The Expansion of the Roman Republic

This is an essay on the expansion of the Roman Republic. 

The Expansion of the Roman Republic

 

Well, did the expansion help or hurt the Roman Republic. That’s like saying if Qin Shi Huang was a good emperor. I mean, sure he did lots of good deeds to China, but there were some very cruel things he did too. So, what really is the truth? In my opinion, I think the expansion hurt the Roman Republic.

 

There are many reasons why the expansion hurt the Roman Republic, but there are also specific reasons. One specific reason is that during the expansion, a lot of the farmland was destroyed and once the farmers came back from finishing their service to the Roman army, they couldn’t afford to fix the damages. Therefore, they had to sell the land to the rich. If more farmland keeps getting destroyed, then the people of Rome won’t have much food to eat. That means the people will starve to death!

 

The second specific reason is that the rich people who bought the farms grew only “cash crops” such as olives and fruits. They didn’t grow grain so in the end, they had to depend on imported food from other countries.

 

Another reason is that after Rome conquered more countries, the people they conquered became slaves. As more countries were conquered, there were more slaves. Plus, they were being mistreated. I certainly don’t tolerate this. You can’t just take the people as your slaves. If you do take them as slaves, at least treat them with respect.

 

These are the reasons why I think the expansion hurt the Roman Empire. I know there are other good things that have happened, like poor people not having to pay taxes and get free food, but there have been too many bad things that have happened.

 

Basically, the Roman Republic was expanding their territory to become the most powerful empire in the world. That’s kind of what’s going on with the U.S. in our times now. The United States has been involved in a couple world affairs around the world, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some people say that they got involved in the wars because they just wanted to show off and prove they’re a world power and some others said they broke in just for oil supplies. There are many, many, many people saying their own opinions. The main question is, did the United State’s involvement in world affairs helped or hurt its standing as a world power? I think it hurt its standing as a world power because they thought Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) so they broke into Iraq to search for the weapons. It turned out that Iraq had no WMD. Then, the invasion led to the quick defeat of the Iraqi military and the execution of Saddam Hussein, the dictator. Later on, the U.S. occupied Iraq and tried to establish a new government, a government of democracy. And that led to  a huge fight/war that is still continuing today. I think the U.S. government should first rethink about everything before they try to break in a country and find the WMD.

 

After learning this much of the past, I’ve realized that the world will probably be better off with no country being a world power. If a country were a world power, then lots of countries would be too dependent on that country. For example, this year, the United State’s economy has kept getting worst and worst. A lot of countries depended on the economy of the U.S. Now some countries are almost bankrupt. All countries should have the same power so there won’t be any more disasters that will be like this.

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