Migration Period

The Migration Period was an era of large-scale population movements across Europe, conventionally dated from the decline of the Western Roman Empire to the early Middle Ages.

Fall of the Western Roman Empire: The disintegration of Roman imperial rule in the western provinces during the fifth century. Its weakening authority opened routes for groups to cross borders and establish successor kingdoms.
Visigoths: A Gothic people who established a kingdom in southwestern Gaul and later Hispania. Their movement from the Balkans through Italy and Gaul created one of the largest successor kingdoms.
Peter Heather: A British historian known for scholarship on late antiquity, the Goths, and the end of the Roman Empire. His work emphasizes the role of external pressures and organized groups in western imperial collapse.
Germanic kingdoms: Post-Roman kingdoms ruled by Germanic peoples across western and central Europe. These states converted migration and settlement into lasting political structures.
Hunnic Empire: A short-lived empire of Hunnic-led peoples that dominated parts of Europe under Attila in the fifth century. Hunnic expansion pushed other groups toward Roman territory and helped accelerate movements westward.
Vandals: A Germanic people who crossed into North Africa and founded a kingdom centered on Carthage. Their passage through Gaul and Hispania culminated in control of a major Roman grain-producing region.
Walter Pohl: An Austrian historian whose work examines early medieval peoples, identity, and political transformation. His research questions the idea that migrating groups were fixed, unified ethnic communities.
Merovingian dynasty: A Frankish ruling dynasty that governed much of Gaul from the fifth to eighth centuries. Its rule demonstrates how a migration-era kingdom developed into a major early medieval polity.
Foederati: Non-Roman peoples or troops bound to Rome by treaties, often serving in exchange for land or subsidies. Roman authorities used allied groups to defend frontiers and settle military communities within the empire.
Ostrogoths: A Gothic people who ruled Italy under Theodoric the Great in the late fifth and sixth centuries. Their Italian kingdom preserved and adapted Roman institutions after imperial rule ended.

Linked from 34 pages