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n important part of Bryce Lyon’s impressive career always will be associated with the work of Henri Pirenne and particularly with his argument that the so-called barbarian invasions did not destroy the later Roman economy in the West.1 As Lyon emphasized,Pirenne and his contemporary Alfons Dopsch maintained that in various of Rome’s successor states, especially in Gaul where both men focused their work in regard to the early Middle Ages,the economy remained comparable to what had existed prior to the dissolution of imperial authority in the West.2 Pirenne, of course, parted company with Dopsch and maintained that continuity was destroyed by the Muslim conquest of much of the Mediterranean littoral during the late seventh and early eighth centuries.3 In response to Pirenne and Dopsch, modern scholars quickly embraced the view that throughout the West of the later Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages, now called “late antiquity” by many scholars, the economy suffered massive decline due in large part to the barbarian invasions.4 In 1951 Robert Lopez asserted, as though it were a noncontroversial fact, “the Roman economy collapsed in the fifth century.”5 By the 1970s most specialists in medieval economic history had rejected the views of both Dopsch and Pirenne. As Renée Doehaerd summed up the state of the question, a “scarcity of goods” was “the essential characteristic of the [economy of the] West between the fifth and Continuity in Late Antique Gaul: A Demographic and Economic Perspective Bernard S. Bachrach 27 1 Lyon, Origins, pp. 57–75; Lyon, Henri Pirenne, pp. 435–38. 2 Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, pp. 9–11, and Dopsch, Economic and Social Foundations. 3 Lyon, Origins, pp. 57–75. 4 Goffart, Barbarian Tides. Concerning late antiquity, see Marcone, “Late Antiquity,” and Ando, “Decline.” 5 Lopez, “Dollar,” p. 18. A ninth centuries.”6 Georges Duby, whose authority went virtually unchallenged among medievalists for some thirty years in the French- and English-speaking worlds, echoed these views throughout the 1970s and 1980s.7 He found strong support from Robert Fossier, his colleague at the Collège de France.8 This model remains dominant today among many influential medievalists . For example, Paul Fouracre, editor of the first volume of the New Cambridge Medieval History, observed recently: “[T]here is a consensus among historians and archaeologists” that “there was a deep and lasting economic recession in Europe between at least the fourth and eighth centuries ad.”9 A prominent archaeologist, Bryan Ward-Perkins, has characterized the general view of a decline in economic conditions as being calculated from “a high point sometime in the Roman period sinking to a low sometime between 400–700.”10 Michael McCormick has observed: “The overall economic trend of the Roman world from c. 200 to c. 700 was downward.”11 By contrast, some specialists in the history of the later Roman Empire now defend Pirenne’s thesis. For example, C. R. Whittaker has observed that it “is still—despite some dissent—largely supported by modern research.”12 S. J. B. Barnish notes that “[o]n the whole, recent archaeology has tended to confirm Pirenne’s picture of a lively Mediterranean commerce in the 5th and 6th centuries .”13 Jeremy Knight emphasizes that “the economic unity of the Mediterranean world into the seventh century is now supported by much archaeological evidence still below ground when Pirenne wrote.”14 The failure of some medieval historians to keep abreast of the relevant literature is summarized by Christine Delaplace: “Some historians are able to remain ignorant of innovative works when the period being studied is not that of their special interest.”15 Many scholars argue that the supposedly abysmal level of the economy during the late antique era is to be explained by drastic demographic decline.16 Doehaerd characterized the state of the question:“The existence of a low population 28   Bernard S. Bachrach 6 Doehaerd, Early Middle Ages, p. 22. 7 Duby, Early Growth. 8 Fossier, “Les tendences”; and McCormick, “Origins of the European Economy,” p. 263n1. 9 Fouracre, “Space,” p. 367. 10 Ward-Perkins, “Specialized Production,” p. 362. 11 McCormick, Origins, p. 30.Wood,“North-Western Provinces,”p. 499; and Liebeschuetz, Decline, p. 10. 12 Whittaker, “Late Roman Trade,” p. 162. 13 Barnish, “Transformation,” p. 396. 14 Knight, End of Antiquity, p. 166. 15 Delaplace, “Débats et problèmes,” pp. 16–17; also Loseby, “Marseille”; Loseby, “Marseille and Pirenne”; and Banaji, Agrarian Change, p. 265. 16 For lists, see Lyon, Origins...

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