Historian of sci, tech, and American politics. Author of *Coal & Empire* w/@JHUPress. Associate Professor of History @CWRU. Edits @HistOpinion. I 
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The "barbarians" invading the Roman Empire were overwhelmingly from Europe itself, and by the 4th century, often already Christian. They had been well known neighbors--and often allies, or soldiers, or trading partners, or just subjugated to the whims of Rome--for centuries.https://twitter.com/OsitaNwanevu/status/1012380700643856384 …
Does no one (ignorant of modern historiography on late antiquity/early middle ages) stop to think as they lament the barbarians, that "western history" has always tended to look for its roots in the barbarian west (Francia, Britannia, Germany) and not surviving Roman Byzantium?
Erik Jensen has a new book on what "barbarians" mean to Greeks and Romans and it's probably not what you think.https://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Greek-Roman-World-Jensen/dp/1624667120/ref=sr_1_1 …
I'll further say that Rome spent centuries incorporating people who had been considered barbarians, from Spain, North Africa, Arabia, Germania, and elsewhere. The elite of the "Roman" world by the late third century were by and large not ancestrally "Roman," or even Italian.
If you're a white European, you're probably a descendent of some kind of Roman-era barbarian. It is unlikely you think that this is a bad thing. Why would people of the future care about this either?
One thing often left out in these narratives is the role of civil strife within the Roman Empire that made such invasions possible. Events like the Imperial Crisis made the Empire weak and ripe to be invaded and for Rome to be sacked.
Multiple times! The third century was a disaster, in part because there was no real legitimate way to keep an emperor in power (short of winning battles) and no legitimate way to ensure a peaceful succession.
Anyone whoever read Obelix and Asterix knows this.
I’m an Ostrogoth.
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