Migration Period
The Migration Period, also known as the Barbarian Invasions, was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of post-Roman kingdoms there.
The term refers to the important role played by the migration, invasion, and settlement of various tribes, notably the Burgundians, Vandals, Goths, Alemanni, Alans, Huns, early Slavs, Pannonian Avars, Bulgars and Magyars within or into the territories of Europe as a whole and of the Western Roman Empire in particular. Historiography traditionally takes the period as beginning in AD 375 and ending in 568. Various factors contributed to this phenomenon of migration and invasion, and their role and significance are still widely discussed.
Historians differ as to the dates for the beginning and ending of the Migration Period. The beginning of the period is widely regarded as the invasion of Europe by the Huns from Asia in about 375, and the ending with the Lombards' conquest of Italy in 568, but a more loosely set period extends from as early as 300 to as late as 800. For example, in the 4th century the Empire settled a very large group of Goths as foederati within the Roman Balkans, and the Franks were settled south of the Rhine in Roman Gaul. In 406 a particularly large and unexpected crossing of the Rhine was made by a group of Vandals, Alans and Suebi. As central power broke down in the Western Roman Empire, the Roman military became more important but was dominated by men of barbarian origin.
There are contradictory opinions as to whether the fall of the Western Roman Empire was a result of an increase in migrations, or if both the breakdown of central power and the increased importance of non-Romans created additional internal factors. Migrations, and the use of non-Romans in the military, were known in the periods before and after, and the Eastern Roman Empire adapted and continued to exist until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, although it involved the establishment of competing barbarian kingdoms, was to some extent managed by the Eastern emperors.
Individual migrating groups varied considerably in size, from war bands of a few thousand to entire tribal groups numbering over 100,000. Modern estimates suggest the Gothic crossing of the Danube in 376 brought 90,000–200,000 people into the Empire; the Rhine crossing of 406 involved a coalition of Vandals, Alans, and Suebi estimated at up to 200,000 people; and the Ostrogoths under Theodoric numbered 100,000–200,000 when they invaded Italy in 489. Estimates for the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain range from 20,000 to 200,000, while the Lombard invasion of Italy in 568 has been estimated at around 150,000. Estimates for other groups, such as the Franks, Burgundians, or Slavs, are difficult to determine due to their more gradual or dispersed settlement patterns. According to the preceding estimates, total migration into Roman territory during the Migration Period could have ranged from roughly 500,000 to over 1,000,000 people.
The first migrations of peoples were made by Germanic tribes such as the Goths, the Vandals, the Anglo-Saxons, the Lombards, the Suebi, the Frisii, the Jutes, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, the Sciri and the Franks; some of these groups were later pushed westward by the Huns, the Avars, the Slavs and the Bulgars. Later invasions such as those carried out by the Vikings, the Normans, the Varangians, the Hungarians, the Arabs, the Turks, and the Mongols also had significant effects on Roman and ex-Roman territory.
Chronology
Germanic tribes prior to migration
moved out of southern Scandinavia and northern Germany to the adjacent lands between the Elbe and Oder after 1000 BC. The first wave moved westward and southward, moving into southern Germany up to the Roman provinces of Gaul and Cisalpine Gaul by 100 BC, where they were stopped by Gaius Marius and later by Julius Caesar. It is this western group which was described by the Roman historian Tacitus and Julius Caesar. A later wave of Germanic tribes migrated eastward and southward from Scandinavia, between 600 and 300 BC, to the opposite coast of the Baltic Sea, moving up the Vistula near the Carpathian Mountains. During Tacitus' era they included lesser-known tribes such as the Tencteri, Cherusci, Hermunduri and Chatti; however, a period of federation and intermarriage resulted in the familiar groups known as the Alemanni, Franks, Saxons, Frisians and Thuringians.First wave
The first wave of invasions, between AD 300 and 500, is partly documented by Greek and Latin historians but is difficult to verify archaeologically. It puts Germanic peoples in control of most areas of what was then the Western Roman Empire.The Tervingi crossed the Danube into Roman territory in 376, in a migration fleeing the invading Huns. Some time later in Marcianopolis, the escort to their leader Fritigern was killed while meeting with Roman commander Lupicinus. The Tervingi rebelled, and the Visigoths, a group derived either from the Tervingi or from a fusion of mainly Gothic groups, eventually invaded Italy and sacked Rome in 410 before settling in Gaul. Around 460, they founded the Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia. They were followed into Roman territory first by a confederation of Herulian, Rugian, and Scirian warriors under Odoacer, that deposed Romulus Augustulus in 476, and later by the Ostrogoths, led by Theodoric the Great, who settled in Italy.
In Gaul, the Franks entered Roman lands gradually during the 5th century, and after consolidating power under Childeric and his son Clovis's decisive victory over Syagrius in 486, established themselves as rulers of northern Roman Gaul. Fending off challenges from the Alemanni, Burgundians, and Visigoths, the Frankish kingdom became the nucleus of what would later become France and Germany.
The initial Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain occurred during the 5th century, when Roman control of Britain had come to an end. The Burgundians settled in northwestern Italy, Switzerland and Eastern France in the 5th century.
Second wave
Between AD 500 and 700, Slavic tribes settled more areas of central Europe and pushed farther into southern and eastern Europe, gradually making the eastern half of Europe predominantly Slavic-speaking.Additionally, Turkic tribes such as the Avars and - later - Ugric-speaking Magyars became involved in this second wave. In AD 567, the Avars and the Lombards destroyed much of the Gepid Kingdom. The Lombards, a Germanic people, settled in Italy with their Herulian, Suebian, Gepid, Thuringian, Bulgar, Sarmatian and Saxon allies in the 6th century. They were later followed by the Bavarians and the Franks, who conquered and ruled most of the Italian peninsula.
The Bulgars, originally a nomadic group probably from Central Asia, occupied the Pontic steppe north of Caucasus from the 2nd century. Later, pushed by the Khazars, the majority of them migrated west and dominated Byzantine territories along the lower Danube in the 7th century. From that time the demographic picture of the Balkans changed permanently, becoming predominantly a new language, Slavonic-speaking, while massive populations of native Thraco-Romanised people survived in the mountains of the Balkans.
Left behind by the Alans three Asian populaces settled South of Danube: Sclavini settled in Istrian Peninsula renamed Slovenia after 1920; Croats settled in Dalmatia, i.e. modern Croatia and Western Bosnia and Herzegovina; while the Serbs settled in Illyria, Epir, Thracia and Macedonia, i.e. nowadays Southwestern Serbia, Eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of modern Montenegro. By the mid seventh century, Serb tribes were invading northern Albania. By the ninth century, the central Haemus Peninsula and Epirus became invaded and settled by Bulgars.
During the early Byzantine–Arab Wars, Arab armies attempted to invade southeast Europe via Asia Minor during the late 7th and early 8th centuries but were defeated at the siege of Constantinople by the joint forces of Byzantium and the Bulgars. During the Khazar–Arab Wars, the Khazars stopped the Arab expansion into Europe across the Caucasus. At the same time, the so-called Moors invaded Europe via Gibraltar, before being halted by the Franks at the Battle of Tours in Gaul. These campaigns led to broadly demarcated frontiers between Christendom and Islam for the next millennium. The following centuries saw the Muslims successful in conquering most of Sicily from the Christians by 902.
The Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin from around AD 895 and the subsequent Hungarian invasions of Europe until their massacre in the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 A.D. troubled Central Europe and is considered the final act of the invasions from Asia.
The Viking expansion from the late 8th century conventionally mark the last large migration movements of the period.
Christian missionaries from the Roman West and Roman East Byzantium gradually converted the non-Islamic newcomers and integrated them into Christendom.
Discussions
Barbarian identity
Analysis of barbarian identity and how it was created and expressed during the Barbarian Invasions has elicited discussion among scholars. Herwig Wolfram, a historian of the Goths, in discussing the equation of migratio gentium with Völkerwanderung, observes that introduced the equation in his 1778 history of the Germans. Wolfram observed that the significance of gens as a biological community was shifting, even during the early Middle Ages and that "to complicate matters, we have no way of devising a terminology that is not derived from the concept of nationhood created during the French Revolution".The "primordialistic" paradigm prevailed during the 19th century. Scholars, such as German linguist Johann Gottfried Herder, viewed tribes as coherent biological entities, using the term to refer to discrete ethnic groups. He also believed that the Volk were an organic whole, with a core identity and spirit evident in art, literature and language. These characteristics were seen as intrinsic, unaffected by external influences, even conquest. Language, in particular, was seen as the most important expression of ethnicity. They argued that groups sharing the same language possessed a common identity and ancestry. This was the Romantic ideal that there once had been a single German, Celtic or Slavic people who originated from a common homeland and spoke a common tongue, helping to provide a conceptual framework for political movements of the 18th and 19th centuries such as Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism.
From the 1960s, a reinterpretation of archaeological and historical evidence prompted scholars, such as Goffart and Todd, to propose new models for explaining the construction of barbarian identity. They maintained that no sense of shared identity was perceived by the Germani; a similar theory having been proposed for Celtic and Slavic groups.
A theory states that the primordialist mode of thinking was encouraged by a prima facie interpretation of Graeco-Roman sources, which grouped together many tribes under such labels as Germanoi, Keltoi or Sclavenoi, thus encouraging their perception as distinct peoples. Modernists argue that the uniqueness perceived by specific groups was based on common political and economic interests rather than biological or racial distinctions. Indeed, on this basis, some schools of thought in recent scholarship urge that the concept of Germanic peoples be jettisoned altogether.
The role of language in constructing and maintaining group identity can be ephemeral since large-scale language shifts occur commonly in history. Modernists propose the idea of "imagined communities"; the barbarian polities in late antiquity were social constructs rather than unchanging lines of blood kinship. The process of forming tribal units was called "ethnogenesis", a term coined by Soviet scholar Yulian Bromley. The Austrian school popularized this idea, which influenced medievalists such as Herwig Wolfram, Walter Pohl and Patrick J. Geary. It argues that the stimulus for forming tribal polities was perpetuated by a small nucleus of people, known as the Traditionskern, who were a military or aristocratic elite. This core group formed a standard for larger units, gathering adherents by employing amalgamative metaphors such as kinship and aboriginal commonality and claiming that they perpetuated an ancient, divinely-sanctioned lineage.
The common, track-filled map of the Völkerwanderung may illustrate such course of events, but it misleads. Unfolded over long periods of time, the changes of position that took place were necessarily irregular ... periods of emphatic discontinuity. For decades and possibly centuries, the tradition bearers idled, and the tradition itself hibernated. There was ample time for forgetfulness to do its work.