Britain
Britain was
a thoroughly Romanized province, or at least the southern portions were. There were beautiful
public baths, estates, even bookstores. The Roman legions brought peace and prosperity, at least
most of the time.
But the troubles of the late 4th century caused the legions of the outlying provinces to be
recalled. The last Roman legion left in 407. Across the North Sea, new Germanic tribes were
settling: Angles, Jutes, Saxons. By the later 400s, they were crossing over to England and driving
the Britons back into Cornwall and Wales.
The King Arthur legends preserve some memory of this. If there was an Arthur, he probably lived
in the early 500s, just when the Celtic Britons were making their last stands against the Saxons.
Perhaps Arthur somehow represented a memory of the days when Roman troops kept the peace, Roman
law kept order, and Roman merchants brought wealth.
Spain
The story
was different here. The Visigoths moved across Europe in the later 300s, after their victory at
Adrianople, coming to settle finally in Spain in the early 400s. There they set up a kingdom that
retained much of the old Roman administrative system.
In fact, Visigothic Spain was a haven of order in a chaotic world. They retained Roman titles
and Roman practices. We have some modest literary works from here, most notably that of Isidore of
Seville. This kingdom lasted until the arrival of the Moslems at the beginning of the 700s.
Africa
North
Africa had long been the granary of Italy, and it continued in this role until the Vandals swept
through in the 5th century. They thoroughly disrupted the Roman administrative systems and the
grain vanished so abruptly that it caused famine more than once in Rome.
The Vandals were defeated by the Byzantines during Justinian's reign and enjoyed a late though
modest prosperity in the later 6th and early 7th centuries. But this Roman backwater vanished
forever with the coming of Islamic armies in the later 7th century.