J B eBooks
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History of the Later Roman Empire. E-book. Formato EPUB J.B. Bury - Perennial Press, 2018 -
THE first of these two volumes might be entitled the “German Conquest of Western Europe,” and the second the “Age of Justinian.” The first covers more than one hundred and twenty years, the second somewhat less than fifty. This disparity is a striking illustration of the fact that perspective and proportion are unavoidably lost in an attempt to tell the story of any considerable period of ancient or early medieval history as fully as our sources allow. Perspective can be preserved only in an outline. The fifth century was one of the most critical periods in the history of Europe. It was crammed with events of great moment, and the changes which it witnessed transformed Europe more radically than any set of political events that have happened since. At that time hundreds of people were writing abundantly on all kinds of subjects, and many of their writings have survived; but among these there is no history of contemporary events, and the story has had to be pieced together from fragments, jejune chronicles, incidental references in poets, rhetoricians, and theologians. Inscribed stones which supply so much information for the first four centuries of the Roman Empire are rare. Nowhere, since the time of Alexander the Great, do we feel so strongly that the meagreness of the sources flouts the magnitude of the events. Although we know little of the details of the process by which the western provinces of the Empire became German kingdoms, one fact stands out. The change of masters was not the result of anything that could be called a cataclysm. The German peoples, who were much fewer in numbers than is often imagined, at first settled in the provinces as dependents, and a change which meant virtually conquest was disguised for a shorter or longer time by their recognition of the nominal rights of the Emperor. Britain, of which we know less than of any other part of the Empire at this period, seems to have been the only exception to this rule. The consequence was that the immense revolution was accomplished with far less violence and upheaval than might have been expected. This is the leading fact which it is the chief duty of the historian to make clear.
The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians. E-book. Formato EPUB J.B. Bury - Perennial Press, 2018 -
THE present series of lectures is designed to give a broad and general view of the long sequence of the migratory movements of the northern barbarians which began in the third and fourth centuries A.D. and cannot be said to have terminated till the ninth. This long process shaped Europe into its present form, and it must be grasped in its broad outlines in order to understand the framework of modern Europe. There are two ways in which the subject may be treated, two points of view from which the sequence of changes which broke up the Roman Empire may be regarded. We may look at the process, in the earliest and most important stage, from the point of view of the Empire which was being dismembered or from that of the barbarians who were dismembering it. We may stand in Rome and watch the strangers sweeping over her provinces; or we may stand east of the Rhine and north of the Danube, amid the forests of Germany, and follow the fortunes of the men who issued thence, winning new habitations and entering on a new life. Both methods have been followed by modern writers. Gibbon and many others have told the story from the side of the Roman Empire, but all the principal barbarian peoples—not only those who founded permanent states, but even those who formed only transient kingdoms—have had each its special historian. One naturally falls into the habit of contemplating these events from the Roman side because the early part of the story has come down to us in records which were written from the Roman side. We must, however, try to see things from both points of view. The barbarians who dismembered the Empire were mainly Germans. It is not till the sixth, century that people of another race—the Slavs—appear upon the scene. Those who approach for the first time the study of the beginnings of medieval history will probably find it difficult to group and locate clearly in their minds the multitude of Germanic peoples who surge over the scene in distracting confusion. The apparent confusion vanishes, of course, with familiarity, and the movements fall into a certain order. But at the very outset the study of the period may be simplified by drawing a line of division within the Germanic world. This capital line of division is geographical, but it has its basis in historical facts. It is the distinction of the West Germans from the East Germans. To understand this division we must go back for a moment into the early history of the Germans.
The Ancient World: The Egyptian and Hittite Empires to 1000 BC. E-book. Formato EPUB J.B. Bury - Perennial Press, 2018 -
IN the period upon which we are about to enter, the peoples of south-west Asia, Egypt and south-east Europe were brought Into very close contact one with another. Peaceful trading-journeys, ambitious wars by land and by sea, and some sweeping ethnical movements, which had the profoundest consequences for history, made the area virtually one interconnected whole. The history of no portion of this whole can properly be viewed quite apart from the rest, although naturally it will be necessary to treat each part by itself, and with reference to its own peculiar development and problem. The available sources, moreover, although by no means inconsiderable in quantity, vary greatly as regards quality; both the archaeological and the written materials are often difficult to interpret, or are susceptible of different interpretations, and may be treated from different points of view. Further, the far-reaching political and other changes which mark this period can be best understood only by taking a wider survey of the interrelations between Asia, Africa and Europe which illumine the particular vicissitudes now to be described. To a certain extent this has already been done in volume I; accordingly, the chapters in this volume are drawn up so as to assist the reader to grasp the period and the area as a whole, and also in their various parts and aspects, though at the unavoidable cost of some repetition and overlapping. Once more the history of Egypt holds the premier position, owing mainly to its relations with south-west Asia and the peoples of the East Mediterranean. But Asia Minor now assumes a unique significance, partly because, as the bridge between Europe and Asia, it was the center of the most intricate developments of the period, and partly also because the rich store of cuneiform tablets discovered at Boghaz Keui, and the problems of the Hittites, and all their ramifications are proving to be of more fundamental importance than could ever have been suspected. Accordingly, chapters on the peoples of Asia Minor and of Europe form an appropriate introduction, and deal with linguistic problems, and with certain important migrations...