Obtain Immediately Empires And Barbarians Originated By Peter Heather Shared As Electronic Format

was only able to get to pagein this book, It was much more about barbarians than empire and I just wasn't that interested, There was a lot of detail about various barbarian groups, with much about current archeological findings, It was pretty academic, like a book that you have to read for a class that you have to take, Just not that enjoyable for me, Once again Peter Heath has written an extraordinarily complex and nuanced account of Europe in the first millennium AD, a period when the modern foundations of European society were established.
He focuses on migration and its role in transforming the Mediterraneancentered world of Late Antiquity into the Atlanticcentered one of the Medieval and Modern eras.
Toward that end, the author looks at the drift of Germanic tribes ever westward into the Roman Empire to c, ADtheir replacement by Slavs in north and central Europe after ADand the last great migrations of the Vikings AD, Up to thes, the theory influenced byth Century ideas of nationalism and, frankly, racism of mass migrations of large, coherent “nations” of peoples sweeping through the old provinces of Rome and exterminating or pushing all before them dominated the historiography.
As textual and archaeological evidence accumulated, this view grew more and more inadequate, It engendered a reactive scholarship that emphasized internal transformations on both sides of the frontier rather than migrations as critical factors Preface and Chapter, “Migrants and Barbarians”.
sitelinkWalter Goffart is a good and intimidating example of this school, Heather argues that neither extreme is terribly productive in explaining what happened, and we should take a more nuanced view that incorporates the very real internal transformations that made Constantines empire very different from Augustus and Fritigerns Germania very different from Arminius and the external migrations of significant populations that certainly took place p.
x.

In his zeal to restore the good name of “mass migration,” Heather may himself stray into the pitfall of overemphasis but not too often and not too deep.


A reader hoping to understand or find out about the antimigration argument will be disappointed but Id refer you to Heathers earlier book, sitelinkThe Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, or better since its from a proponent Goffarts work.
That aside, Heathers argument for restoring a balance in our perceptions of a nascent European culture is valid, and the evidence he martials for his case, impressive.
And eyeopening. Heather has a particular facility in evoking the society of late Antiquity and making the reader see events through the eyes of the participants,

Heather begins the book by looking at the difference between the social and economic development of “Germania” from our first glimpse of it in Roman literature primarily sitelinkCornelius Tacitus to the Frankish hegemony of theth Century including the AngloSaxon conquest of CeltoRoman Britain here the primary text is sitelinkAmmianus Marcellinus.
He then looks at the Slavicization of north and central Europe in the wake of the Germanic migration, And he rounds off his survey by examining the Viking migrations that crowned the last few centuries of the first millennium AD, The basic argument for all of these developments is this: Migration is motivated by negative factors such as war and political turmoil but also by positive factors such as economic opportunity.
People look toward wealthier economies for the promise of a better life, In the face of a strong polity like Rome before c,, a fourtier zone developed: i Rome proper, relative to others a highly developed, mature, wealthy economy ii an inner periphery of barbarian polities intimately tied to Rome in trade and politics iii an outer, less developed periphery iv a zone with little or no direct contact with even the inner periphery much less Rome where the levels of technological, political and economic development remained at an Iron Age level or less.
A paradox of this development is that in pursuing its own economic interests, the more advanced culture sows the seeds of relative if not absolute decline.
In the face of Roman aggression and manipulation, the barbarians on the Empires frontier developed more complex and richer economies and equally complex and more powerful political organizations.
In, Arminius led a coalition of tribes that annihilated three Roman legions c,,men yet within a decade punitive campaigns had thoroughly pacified the frontier and at no time was the Rhine border or the provinces behind it seriously threatened.
The situation was differentyears later when Marcus Aurelius faced the well organized alliance of the Marcomanni in a devastatingyear war, And the tipping point had been reached bywhen Tervingi and Greuthungi Goths annihilated another Roman army at Adrianople, At that time, the frontier was fatally breached and the Empire was never able to completely regain its dominant position,

A similar paradigm governed all the migratory movements of the first millennium, There are differences in detail, of course, For example, in the case of the AngloSaxon conquest of Britain, elite replacement was a more influential factor than in the Gothic and Frankish conquests of Gaul.
Historical accident plays a role and you cant hitch your star to any single or simplistic explanation for outcomes, Migration played an enormous role in the development of Europe but that role diminished over the course of time as other developments came to the fore.
By the end of the millennium, Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals was

sufficiently advanced socially, economically and politically that subsequent migrations such as the Magyars and the Mongols were the assimilated rather than the assimilators.


I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and highly recommend it to Roman and European history buffs, I do have several caveats, alas:

, As mentioned in another review, Heathers authorial tone is at times too folksy and colloquial, Ive complained before in other reviews, and Ill continue to do so, but this is not acceptable for a serious book of this nature, Ill continue to read future works by Heather but Ill hope probably in vain that the tone will be closer to his earlier books,

. Typos: Im a copy editor, Im not obsessive about typos I make enough of my own not to take too high a position on moral grounds Im willing to overlook one or two in apage work though I shouldnt.
But in a professionally published, scholarly work such as this there were far, far too many to excuse, Some examples are inconsistent spellings, i, e. , “Rurikid” vs. “Riurikid” or “Vojnomer” vs. “Voinomer,” and straight out and easily avoided misspellings, “itineration” vs, “itiration. ”

. And my crowning complaint: At many points in the narrative, Heather refers to photographs and theres a “picture acknowledgements” page but nowhere is there a section of photographs.
Nowhere! This is beyond inexcusable, That quality control failed so spectacularly in this print run of the book leaves me spluttering in indignation, I cant convey how frustrated I feelargh!

Maybe the paperback edition will correct these mistakes, If youre interested in reading this book, Id wait for it,

Full Disclosure: I respect and admire Goffart and, in the face of his erudition, its hard for the dilettante historian such as myself to resist his arguments but I think Heathers point about ignoring the role of migration is valid.


Goffart is not as userfriendly for the general reader as Heather but any serious, even if amateur, student of the period needs to read his work see my review of sitelinkBarbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire sitelinkhere.
Warning: this is not a History book, but a detailed exploration of the reasons behing the migrations in the first millenium, So if you don't know anything about the background history, maybe get some basic information first,
That said, the author made a very thorough study of his topicyears!, with comments on other scholars' approach, presenting evidence and advancing his own arguments theories.

I particularly like the part on the slavic kingdoms, as this is not often discussed in English language books of this period,
Only caveat: the structure is a bit too academic, And some ideas are repeated ad nauseum,
Otherwise, really worth reading it, It is a lengthy overview of thest millennium AD in Europe, This period is subject to a substantial controversy between the historians for the obvious reasons not many written sources and those existing are rarely reliable.
The most controversial point is the role of migrations in this period, Peter Heather gives a solid overview of the problem and related points of view from no migration to so called "invasion hypothesis" the theory prevailing in the first half of theth century and before, when a certain "people" fought its way into a territory and ethnically cleansed the existing population.
It was later discredited and rejected, Heather's own view is somewhere in the middle:there are different kids of migrationsit is always more complicated then it seems probably not surprisinglya metaphor of a "billiard ball" of the rapid movement of one "people" is replaced by "the snowball" of the mixed population movement including women and children and in other cases elite's replacements.
Roman empire and later Byzantine empire and even the Arabs where source of both positive and negative influence of the evolving populations not totally surprisingly again.


Heather comes across as a historian who does not believe that "the history is a foreign country" as many others do, He extensively deduces his hypothesis from the analysis of the recent migrations such as Rwanda genocide for example, His theories and ideas are always lucid and he is open about the difficulties he faces, I had only problem with the book it was quite repetitive at times,

The first chapter is the most interesting and theoretical, He summarises his views and ideas, This is followed by more or less chronological narrative of the millennium starting with Goths and moving to the Slavs in the later half of the millennium.
I found the The Slavs' chapters the most fascinating: he posits that the early Slavic states were based economically on the huge trading surplus from slave and fur trade in the region by the Scandinavians and the Western Slavs selling the Eastern Slavs this bit is the most unpleasant, if true.
The discussion of Franks and AngloSaxons I found the weakest, I did not feel it was enough evidence in the book to support Franks' mass migration, With AngloSaxons, he said it was a substantial migration to replace the elite and more as the existing ownership structures were replaced, However, as far as I understood him, it was not more than that, I struggle how then the language was totally replaced as well, Maybe that is because we know about it only based upon the written sources I presume, But the sources would come from the very small strata of population who could write then, Anyway, I am still puzzled about that period in England,

Overall, it is very interesting, well written and well argued book, if only a little repetitive, .