How important was currency inflation in Fall of Roman Empire?
Upvote:-1
I'd say that inflation was the main cause of the of the fall of the Roman Empire. Except that the inflation itself was caused by something else. Every time an emperor died (and very few died of natural causes) there was a struggle for power and the army knew that they could simply kill any emperor that didn't give them what they wanted. Emperors had to keep giving more and more money to the army to appease them, so they just created more coins with less valuable metal in them. This lead to hyperinflation and the collapse of their currency. Then what really destroyed ancient Rome was around 300 AD the government started to only accept gold when collecting taxes, while still forcing everyone to use their bronze currency. So regular farmers had to pay tax on their land in gold but they didn't have any gold. So half the time they would try to sell their land or just abandon it and you had tons of fertile land just went fallow. Or they would fall into debt and become slaves to the few rich landowners who either had gold or had ways of getting around paying taxes. Or they would illegally join the mob of people who had nothing taxable. By the time the barbarians invaded there was very little left of roman society. Mostly everyone was a slave, and if you had any land you weren't allowed to sell it or leave. The invasion didn't actually change that much, just which feudal lord was in charge of you. Most of roman wealth was already plundered before any invaders arrived. Rome kept sending out all its gold by hiring barbarian mercenaries who only accepted gold for payment. You couldn't force them to use Roman currency or they would just leave. So why isn't this a more common thing in history where an army is too large and powerful that the king has to has to tax everyone to death to keep the army happy? Mostly because people in an army usually care about their country. In ancient Rome there were so many provinces and different people that were accepted as citizens just to collect taxes on them, and the army only cared about itself, it would frequently just pillage its own people.
Upvote:7
It is fair to say it was a contributing factor. Often currency devaluations would take place to fund responses to other crisis. I.E. You are losing in a war in Parthia and need more troops but the treasury is looking thin. No problem! Sprinkle a little silver into those new gold coins...no one will notice, at least not right away.
Devaluations would slowly impact the confidence of the currency and add frictions to trade. In the Western Roman Empire this was less of a problem as there was no possible replacement to this currency. In the later history of the Eastern Empire consistent devaluations resulted in a switch by the European economy away from roman currency to florins. This has a significant impact on the Eastern Empires economy.
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