Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2014

 

Anti-Germanic Feeling and the Political Crisis of the Early Byzantine Empire

(Abstract)

 

Dong Xiaojia and Liu Rongrong

 

The early Byzantine emperors inherited and further developed the Roman republican and imperial policy of recruiting barbarians into their armies. This measure was aimed at securing the borders of the empire. On the one hand, the policy helped reduce the growing pressure on the borders and increased the pool of military recruits; but on the other, it meant that barbarian soldiers, represented by Germanic tribes, held important positions in the army, leading to the barbarization of the empire’s military forces. Barbarian forays from outside the empire's borders and the growing numbers of barbarian soldiers and commanders within them aroused anti-Germanic feeling. These subjective sentiments combined with the objective contradiction between military and imperial power in the Byzantine political system was to bring about a political crisis in the late 4th and early 5th century. This was the most serious crisis since the establishment of Constantinople.