Europe’s foundations lie with peoples the Romans excluded as barbarians

Evidence

The social basis of European civilization was “among those whom the Romans called the ‘barbarians.’” Prior to the eleventh or twelfth centuries, the use of the collective sense of the term “barbarian” was primarily a function of exclusion rather than a reflection of any significant consolidation among those peoples. The term signified that the “barbarians” had their historical origins beyond the civilizing reach of Roman law and the old Roman imperial social order. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 125