Europe's Barbarians AD 200-600

Edward James, an Anglo-Saxon who lives amongst Celts, here offers a sure-footed, clear and sympathetic guide to the complex world of barbarian Europe, where scholarly theories are fought over with almost as much passion as loot from the Empire."

Bryan Ward-Perkins, Trinity College, Oxford

"A lively and informative introduction to the problems of the collapse of the late Roman Empire and the creation of the medieval world."

Hugh Elton, Trent University, Canada

Barbarians is the name the Romans gave to those who lived beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire the peoples they considered uncivilised. Most of the written sources concerning the barbarians come from the Romans too, and as such, need to be treated with caution. Only archaeology allows us to see beyond Roman prejudices and yet these records are often as difficult to interpret as historical ones.

Expertly guiding the reader through such historiographical complexities, Edward James traces the history of the barbarians from the height of Roman power through to AD 600, by which time they had settled in most parts of imperial territory in Europe. His book is the first to look at all Europes barbarians: the Picts and the Scots in the far north-west; the Franks, Goths and Slavic-speaking peoples; and relative newcomers such as the Huns and Alans from the Asiatic steppes.

How did whole barbarian peoples migrate across Europe? What were their relations with the Romans? And why did they convert to Christianity? Drawing on the latest scholarly research, this book rejects easy generalisations to provide a clear, nuanced and comprehensive account of the barbarians and the tumultuous period they lived through.  

Edward James trained as both an archaeologist and historian and is now Professor of Medieval History at University College Dublin. His single-authored books include The Origins of France (1982), The Franks (1988), and Britain in the First Millennium (2001), and he has also produced two award-winning books on science fiction, the single-authored Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century (1994) and The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (2003), co-edited with Farah Mendlesohn.