Authors: Christopher I. Beckwith
Tags: #History, #General, #Asia, #Europe, #Eastern, #Central Asia
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (28 page)
When these adjustments in the
local
political and demographic order that had been prevented for so long took place, they allowed other adjustments deeper within Central Eurasia to follow like a chain reaction. Altogether they constituted the Great Wandering of Peoples. What was of revolutionary importance about the movement was its effect on Western Europe.
Re–Central Eurasianization of Europe and the Medieval Revolution
The long decline of the Western Roman Empire was accompanied by the gradual immigration of half-Romanized peoples from Northern and Eastern Europe. Although there was also considerable immigration into the Eastern Roman Empire, the larger population there and its greater economic vitality meant that the immigrants were mostly absorbed by the dominant Greek population. In the West, many of the new cities built by the Romans were near the northern limits of their conquests in what had been Germanic or Celtic territory, where the people belonged to the Central Eurasian Culture Complex, not the Mediterranean–Ancient Near Eastern “Hellenistic” culture out of which the Roman Empire had grown and developed over several hundred years. When the Western Empire weakened internally, the government was forced to withdraw imperial troops closer to the center of the realm—northern Italy and Rome itself. Despite the frontier peoples’ semi-Romanized cultural development, their fundamental culture was still Central Eurasian: trade was absolutely necessary, and they were willing to fight if there was no other way to reach the markets. The decline of the cities in the West forced the Central Eurasians to move deeper into the empire to find viable markets. The inevitable result was conflict and retreat of the Romans still further south.
The move of the frontier peoples into the Western Roman Empire—which is thought to have been partly depopulated, for unknown internal reasons—in turn induced peoples further out in Central Eurasia to move west and south as well. The entire movement was accompanied by the efforts of various peoples to establish kingdoms or empires of their own in Central Eurasia or on the frontiers of the Roman Empire. The culmination was the mass movement of the Goths, Huns, and Franks in the fourth and fifth centuries, during which nearly all of Romanized Western Europe was overrun. By the end of the fifth century, the Central Eurasian Culture Complex was in place not only in previously non-Romanized Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe but in the formerly Romanized parts of North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, England, France, Belgium, Switzerland, northern Italy, Germania, and most of the Balkans.
The famous, seductive argument of Henri Pirenne, to the effect that the Middle Ages and medieval civilization in Western Europe began not with the “barbarian conquests” but with Islamic conquest of the Mediterranean and the isolation and impoverishment of what had been the Western Roman Empire,
48
is based on several serious errors and has been totally disproved both in general and in great detail.
49
It nevertheless continues to be followed by most medievalists for a number of reasons, none of them good. As a result, the origins and development of medieval European culture now constitute a great historical mystery, and many proposals have been made to try and solve it.
The earlier belief of historians that the “barbarian conquests” were the turning point between Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages—as the writers who lived in the age of the Great Wandering of Peoples themselves suggest—deserves to be reexamined in the light of the Central Eurasian Culture Complex. There is no question but that the Germanic form of it was reintroduced into Western Europe and became the dominant sociopolitical system there, developing gradually into what is now known as “medieval” culture, which included the “feudal” system or systems, the special status of trading cities, and the special status of the warrior class. The persistence of Graeco-Roman elements—most significantly the dominance of Latin as the common literary language of Western Europe—and the long survival of some pockets of rural Antiquity in the south, did not restore the ancient Mediterranean high culture anywhere in what had been the Western Roman Empire. But that culture did not disappear, either. Romans and Romanized peoples lived in the new Germanic kingdoms, and a merger of the two peoples began to take place almost from the outset. The primary result of the re–Central Eurasianization of Romanized Western Europe was the cultural revolution known prosaically as the Middle Ages.
50
1
The quotation introduces Grendel, the monster defeated by the hero Beowulf. On the textual problem, see endnote
55
.
2
Identification with the Hsiung-nu is still often argued (e.g., de la Vaissière 2005d), but there are many problems with the proposal. See the section on the Hsiung-nu in
chapter 2
, and endnotes 51 and 52.
3
Unfortunately, nothing else is known about Balamber.
4
The known history of the wide-ranging expansionistic wars of Ermanaric cannot be ignored in any discussion of the coming of the Huns, yet modern histories still present the Hun attack against the Alans and Huns as unexpected and unprovoked. The sources do not tell us the Huns’ motivations, but in the light of Ostrogothic history it is unlikely that the invasion was unprovoked. On Ermanaric’s empire and the early Goths in general, see Wolfram (1988).
5
Wolfram (1988: 133).
6
Wolfram (1988: 119).
7
Wolfram (1988: 135–136).
8
Cf. Sinor (1990c: 182–183), who doubts this reason. However, when sufficient information about Hun attacks is available, they seem to have had just cause. See endnotes 56 and 57, and the epilogue.
9
Sinor (1990c: 184). On the frequent confusion of the Huns with the Hephthalites and others, see endnote
56
.
10
On Roman border officials’ misbehavior as the cause of Hun complaints against the Romans, see endnote
57
.
11
Blockley (1983, II: 227).
12
"Theodosius was the first of the emperors to make Constantinople his permanent residence … other emperors maintained the peripatetic lifestyle of so many of their predecessors” (Howarth 1994: 61).
13
These peace settlements paid to the Huns in gold, though protested as onerous both in the sources and in virtually all modern accounts, were in fact a minuscule percentage of the imperial fisc. In another connection it is noted that “four thousand pounds of gold amounts to the yearly income of a senator of the wealthy, though not the wealthiest, class” (Wolfram 1988: 154). According to Treadgold (1997: 40, 145), Justinian changed the ratio of
nomismata
(Latin
solidi),
or gold coins, to 72 per Roman pound. He estimates the annual state budget in the years 450 to 457 to have amounted to about 7,784,000
nomismata.
Because 2,100 pounds of gold would have equaled 151,200
nomismata,
the indemnity paid to the Huns—a punishment that the Romans fully deserved—came to 1.9 percent of the imperial budget. The stories that the wealthy men of Constantinople were reduced to penury in order to pay the indemnity are fairy tales.
14
Blockley (1983, II: 275).
15
For a detailed examination, see Lindner (1981).
16
The exact location is unknown. It is widely thought to have been somewhere in the Champagne region near what is now Châlons, but this too is uncertain.
17
A few years earlier Aetius had been a hostage among the Goths, so his knowledge of the tactics of these two peoples must have been unparalleled.
18
There are several suggested explanations. According to Priscus (from Jordanes, summarized in Theophanes), he choked to death in the night from a nasal hemorrhage (Blockley 1983, II: 316–319). The unusual nosebleed story would seem to have the ring of truth, but it has also been argued that Attila was assassinated. This may be so, but Babcock’s (2005) theory that it was done by Attila’s closest retainers, Edeco and Orestes, would seem highly unlikely.
19
The men who were slain and buried with Attila according to Jordanes (Blockley 1983, II: 319) were certainly killed ritually (cf. Sinor 1990c: 197) and may well have been members of his comitatus. In view of the fact that the observers who described the burial were not killed, the executions were hardly done to hide the location.
20
The Huns of the Western Steppe appear to have formed an element of the later Danubian Bulgars, a Turkic people who, under Asparukh, moved into the Balkans in 680 and founded a powerful kingdom there, which eventually became Bulgaria (Sinor 1990c: 198–199). Like the name Scythian up to the early medieval period, the name Hun became a generic (usually pejorative) term in subsequent history for any steppe-warrior people, or even any enemy people, regardless of their actual identity.
21
Wolfram (1988).
22
Blair (2003: 3).
23
The Celts who had preceded them had already introduced an earlier form of the Central Eurasian Culture Complex, complete with war chariots, at the time of their migration to the British Isles.
24
Blair (2003: 1–6).
25
Beckwith (forthcoming-a), Wood (1994: 33–35), Ewig (1997).
26
Wood (1994: 38–42).
27
Millward (2007: 30–31). see endnote 56.
28
Frye (1983: 153–160).
29
That is, *Taγßač; in Mandarin,
T’o-pa;
in Old Turkic metathesized into
Taß
γ
a
č. The language of this name is—or was understood to be—part Mongolic and part Indic (Beckwith 2005b; cf. Beckwith forthcoming-a).
30
see endnote
18
on the controversy surrounding the names and the identification of the Jou-jan with the Avars.
31
Sinor (1990c: 293).
32
Also written Juan-juan and Ju-ju (in pinyin Rouran, etc.).
33
On the ethnolinguistic identity of the Avars, who were probably not a Mongolic people, see endnote
58
.
34
Sinor (1990c: 293).
35
Sinor (1990c: 293), who notes that little is known about the Avars (Jou-jan). Nevertheless, there is enough material in the Chinese sources for a good book on them.
36
The Old Turkic form of the word,
qayan,
has a feminine equivalent,
qatun,
which has the same unusual morphological characteristics that are neither Mongolic nor Turkic. The title
qayan
is first attested in the mid-third century among one of the Hsien-pei peoples (Liu 1989), all linguistically identified members of which spoke Mongolic languages, but these particular words are not Mongolic in structure. The source of the words and their morphology remains unknown. Simple segmentation of the two words produces a root *qa-, the usual eastern Eurasian word for ‘ruler’ found earliest in the Korean Peninsula area in Late Antiquity and much later in early Mongolian sources (Khitan and Middle Mongolian); see Beckwith (2007a: 43–44, 46–47 n. 46). The Avars were undoubtedly heavily influenced by the Mongolic *Taghbač in the period when the latter ruled North China.
37
It is possible that the name Kara is an exonym, suggesting that the “native” name was Mimana. The spelling Kaya is the modern Korean reading of the characters used to write the name; the pronunciation /kara/(transcriptionally *kala) is certain (Beckwith 2007a: 40 n. 27).
38
See Beckwith (2006c).
39
On the modern controversy over the ethnolinguistic history of the early Korean Peninsula region, see endnote
59
.
40
Liao-hsi is their last
known
location on the Asian mainland (Beckwith 2007a).
41
On the controversy over the dating of the Yayoi period, see endnote
60
.
42
Even in the fragmentary historical record that does exist, several disastrous defeats are recorded. Many more defeats, and victories as well, must have occurred, but no record of them has survived.
43
Toneri
is translated as ‘royal retainers’ by Farris (1995: 27–28). In at least one early case a
toneri
is called a ‘slave’ of his lord, as in continental Central Eurasian cultures where the comitatus warrior is often referred to as a ‘slave’ or the like.
44
Farris (1995: 7).
45
The introduction of Central Eurasian-style burials, and the great increase in the size and splendor of the burial mounds erected at this time are clear signs of this specific new influence (this Japanese archaeological-historical period takes its name from its distinctive, enormous
kofun
‘ancient tumuli’); another sign is the comitatus warriors’ ritual suicide, or
junshi,
which, though later discouraged, continued to be practiced by samurai down to recent times; for a detailed study see Turnbull (2003).
46
It is often argued that the imperial dynasty was ethnically Korean, sometimes specifically Paekche, in origin. These arguments are not really supportable by the sources, whether in Japanese or other languages. The old horserider theory of Egami Namio, published in English in 1964, has been pursued in a simplified form by others (e.g., Ledyard 1975), who argue that a continental Altaic steppe-warrior people conquered Japan and established the imperial dynasty. That particular idea has been disproved by archaeology (Hudson 1999), but it is undoubtedly true that the dynamic new nation-building dynasty was founded by warriors—returning Japanese—who had adopted the Central Eurasian Culture Complex in the Korean Peninsula. The lack of any support for the ethnic Korean conquest theories contrasts with the substantial support—partly via the material presented very carefully by Egami (1964) himself in the very same work—for such a “conquest” of Japan by Central Eurasianized Japanese. See Beckwith (2007a).
47
The scenario presented here is one of a number of possibilities. On stereotypical, unlikely, or unfounded explanations for the
Völkerwanderung,
see endnote
61
.
48
Pirenne (1939).
49
This theory has been much discussed. Lyon (1972) carefully surveys all the critical literature and shows that no important element of the theory has withstood scientific examination. However, he unexpectedly concludes that the continuing broad accept ance of the major points of the Pirenne Thesis and its chronology for the beginning of the Middle Ages nevertheless indicates its validity. See Beckwith (1987a/1993: 173 et seq.) for detailed criticism.
50
The introduction during the High Middle Ages of Arab Islamic knowledge and techniques into the new European culture supercharged it and is clearly one of the elements responsible for initiating the beginnings of modern science, but it did not eliminate the Central Eurasian element in European culture. This is fully evident from the history of the Age of Exploration, q.v.
chapter 9
.
