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Late Antiquity
Why Rome Fell . . . and why it doesn't matter
When people talk about the "fall of the Roman Empire", they usually envision some sort of event: a particular year, perhaps, or at least a particular generation. A little bit of study might yield some specific dates: 476, or 455, or 410. All such ideas are fundamentally misleading because they over-simplify what the Roman Empire was, and they overlook social and economic developments in favor of strictly political developments.
The very notion of a fall implies that something was standing, and that this something was a cohesive entity. In fact, Rome was always a patchwork, held together only at the very top. Much of the Roman Empire was governed at a very local level; the civitas (city-state) was the fundamental unit of governing and Rome gave these a great deal of autonomy. Above this stood the provincial government and the Roman army. As the tax base dwindled, and the army was called away or was distracted by civil wars, the provincial government vanished, but the local civitas went on. As the barbarians invaded, they often took over the old Roman provincial titles, so that Roman authority continued in a new guise.
A different way of considering matters is to leave aside entirely the idea of a "fall" and to talk instead about the transition from the ancient world to the medieval world. At some point we are clearly in the ancient world. At some later date, we are clearly in the medieval world. How did this transformation come about? The history of the Roman Empire figures into this story, but so do the Arabs and the Germans and the Slavs. Religion plays a prominent role, as do economic forces. With this point of view, it is more practical to ask: when did central Roman authority decline and disappear from this region or that one? This being a survey class, we can only trace the broadest of outlines, but it will be enough to change the focus away from the Roman Empire.
You may have noticed the running header for these pages: Late Antiquity. Historians have not settled on a good name for the centuries between Diocletian and Charlemagne, but this phrase is at least serviceable. The older term, the Dark Ages, has long been in disfavor as misleading and pejorative. I still have some trouble thinking of the Merovingian kings of the 8th century as belonging to Late Antiquity, but no term is without compromise. I'll stick with this one for a while longer.