Book Review: "The Making of the Slavs"

This is an old review of The Making of the Slavs that I wrote for Matins two years ago. The author, Florin Curta, is a very impressive young scholar from Roumania. He seems to be competent in virtually every language spoken in Europe, including some that are no longer spoken. He once told me he had learned English from listening to rock music with his friends. Anyway, here is the review, although it may not be of interest to everyone.

A good book, though I felt like some of the dots weren't always connected and I would have liked a clearer description of what was ethnically out there across the Danube before the formation of the Slavs. I like Curta's theory that Old Slavic was probably the lingua franca of the Avar khaganate. That would explain a lot - but makes me wonder just exactly who were the Avars. And where did they pick up this linguistic oddity? If it was necessary to use Old Slavic or even to create it as a standardized form of several dialects, then who actually manned the khaganate's armies and inhabited its villages? Above all, who exactly were speaking the component dialects of this new lingua franca before the 'Making of the Slavs'? Speakers of something that was not yet Slavic and who were not conscious of being part of a 'Slavic' mass? This seems to be Curta's point. They wouldn't have called themselves Slavs nor have necessarily thought of themselves as Slavs.

If this is so it looks like the Avars performed the hammering into shape that produced 'the Slavs.' Curta, however, sees the Byzantines as doing this. Perhaps the Avars were the hammer, and the Byzantine Empire the anvil. Justinian builds an elaborate system of forts on the Danubian frontier, the Slavs begin to form as bands to raid which cluster as settlements north of the forts. And then come the Avars to impel them into the forts, like a smith folding and hammering iron until it is a blade. Before it is over the Balkans and even northern Greece become Slavic. But I should beware the tyranny of an attractive metaphor.

To sum it up, a wonderful study of high scholarship by someone who can read all of the relevant languages and knows the archaeological material intimately. I think that even the non-expert could be interested in it.