ABSTRACT
Until the fifth century A.D., much of western Europe lay within the Roman Empire, a vast collection of terrritories including parts of the Middle East and North Africa. In Europe itself during the centuries of Roman rule, much of the native Celtic population had become highly Romanized in its culture, political allegiance and legal practices. In the last few centuries of the Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes which had long lived on the eastern fringes of the European provinces moved into the Romanized lands in large numbers. This wave of "barbarian" invasions, along with severe political and economic problems, gradually killed off the Roman Empire, which was replaced by a number of Germanic successor kingdoms, including those of the Franks in Gaul (modern France), the Visigoths in Spain, the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Burgundians in and around what is now Switzerland, and the AngloSaxons in England.
