Migration Period

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Image:Karte völkerwanderung.jpg The Migration Period is a name given by historians to a human migration which occurred within the period AD 300–900 in the area which comprises Central Europe.

The migration included the Goths, Vandals, and Franks, among other Germanic and Slavic tribes. The migration may have been triggered by the incursions of the Huns, population pressures, or climate changes.

1 The modern account
2 Völkerwanderung
3 Migration Period
4 Timeline
5 Footnote
6 See also
7 References

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The modern account

Modern historians divide the migration movement into two phases. The first phase, between AD 300 and 500, largely seen from the Mediterranean perspective, saw the movement of Germanic and other tribes and resulted in putting Germanic peoples in control of most areas of the former Western Roman Empire. (See also: Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, Alans, Langobards, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Suebi, Alamanni). The first to formally enter Roman territory were the Visigoths who are considered nowadays to have put an end to the last outliving form of Roman Empire. They were first called by the Roman Empire to defend its boundaries in exchange of fees, but they later occupied it. They were soon followed by the Ostrogoths led by Thiudareiks.

The second phase, between AD 500 and 900, saw Slavic, Turkish and other tribes on the move, re-settling in Eastern Europe and gradually making it predominantly Slavic, and affecting Anatolia and the Caucasus as the first Turkic peoples arrived. See also: Avars, Huns, Arabs, Varangians. The last phase of the migrations saw the coming of the Magyars to Pannonia and the expansion of the Vikings out of Scandinavia.

While other migrations have happened later in the history of Europe, generally they did not give rise to new states to the same extent, comprising mainly temporary invasions — with the notable exception of the Turkish invasion which started the Ottoman Empire.

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Völkerwanderung

The German term Völkerwanderung Template:IPA ("the migration of peoples"), is less often used as an alternate label for the Migration Period in English-language historiography than it is in German discourse<ref>"Jene Epoche, in der sich der Übergang von der Spätantike zum Frühmittelalter vollzog, wird in der deutschen Wissenschaftssprache traditionell als "Völkerwanderungszeit" bezeichnet." Manuel Koch, "Das Reich der Vandalen und seine Vorgeschichte(n)" (on-line)</ref> . However, the term Völkerwanderung is also strongly associated with a certain romantic historical style which has strong roots in the German-speaking world of the 19th century, perhaps associated with the same cultural process which included the music of Wagner and the writings of Nietzsche and Goethe.

In cultures that are heirs to Latin culture, these migrations are often called "invasions" (e.g. the Italian term "Invasioni Barbariche" meaning "barbarian invasions"). This is due to a widespread view of Northern peoples of that period as uncivil and primitive; often they have been blamed for destroying the Roman Empire. This old way of thinking is a remnant of the Renaissance, common until Romanticism and still alive in popular histories in France and Italy.

By contrast, the subtext of Völkerwanderung, seen as the forceful expansion of the Germanic tribes into France, England, Northern Italy and Iberia, is an indication of the energy and dynamism of those so-called "barbarian" peoples. This analysis became associated with 19th century German Romantic nationalism and the Eastern expansion of Germany (Drang nach Osten, the urge to move East).

It is argued that this kind of analysis contributed to the Nazi folk ideology of Lebensraum, or "living space", the theory that the Germans had a mission to expand their population beyond the national borders of Germany.

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Migration Period

In reaction to the above, 20th-century English-language historiography largely abandoned the German term, replacing it with "Migration Period", as in the series Studies in Historical Archaeoethnology or Gyula Laslo's The Art of the Migration Period.

The "invasions" of Romantic-generation historians have given way, too: scholars today hold that a great deal of the migration did not represent hostile invasion, but rather tribes taking the opportunity to enter and settle lands already thinly populated and weakly held by a divided Roman state whose economy was shrinking.

For a discussion of prehistoric migrations, see Human migration.

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