A history of Eastern Europe crisis and change 2nd edition (2007)
Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries
The following are excerpts from pages 137-39 of the book noted.
The much disputed origins of the slavic ‘peoples’....
In truth all that can be stated with any certainty is that by the tenth century AD a people or peoples widely identified as a ‘slavic’ linguistic-cultural group and/or a biological-racial group made up a majority of the inhabitants of East Central Europe....
Paul Barford (2001, 2005) and Florin Curta (2001, 2005, 2006) have demonstrated that there is very little (if any) reliable information concerning the Slavic people(s) and their place(s) of origin prior to the seventh century AD. Data generated by dendrochronology (the use of tree rings for dating past events) indicate that in East Central Europe ‘the so-called Slav culture...cannot be dated earlier than 700AD (Curta 2005: 9). Paul Barford, a leading British specialist on Polish archaeology, maintains that ‘there is little evidence of a Slavic presence in Polabia (modern-day East Germany) or central and northwestern Poland before the end of the seventh or the early eighth century. Indeed, over most of the area, there are only sparse settlement...before the late 600s (Barford 2005; 62). There is still longstanding and still far from resolved disagreements as to when and how the Slavic ancestors of the Poles, the Czechs and the Slovaks ‘emerged’: and whether they first appeared in their current ‘homelands’ at some point during the sixth or seventh century AD; how they originated; and if they ‘migrated’ or ‘arrived’ from somewhere else, whence they came. Nor is there any consensus concerning the nature and timing of the processes by which the Slavic people(s) separated or coalesced into Western, Eastern and southern Slav linguistic and ethnic groupings.
It seems highly unlikely that there were large ethnically or linguistically identifiable Slavic populations in East Central Europe prior to the sixth century AD. Before that time, significantly, the Byzantine (East Roman) Empire was ‘totally oblivious to the existence of a barbaric people called the Slavs on their northern border. The terms (designating Slavic peoples) seem to have been coined or adopted by East Roman writers as descriptions of a certain group of barbarians only in the 550s (Barford 2001: 36). Furthermore, it no longer seems plausible that the forebears of the Western Slavs ‘migrated’ to East Central Europe from elsewhere. There is insufficient evidence to back up older hypothesis suggesting a large scale displacement from what is now Ukraine and/or Belarus into East Central Europe (Barford 2001; 16, 45-6; Curta 2001: 336-7; 2006: 56). The inhabitants of ‘the vast spaces of the Russian plain’ during the third to seveth centuries AD, whose existence and characteristics were not recorded in written documents, ‘had no common name, whether it was “Slavs” or anything else (Dolukhanov 1996: ix-x), and they ‘cannot be ascribed to any ethnic group (Curta 2001: 13).
Furthermore, it is implausible to suppose that large-scale Slavic population pools and movements of this sort could have gone completely unnoticed by contemporary neighbouring peoples and states. Yet the expansion of the Slavic peoples to become the most numerous ethno-cultural group(s) in East Central Europe, the Balkans and Russia by the ninth century AD was also too rapid to be explicable as a natural demographic explosion (Barford 2001: 16; Urbanczyk 2005; 142). ‘The rate of reproduction involved to fill the new territories with descendants of a small original population, no matter how the figures are calculated, is biologically impossible’ (Barford 2001: 46). Curta and Barford have cogently argued that it is simply not known how any of the Slav peoples (not just the Western Slavs) came into existence, although this has not stopped them and others from continuing the long tradition of putting forward ingenious and interesting conjectures and hypotheses on the endlessly fascinating mystery.
Whatever the case, if populations were in an endemic state of movement and flux in most parts of Europe through much of the first millennium AD, it is highly unlikely that God had already led the ancestors of the Poles, the Czechs and the Slovaks to proto-national ‘homelands’ over which they could justly maintain permanent and exclusive jurisdiction for ever more, against all comers and/or prior occupants. Instead of striving to project specious modern ethnic, national and territorial concepts and claims on to pre-modern multi-cultural societies within which modern ethnic and national identities had not yet crystallized (often in misguided attempts to ascribe the origins of modern ethnic and national conflicts to a pre-modern past), it is much safer and sounder to emphasise that the peoples of East Central Europe are all mongrels. Modern attempts to ‘discover‘ or invent ethnically and/or biologically pure medieval pedigrees in pursuit of modern national, racial and territorial claims are largely preposterous. There is much to be said for the mischievous definition of a nation as ‘a group of persons united by a common error about their ancestry and a common dislike of their neighbours‘ (Deutsch 1969: 3).
....Europe consists of racially impure nations...(Ignotus 1972: 21)
All Europe’s peoples have diverse and often very obscure racial and ethnic origins. The only significant differences are that: (i) there is even less reliable and unambiguous evidence about the ethnic composition, cultures, ways of life and social organisation of the populations of East Central Europe during the first millennium AD than those of southern Europe (including the Balkans) and parts of western and Germanic Europe; (ii) this has made it relatively easy for nationalistic (Western) Slavic historians, philologists and archaeologists to advance specious ethnic, racial and territorial narratives and claims with regard to the first millennium AD; and (iii) this in turn has contributed to the emergence of relatively narrow and exclusive ethic and racial conception of the nation in modern East Central Europe.
Finally, it needs to be emphasised that the emergence of the medieval Polish, Czech and Magyar kingdoms substantially pre-dated modern conceptions of exclusive territorial jurisdiction and statehood. The seats of power around which royal authority could be directly enforced were usually separated by vast expanses of ill-defined border country controlled by ‘marcher lords’ who were, to varying degrees, laws unto themselves. ‘Political power radiated from a few centres of authority, whose spheres of influence constantly waxed and waned and very frequently overlapped (Davies 1981a: 33). In East Central Europe, much of the terrain of which was either densely wooded or marshy and (partly for these reasons) more difficult to traverse than most parts of western Europe, such condition persisted until the middle of the seventeenth century in the Kingdom of Bohemia and until the end of the eighteenth century in Poland and Hungary. This makes it even less sound to try to link particular ‘peoples’ or ethnic groups to particular territories or (supposedly) continuously occupied ‘national homelands,’ and to try to buttress modern territorial claims with bogus historical narratives of that sort.
Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries
The following are excerpts from pages 137-39 of the book noted.
The much disputed origins of the slavic ‘peoples’....
In truth all that can be stated with any certainty is that by the tenth century AD a people or peoples widely identified as a ‘slavic’ linguistic-cultural group and/or a biological-racial group made up a majority of the inhabitants of East Central Europe....
Paul Barford (2001, 2005) and Florin Curta (2001, 2005, 2006) have demonstrated that there is very little (if any) reliable information concerning the Slavic people(s) and their place(s) of origin prior to the seventh century AD. Data generated by dendrochronology (the use of tree rings for dating past events) indicate that in East Central Europe ‘the so-called Slav culture...cannot be dated earlier than 700AD (Curta 2005: 9). Paul Barford, a leading British specialist on Polish archaeology, maintains that ‘there is little evidence of a Slavic presence in Polabia (modern-day East Germany) or central and northwestern Poland before the end of the seventh or the early eighth century. Indeed, over most of the area, there are only sparse settlement...before the late 600s (Barford 2005; 62). There is still longstanding and still far from resolved disagreements as to when and how the Slavic ancestors of the Poles, the Czechs and the Slovaks ‘emerged’: and whether they first appeared in their current ‘homelands’ at some point during the sixth or seventh century AD; how they originated; and if they ‘migrated’ or ‘arrived’ from somewhere else, whence they came. Nor is there any consensus concerning the nature and timing of the processes by which the Slavic people(s) separated or coalesced into Western, Eastern and southern Slav linguistic and ethnic groupings.
It seems highly unlikely that there were large ethnically or linguistically identifiable Slavic populations in East Central Europe prior to the sixth century AD. Before that time, significantly, the Byzantine (East Roman) Empire was ‘totally oblivious to the existence of a barbaric people called the Slavs on their northern border. The terms (designating Slavic peoples) seem to have been coined or adopted by East Roman writers as descriptions of a certain group of barbarians only in the 550s (Barford 2001: 36). Furthermore, it no longer seems plausible that the forebears of the Western Slavs ‘migrated’ to East Central Europe from elsewhere. There is insufficient evidence to back up older hypothesis suggesting a large scale displacement from what is now Ukraine and/or Belarus into East Central Europe (Barford 2001; 16, 45-6; Curta 2001: 336-7; 2006: 56). The inhabitants of ‘the vast spaces of the Russian plain’ during the third to seveth centuries AD, whose existence and characteristics were not recorded in written documents, ‘had no common name, whether it was “Slavs” or anything else (Dolukhanov 1996: ix-x), and they ‘cannot be ascribed to any ethnic group (Curta 2001: 13).
Furthermore, it is implausible to suppose that large-scale Slavic population pools and movements of this sort could have gone completely unnoticed by contemporary neighbouring peoples and states. Yet the expansion of the Slavic peoples to become the most numerous ethno-cultural group(s) in East Central Europe, the Balkans and Russia by the ninth century AD was also too rapid to be explicable as a natural demographic explosion (Barford 2001: 16; Urbanczyk 2005; 142). ‘The rate of reproduction involved to fill the new territories with descendants of a small original population, no matter how the figures are calculated, is biologically impossible’ (Barford 2001: 46). Curta and Barford have cogently argued that it is simply not known how any of the Slav peoples (not just the Western Slavs) came into existence, although this has not stopped them and others from continuing the long tradition of putting forward ingenious and interesting conjectures and hypotheses on the endlessly fascinating mystery.
Whatever the case, if populations were in an endemic state of movement and flux in most parts of Europe through much of the first millennium AD, it is highly unlikely that God had already led the ancestors of the Poles, the Czechs and the Slovaks to proto-national ‘homelands’ over which they could justly maintain permanent and exclusive jurisdiction for ever more, against all comers and/or prior occupants. Instead of striving to project specious modern ethnic, national and territorial concepts and claims on to pre-modern multi-cultural societies within which modern ethnic and national identities had not yet crystallized (often in misguided attempts to ascribe the origins of modern ethnic and national conflicts to a pre-modern past), it is much safer and sounder to emphasise that the peoples of East Central Europe are all mongrels. Modern attempts to ‘discover‘ or invent ethnically and/or biologically pure medieval pedigrees in pursuit of modern national, racial and territorial claims are largely preposterous. There is much to be said for the mischievous definition of a nation as ‘a group of persons united by a common error about their ancestry and a common dislike of their neighbours‘ (Deutsch 1969: 3).
....Europe consists of racially impure nations...(Ignotus 1972: 21)
All Europe’s peoples have diverse and often very obscure racial and ethnic origins. The only significant differences are that: (i) there is even less reliable and unambiguous evidence about the ethnic composition, cultures, ways of life and social organisation of the populations of East Central Europe during the first millennium AD than those of southern Europe (including the Balkans) and parts of western and Germanic Europe; (ii) this has made it relatively easy for nationalistic (Western) Slavic historians, philologists and archaeologists to advance specious ethnic, racial and territorial narratives and claims with regard to the first millennium AD; and (iii) this in turn has contributed to the emergence of relatively narrow and exclusive ethic and racial conception of the nation in modern East Central Europe.
Finally, it needs to be emphasised that the emergence of the medieval Polish, Czech and Magyar kingdoms substantially pre-dated modern conceptions of exclusive territorial jurisdiction and statehood. The seats of power around which royal authority could be directly enforced were usually separated by vast expanses of ill-defined border country controlled by ‘marcher lords’ who were, to varying degrees, laws unto themselves. ‘Political power radiated from a few centres of authority, whose spheres of influence constantly waxed and waned and very frequently overlapped (Davies 1981a: 33). In East Central Europe, much of the terrain of which was either densely wooded or marshy and (partly for these reasons) more difficult to traverse than most parts of western Europe, such condition persisted until the middle of the seventeenth century in the Kingdom of Bohemia and until the end of the eighteenth century in Poland and Hungary. This makes it even less sound to try to link particular ‘peoples’ or ethnic groups to particular territories or (supposedly) continuously occupied ‘national homelands,’ and to try to buttress modern territorial claims with bogus historical narratives of that sort.
Comment