Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (27 page)

At the same time as the *Taghbač conquest of North China, the Avars
³⁰
conquered the Eastern Steppe and built an empire stretching from Karashahr in the northwestern Tarim Basin to the borders of the Koguryo Kingdom in the east.
³¹
The ethnolinguistic relationships of the Avars, known to the Chinese as Jou-jan,
³²
have not been determined.
³³
The Chinese sources claim that the first Avar was a slave of the *Taghbač.
³⁴
If the Avars had indeed been so subjugated, in their period of service they would have learned the steppe warrior variant of the Central Eurasian Culture Complex and, following the dynamic of the First Story, would gradually have become strong enough to overthrow their lords. During the rule of the founder of the T’o-pa Wei Dynasty, T’o-pa Kuei (r. 386–409), the Avars under their ruler She-lun established their empire in the Eastern Steppe and northern Tarim Basin.
³⁵
They maintained their power, despite many serious reverses, including incursions by the *Taghbač and other peoples, for some two centuries. The Avars thus restored to some degree the former realm of the Hsiung-nu and brought under their sway many other peoples, including the Türk. After a long period of destabilization and division, in or around 524 Anagai became
kaghan
‘emperor’
³⁶
of the Avars and began rebuilding their realm into that of a great power.

The Puyo-Koguryo Migration into the Korean Peninsula

During the first few centuries
AD
, the Puyo and Koguryo kingdoms maintained themselves in southern Manchuria, ruling over native people they treated as slaves. The Koguryo many times came into conflict with the Chinese Empire’s easternmost commandery in Lolang in the northern Korean Peninsula. Nevertheless, despite the periodic flourishing of the Koguryo, the Chinese maintained themselves in the region even after the fall of the Han Dynasty, partly because of several wars between the Koguryo and the Mu-jung clan of the Hsien-pei to their west, who twice devastatingly defeated the Koguryo.

In the fourth century the Koguryo finally captured Lolang. Renaming it
^*
Piarna ‘level land’ in their language (in Sino-Korean reading,
Pyong’yang),
they moved their capital there and, along with other Puyo-Koguryoic peoples, proceeded to overrun most of the Korean Peninsula. The Kingdom of Paekche was established by the Puyo clan in the area of the former Ma Han realm in southwestern Korea, while another Puyo-Koguryo clan established a dynasty in the new Silla Kingdom in the area of the former Chin Han realm in the southeastern most corner of Korea, though the kingdom remained Korean-speaking. The one area that seems to have escaped the nation building of the Puyo-Koguryo people, as well as the influence of their language, was the realm of former Pyon Han, in the central part of the south coast of the Korean Peninsula. It became known as Kara, or Mimana,
³⁷
and never achieved political equality with the other kingdoms of the peninsula.
³⁸
Little is known about Kara, but it was under heavy Japanese influence and at times was a Japanese tributary state, if not an outright colony. The period of the Three Kingdoms in Korea was one of demographic and cultural growth accompanied by almost constant warfare somewhere on the peninsula.

The Central Eurasian Culture Complex in Japan

At the far eastern end of Eurasia, the Wa—the Proto-Japanese speakers who emigrated to Japan and the southern end of the Korean Peninsula
³⁹
from the Asian mainland (apparently from the Liao-hsi region)
⁴⁰
at the inception of the Yayoi period (ca. fourth century
BC
to fourth century
AD
)
⁴¹
—clearly did not belong to the Central Eurasian Culture Complex. In Japan they gradually developed a distinctive culture of their own, partly under influences emanating from the Korean Peninsula.

The Wa conducted active trade and political relations with the states of the Korean Peninsula. Much of the trade centered on the acquisition of iron, the production of which was of great importance in the southern part of the peninsula. Following the migration of the Puyo-Koguryoic-speaking peoples southward throughout the Korean Peninsula, the Japanese became deeply enmeshed in the internecine wars of the states that formed there.

In the course of the Japanese military experience in Korea, Japanese soldiers were defeated on many occasions by one or another of the kingdoms established there by the Puyo-Koguryo warriors, who belonged to the Central Eurasian Culture Complex.
⁴²
Following the dynamic of the First Story, Japanese warriors fighting in the service of Puyo-Koguryo lords must have acquired their version of the steppe form of the Central Eurasian Culture Complex, in particular the comitatus, whose members are known in Old Japanese as
toneri.
⁴³
The early Japanese mounted archer warrior, the
bushi,
like the later samurai, his institutional descendant, “was merely one variant of the Asian-style mounted archer predominant in the Middle East and the steppe; similarities among all the fighting men of these early centuries of Japanese history far outweigh the differences.”
⁴⁴
The close warrior companions of a lord in early Japan also were expected to commit suicide to be buried with him (called
junshi
‘following in death’) and regularly did so. When some of these Japanese warriors returned home from the Korean Peninsula area, along with natives of the peninsula, the result was the transmission of the Central Eurasian Culture Complex to Japan
⁴⁵
and the revolution in Japanese culture and politics known as the Kofun period. It produced the Japanese imperial dynasty, which began its conquest and unification of Japan at that time.
⁴⁶
The island country then increasingly looked to the continent for cultural input.

The Great Wandering of Peoples and Central Eurasia

The reason for the Central Eurasians’ migrations into the remains of the Classical empires are unknown.
⁴⁷
Only the fact of their migration is known. Yet that itself is significant. The normal situation within Central Eurasia with respect to migration was that it frequently occurred. Most steppe zone Central Eurasians were nomadic or seminomadic stockbreeders—effectively, farmers whose fields changed during the year and whose “crops,” their animals, moved constantly. Though the people knew who “owned” the grazing rights and water rights to specific lands at specific times of the year, there were in general no markers between one people’s pastures and those of the next. For these reasons, nonsedentary Central Eurasia was characterized by a great deal of fluidity. Nations were defined by their people, who were bound together by oaths, not by the land they inhabited.

From the beginning of historical records, the entire territory of Eurasia, including all of Central Eurasia, was already occupied by one or another people. Although some peaceful political and demographic adjustments did occur, most have evidently not made it into the historical record, wherein war typically decides who rules the contested territory. Those among the ruling clan of the losers who were not killed or did not submit to the winning clan would flee; in some cases, they fled to a peripheral empire such as Rome or China and asked for, or demanded, refuge. But most of the ordinary people, the rank-and-file survivors of the defeated group, who were largely pastoralists (animal farmers) and agriculturalists, would normally merge with the members of the new nation. There was not necessarily any change at the local level, and many peoples maintained their languages and traditions for centuries despite the change of rulers. This pattern occurred over and over in Central Eurasia from the beginning of the historical record down to modern times; it is exactly the same process as the changes of government and expansions and contractions of territory that characterize the history of the peripheral agricultural-urban cultures of Europe and China.

All empire builders, whether ruled by nomadic or agrarian dynasties, attempted to expand as far as possible in all directions. As noted above, there were no physical barriers to prevent movement in the steppe zone, and from the Central Eurasian point of view borders were meaningless. As a consequence, when a winning clan was extraordinarily successful, the new nation could rapidly expand across the entire expanse of the Central Eurasian steppe zone up to the walls and fortresses of the peripheral empires. This happened at least three times in Central Eurasian history: under the Scythians (or Northern Iranians), the Turks, and the Mongols.

In the agrarian Eurasian periphery, by contrast, borders between nations were macrocosmic reflections of the borders between agricultural fields, the stable microcosms that made up the empires. Local, internal adjustments in the political order could not take place without an imperial response against the uprising. Adjustments across borders meant war between empires. The borders attracted merchants and other people from both cultural worlds to the trading cities, which were tightly controlled and taxed during periods when the peripheral states ruled over them. Many Central Eurasian groups developed half-Roman, half-Persian, or half-Chinese cultures in the border regions.

One specific factor that certainly helped drive the migrations, at least initially, was the economic decline of both Rome and China. The border areas of these empires were much more strongly affected by economic trouble than their more central areas, which had accumulated and retained more wealth. It must have been increasingly difficult to make a living as a foreign trader or immigrant worker when the frontier cities and villas of the wealthy imperials themselves were strapped for funds and shrinking, or were simply abandoned.

The economic troubles would also have entailed difficulties for the Central Eurasian rulers, who needed to continually acquire luxury goods and other forms of wealth to distribute to their comitatus members and allies. When the border markets collapsed, or were destroyed in the wars that became more and more devastating as the general situation worsened, it became imperative for men who needed to trade to move closer to localities where it was still possible to do business. The fact that the Eastern Roman Empire was located further “inside” Eurasia than the Western realm, and managed to survive, though much reduced in size, and that the Persian Empire was relatively little affected by the great migrations, mainly losing its colonial territories in Central Asia, would seem to confirm the principle on a larger scale.

When the Classical empires of Rome and China crumbled, the borders that had been officially closed for so long became porous. The local half-Romanized or half-Sinified Central Eurasians moved deeper inside the empires they had come to depend on, hoping to continue their way of life more securely. These first immigrants mostly admired the imperial cultures and wanted to preserve them.

In Europe, for example, they fought beside the Romans against others such as the Goths and Huns who came from further out in Central Eurasia. But the latter actually wanted the same thing: the Huns were explicit, consistent, and emphatic in their demand to be allowed to trade at Roman frontier markets.