Not quite in the same category of solidity, but still well within the usual limits of first-millennium plausibility, likewise, is a range of evidence indicating that moves of a similar nature were made by large, organized Vandal and Alanic groups on to Roman soil from 406, and by Radagaisus’ Goths in 405.6 And while more argument is certainly again required, by far the likeliest reconstruction of Alaric the Visigoth’s career indicates that it was founded on mobilizing the Tervingi and Greuthungi of 376, settled in the Balkans by treaty in 382, into a series of further moves from 395 onwards. These are all instances of large, mixed-group movement that pass muster on all the normal rules of first-millennium evidence. There are also enough of them to require us not to dismiss too quickly a series of other cases, where the evidence is a notch or two weaker: in particular the population movements associated with the rise and fall of the Hunnic Empire, which saw the gathering-in of armed, largely Germanic groups, and their subsequent departures from the Great Hungarian Plain as competition built up among them in the era of Hunnic collapse. Here the evidence for large group migration is either partial (the cases of the Rugi or Heruli), or implicit rather than explicit (those of the Sciri, Sueves, and Alans). Although we can find some convincing cases where the action has been mistakenly cast in the form of an invasion-hypothesis-type population movement, therefore, there are many others where there is no good reason to think that this has happened. And, in fact, even the Goths and Lombards are worth a closer look.
In both instances, we are dealing with highly retrospective miscastings of the action. Jordanes was writing about events that happened three hundred years before his own lifetime, and the Lombard authors in the ninth century and beyond about migratory activity that was then four to five hundred years in the past. On one level, it is easy to see why mistakes might have crept in, but there is more to say here than just that. For in neither case was it complete fantasy to be thinking in terms of migration of some kind. The totality of the evidence for both the second- and third-century Goths and the fourth-and fifth-century Lombards does indicate that substantial population displacement played a major role in these eras of their respective pasts.
The evidence is better for the Goths. Here we have contemporary accounts locating Goths in northern Poland in the first and second centuries, but north of the Black Sea from the mid-third. There was also a major material cultural revolution north of the Black Sea in the third century, in the course of which a whole series of customs and items became prominent in the region, which had not previously been part of its characteristic profiles. Some of the more distinctive among the new features, moreover, had been well-established aspects of life and death in first- and second-century Poland. These archaeological indications cannot prove that Gothic migration took place from the Baltic to the Black Sea regions, but, taken in conjunction with the contemporary historical evidence, they amount to a very serious argument to that effect. And while that historical evidence clearly indicates, as we have seen, that, even if there were many separate groups involved in the action rather than one ‘people’, and that some of them were perhaps originally numerically challenged, this did not remain the case throughout the migratory process. The third-century Goths provide, in fact, an excellent case of a migration flow of increasing momentum, which didn’t really stop until the Gothic Tervingi had displaced the Carpi as the dominant grouping between the Danube and the Carpathians in the decades either side of the year 300. Though much less detailed, the Lombard evidence is similar.
Lombards are well attested in the Lower Elbe region, just south of modern Denmark, in the first and second centuries AD. In this case, there are no contemporary historical indications at all of any major population displacements from this region in the Roman period, and what archaeological evidence there is might suggest only a series of relatively small ones, like the first Gothic flows towards the Black Sea. Yet again, however, Lombards were present on the Upper Elbe in sufficient numbers by the 490s to move in and destroy the hegemony of the Heruli in the western half of the Great Hungarian Plain through main force. Whatever its earlier forms, therefore, Lombard expansion towards the Danube, like that of the Goths towards the Black Sea, eventually took the form of much larger pulses of population. Neither Jordanes nor our Lombard sources invented the concept of large-scale migration from nothing, therefore, even if they miscast its form. And, just to push their rehabilitation one stage further, subsequent Gothic and Lombard migrations, occurring between these initial flows and our sources’ composition, had taken the form of large, composite group moves, both in the direction of Italy: the Ostrogoths in 488/9 and the Lombards some eighty years later.7
When examined more closely, therefore, neither Jordanes nor the Lombard sources give us reason to deny the reality of the large-group migrations recorded in other sources. That said, it is very important to recognize that even our echt examples of large-group first-millennium migration do not conform exactly to the old invasion-hypothesis model. Not even the largest groups were whole ‘peoples’ moving from one locality to another untouched by the process. They could both shed population and gain it. This was presumably even more true of drawn-out migration flows, such as the second- and third-century Goths and fourth- and fifth-century Lombards, but the pattern is only explicitly documented for some of the large-group moves. Decisions to move on such a scale were never lightly, and often caused splits. The Tervingi who crossed into the Empire in 376 left behind them north of the Danube a significant minority of the old group’s membership who adhered to the old leadership. Theoderic the Amal’s father caused another split when he moved the then Pannonian Goths into the Roman Balkans in 473, and Theoderic himself left behind at least some elite Goths who were absorbed into the military-political hierarchies of the east Roman state. When it comes to gathering recruits, the Lombards were joined by a mixed group of 20,000 Saxons for their move to Italy, together with descendants of much of the flotsam and jetsam left over by the post-Attilan struggles for power in the Middle Danube. Theoderic the Amal, likewise, added a body of Rugi to the Gothic following built up over two generations by his uncle and himself. Similarly, the relationship between the two Vandal groups and the Alans who crossed the Rhine together became much tighter in the face of Roman counterattack in Spain, so that, by the time they invaded North Africa in 429, the survivors, united behind the Hasding monarchy, were much more of a cohesive political unit than the loose alliance they had been twenty-three years before. As much recent work has emphasized, there was as much of the snowball to these migratory movements as the billiard ball.
Another significant departure from the old invasion model is the fact that, when looked at closely, these large groups were mixed not only in age and gender, but also in status. Visions of the Germanic Völkerwanderung produced in the great era of nationalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had in mind large invasion groups of free and equal warriors with their families in tow. But within the larger groups, two separate status-categories of warrior are documented, and there is reason to suppose that non-militarized slaves also participated in at least some of the moves. It is only the higher warrior class that fell into the ‘free’ category, and the fact that they were by definition an elite class suggests that this group was some kind of minority. The key decisions about migration in the period were being taken, therefore, only by a minority of the participants, with lesser warriors and slaves having little if any influence. Recognizing the reality and significance of these status distinctions also imposes clear limits on the extent to which currently fashionable ideas about the freedom with which group identities could be chosen and discarded can really have applied in practice. What kind of idiot would have chosen to be of lesser-warrior or slave status if group identity was entirely a matter of individual choice? By extension, this also indicates that we need to be careful as to how far we suppose snowball-type phenomena to have operated. Since much of the population of barbarian Europe was not in control of its own destiny, the r
ight to join or not join in large-group migration must have been exercised only by certain, more elite elements among participating populations.8
The final modification that must be made to the old invasion-hypothesis model of large-group migration concerns its supposition that large-scale intrusions drove out existing populations. There are several good examples of large-scale invasion in the first millennium, but none where the evidence suggests mass ethnic cleansing. Indigenous populations were often faced with a choice between accepting subjugation or moving on, a choice which would have felt particularly brutal to indigenous elites who had most to lose from the arrival of a new set of masters. But there is no convincingly documented case where the response to this choice led to the complete evacuation of an extensive landscape. At the very least, indigenous populations supplied good agricultural labour, and many of our immigrant groups anyway had lower social-status categories into which newly subjugated indigenous populations could easily be slotted.
These alterations are important, but they remain modifications rather than denials of the basic proposition that the evidence for large, mixed, and organized migrant groups from the first millennium is, ostensibly, periodically convincing. Nationalist visions of whole ancestral ‘peoples’ clearing out new landscapes for themselves to enjoy can be consigned to the recycle bin of history. The groups documented in our sources were political entities, which could grow or fragment, which contained individuals occupying lesser- and higher-status categories, and which inserted themselves in correspondingly complex ways into new but already thoroughly inhabited environments. Though fair enough on the basis of the available historical evidence (and not denied by the archaeological), can this proposition still be maintained in the face of the non-appearance of such phenomena in modern migratory patterns? The answer to this question is bound up, in my view, with that to a far larger one: Why did European migration take the forms it did in the first millennium? Answering this question requires us to set the observable patterns of demographic displacement between the birth of Christ and the year 1000 against all that comparative study can teach us about migration as a general human phenomenon.
Migration Mechanics
There are a myriad detailed ways in which the mechanics of first-millennium migration correspond to what has been observed in better-documented case studies of early modern and more recent migration. Not least of these, the crucial importance of active fields of information in dictating precise destinations is just as prominent in the first millennium as in later eras. Germanic expansion towards the Black Sea in the third century was clearly exploiting information about the region which had built up through the operations of the Amber Route. Slavic groups first came to know the Roman Balkans as raiders before exploiting that knowledge to turn themselves into settlers as and when political conditions permitted. Scandinavian expansion to the west in the Viking era likewise operated on the back of intelligence acquired by participation in the emporia trading networks of the eighth century, while those working to the east took a generation or so to find their way down the river routes of western Russia to the great centres of Islamic demand for northern goods, having originally opened up the eastern hinterland of the Baltic to feed western markets. To these entirely uncontroversial examples, I would also add some others. A major contributory factor to the apparently odd stop/start migratory patterns of some of the groups entering Roman territory either side of the year 400 was the need to acquire information about further possible destinations before hitting the road again. The Goths, especially the Tervingi who entered the Empire in 376, already knew about the Balkans, for instance, but not about Italy and Gaul, to where they moved on in the next generation. It took twenty years (and their participation in two Roman civil wars that took some of them lengthy distances in that direction) before they were ready to take the next step. Likewise the Vandals and Alans: Spain marked the end of their original migratory ambitions, and it again took twenty years and some exploratory sea raids before they were prepared to venture across the Straits of Gibraltar to North Africa. More generally, the whole broader phenomenon of migration flows of increasing momentum is clearly a product of growing knowledge. It was precisely the fact that exploratory expansionary ventures into a new region produced profitable outcomes for the pioneers that encouraged others to participate. In some modern cases, such as the spread of the Boers northwards from the Cape, the pioneers were deliberately recruited scouts, sent to check the viability of larger-scale expansion. The same effect could also be achieved, however, by a less formal grapevine.
The study of modern migration also devotes much effort to the key issue of why some people from any particular community choose to move, whereas others in more or less identical circumstances stay put. Tackling this complex issue fully requires the kind of detailed information which is simply unavailable for the first millennium, but it is worth pointing up the relevance of the issue. In the cases of large-group migration reported in any detail in our sources, there is no instance where the decision to move did not generate some kind of split among the affected population group. The same is true, only more so, of the more extended migration flows. For all the Germani of Polish origin who ended up by the Black Sea in the third century, there were many others who stayed behind, shown by the fact that the Wielbark and Przeworsk cultural systems continued to operate. Likewise, many Angles and Saxons did not relocate to England in the fifth and sixth centuries, and Scandinavia was not emptied in the Viking period. Such divergences of response were only natural, of course, given the magnitude of the decisions involved, and first-millennium populations clearly felt the same stress of migration as modern ones, even if we can’t explore their reactions in detail.
Stress also manifests itself in the modern world in the phenomenon of return migration. Looked at closely, all modern migration flows see substantial numbers of immigrants returning to their original homelands. Again, the level of information is not sufficient to allow us to discuss this topic properly for the first millennium, but aspects of the Viking period emphasize that it, too, needs to be recognized as a real phenomenon. The initial phases of Scandinavian expansion were all about gathering wealth, whether by raiding or trading, or both. Having gathered their wealth, different individuals then made different choices about how to invest it. Some chose, even early on, to stay put at their points of destination in the east and west (as shown by the early settlements in northern Scotland and the isles), whereas others chose to take their new wealth back home to Scandinavia, eventually prompting a massive shake-up in Baltic politics. With this example in mind, I (as others) would be happy to believe reports that some incoming Anglo-Saxons also eventually chose to return to the continent.9
Closely related, too, to the stress of migration, but this time something we can explore in greater detail, is the highly significant influence on patterns of movement of an ingrained migration habit. In modern migration flows, an existing tradition of mobility often plays a vital role in dictating which individuals within a particular group of people will decide to move. Individuals who have moved once are more prone to move again within their own lifetimes, but, less intuitively obvious, the habit is also passed on between generations. The children and grandchildren of migrants are much more likely than the average to move again themselves. A tradition of personal or familial mobility clearly generates a greater propensity to attempt to solve life’s problems, or look for greater opportunity, by moving to new localities. Anyone might move if the stimulus to do so is large enough, but the required stimulus is smaller for those with established migration habits.
The effects of this factor can be seen at work on at least two different levels in the first millennium. First, at least two of the broader population flows, those of the Wielbark and Przeworsk Germani in the second and third centuries, and of the early Slavs three hundred years later, involved populations whose farming techniques were then insufficient to maintain the fertility of any individual piece of arable land for more
than a generation or two. A general, periodic local mobility was simply a fact of life for these populations, and there is every reason to suppose that this facilitated the eventual transformation of a more random wave-of-advance-type expansion into a channelled migration flow when information began to filter back about the opportunities available at an entirely new set of longer-distance destinations. Second, a more specific tradition of distinct, longer-distance relocation clearly built up among some particular first-millennium populations. The fourth-century Gothic Tervingi are probably most famous for the fact that a majority of them decided to seek asylum inside the Roman Empire in 376. That decision was greatly facilitated, however, by active memories of recent migrations. This same Gothic group had taken possession of their existing lands in Wallachia and Moldavia between the Lower Danube and the River Dniester only in the decades either side of the year 300, and a generation or so later, in the 330s, had attempted to move bodily to new locations on the fringes of the Middle Danube region. It was the children of those who had moved into Moldavia and Wallachia who were on the move again in the 330s, and their children and older grandchildren who decided to seek a new life inside the Roman Empire in 376. Similar observations apply to many of the other groups caught up in the rise and fall of the Hunnic Empire, both those who fled inside Roman borders in the crises of 376–80 and 405–8, and those who moved first to the Middle Danube under Hunnic influence and/or duress, and then out of it after Attila’s death. The willingness of some Norse to move on to Iceland and Greenland in the later ninth century was likewise facilitated by the fact that they were the immediate descendants of Viking immigrants to Scotland and the isles. In fact, examples like the Goths or Slavs demonstrate how moves that were initially generated by general traditions of local mobility could then spawn the more specific traditions of larger-scale mobility that underlay the move of many Tervingi on to Roman soil in 376, in the same way that internal migrants within the European landscape provided many of the recruits for the trek to North America in the nineteenth century.
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