Empire disintegrates in city-states

Nope. It took centuries for Italy to recover in order for city-states to be viable. Rome itself went from over million citizens to less than fifty thousands during Third Century Crisis and that was even before the collapse of the empire.

And even that was possible only because of the Carolingian empire and later Holy Roman empire protecting Italy against Islamic conquest.

The more likely event in an imperial collapse is generals and influential landholders seizing medium-to-large successor states. This is what happened to Alexander's Empire, the WRE, the Mongols, and China (Several times). Warlords will take over and more than likely will all be competing to be top dog in the new power-vacuum, so city-states will be relatively rare as larger factions gobble up weaker ones. Pic related is of Warlord-Era China; note the large factions.

>Would the term city-state be misleading?
Not really bruh. The most famous city-state of them all, Athens, rules extensive lands and villages surrounding Athens and at some point led most of Greece through a system of alliances. Sparta also had a large system of allies/vassals during the Peleponesian war.

And then there's Rome, which also fit the definition of city-state from its founding until citizenship being extended to Peregrines (non-Roman freemen within the empire) in the 3rd century AD.

A city-state the size of Bavaria wouldn't be abnormal, as long as "München" rules political life (perhaps to the point where only the natives of "München" have a say in political affairs. Remember: Athenian democracy only applied to free men over the age of 20 whose families had lived in Athens for at least two generations. Shit like the modern day left importing voting cattle wouldn't fly there.)).

Sort of. It was the loss of the North African grain-production that directly did it. So one the one hand, you only let some Vandals get at a province like had been done before and since to not much result, and on the other hand... derp.

>North African grain-production
Warning: I'm a retard, please be gentle.

Why was North Africa important to grain production, when so much of it is desert? If we look at some countries that were part of the former Roman Empire, then we see that France and Italy have many, many, many, many times more arable land than for example Algeria and Libya. Sure, during French colonial days Algeria was the 4th wine producer in the world, but I presume that had more to do with agressive apartheid-esque farming policies than the land being so much more arable than that in France.

What information am I missing here? Unless by "North Africa" you exclusively mean "Egypt" in which case
1. My former point still applies (though to a lesser extent, the Nile has a tendency to make the surrounding lands hella fertile)
2. You mentioned Vandals, who never got to Egypt as far as I know. They only took over the modern day Maghreb if I'm not mistaken.

The collapse of the WRE is very complex and there is much more to it than just de-urbanization. The Germanic successor states that took the WRE's place were quite large (pic related) and for the average person the shift in power was hardly dramatic. The WRE didn't die in a bang so much as a whimper, the shift toward deurbanization, localism, and the migration of tribes had been occurring since at least the the 4th century. Italy was pretty unaffected by the collapse, it was the Gothic Wars of the 6th century that truly decimated the region. North Africa was rich and prosperous until what we theorize to be a climatic shift turned rendered much of the area into arid desert from a previously Mediterranean climate. The Italian city states of the Renaissance were a result of feudal divisions that took place in the region when the Holy Roman Empire held power over the region and gradually lost influence over it.

>Why was North Africa important to grain production, when so much of it is desert?

North African (And by which I refer to modern day Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) during antiquity had a more temperate, Mediterranean climate. At that time, it was one of the richest and most agriculurally productive regions of the empire and breadbasket of the WRE. Desertification gradually made the region more arid and less productive over time.

Not Egypt. You've got the information already it seems, you just haven't put together how important water-transport was (and how fertile the Med coast of North Africa is). The Maghreb harvest fed Rome's urban population.

How much can a climate even change over the course of 1500 years? Can you please refer me to some sources on this? And would it theoretically be possible to reverse this desertification? Would the proposed Trans-Saharan railway the French never got to build due to decolonization have aided in this effort?

Why do you think Civilization arose in those "deserts" that are Mesopotamia and Egypt do you think ? Because they're not. The rivers allow a permanent access to water. Add irrigation and sun and you have food. Of course there are desertic zones but there also very fertile areas.
In fact Europe didn't become a good producer before around 1000 AD, where we saw a warming in temperature which allowed for bigger harvests and thus demographic expansion.
Rome relied heavily on Egypt's grain because it was one of the biggest producers at one point, and needed it for its expansion

>what we theorize to be a climatic shift turned rendered much of the area into arid desert from a previously Mediterranean climate.
There is also the utter collapse of the irrigation system maintained in modern day Tunisia for centuries when Vandal tribes took over. So in no time the whole thing turned into a desert.

Same sort of situation with Sicily, user. And Cyprus. Low-tech humans can really wreck a place if they're given time to do it, but it's actually the damned goats' fault as often as not.

>How much can a climate even change over the course of 1500 years?
A lot. Weather and climate are very weird and finicky things and subtle changes and hundreds of factors can cause temporary or permanent shifts.

>Can you please refer me to some sources on this?

Just google "desertification". Here's an article to familiarize you with the concept.

>sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/07/990712080500.htm

> And would it theoretically be possible to reverse this desertification?
That's a question way beyond my scope of knowledge in environmental science, sorry.

The Vandals sucked, t.bh. Worst girl.

Because back in antiquity Egypt, Cyreneica (region in coastal east Libya) and what is today Tunisia were SUPER fertile, basically having a climate you have today in central Italy. Egypt had to that Nile, covering entire farmland yearly with silt, so they didn't even have to bother with fertility, as the fields were literally "reseting" each year to 100% productivity.

And then the climate changed. It turned Cyreneica and Tunisia into desert. Tunisia might hold due to Atlas mountains, BUT the Vandal conquest of the region damaged irrigation system and then the "central" government collapsed into a mess, so there was nobody giving orders to rebuild or repair the system (centralised and strong government is one of the most important factors for irrigation projects, read about hydraulic state on your own), dooming what could last for few more centuries if the irrigation was maintained, or maybe even rebound with later climate changes.
The only reason why Egypt didn't suffer the same fate was the fact it has Nile, but pretty much anything outside Nile valley also turned into desert.

There are several theories saying that the barbarian invasions of the roman empire would have partially been caused by a cooling of the asian steppes, forcing the nomadic tribes to go south west and moving entire populations.
There is also another cooling in asia that would coincide with the change of the commercial roads between europe and asia. Then again, populations would have had to go south, forcing the roads to go south too and ending up in Egypt instead of Byzance, weakening its economic power.
Climate change always existed and can really change societies throughout time

It's not as much as Vandals actively destroying the system. But they've destroyed local institutions, never impose anything even resembling central government (or any real government, for that matter). And you need a lot of funds, manpower and REGIONAL (and not local) focus to make wide irrigation work.

In short - they've killed the government capable of doing that and didn't provide any replacement. After all, North Aftrica was doing pretty good, while European part of WRE was a fucking mess for last century or so.

Vandals are nigger-tier, basically.

Yeah, I know, I know, wikipedia, yada yada yada:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Antique_Little_Ice_Age
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

Basically, you combine bunch of sun spots, few vulcanic eruptions on the other half of the world and minimal change of Eath's axis tilt and you are living on Hoth. Any of those factors can completely change climate for decades, if not centuries. Combined they are going to fuck you up like nothing else.

Hey, the term "vandalism" came from them, so what you expect?

People completely forgot how much lucky we were for having good climate for such a long time. Shit can go down tomorrow for all we know and could really fuck us over

>implying it isn't happening already

Climate is not an issue, really. Solar flare can fuck you up completely in roughtly 7 minutes after it happens. Last big solar flare hit Earth in 1860s. Back then it made telegraph lines inoperatable for few days unti fried parts were replaced, no biggy.

Today it would fry entire electronic equipment, along with all satellites we have.

Hell, if something happens to the Gulf Stream, Western Europe is in for all kinds of a bad time - London is farther north than Calgary with Amsterdam, Berlin and Dublin being located even further north. Right now they're excellent for growing shit and have mild winters, but shit could really start to suck if things change

>I-It's ok guys, it's chinese propaganda to make us lose our productivity !

>solar flares
Oh fuck imagine 2 days without internet.

>Africa and middle east become completely sterile and populations are forced to go north
Refugee spam : electric boogaloo

>Today it would fry entire electronic equipment, along with all satellites we have.
I imagine that could be pretty bad. Not only would the economy be crashing, but in the West we already rely on a lot of electronics (think greenhouses) for food production and cooling. Not to think of all hospital equipment that would be out of order.

Shit, it's scary how much we rely on electronics nowadays. The question is how quickly humanity can recover from this. I imagine that it would take a week at best to repair the most vital damage to our systems? If we're really, really lucky the governments of the West already have a "in case of solar flare" emergency plan.

I wish Yunnan had come out victorious in the warlord period of China.

It's become impolitic as an issue, the "we're rounding error, but acts of God happen reliably from a historical perspective" view of climate change catastrophe is denied in favor of misrepresentation as "denial". Advocacy for the development of robust GMO staples and chemical industry to make now-marginal soils productive (like what's been managed in Brazil recently) in order to roll with the next inevitable climate punch instead of taking it as a knockout blow has the same problem promoting nuclear power as a sustainable does. Not sexy, or politically useful.

>week
Assuming a coordinated effort and mobilising strong response, we are talking about weeks, plural.
And that's about most vital systems, like, say, fixing situation in areas with high urbanisation. Complete clean-up could take months.

You can also forget about satellites for next few years.

It had more to do with the complete deforestation of the mediterranian coast. All that wood went into ships or cities. The now free area used for agriculture, which was not sustainable in that climate without forests to balance shit out.

user, don't want to break it for you, but there were no forests in North Africa, ever. You can't deforest something that wasn't a forest.

The coastal areas had dense forests and were very fertile. Generations of cutting down trees for building material changed that.

The romans did most of it...

Let's put it this way:
Water-treatment plant is off
Electricity is off
Communication other than post is off.

Unless you had replacement circuits stored in Faraday cage, you can't do shit about it and need to make new one or jury-rig a LOT of things (assuming it was just electric-operated, not electronic-operated, that is, so say, old plants in former Eastern Blocks are in "better" situation).

>are forced to go north
How did you get that from the Gulf Stream ending?
Surely it would send people south?

Most satellites would probably be okay - they're designed to operate in space where there's no atmosphere providing shielding, and the Cold War risk of similar effects to solar flares from the incidental EMP you get with nuclear explosions means a lot will be hardened

That said, insurers still reckon a direct hit like 1859 would cost something like upwards of a trillion dollars in the US alone (there was an event of similar magnitude around 23rd of 2012 but it didn't hit earth - we missed it by about 9 days)

>atmosphere
*Magnetosphere
Though I think the atmosphere does shield a little

>Water-treatment plant is off
Shit... in a West (or even a world) where most 'natural' water is too polluted to drink this is a disaster. Could it be a humanity-ending event or is that exaggerated?

You are in a world of pain. And it's not as much as the water treatments being stopped (3/4 of the procedures are done by gravity and bacteria), but the fact nothing builds pressure in the pipes is the real bummer.

So... the fact that the population in north africa shrank, the system collapsed, and later islam took over... Is because of germanics going full nigger yet again?
Am I right?

Most of that land is also marginal at best.

>The collapse of the WRE is very complex and there is much more to it than just de-urbanization.
Yes, but the point was that during socio-economic collapse cities are usually the first to go.

As agricultural lands. But they produced enough furs for Novgorod to outsource grain production to Moscow and military to Lithuania. Didn't work very well for them.

Roughtly 30% of blame is on them. It would still go to shit without them due to climatic shift, but not as bad as it do with their "help". So in the end it's 30% Germanics, 60% climate change and 10% shit going from hand to hand on constant basis in the region for next few centuries (not exactly the best thing for land maintance).

Hah. You think that is bad? Some of the more vital shit in the electrical grid can take years to build.

As in years Plural. If enough of that shit gets hit at once it could be a couple of years before the grid is operational again.