“民族大迁徙”:一个术语的由来与发展

“V?lkerwanderung”: The Origin and Development of the Term

作为一个历史术语,"民族大迁徙"有其自身的演变史。本文以德国史学史为主,梳理该术语的产生和发展的历史。自从文艺复兴时期开始,"民族大迁徙"成为一个专门的学术术语,用来解释罗马帝国晚期北方族群逐渐进入罗马帝国境内定居,并建立起自己的政府的历史进程。此后,逐渐形成了"自东向西迁徙"和"自北向南迁徙"两大理论解释框架。二战以后,族群迁徙理论逐渐让位于族群生成(凝聚)理论。近年来,族群认同研究取而代之,将中古早期的族群问题从人种志学领域解放出来,而以政治文化研究为主。目前,如何看待中古早期史中族群研究的必要性,学术界仍然存在着激烈的争论。

In the late Roman Empire, groups of people entered into the Roman Empire, either by the invitation of the Roman governors or by invasion. In the following centuries these barbarous groups gradually established their own states. How to describe and explain this historical development, is always one major challenge at which the historians have to face. The historiographers in the Renaissance recognized these various northern groups as German people with a new term: Migratio Gentum(V?lkerwanderung). In the early modern period there were two widespread theories explaining the origin of these people and the routes of their immigration: Immigration from east to west and Immigration from the North to the South respectively. After the World War II a new theory of Ethnogenesis first systematically put forward by Reinhard Wenskus, and then further developed along the way of ethnical Identity by the Vienna School. Nevertheless, there is still hot debate between the Anglophone scholars and the German historians about the role the ethnical groups played in the early Middle Ages.