The Making of Peoples However obvious it might seem, the making of barbarian peoples was strongly influenced by their interactions with the Romans and the impact that they had on them. Within the empire, the two processes: the so-called a~barbarisation' and a~Romanisation' were supposed to lead to not the formation of barbarian peoples, but to integration of barbarian tribes into life under Roman rule. By the end of the Empire, the society was a unique mixture of Romans and barbarians, which was rather chaotic. Those barbarians who formed the kingdoms after the collapse of the Empire did not live within her borders for long. The Roman Empire was the perfect example for the barbarians to unite and create their own kingdoms. And it was also the Roman Empire who influenced them not to become a part of it, but to strive for their own kingdoms. Therefore, it was the Roman Empire that was in the basis of the formation of the new kingdoms.First of all, it was not only the Romans who had impact on barbarians. As well, the barbarians had strong impact on Rome: on the army, the society and even the games. Some historians, such as Vegetius and Arthur Ferrill, blame the process also known as a~barbarisation' for the collapse of the empire. This process lead to many consequences, a number of which were negative. For example, the barbarisation of the army made the Roman soldier resemble the barbarian one too much and this is thought to be the reason for the numerous defeats from the barbarians. To illustrate this, compare these two pictures. The first one shows a Roman legionnaire of 1-2 centuries AD, and the second is of a legionnaire of 4-5 centuries AD.These two clearly show what the process of barbarisation had done to the Roman army: the latter soldier rarely cared any armour; he had a round shield and helmet, which did not protect him very much. It was exactly the high level of discipline and the better equipment that allowed Rome to lay down the law over the barbarians. The legions were demoralised and ungovernable during the third and the fourth centuries AD. With having barbarians enter the army, many things changed; things such as the way of leading battle actions, the equipment of the soldier and the tactics. Also, for having too many barbarians enter the Roman society over the years, the society was no longer
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purely Roman. After the collapse of the Empire, all the kingdoms that emerged were mainly of those peoples that migrated- the barbarians that were conquered by the empire did not form their own kingdoms. That was because the population of the Empire was an enormous mixture of barbarians and Romans, all of which calling themselves Romans. This is because the two processes, the a~Romanisation' and the a~barbarisation', just like Henri Pirenne, Peter Brown or Lucien Musset would say, transformed the Roman world and the fusion between them resulted first in the Roman society by the end of the Empire and ...

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