THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 189

Demographics and the Degeneracy of Nomadism

12-16. Demographics and the Degeneracy of Nomadism

Franz von Schwarz draws the following cheerless picture of the Turkestan Sarts, among whom he lived for fifteen years: With respect to character they are sunk as low as man possibly can be. But this is not at all to be wondered at, as for thousands of years they were oppressed and enslaved by all possible peoples, against whom they could only maintain themselves by servility, cunning, and deceit The Sart is cowardly, fawning, cringing, reticent, suspicious, deceitful, revengeful, cruel, and boastful. At the same time he shews in his appearance and manner a dignity and bearing that would compel the uninitiated to regard him as the ideal of a man of honour. In the former native States, as in Bokhara and Khiva to-day, the entire system of government and administration was based exclusively on lying, deceit, and bribery, and it was quite impossible for a poor man to get justice.

The opposite of the Sart is his oppressor the Kirghiz, who is shy, morose, and violent, but also honourable, upright, good-hearted, and brave. The terrible slave-hunting Turkoman is distinguished from all other Central Asiatics by his bold and piercing glance and proud bearing.

In wild bravery no other race on earth can match itself with him, and as a horseman he is unsurpassed. He has an unruly disposition and recognises no authority, but his word can be absolutely relied upon. What a tragic fate for an enslaved people. Although its lowest degradation is already behind it, how long yet will it be the object of universal and not unnatural contempt, while its former oppressor, void of all humane feeling, a professional murderer and cattle-thief, remains as a hero and ideal superman?

So long as the dominant nomad horde remains true to its wandering life, it lives in the midst of the subjugated only in winter, and proceeds in spring to the summer pastures. But it is wise enough to leave behind overseers and guards, to prevent revolts. The individual nomad has no need to keep many slaves; besides, he would have no occupation and no food for them, and so an entire horde enslaves entire peoples, who must provide food for themselves. In so far as he does not winter directly among them, the nomad only comes to plunder them regularly, leaving them nothing but what is absolutely indispensable.

The peasantry had to supply the nomads and their herds who wintered among them with all that was demanded. For this purpose they stored up gram and fodder during the summer, for in Central and East Europe the snow falls too deep for the herds to be left to scrape out fodder alone.

During the winter the wives and daughters of the enslaved became a prey to the lusts of the yellow-skins, by whom they were incessantly violated, and thus every conjugal and family tie and as a further consequence the entire social organisation was seriously loosened. The ancient Indo-European patriarchal principle, which has exclusively prevailed among the Altaians also from the earliest times, languished among the enslaved just because of the violation and loosening of the conjugal bond, which often continued for hundreds of years. The matriarchal principle came into prominence, for the Altaian adulterer repudiated bastards, and still more did the husband where there was one, so the children followed the mother. Where therefore matriarchal phenomena occur among Indo-Europeans, usually among the lower strata of population, they are not survivals of pre-patriarchal times, but probably arose later from the corruption of married life by systematic adultery. Thus the subjugated Indo-Europeans became — here more, there less — mongolised by the mixture of races, and in places the two superimposed races became fused into a uniform mixed people.

Indo-European usage and law died out, and the savage wilfulness of the Altaians had exclusive sway. Revolutions among the people driven to despair followed, but they were quelled in blood, and the oppression exercised still more heavily. Even if here and there the yoke was successfully shaken off, the emancipated, long paralysed and robbed of all capability of self-organisation, were unable to remain independent. Commonly they fell into anarchy and then voluntarily gave themselves up to another milder-seeming servitude, or became once more the prey of an if possible rougher conqueror.

In consequence of the everlasting man-hunting and especially the carrying off of women in foreign civilised districts there ensued a strong mixing of blood, and the Altaian race-characteristics grew fainter, especially to the south and west. The Greeks by the time of Alexander the Great were no longer struck by the Mongol type — already much obliterated — of the nomads pasturing in the district between the Oxus and the Jaxartes. This led to the supposition that these nomads had belonged to the Indo-European race and had originally been settled peasants, and that they had been compelled to limit themselves to animal rearing and to become nomads only after the conversion of their fields to deserts through the evaporation of the water-basins. This supposition is false, as we have seen before.

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