GERMANS

1
GERMANS

• Around 500 BC, Germanic people began to migrate
  out of Scandinavia and northeastern Russia and
  had occupied Germany by 100 BC
• Formerly occupied by Celts
• They were primarily a pastoral people who lived
  off the products of their sheep and cattle
• Augmented by hunting
• Other favorite activity was fighting
• Some in organized campaigns to seize land
• More often in individual raids to steal cattle,
  capture slaves, etc.

2
BONDS OF PERSONAL LOYALTY

• No formal political organization
• They were tied together by bonds of personal
  loyalty
• Kinship
• Lordship
• Kinship was based on the clan
• Groups of clans would join together to form a
  tribe
• Maintained cohesion by making up myth of a
  common, heroic ancestor
• Function was mutual protections
• Kin expected to get vengence if a fellow clan
  member was killed or injured by an outsider

3
LORDSHIP

• Relationship between a leader and his retinue of
  warriors
• Voluntary relationship
• Leading man would call on any brave young man to
  go on raid with him
• Those who answered call swore to serve leader
  faithfully in return for his protection and a
  share of the spoils
• Transcended clan loyalty
• Members form groups of companions, bond together
  and to their leader by oaths

4
CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION

• Before 500 BC, all Germans had a similar language
  and culture
• But after the migrations, different groups became
  isolated from one another and differences in
  language and culture developed
• Two distinct groups of Germans had emerged by the
  4th century AD
• West Germans
• Franks, Saxons, and Alemanni
• Settled along Roman border on the Rhine River
• East Germans
• Goths, Vandals, Lombards
• Modern-day Hungary and southern Russia

5
GOTHS

• Divided into two major sub-groups
• Visigoths
• Lived along Danube River
• Ostrogoths
• Lived in southern Russia
• Developed a more advanced form of political
  organization than other Germans
• United under strong kings
• In close contact with the Eastern Roman Empire
• Influenced by Greek/Roman culture
• First Germanic tribe to convert to Christianity
• First to become literate and assume a veneer of
  civilization

Ostrogoth Chest
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WEST GERMANS

• More primitive
• Large men with long red or blond hair and blue
  eyes
• Lived to hunt and fight
• In times of peace they drank until they passed
  out
• No form of central government
• War leader might be selected in an emergency but
  what little unity they possessed was provided by
  kinship and lordship

7
CONTACT

• Romans and Germans had influenced each other
  since beginning of the empire
• Beginning in 3rd century AD, Germans had enlisted
  in Roman army
• Joined in units known as foederati
• Given land in border regions when they retired
• Trade also developed between the two
• Germans supplied slaves and cattle in exchange
  for jewelry, weapons, textiles, and potterty

8
CONFUSING SITUATION

• Peaceful trading alternated with warfare
• Germans constantly pressed against borders of
  empire
• Confusing situation
• Franks occupied both sides of Rhine River
• Those in Roman territory fought as foederati for
  Rome against their cousins across the river
• Same situation along Danube River
• By the end of the 4th century, Roman army was
  nothing more than an army of barbarians fighting
  under Roman command
• Even some high officers were German by this time

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Until 400 AD, Germans had been satisfied with
launching periodic raids into empire
Captured territory, settled there, and set up
independent kingdoms under their own rulers and
laws
But around 400 AD, entire tribes and nations
began to move into the empire at the same time
This massive migration caused collapse of western
Roman Empire
10
HUNS

• Nomadic people from Mongolia
• Expert horsemen
• Tried to invade China in 370 AD
• Failed and then turned west
• Moved across southern Russia into Europe where
  they terrorized German tribes
• Germans migrated en masse in Roman Empire to
  escape Huns

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THE END

• German invasions began in 375 AD when Visigoths
  crossed Danube River and permanently entered the
  empire
• Followed by many others
• Rome unable to effectively resist them
• In 476, the last Western Roman emperor, Romulus
  Augustulus, was deposed by Ostrogothic chieftain
  Odovocar and the Western Roman Empire ceased to
  exist

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Other tribes such as Lombards, Thuringians,
Jutes, and Frisians still wandering around
Denmark, Netherlands, and Eastern Europe
Numerous barbarian kingdoms established in old
Western Empire
Angles and Saxons
Burgundians
Franks
Justinian would kick Ostrogoths out of Italy
(555) and also conquer Vandal kingdom in North
Africa (533) Franks would push Visigoths out of
southern France (507) Arabs would overrun
Visigothic Kingdom in Spain (711)
Visigoths
Ostrogoths
Vandals
Some of these new kingdoms would not last long
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RESULTS I

• With establishment of barbarian kingdoms, Europe,
  as a single unified political unit, was finished
  forever
• Replaced by a multitude of small, competing
  entities that would, in different shapes,
  dominate European history until today
• Politically unified Europe, as it had been under
  Rome, remains an unfulfilled dream

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RESULTS II

• Ancient civilization and culture had been in
  decline for a long time before the barbarian
  invasions
• People had been frozen in their occupations,
  cities had been virtually abandoned, crime had
  been increasing, trade was falling off,
  population had been dropping, intellectual
  activity was stagnant, nothing new in art and
  literature had been produced, political
  corruption, irresponsibility, and disregard for
  civil rights had become normal part of Roman
  government
• The barbarian invasions accelerated this process
  of disintegration

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RESULTS III

• Ancient civilization had exhausted itself by the
  Late Roman Empire
• Nothing original left in it that could be used to
  build something new and better
• Barbarians did western civilization a favor by
  putting the stagnant and dying ancient world out
  of its misery
• Barbarians held the key to the future
• Though violent and primitive, their culture was
  alive and vital
• Their institutions contained the kernel for
  future development
• When barbarian institutions mixed with the
  intellectual vitality of Christianity (and the
  way in which barbarians would adapt old Roman
  institutions), the result was a new world

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Eastern half of Roman Empire with Constantinople
as its capital would survive for almost 1000
years after fall of Western half
Emperor Constantine had built a new imperial
capital on site of old Greek city-state named
Byzantiumcalled it Constantinople
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ADVANTAGES I

• Eastern empire survived because it was in better
  shape than the west
• Had a larger population
• Its civilization was older and better implanted
• Cities were larger and more numerous
• Small farmers were more prosperous
• Commerce and industry were more healthy
• East was simply more structurally sound than the
  west and better able to resist barbarian invasions

Library in Alexandria in Byzantine Empire
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ADVANTAGES II

• East also possessed important strategic
  advantages
• Key province of Asia Minor was protected from
  invasions by Black Sea to the north and by the
  virtually impregnable citadel of Constantinople
  to the south
• Asia Minor also became main source of workers,
  soldiers, and tax revenue
• It held up the east
• Loyal troops from region allowed Byzantine
  emperors to avoid dangerous policy of recruiting
  German mercenaries

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SURVIVAL AND LEGACY

• Constantinople was attacked by Germans, Huns,
  Mongols, Persians, and Arabs
• And repelled them all
• Byzantine empire would last until 1453 when
  Constantinople was finally conquered by Ottoman
  Turks
• But it would, before it gell spread Christianity
  to new regions, protect Western Europe, preserve
  a great deal of the ancient heritage, and create
  many religious, political, and social practices
  that remain in use today

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BYZANTINE CIVILIZATION

• Made up three components
• Roman government
• Christian religion
• Greek culture
• Byzantine government was a direct descendant of
  the Roman political system as modified by
  Diocletian and Constantine
• Emperors were glorified as gods, they retained
  tight control of the church, and they kept the
  high taxes of the Late Roman Empire

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IMPORTANT JOB

• Empire saw itself as an isolated and beleaguered
  outpost of civilization and Christianity
• Surrounded by a swarming and hostile ocean of
  barbarians and pagans
• Chief duty of emperor was therefore to protect
  this island of civilization
• Surrounded by majesty and elaborate rituals to
  illustrate the important job he had to perform

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VIOLENCE

• Out of 88 Byzantine emperors total
• 13 resigned voluntarily or involuntarily
• 30 died violent deaths
• Starved, poisoned, strangled, stabbed,
  decapitated, beat to death, cut into little
  pieces, or had their eyes gouged out
• Emperors themselves were sometimes pretty bad
• Constantine murdered his oldest son and drowned
  his daughter-in-law
• Basil III gouged out the eyes of 15,000 Bulgar
  prisoners

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BUREAUCRACY

• Huge bureaucracy provided continuity to imperial
  government
• Gigantic even by modern standards
• There was a bureaucrat for even the most trivial
  function of government
• Even had intelligence service called Bureau of
  Barbarians
• Generally efficient

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ECONOMIC REGULATION

• Bureaucracy produced ever-growing number of laws
  and regulations in which it attempted to
  subordinate individual interests to those of the
  state
• Economic activity strictly regulated
• Prices, rents, and wages were controlled
• Inspectors regulated product quality
• Government had monopolies in certain industries
• Interest rates frozen at 8

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POLICE STATE?

• Unemployed persons forced to work on state
  projects or not receive any aid
• Taverns closed at 800 pm
• Punishments for such crimes as treason,
  blasphemy, incest, arson, and even some economic
  crimes were brutal
• Foreigners visiting the empire were kept under
  constant surveillance
• Spies were everywhere
• Forced the historian Precopius to lead an
  intellectual double life

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SUMMARY

• Two factors must be kept in mind when considering
  Byzantine policies
• Their political system was a direct descendant of
  the system originally established by Diocletian
• Merely fine-tuned a basically repressive system
  they inherited from the Romans
• Empire saw itself as an isolated and besieged
  outpost of civilization in a fundamentally
  barbarian world
• Believed that any slip in security might open the
  door to their numerous enemies and cause the same
  sort of destruction as had happened in the west
• Believed that the very survival of their society
  and civilization required repression