Download PDF | [Cambridge Medieval Textbooks] Guy Halsall - Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
615 Pages
This is a major new survey of the barbarian migrations and their role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the creation of early medieval Europe, one of the key events in European history. Unlike previous studies it integrates historical and archaeological evidence and discusses Britain, Ireland, mainland Europe and North Africa, demonstrating that the Roman Empire and its neighbours were inextricably linked. A narrative account of the turbulent fifth and early sixth centuries is followed by a description of society and politics during the migration period and an analysis of the mechanisms of settlement and the changes of identity. Guy Halsall reveals that the creation and maintenance of kingdoms and empires was impossible without the active involvement of people in the communities of Europe and North Africa. He concludes that, contrary to most opinions, the fall of the Roman Empire produced the barbarian migrations, not vice versa.
guy halsall is Professor of History at the University of York. His recent publications include Settlement and Social Organization (Cambridge, 1995) and Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2002).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This volume was commissioned a long time ago, and delivered very late. It is only right, therefore, that my editor for much of this time, Bill Davies, heads my list of acknowledgements. I thank him for his faith in this project, and the syndics of Cambridge University Press for their patience and understanding. Simon Whitmore cracked the whip fairly and in thoroughly amiable fashion in the latter period of the book’s composition, and Michael Watson was most helpful at the very end. I hope the book has been improved by the fact that I am older and – perhaps – wiser than I would have been had it been delivered on time.
The people I have to thank above all else are my own ‘barbarian horde’, my students, especially the ‘tradition-bearers’ of this group, the 140 or so undergraduates who have studied the barbarian migrations (in various forms) with me over the past eight years at York and London. Their essays, seminar contributions and stubborn refusal just to take my word for it have kept me on my toes and stimulated my thinking about the issues discussed in this book. They have provided me, moreover, with many very fond memories, and will find much in the following pages that is extremely familiar. Two, Anthony Dee and Adrian Smith, read earlier drafts of this book, for which many thanks.
This is a book that touches on dozens of areas of specialist research, in all of which there are many people more expert than I. I owe an enormous debt to those scholars whose work I have drawn upon; if I have any perspective at all on the huge problems with which this book deals, it is very much one derived from a vantage point perched ‘on the shoulders of giants’. Numerous scholars have kindly sent me off-prints of their works, which have proved invaluable. Of these learned ladies and gentlemen some deserve additional thanks.
In the reinterpretation of ‘Germanic’ archaeology I have benefited from discussions with, and the encouragement of fellow-subversives: Sebastian Brather, Frans Theuws and Philipp von Rummel (vive la re´volution!). Philipp also read the entire book in draft and made numerous helpful suggestions, saving me from many an error. Many others have helped too, as supporters, readers, discussants, always amiable (and patient!) sparring partners and in numerous other ways: Kate Cooper, Mayke de Jong, Bonnie Effros, Paul Fouracre, Mark Handley, Heinrich Ha¨rke, Peter Heather, Mark Humphries, Charlie Insley, Edward James, Ralph Mathisen, Walter Pohl, Susan Reynolds, Danuta Shanzer, Alan Thacker, Chris Wickham, and Ian Wood.
This book was mostly written in York but it owes much to Toronto. The influence of Walter Goffart’s ideas will be readily apparent. His claim, following a lecture at Kalamazoo, to have ‘liked half of [my] paper’, is one which I will carry with pride to my grave as, by Goffartian standards, unstinting flattery. Michael Kulikowski read and offered a thorough critique of the narrative section. I have benefited greatly from discussions with him, as well as from his many publications, as a cursory inspection of this book’s footnotes will attest. Finally, as well as learning much from his excellent volume on political communication in this era, I owe the term ‘post-imperial’, so much more appropriate than the usual, but in many ways misleading, ‘post-Roman’, to another product of the Toronto school, Andrew Gillett.
I must also give my deepest thanks to the fellow members of staff of the Department of History and the Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of York. It is a privilege to work with colleagues who are actually collegial, but they are much more than that. In particular I must thank Mark Ormrod for his unfailing support and friendship throughout. Before moving to York, much of the period spent working on this book represented an unhappy phase of my personal and professional life, at least increasing my perception of the irony of the historical process!
In addition to my family, who have remained the real bedrock of my existence, I have been blessed with wonderful Acknowledgements xv friends who have served, way beyond the call of duty, in helping me through these difficulties. By calling me away from my wordprocessor they have doubtless significantly delayed the appearance of this tome, but the book and its author have been much improved as a result. It is a pleasure and an honour to record my debt to them. It would have taken too much space to name them all and I’d doubtless have forgotten someone.
The enforced anonymity of this acknowledgement in no way reduces its sincerity. You know who you are! The one person who cannot remain anonymous is Emma Campbell, who, in addition to providing invaluable assistance with my discussions of gender and its theorisation, has reassured me that this book would get finished, and continued to make my life a much brighter place. Guy Halsall August 2006.
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