TEUTONIC RACE. The name applied to a division of the European peoples, comprising nearly the whole or the bulk of the population of the German Empire, the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands. Great Britain, Switzerland, the United States, Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand. and Cape Colony, about two-thirds of the inhabitants of Cisleithan Austria, and half the population of Belgium (Flemings). It is also represented by large numbers in Hungary and in the Baltic Provinces, Finland, and other parts of Russia. and is found scattered over the whole world. They have long heads and faces, very light hair, blue eyes, tall stature, and narrow, aquiline noses. The oldest traceable home of the Teutons seems to have been in the region be tween the middle and lower courses of the rivers Elbe and Oder. Adjacent tracts, reaching to the river Vistula in the east, to the Harz Mountains and the Thuringian forest in the south, from tho Elbe to the Rhine in the West, and across Den mark to the Scandinavian peninsula in the north, were all occupied by Teutons about the second century B.C. Pliny and Tacitus men tion the Basterme, or Bastarme (q.v.), who appear on the Black Sea about n.c. 200. Next of the Germanic races to force their way south ward were the Cimbri (q.v.), who came down about 2000 years ago from their northern home in the Cimbrian (Danish) peninsula, were joined by the Helvetian Tentones, and penetrated as far as Upper Italy, only to he destroyed by 'Marius in B.C. 102-101. Caesar, bent upon con quering Gaul, clashed with another German tribe, the Suevi (Swabians). The defeat of Ariovistus in n.e. 58, and t-he subsequent in vasions of Germany by the Roman legions, pre vented the Germanization of Gaul, and confined the Germans within the Rhine. Several cen turies after Christ came the later migrations.
Of these the principal ones were those of the Burgundians, Vandals, and Goths, from Eastern Germany southward toward the Danube, and thence westward into Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Africa, and the conquest of the Celtic Britain by the Saxons, Jutes (Danes), and Angles. Later followed the piratical Viking raids of the Norse Danes and Norwegians into the northern islands of Europe, into France (Normandy), and the :Mediterranean coast. Simultaneously with these movements occurred the colonization of Ice land, followed by the settlement of Greenland. Afterwards came the Norman conquest of Eng land and of Southern Italy and Sicily.
The original home of the Burgundians (q.v.) was on the west side of the upper course of the river Vistula. In the third century A.D. they mi grated to the region of the Lower Danube. At the end of thy same century they migrated west ward; at the of the fifth they founded their kingdom in the Rhenish Palatinate. This kingdom was destroyed in 437 by the Huns; the Burgundians settled in Savoy, and thence they founded a new State on the banks of the river Rhone, which fell into the bands of the Franks in 534. After that they were Romanized. See Buricurtnv.
The earliest traceable home of the Vandals seems to have been on the shores of the Baltic. From there they seem to have migrated to the region of the Riesenoebirge (`Vandal Mountains') to the north of Bohemia. But in the third cen tury they are found in the far south in Dacia by the side of the Goths. At the beginning of the fifth century they moved with other German tribes into Gaul, thence into Spain, finally crossing over into North Africa to found there in 429 their famous empire. This was destroyed by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in 534. See