The fall of the western Roman Empire

I remember reading this book by Peter Heather when it was originally published a decade ago. I was so fascinated by the history of the Roman Empire at the time that I enrolled in a college course on the subject matter, which was cancelled unexpectedly. Then I took a course on nationalism by a respected Cambridge scholar instead, who bothered to grade my paper.

The death of the Roman Empire is one of the perennial mysteries of world history. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Peter Heather proposes a stunning new solution: Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors Rome called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling an Empire that had dominated their lives for so long. A leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians, Heather relates the extraordinary story of how Europe's barbarians, transformed by centuries of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled the empire apart. He shows first how the Huns overturned the existing strategic balance of power on Rome's European frontiers, to force the Goths and others to seek refuge inside the Empire. This prompted two generations of struggle, during which new barbarian coalitions, formed in response to Roman hostility, brought the Roman west to its knees. The Goths first destroyed a Roman army at the battle of Hadrianople in 378, and went on to sack Rome in 410. The Vandals spread devastation in Gaul and Spain, before conquering North Africa, the breadbasket of the Western Empire, in 439. We then meet Attila the Hun, whose reign of terror swept from Constantinople to Paris, but whose death in 453 ironically precipitated a final desperate phase of Roman collapse, culminating in the Vandals' defeat of the massive Byzantine Armada: the west's last chance for survival. Peter Heather convincingly argues that the Roman Empire was not on the brink of social or moral collapse. What brought it to an end were the barbarians.

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I remember reading this book by Peter Heather when it was originally published a decade ago. I was so fascinated by the history of the Roman Empire at the time that I enrolled in a college course on the subject matter, which was cancelled unexpectedly. Then I took a course on nationalism by a respected Cambridge scholar instead, who bothered to grade my paper.



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This is one of the ones I bought and kept. Extraordinary that at the time it was rather the minority view, if even that.

There are wonderful opportunities for on line courses now, even before Covid; it's one of the benefits of the internet.
 
What brought the Roman Empire down was all the infighting, assassinations and machinations, coups. What brought it down was all the mercenaries employed in its armies.Remember that Goths served in the armies of the empire and then turned against the empire. The Byzantines employed one barbarian tribe against the other and then they would stop paying them resulting in the barbarians turning against the empire and making alliances with their former enemies. The Avars were employed against the Slavs and then turned against the empire. I am totally surprised that the Eastern empire lasted another 1000 years for all the corruption and incompetence. I think the empire collapsed when it stopped being Roman.
 
This is one of the ones I bought and kept. Extraordinary that at the time it was rather the minority view, if even that.

There are wonderful opportunities for on line courses now, even before Covid; it's one of the benefits of the internet.

This is a great book and we recommend that you do not opt for its third edition. Perhaps you can keep it in your collection. He deserves to be taken out and read in the future when it's empty.
 

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