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Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies

Walter Pohl (p. 13-24 in: Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, Ed. Lester K.

Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein, Blackwell Publishers, 1998)

Recently, the problem of ethnicity has been one of the most widely discussed topics in

early medieval studies. From the historian's perspective, the discussion on ethnicity owes

its decisive impulse to Reinhard Wenskus (1961; his approach was elaborated in the

monographs by Herwig Wolfram in 1979 and Walter Pohl in 1988). Traditional research

has taken the meaning of the terms "people" or "tribe" for granted. In this view, a

"people" is a racially and culturally highly homogeneous group sharing a common

descendance and destiny, speaking the same language and living within one state.

Peoples (and not individuals or social groups) were often seen as factors of continuity in

a changing world, as the real subjects of history — almost immutable in its course,

indeed more a natural than a historical phenomenon. Their fate was described using

biological metaphors: birth, growth, flowering, and decay. This historical conception was

rooted in the national movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it had its

share in encouraging all kinds of chauvinist ideologies. The idea that anything apart from

one people living in one state was an anomaly (and should be corrected by all means)

was, tacitly or explicitly, supported by many historians. Even today, after centuries of

modern nationhood, the identity of people and state is the exception and not the rule, as

the examples of Switzerland, Austria, the Germans, the Jews, the Arabs, the United

States, or the Soviet Union show. Today's nationalist movements in many eastern

European countries have rediscovered the nineteenth-century ideal of the homogeneous

nation-state; it is sad to see that after so many tragedies it has brought about, some more

seem to follow, and often in the name of history.

This situation explains the crucial importance of early medieval studies for the

conceptions and preconceptions of ethnicity. Nations that for some reasons felt that they

fell short of the "one people, one state" doctrine looked to those sombre times for a

justification of their claims. The existence of Romans, Germans or Slavs in the fifth or

seventh centuries became important arguments in an endless series of national struggles,

culminating in the bizarre revival of the fair and reckless Germanic hero that lured an

entire people into the Nazi Holocaust.

That the peoples in the Migration Period had little to do with those heroic (or sometimes

brutish) cliches is now generally accepted among historians. But still, ethnic terms carry

their load of emotions and preconceptions and tend to evoke misleading ideas. Even if we

try to substitute "people" or "tribe" with the contemporary terms ethnos or gens for

scientific use, we do not escape this methodological problem. It is remarkable enough

that we still seem to rely upon biological metaphors — for instance, when we speak of

"ethnogenesis."

Even the Marxist ethnologist Bromley (1974: 69) has coined the term "ethnosocial

organism (ESO)" to describe the interdependence of ethnicity with the social and political

sphere. This type of imagery can help to express the complexity of ethnic structures; but

it should not be misunderstood as placing them in the realm of nature, far beyond the

reach of history.

It has become clear enough now that ethnic units are the result of history. It may be

discussed if ethnicity, in a very general sense, has been a basic organizing principle from

times of old, a position that the English sociologist Anthony D. Smith (1986: 6ff) has

labelled "primordialist," vs the "modernist" view that sees the nation as a relatively new

phenomenon. But single peoples (or ethne, to use the technical term — I do not dwell on

the problem if ethnos and "people" - Volk - narod cover the same range of phenomena)

can have a beginning and an end; their composition changes; and their development is not

the result of inherent "national" characteristics, but is influenced by a variety of political,

economic, and cultural factors. Of course, ethnic changes are mostly a question of the

longue durée ["long haul", a phrase often used by the French historian Fernand Braudel];

they scarcely even become obvious to contemporaries. In this respect, the Avars mark an

exception — it was noted how quickly they disappeared without leaving a trace (in a

well-known passage of Nestor's chronicle, but also in a lesser-known letter of Nikolaos

Mystikos – cf. Pohl 1988: 323). But this "relatively persistent character of ethnic

features" (Bromley 1974: 61) should not obscure its historical dimension.

Secondly, early medieval peoples were far less homogeneous than often thought. They

themselves shared the fundamental belief to be of common origin; and modern historians,

for a long time, found no reason to think otherwise. They could cite Isidore of Seville's

seventh-century definition: "Gens est multitude ab uno principle orta" ("a people is a

multitude stemming from one origin"); it has often been ignored that Isidore continues:

"sive ab alia natione secundum propriam collectionem distincta" ("or distinguished from

another people by its proper ties" - Isidore, Etymologies, IX, 2, i). Natio, in those days,

was a near-equivalent to the term gens, whereas populus carried a connotation of a

political body or a Christian community (cf. Lo ek 1990). It is hard to render the

meaning of propria collectio; but I think it is as good as any modern definition trying to

pin down the elusive characteristics of ethnicity. It was Reinhard Wenskus in his

comparative study of German ethnogeneses who worked out some of the mechanisms of

collectio, of collecting and holding together a gens, an early medieval people; and he

made it clear that the idea of common origin was a myth. This myth, however, was an

essential part of a tradition that shaped the particularity of the gens, its beliefs and

institutions. A relatively small group guarded and handed on this tradition and set it up as

a standard for much larger units; Wenskus calls this group Traditionskern (the term

"kernel of tradition" had already been used in a similar sense by H. M. Chadwick in

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. Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies . Walter Pohl (p. 13-24 in: Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, Ed. Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein, Blackwell Publishers, 1998) Recently, the problem of ethnicity has been one of the most widely discussed topics in early medieval studies. From the historian's perspective, the discussion on ethnicity owes its decisive impulse to Reinhard Wenskus (1961; his approach was elaborated in the monographs by Herwig Wolfram in 1979 and Walter Pohl in 1988). Traditional research has taken the meaning of the terms "people" or "tribe" for granted. In this view, a "people" is a racially and culturally highly homogeneous group sharing a common descendance and destiny, speaking the same language and living within one state. Peoples (and not individuals or social groups) were often seen as factors of continuity in a changing world, as the real subjects of history — almost immutable in its course, indeed more a natural than a historical phenomenon. Their fate was described using biological metaphors: birth, growth, flowering, and decay. This historical conception was rooted in the national movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it had its share in encouraging all kinds of chauvinist ideologies. The idea that anything apart from one people living in one state was an anomaly (and should be corrected by all means) was, tacitly or explicitly, supported by many historians. Even today, after centur ...
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