Quote:perhaps as the empire declined the elite no longer invested in long-distance trade... meaning no one can receive the goods and no one can get paid for them.
That's a good point, and although it's a bit late in the day, thinking about that prompts me to pick up on these two earlier comments:
Quote:the lack of Roman government in Britain created an economic boom in the 5th century
Quote:From the perspective of a local landowner in the provinces, Rome really did not offer much, other than heavy taxation
The 4th century 'villa economy' boom in Britain (which I think is what Evan is referring to) has been mentioned before here. I'm sure there are several theories as to why it happened, but I think one possibility might provide a good illustration of this point about investment and long-distance trade.
In the later third century, large areas of northern Gaul were attacked and plundered, either by barbarians or competing Roman armies. Perhaps as a result of this, or some other cause, a lot of agricultural land was deserted - either way, the agricultural production of the Gallic provinces must have been heavily depleted.
Britain, on the other hand, suffered almost none of this, and enjoyed remarkable peace and security throughout the third century. British agricultural production, therefore, might have outpaced that of continental Gaul.
So by the fourth century, when Roman commanders are looking for supplies for their troops on the Rhine, they no longer rely on Gallic grain, but instead ship it in from Britain, as we learn in Ammianus Marcellinus.
This in turn leads to large government supply contracts for British farmers, leading to larger farms, more concentration on bulk grain production, and more good-quality government money in the hands of estate owners, to pay for all those fancy new mosaics...
However, when the Roman military infrastructure on the lower Rhine collapses in the later 4th/early 5th centuries, this source of wealth is cut off. There is no comparable bulk-buyer to the Roman army, and the huge agricultural estates of Britain suddenly find that they have an enormous wheat surplus and nobody with the demand or the money to buy it off them.
This might be why the collapse in Britain was so rapid - continental Gaul had already suffered through the disruption of the third century, and had evolved some smaller-scale social and economic structures to cope with it. Britain had not, and its elites were largely dependant on supply contracts from the Rhine army. Once those contracts dried up, the huge villa estates were economic liablities, and Britain had rapidly to relearn subsistence farming.
