Fall of the western roman empire

Fall of the western roman empire There were many different causes to the fall of the western empire. However, this decline was due mostly to economics but also to a few other. One reason was due to the split done by Diocletian. When Diocletian split the Empire into the East and West, he remained the ruler of the west but appointed a colleague to rule the West. To determine who would be the next ruler, each Emperor would appoint an official that he thought was worthy. Unfortunately this was part of the cause of the demise of the empire. There was eventually a point where there were no real successors and the army decided who ruled. Another reason was because farming and agriculture depended on the empire which was broke. Therefore, there was not much agriculture and not many resources to trade. The roman economy was not doing well at all. During the fourth century, the roman military was larger; a large amount of these soldiers were barbarians who only did it for citizenship and slaves. None of these actually cared for the advancement of Rome. The western empire started becoming increasingly barbarian. Another problem came when Constantine came into power and declared Constantinople (in the east) the center of the Roman Empire. Because of this, Western cities lost their power over the cities of the east; the west was less economically developed and less urbanized. The population in the west was also more spread out over a larger area and had trouble defending the borders. The western empire provinces started becoming Germanic Kingdom. There was increased barbarian political violence in the west . After Valentinian III, a germanic general decided that the west did not need an emperor. The western empire had now fallen in 476. The eastern empire remained intact mostly because it had a much larger population that was more in control. This was because the capital of rome (Constantinople) was in the east. It was more economically stable and more urbanized. There was more trade coming in from different places. In addition, it had only one front to protect (from Persia) while the west had to defend a much larger border even thought it was less organized.