The day before yesterday, on the advice of a trusted comrade, I read the comments to the note about the reasons for the onset of the "dark" ages. And a little freaked out. First of all, people are persistently trying to find one single reason for the death of antiquity, which would explain everything. Secondly, from the fact that considering antiquity, people tie themselves to the Western Roman Empire, believing that now it has fallen and antiquity is all. It is especially funny to read statements of the form: Byzantium is already more east, and therefore not antiquity. Well, OK. The fact that in the Roman Empire the social structures of antiquity were preserved for the longest time is probably not important.
Well, okay, I want to talk not about Byzantium, but about the fact that the dividing line between the dark ages and antiquity is the decline of ancient cities in the 7th century. No, he was not a cause, but a consequence of many processes within the Western world. But this consequence was symptomatic and opened the way for the already full-fledged formation of feudalism.
Actually, the cities of the polis type in themselves became the reason that Antiquity singled out against the background of the ancient world. Yes, the ancient civilization of the East for millennia before the Greeks knew and appreciated cities, only Babylon was worth what. But the structure of society in the ancient eastern city was strictly hierarchical. On the one hand, this ensured stability, but on the other hand, it slowed down progress, since a person was locked in a role that was defined at birth.
And then the Greeks entered the scene, where, in the course of the disintegration of the tribal system, societies with many approximately equal centers of power were formed. In such conditions, the establishment of the sole authority of one of the centers of power (clans) was impossible, and therefore a system was created in which the management was carried out by the entire community. Such a system took different forms - from democracy of the Athenian type to tyrannical dictatorships, but they always had one thing in common: equal rights of citizens to participate in political life and govern the polis through elected structures.
The Romans added codified laws to this, and then they built the state apparatus on top, having received the Empire. Moreover, although the entire period of the Empire's existence, the process of consolidation of power in the hands of the Emperor was constantly taking place, the cities continued to have a polis structure, with magistrates, the Senate, district gatherings, etc., it is just that now there were control and supervisory imperial structures in the city.
The polis was the force that allowed Rome to Romanize the entire Mediterranean. The complex social structure of the polis, on the one hand, required a certain level of education in order to live well in it, but on the other hand, it opened up unprecedented social lifts, when, having passed through the elected city magistracy, a person could get into the imperial administration. Until the late Empire, magistracy was the forge of personnel for the imperial machine. All this drew along with it a natural movement within society, a craving for education, culture, as necessary conditions for a higher standard of living. The urban life of antiquity attracted, as light attracts a moth, many provincials not only with their brilliance, but also with real opportunities to rise above their position.
It's funny, but the barbarians, having come to the territory of the Empire, immediately sought to get into this urban environment, not to destroy it, but to use it. It is fairly easy to see that even before the fall of the Western Empire, many positions were occupied by barbarians. But even after, if you look at the same Italy, where the Empire no longer exists, you can be surprised to find the same Senate, magistrates, municipalities, simply occupied by new barbarians. Forced to integrate into the complex structure of the social structure of cities, the barbarians had to either accept all the rules of the game, or say goodbye to all the goodies of city life. The ancient city continued to ruthlessly grind the barbarians, romanizing them, in many ways from their own will.
But, the antique polis was a complex thing, highly dependent on external factors. And at the beginning of the 6th century, they began to form a very unpleasant figure. The very formation of policies was possible only where there was an excess of food, thereby a large number of people were freed from exhausting rural labor and could create. But the cooling of the climate and the damping of the usual trade routes due to the wars led to an outflow of the population to the countryside, where it was possible to settle on the ground and feed, and not wait for the irregular grain distributions. Diseases, which mowed down the population of cities, also contributed. And now, the balance is already shifting towards the village. Old urban structures are becoming more redundant with the simplification of the social structure.
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The village is not a city, here the social structure is flat, like my jokes, hierarchical in nature. It is in the countryside that Romanization is swept away by the barbarians, since it does not have a solid foundation - why should a peasant know how to read, if he does not happen at the Forum and does not read the laws. Proto-feudalism is quickly established here, where every village has a ruler, and every ruler has a patron. But while the cities dominated the barbarian kingdoms, these protofeudal lords were drawn to them, where they inevitably became romanized.
And by the end of the 7th century, the cities become unable to support the old way of life - their population is too diminished due to the banal impossibility to feed it. Cities become large villages, where only those professions remain that contribute to survival. They no longer need legalists, administrators, or numerous scribes - hello, we have natural exchange here, and instead of the law, the right of the strong. Such cities become easy prey for feudal lords, since they no longer need to take into account the opinions of dozens of disparate interest groups to govern them. And then the dark ages really come.