So as the title asks. I was thinking and it makes sense to me that it happened but couldn't find anything that proves it.
I was thinking how east had thriving economy, but was that thanks to westerners moving to east or just east by itself.
I don't know what more I can say on my part since I am no real historian but I need to have here some more text so that bot moder allowes my post to go through.
I just want second everything in this post and recommend Peter Heather's "Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe" to OP, as I think it would help answer his question and is probably my favorite work regarding migrations and power changes during late antiquity and the middle ages.
Thanks on book reecomendation.
very good book, but this issue was not discussed.
It doesn’t outright discuss migration of Western Romans to the East, but it does touch on most of what u/AJ_Lounes mentions above in regards to how the fall of the western empire didn’t trigger a mass migration of citizens to the Eastern Empire.
Are there any podcasts on the Roman Empire you might recommend?
The History of Rome Podcast by Mike Duncan
Thank you. I’ve listened to quite a few of those. Once in a while In Our Time covers a Roman individual.
Dan Carlin has a bunch that are wonderful:
Punic Nightmares (about the punic wars) Celtic Holocaust (rome and the Celts) Death Throws of the Republic (great set about the fall of the republic and rise of the empire and lots of info on causes. Thors Angles - basically it's about the 'dark ages' but covers a lot of the fall of Rome's influence etc.
Thank you. I don’t think I’ve listened to him before.
That is an awesome book
I know decline was quite long period, that is why I mentioned in my post decline and fall. Since decline was happening for centuries not over night. That is why it might be bad question. Since many people could migrate during that time but in smaller groups, like we have today in EU. Balkan countires lost up to 1/3 of pop since early 1990s. From migration to wast mostly. I mean it in that way. Not like 1mil from middle east and africa comming in few mounths.
In advance sorry for bringing bit of politics, just wanted to give example of what I want to say.
Indeed, I saw afterwards that you've mentioned it was a long period yourself.
No worries for the politics side, that's what History is.
You're right. However, I would go back to what I said about how the barbarians were actually trying to respect and pursue what the Romans had established rather than erasing everything to start their own thing from scratch. The examples you're mentioning are right, but they are people who are moving away from places where sometimes bombs are literally raining and food supplies are almost non-existent.
If we go back to the barbarians, they in fact had all the interest possible of having the roman machine to keep on going, with already established laws, cereals farmed and functioning water systems. As I said above, would the barbarians had come into the empire in a more "viking" way, then no doubt the roman migration would have been much much more significant.
So the barbarian invaders just wanted to make a regime change while keeping the system functioning?
In a way, yes. The roman power ran out of recognition and prestige with time. One of the strenght of the Empire through its History was obviously its military. But it also became its weakness during the fall. There are 2 main things to remember when it comes to this :
But that's only for the political part. Culturally, the Romans inprint remained in Europe and was respected by the barbarians. When the barbarians rulers arrived with their courts and nobles, they knew that the main people was remaining roman. According to some (rare) testimonies which arrived to us, they understood they needed to work with the people already settled in good terms. One of the best example for this might be the Franks.
According to quite some historians, we might want to thank Christianism for this whole process of (not full, but still) preservation. The barbarian rulers understood they needed the roman people. The roman people was responding positively to the Church. So the barbarian needed the Church. And the Church needed strong protective rulers who eventually all got baptized. The Church ultimately gained power (it was the Franks who actually recognized first the Vatican as a state and well, the Vatican was in a way benefiting of Rome's aura) and more and more churches and cathedrals were built, which also led more or less directly to the preservation of some Ancient texts and works which were also rewritten in churches' offices.
And as we've discussed above, many rulers, even hundreds of years after the Fall, had in mind to restore the glory of the old Empire which was still seen as a wonder.
To conclude : the Fall of the Western Empire was the fall of its political system. But not of its people, culture or infrastructures. Sure, time did its work, adjustments were made here and there, romans and barbarians shared couches, but the whole presence and aura of the Empire was still there.
First, thank you very much for this productive input. I got a question: So why was the Roman infrastructure and architectural culture destroyed gradually? When you go to Rome today, you hardly can find a complete temple. Even the well known Forum Romanum is nothing more than a few stone blocks..
Thanks ! It is true the preservation is quite different from one thing to another. There are a bit of various reasons. Time is obviously one of them but not only. It happened sometimes that in order to build other monuments or support economy or war effort in troubled times that some monuments or places actually got destroyed to recycle the materials.
I imagine also that more modern conflicts could have damaged some places. Also, I don't remember precisely the place name, but I believe Mussolini actually ordered the destruction of old buildings to clear space and build a massive street through Rome.
If we look on the brightside however, we do have some monuments such as the Coliseum or the Pantheon which have made it quite good so far despite a few damages here and there. If we think also about the main roads paved by the romans, we are in a way still using some to this day technically, but obviously they're under concrete now..
I would also add that due to the fragmented political power and emergence of brand new regimes across Europe that the places of power changed of location too and so, I guess, the money allowed to maintain certain buildings in good shape.
Thanks!
Squared stone blocks are expensive to make. Cheaper and easier to take them from some abandoned building. Rome went from maybe 500,000 plus to 20,000 over two centuries, and stayed at 20,000 for several centuries more. Basically a mid-size town in the middle of a large field of ruins.
As rome unwound, plebeians would take marble and stone from the colosseum to sell for food. This after a full year of no sun, a plague, and hardly any food. Other sites were just ignored as it was too expensive to maintain. The church came in and rebuilt but in their vision.
I always think of the symbolic end of Rome as 660. Constans II comes over from Constantinople. He visits Rome which after all is still part of his empire. He walks around marveling at the glories done centuries ago. Rome has only about 50k people at this point, just the Papal bureaucracy really. It isn’t even the capital of Byzantine Italy. That’s Ravenna.
He orders his men to strip all the remaining precious metal gilding from the monuments. He even takes all the copper.
Then no Roman Emperor returns until the 15th century, unless you count Charlemagne and tue HRE.
This is where I start to get sad…
Historians used to think of 410 as almost a rowdy tourist visit. I’m not sure that’s true anymore. It was the Vandals in 455 that really ruined things, then Belisarius versus the Ostrogoths and Lombards that did the coup de grace. But if you think about it, in 405 the Danube and Rhine frontiers are leaking but they are still there and 5 years later the Visigoths are in Rome. Very sad.
The new barbarian kingdom let taxation slip, since their armies were mostly landed now, not paid. Moreover, the aristocracy in the west became much more rural. Finally, there was a greater focus on churches and monasteries instead of the usual civil infrastructure.
They didn’t so much let taxation slip as they inherited a system of taxes in kind. The money economy was going away. It becomes much harder to rebuild a needed aqueduct for a city 500 miles away when you can’t pay the workers from the surplus you’ve got elsewhere. All you can do are smaller projects using your local surpluses.
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Well remember originaly barbarian just meant foreigners.
No, non hellenic speakers which many if not most romans were
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Yet so much of the Roman infrastructure was destroyed.
Over a long time. Upkeep requires investment. There's a lot of American infrastructure seriously in need now, and that's over decades, not centuries.
The romans used volcanic ash in their concrete. Huge difference in how long their structures survive even harsh conditions vs modern concrete. https://www.historicmysteries.com/roman-concrete/
Thank you!
Has anyone tried to recreate this in modern buildings? I'm actually semi-interested in building a house
Roman concrete has longer drying time and lower strength but it is MUCH more durable. Roman concrete was still gaining strength for DECADEs after construction was completed.
I want to make a house that will outlast me lol. This brick house I have is 50 years old and falling apart -_-
Plumbing in some places in the US is about a century old lol
Wasn't people's wealth in the past much more tied to the land and their family/social networks than in the present? It's not like there was a job market back then. You don't send out resumes. It's not like you can just show up in a city and expect to make a living. To do what? Odd jobs? Crime? People were generally much less mobile and footloose in the past and much more embedded in local contexts prior to the Industrial Revolution and depersonalization of relationships allowed by money and bureaucratization.
I would imagine those who had extensive experience in governmental administration and/or made their living though education/literacy would be able to move, but that's a small subset of the population.
I always remember that, yes Rome itself was outside the empire for 60 years after 476, but then it was back in and stayed in until about 750. Then in 800 the Pope looked around and said, “yep it’s back again” and crowned Charlemagne “Emperor.”
So the idea took forever to die.
Out of curiosity, are there any known holdouts of Roman cities continuing to operate after the fall of the western Roman empire?
It depends on what these key words mean - "operate" on what level? and "fall" as in 476? A number of cities continued to provide public services, pay to keep up their existing infrastructure and construct new buildings. It depends on how you define the specific romanitas of a city! In Ostrogothic Italy, some aqueducts were repaired or built anew in Ravenna, Rome, Naples, for instance. Vandal North Africa also remained pretty urban. Overall, cities definitely get less important for a few hundred years, for sure.
Very interesting question. I honestly don't know.
If any kind of resistance was there, I think it was more of a cultural one rather than an organised armed one.
But it is definitely something that needs to be studied ! We never know and might be surprised
This comment is inline with everything i learned in college 20 years ago. Huzzah!
I remember in a history class I took in college we saw a picture of an inscription on a tomb that referred to the guy as a (a frank I think? Idk one of the 'barbarians') and a Roman.
Didn't most of the aristocracy migrate to the new capital with Constantine over time?
I don't know the numbers but some of the aristocracy definitely did. However I guess it was more the aristocracy from the City, who were more linked to the power itself and the emperor.
For aristocracy or land owners of the rest of the Empire, as long as the barbarians were not messing everything up, I guess the bargain was alright.
There's a lot of junk conjecture in this thread, so first, I'm going to repost a link that a mod posted further down the line that I think will shed a lot of light on the subject:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period
Second, while the "sudden collapse" way of thinking about the Western Roman Empire (i.e. that in 475 there was a prosperous empire, and that by 477 "here thar be dragons") is severely outmoded, the idea that the collapse and the decades that followed represented some sort of "smooth," barely-noticeable administrative change is complete fantasy.
For example, the city of Mediolanum (Roman-era Milan) was utterly obliterated in the Gothic Wars in 538, and the majority of its inhabitants were either killed or enslaved. Hardly a mere change in the process of government to see the second-largest city in the Western Empire bludgeoned out of existence.
As you've stated, this event occurs within the Gothic Wars, an attempt of reconquer by the Eastern empire. It goes a bit beyond the only migration process itself we were discussing here, although it is a consequence of it. Quite sadly, the large amount of deaths actually occured with the attempt of reconquer, Justinian plague etc
It is obvious that nothing is white or black. Yes, violent episodes occured without a doubt throughout the territory, the barbarians themselves were not a unique people, they all had different ways of bringing changes into the places they arrived. The Wisigoths for example did not have the same relationship towards religion than let's say the Vandals. For very much detail, each tribe and place should be studied separately.
Changes were not unseenable, true. They were even needed. Otherwise, the Empire would not have "fallen". But as I have emphasized, this is why the old roman families and clergy was, and has been, very important in the process. Small populations of the countryside were more in contact with their local bishop than the king.
Really the Romans probably did more to bring down their own empire than did the barbarians from the outside with all the corruption and tax farming and the like. The far more simplified structure of the Germanic tribes would have been a help.
Many Romans were already moving into France during the time of Caesar, so at the time of collapse, there is a sizable population of Romans established in France already
You're right, as Gaul became a province with Caesar and then fully part of the empire. By the collapse, the population was well romanized.
Thank you!
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When the east fell to the Turks in 1454 AD intellectuals/books flooded Europe and is a factor in the renaissance of the 15th century.
This exact fact is what prompted me to ask about fall of west.
Yes, but even in that case the vast majority of Greeks remained. There were some Greeks that fled to certain European regions but there wasn't a mass migration.
*Romans, not Greeks. Yes, they had Greek culture all around them, but they saw themselves as Romans. When you today go to Southern Cyprus and ask the people, they will tell you that they are Cypriots or Rums (Romans), but not Greeks.
They were Greeks with Roman citizenship. In other words they were both Greeks (ethnicity) and Romans (politically) and that's how they saw themselves based on the primary sources that have survived.
>When you today go to Southern Cyprus and ask the people, they will tell you that they are Cypriots or Rums (Romans), but not Greeks.
I suppose you mean Cyprus and I think you got confused by our different ethnonyms. Greeks today have three ethnonyms: Ελληνας (Hellenas), Γραικός (Graikos) and Ρωμιός (Rhomios/Roman). All these terms mean "Greek" in Greek and Έλληνας is by far the most popular one. Although during the byzantine period we also used Ρωμαίος/Rhomaios/Roman, today Ρωμαίος is used for the ancient romans while Ρωμιός is the term that we use for ourselves. As for cypriots, we are Greeks. As far as I know Turks use the term "Rum" for Greeks from Cyprus,Pontic Greeks and Greeks that still live in turkey while they use the term "Yunan" (from Ίωνες, the ancient Greek tribe) for the rest of the Greeks that live in Greece.
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At that point yeah. The Greeks definitely began to view themselves as Greeks and not Romans as the centuries went on.
So a medieval brain drain — very interesting (I never learned this and thought it was a modern concept)
The Eastern Empire/Byzantium was more or less surrounded by the turks. In its latter days, the empire was a diminishing island in an Ottoman sea. The western empire some places, like Britannia, it more or less disappeared overnight, others, it just withered away. I suppose there was a lot of internal displacements in such turbulent times, but mass migration from west to east, seems unlikely. To me, that is :)
When Constantine made Constantinople the roman capitol, the elite of rome followed him there. I have no doubt that some families kept the lesser family members in their estates in Rome if they didn't sell them outright; however the west continued to decline. There would have absolutely been a migration of the wealthier classes at certain times to the east. Some families whose power was from holdings in the west, would have stayed until they had to relinquish that power. By the time of the west's collapse, the dominant families in Rome were high ranking members of the church. The nobles who were close to the western emperor would have been in Ravenna. By this time there were still old Roman families, but they had also intermarried various barbarian invaders at the higher ranks. There is also documented cases of people fleeing to the eastern empire after the last emperor fell. So in essence yes, but I doubt most peasants would be involved. Also you have the tribes of Germania who were conquered by the huns and went east with them until Atilla was defeated.
>So in essence yes, but I doubt most peasants would be involved.
Right. By the time of Constantine and his successors, the 'peasants' were essentially bound to the land, like later serfs. Most had no option to emigrate.
That's a good point. After the end of the crisis of the third century, diocletian began the dominate. It's usually marked 284 ad as the starting point. Diocletion declared alot of laws that weren't common to the west. Such as having people kneel and bow before him. He also decreed price ceilings on a variety of goods and that sons would inherit their own fathers job. They would need special permission to move. This is the first steps to feudalism, so I'm glad you mentioned it.
It was fresh in my mind. I just had my laptop repaired so instead of doom-scrolling I read some of the books on my shelf, and one of them being Trever's "History of Ancient Civilization Vol. II: The Roman World," which covers this fairly extensively.
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I don't know if anyone will read this at this stage but there is an ongoing discovery in ancient dna. Mainland Italy's genetic makeup changed drastically from the start of imperial Rome because of a massive, and I mean massive, influx of eastern mediterranean ancestry. These people came mostly in the form of Greek - speaking Anatolians and to a lesser extent Levantines. This shift is starting to be called the "east med shift" in ancient dna and the evidence is quite frankly astounding. Whatever reason, indentured servitude to become a Roman citizen, or any other reason, tons of eastern provincials migrated en masse to Italy in the early stages of Imperial Rome. Of course, places like Sicily already had greek speaking populations since the first Greek colonies on Italian and Sicilian shores. Just a funny anecdote considering the question above.
"Collapse" in general involves the elites more - there is less production of luxury goods and high culture, but for the average slave or peasant I don't know if the collapse of the western Empire would have massively affected their lifestyle.
If we look outside the Roman elite, which makes up a very small percentage of the overall population, I would bet money that the vast majority of people hunkered down and stayed put.
Consider two facts for this: most didn't have the financial resources to travel hundreds of miles or give up their day to day livelihood because they needed to put food on the table today. It may not have been subsistence level living but very likely a paycheck to paycheck sort of situation. That handicaps people's ability to make big changes and cut away from their previous lives to start over somewhere new.
Secondly the 5th century was an unstable, chaotic, violent time for most of the provinces. Civil wars and barbarian thugs rampaged up and down and around the Western Empire. Travel was perilous and I imagine robbery and death awaited people who weren't quick enough to get out of the way of those Romans and non-Romans who had nice pointy sharp sticks roaming around and demanding your gold and supplies.
This is not to say that there wasn't movement of people at all. We can look at the Bretons as an example of a group that fled from the barbarian migrations. But even that group already had close ties to the area they went to through trading and kinship and so had a community network to rely on for support (housing, jobs, family, etc.).
I doubt we'll ever know the true numbers of how much of the population moved around but at least on the continent I think people were conditioned to duck and cover after decades and decades (and more decades) of war.
> If we look outside the Roman elite, which makes up a very small percentage of the overall population, I would bet money that the vast majority of people hunkered down and stayed put.
The main form of wealth in ancient Rome was land, so even much of the elite was stuck.
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Listen to the podcast Fall of Civilizations the Byzantium episode specifically
Even by 300 AD roman peasants were bound to their landlord, and forbidden by law to leave the manor. Thus a large part of the population was unable to migrate. In order to maintain the empire's armies, and to fund the frequently recurring civil wars, the tax burden on roman citizens had become unbearingly heavy. This combined with the suppressive religious policies of a now Christian empire, made many people welcome barbarian rule. (As happened when roman North-Africa came under muslim-arab rule two centuries later. Also, these were troublesome times, and travelling for long distances could be very hazardous, so my guess is that there might have been migration from areas close to the eastern part of the empire, and perhaps some wealthy citizens (merchants and others, whose wealth was not tied to the land), but all in all, I'd go for very limited migration.
This was what I was going to posit as well. The late Roman Imperial term for this practice is coloni (quick Wikipedia article on it). Peasants from the late Empire through the Dark Ages were essentially serfs; beginning with contracting away rights for food and a part of land, and then just legally being owned by the local lord. Fascinating stuff.
If you think about it, the landlord is also unlikely to leave.
The Romans had by the time of the official "fall" of the Western empire already introduced the practice of stationing Germanic mercenary cavalry directly with landowners and towns in Italy, so that the mercenaries could collect their own wages directly as taxes. This feudal societal organization would basically remain unchanged in the Ostrogothic and Lombard kingdoms. Landowners and mercenaries had a shared interest in preventing the peasants/commoners under their control from leaving if that impacted income, and would be definitely capable of hunting them down if they did.
I do not have the impression, if you look at the sources covering later attempts by the Eastern Roman empire to expand their influence in Italy at the expense of the barbarians, that they had much popular support for doing so. On the contrary: small Lombard feudal armies for instance regularly defeated larger but very low morale locally sourced (Eastern) Roman armies. And parents complained about their children dressing as barbarians to look cool. That doesn't give the impression that the average former Roman was willing to risk his life to be able to live under an emperor in Italy. At best you could describe it as an attitude of apathy.
I heard a group of about 40,000 went with to Constantinople from Rome when Constantine made it the new capital.
But really, I prefer to think of it as:
> But several centuries later the Romans moved to the East, you could almost say Greek culture conquered the Romans :o
Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio
Nice! Is that Horace?
(zomg, and down the rabbit-hole I go :P
The legend says the romans were survivors of Troy so its Greeks all the way down.
That's an interesting point. One could argue the Trojans weren't actually Greeks, but then other says there are Trojan names in the Illiad that translate to Greek ( leading some to speculate that the citizens of Troy were a mix of Trojans and Greeks when the siege was happening ).
Others dispute the story altogether.
But there is that "Etruscan" linguistic angle ( that Etruscan doesn't fit with other local languages back then, lending weight to the idea they came from Troy ).
I once wondered where the word Etruscan came from and if it was some kind of form of "ex-trojan"? (e-troyscan ? I dunno). We'll never know for sure, but all that bronze-age stuff (like, 1000-1600BCE or so? ) is just great fun to speculate on :D
> I heard a group of about 40,000 went with to Constantinople from Rome when Constantine made it the new capital.
Wasnt this from around the empire? And since it was voluntary migration, most of those migrans were opportunist or who had nothing and wanted to start from a fresh plate.
In class we read an incredibly interesting primary source from the late Roman Empire, i can't remember who it was.
Basically this very well off Roman aristocrat was living in Gaul with his family, and he wanted to move back East to Greece, as this was during the advanced stages of the "decline of the western empire". His wife however preferred to stay in Gaul, and remained there with her children rather than move back East.
Very telling that this person preferred staying in Gaul which was ruled at that point by who we would commonly assume to be "savage barbarians".
That sounds like it could be Sidonius Apollinaris. Dozens of his letters survive and provide an interesting view of 5th century Gaul.
No. Odoacer deposed the last Western Roman Emperor (but spared his life), and had been the head of the Foederati for some time - he knew Roman politics and appealed to the Senate for legitimacy, making the existing Roman Senate more important than it had been in a long time and regularly consulting with it, nominating consuls, etc. So as a Italian elite, you were suddenly doing significantly better; he appointed several prominent old Roman families to important positions and issued new coinage.
The Eastern Roman Emperor (Zeno) was afraid that Odoacer might head East as well and convinced Theodoric the Ostrogoth to take his armies and go attack Odoacer. Theodoric was also a romanized "barbarian" who had been raised in Constantinople with the Emperor's kids as a hostage, and had actually been named as a consul by the Eastern Roman Emperor (although he felt like he was not properly rewarded and his people were betrayed by a newer emperor, Zeno, which put him on the attack).
Anyway, Theodoric beat Odoacer and also upheld roman law and administration, and there was actually a flourishing. He instituted a new building program and expanded out his kingdom and made peace with several key "barbarian" allies. He rebuilt the walls of Rome and the Roman Senate built him a statue in celebration.
Ironically, it was the effort of the Eastern Roman Empire to reconquer Italy after Theodoric's death that led to a substantial depopulation as warring armies traded cities back and forth, subjecting them to repeated sacks.
I just visited Hadrian’s Wall at Birdoswald and the museum claims that the decline of supplies and pay forced the Roman soldiers (from all parts of the empire) to start local farms/businesses. They never left.
Most citizens were just rural farmers who had no reason or means to move. The only people who moved were like some priests/scribes/gentry who might have moved, but you'd have to think about the reasons why. Did they fear they would suffer at the hands of the Ostrogoths? If not, then that removes a lot of the pressure to move to the east.
I doubt it. By the time Rome finally collapsed it had been in decline for a couple centuries. Populations declined throughout the Italian peninsula during this period, that's why it was conquerable in the first place. By the time the Ostrogoths overran Italy the peninsula was a shadow of its former self and there were few people left to flee. That, and the Ostrogothic Kingdom functioned nominally as a suzerainty of the eastern empire so there wasn't a tremendous change in the daily life of the Italian peoples.
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If you are interested in an in-depth discussion of societal changes and migration patterns during and after the decline and fall of (Western) Rome, I suggest Patrick Whyman's Fall of Rome podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-fall-of-rome-podcast/id1141563910 He actually did some scholarship on the topic, so he knows what he is talking about
the leading families? some did for sure moved away in the last years. But for the average citizens there wasn't much of a difference whomever was in charge
No, that was not the case because most of the people under Rome were very very poor, many people don't realize this and think everyone lived like the Julia family from the ,,Rome'' show. And daily lives didn't change at all under the new Germanic rulers as they converted to christianity and even offered more protection to people, especially if they moved to rural communities where proto - feudalism was starting to form.
I have no facts as I wasn't there, but mass migrations are a relatively modern affair.
Not sure you are going to find a census.
This is absolutely false. I've seen some bad comments but jeez. The western Roman empire fell from mass migrations. Let's name some. The huns, the goths, the vandals, the Frank's, the celts, the moors, the Saxons. Now let's go to the eastern empire. The pechaneg, the rus, the turks. Ffs.....
You are missing the largest one. That of eastern mediterraneans (Greek - speaking anatolians mostly) to mainland Italy from the start of imperial Rome.
... the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Langobards, the Burgundians...
The rugii, thuringians, and the jutes, cherusci, chatti, and batavii.. and those pesky Irish who created the kingdom of Dal riada. What a chaotic age.
Invasion is not mass migration.
Wut. All of these people were wandering tribes who came with their families. They are the definition of mass migration. It's not called the freaking migration period for no reason 😒
Mass migration of Slavs? Rings a bell? It's but one example where it was and is labeled as a Migration as there was no one to Invade...
Some history books are talking of an invasion from the barbarians but the reality's more grey. Barbarians were already in the landscape for a long time. As a matter of fact, by the end of the west empire, most of the army, including leaders, was made of barbarians. The "invasion" was in fact the arrival of big groups of people, fleeing themselves from what was probably more of an invasion this time : the Huns.
Yes, some tensions and conflicts probably occured in the process, but it was not the bloody invasion depicted in our school books.
Well sometimes it was absolutely bloody, and they brought their families to watch! In wagon trains!
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I've been on this Reddit a while....
I'm just going to leave this link here.
:) Mass migrations are the way that all continents got populated. Just smaller masses!
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AJ_Lounes t1_it384pi wrote
Some probably did.
But for the most part, I don't think it was the case.
The process of the Fall of the western part was in fact quite long and not to be seen as one big wave of soldiers invading and killing everything. If it had been the case, then probably more roman migration would have occured indeed. But actually, the "barbarians" were already in the Roman landscape since quite some time. Quite a number of them was holding high positions within the military and it is even said that, by the end of the western part, most of the armies was barbarian or coming from barbarian bloodlines. All of this while the last emperors were losing in power and prestige.
Also, the Fall of the empire was probably not perceived the same way according to where you were living in the Empire. A citizen of the City was probably more concerned of losing the Emperor than let's say a farmer in the countryside who only knew approximately the emperor's face thanks to the money coins.
We must also not forget quite an interesting fact. The "barbarians" had no interest in destroying the Roman culture and infrastructures of supply and power. It appears that they actually wanted to preserve and pursue it (just have a look at how some leaders even yeeeears after the Fall did their best to bring the Empire, or at least the idea of the Empire, back). Some of the new people in charge actually asked for councelling from romans of long roman bloodlines on how to keep everything in place.
This probably helped in having the smoothest change as possible and so to not "scare" the roman people.
I would add that even 100-200 years after the fall, people who were descending from old roman families were much respected and had quite some positions of power, still as councellors or within the Church, which worked closely with the new powers in place across West Europe to maintain society.