Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire (The Middle Ages Series) by Walter Goffart (PDF)

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The Migration Age is still envisioned as an onrush of expansionary “Germans” pouring unwanted into the Roman Empire and subjecting it to pressures so great that its western parts collapsed under the weight. Further developing the themes set forth in his classic Barbarians and Romans, Walter Goffart dismantles this grand narrative, shaking the barbarians of late antiquity out of this “Germanic” setting and reimagining the role of foreigners in the Later Roman Empire.The Empire was not swamped by a migratory Germanic flood for the simple reason that there was no single ancient Germanic civilization to be transplanted onto ex-Roman soil. Since the sixteenth century, the belief that purposeful Germans existed in parallel with the Romans has been a fixed point in European history. Goffart uncovers the origins of this historical untruth and argues that any projection of a modern Germany out of an ancient one is illusory. Rather, the multiplicity of northern peoples once living on the edges of the Empire participated with the Romans in the larger stirrings of late antiquity. Most relevant among these was the long militarization that gripped late Roman society concurrently with its Christianization.If the fragmented foreign peoples with which the Empire dealt gave Rome an advantage in maintaining its ascendancy, the readiness to admit military talents of any social origin to positions of leadership opened the door of imperial service to immigrants from beyond its frontiers. Many barbarians were settled in the provinces without dislodging the Roman residents or destabilizing landownership; some were even incorporated into the ruling families of the Empire. The outcome of this process, Goffart argues, was a society headed by elites of soldiers and Christian clergy—one we have come to call medieval.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review Goffart has produced yet another major study on the migration of the Northern barbarians into the late Roman Empire. Although called a sequel to his Barbarians and Romans, this is a completely rethought, significantly expanded and rewritten version. ― ChoiceAn important book which should be read attentively by all scholars of the late Roman West and early medieval Europe, and which will also be instructive to those interested in the intellectual history of early-modern and contemporary European historiography. ― EHR About the Author Walter Goffart is Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Toronto and Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer at Yale University.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This book from Walter Goffart, even though it is written somewhat in a polemical style, gives a very good introduction into the argument whether the Roman empire fell or was transformed. So far, when I read a book from the fall side, they would point out all the barbarians that migrated through and ravaged the divers Roman provinces. Their side was always an easy side to present in lively pictures. Books from the transformation side, I am particularly acquainted with the views of Peter Brown, on the other hand mostly concentrate on the cultural and the religious developments, demonstrating that they evolved during the centuries in question and that there was no regression in these areas that we can see. Walter Goffart’s book now is the first book I have read that from a transformation point of view nevertheless deals with the barbarians. Therefore, it leads to highly interesting conclusions and cannot be recommended highly enough.The book essentially consists of eight chapters, whereby the first four are like short papers, dealing each with one subject and thoroughly discussing it. The later three chapters are then longer before a short summarizing chapter concludes the book. In what follows, I will quickly summarize the different chapters. If you do not want to read them, you can skip them and go directly to my last section.The first chapter is generally about the concept of the migration age. Even though the migration age is the time between 370 and 578, many people associate it with two different concepts, the one of the long Germanic migration age, whereby Germanic people, as far back as the Teutons and Cimbri or even before pushed southwards to greener pastures, and the Asian migration age, with the Huns as Chinese neighbors were driven away by them, and crossed the whole Asian continent only to wash ashore Europe and the Roman border. Both concepts, says Walter Goffart, are not provable and should be rejected.The second chapter then talks about the core idea that Germanic barbarians were responsible for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Walter Goffart then also directly cites some pages from Alexander Demandt’s

⭐”Der Fall Roms” in the first appendix and directly responds to the different points made therein in his second chapter. As a positive side effect, I won’t have to read Alexander Demandt’s book anymore as I now know its main conclusions.In the third chapter, Walter Goffart then looks at the idea that most Northern Roman neighbors were Germanic tribes from a grand German family. Walter Goffart insists that all those people might have had in common was a related language, but that this did not make them form a big group with common plans and goals. The Northern Roman neighbors happened to be a divers bunch of humans, organized in different forms with different aims and behaviors towards the Roman empire. Walter Goffart also shows how an idea of organized Germans opposite Romans came into being; from Renaissance German humanists reading Tacitus’ Germania and concluding therewith that the Germans before Germany formed a cohesive group. This conclusion cannot be sustained nowadays.The fourth and last short chapter looks at the idea that various Germanic tribes came originally from Scandinavia or other exotic locations before moving southwards where they encountered the Romans. This conclusion, Walter Goffart convincingly shows, was originally put forward by Jordanes towards the end of Justinian’s Gothic wars, in an effort to demonstrate that the Goths of Italy were as alien as they could possible be and deserved to be eradicated. Before reading this book, I had read a

⭐by Walter Pohl, saying that a lot of ideas about the Germanic peoples need to be rethought. The interesting thing for me now was to see that Walter Goffart also criticizes historians like Walter Pohl, for not going far enough. For him, the whole terms “Germans” and “Germanic” must be removed from Late Antique discussions, as they lead to anachronistic conclusions about the Roman neighbors that need to be eliminated.In the fifth and first longer chapter, Walter Goffart looks at the invasion of the Vandals and other groups in 406 as a case example of “barbarian migration”. He can show thereby that the migration processes of the divers barbarian groups were more complicated and complex than is nowadays written in many books.As with my last book, I was especially interested in this one most important moment in the history of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, if there ever was one. As I had concluded that the loss of Roman North Africa dealt the eventual death blow to the western half of the Roman Empire, after which they could hardly pay any troops anymore, this loss constituted a turning point in the fate of the Empire. Nevertheless, these provinces were not lost overnight, but it was a long process over a third of a century, in which the Hasding Vandals would first cross the Rhine in 406 (or 405), move to Spain and receive parts of Gallaecia in 408, take Baetica in 418 after the defeat of the Alans and Siling Vandals, start thereafter to exert their influence on North African Mauretania, cross eventually to Africa in 429 and take Carthage in 439. Thus, rather a development than a moment. Nevertheless, I came to understand the crossing of the Vandals over the Rhine as the starting point that set up all the following steps, and thus to get interested in this particular moment in history.Originally, the general position that also I knew was that the border garrisons on the Rhine were withdrawn before this point by Stilicho and that therefore the Rhine frontiers lay relatively undefended open for invaders, only protected by some allied troops of Franks and Alamanni. However, John Drinkwater has made the point in his

⭐about the Alamanni that this might not have been the case, and that the Rhine frontier was still heavily guarded at this time point. This intrigued me even further and made me wonder, how the Vandals and their companions consequently managed to intrude into the Roman Empire.The story as I had read it from John Drinkwater’s book and

⭐about the Vandals was that the Vandal troops might have constituted a relatively minor group that was not taken that seriously, also in the light of the fact that quickly thereafter the usurpation by Constantine III occurred that at once captured all the attention of the Roman government. Moreover, also Alaric and his Goths turned out to be again a problem at this time, and hence, the relatively small warband of the Vandals received no real attention as they crossed the Rhine and started to plunder there. Once they had done so, they might have been reinforced by barbarian contingents from Radagaisus’ army, escaping over the French Alps into Gaul from Stilicho’s campaign, by hostile federates settled previously in Pannonia, or by local people in Gaul, joining the victorious raiders once they had established themselves in Gaul for the outlook of rich plunder. Only then did the Vandal’s invasion swell into a major assemblage of people that managed to establish themselves on Roman soil, with all the known consequences.Walter Goffart now states that this conclusion of a reinforcement especially by Radagaisus’ forces is based mainly on two text passages. In one, it is stated that the usurper Constantine III faced barbarians that crossed the Alps. The second one states that Radagaisus’ army entered Italy with three columns, but split thereafter in Italy so that only one was present when it was besieged in Fiesole, Radagaisus killed and the remnants of the army recruited into the Roman army. Thus, these two passages were interpreted in the respect that there were still large numbers of barbarian troops at large in Italy after Radagaisus had been killed and that subsequently sought their way over the Alps to join the Vandal invasion. Walter Goffart now rejects this notion; his point of view is that Radagaisus’ army was complete at Fiesole and that its number had anyway been exaggerated. To this end, when after 100’000 men supposedly invaded Italy with Radagaisus but only 10’000 were recruited by the Roman army, the source insists that these were only the higher officers that were recruited. To Walter Goffart, this makes no sense; probably all the survivors were recruited. Moreover, the barbarians that Constantine III had to face coming over the Alps might very well have been the troops of Sarus, thus the official Roman troops sent to deal with him. Thus, to Walter Goffart, it is more than likely that the Vandal invaders were not reinforced. His opinion is more that the Roman frontier in Gaul was indeed denuded, as the sources say, and thus that the invaders faced no real opposition for the invasion. Moreover, he also draws our attention to the fact that before their defeat in 418 in Spain, the Alans most probably played the major role in the invasion, dragging the Vandals and the Sueves with them down to Spain. This is also represented in the distribution of the Spanish provinces to the different invading groups, where the Alans received the lion’s share. Only after their defeat at the hands of the Visigoths did their survivors join the Hasding Vandals, where upon this group would swell and play a major role in the subsequent events.Reading this book I concluded that I had somehow arrived at an uncertainty principle in history, similar to the one postulated by Heisenberg for quantum mechanics. The mechanisms of the two would of course be different; in quantum mechanics there are physical laws that inhibit the simultaneous precise measurement of position and momentum of subatomic particles, whereas in history, it is the presence (or lacking) of sources that leads to an impossibility to make certain statements. There is of course no possibility to do experiments in order to receive somehow more answers by other means in this system. As a consequence, what is there is there, there is not going to be more information in the future, which is not helped by the fact that what the extant sources at times might be contradictory to each other. Thus, historians have to draw conclusions on the basis of the current knowledge of the past, which will most probably not increase significantly in the future anymore. There is the possibility that archeological findings might do so, which is however not of particular significance in this case, as many the new barbarian residents cannot be distinguished from Romans by their material culture. Here, archeology will thus not be able to contribute to new knowledge, and all historians have to work with what there is presently. And thereby, they might now believe one source more and therefore have to reject another one, as it contradicts the first one. And as different historians will put their faith into different sources, one arrives at a situation where one gets different historians coming to different conclusions. Additionally it is and most probably will remain impossible to dissolve the correctness of the different historian’s conclusions. Hence the postulation of an uncertainty principle in history, where statements will remain unprovable. One example from this book would be the statement from Gregory from Tours, that the Franks fought and won almost against the Hasding Vandals, killing thereby their king, and that only the timely intervention of the Alans could save the Hasding Vandals from complete annihilation. This statement this rejected by the historians who think the Rhine frontier was still mounted by Roman troops, but accepted by Walter Goffart in order to show that the Franks (and Alamanni) were guarding the Rhine frontier in lieu of genuine Roman troops. Which of the positions to follow becomes then a difficult task for lay reader of these books.The sixth and longest chapter deals with Walter Goffart’s main proposition; of what the barbarian groups that entered Roman territory received when they were settled on Roman soil. Walter Goffart insists that it cannot have been land, because giving land from the Roman landowners would have been unconstitutional and that the unlawfully expropriated landowners would have complained enough that it would have made it into our sources. Walter Goffart also maintains that a host in Roman context was most probably only that, a host, and that no host, neither then or now, can be forced to surround a considerable part of his possessions. Walter Goffart theory that only tax receipts were given to the barbarians is pretty convincing, and it is an enjoyment to see how Walter Goffart can make the old law texts become meaningful with the interpretation that Roman emperors distributed to the barbarians lawfully those tax receipts that they previously had received. On this point, that the barbarians always acted and were treated according to the Roman law hinges then also the whole concept of a Roman transformation. The barbarians did not come and took away things from the Romans, well, of course this did also happen, but only temporally. But those barbarians that were settled on Roman soil by the official Roman government and did stay did so on lawful terms. It seems thus a crucial point to be proven or refuted, as with it the question of a Roman “downfall” or “transformation” can be decided.The seventh chapter gives a good introduction into those barbarian gentes that are normally not in the limelight of the books about the end of the Roman Empire. Taking these as other case examples, Walter Goffart can nicely show that not all barbarian groups moved around this time, and that those that did move moved sometimes not voluntarily but for example were encouraged to do so as auxiliaries of the Huns. In the story of the barbarian migration age, those barbarians that did not migrate are thus often forgotten, which will of course bias the point of view. Walter Goffart succeeds in putting these barbarians that did not move in relation to those that did, demonstrating that the migrating barbarians constituted actually only a minority. The term “migration age” then also constitutes an exaggeration, which Walter Goffart can accept as historically introduced.Chapter eight finally summarizes Walter Goffart’s key statements expertly in few pages. Thereby, mainly two points caught my attention. On the one hand, the interesting elaboration of Walter Goffart of how the different views why the Roman Empire collapsed changed over time. Thus, until the second world war, the predominant view, voiced for example by Edward Gibbon, was that the Roman Empire collapsed due to internal weakness, i.e. decadence. The Romans came to enjoy praying much more than fighting, and preferred to cut their thumbs over going to war, or so the saying went. After the second world war, the opinion came up that outside barbarians, i.e. Germans, were responsible of “killing off” the Roman Empire, first out of a revenge feeling against the modern Germans, but then more and more seriously and with the negative feelings removed from it. At this stage, says Walter Goffart, many modern historians still are. Walter Goffart’s view is now that the Roman Empire did not collapse due to “Germanic” outsiders, that did in this form anyway not exist, neither did it fall due to internal decadence. Walter Goffart’s interpretation is that the Roman Empire was transformed. This is not to say that he is downplaying the barbarian warbands that ravaged the different provinces, he just maintains that they were not responsible for the profound changed Roman Empire of the fifth century. After all they already occurred in the third century and no barbarian kingdoms were visible thereafter on Roman soil. Walter Goffart says that the barbarians were integrated into the army as a step to simplify (or to get the same service cheaper) the Roman troops, and they were allotted sortes, tax receipts as a way to simplify their payment. Thus all these steps were made deliberately, the Roman Empire was not overrun by barbarians but they were invited and their payment organized accordingly so as to simplify (or make cheaper) the Roman army.On the other hand, starting with a long citation from Bede, Walter Goffart also analyzes why the rich Romans’ way of life of leisurely reading and writing correspondences and books to each other came out of fashion. From the citation, it becomes clear that this lifestyle was already looked down upon in Bede’s times. At that time, you either were a monk in a monastery or a soldier with an allotment that kept you provided. But to have a landed estate and not doing either of them was not accepted anymore. Why this happened stays somehow in the dark. I read somewhere that the rich aristocrats were too busy fighting so they did not have spare time anymore. It might also be that at that time rich people who wanted to read, discuss and write books undertook a clergy career, thus changing the kind of books they read. In any way, what seems clear is that this change of rich people’s lifestyle did not happen deliberately, but was again a consequence of the simplification of the Roman Empire’s ways. And that as a consequence of it, a lot of knowledge of the Romans was lost as the books were not maintained.In sum, this book gives good points for concluding that, even though the Roman Empire was overrun by barbarians, this was not the reason for its end. The reason was the Roman authorities’ decision to settle them on Roman soil with their own allotments to provide them. Once there was no strong central leader anymore, the barbarians had all they needed to take care for themselves. The simplification of the Roman army led to the becoming unnecessary of a central ruler and to its eventual removal. Thus, even though Walter Goffart’s polemic writing styling is at times plainly annoying, at others it is intriguing and interesting, and Walter Goffart’s good arguments make the book anyway worthwhile reading stuff.

⭐While the description of the movement of certain groups was well documented, the text seems, at times, to move a bit slow. It does provide a nice approach to which groups moved into which areas of the European area.

⭐Be forewarned. This is NOT a history of the period but a vitriolic denunciation of the far superior previous histories of the period (Heather, Brown et al.) and by extension of the outstanding histories published subsequent to Goffart’s polemic. If you are not thoroughly familiar with the period, you will certainly not learn of its history here.

⭐An interesting an unconventional look at a topic that is usually bogged down in misconceptions. It’s a pretty scholarly and technical discussion but has a strong, provocative thesis.

⭐Excelente obra

⭐A summary of the review on StrategyPage.Com’In this revisionist work, Prof. Goffart (Yale), calls for a reassessment of the “Barbarian Invasions.” As do many recent scholars, he argues that the “Fall” of the Roman Empire was more of a “transformation.” The “Barbarians” who settled on imperial soil usually had the consent of imperial authorities, and rather rapidly assimilated; meanwhile, the Goths, Franks, Burgundians, Suevi and the others have long vanished, leaving descendants noticeably more Roman than German. He then argues that the concept of “German” peoples north of the empire constituting a common ethnic group with ancient Scandinavia roots is merely a construct of Renaissance and Enlightenment scholars. Goffart notes that much scholarship on the ancient “Germans” is based on the over-mining of sources such as Tacitus’s Germania and other ancient Roman and Greek writers, none of whom spoke “Barbarian.” So we find scholars identifying a people named the “Sciri” in a reference of about 200 BC with the “Sciri” of the next appearance of the name, around AD 350, and was the man the Romans called “Arminius” really named “Hermann”? This is a rich, thought-provoking work, of value to specialists in ancient history and worth a read for anyone with even a passing interest in the subject.’For the full review, see StrategyPage.Com

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