Empires and Barbarians

by Peter Heather

  While accepting that the Strategicon’s account of ethnic openness did apply to some of them, an overly romantic vision of the early Slavs must be avoided. Slavic expansion was carried forward by a range of groups of very different kinds and with different motivations, and it is likely that they responded to the indigenous populations they encountered in a variety of ways. In some parts of north-central Europe, Slavic immigration generated the recolonization of lands left empty by Germanic migrants of the Völkerwanderung era, or the primary exploitation of upland wooded agricultural niches that had previously not proved attractive. Where indigenous populations survived, but not much in the way of state structures, by contrast, Slavic immigration probably amounted to a kind of ‘elite re-creation’, somewhat along the lines of what happened in early Anglo-Saxon England or north-eastern Gaul. Here new immigrant–native amalgams were eventually generated. But, even if some Slavic groups were particularly open to outsiders, and overall the process was maybe more peaceful than anything seen in Gaul or England, the immigrants did come to dominate – in thoroughly monolithic fashion – the new societies created.60

  Overall, and despite the lack of figures, there is no doubt that, in the qualitative terms used in modern comparative studies, Slavic expansion must count as an example of mass migration. Politically and culturally, the shock is overwhelmingly clear at the receiving end of the migration flow. Most of the Balkan peninsula, central Europe as far west as the Elbe, much of Ukraine and a huge region of western Russia came to be dominated by Slavic-speakers in the three or four centuries after 500 AD. This was new. Many of these territories had previously been dominated by Germanic- and Baltic-speakers, or formed part of the east Roman Empire. It could be objected – given the gaps in the evidence – that Slavic expansion was much more of a slow process than a genuine ‘shock’. And there is something in this argument. Germanic culture collapse indicates that in some of the areas affected by the extension of Slavic power, a first major shock had already happened before the Slavs arrived. Even taking a minimalist view of this phenomenon, the disappearance of a sociopolitical elite and several hundred years’ worth of continuous material-cultural tradition was no insignificant event, and certainly paved the way for Slavic expansion in the form of very small migration units. Elsewhere, however, the creation of Slavic power was both sudden, and the product of violent self-assertion. Up to the 610s, east Roman forces had just about held the Danube line against their Slavic antagonists, preventing raiding from turning into settlement. It was at that point that the frontier collapsed, and large-scale settlement quickly followed. And as the fortified settlements of the Romny-Borshevo era also emphasize, there is no reason to suppose that the Balkans was the only area in which Slavic expansion was a hotly contested phenomenon, requiring larger and more aggressive migration units.

  The migration process also administered a huge shock – measured in terms of economic and sociopolitical dislocation – for at least some of the Slavs themselves. Our knowledge of the Slavs before their diaspora is limited, except for the fact that they originated somewhere in the eastern stretches of the Great European Plain. As we have seen, the general character of Korchak-type systems bears witness to populations practising a very simple form of mixed farming, with few material possessions, and this broadly corresponds to descriptions of early Slavic society in east Roman literary sources, which again stress its poverty, simplicity and relatively egalitarian nature. Migration eventually changed all this, if at different speeds for different Slavic-speaking groups. One population element affected from a very early date was the specialist warrior class which quickly emerged in the foothills of the Carpathians to take advantage of the raiding opportunities provided by their new proximity to the Balkan provinces of the Roman Empire. In the longer term, these changes were to spread much more widely through Slav-dominated lands.61 But if there is no real doubt that Slavic expansion must be considered a mass migration, why did it happen at all, and why did its processes unfold as they did?

  Migration, Development and the Slavs

  With Slavic expansion encompassing so many types of migration unit, functioning in so many contexts, we should not be surprised that a wide range of motivations operated within them. Some Slavs were on the move for largely voluntary and economic motives. This is true most obviously of the Slavic raiders of the Roman Balkans in the sixth century, whose activities were entirely concerned with siphoning off part of the movable wealth available there. Raiding was one method of doing this, but Slavic auxiliary troops are also found in Roman employ in these years – another means to the same end. The Antae, in particular, seem to have benefited from becoming licensed Roman allies from the 530s. In broad terms, it was the initial moves of the Sclavenes and Antae into Moldavia and Wallachia south and east of the Carpathians that brought them close enough to the east Roman Empire to make these different kinds of money-making activity possible. There is no reason to think that this wasn’t one of the aims behind the original move.

  The material benefits accruing to certain elements, at least, within the Slavic world from all the migratory activity of the fifth to the eighth century are also obvious if you compare the Slavic material culture at the beginning with that of the end of the era. More sophisticated metalwork, including some in precious metals, a greater range of material goods, and even some differentiated housing – all appeared in these years to the benefit particularly of the warrior classes, who became able to take advantage of the new opportunities that were now available as a consequence of their greater proximity to developed Europe. Obviously, this is to reconstruct motivation not on the basis of direct evidence but from actions and their consequences, but it seems reasonable nonetheless.62 It also means that Slavic migration – or some of it – falls into a pattern we have encountered before, whereby groups from a less developed periphery moved into contact with imperial Europe or its immediate hinterland, where new opportunities for gathering wealth existed in abundance. It would also put Slavic migration firmly in line with one of the essential conclusions of modern migration studies: inequalities of wealth and development provide one fundamental stimulus to migration.

  But as Slavic expansion unfolded, the integration of outermost periphery and imperial Europe reached a new intensity. Slavic-speakers originated somewhere within the very simple farming societies that spread east of the Vistula and north of the Carpathians in the first half of the millennium, as we have seen, whether or not you believe Jordanes’ account of them as an offshoot of the Venedi. At that point, they were part of a world that had never come into serious contact with the Roman Empire, even though it lasted for half a millennium. This prompts an extremely important question. If it is fair enough to think of the Slavs as wanting to move out of the periphery in order to expand their wealth-grabbing opportunities, as the historical and archaeological evidence broadly suggests, we still need to explain why this started to happen in the later fifth and sixth centuries, and not before. There had been countless other chances for them to make these kinds of wealth-generating moves over the preceding five hundred years, and yet they didn’t. Why did this process start to unfold when it did?

  The likeliest answer to this, in my view, has two dimensions. The first is straightforward, bringing us back to the revolution generated by the rise and fall of the Huns on the fringes of the Roman Empire. Arguments will continue over the demographic scale of the Germanic migrations, but their political impact on the previously Germanic-dominated periphery of the Roman world is incontrovertible. The result of two waves of invasion, in 376–80 and 405–8, followed by the knock-on effects of the struggle for control of the Middle Danube after Attila’s death, was, as we have seen, dramatically to reduce the number of Germanic-dominated power blocks operating in central and eastern Europe and the amount of territory that they controlled. Whatever its wider demographic significance, Germanic culture collapse certainly reflected the disappearance from central and eastern Europe of militarily effective, larger-scale p
olitical structures. This played a key role in making possible subsequent Slavic expansion into the Roman periphery, because it eliminated many of the intermediate Germanic powers that had previously monopolized the profitable positions to be had just beyond the imperial frontier. Slavic-speakers could now move into that periphery because the organized, armed groups were out of the way.

  The point is worth developing just a little further. To benefit from the money-making advantages brought by proximity to the Roman frontier, Slavic groups had to transform themselves into more structured entities with greater military potential. This was, of course, a two-way process, since the movable wealth extracted from the Empire in turn provided the new Slavic leaders of the late sixth century with the powers of patronage they required to be successful. The degree of reorganization that would have been required in the Roman period, when ambitious incoming Slavs would have been competing with the already well-organized, largely Germanic client states who then occupied the frontier zone, would have been much greater, and hence that much more difficult to bring about. Such reorganization would also have had to happen out in the forests of the eastern stretches of the Great European Plain before the Slavic groups concerned could have begun to move into a profitable slot in the periphery. Otherwise, they would not have been able to compete with the sitting Germanic tenants. It is hard to imagine any leader finding sufficient resources in these localities in the first half of the millennium to muster enough followers to mount an effective challenge. The rise and fall of the Hunnic Empire created a relative power vacuum north of the Lower Danube frontier, which allowed the smaller armed Slavic groups to move in.

  The second dimension is more hypothetical, but follows on from this. If the initial crystallization zone of those Slavs who were to come into contact with the Roman Balkans in the sixth century has been correctly identified as Polesie, or certainly the foothills of the Carpathians, in the fourth century, it fell within the confines of the largely Gothic-dominated Cernjachov system (Chapter 3). This would suggest that their initial transformation arose as a response to that Gothic domination, as part of a process of reformation designed to throw off or at least minimize its worst effects. Like the Hunnic or Avar Empires, the Cernjachov system presumably demanded of indigenous subject peoples that they provide economic support in the form of food supplies, and possibly also military manpower. In this context, it is perhaps significant that the first appearance of any Slavic-speaking group in a late antique historical narrative is in the context of conflict with some Goths. Jordanes reports that one of the great victories of the Gothic leader Vinitharius, who ruled in the mid-fifth century, was over some Antae:

  When [Vinitharius] attacked them, he was beaten in the first encounter. Thereafter he did valiantly and, as a terrible example, crucified their king, named Boz, together with his sons and seventy nobles, and left their bodies hanging to double the fear of those who had surrendered.63

  One example can’t prove that a whole process was under way, but the pattern here is suggestive. As is so often the case with modern examples too, even what appears to be economically motivated migration has significant political dimensions. Without the political changes generated by the Huns, even the new militarily improved Slavic-speaking communities would have had difficulty in acquiring the new economic opportunities of a frontier position that came their way so much more easily once their former Germanic overlords were out of the way.

  Moving beyond the first half of the sixth century, the balance between economic and political motives varied substantially between different elements of the Slavic migration flows. The motivation behind the spread of Korchak-type, extended familial settlements across the central European uplands can probably be partly explained in terms of population growth, generated not just by the absorption of outsiders but also by the increased availability of food supplies. But even Korchak-type expansion may have had its political dimension. For one thing, Korchak drift must have been greatly facilitated by the struggles that drove Goths, Heruli, Sueves, Rugi and others out of the Middle Danube region and sucked the Lombards south into it from Bohemia and beyond (Chapter 5). These conflicts were under way in the later fifth and the earlier sixth century, precisely when Korchak Slavic-speakers were spreading westwards from the Carpathians, and must have eased their takeover of Moravia and Bohemia. There may also have been a second political dimension to the motivations of Korchak groups. As we have seen, these migrants, moving as small-scale farming communities, need to be distinguished from the larger and more militarized Slavic entities that were simultaneously evolving further east and south through direct contact with the east Roman Empire. Given this, the Korchak-type migrants may also have been on the move so as to avoid being sucked into the orbits of these new and more powerful Slavic polities. Post-nationalist perspectives apply to Slavs too. You cannot assume a strong sense of community between different Slavic populations just because they all spoke related languages, and the Korchak-type migrants were making very different life choices from their cousins, preoccupied as they were with thoughts of Roman wealth. One incentive behind those choices could have been to avoid the latter’s unwelcome and predatory attentions.

  The rise of Avar power also added its own momentum to the Slavic migratory process. The Avar Empire operated in broadly similar ways to its Hunnic predecessor, in that its power depended upon subordinated allied groups who provided it with military manpower and economic support. It was, in short, a hegemony, established by military conquest and maintained by intimidation. East Roman historical sources preserve numerous instances of the determined efforts of Avar Khagans not to lose face even in defeat, since any sign of weakness was always a signal for some of their more disaffected subjects to rebel. The historian Menander preserves one particularly beautiful example, in which an Avar leader whose siege of Singidunum (modern Belgrade) was failing asked for a large gift from the city’s commander, so that he could retreat with his honour intact. Even more dramatically, in 626 when the Avars’ last stratagem for the capture of Constantinople failed and their Slavic footsoldiers began to run away, the Avars began to kill them.64

  The militarizing Slavs of the Carpathian region thus made potentially useful subjects for the Avars, who quickly attached some of them to their train. In pursuit of this aim, the Avars were willing to be employed by the Roman state to attack Slavic groups in the early 570s and 580s, and at one point were even ferried down the Danube in Roman ships to attack some Slavs who were causing trouble on the frontier (probably in the Banat region and Wallachia) southwest and south respectively of the Carpathians. Slavic groups were not generally brought into this new nomad Empire by peaceful negotiation, and enjoyed, if that’s the right word, thoroughly ambivalent relations with their Avar masters. On the one hand, as we have already seen, there is a real sense in which the Avar war machine (with Persian and Arab assistance) blew a hole in the east Roman defences of the Balkans, and made possible the large-scale Slavic settlement there of the seventh century. On the other, Avar domination was itself something that many Slavic groups wanted to avoid – or to throw off, having once fallen foul of it. The Serbs and Croats who settled in the Balkans reportedly did precisely this, as we have seen, as did the Sorbs further west under the leadership of Samo. Fredegar, our source for this incident, is explicit as to the causes of revolt:

  Whenever the [Avars] took the field against another people, they stayed encamped in battle array while the [Slavs] did the fighting . . . Every year the [Avars] wintered with the Slavs, sleeping with their wives and daughters, and in addition the Slavs paid tribute and endured many other burdens.65

  Avar domination thus provided yet more reasons for Slavic groups to move out of the Carpathian and Middle Danubian regions. First, while the initial spread of Korchak-type communities clearly had other origins, having begun before the Avars became a factor, their further spread from Bohemia towards the Saale and beyond the Elbe after the mid-sixth century will have had the extra motivation of seek
ing to avoid absorption into the exploitative Avar Empire. This may well have prompted the spread of Slavic-speakers northwards into Poland at more or less the same time.66 Second, Avars were responsible for the spread of the larger ‘tribal’ Slavic communities into the Balkans after 610, which would have been impossible if the former had not destroyed Roman frontier security. But these were the same Slavs who had been alternately fighting and serving the Avars over the previous fifty years, so there is every reason to suppose that they also wanted to put themselves, not to mention their wives and children, out of the latter’s reach. Third, again like the Huns, the Avars resettled some subject peoples around their core dominions on the Great Hungarian Plain. Historical sources document them doing this, amongst others, with Bulgars and Gepids, and with communities of Roman prisoners taken from the Balkans. The archaeological evidence also suggests that they were doing the same with those Slavic groups that they particularly dominated.67

  Motivation and context thus go a long way towards explaining the variety of migratory process observable among the Slavs. That Slavic expansion was carried forward sometimes by larger groups and sometimes by smaller, sometimes peacefully and sometimes much more aggressively, should not disconcert us. Sometimes the prevailing motivation was political, sometimes economic. Which of these dominated in the case of the expansion out on to the East European Plain from the seventh century onwards is impossible to say in the absence of historical accounts of the action and of its political contexts. The groups who moved east of the Dnieper in the later period quickly began to profit from the fur and slave trades which began to build up in this region from the eighth century, as we shall see in Chapter 10, but whether this was the reason that brought them into those lands, or an accidental consequence of the move, is impossible to say.