invasions that lead to the country not being able to protect itself. Economically

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Given these reasons, it can be concluded of how Rome fell. Rome was too big and when plagues were brought over and were spread, it decreased the population and hassled the economic life because they didn’t have the resources to pay back the Germanic soldiers. When social and military issues came into play, it led to great cities being lost. Lastly, the reason the contributed the most to the fall of Rome was the weak or selfish emperors and the state being ruined because the government was not following the spirit of past

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So Rome paid thousands of German soldiers to fight for them. Obviously this made Rome 's military weak because they would easily run from battle or betray Rome because they had nothing to protect in Rome. Another reason the Roman empire fell to shambles was because the Roman military stopped going on military conquests. When they did this the Roman economy collapsed because the economy relied on the constant income of plundered trophies from captured civilizations.

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