Tendentious history writing has been a plague upon Central European nations. In the West few deign to deal with Central Europe or Slavs and those who do often do so poorly. What’s worse though is that the works of the few Western authors who do spend time on Central Europe are often praised and accepted uncritically in the East simply because the fact that such authors have shown any interest at all garners them credit in excess of the credit otherwise merited by the qualify of their writing. In other words, the adage that beggars can’t be choosers has apparently been enthusiastically endorsed in historiography.
Take Norman Davies. His “God’s Playground” is considered “the” English-language work on Poland. And yet, we’ve found its constantly meandering style virtually unreadable and not just for someone casually interested in the subject. Add to that the author’s paternalistic didacticism and you have a recipe for a – rather expensive – door stop.
The Story of Life in the Hypothetical Homeland
Of course, given the focus of this site, what concerns us the most about Davies’ book is the distortive effect of the highly politicized view of the early European state that the author brushstrokes himself to conjure. In the section discussing early Poland, nearly every paragraph begins with an unfounded sentence whose doubtful message the author then proceeds to dutifully develop while casting derisive sneers at those whose arguments he prefers to mock rather than address.
Thus, the book is full of gems such as this paragraph:
“According to this hypothesis, the modern Polish nation is descended from a uniquely tenacious group of Protoslavs, who, whilst their kinfolk migrated to the west, east, or south obstinately remained on their native soil. The Poles are seen as ‘autochtones’, as ‘permanent residents’, and as ‘the native population; all other peoples of the area are relegated to the status of ‘aliens’, ‘transients’, or ‘invaders’. It is an unusual situation to say the least. At a period when the population was in flux in every other part of Europe, and in every other part of Slavdom, the forefathers of the Poles were planted at a stroke and with extraordinary precision in the one spot of God’s earth where they could rest indefinitely. There may be a long prehistory of England before the English, of France before the French, of Bohemia before the Czechs, of Hungary before Hungarians, even of Russia before the Russians, but not it seems, of Poland before the Poles.”
This paragraph might fairly be read to suggest that Davies believes that history is less about truth than about what’s “good enough” for a given people – a curious approach to the subject area – one more fitting a political agitator than a serious scholar. Moreover, his premise of a population in a state of “flux” is itself full of half-truths:
- it is not clear that there was a Bohemia before the Czechs. Put differently, we do not know who the “mysterious” Boii were. There is nothing to suggest that they could not have been the ancestors of the Czechs. There is further precious little to suggest what happened to the Boii after the Marcomanni invaded their territories. Even if one were to assume a Czech migration into Bohemia, there is nothing to suggests that this could not have been a back-migration after the Marcomanni (whoever they were) departed these lands.
- The same more or less holds true of the Russians – while the name Rus is new, similar names were in use in the Ukraine long before the Varangians appeared on the scene (take the Roxoalani as just one example).
- Even in the case of England modern DNA studies suggest that the majority of the (white obviously) population derives its roots from pre-6th century inhabitants of the same area.
- Not to mention that the “state of flux” itself has been challenged – no less than by Davies’ fellow historical travelers – who, as it’s become fashionable, have downplayed the role of the Voelkerwanderung (indeed most of the so-called “Leftist” theories of national origins if put together next to each other fail in their inconsistency – about the only thing that unites them is a visceral desire to vanquish “national myths”);
What else? First of all, the statement that there was no Poland before the Poles is, of course, a banal truism used as a rhetorical device. Why rhetoric has to be employed by a historian is itself curious but, be that as it may, the next question concerns Davies’ real purpose, namely, the implication that there were people in “Poland” before the ancestors of the Poles. From the context it is clear that he believes that the Slavs had waltzed into the area at some point around the 7th-8th centuries. Where from? Davies implies that this was somewhere north of Carpathians around the Dnieper. He presents this map:
Davies then argues that such a location of a “Slavic homeland” agrees with:
“linguistic evidence , which demands firstly that the Slavs did not disperse until relatively recently; and secondly that they should have passed the formative years in contact not only with Germans and Balts but also with Illyrians, Thracians and Iranians. [Such a location] encourages the identification of these early Slavs with the ‘Scythian farmers’ of the fifth century B.C. whom Herodotus put at three days’ march from the Dnieper. Here the Slavs would have developed their characteristic social institution, the zadruga or ‘joint family’, where all the relatives of the chieftain lived together under fierce patriarchal discipline. Here subjected first to the Scythians and then from the second century BC to the Sarmatians, they learned their common religious vocabulary, most of which… is of Sarmato-Iranian derivation… Here in the first century of our era, they would have witnessed the slow migration of the Germanic Goths and Gepids whose route from the Baltic Coast to the Black Sea is clearly marked by a trail of characteristic settlement and funeral sites. Here they would have experienced the successive arrivals of the Huns and the Avars. Their own main expansion, which probably began in the coat-tails of the nomads, grew into a flood with the collapse of Avar supremacy in the seventh century. ‘The barriers were down, and the Slavs poured out.’… According to this schedule, the ‘Protopoles’ would have been one of the last of the Slavs to drift away front the North Carpathian homeland, and would have settled in the valleys of the Odra and Vistula in the course of the seventh and eight centuries. By the end of the prehistoric period, the new wave of Slavonic colonization had obliterated most of the underlying layers of previous settlement. The main implication of this hypothesis for Polish history is that the Poles would be but the latest of many Indo-European groups who have settled on the territory of present-day Poland. Such a conclusion… is hard to refute…”
Davies who just above was willing to mock people positing “a uniquely tenacious group of Protoslavs” living in Poland throughout the ages, then proceeds to posit a uniquely tenacious group of Protoslavs living North of the Carpathians…
They are even given a dating of 5th century B.C. (!). From their Protoslavonic dwellings Davies’ Protoslavs witness the Scythians, the Sarmatians, the Goths, the Gepids, the Huns and the Avars passing by on their way to exploits elsewhere – all while “tenaciously” clinging to their North-Carpathian dwellings from which the same Scythians, Sarmatians, Goths, Gepids, Huns and Avars are either unable or unwilling to dislodge Davies’ proto-Slavs….
Jordanes may have claimed a vast realm for the Goths – a realm where the Gothic kings have subjugated every conceivable tribe (including the Veneti) – but, in Davies’ telling, once Davies discounts the role of the Veneti (on that see below), Jordanes makes no mention of these North-Carpathian Protoslavs when discussing Gothic conquests. Why? Perhaps the Goths were simply so traumatized by their inability to take on the tenacious Slavs that even a few centuries later the greatest Gothic historian did not dare to broach the subject?
Thus, it seems “tenacity” is not really the issue – Davies’ Protoslavs are as tenacious (if not more) than the Proto-Slavs of Lehr-Splawinski. The issue for Davies seems rather the location of these Protoslavs…
(and this leaves out the fact that zadruga is a Southern Slavic term – not some form of ueber-Slavic societal organization)
The Story of the Linguistic Evidence
So what of the location? Why the North-Carpathians? Davies trots out “linguistic evidence” which, as noted above, he claims “demands firstly that the Slavs did not disperse until relatively recently; and secondly that they should have passed the formative years in contact not only with Germans and Balts but also with Illyrians, Thracians and Iranians.”
But Czechs and Russians can still understand each other – not entirely but passably – even one and a half millennia (!) after their “separation” from the Protoslavonic mix. And this is true notwithstanding that the spaces covered by the modern Russians and Czechs stretch literally from the heart of Europe all the way to Vladivostok. Even if one posits a smaller recent extent of the Slavs (to the Volga, say) we are still talking about enormous distances. The fact is that the similarity of various Slavonic languages says absolutely nothing about the rate (even assuming a constant rate!) of change away from some hypothetical Slavonic original. And it certainly says nothing about the geographic expanse of the original Slavonic homeland.
Moreover, the reference to these other peoples likewise does not “demand” anything special. One might first ask who were the Illyrians and Thracians? What do we know of their language(s)? Answer: close to nothing. But even assuming that these existed as distinct (and non-Slavic) peoples, all of Davies’ conditions for a close Slavic neighborhood with the above tribes would be met by positing a Slavic homeland between Vindelicia and Pannonia… Or Central Germany and western Poland…
As regards the “Iranian” element, first it should properly be called the “Eastern” element for it has as much to do with India as with Iran. Second, we have no idea what language the Scythians or Sarmatians spoke – the assumption is that it was “Iranian” but this is virtually unsubstantiated. We simply do not know and anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or is a fool. The fact that so many Scythians (and later Alans) are described as light-haired individuals suggests that – whatever they may have been – they did not have the look of (most of) today’s Persians. Even if such peoples spoke an “Iranian” dialect, there is no reason to look for them on the Dnieper. The “Sarmatian” Jaziges were firmly established in Pannonia centuries before the Huns invaded Europe.
The Story of Goths, Celts and the Argentinean Gauchos (all in Poland)
Davies then proceeds to tell us who lived in Poland before the Poles:
“From the early Bronze Age… the central and eastern areas of modern Poland were inhabited by Balts; the north-western areas fell within the fringe of Germanic settlement, which had stabilized in southern Scandinavia. South-western areas formed part of the Central European Culture, which possessed an Illyrian-Celtic complexion. Only the extreme south-eastern corner of modern Poland… would have fall within the extreme bounds of Slavonic settlement…”
As to the Balts, no problem but all that follows is questionable. We do not know what a “fringe” of Germanic settlement means. Does Davies think that there were Nordics on the coast but maybe other non-Nordic peoples there as well? As regards an “Illyrian-Celtic complexion”, we can’t even begin to address as to what this means and suspect neither does the author. (Finally, what is the basis for Davies admitting that some super-extreme Slavs may have lived in some lower extremity of modern Poland? Why even grant that? Is this an exercise in throwing a bone?)
Davies continues on:
“In the Roman period, a massive influx of Celts was provoked by disturbances over the mountains Bohemia. The Celts filtered eastwards as far as the River San and beyond, building an impressive series of hill-forts… If it is unwise to put the Slavonic tag on any archaeological funds prior to AD 500, it is certainly improper to call anything at all at this juncture ‘Polish’…”
How does Davies know there was any filtering at all? And even assuming a “filtering” how does he know that the “filterers” built the “impressive” forts? And as to either of those groups, how is Davies able to put a Celtic “tag” on them?
Davies is on a roll here…
“Both the Goths and the Vandals lived in the Vistula Basin before migrating to the south and east on the first stage of their complicated wanderings… [F]ollowing the Avars’ failure at the gates of Constantinople in 626, the Avars lost control of their tributary lands north of the Carpathians, and their fragile realm disintegrated. From that point onwards, the expansion of the Slavonic peoples could proceed without serious hindrance. The nomadic life was losing its appeal…”
Maybe (?) there were Goths at the mouth of the Vistula (whatever Vistula may have been back then) but were they settlers? Or were they more in the nature of raiders like their Viking followers? As to the entire Vistula basin, it’s not clear what is meant here. Does Davies means that the entire Vistula basin was covered in Goths or that he does not know exactly where these Goths lived but for sure they lived somewhere in the “basin”.
As to the Vandals, we have noted that there is close to zero evidence that they lived anywhere in Poland. Further, the Avars may have lost some control over their empire after 626 but they were not defeated until the pathological reign of Charlemagne. Since they first appeared in Byzantine records mid-6th century, this means that about 3/4 of the Khaganate’s history did not take place until after their defeat at Constantinople. Their realm was not so fragile and it did not disintegrate in 626. Moreover, the expansion of the Slavonic peoples would have had to have taken place remarkably quickly “from that point onwards” since both Slavonic Wends and Slavonic Sorbs make their appearance on the fringes of the Frankish empire in Fredegar right around this time – and, as to the Sorbs, there is no suggestion of them having been tributaries to the Avars (frankly, there is no evidence of the north-Carpathian lands being tributary to the Avars at all but why quibble).
Davies then gets to his desired conclusion:
“Inevitably, in the wake of so many human migrations, the ethnic mix of the population was extremely rich.”
The only thing rich is the above statement. First of all, Davies has no notion because he did not do any studies of the “ethnic mix” of Poland or any of the Slav lands as of the time he is describing. He literally pulls this one out of his ass. Second, what does “extremely rich” really mean? Does it mean that Poland was filled with Bantu-speakers from West Africa, fiercely independent Mauri peoples, blood-thirsty Toltecs and curious Arab travelers? Were the Polanie a tribe of Han Chinese particularly skilled at agriculture? That kind of a “mix” would be extremely rich (outside of present day London or New York). But, even assuming everything else he writes elsewhere is true, Davies’ Poland was unlikely to have had at the time any peoples other than what are today’s Central Europeans – whites, with hair that is neither very blonde nor “altogether inclining towards the dark” – the Baltic or Finnic “subtype” if you will. This is confirmed by the modern DNA studies which both place the Poles as some of the least diverse people in Europe (!) and also show them to be related to various Finnic tribes such as the Veps peoples.
The Story of Isolationist Impossibilities
Davies doesn’t stop digging here, of course:
“As a result it is quite impossible to isolate anything resembling an ethnic core, or, at the distance of more than a thousand years, to distinguish Slavonic from non-Slavonic racial elements… People who imagine that the Poles or Polish culture are somehow ‘indigenous’ to the Polish lands are as mistaken as those who believe that Europe is the original home of the Europeans… To look for Poles in the eighth or ninth centuries, is as anachronistic, and as pointless, as looking for Englishmen in the age of Hengist and Horsa… In the last resort, all our ancestors were alien mongrel immigrants.”
We will not dwell on Hengist and Horsa as they are not our business. However, Davies seems to be kidding when he makes that statement. Is it really the case that he can’t tell the “ethnic core” of a Pole from any of the peoples listed above? To call Poles “mongrels” is to deprive that word of any reasonable meaning – even assuming that such a word could be used in polite company.
Poles may or may not be indigenous to Poland. If you believe that all humans came from Africa then obviously all humans are – under that most pedantic definition – immigrants. But even if this were true, there is little in the historical record to suggest that today’s Ukrainians, Poles, Sorbs, Slovenes and so forth are not – at least in significant part – the direct descendants of the various earlier tribes mentioned by historians. The names of the various polities may have changed but did the people? Davies makes assertions but provides no evidence.
Veneti Who?
What of the Veneti?
Davies says this:
“The so-called Venedian culture of the Protoslavs must be set aside as yet another red herring… [Tacitus’] delphic reference to the ‘Venedii’ has been variously interpreted as proof of the existence of Germanic Vandals or else of Slavic Wends.”
We have never thought that the Veneti could be seen as Vandals. Nor are we aware of anyone seriously suggesting this except perhaps on the German pre-war far right. Tacitus mentions the word Vandal but does not suggest any link to the Veneti who he also discusses. (His reference to the Veneti is no more or less delphic than his references to various other peoples of Germania.) To suggest that the Veneti could equally well have been Vandals as Slavs is to engage in intellectual relativism – just because you can come up with two opposing arguments and those to champion them does not mean that each argument is equally valid. Davies is wrong in equating (and thereby legitimizing) these two approaches to the Venetii. That the Venetii were the ancestors of the Slavs is, to us, highly likely – what is not certain is whether they encompassed all the Slavs and whether some other peoples (e.g., Balts) were understood under the Veneti name as well.
Davies also mentions Pliny for his amber stories but fails to mention that Pliny too talks of the Veneti at the Vistula. Nor does he mention Procopius who speaks of the Venetic Gulf (Baltic Sea?). Nor does he discuss the Tabula Peutingeriana. So where, did these mysterious Veneti dwell according to Davies? And, importantly, what happened to them? Once again, if the Nordics came from Scandinavia, who lived in Central Europe before them and what happened to them?
Looking at his book, we are forced to conclude (with more than a touch of charity) that Davies is unprepared to discuss Polish or Slavic pre-history. His methods and sources are, to put it gently, lacking.
The question is why? One answer would be that he is not a very good historian or not a particularly bright man. A more likely answer based on his didactic proclivities described above would be that he simply does not see the value in dwelling on the past and is quick to dismiss anything that might smack in his view of “chauvinism.” But what this means is that Davies prefers not to examine facts that might lead him in a direction that he does not want to go in. That however is not the path of an honest historian but one of a determined propagandist.*
Unlike a rich tribe which, given its abundance of sagacious historians, may well survive a few mediocre ones, a poorer tribe ought to take heed before endorsing a scholar merely because the scholar is willing to give such tribe some stage time.
* And speaking of politically engaged pseudo-scholars, a mention of this crude Twitter post from Paul Barford – an archeologist (degree from?) moonlighting as a historian deserves its own footnote:
Barford, who does not seem to have any known university education appears to be a cantankerous hobbyist archeologist who managed to move to Poland in Communist days, get himself employed by Polish cultural institutions (Brueckner might just provide answers as to how) and even to publish “The Early Slavs” (a book which, notwithstanding the author’s peculiarities, is still far more readable than Davies’ or Curta’s tedious volumes). His website features this logo which appears to be a boot imprint on his host country’s flag (the fact that insulting national symbols in Poland is a criminal offense there does not seem to bother him).
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