Honey, would you let the Barbarians in?

Illustration by John Lamberger

LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE

In October 2021, Boris Johnson stood on the observation deck of the Colosseum for an interview with Channel 4. His odd manner – a mix of aristocratic bewilderment and the look of a suburban pub lout – clashed intensely with the enigmatic ruins. The focus of his semi-intellectual fumblings was the most downtrodden of the global order: climate refugees. He did his best to summon the classic image of the fall of the Empire; hordes of unwashed barbarians tearing down the symbols of a glittering civilization to replace them with indoor excrement buckets and illiteracy. In the interview, he spoke briefly of the history, brushing past it as a simple, clarifiable fact: “The Roman Empire fell because of out-of-control immigration,” and that “People should not be so naive to think that history moves in one direction,” that “history is moving backwards.” In reality, Johnson's muddied xenophobic reframing of history is blissful, clean, pure nonsense.

I pick Johnson’s example out of a myriad right-wing reactionaries using this “interpretation” of Roman history because it's the least effective and, thus, the funniest. The wider right-wing consistently holds up migration as the reason for the Empire’s fall and a universal warning sign for an Empire in decline. The “historical” example is then applied to the position of the contemporary West:

These Twitter posts are much more deft examples of right-wing reactionary propaganda than Boris’. They’re interesting in the way that the best propaganda is – it grabs your attention. But they’re just that: propaganda.

The rigor of the Classics, the study of the ancient Mediterranean world, comes not from reading the ancient documents, but in understanding how every subsequent generation of historians understood the period that they’re describing. Many of what we consider “primary sources” from the Roman Period were written hundreds of years after the events described, or inextricably politically biased. What few extant secondary and tertiary sources are biased in both respects. In other words, Roman history has always been highly political and highly fluid.

So any study of the Classics is inherently a reflection of the author's contemporary political feelings; to what extent is almost impossible to decipher. The reactionary right’s interpretation of the Empire’s fall, however, is not founded in history whatsoever. It’s constrained to 140-character tweets and 7-minute interviews; in other words, the Late Empire becomes a simple rhetorical device. 

A real study of Rome’s relationship with Germanic immigration can inform, as the right is suggesting, national policy and migration policy in the upcoming period of climate migration. As the period of contemporary climate migration intensifies over the next quarter-century, studying how the Romans interacted with their Germanic neighbors during the Period of Migration (300 AD - 600 AD) can help illuminate how we can successfully withstand the great demographic changes that will soon grip our own political systems. The truth is, the Fall of the Roman Empire was precipitated not by the acceptance of German immigrants but by their violent rejection. The Empire enjoyed a hundred-year-long “stay of execution” by essentially throwing open its borders to German immigration.

Let me be the first to say that the story below is also a thumbnail sketch of Late Roman Imperial scholarship. It perhaps isn’t even a good one. Classicists more ideologically conservative than I would certainly accuse me of selecting, as every historian does, information based on how I view contemporary politics. I encourage you to keep that in mind while reading this article.

Without further ado, let's travel back in time together.

The Crisis of the Third Century (234-284)

In 234 AD, overlapping and self-reinforcing environmental, economic, and political crises enveloped the entire Mediterranean world. Plague, probably smallpox, devastated urban and rural populations alike. Hyperinflation devoured a huge portion of the Roman economy, rendering the currency so valueless that the Empire ceased collecting taxes in money. A permanent change in the climate, the end of the Roman Warm Period, made agriculture permanently less productive. This is just to name a few of the existential issues that all of Europe faced.

The Empire needed to adapt to fundamentally different circumstances than it had faced throughout its history. Roman administrators pulled off some of the most agile feats of bureaucratic gymnastics in history, sticking the landing almost every time on the first attempt. They pursued an agenda marked by radically open immigration reform, political reorganization, systemic changes to the basic functions of the Roman economy, and the creation of entirely new socioeconomic classes. 284 AD is perhaps a more logical beginning to the Middle Ages than the expulsion of Romulus Augustulus in 476. The reforms of the late 200s AD created what we understand as Medieval: patrimonial labor organizations, serfdom, and the divinely appointed monarch.

The Germanic tribes outside the Empire’s borders simply collapsed in the face of climate migration, plague, economic collapse, and external invasion. They migrated en masse to the Empire, looking for safety and competent administration. The Romans, for their part, were ecstatic to welcome new bodies to serve their legions and in the marketplaces sapped by the compounding crises. Roman administrators, looking at their empty streets and unplowed fields, essentially threw open the doors.

The Process of Roman Immigration

What we might understand as “legal immigration” into the Roman Empire happened through a process called consensus. Roman borders, with few exceptions, were almost entirely porous to individuals and small parties. As an individual, one could cross the border and become a Roman taxpayer with all the benefits that came with it. As a large group, however, you needed consensus.

What this process looked like varied between time and place, but was much the same in its essential characteristics. A tribe of 250,000 or more would appear at the border and petition for admittance into the empire. Local magistrates would collect certain information on the new arrivals and call in a legionary presence to meet the barbarians at a pre-arranged spot. The Germans would cross the border, leave their weapons behind, and swear allegiance to the Emperor. The Roman apparatus would then split the tribe up and disperse them evenly across the vast size of the Empire; this family to Spain, this one to Italy, and so on. They were disarmed, separated, and settled.

To put it plainly, the Empire needed these injections of manpower between the third and fourth centuries. To a lesser extent, that’s the way the Romans had always worked. To be Roman wasn’t like being German; to be Roman was a way of life, a system of values, not an ethnicity.

The Imperii Populii Romanii, the Power of the Roman People, always rested on their ability to convince new people to become Romans and lend their efforts to the imperial project.

New Arrivals (376)

The positive feedback loop between Roman power and German immigration established in the aftermath of the Crisis of the Third Century suffered a relatively simple end. For one, the Huns were galloping over the Eastern European Plain, from where we aren’t sure, displacing more people and causing cascading refugee waves. The Romans had been at the top of their integration game, welcoming or forcing hundreds of thousands of Goths, Franks, Quadii, and Marcomanii into the fabric of Roman society for the last hundred years. Their ability to welcome newcomers had been the only reason the Empire had not collapsed back in the third century.

In 376, a group of 200,000 Goths, likely from modern Ukraine, presented themselves at the Roman border requesting asylum from the unstoppable Hunnic invasion from the East. Then, Roman Emperor Valens was ecstatic. One of the recurrent outbreaks of the Antonine Plague had devastated the legions at the very start of a major conflict with the Sassanians, an equally powerful empire centered in modern Iran. 

This massive group of Goths crossed the Danube and, as usual, they left their weapons on the far bank of the Danube, content in the knowledge that now they were safe in Roman territory. Because of the extensive conflict in the East and recurrent cycles of plague, the Roman force that met them was large but not overwhelmingly so. A temporary camp was set up to accommodate the Goths before they were dispersed by their new Roman leaders across the Empire. 

The Romans were never a people to protest their bureaucrats skimming a bit of the top, but the abuse suffered by the Goths at the hands of their Roman administrators while in this temporary camp was cruel. The camp became semi-permanent as weeks of waiting turned into months. The Roman administrators of this camp schemed constantly to separate the Goths under their purview from their gold. Going so far as to exchange dog meat for their women and children to abate starvation. This was after, of course, they had sold the provisions the central government had been sending them to feed the Goths on the private market. When the Goths heard that Emperor Valens was on his way, their leaders gathered to petition him to punish the greedy administrators who wreaked such cruelty on their people. The administrators of the camp, in way over their heads, killed the Gothic leaders before they could inform their bosses of their misdeeds.

The Goths were enraged. In convulsions of pain only known to the dispossessed and abused, they broke out of camp, sacked a nearby city for all its food, and relished in torturing the Roman citizens they were once so hopeful to become.

The Beginning of the End (376 - 476)

Emperor Valens was furious. The greed and ineptitude of a few low-level bureaucrats had turned hundreds of thousands of allies into an apocalyptic threat. The Empire was fighting a war with a near-peer adversary to the East and now had to contend with a large-scale enemy army within its borders. The Emperor ordered the legions stationed on the border to join the major force the Emperor was leading with all haste towards the Gothic army. 

He attacked the Gothic army outside the city of Hadrianopolis near the modern Greek border with Bulgaria. The Romans were crushed. Emperor Valens was killed on the field, two-thirds of the Roman army was slaughtered, and Hadrianopolis was burned to the ground. The borders were undefended, and no army within a thousand miles could challenge the Goths now, let alone the Huns from which they were initially fleeing.

The Western Empire never truly recovered from the blow suffered at Adrianople. The Huns penetrated Roman territory, now completely undefended. The Romans bargained with the Goths to ally with them against the Huns in exchange for gold and political privileges. Valens’ successors were increasingly unable to impose terms on the arriving tribes. They began crossing the borders without first asking Roman officials, bringing their weapons, settling together, and only coming to those “agreements” after they had taken what they could. Consensus was permanently broken. The Romans could no longer effectively impose their terms and culture on the new arrivals.

The Western Roman Empire went with a whimper, not a bang. Tribes were increasingly only nominally subservient to the Emperor in Rome and, in practice, held all the cards in the relationship. The last Roman emperors even abandoned Rome as the capital, unable to defend such a large and attractive pile of treasure. The Eternal City was looted twice in the 400s AD. Instead, they ruled from Ravenna, playacting as masters of the world from behind the swamps that encircled the city. 

Conclusion

Studying the Migration Period (300-600 AD) to understand how the Romans and German migrants interacted with one another can help policymakers determine how to react to the upcoming period of climate migration. The Migration Policy Institute predicts up to 1.2 billion people will be internationally displaced by 2050; the vast majority moving north from the equator. It’s imperative that leaders understand the decisions that caused alignment of Roman and Gothic interests versus those that pitted them against each other.

There are two lessons that present themselves to me as a Roman historian and scholar of current events:

1. The United States is facing a demographic cliff and entering into competition with the most populous nation on Earth. Just as Rome needed German immigration to fill its legions and coffers, the United States needs immigrants from the South. The wisest course of action is to model Roman consensus and make friends where natural friends exist. Welcome them under the auspices of overwhelming power but extend a generous hand; In other words, talk softly but carry a big stick.

2. Go to elaborate lengths to avoid violent confrontation with large groups of migrants. At some point, the flow of migrants will be such as to represent an irresistible faction. Appearances of overwhelming power on the part of the assimilating group are more important than the actual ability to militarily resist the newcomers. Avoiding the possibility of an Adrianople is paramount to the survival of the American Empire.

Of course, the same reason these lessons can’t be learned in hindsight is the same reason simplified tellings are so rhetorically attractive. It is, however, important to distinguish leaders from Twitter influencers. I can understand why the backwards interpretation of history proliferates on a platform like Twitter, but to be repeated by the decision-makers themselves signals a fundamental issue. If Boris Johnson is himself repeating the propaganda and perhaps believing it, how can we trust him and people like him to make discerning, unbiased strategic decisions?

Let this be realized: if we make unnecessary enemies of these people, they will learn quickly that we can’t stop them even if we try.

Braxton Fuller is a current master’s candidate for International Studies at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs.

If you enjoyed this work, please consider sharing our content and website or donating to a non-profit organization linked in the Donate tab.

DISCLAIMER

Mooreposts publishes independent analysis, commentary, and research for informational and educational purposes only. Content on Mooreposts—including articles, Mooreposts Bites, strategic intelligence assessments, opinion pieces, interviews, and visual materials—does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or professional advice, nor does it represent any government agency, official position, or classified assessment.

Unless explicitly stated, all analyses and interpretations reflect the views and analytic judgments of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Mooreposts, its editorial staff, or affiliated contributors. Strategic intelligence and analytical content is based on open-source information and publicly available materials.

Mooreposts strives for accuracy, transparency, and rigorous sourcing; however, information may change as events develop. Readers are encouraged to consult primary sources and exercise independent judgment.