This course examines the peoples known to historians of Western Europe as the "Barbarians" who took up residence on the continent of Europe and whose polities replaced the central government of imperial Rome in the fifth and subsequent centuries, as well as those of the northern realms of the British Isles and Scandinavia. Topics to be studied include the ethnic and cultural identities of the Barbarians, their role in redefining the social and political institutions of Europe, the reasons for their political and military successes, and their hold on the imaginations of both sympathetic and unsympathetic historians.