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( Migration Period)
The Migration Period, also called Barbarian Invasions, or sometimes Völkerwanderung (German for "wandering of peoples") is the English name used by historians to a human migration which occurred within the period of roughly AD 300–700 in Europe,[1] marking the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. The migration included the Goths, Vandals, Bulgars, Alans, Suebi, Frisians and Franks, among other Germanic, Iranian and Slavic tribes. The migration may have been triggered by the incursions of the Huns, in turn connected to the Turkic migration in Central Asia, population pressures, or climate changes. Migrations would continue well beyond AD 1000, with successive waves of Slavs, Avars, Hungarians, the Turkic expansion and, finally, the Mongol invasions, radically changing the ethnic makeup of Eastern Europe. Western European historians tend to emphasize the earlier migrations most relevant to Western Europe. The migration movement may be divided into two phases; the first phase, between AD 300 and 500, largely seen from the Mediterranean perspective of Greek and Latin historians,[2] with the aid of some archaeology, put Germanic peoples in control of most areas of the former Western Roman Empire. (See also Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, Alans, Langobards, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Suebi, Alamanni, Vandals). The first to formally enter Roman territory — as refugees from the Huns — were the Visigoths in 376. Tolerated by the Romans on condition that they defend the Danube frontier, they rebelled, eventually invading Italy and sacking Rome itself (410) before settling in Iberia and founding a kingdom there that endured 300 years. They were followed into Roman territory by the Ostrogoths led by Theodoric the Great, who settled in Italy itself. In Gaul, the Franks, a fusion of western Germanic tribes whose leaders had been strongly aligned with Rome, entered Roman lands more gradually and peacefully during the 5th century, and were generally accepted as rulers by the Roman-Gaulish population. Fending off challenges from the Allemanni, Burgundians and Visigoths, the Frankish kingdom became the nucleus of the future states of France and Germany. Meanwhile Roman Britain was more slowly conquered by Angles and Saxons.
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