Bring it on. A “dark age” for the collective West means a bright shining future for the rest of the world free from the boot of Westoid colonial plundering and imperialist oppression.
Bring it on. A “dark age” for the collective West means a bright shining future for the rest of the world free from the boot of Westoid colonial plundering and imperialist oppression.
The dark age comparison is actually accurate because the dark age was only a bad time for the former Western Roman empire, China and other parts of the world were doing just fine.
Not even for the former western roman empire. The british isles had it rough, everywhere else populations moved out of the cities and that was about it. Magyars and norse raiders became less of a problem the more feudalism set in. Iberia was just vibin’, france was a slugfest that saw the frankish quickly coming out ontop, italy was happily vibing under the goths. Hell, even the romans were doing alright over in the east.
Sure some events stirred the pot a bit, like the roman attempt of reconquering the western empire, the last persian wars and the islamic conquests, but they were over relatively quickly. Unless one looks at the Terf isles it was not some horrible time.
The Black Death or the 30 years war, those were shit times to be had in europe.
The former ruling and slave owning class of Roman Empire I should specific, yes.
They were in deep ass even before, Geza Alfoldy “The Social History of Rome” goes in details about this, by the V century the middle classes, equites and decurioni were basically impoverished and mostly disappeared, and the upper class were already feudal.