This is a major 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.
Rome's Gothic Wars is a concise introduction to research on the Roman Empire's relations with one of the most important barbarian groups of the ancient world. The book uses archaeological and ...historical evidence to look not just at the course of events, but at the social and political causes of conflict between the empire and its Gothic neighbours. In eight chapters, Michael Kulikowski traces the history of Romano-Gothic relations from their earliest stage in the third century, through the development of strong Gothic politics in the early fourth century, until the entry of many Goths into the empire in 376 and the catastrophic Gothic war that followed. The book closes with a detailed look at the career of Alaric, the powerful Gothic general who sacked the city of Rome in 410.
This book describes and analyses the development of the Roman West from Gibraltar to the Rhine, using primarily the extensive body of published archaeological evidence rather than the textual ...evidence underlying most other studies. It situates this development within a longer-term process of change, proposing the later second century rather than the 'third-century crisis' as the major turning-point, although the latter had longer-term consequences owing to the rise in importance of military identities. Elsewhere, more 'traditional' forms of settlement and display were sustained, to which was added the vocabulary of Christianity. The longer-term rhythms are also central to assessing the evidence for such aspects as rural settlement and patterns of economic interaction. The collapse of Roman imperial authority emphasised trends such as militarisation and regionalisation along with economic and cultural disintegration. Indicators of 'barbarian/Germanic' presence are reassessed within such contexts and the traditional interpretations questioned and alternatives proposed.
The Variae of Cassiodorus have long been valued as an epistolary collection offering a window into political and cultural life in a so-called barbarian successor state in sixth-century Italy. ...However, this study is the first to treat them as more than an assemblage of individual case studies and to analyse the collection's wider historical context. M. Shane Bjornlie highlights the insights the Variae provide into early medieval political, ecclesiastical, fiscal and legal affairs and the influence of the political and military turbulence of Justinian's reconquest of Italy and of political and cultural exchanges between Italy and Constantinople. The book also explores how Cassiodorus revised, updated and assembled the Variae for publication and what this reveals about his motives for publishing an epistolary record and for his own political life at a crucial period of transformation for the Roman world.
This Handbook makes the work of modern German and overwhelmingly German-language scholarship on the archaeology of Roman Germany available in English, presenting the latest developments in current ...research and providing a truly international perspective on the topic.
In this vivid memoir originally published in German, Anne Groschler (1888-1982) recounts her 1944 escape from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to Mandatory Palestine via "Transport 222", an ...exchange transport of 222 Jews for "Aryan" prisoners of war. In the most detailed contribution of the exchange ever published, Groschler paints an authentic picture of life before WWII amongst the upper echelons of German society, her ultimate persecution and escape to Holland where she was betrayed, the horrors of life in the Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen camps, and her eventual flight via "Transport 222" to Palestine. Written immediately after her liberation in 1944, this unique document captures a little-known chapter of Holocaust history.
We can all agree that World War II, beyond its military, political or economic coordinates, countless tragedies, convulsions propagated around the world, tensions and dramas often felt to our day, ...was for all of us a lesson of geography. From this perspective, the invasion of Poland in September 1939 by the German and Soviet troops was a first lesson, continued on another level by the Soviet-Finnish Winter War. The invasion of Norway (and Denmark) by the Germans in April 1940, followed by the allied reaction and the transformation of the Scandinavian states into a theatre of military operations, was monitored with distinct interest in Romania, at political, diplomatic and military level, but also at the level of general perception of a society that was both worried and avid, in the context of the European (for the time being) war, of information on the evolution of the conflict and not only. Names such as Oslo, Narvik, Trondheim, Åndalsnes, Namsos, Bergen, Lillehammer, Stavanger or Tromsø become familiar to the Romanian public. We find, especially in the Romanian media of the time, a luxurious abundance of accounts, commentaries, editorials, telegrams or interviews related to the conduct of military operations in northern Europe, beyond the censorship and restrictions imposed by the conditions of the war. From this perspective, we find it difficult to attempt even to pursue the conflict in Norway in April-May 1940 only in the light of articles in the Romanian press. Central newspapers, in the first place, abound with telegrams that alternately feature views, news, and information from both camps. Inevitably there were various denials, rumors, or what we call today "fake news", often taken over by the sensational rush, even by big press agencies of the time, without mentioning newspapers in European capitals including Bucharest. For this reason, our objective is to identify and analyze some of the Romanian echoes generated by the invasion of Norway, both in the Romanian media, but also at a diplomatic or military level, in a context in which Romania, as a neutral state, lived its own tensions and worries about its future fate as the war spread across the old continent.
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