How did the political systems of Europe evolve after the fall of the Roman Empire?
The Empire split in two: The Western and the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire (later known as the Byzantine Empire) would fight the barbarians in its western border and the Persians (later Arab Muslims) in the east for another couple centuries. After the fall of the West, Europe was dragged in a Dark Age. Without imperial control lost, barbarian states rose. The Vandals settled in North Africa, the Ostrogoths in Italy. The Saxons, the Angles and the Jutes settled England. The most prominent kingdom of all, the kingdom of the Franks, rose in France. In Iberia two kingdoms rose: the kingdom of the Visigoths and the kingdom of the Suevos. The Visigoths would later dominate the Peninsula but infighting led to the Muslim invasion which made the kingdom to retreat all the way to the Asturias. The Muslims were eventually stopped at Poitiers by the Franks. Other implications of the fall of the Roman Empire was the fact that urban population decreased as people fled the countrysid
