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Constans – Roman Emperor: 337-350 A.D. –
Bronze Centenionalis AE2 22mm (4.14 grams) Nicomedia mint: 348-351 A.D.
Reference: RIC VIII 70
DN CONSTANS PF AVG, diademed, draped & cuirassed bust left holding globe
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Royal/Imperial
symbols of power
Ruling dynasties often exploit pomp and ceremony with the use of
regalia
:
crowns
,
robes,
orb (globe) and sceptres
, some of which are reflections
of formerly practical objects. The use of language mechanisms also support this
differentiation with subjects talking of “the crown” and/or of “the
throne
” rather than referring directly to
personal names and items.
Monarchies
provide the most explicit
demonstration of tools to strengthen the elevation of leaders. Thrones sit high
on daises
leading to subjects lifting their gaze
(if they have permission) to contemplate the ruler. Architecture in general can
set leaders apart: note the symbolism inherent in the very name of the Chinese
imperial
Forbidden City
.
Constans (Latin:
Flavius Julius Constans Augustus)
(c.323–350) was
Roman Emperor
from 337 to 350. He defeated his
brother
Constantine II
in 340, but anger in the army
over his personal life and preference for his barbarian bodyguards led the
general Magnentius
to rebel, resulting in the
assassination of Constans in 350.
Career
Constans was the third and youngest son of
Constantine the Great
and
Fausta
, his father’s second wife. He was
educated at the court of his father at
Constantinople
under the tutelage of the poet
Aemilius Magnus Arborius
.
On 25 December 333, Constantine I elevated Constans to the rank
of
Caesar
at
Constantinople
. Constans became engaged to
Olympias
, the daughter of the
Praetorian Prefect
Ablabius
, but the marriage never came to
pass.With Constantine’s death in 337, Constans and his two brothers,
Constantine II
and
Constantius II
, divided the Roman world between
themselves and disposed of virtually all relatives who could possibly have a
claim to the throne.The army proclaimed them
Augusti
on September 9, 337. Almost
immediately, Constans was required to deal with a
Sarmatian
invasion in late 337, over whom he
won a resounding victory.
Division of the Roman Empire among the Caesars appointed by
Constantine I
: from left to right,
the territories of
Constantine II
, Constans,
Dalmatius
and
Constantius II
. After the death of
Constantine I (May 337), this was the formal division of the Empire,
until Dalmatius was killed and his territory divided between
Constans and Constantius.
Constans was initially under the guardianship of Constantine II. The original
settlement assigned Constans the
praetorian prefectures
of
Italy and Africa
. Constans was unhappy with
this division, so the brothers met at
Viminacium
in 338 to revise the boundaries.
Constans managed to extract the prefecture of
Illyricum
and the
diocese of Thrace
,provinces that were
originally to be ruled by his cousin
Dalmatius
, as per Constantine I’s proposed
division after his death. Constantine II soon complained that he had not
received the amount of territory that was his due as the eldest son.
Annoyed that Constans had received Thrace and
Macedonia
after the death of Dalmatius,
Constantine demanded that Constans hand over the African provinces, which he
agreed to do in order to maintain a fragile peace. Soon, however, they began
quarreling over which parts of the African provinces belonged to
Carthage
, and thus Constantine, and which
belonged to Italy
, and therefore Constans. This led to
growing tensions between the two brothers, which were only heightened by
Constans finally coming of age and Constantine refusing to give up his
guardianship. In 340 Constantine II invaded Italy. Constans, at that time in
Dacia
, detached and sent a select and
disciplined body of his Illyrian troops, stating that he would follow them in
person with the remainder of his forces. Constantine was eventually trapped at
Aquileia
, where he died, leaving Constans to
inherit all of his brother’s former territories –
Hispania
,
Britannia
and
Gaul.
Constans began his reign in an energetic fashion. In 341-42, he led a
successful campaign against the
Franks
, and in the early months of 343 he
visited
Britain
. The source for this visit,
Julius Firmicus Maternus
, does not provide a
reason, but the quick movement and the danger involved in crossing the
channel
in the dangerous winter months suggests
it was in response to a military emergency, possibly to repel the
Picts
and
Scots
.
Regarding religion, Constans was tolerant of Judaism but promulgated an edict
banning pagan sacrifices in 341. He suppressed
Donatism
in Africa and supported
Nicene orthodoxy
against
Arianism
, which was championed by his brother
Constantius. Although Constans called the
Council of Sardica
in 343 to settle the
conflict, it was a complete failure, and by 346 the two emperors were on the
point of open warfare over the dispute. The conflict was only resolved by an
interim agreement which allowed each emperor to support their preferred clergy
within their own spheres of influence.
Death
In the final years of his reign, Constans developed a reputation for cruelty
and misrule.
Dominated by favourites and openly preferring his select
bodyguard, he lost the support of the
legions
who were also offended by his
homosexuality. In 350, the general
Magnentius
declared himself emperor at
Augustodunum
with the support of the troops on
the Rhine
frontier, and later the western provinces
of the Empire. Constans was enjoying himself nearby when he was notified of the
elevation of Magnentius.
Lacking any support beyond his immediate household, he was
forced to flee for his life. As he was trying to reach either Italy or Spain,
supporters of Magnentius cornered him in a fortification in
Vicus Helena
(now
Elne) in the
Pyrenees
, southwestern
Gaul
, where he was killed after seeking
sanctuary in a temple.
The term “barbarian” refers to a person who is perceived to be
uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to member of a
nation or
ethnos
, typically a
tribal society
as seen by an urban
civilization
either viewed as inferior, or
admired as a
noble savage
. In idiomatic or figurative usage,
a “barbarian” may also be an individual reference to a brutal, cruel, warlike,
insensitive person.
The
term originates from the
Greek
word βάρβαρος (barbaros). Hence
the Greek idiom “πᾶς μὴ Ἕλλην βάρβαρος” (pas mē Hellēn barbaros) which
literally means “whoever is not Greek is a barbarian”. In ancient times, Greeks
used it mostly for people of different cultures, but there are examples where
one Greek city or state would use the word to attack another (e.g. haughty
Athenians
calling the
Boeotians
barbarian);[2]
in the early modern period and sometimes later, Greeks used it for the
Turks
, in a clearly pejorative way.[3][4]
Comparable notions are found in non-European civilizations. In the
Roman Empire
, Romans used the word “barbarian”
for many people, such as the
Berbers
,
Germanics
,
Celts
,
Carthaginians
,
Iberians
,
Thracians
and
Persians
.
Etymology
Routes taken by
barbarian invaders
, 5th century
CE
Routes taken by
Mongol invaders
, 13th century
The
Ancient Greek
word
βάρβαρος
(barbaros), “barbarian”, was an
antonym
for
πολίτης
(politēs), “citizen” (from πόλις
– polis
, “city-state”). The sound of
barbaros
onomatopoetically
evokes the image of babbling
(a person speaking a non-Greek language).[5]
The earliest attested form of the word is the
Mycenaean Greek
pa-pa-ro, written in
Linear B
syllabic script.
The Greeks and Romans used the term as they encountered scores of different
foreign cultures, including the
Egyptians
,
Persians
,
Medes
,
Celts
,
Germanic peoples
,
Phoenicians
and
Carthaginians
. In fact, it became a common term
to refer to all foreigners. However in various occasions, the term was also used
by Greeks, especially the
Athenians
, to deride other Greek tribes and
states (such as Epirotes
,
Eleans
,
Macedonians
and
Aeolic
-speakers) in a pejorative and
politically motivated manner.[8]
Of course, the term also carried a cultural dimension to its dual meaning.The
verb βαρβαρίζειν (barbarízein) in
ancient Greek
meant imitating the linguistic
sounds non-Greeks made or making grammatical errors in Greek.
Plato
(Statesman 262de) rejected the
Greek–barbarian dichotomy as a logical absurdity on just such grounds: dividing
the world into Greeks and non-Greeks told one nothing about the second group. In
Homer
‘s works, the term appeared only once (Iliad
2.867), in the form βαρβαρόφωνος (barbarophonos)
(“of incomprehensible speech”), used of the
Carians
fighting for
Troy during the
Trojan War
. In general, the concept of
barbaros did not figure largely in archaic literature before the 5th century
BC
.[11]
Still it has been suggested that “barbarophonoi” in the Iliad signifies
not those who spoke a non-Greek language but simply those who spoke Greek badly.
A change occurred in the connotations of the word after the
Greco-Persian Wars
in the first half of the 5th
century BC. Here a hasty coalition of Greeks defeated the vast
Achaemenid Empire
. Indeed in the Greek of this
period ‘barbarian’ is often used expressly to mean
Persian
.
Greek barbaros was the etymological source for many words meaning
“barbarian”, including English barbarian, which was first recorded in
16th-century
Middle English
.
A word barbara- is also found in the
Sanskrit
of ancient India. The Greek word
barbaros is related to Sanskrit barbaras (stammering).
Semantics
“Germanic
warriors” as depicted in
Philipp Clüver
‘s Germania
Antiqua (1616)
The
Oxford English Dictionary
defines five
meanings of the noun barbarian, including an obsolete
Barbary
usage.
- 1. etymologically, A foreigner, one whose language and
customs differ from the speaker’s.
- 2. Hist. a. One not a Greek. b. One living
outside the pale of the Roman empire and its civilization, applied
especially to the northern nations that overthrew them. c. One
outside the pale of Christian civilization. d. With the Italians of
the Renascence: One of a nation outside of Italy.
- 3. A rude, wild, uncivilized person. b. Sometimes
distinguished from savage (perh. with a glance at 2). c.
Applied by the Chinese contemptuously to foreigners.
- 4. An uncultured person, or one who has no sympathy with literary
culture.
- †5. A native of Barbary. [See Barbary.] Obs. †b. A
Barbary horse. Obs.
The OED barbarous entry summarizes the semantic history. “The
sense-development in ancient times was (with the Greeks) ‘foreign,
non-Hellenic,’ later ‘outlandish, rude, brutal’; (with the Romans) ‘not Latin
nor Greek,’ then ‘pertaining to those outside the Roman empire’; hence
‘uncivilized, uncultured,’ and later ‘non-Christian,’ whence ‘Saracen, heathen’;
and generally ‘savage, rude, savagely cruel, inhuman.’”
Going against scholarly tradition, the historian
Christopher I. Beckwith
hypothesizes that
“barbarian” only properly refers to Greco-Roman contexts and should not be used
for
Central Eurasian
peoples. He summarizes, “the
word barbarian embodies a complex European cultural construct, a
generic pejorative term for a ‘powerful foreigner with uncouth, uncivilized,
nonurban culture who was militarily skilled and somewhat heroic, but inclines to
violence and cruelty’ – yet not a ‘savage’ or a ‘wild man’.” Beckwith also
criticizes the Chinese language, which has several exonyms commonly translated
as “barbarian” (see below). “There is also no single native word for
“foreigner”, no matter how pejorative, which includes the complex of the notions
‘inability to speak Chinese’, ‘militarily skilled’, ‘fierce/cruel to enemies’,
and ‘non-Chinese in culture’.” However, the above OED entry controverts
both Beckwith’s complex barbarian definition and his claim that Chinese
lacks “barbarian” words. Definition 3c, “Applied by the Chinese contemptuously
to foreigners”, cites the
Treaty of Tientsin
prohibiting the Chinese from
calling the British Yi 夷 (Conventionally translated as “barbarians.” See
more below)
Linguistics
differentiates between objective
description
of language usages and subjective
prescription
of which usages are considered
proper or
politically correct
. Modern dictionaries like
the OED descriptively record how English is used; individuals like
Beckwith prescriptively opine how it should be used.
It should also be noted that the translation of the term “Yi” has a history.
In the early 19th century, it was initially translated as just “foreigners.”[24]
By the First Opium War, the term had begun to be translated as “barbarians.” The
prohibition in the Treaty of Tientsin had been the end result of a long dispute
between the Qing and British officials regarding the translation, usage and
meaning of Yi. Many Qing officials argued that the term did not mean
“barbarians,” but their British counterparts disagreed with this opinion.[25]
“Barbarian” in Greek historical contexts
Slavery in Greece
Slaves in chains, relief found at Smyrna (present day
İzmir
,
Turkey
), 200 AD
A parallel factor was the growth of
chattel slavery
especially at
Athens
. Although enslavement of Greeks for
non-payment of debt
continued in most Greek states, it was
banned at Athens under
Solon
in the early 6th century
BC
. Under the
Athenian democracy
established ca. 508 BC
slavery
came to be used on a scale never before
seen among the Greeks. Massive concentrations of slaves were worked under
especially brutal conditions in the silver mines at
Laureion
—a major vein of silver-bearing ore was
found there in 483 BC—while the phenomenon of skilled slave craftsmen producing
manufactured goods in small factories and workshops became increasingly common.
Furthermore, slaves were no longer the preserve of the rich: all but the
poorest of Athenian households came to have slaves to supplement the work of
their free members. Overwhelmingly, the slaves of Athens were “barbarian” in
origin[citation
needed], drawn especially from lands around the
Black Sea
such as
Thrace
and
Taurica
(Crimea),
while from
Asia Minor
came above all
Lydians
,
Phrygians
and
Carians
.
Aristotle
(Politics
1.2–7; 3.14) even states that barbarians are slaves by nature.
From this period, words like barbarophonos, cited above from Homer,
began to be used not only of the sound of a foreign language but of foreigners
speaking Greek improperly. In Greek, the notions of language and reason are
easily confused in the word
logos
, so speaking poorly was easily
conflated with being stupid, an association not of course limited to the ancient
Greeks.
Further changes occurred in the connotations of barbari/barbaroi
in Late Antiquity
,[26]
when bishops and catholikoi were appointed to sees connected to cities
among the “civilized” gentes barbaricae such as in
Armenia
or
Persia
, whereas bishops were appointed to
supervise entire peoples among the less settled.
Eventually the term found a hidden meaning by
Christian
Romans
through the
folk etymology
of
Cassiodorus
. He stated the word barbarian
was “made up of barba (beard) and rus (flat land); for barbarians
did not live in cities, making their abodes in the fields like wild animals”.[27]
The female given name “Barbara”
originally meant “a barbarian woman”, and as such was likely to have had a
pejorative meaning—given that most such women in Graeco-Roman society were of a
low social status (often being slaves).[citation
needed][dubious
–
discuss
] However,
Saint Barbara
is mentioned as being the
daughter of rich and respectable Roman citizens. Evidently, by her time (about
300 CE
according to Christian
hagiography
, though some historians put the
story much later) the name no longer had any specific ethnic or pejorative
connotations. Alternatively her canonisation might have been intended to counter
any such pejorative connotations, especially if her story was fictitious, as
many authorities think possible, including the Roman Catholic Church since 1969
(for details of these doubts, see under
Saint Barbara, Veneration
).[original
research?]
Hellenic stereotypes
Out of those sources the Hellenic stereotype was elaborated: barbarians are
like children, unable to speak or reason properly, cowardly, effeminate,
luxurious, cruel, unable to control their appetites and desires, politically
unable to govern themselves. These stereotypes were voiced with much shrillness
by writers like
Isocrates
in the 4th century
BCE
who called for a war of conquest against
Persia
as a
panacea
for Greek problems.
However, the Hellenic stereotype of barbarians was not a universal feature of
Hellenic culture.
Xenophon
, for example, wrote the
Cyropaedia
, a laudatory fictionalised
account of
Cyrus the Great
, the founder of the Persian
empire, effectively a
utopian
text. In his
Anabasis
, Xenophon’s accounts of the
Persians and other non-Greeks he knew or encountered hardly seem to be under the
sway of these stereotypes at all.
The renowned orator
Demosthenes
made derogatory comments in his
speeches, using the word “barbarian.”
Barbarian is used in its Hellenic sense by
St. Paul
in the
New Testament
(Romans
1:14) to describe non-Greeks, and to describe one who merely speaks a
different language (1
Corinthians 14:11).
About a hundred years after Paul’s time,
Lucian
– a native of
Samosata
, in the former kingdom of
Commagene
, which had been absorbed by the
Roman Empire
and made part of the province of
Syria
– used the term “barbarian” to describe
himself. As he was a noted satirist, this could have been a deprecating
self-irony. It might also have indicated that he was descended from Samosata’s
original Semitic population – likely to have been called “barbarians” by later
Hellenistic, Greek-speaking settlers, and who might have eventually taken up
this appellation themselves.[28][29]
The term retained its standard usage in the
Greek language
throughout the Middle Ages, as
it was widely used by the
Byzantine Greeks
until the fall of the
Byzantine Empire
in the 15th century.
Cicero
described the mountain area of inner
Sardinia
as “a land of barbarians”, with these
inhabitants also known by the manifestly pejorative term latrones mastrucati
(“thieves with a rough garment in wool”). The region is up to the present known
as “Barbagia”
(in
Sardinian
“Barbàgia” or “Barbaza”), which is
traceable to this old “barbarian” designation – but no longer consciously
associated with it, and used naturally as the name of the region by its own
inhabitants.
The Dying Galatian
statue
The Dying Galatian,
Capitoline Museums
, Rome
Some insight about the Hellenistic perception of and attitude to “Barbarians”
can be taken from the “Dying
Galatian“, a statue commissioned by
Attalus I
of
Pergamon
to celebrate his victory over the
Celtic Galatians
in
Anatolia
(the bronze original is lost, but a
Roman
marble
copy was found in the 17th century).[30]
The statue depicts with remarkable realism a dying Celt warrior with a typically
Celtic hairstyle and moustache. He lies on his fallen shield while sword and
other objects lie beside him. He appears to be fighting against death, refusing
to accept his fate.
The statue serves both as a reminder of the Celts’ defeat, thus demonstrating
the might of the people who defeated them, and a memorial to their bravery as
worthy adversaries. The message conveyed by the sculpture, as
H. W. Janson
comments, is that “they knew how
to die, barbarians that they were.”[31]
The Greeks admired
Scythians
and
Galatians
as heroic individuals – even in the
case of Anacharsis
as philosophers – but considered
their culture to be barbaric. The
Romans
indiscriminately regarded the various
Germanic tribes
, the settled
Gauls
, and the raiding
Huns
as barbarians.
The Romans adapted the term to refer to anything non-Roman. The German
cultural historian Silvio Vietta points out that the meaning of the word
“barbarous” has undergone a semantic change in modern times, after Michel de
Montaigne used it to characterize the activities in the New World of the
Spaniards – supposedly representatives of the “higher” European culture – as
“barbarous”, in a satirical essay of the year 1580.[32]
It was not the supposedly “uncivilized” Indian tribes who were “barbarous”, but
the conquering Spaniards. Montaigne argued that Europeans noted the barbarism of
other cultures but not the crueler and more brutal actions of their own society,
particularly (in his time) in the so-called religious wars. We – the Europeans –
were the real “barbarians”. In this way, the Eurocentric argument was turned
around and applied against the European invaders. With this shift of meaning a
whole literature arose in Europe that characterized the indigenous Indian
peoples as innocent, and the militarily superior Europeans as “barbarous”
intruders into a paradisiacal world.[33][34]
“Barbarian” in international historical contexts
Historically, the term barbarian has seen widespread use, in English.
Many peoples have dismissed alien cultures and even rival civilizations, because
they were unrecognizably strange. For instance, the nomadic
steppe peoples
north of the
Black Sea
, including the
Pechenegs
and the
Kipchaks
, were called barbarians by
Byzantines
.[35]
Berber and
North African cultures
Ransom of Christian slaves held in Barbary, 17th century
The
Berbers
of
North Africa
were among the many peoples called
“Barbarian” by the Romans; in their case, the name remained in use, having been
adopted by the
Arabs
(see
Berber etymology
) and is still in use as the
name for the non-Arabs in North Africa (though not by themselves). The
geographical term
Barbary
or
Barbary Coast
, and the name of the
Barbary pirates
based on that coast (and who
were not necessarily Berbers) were also derived from it.
The term has also been used to refer to people from
Barbary
, a region encompassing most of
North Africa
. The name of the region,
Barbary, comes from the Arabic word Barbar, possibly from the Latin
word barbaricum, meaning “land of the barbarians”.
Many languages define the “Other” as those who do not speak one’s language;
Greek barbaroi was paralleled by
Arabic
ajam “non-Arabic speakers; non-Arabs; (especially)
Persians
.”[36]
Hindu culture
In the ancient Indian epic
Mahabharata
, the Sanskrit word barbara-
meant “stammering, wretch, foreigner, sinful people, low and barbarous”.[37]
The Hindus anciently referred to foreign peoples as
Mleccha
“dirty ones; barbarians.”[38][39]
The
Aryans
used mleccha much like the
ancient Greeks used barbaros, “originally to indicate the uncouth and
incomprehensible speech of foreigners and then extended to their unfamiliar
behavior.”[40]
In the ancient texts, Mlecchas are people who are dirty and who have
given up the Vedic
beliefs. Today this term implies those
with bad hygiene.[41][42]
Among the tribes termed Mleccha were
Sakas
,
Hunas
,
Yavanas
,
Kambojas
,
Pahlavas
,Kiratas, Khasas(non-vedic aryan
tribe), Bahlikas
and
Rishikas
.[41]
Chinese culture
The term “Barbarian” in traditional Chinese culture had a few interesting
aspects. For one thing, Chinese has more than one historical “barbarian” exonym.
Several historical
Chinese characters
for non-Chinese peoples were
graphic pejoratives
, the character for the
Yao people
, for instance, was changed from
yao 猺 “jackal” to yao 瑤 “precious jade” in the modern period. The
original
Hua-Yi distinction
between “Chinese” and
“barbarian” was based on culture and not on race.
Historically, the Chinese used various words for foreign ethnic groups. They
include terms like 夷 Yi, which is often translated as “barbarians.”
Despite this conventional translation, there are also other ways of translating
Yi into English. Some of the examples include “foreigners,”[24]
“ordinary others,”[43]
“wild tribes,”[44]
“uncivilized tribes,”[45]
and so forth.
History and
terminology
Chinese historical records mention what may now perhaps be termed “barbarian”
peoples for over four millennia, although this considerably predates the
Greek language
origin of the term “barbarian”,
at least as is known from the thirty-four centuries of written records in the
Greek language. The sinologist
Herrlee Glessner Creel
said, “Throughout
Chinese history “the barbarians” have been a constant motif, sometimes minor,
sometimes very major indeed. They figure prominently in the Shang oracle
inscriptions, and the dynasty that came to an end only in 1912 was, from the
Chinese point of view, barbarian.”[46]
Shang Dynasty
(1600-1046
BC
)
oracles
and
bronze inscriptions
first recorded specific
Chinese
exonyms
for foreigners, often in contexts of
warfare or tribute. King
Wu Ding
(r. 1250–1192 BC), for instance, fought
with the Guifang
鬼方,
Di
氐, and
Qiang
羌 “barbarians.”
During the
Spring and Autumn Period
(771–476 BC), the
meanings of four exonyms were expanded. “These included Rong, Yi, Man, and Di—all
general designations referring to the barbarian tribes.”[47]
These
Siyi
四夷 “Four Barbarians”, most “probably
the names of ethnic groups originally,”[48]
were the Yi or Dongyi
東夷 “eastern barbarians,” Man or
Nanman
南蠻 “southern barbarians,” Rong or
Xirong
西戎 “western barbarians,” and Di or
Beidi
北狄 “northern barbarians.” The Russian
anthropologist
Mikhail Kryukov
concluded.
Evidently, the barbarian tribes at first had individual names, but during
about the middle of the first millennium B.C., they were classified
schematically according to the four cardinal points of the compass. This
would, in the final analysis, mean that once again territory had become the
primary criterion of the we-group, whereas the consciousness of common
origin remained secondary. What continued to be important were the factors
of language, the acceptance of certain forms of material culture, the
adherence to certain rituals, and, above all, the economy and the way of
life. Agriculture was the only appropriate way of life for the
Hua-Hsia
.[49]
The
Chinese classics
use compounds of these four
generic names in localized “barbarian tribes” exonyms such as “west and north”
Rongdi, “south and east” Manyi, Nanyibeidi “barbarian
tribes in the south and the north,” and Manyirongdi “all kinds of
barbarians.” Creel says the Chinese evidently came to use Rongdi and
Manyi “as generalized terms denoting ‘non-Chinese,’ ‘foreigners,’
‘barbarians’,” and a statement such as “the Rong and Di are wolves” (Zuozhuan,
Min 1) is “very much like the assertion that many people in many lands will make
today, that ‘no foreigner can be trusted’.”
The Chinese had at least two reasons for vilifying and depreciating the
non-Chinese groups. On the one hand, many of them harassed and pillaged the
Chinese, which gave them a genuine grievance. On the other, it is quite
clear that the Chinese were increasingly encroaching upon the territory of
these peoples, getting the better of them by trickery, and putting many of
them under subjection. By vilifying them and depicting them as somewhat less
than human, the Chinese could justify their conduct and still any qualms of
conscience.[50]
This word Yi has both specific references, such as to Huaiyi 淮夷
peoples in the
Huai River
region, and generalized references
to “barbarian; foreigner; non-Chinese.”
Lin Yutang
‘s Chinese-English Dictionary of
Modern Usage translates Yi as “Anc[ient] barbarian tribe on east
border, any border or foreign tribe.”[51]
The sinologist
Edwin G. Pulleyblank
says the name Yi
“furnished the primary Chinese term for ‘barbarian’,” but “Paradoxically the Yi
were considered the most civilized of the non-Chinese peoples.[52]
Idealization
A few contexts in the Chinese classics romanticize or idealize barbarians,
comparable to the western
noble savage
construct. For instance, the
Confucian Analects
records:
- The Master said, The [夷狄] barbarians of the East and North have retained
their princes. They are not in such a state of decay as we in China.
- The Master said, The Way makes no progress. I shall get upon a raft and
float out to sea.
- The Master wanted to settle among the [九夷] Nine Wild Tribes of the East.
Someone said, I am afraid you would find it hard to put up with their lack
of refinement. The Master said, Were a true gentleman to settle among them
there would soon be no trouble about lack of refinement.[53]
The translator
Arthur Waley
noted that, “A certain
idealization of the ‘noble savage’ is to be found fairly often in early Chinese
literature”, citing the
Zuozhuan
maxim, “When the Emperor no longer
functions, learning must be sought among the ‘Four Barbarians,’ north, west,
east, and south.”[54]
Professor Creel said,
From ancient to modern times the Chinese attitude toward people not
Chinese in culture—”barbarians”—has commonly been one of contempt, sometimes
tinged with fear…It must be noted that, while the Chinese have disparaged
barbarians, they have been singularly hospitable both to individuals and to
groups that have adopted Chinese culture. And at times they seem to have had
a certain admiration, perhaps unwilling, for the rude force of these peoples
or simpler customs.[55]
In a somewhat related example,
Mencius
believed that Confucian practices were
universal and timeless, and thus followed by both Hua and Yi, “Shun
was an Eastern barbarian; he was born in Chu Feng, moved to Fu Hsia, and died in
Ming T’iao.
King Wen
was a Western barbarian; he was born
in Ch’i Chou and died in Pi Ying. Their native places were over a thousand li
apart, and there were a thousand years between them. Yet when they had their way
in the Central Kingdoms, their actions matched like the two halves of a tally.
The standards of the two sages, one earlier and one later, were identical.”[56]
Pejorative
Chinese characters
Main article:
Graphic pejoratives in written Chinese
Some
Chinese characters
used to
transcribe
non-Chinese peoples were graphically
pejorative
ethnic slurs
, where the insult derived not from
the Chinese word but from the character used to write it. Take for instance, the
Written Chinese
transcription of Yao
“the Yao people
“, who primarily live in the
mountains of southwest China and Vietnam. When 11th-century
Song Dynasty
authors first transcribed the
exonym
Yao, they insultingly chose
yao 猺 “jackal” from a lexical selection of over 100 characters pronounced
yao (e.g., 腰 “waist”, 遙 “distant”, 搖 “shake”). During a series of
20th-century Chinese
language reforms
, this graphic pejorative
猺
(written with the 犭”dog/beast
radical“) “jackal; the Yao” was replaced twice; first with the
invented character yao
傜
(亻”human
radical“) “the Yao”, then with yao
瑤
(玉 “jade
radical“) “precious jade; the Yao.” Chinese
orthography
(symbols used to write a language)
can provide unique opportunities to write ethnic insults
logographically
that do not exist
alphabetically. For the Yao ethnic group, there is a difference between the
transcriptions Yao 猺 “jackal” and Yao 瑤 “jade” but none between
the
romanizations
Yao and Yau.
Cultural and
racial barbarianism
The purpose of the
Great Wall of China
was to stop the
“barbarians” from crossing the northern border of China.
According to the archeologist William Meacham, it was only by the time of the
late Shang dynasty that one can speak of “Chinese,”
“Chinese
culture,” or “Chinese civilization.” “There is a sense in which the
traditional view of ancient Chinese history is correct (and perhaps it
originated ultimately in the first appearance of dynastic civilization): those
on the fringes and outside this esoteric event were “barbarians” in that they
did not enjoy (or suffer from) the fruit of civilization until they were brought
into close contact with it by an imperial expansion of the civilization itself.”[57]
In a similar vein, Creel explained the significance of Confucian
li
“ritual; rites; propriety”.
The fundamental criterion of “Chinese-ness,” anciently and throughout
history, has been cultural. The Chinese have had a particular way of life, a
particular complex of usages, sometimes characterized as li. Groups
that conformed to this way of life were, generally speaking, considered
Chinese. Those that turned away from it were considered to cease to be
Chinese. … It was the process of acculturation, transforming barbarians into
Chinese, that created the great bulk of the Chinese people. The barbarians
of Western Chou times were, for the most part, future Chinese, or the
ancestors of future Chinese. This is a fact of great importance. … It is
significant, however, that we almost never find any references in the early
literature to physical differences between Chinese and barbarians. Insofar
as we can tell, the distinction was purely cultural.[48]
According to the Pakistani academic
M. Shahid Alam
, “The centrality of culture,
rather than race, in the Chinese world view had an important corollary. Nearly
always, this translated into a civilizing mission rooted in the premise that
‘the barbarians could be culturally assimilated'”; namely laihua 來化 “come
and be transformed” or Hanhua 漢化 “become Chinese; be sinicized.”[58]
Two millennia before the French anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss
wrote
The Raw and the Cooked
, the Chinese
differentiated “raw” and “cooked” categories of barbarian peoples who lived in
China. The shufan 熟番 “cooked [food eating] barbarians” are sometimes
interpreted as Sinicized, and the shengfan 生番 “raw [food eating]
barbarians” as not Sinicized.[59]
The
Liji
gives this description.
The people of those five regions – the Middle states, and the [Rong],
[Yi] (and other wild tribes around them) – had all their several natures,
which they could not be made to alter. The tribes on the east were called
[Yi]. They had their hair unbound, and tattooed their bodies. Some of them
ate their food without its being cooked with fire. Those on the south were
called Man. They tattooed their foreheads, and had their feet turned toward
each other. Some of them ate their food without its being cooked with fire.
Those on the west were called [Rong]. They had their hair unbound, and wore
skins. Some of them did not eat grain-food. Those on the north were called [Di].
They wore skins of animals and birds, and dwelt in caves. Some of them did
not eat grain-food.[60]
Dikötter explains the close association between
nature and nurture
. “The shengfan,
literally ‘raw barbarians’, were considered savage and resisting. The shufan,
or ‘cooked barbarians’, were tame and submissive. The consumption of raw food
was regarded as an infallible sign of savagery that affected the physiological
state of the barbarian.”[61]
Some
Warring States period
texts record a belief
that the respective natures of the Chinese and the barbarian were incompatible.
Mencius, for instance, once stated: “I have heard of the Chinese converting
barbarians to their ways, but not of their being converted to barbarian ways.”[62]
Dikötter says, “The nature of the Chinese was regarded as impermeable to the
evil influences of the barbarian; no retrogression was possible. Only the
barbarian might eventually change by adopting Chinese ways.”[63]
However, different thinkers and texts convey different opinions on this
issue. The prominent Tang Confucian Han Yu, for example, wrote in his essay
Yuan Dao the following: “When Confucius wrote the Chunqiu, he said
that if the feudal lords use Yi ritual, then they should be called Yi; If they
use Chinese rituals, then they should be called Chinese.” Han Yu went on to
lament in the same essay that the Chinese of his time might all become Yi
because the Tang court wanted to put Yi laws above the teachings of the former
kings.[64]
Therefore, Han Yu’s essay shows the possibility that the Chinese can lose their
culture and become the uncivilized outsiders, and that the uncivilized outsiders
have the potential to become Chinese.
Interestingly, after the Song Dynasty, many of China’s rulers in the north
were of Inner Asia ethnicities, such as Qidan, Ruzhen, and Mongols of the Liao,
Jin and Yuan Dynasties, the latter ended up ruling over the entire China. Hence,
the historian
John King Fairbank
wrote, “the influence on
China of the great fact of alien conquest under the Liao-Jin -Yuan dynasties is
just beginning to be explored.”[65]
During the Qing Dynasty, the rulers of China adopted Confucian philosophy and
Han Chinese institutions to show that the Manchu rulers had received the Mandate
of Heaven to rule China. At the same time, they also tried to retain their own
indigenous culture.[66]
Due to the Manchus’ adoption of Han Chinese culture, most Han Chinese (though
not all) did accept the Manchus as the legitimate rulers of China. Similarly,
according to Fudan University historian Yao Dali, even the supposedly
“patriotic” hero Wen Tianxiang of the late Song and early Yuan period did not
believe the Mongol rule to be illegitimate. In fact, Wen was willing to live
under Mongol rule as long as he was not forced to be a Yuan dynasty official,
out of his loyalty to the Song dynasty. Yao explains that Wen chose to die in
the end because he was forced to become a Yuan official. So, Wen chose death due
to his loyalty to his dynasty, not because he viewed the Yuan court as a
non-Chinese, illegitimate regime and therefore refused to live under their rule.
Yao also says that many Chinese who were living in the Yuan-Ming transition
period also shared Wen’s beliefs of identifying with and putting loyalty towards
one’s dynasty above racial/ethnic differences. Many Han Chinese writers did not
celebrate the collapse of the Mongols and the return of the Han Chinese rule in
the form of the Ming dynasty government at that time. Many Han Chinese actually
chose not to serve in the new Ming court at all due to their loyalty to the
Yuan. Some Han Chinese also committed suicide on behalf of the Mongols as a
proof of their loyalty.[67]
We should note that the founder of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, also
indicated that he was happy to be born in the Yuan period and that the Yuan did
legitimately receive the Mandate of Heaven to rule over China. On a side note,
one of his key advisors, Liu Ji, generally supported the idea that while the
Chinese and the non-Chinese are different, they are actually equal. Liu was
therefore arguing against the idea that the Chinese were and are superior to the
“Yi.”[68]
These things show that many times, pre-modern Chinese did view culture (and
sometimes politics) rather than race and ethnicity as the dividing line between
the Chinese and the non-Chinese. In many cases, the non-Chinese could and did
become the Chinese and vice versa, especially when there was a change in
culture.
Modern
reinterpretations
According to the historian
Frank Dikötter
, “The delusive myth of a Chinese
antiquity that abandoned racial standards in favour of a concept of cultural
universalism in which all barbarians could ultimately participate has
understandably attracted some modern scholars. Living in an unequal and often
hostile world, it is tempting to project the utopian image of a racially
harmonious world into a distant and obscure past.”[69]
The politician and historian
K. C. Wu
analyzes the origin of the characters
for the Yi, Man, Rong, Di, and Xia peoples
and concludes that the “ancients formed these characters with only one purpose
in mind—to describe the different ways of living each of these people pursued.”[70]
Despite the well-known examples of pejorative exonymic characters (such as the
“dog radical” in Di), he claims there is no hidden racial bias in the meanings
of the characters used to describe these different peoples, but rather the
differences were “in occupation or in custom, not in race or origin.”[71]
Wu says the modern character
夷
designating the historical “Yi peoples,”
composed of the characters for 大 “big (person)” and 弓 “bow”, implies a big
person carrying a bow, someone to perhaps be feared or respected, but not to be
despised.[72]
However, differing from Wu, the scholar Wu Qichang believes that the earliest
oracle bone script
for yi 夷 was
used interchangeably
with shi
尸
“corpse”.[73]
The historian John Hill explains that Yi “was used rather loosely for
non-Chinese populations of the east. It carried the connotation of people
ignorant of Chinese culture and, therefore, ‘barbarians’.”[74]
Christopher I. Beckwith makes the extraordinary claim that the name
“barbarian” should only be used for Greek historical contexts, and is
inapplicable for all other “peoples to whom it has been applied either
historically or in modern times.”[75]
Beckwith notes that most specialists in East Asian history, including him, have
translated Chinese exonyms as English “barbarian.” He believes that after
academics read his published explanation of the problems, except for direct
quotations of “earlier scholars who use the word, it should no longer be used as
a term by any writer.”[76]
The first problem is that, “it is impossible to translate the word
barbarian into Chinese because the concept does not exist in Chinese,”
meaning a single “completely generic”
loanword
from Greek barbar-.[77]
“Until the Chinese borrow the word barbarian or one of its relatives, or
make up a new word that explicitly includes the same basic ideas, they cannot
express the idea of the ‘barbarian’ in Chinese.”[22]
The usual
Standard Chinese
translation of English
barbarian is yemanren (traditional
Chinese: 野蠻人;
simplified Chinese
:
野蛮人;
pinyin
: yěmánrén), which Beckwith
claims, “actually means ‘wild man, savage’. That is very definitely not the same
thing as ‘barbarian’.”[78]
Despite this semantic hypothesis, Chinese-English dictionaries regularly
translate yemanren as “barbarian” or “barbarians.”[79]
Beckwith concedes that the early Chinese “apparently disliked foreigners in
general and looked down on them as having an inferior culture,” and pejoratively
wrote some exonyms. However, he purports, “The fact that the Chinese did not
like foreigner Y and occasionally picked a transcriptional character with
negative meaning (in Chinese) to write the sound of his ethnonym, is
irrelevant.”[80]
Beckwith’s second problem is with linguists and lexicographers of Chinese.
“If one looks up in a Chinese-English dictionary the two dozen or so partly
generic words used for various foreign peoples throughout Chinese history, one
will find most of them defined in English as, in effect, ‘a kind of barbarian’.
Even the works of well-known lexicographers such as Karlgren do this.”[81]
Although Beckwith does not cite any examples, the Swedish sinologist
Bernhard Karlgren
edited two dictionaries:
Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese (1923) and
Grammata Serica Recensa
(1957). Compare
Karlgrlen’s translations of the siyi “four barbarians”:
- yi 夷 “barbarian, foreigner; destroy, raze to the ground,”
“barbarian (esp. tribes to the East of ancient China)”[82]
- man 蛮 “barbarians of the South; barbarian, savage,” “Southern
barbarian”[83]
- rong 戎 “weapons, armour; war, warrior; N. pr. of western tribes,”
“weapon; attack; war chariot; loan for tribes of the West”[84]
- di 狄 “Northern Barbarians – “fire-dogs”,” “name of a Northern
tribe; low servant”[85]
The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus Project
includes Karlgren’s GSR definitions. Searching the
STEDT Database
finds various “a kind of”
definitions for plant and animal names (e.g., you 狖 “a kind of monkey,”[86]
but not one “a kind of barbarian” definition. Besides faulting Chinese for
lacking a general “barbarian” term, Beckwith also faults English, which “has no
words for the many foreign peoples referred to by one or another Classical
Chinese word, such as 胡 hú, 夷 yí, 蠻 mán, and so on.”[87]
The third problem involves
Tang Dynasty
usages of fan “foreigner”
and lu “prisoner”, neither of which meant “barbarian.” Beckwith says Tang
texts used fan 番 or 蕃 “foreigner” (see shengfan and shufan
above) as “perhaps the only true generic at any time in Chinese literature, was
practically the opposite of the word barbarian. It meant simply ‘foreign,
foreigner’ without any pejorative meaning.”[21]
In modern usage, fan 番 means “foreigner; barbarian; aborigine”. The
linguist Robert Ramsey illustrates the pejorative connotations of fan.
The word “Fān” was formerly used by the Chinese almost innocently
in the sense of ‘aborigines’ to refer to ethnic groups in South China, and
Mao Zedong himself once used it in 1938 in a speech advocating equal rights
for the various minority peoples. But that term has now been so
systematically purged from the language that it is not to be found (at least
in that meaning) even in large dictionaries, and all references to Mao’s
1938 speech have excised the offending word and replaced it with a more
elaborate locution, “Yao, Yi, and Yu.”[88]
The Tang Dynasty Chinese also had a derogatory term for foreigners, lu
(traditional
Chinese: 虜;
simplified Chinese
:
虏;
pinyin
: lǔ) “prisoner, slave, captive”.
Beckwith says it means something like “those miscreants who should be locked
up,” therefore, “The word does not even mean ‘foreigner’ at all, let alone
‘barbarian’.”[89]
Christopher I. Beckwith’s 2009 “The Barbarians” epilogue provides many
references, but overlooks H. G. Creel’s 1970 “The Barbarians” chapter. Creel
descriptively wrote, “Who, in fact, were the barbarians? The Chinese have no
single term for them. But they were all the non-Chinese, just as for the Greeks
the barbarians were all the non-Greeks.”[90]
Beckwith prescriptively wrote, “The Chinese, however, have still not yet
borrowed Greek barbar-. There is also no single native Chinese word for
‘foreigner’, no matter how pejorative,” which meets his strict definition of
“barbarian.”[22]
Barbarian
puppet drinking game
In the Tang Dynasty houses of pleasure, where drinking games were common,
small puppets in the aspect of Westerners, in a ridiculous state of drunkenness,
were used in one popular permutation of the drinking game; so, in the form of
blue-eyed, pointy nosed, and peak-capped barbarians, these puppets were
manipulated in such a way as to occasionally fall down: then, whichever guest to
whom the puppet pointed after falling was then obliged by honor to empty his cup
of
Chinese wine
.[91]
Japanese culture
When Europeans came to
Japan
, they were called nanban
(南蛮?),
literally Barbarians from the South, because the
Portuguese
ships appeared to sail from the
South. The
Dutch
, who arrived later, were also called
either nanban or kōmō (紅毛?),
literally meaning “Red Hair.”
American cultures
In Mesoamerica the Aztec
civilization used the word “Chichimeca”
to denominate a group of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes that lived in the
outskirts of the
Triple Alliance
‘s Empire, in the North of
Modern Mexico, which were seen by the Aztec people as primitive and uncivilized.
One of the meanings attributed to the word “Chichimeca” is “dog people”.
The
Incas
of South America used the term “puruma
auca” for all peoples living outside the rule of their empire (see
Promaucaes
).
The white settlers of the
United States
referred to Native Americans as
“savages.”
Early Modern period
A defeated
Sarmatian
barbarian serves as an
atlas
on a 16th-century
villa
in
Milan
. Sculpted by
Antonio Abbondio
for
Leone Leoni
Italians in the
Renaissance
often called anyone who lived
outside of their country a barbarian.
Spanish sea captain
Francisco de Cuellar
who sailed with the
Spanish Armada
in 1588 used the term ‘savage’
(‘salvaje’) to describe the
Irish people
.[92]
Marxist use of
“Barbarism”
In her “Junius Pamphlet” of 1916, strongly denouncing the then raging
First World War
,
Rosa Luxemburg
wrote: Bourgeois society
stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into
Barbarism.[93]
Luxemburg attributed it to
Friedrich Engels
, though – as shown by
Michael Löwy
– Engels had not used the term
“Barbarism” but a less resounding formulation: If the whole of modern society
is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must
take place
[94]
Luxemburg went on to explain what she meant by “Regression into Barbarism”:
“A look around us at this moment [i.e., 1916 Europe] shows what the regression
of bourgeois society into Barbarism means. This World War is a regression into
Barbarism. The triumph of Imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization.
At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then
when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable
consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a
generation ago: either the triumph of Imperialism and the collapse of all
civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a
great cemetery. Or the victory of Socialism, that means the conscious active
struggle of the International Proletariat against Imperialism and its method of
war.”
“Socialism or Barbarism” became, and remains, an often quoted and influential
concept in
Marxist
literature. “Barbarism” is variously
interpreted as meaning either a technologically advanced but extremely
exploitative and oppressive society (e.g. a victory and world domination by
Nazi Germany
and its Fascist allies); a
collapse of technological civilization due to Capitalism causing a
Nuclear War
or
ecological disaster
; or the one form of
barbarism bringing on the other.
The
Internationalist Communist Tendency
considers
“Socialism or Barbarism” to be a variant of the earlier “Liberty
or Death“, used by revolutionaries of different stripes since the
late 18th century
[95]
Further information:
Socialisme ou Barbarie
,
Socialism or Barbarism
, and
Socialismo e Barbarie
Modern popular culture
Modern popular culture contains such fantasy barbarians as
Thundarr the Barbarian
and
Conan the Barbarian
.[96]
In such fantasy, the negative connotations traditionally associated with
“Barbarian” are often inverted. For example, “The
Phoenix on the Sword” (1932), the first of
Robert E. Howard
‘s “Conan” series, is set soon
after the “Barbarian” protagonist had forcibly seized the turbulent kingdom of
Aquilonia
from King Numedides, whom he
strangled upon his throne. The story is clearly slanted to imply that the
kingdom greatly benefited by power passing from a decadent and tyrannical
hereditary monarch to a strong and vigorous Barbarian usurper.
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