Hyun Jin Kim

I am so out of touch with the European end of things that his claims there are impossible at present for me to assess. They are large claims, about Hun influence on Europe subsequently (as per his The Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe, more briefly dealt with here).

But the strength of the book is obvious: that he integrates Hun history from East Asia (yes, the Xiongnu), to Central Asia (White Huns, etc.), to the European Huns. Hyun Jin Kim is across the sources in order to do this, and that's pretty rare. One basic misunderstanding has been that the search for continuity between the Chinese-named Xiongnu and the Huns as known in Europe, used to focus on whether there is an 'ethnic', 'blood descent', racial link. Whereas of course the link is political and to do with the Huns' enormous political prestige and legacy. As typical for steppe societies the Huns were ethnically very mixed indeed, and our understanding of connections must not be in those old terms, blood and race.

So this is an overview of the Huns from China to Rome, integrated by Kim's Inner Asian perspective. The political institutions of the Huns were extremely long-lived and tenacious, although unfortunately we still have to try to see them from the outside in -- that is, from the written accounts of settled societies. His ideas on the enduring political and cultural legacy in Europe are challenging and probably overreach. But his work is a massive step forward in knowledge of the Huns.

As a new standard history of the Huns, this doesn't read as easily as one might wish. It is, however, aimed at a general audience. I have a couple of popular histories of the Huns, but until this information filters into a popular format, you'd miss far too much if you went elsewhere.… (mehr)

The book I ought to have read ahead of this -- had it been published when I saw this one -- is his new general history of the Huns [The Huns, Routledge, 2015]. The present book is a set of particular arguments on 1. the Huns' political level before they reached Europe, 2. the Huns' influence in Europe, both in the end-of-Rome scenario and in the post-5th century states that replaced Rome.

On 1. he has much to add. He works by analogy with other steppe states, and an expertise in these means he can exploit the scant evidence on Huns to more effect than previous writers who have not made themselves experts in Inner Asia in order to understand the Huns in Europe. That is his claim, and given his exhaustive engagements with the other main writers in these pages, you become acquainted with the historiography as it stands. For me this is his strength, that he is familiar with Inner Asian history and can draw on it to newly interpret pieces of the puzzle. His conclusion is that the Huns had a sophisticated political culture already in place, one typical of the steppe, as opposed to the 'loose tribes' they have been thought.

On 2. he is bold and ends with the conclusion that post-5th century political culture in Europe was as much Inner Asian as Roman, that is, these were the two major strands of influence. To quote, 'The political and cultural landscape of early medieval Europe was shaped by the fusion of Roman and Inner Asian influences.' [143]

I am not equipped to judge his arguments in 2. I'm rusty on 5th century Europe, if I ever knew enough to assess what he says. I can follow him in 1. and find him convincing (with quibbles), but 2. becomes a blur of names to me. And I can imagine the other way around, that those less exposed to Inner Asian history are going to find that section a blur of names, therefore his argument hard to judge of.

Which probably proves that our difficulty the whole time has been to keep in balance these two, to be at home in both spheres. And so on his last page he says: 'The sooner it is recognised that there is a Eurasian history and not a separate Asian and European history, the better it will be...'

He has a lot of disagreement to do. I saw one review that found the book strident, as is only too easy in those circumstances. I don't enjoy bad-tempered scholarship, but I did not think him over-combative; two or three times I thought he crossed a line with his wording just in an effort to vary his phrases of disagreement. You have to be subject to exasperation when you work in a field you feel has been ill-served.

I expect his general history of the Huns to make quite a splash in these waters, which are in any case choppy with controversy (I have avoided fall-of-Rome books lately because they have become so politicised). As a matter of fact I am more interested in 'the Huns themselves' than in these vexed questions of their influence, so I'm headed for his other book.… (mehr)