The use and misuse of the barbarian invasions, 1732-2002

背景：研究古代晚期和中世纪早期的历史学家很少意识到他们现在所参与的辩论的起源，以及这些辩论随着时间的推移而发生的变化。同样，很少有人意识到，关于中世纪早期（尤其是罗马帝国灭亡后蛮族王国的建立）的争论在多大程度上被卷入了十八、十九和二十世纪的社会和政治话语中。在关于中世纪早期的书籍中，即使是像克里斯·威克姆的《构架中世纪早期》这样的重要作品，也很少表现出对这一主题的史学发展的认识，尽管沃尔特·戈法特的《野蛮的潮汐》和帕特里克·加里的《国家神话》更加关注过去的写作，但他们只涉及材料的特定方面。与我正在写的这本书最相似的是克劳德·尼科莱（Claude Nicolet）的《国家结构》（La fabrique d’une nation），但他的专业领域是古代史，他的讨论仅限于法国。目的和目标：在研究现代时期的作家中，Joep Leerssen在《欧洲民族思想》一书中指出，19世纪早期中世纪历史的某些方面是如何被利用的，但他没有证明这些方面被利用的一致性。通过观察从中世纪早期到21世纪早期不断变化的话语，通过考虑法国、意大利、德国和（在较小程度上）英国，并通过结合某些艺术、文学和音乐作品的案例研究，我将展示在语境中设置史学的价值，无论是对早期中世纪的理解，还是对更现代的社会和政治辩论的理解。第一章将展示罗马帝国的灭亡是如何在关于贵族特权的辩论和革命话语中被使用的。第二章将考察拿破仑和19世纪20年代的作家，尤其是奥古斯丁·蒂埃里对墨罗温学派的使用。第三章将考虑将蒂埃里的论点转移到意大利，在那里他们被用作描述入侵者剥削国家的模型。除了研究史学，这门课还会研究复兴运动时期的戏剧和歌剧。第4章将介绍在德国统一的背景下，特别是在围绕新国家范围的辩论中，对早期中世纪历史的使用，特别是雅各布·格里姆的使用。第五章将考察野蛮人入侵的史学在多大程度上受到普法战争的影响，以及这些辩论对法国公共艺术和德国文学的影响。第6章将考虑使用日耳曼定居的解释来为1914年德国的侵略辩护，以及学术界的反应，首先是亨利·皮雷恩。第7章将考虑早期中世纪考古学和魏玛共和国和第三帝国的onomastics的使用，以及如何使用它们来为帝国划定理想的边界。它还将展示对日耳曼民族的理解是如何日益与种族观念联系在一起的。第8章将考察1945年后学者对纳粹时期历史的利用的反应，最重要的是，试图从野蛮人的研究中消除种族问题。第9章将考虑关于野蛮人入侵的公共辩论如何进入博物馆展览领域，以及潜在议程如何成为欧盟定义问题之一。从学术观众的角度来看，这项研究的主要好处将是展示一段历史是如何被政治家利用和滥用的，并将指出向广大观众展示历史的价值，但同时也需要监督展示。

Context: Few historians working on Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages are aware of the origins of the debates in which they are now involved, and the ways in which those debates have changed over time. Equally, few people are aware of the extent to which debates about the Early Middle Ages (and especially the establishment of the barbarian kingdoms following the Fall of the Roman Empire) were drawn into social and political discourse in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Among books on the Early Middle Ages, even major works like Chris Wickham's Framing the Early Middle Ages, have shown little awareness of the historiographical development of the subject, and although Walter Goffart's Barbarian Tides and Patrick Geary's Myth of Nations have paid more attention to past writing, they have only dealt with specific aspects of the material. The closest parallel to the book I am writing is La fabrique d'une nation, by Claude Nicolet: but his area of expertise is Ancient History, and his discussion is limited to France.Aims and Objectives: Among writers on the Modern Period, Joep Leerssen, in National Thought in Europe, has noted how certain aspects of Early Medieval History were have been exploited in the nineteenth century, but he has not demonstrated the consistency with which it has been exploited. By looking at the changing discourse on the Early Middle Ages from the Ancien Regime to the early twenty-first century, and by considering France, Italy, Germany and (to a lesser extent) England, and by incorporating case studies of certain works of art, literature and music, I will demonstrate the value of setting historiography in context, both for an understanding of the Early Middle Ages and for an understanding of more modern social and political debate.Chapter 1 will show how the Fall of the Roman Empire was used in debates over the privileges of the nobility, and in revolutionary discourse. Chapter 2 will examine the use of the Merovingians by Napoleon, and then by writers in the 1820s, notably Augustin Thierry. Chapter 3 will consider the transfer of Thierry's arguments to Italy, where they were used as a model for the depiction of the exploitation of the country by invaders. In addition to looking at historiography, this will also look at Risorgimento drama and opera. Chapter 4 will present the use of Early Medieval History, especially by Jacob Grimm, in the context of the unification of Germany, and in debates surrounding the extent of the new state. Chapter 5 will examine the extent to which the historiography of the barbarian invasions was influenced by the Franco-Prussian War, as well as the impact of those debates on public art in France, and on literature in Germany. Chapter 6 will consider the use of interpretations of Germanic settlement in justifying German aggression in 1914, and the scholarly reaction, above all of Henri Pirenne. Chapter 7 will consider the use of early medieval archaeology and of onomastics by the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, and how that was used to draw up ideal boundaries for the Reich. It will also show how understanding of the Germanic peoples was becoming increasingly bound up with ideas of ethnicity. Chapter 8 will examine the reactions of scholars after 1945 to the use made of history in the Nazi period, and above all the attempts to remove the issue of ethnicity from the study of the barbarian peoples. Chapter 9 will consider the way in which public debate about the barbarian invasions has moved into the sphere of museum exhibitions, and how the underlying agenda has become one of the question of the definition of the EU. Looking beyond an academic audience, the chief benefit of the study will be to show how one period of history has been used and misused by politicians, and will point to the value of presenting history to a wide audience, but at the same time to the need to monitor the presentation.