Huns, Vandals, and the Fall of the Roman Empire PDF Download

Author: Thomas Hodgkin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 694

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Book Description
This work explores Attila's rise and rule over the Huns in the 440s, when Vandals, Ostrogoths, Gepids and Franks were also fighting under his banner.

Author: Christopher Kelly
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446419320
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Attila the Hun - godless barbarian and near-mythical warrior king - has become a byword for mindless ferocity. His brutal attacks smashed through the frontiers of the Roman empire in a savage wave of death and destruction. His reign of terror shattered an imperial world that had been securely unified by the conquests of Julius Caesar five centuries before. This book goes in search of the real Attila the Hun. For the first time it reveals the history of an astute politician and first-rate military commander who brilliantly exploited the strengths and weaknesses of the Roman empire. We ride with Attila and the Huns from the windswept steppes of Kazakhstan to the opulent city of Constantinople, from the Great Hungarian Plain to the fertile fields of Champagne in France. Challenging our own ideas about barbarians and Romans, imperialism and civilisation, terrorists and superpowers, this is the absorbing story of an extraordinary and complex individual who helped to bring down an empire and forced the map of Europe to be redrawn forever.

Author: Christopher Kelly
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393072665
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
"A thoughtful and sophisticated account of a notoriously complicated and controversial period." —R. I. Moore, Times Literary Supplement History remembers Attila, the leader of the Huns, as the Romans perceived him: a savage barbarian brutally inflicting terror on whoever crossed his path. Following Attila and the Huns from the steppes of Kazakhstan to the court of Constantinople, Christopher Kelly portrays Attila in a compelling new light, uncovering an unlikely marriage proposal, a long-standing relationship with a treacherous Roman general, and a thwarted assassination plot. We see Attila as both a master warrior and an astute strategist whose rule was threatening but whose sudden loss of power was even more so. The End of Empire is an original exploration of the clash between empire and barbarity in the ancient world, full of contemporary resonance.

Author: Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781594163319
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The First General History in English of the Germanic People Who Sacked Rome in the Fifth Century AD and Established a Kingdom in North Africa One of the most fascinating of late antiquity were the Vandals, who over a period of six hundred years had migrated from the woodland regions of Scandinavia across Europe and ended in the deserts of North Africa. In A History of the Vandals, the first general account in English covering the entire story of the Vandals from their emergence to the end of their kingdom, historian Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen pieces together what we know about the Vandals, sifting fact from fiction.

Author: Hyun Jin Kim
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107067227
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
The Huns have often been treated as primitive barbarians with no advanced political organisation. Their place of origin was the so-called 'backward steppe'. It has been argued that whatever political organisation they achieved they owed to the 'civilizing influence' of the Germanic peoples they encountered as they moved west. This book argues that the steppes of Inner Asia were far from 'backward' and that the image of the primitive Huns is vastly misleading. They already possessed a highly sophisticated political culture while still in Inner Asia and, far from being passive recipients of advanced culture from the West, they passed on important elements of Central Eurasian culture to early medieval Europe, which they helped create. Their expansion also marked the beginning of a millennium of virtual monopoly of world power by empires originating in the steppes of Inner Asia. The rise of the Hunnic Empire was truly a geopolitical revolution.

Author: Peter Heather
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0195325419
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 605

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Book Description
Shows how Europe's barbarians, strengthened by centuries of contact with Rome on many levels, turned into an enemy capable of overturning and dismantling the mighty Empire.

Author: Simon MacDowall
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 147388022X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
An up-close look at the Germanic people who sacked Rome in the fifth century AD. On 31 December AD 406, a group of German tribes crossed the Rhine, pierced the Roman defensive lines, and began a rampage across Roman Gaul, sacking cities such as Metz, Arras, and Strasbourg. Foremost amongst them were the Vandals, and their search for a new homeland took them on the most remarkable odyssey. The Romans were unable to stop them and their closest allies, the Alans, marching the breadth of Gaul, crossing the Pyrenees, and making themselves masters of Spain. However, this kingdom of the Vandals and Alans soon came under intense pressure from Rome’s Visigothic allies. In 429, under their new king, Gaiseric, they crossed the straits of Gibraltar to North Africa. They quickly overran this rich Roman province and established a stable kingdom. Taking to the seas, they soon dominated the Western Mediterranean and raided Italy, famously sacking Rome itself in 455. Eventually, however, they were utterly conquered by Belisarius in 533 and vanished from history. Simon MacDowall narrates and analyzes these events, with particular focus on the evolution of Vandal armies and warfare.

Author: John Man
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312349394
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Chronicles the life of Attila the Hun, focusing on his conflicts with the Roman Empire, his influence over the history of Europe, his image in the modern world, his reputation for savagery, and other related topics.

Author: Andrew Merrills
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9781444318081
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
The Vandals is the first book available in the EnglishLanguage dedicated to exploring the sudden rise and dramatic fallof this complex North African Kingdom. This complete historyprovides a full account of the Vandals and re-evaluates key aspectsof the society including: Political and economic structures such as the complexforeign policy which combined diplomatic alliances and marriageswith brutal raiding The extraordinary cultural development of secular learning,and the religious struggles that threatened to tear the stateapart The nature of Vandal identity from a social and genderperspective.

Author: Bryan Ward-Perkins
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191622362
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Why did Rome fall? Vicious barbarian invasions during the fifth century resulted in the cataclysmic end of the world's most powerful civilization, and a 'dark age' for its conquered peoples. Or did it? The dominant view of this period today is that the 'fall of Rome' was a largely peaceful transition to Germanic rule, and the start of a positive cultural transformation. Bryan Ward-Perkins encourages every reader to think again by reclaiming the drama and violence of the last days of the Roman world, and reminding us of the very real horrors of barbarian occupation. Attacking new sources with relish and making use of a range of contemporary archaeological evidence, he looks at both the wider explanations for the disintegration of the Roman world and also the consequences for the lives of everyday Romans, in a world of economic collapse, marauding barbarians, and the rise of a new religious orthodoxy. He also looks at how and why successive generations have understood this period differently, and why the story is still so significant today.