The Migration Period ( 300 to 600 AD), also known as the Barbarian Invasions, was a period in European history and late antiquity 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 (possibly as early as 300) and ending in 568.Halsall, Guy. Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568. Cambridge University Press, 2007. 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,For example, Halsall, (2008), Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 but a more loosely set period extends from as early as 300 to as late as 800."The Migration period (fourth to eighth century)", p.5 Migration Art, A.D. 300-800, 1995, Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. Katharine Reynolds Brown, , 9780870997501 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 20,000Catherine Hills, "The Anglo-Saxon Migration: An Archaeological Case Study of Disruption," in Migration and Disruptions: Toward a Unifying Theory of Ancient and Contemporary Migrations, ed. Brenda J. Baker and Takeyuki Tsuda (2015: University Press of Florida), pp. 11-20 to 200,000,Bryan Ward-Perkins, "Why did the Anglo-Saxons not become more British?" (2000). 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 (including the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths), 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.Bury, J. B., The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians, Norton Library, 1967. 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 (especially in North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Anatolia and Central and Eastern Europe).
Chronology
Germanic tribes prior to migration
Germanic peoples moved out of southern Scandinavia and northern GermanyWolfram Euler, Konrad Badenheuer; "Sprache und Herkunft der Germanen: Abriss des Protogermanischen vor der Ersten Lautverschiebung"; 2009; to the adjacent lands between the Elbe and Oder after 1000 BC. The first wave moved westward and southward (pushing the resident Celts west to the Rhine around 200 BC), 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 (AD 56–117) and Julius Caesar (100–44 BC). 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's 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.Bury, Invasion, Ch. 1.
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 (a fusion of western Germanic tribes whose leaders had been aligned with Rome since the 3rd century) 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.Bertolini 1960, pp. 34–38.Schutz 2002, p. 82 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 Slavic-speaking, while pockets of native people survived in the mountains of the Balkans.Fine, John Van Antwerp (1983), The Early Medieval Balkans, University of Michigan Press, , p. 31.The Miracles of Saint Demetrius
Croats settled in modern Croatia and Western Bosnia and Herzegovina while the Serbs settled in Southwestern Serbia, Eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of modern Montenegro.Chapter 2 in Noel Malcolm's Kosovo, a Short History, Macmillan, London, 1998, pp. 22-40 By the mid seventh century, Serb tribes were invading northern Albania. By the ninth century, the central Balkans and the area of southern and central Albania 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 (717–718) 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 (7th and 8th centuries). At the same time, the so-called Moors (consisting of Arabs and Berbers) invaded Europe via Gibraltar (conquering Hispania from the Visigothic Kingdom in 711), 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 and 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 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,Wolfram, Thomas J. Dunlap, tr. History of the Goths (1979) 1988:5 in discussing the equation of migratio gentium with , 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".