What prevented the formation of a post-Roman European empire?

...

>What prevented the formation of a post-Roman European empire?
The death of Justinian I

>Why was no European kingdom able to consolidate power over the others like the Romans did in the past?
Charlemagne did. Clovis had united the Franks. During the time, the powers in Iberia and Italy were the Goths who's Arian faith did not coincide with Western Christianity.

How did the Europe balkanize so hard and what prevented a reversal of this fragmentation?

For those who may point to the Holy Roman Empire or Charlemagne's empire, why did those fail to realize the power, lasting influence, and prestige which they seemed to yearn for?

Pic somewhat related.

It's ok, you can leave this thread now.

Stay mad, kid. I know it doesn't fit in with your master race fantasies, but that doesn't change what the truth is.

Look at the HRE. A bunch of tribalistic Germans who had helped destroy Rome claimed to be the true heirs to Rome. Tell me how this isn't exactly "we wuz kangz".

>lack of desire creating world dominating empires

I would argue that this sentiment did exist in Europe as evidenced by such figures as Charlemagne.

Flash in the pan really.

potato?

Agreed on Charlemagne, still I'd argue that the urge for militaristic expansion was way less prominent with the medieval ruling classes than with the Roman society. Also, all such ambitions would have been seriously hampered by vastly inferior communications, transportations and administration skills.

The whole unified or semi-unified states thing was pretty in the way of a grand European empire. The Romans cobbled their empire together out of disparate pieces, often adding to the empire-building of subdued rivals. The Carthaginians and the Greek colonies paved the way for Roman expansion, while the scattered tribes of Celts and other European rivals proved little match for the organized Roman war machine.

In the middle ages, we have three significant impediments to rapid conquest. The first is a lack of standing armies - they came and went throughout the medieval period, never actually being sustained over a series of generations. Second, there's the bureacracy; outside of the church, there weren't enough learned men to actually organize a sustained empire-building scheme like that of the Romans. Finally, there's the issue of consolidated power. Even if the French monarch was weak, France as an entity was powerful - same goes for the Holy Roman Emperors. While the maps we post on Veeky Forums might look like a fragmented mess of polities, the overwhelming majority of those polities were functionally attached to various others. There weren't many easy conquests to come by for most of the middle ages; France, for example, could never have had an ostsiedlung like Germany did.

>Even if the French monarch was weak, France as an entity was powerful

So basically, neighboring kingdoms were too decentralized to make serious attempts on eachother's territory, and at the same time this decentralization made it very difficult for foreigner armies to make good progress in the rare event that a king was able to consolidate his holdings enough to form a large force?

Pretty much. There's a reason why Machiavelli tells us in The Prince that the best way to control a new territory is to set up shop in it. It's very difficult to administer far-flung regions, and in a world of shitty infrastructure almost everywhere is far-flung.

To be more explicit re: the decentralization issue - a lot of nobles would be willing to do their basic duty for an offensive war, unless they stand to benefit from it in some way. However, if facing invasion, those same nobles might commit themselves entirely to the defense of their territory as vassals of the liege-lord. While the weakness of the central authority was in the interest of the feudal lords, the strength of their kingdom's.... coalition, if you will, was also something of value.

sure you're quoting the right guy?
Basically I'd agree. There are notable examples like the Norman conquests (both north and south) .

>There are notable examples like the Norman conquests (both north and south) .
Sorry, I meant there are examples where conquering turf worked, but it's rather the exception than the standard.

If you look at geography, you might find an explanation. Compared to India or China, Europe's geography was simply too varied for anyone to project power over the entire continent before the invention of airplanes.

I mean, you have:

- massive rivers essentially dividing the continent in pieces (Rhine, Danube)
- large island landmasses (Britain, Ireland, Cyprus, Zealand, Iceland, Gotland)
- mountain ranges as natural geographical barriers (Pyrenees, Alps, Carpathians, Caucasus, Anatolia)
- Naval chokepoints (Gibraltar, Bosporus, Oresund)

On top of that, the whole thing was covered in peats, bogs and forests filled with bears and filty Germanic barbarians until like 1,000 years ago. Good luck controlling that shit.

>All European history post-fall is just white niggers going "we wuz romans an sheeit".
>Because Europeans at this time were nigger tier

Fucking brainlet

The simple answer is technology.

Medieval G*rmanic Europe was technological inferior to both the Islamic world and the Mongol hordes. Italian City states were able to fill the technological gap only in the XIV century through commerce and espionage. The Italians then began the renaissance, the scientific revolution and the transatlantic commerce who led to the Global European dominance.

what year is this map based on?
Seems kind of autistic how reconquista is finished and Byzantines are still somewhat intact...

Autism.
Frankish empire of Merovingians and Charlemagne's fallen because of retarded but "fair" Gavelkind succession laws among children.
If Charlemagne wasn't stupid, he would have change laws to primogeniture and let his eldest child inherit all titles.
Early feudal system was an absolute mess which ruined tons of good states like Lombards, Anglo-Saxons, Asturians and Leonese.

Byzantines tried, but they were always surrounded by some other empire that pushed their shit, they would beat one side but fail at another.

Franks split up their domain instead of keeping one unified empire after Charlemagnes death.

West Frankia became France, middle Frankia never became a dominant power, east Frankie became the Holy Roman Empire.

As Christianity spread to other pagan tribes who later adopted feudal European civilization they became legitimate independent states recognized by the Holy See and other European kingdoms such as Poland, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, Norway.

not necessarily roman empire but there was german HRE emperor who wanted europe to be united into 3 blocs/countries (galia, HRE and slavia) and promised boleslaw the brave (kang of Poland) that he shall rule all slavs

It did though, in the proliferation of the Kingdom of God.

It was one of the Ottos i believe, but one of them died before the plan to form a new roman empire type megalliance superstate could be realized, and the successor instantly went to war with Poland because he hated them for some reason (or just wanted to expand lebensraum)

>what year is this map based on?
autism
no point in history where Poland had those kind of borders, i practically memorised every single version of the borders of poland throughout history

Same goes for France

This map is trash to say the least.

It actually looks like Casimir's Poland (including all the vassals inside) before he annexed Galicia.

France looks sort of HYW-era but it lacks English holdings.

DESU, Carlos V was close senpai

But even then, his holdings were still separate and culturally distinct from each other no?

Casimir The Great was born 10 years after the latter date presented on the map. Keep in mind for most of the 14th Century Poland was divided and decentralized until Łokietek managed to finally unite only two of the Polish Provinces before.

youtube.com/watch?v=P-Yr06xWvlw

Here you have an accurate map of the Feudal Fragmentation period of Poland and all it's splinter duchies that were later gobbled up by neighbouring powers (ie Czechia/HRE)

>The constant fragmentation of Silesia

there is so much wrong with that pic I don't even know where to start

>950-1300

What did they mean by this?

France looks like 10th century France, while the HRE looks like 13th century HRE

The only goal of this map is too make the HRE looks big

>produces something that could almost be compared to WRE
>retardedly splits it amongst sons

Monarchies caused this shit.

>Monarchies caused this shit
Feudalism: Making things complicated and difficult since Charlamagne

to be fair, HRE had nearly the same size in the 10th and the 13th century. This map was only made to trigger Poles, and it works fucking flawless.

I ain't mad, I'm just confused.

>This map was only made to trigger Poles, and it works fucking flawless.
May i have a sauce for that please?

>May i have a sauce for that please?
sure:
Like no one was even talking about Poland yet that innocent little map made them sperg out once more.

OP here. I literally just googled "Medieval Europe Map" and used one that showed the variety of states to help illustrate my point that Europe became notable fragmented post-Rome.

>This map was only made to trigger Poles
I'm triggered because i don't see Czechia or anything east of Poland and Hungary

OP, I know that you just picked some map, but apparently something simple as reduced map will trigger some of our more trigger sensitive patrons and derail your thread into some kindergarten shit show. Just ignore the off topic posters and lament the general state of Veeky Forums.

because frankish law said divide your kingdom equally, AND THERE WAS ALWAYS A SON EXCLUDED

>because geography
Romans and greek united extremely diversified regions for centuries, the reason why europe wasn't united is because until 1500 it was an underdeveloped shithole compared to middle-east/east asia/india, and the inhabitants were mostly savages who couldn't handle civilization and destroyed everything the romans did

I congratulate you my dear brownskined friend on how well you learned my Germanic language to utter your well thought about and highly intelligent arguments. Your ancestors must be very proud on you.

Are you retarded? Your butthurt is so advanced, that you are triggered by people discussing accuracy of map on Veeky Forums board?

>butthurt
Protip, don't call anyone butthurt when you're a foaming Pole on a Tibetian woodcarving board, all you get is more laughter.

Religion and tradition. Pre-modern empires are always difficult to create and maintain, but people made it work somehow when there's a need for it.
The only empires to repeatedly restore it self after a major collapse is china and to a lesser extent rome while it lasted. Both believed unity within a traditional imperial border and that the rulers sort of have a duty to unify and stabilize said borders. Hence non-stop civil war until the empire is restored.
With post-rome europe you got white niggers who were nomads just a few generations ago and were already overjoyed to have a piece of clay to call its own. Even after a few generation of preperation for a major expansion, such expansions are motivated by greed and ego, meaning there's no reason to keep it going once it stops being profitable. Additionally, lacking a universal belief for unification means the conquered people would not simply surrender and remain loyal to the conqueror for "the greater good". Because there isnt one that they believe in. In this way you have a bunch of mediocore countries doing jack shit until someone grow big, then you gang up on the big guy and tear him apart to keep the status quo so you wont get eaten.

Gavelkind was a mistake.

That's a bad tip. You are literally the one with butthurt. Posting a meme won't change that.

>no you!

>posts a meme

>People still not aware that Charlemagne´s plans to divide or not his Empire are meaningless cause he had a single surviving son who inherited the whole realm.

Thanks for the free (You). Are you butthurt enough to answer this one to?

Go on, I want to see all of them.

I would take a guess and base it upon the fact that through inheritance laws it was common (at least under Germanic peoples) that the land a previous generation aquired was to be split among the sons of the next. Not to mention the severe European rivalary that was constant.

We would hit image limit on this thread long before that, Polandball was invented for a reason, namely Poles are easier to troll than anybody else because of high butthurt level and zero self irony.

Guess again then, thats only true for Salic law, other German law traditions did favour one son only, either the oldest or the youngest, while the rest got jack.

>I have folder with hundreds of pics in it, just in case "I will have to face something I don't like", known as "butthurt"
>I will use a lot of this word too btw

>Polandball was invented for a reason

agree

>gets triggered by a reduced map
>valiantly defends the honor of early medieval Poland
>albeit not even part of the debate or intended
>start calling people butthurt when they tell him to just stahp
>seriously and earnestly answers every meme post because full autims
>thinks people are out to diss him and great Polonia and have entire folders of source material instead of just using one in a million polandball pics from google
>will even answer this post and think he is smart by derailing another thread with Polish autims
>no I'm totally not butthurt, you are!!!

...

>attention: bait post, don't answer!!!

>will even answer this post
Are you a fucking child?
>gets triggered by a reduced map
>start calling people butthurt when they tell him to just stahp
You was alone in that.
-> That was my first post in this thread. And it's not the only thing you are wrong here.
>valiantly defends the honor of early medieval Poland
>diss him and great Polonia
That's just your imagination. There is nothing about it.
>what year is this map based on?
Was the question, which
answered. And he gave argument why the map is inaccurate, because you know, you need to do that in discussion. In that case map was wrong for Poland.
What's funny, a post later someone posted
>Same goes for France
But you somehow ignored it. So you just have hate boner for Polish, ergo butthurt.
I just wanted to show error in your rationale, because what you did could be described by "irony".

>lmao dude why didn't someone just like recreate the roman empire man it sounds so easy
Why don't you get off Veeky Forums and do it yourself you enormous faggot?

>How did the Europe balkanize so hard and what prevented a reversal of this fragmentation?
It suffered a general systems collapse, not merely a collapse in civil administration, or even "merely" demographic replacement, but both at the same time. The basis the new Europe was built on was not one of universal principles that lend themselves to empires, but personal oaths of loyalty and bonds of blood, which lend themselves to tribes and small kingdoms.
>>Pic somewhat related.
>no pic
Yeah, sums it up pretty well.

>totally not butthurt!!!!

>In the middle ages, we have three significant impediments to rapid conquest.
I agree that this is a key factor but you have the wrong variables.
>lack of standing armies
On the contrary, the feudal periods chief problem was too many "full time" warriors. The entire ruling class was a standing army, which is great for fighting but terrible for statebuilding and cultural / economic development, it was like Sparta on a continental scale, whole kingdoms ruled by warriors answerable to no-one.
>Second, there's the bureacracy; outside of the church, there weren't enough learned men to actually organize a sustained empire-building scheme like that of the Romans.
This is not actually important, a bureaucracy will form more or less spontaneously when it is needed, look at the Mongols or the Persians or any empire that expanded very quickly from a nomadic base but that nonetheless had an excellent bureaucracy in place almost immediately.
>Finally, there's the issue of consolidated power
This is the only actual issue. Feudalism, with its system of personal oaths and land-grants, inherently leads to weak rulers. It's not even a bug, its a feature, a feudal monarchy is first and foremost a state run by aristocrats, not by kings. This is obviously terrible if you want to build an empire, but it actually has many advantages over a centralized state during periods of great instability and frequent invasion, where a strong local noble is better able to keep his peasants safe from bandits and pirates than an over-stretched central state would be.

This is SUCH a retarded argument. Look at the geographic and climatic variation within China and then shut your moron face, dimwit.

Salic law was very influential, and Celts also had retarded inheritance patterns that lead to ever shrinking holdings. But even primogeniture wasn't foolproof, quite apart from the danger of having no son it was not at all unknown for a second son to murder his brother and plunge a kingdom in civil war.

jared go away you're an idiot

Desu, warrior class kingdoms/feudal society != standing armies.

He was the last man with the personal power and authority to reform the inheritance laws and found a true empire, he deserves the blame / praise for avoiding that.

Agreed, but for example when the Eastern Franks switched to Saxon laws they became stable and HRE. So saying Salic law fucked up the pan-European Frankish empire is imho fair.

What did knights do? They fought, they trained for fighting ("""sports""" like jousting and tourneys), and they raised future warriors to replace them. They were absolutely a standing army, ready to fight at a moments notice and perfectly happy to fight for years at a time with no need to go home and bring in the crops or anything like that. Yes they were also the ruling class, this doesn't change anything, it merely means they paid themselves (out of the peasants money) instead of being paid by an emperor or state.

>HRE
HRE was stable(ish) because of the ingenious tradition of electing emperors, this greatly reduced the dangers of civil wars since all the big players could hope to win the big prize by playing together cooperatively. Ofc the HRE also failed to centralize or even to prevent its own internal fragmentation, and was eaten alive by Prussia for it.

Son, nice arguing with you, but you really should look up what's the difference between a feudal army and a standing army.

Emperors might have been elected, Kings of Germany less so, especially in the early/high medieval.

I accept your totally graceless admission of defeat. You can go now, I'm done with you.

Yes but the electorate kept the state stable enough despite its powerful kings by providing some slim possibility that a king could become emperor without having to fight. Of course this system broke down over time, but by the cultural inertia had built up to the point where it continued to work despite no longer working, if you get what I mean.

Protip, don't write that into your high school history test. Despite your teacher chuckling real hard he won't be able to give a you a good grade.

What's with all the hate for Europeans in this thread?

Well, what would you excpet? God-Emperors with absolute powers? Those regents were dependent on the support of their levies and nobles from all over a vast empire with highly diverging interests. A bit of power sharing and political consensus was absolutely essential to keep the ship stable.

>excpet
expect

>On the contrary, the feudal periods chief problem was too many "full time" warriors. The entire ruling class was a standing army, which is great for fighting but terrible for statebuilding and cultural / economic development, it was like Sparta on a continental scale, whole kingdoms ruled by warriors answerable to no-one.
This literally could not be more meme-tier historiography. The nobles were administrators before anything else. The ones who liked to fight and joust all the time, aside from the petty-lord knights, were the exception to the rule and their territories usually floundered as a result. And, once your demesne turns to shit, your ability to wage war is dampened significantly with your loss of levies & revenue.

>This is not actually important, a bureaucracy will form more or less spontaneously when it is needed, look at the Mongols or the Persians or any empire that expanded very quickly from a nomadic base but that nonetheless had an excellent bureaucracy in place almost immediately.
So, basically, you don't understand human capital? One of the reasons why the WRE turned to shit was that it stopped producing people who keep maintain its institutions & infrastructure. This is also why the fall of the ERE was such a boon to places like Italy. You can't just imagineer a social class of educated people to run institutions, they need to be developed over generations. They had a bureaucracy because they invaded places with bureaucrats and then co-opted those people to run their empires.

>The death of Justinian I
I would argue that the Justinian plague probably had more to do with his failure to reconquer the mediterranean. Right as the Byzantines were on the verge of victory and consolidation, the plague hammered them and left them with critical shortages of tax revenue and manpower just in time for the Byzantines to start losing it all

>hurr muh meme-tier
Didn't bother reading further.

>joust
Just to say, jousting was a past time of late medieval nobles and had little to nothing to do with early/high medieval feudal warriors. But then Hollywood strikes again.

That kinda explains the desolate state of your posts. I think user won't make the mistake again of answering your bullshit posts in earnest.

Whatever you say dimwit.

For most of it's history, "China" is the two river valley basins. Control over Manchuria, the Tarim basin, Tibet, and Mongolia could be established when the dynasty was strong, and control would be lost when the dynasty was weak.

although i'm polish i always like myself a good polandball meme