Post-Roman Successor Kingdoms
As Roman administration receded in the West, Germanic-led polities — Visigothic, Ostrogothic, Vandal, Burgundian, Frankish, and Lombard — established kingdoms that fused Roman institutions with new ruling elites.
Definition
Post-Roman successor kingdoms were the regional polities that emerged across the former Western Roman Empire, typically ruled by Germanic military elites who maintained, adapted, or gradually transformed Roman law, taxation, landholding, and ecclesiastical structures.
Scope
Covers the formation, governance, law, and culture of the successor states that replaced the Western Roman Empire between the fifth and eighth centuries, with particular attention to the Merovingian Franks, the Visigoths in Hispania, the Ostrogoths and Lombards in Italy, and the question of ethnic identity and accommodation.
Core questions
- How did Germanic groups settle within the Roman Empire — by conquest, treaty, or accommodation?
- To what extent did Roman institutions survive in each kingdom?
- How were barbarian and Roman identities constructed and maintained?
- Why did some kingdoms endure (Franks) while others fell quickly (Vandals, Ostrogoths)?
Key theories
- Ethnogenesis
- The view, associated with the Vienna School, that 'peoples' such as Goths and Franks were not fixed biological groups but political communities formed and reformed around a 'kernel of tradition' (Traditionskern), reshaping the older migration-as-mass-movement model.
History
Nineteenth-century nationalism read the kingdoms as the cradles of modern nations. Twentieth-century ethnogenesis theory and revisionist work by Goffart and Halsall recast migration and settlement as politically constructed processes, sparking continuing debate with scholars such as Heather who defend a stronger role for genuine population movement and conflict.
Debates
- Migration versus accommodation
- Historians dispute whether successor kingdoms arose from large-scale armed migrations or from negotiated settlement of relatively small groups within an evolving Roman framework.
Key figures
- Guy Halsall
- Ian Wood
- Peter Heather
- Walter Goffart
Related topics
Seminal works
- halsall2007
- wood1994
- heather2009
Frequently asked questions
- Which kingdom proved most durable?
- The Frankish (Merovingian, then Carolingian) kingdom, which expanded across much of western Europe and underpinned the later Carolingian Empire.
- Did the successor kingdoms abandon Roman law?
- Generally no; many issued law codes that preserved Roman legal principles for Roman populations alongside Germanic customary law, a pattern sometimes called personality of law.