Peter J. Heather

Peter J. Heather (born August 6, 1960 in Northern Ireland ) is a British historian .

Life

Heather studied history (followed by promotion ) at New College of Oxford University and taught at the University College in London and at the University of Yale . Until 2008 he was a Fellow of Medieval History at Worcester College , Oxford. Since 2008 he has been Professor of Medieval History at King's College , London.

The main research focus of Heathers is the late antiquity and thus the end of antiquity . In recent years he has also increasingly dealt with the political developments in the early Middle Ages . He has published numerous essays and monographs on topics such as the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the Goths (in which he argued against Herwig Wolfram in part ), the role of the Huns in the dissolution of West Rome or the rhetorician Themistios . In 2005 his book The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians was published , in which he named the invasion of the Huns and the peoples' movements it triggered as the main reason for the fall of the Roman Empire in the west; at the same time, Heather rejected in the book the thesis that the empire was exposed to a "process of decline": internal factors were not decisive for the downfall of West Rome. The book aroused interest in the professional world when his colleague, the Oxford archaeologist and ancient historian Bryan Ward-Perkins , published a similar book almost simultaneously ( The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization ). Heather and above all Ward-Perkins argued partly explicitly against the very influential position of the Princeton-speaking historian Peter Brown , who sees late antiquity primarily as a time of transformation and is accused by some of the research of the destruction associated (at least in part) with the migration period and do not take sufficient account of negative developments.

Publications

(in selection)

• Goths and Romans. 332-489. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 0-19-820234-2 .
• The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe. In: The English Historical Review . Volume 110, No. 435, 1995, pp. 4-41, doi: 10.1093 / ehr / CX.435.4 .
• The Goths (= The Peoples of Europe. ). Blackwell, Oxford 1996, ISBN 0-631-16536-3 .
• as editor: The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the Seventh Century. An ethnographic Perspective (= Studies in historical Archaeoethnology. Volume 4). Boydell Press et al., Woodbridge 1999, ISBN 0-85115-762-9 .
• Politics, philosophy, and empire in the fourth century. Select orations of Themistius (= Translated Texts for Historians. Volume 36). Translated with an introduction by Peter Heather and David Moncur. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2001, ISBN 0-85323-106-0 .
• The Fall of the Roman Empire. Macmillan, London et al. 2005, ISBN 0-333-98914-7 .
  • German: The fall of the Roman Empire. Translated by Klaus Kochmann. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-608-94082-4 . Book Prize 2007 from H-Soz-u-Kult .
• Empires and Barbarians. (Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe). Macmillan, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-333-98975-3 .
  • German: Invasion of the Barbarians. The creation of Europe in the first millennium after Christ. Translated by Bernhard Jendricke, Rita Seuss and Thomas Wollermann. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-608-94652-9 ( detailed review (PDF; 140 kB) at PLEKOS).
• The Restoration of Rome. Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders. Macmillan, London 2013, ISBN 978-0-230-70015-4 .
  • German: The rebirth of Rome. Popes, rulers and the world of the Middle Ages. Translated by Hans Freundl and Heike Schlatterer. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-608-94856-1 .
• Rome Resurgent. War and Empire in the Age of Justinian. Oxford University Press, London 2018, ISBN 978-0-19-936275-2 .
  • German: The last bloom of Rome. Since the age of Justinian. Translated by Cornelius Hartz. WBG-Theiss, Darmstadt 2018, ISBN 978-3-8062-3892-1 .
• numerous articles, for example for the Cambridge Ancient History (volumes 13 and 14).

Web links

• Literature by and about Peter J. Heather in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by Peter J. Heather in Opac92-1 of the Regesta Imperii
• Homepage
• The Fall of Rome - an author dialogue (conversation between Peter Heather and Bryan Ward-Perkins)
• Review of the two books by Peter Heather and Bryan Ward-Perkins on the Rome case (with some comments on the research discussion)
• Review at Times-Online
• Review of Invasion of the Barbarians in the FAZ on March 25, 2011 by Andreas Kilb, accessed on March 25, 2011