Charles River Editors

The birth of Europe as people know it today was hardly an easy and effortless process. The end of antiquity was shaped by centuries of continuous wars, raids, and the falls and rises of empires. The most turbulent of these events happened at the beginning of the Middle Ages, from the 3rd-7th centuries CE. This was the time when the old slave society gave way to the feudal system that marked the latter Middle Ages, and it was also a period of battles between the Roman Empire and various barbarian peoples. The Roman Emperors waged wars, made and broke alliances, and bribed and negotiated with chieftains of various “barbarian” tribes to preserve the territorial integrity of their Empires.

After Julius Caesar conquered Gaul in the mid-1st century BCE, Augustus and his successors eventually began a program of Romanization that, in a remarkably short period of time, transformed Gaul into four provinces. All of these locales added enormously to the Roman Empire in terms of manpower, material goods and wealth. Even today, historians are amazed at how such a large population that was not without its own systems of administration and vibrant culture and tradition could so easily succumb to Rome’s pacification process, and to such an extent that, within short periods of time, the indigenous language and traditions of the Celtic peoples of Gaul were totally supplanted. The reasons why Rome was able to subjugate and then transform what was for that time an immense population of over 10 million people lie not only in its military superiority but its system of organization and its conscious program of Romanization. 

 Ironically, even as Rome’s control over Gaul kept modern France fragmented, the medieval dynasties that sprouted up in the area looked up to the Romans as their predecessors, and in essence they would attempt to recreate the Roman Empire.

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