Peter Heather

Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis. In this wide-ranging work Peter Heather makes a good effort at placing migration back in the analysis of how the world of Roman Late Antiquity eventually gave way to Europe. This is after such concepts were read out of theory, due to a combination of failing to fit the archaeological facts on the ground and the embarrassing lengths to which legends of great migrations had been used by romantic nationalists to justify political platforms.

Pulling all the show more information together, Heather offers a narrative which sees the Germanic peoples undergo a process of economic and social development that eventually allows them to contend with Roman military power, especially once the catalyst represented by Attila's invasion forced the hand of assorted polities to choose escape; particularly peoples who were already used to migration as a solution to intractable problems. A comparable process then happened with the Slavic peoples who back-filled the lands previously held by Germanic peoples, with their catalyst being the Avars.

The telling point then comes with the eruption of the Magyars, which did not provoke the sort of migratory response of the previous two episodes of nomadic invasion. Heather would argue that the peoples who moved previously were the ones who decided to seek economic improvement along with their refuge. Those who fought the Magyars existed in a much more evenly developed economic landscape, besides enjoying a high-enough level of development themselves that fighting made more sense than running; thus ending the migratory patterns of the first quarter of the last millennium.

As for the future, Heather's final point is to consider how empire seems to create its own challenger by association, but that's mostly just an aside.

If I have a particular quibble with this work, it's that I wouldn't mind seeing the impact of disease touched upon a bit. While that is certainly not Heather's main concern, I'd note that his examination of the case of Roman Britain seems to go around in circles, as the evidence doesn't allow one to come down on the side of whether what happened was the sort of ethnic cleansing that the historians of the last generation or so wanted to be done with, or whether there was merely a replacement of one leadership class with another. Entering a landscape decimated by disease would be another element to consider in the process of cultural change. show less

It took me longer than normal to get through this - there is a lot in this book - but I enjoyed it greatly. It draws themes from the post-Roman world and traces them through to the Carolingian era and the rise of the Papacy as a true pan-European force in medieval times; the great strength of the book, however, is in tracing why this was not some inevitable and seamless transition of power from Roman Empire to Roman Church. The anti-Whiggish tone is refreshing and thought-provoking, and show more Heather's writing style keeps you engaged even when the themes being explored are very complex and full of contingencies. show less

The fall of the Roman Empire, a topic about which much ink has been spilled. Memorable are also the series of sword and sandals films of the 1960s with valiant Romans and vile Goths and Huns. Peter Heather has written a good account of the gradual decline of the Roman Empire that accelerated in the final decades before 476. It is interesting that Rome adjusted relatively well to the challenge of the Persian Sassanid Empire than the smaller challenge of succeeding barbarian invasions. Rome's show more perimeter defense once breached resulted piece by piece in the loss of valuable territories (and thus of taxes, supplies and manpower).

While Heather mentions, again and again, the rather limited size of the barbarian armies of around 30-50.000 men, he only shows that the Romans had very limited central reserves to assist the border troops. Heather is correct that the strained public finances did not allow Rome to keep up a large standing reserve army. It is, however, puzzling, why Rome didn't try to revive the citizen army of the republic. After all, Rome managed to compensate the huge losses inflicted by Hannibal and raise new forces seemingly like it had dragon teeth at its disposal. Instead, Rome's oligarchy preferred its empire go down than empower its co-citizens. The oligarchy arranged itself with the new rulers, giving up part of their large land holdings in order to keep their status. It was the rule of law and central government that was lost which plunged Europe into a dark age. show less

In 476 AD the last vestiges of imperial authority of the Western Roman Empire were cast aside, with there being few obvious reasons why Rome should become yet again a major political center. Flash forward about five hundred years and the Papacy of the Roman Catholic Church is effectively the font of authority in most of Europe. How this highly contingent development came to be is the subject of this book, as Peter Heather (best known as a historian of the barbarian kingdoms of the ‘Dark show more Ages’) examines the twists and turns of how this became the dominant outcome to the search for stability and security in Europe.

Heather first examines the processes by which Theodoric the Goth, Justinian of Byzantium and Charles the Great apparently pulled together the core of the old Western Roman Empire, only for events to overtake these empires. Sometimes this was a result of systems failure, sometimes this was a result of greater forces swamping the imperial initiative, but force and transitory personal ability were never enough to get the job done. The forces aligned at creating a new super power were just too great.

This brings us to the fourth part of Heather’s examination of the reestablishment of legitimate authority in the West, dealing with how the Imperial Papacy emerged from the Carolingian Renaissance, making for an empire based essentially on ideology. The interesting thing for Heather is that this empire was not really a creation of the Roman aristocracy that tended to control the Papacy; it was created by the Church intelligentsia as a response to the fragmentation of imperial authority and the efforts of local kings seeking to control Church resources.

Much of what makes this book a pleasure is that I suspect that Heather has become aware that there is a public readership with the appetite for an involved tale of personal intrigue in the face of tectonic forces, and while I might think that Heather is a little too casual in his language at some points, he does make clear the need for a bit of enlightened skepticism about received theories and ideologies does not mean that there isn’t a great deal to say about events that are often glossed over because the alleged documentation doesn’t exist; call it an example of a well-honed historical imagination in action. show less