WALTER GOFFART. Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire. (The Middle Ages Series.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2006. Pp. x, 372. $69.95
Walter Pohl
Walter Goffart is one of the most renowned early medieval historians. His books include Barbarians and Romans A.D. 418–584: The Techniques Accommodation (1980), arguing that late Roman “techniques accommodation” implied tax shares instead land distribution to barbarians; Narrators Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory Tours, Bede, Paul Deacon (1988), analyzing works historiography as “fictions fact,” not ethnic histories; edited collection Rome's Fall After (1989). Rather than establishing new paradigms, these have opened doors inspired controversial debates. Goffart, who remained rather aloof from debates until recently, has now returned them. Reading careful narrative section his book, an exemplary account “Great Rhine Crossing” after 400 (pp. 73–118), might wish he had produced at last a synthesis migrations having...
The American Historical Review