Empire of the Huns
- Thread starter Fex
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Deleted member 82118
Well, Huns could conqer Roman Empire in the Atilla times - and, like Manchurs in China, create the new empire on the Roman bazis. And, that empire could be bigger, than Roman was - such as Qing Empire was much bigger, than the Ming one
You realize that the Manchus were way more organized than the Huns?By the time they started to invade China proper,they have already built up a bureaucracy and became sedentary.
The Lombards were able to occupy Italian cities and utilise existing bureaucracies. It's not beyond the possible that the Huns could have done this for the whole empire. What it really takes is people who know what they are doing. You could say the Mongols had these people, such as Subutai. I don't know how much freedom of action or thought Attila allowed his subordinate commanders, and what their worldview was?
I find this scenario incredibly Hun-likely.
Pun aside, let's examine the fate of the various powerful, intrinsecally nomadic, states.
Which were those ?
Mongolia. Genghis's Khaganate splintered away in the century that followed his death.
Arguably, the Mughal Empire was the last descendant of the Khaghanate, and it ceased existing about 6 centuries after the apogy of the Khaganate.
Hungary. Succesfully sedentarised in Pannonia, never expanded much from there on. Lost their independence after 5-6 centuries of existence.
Bulgaria. Well, they sedentarised too, and wound up in Northern Thrace and Moesia, but lost a lot and didn't exist as an independent state for much of their history.
Manchuria. Got assimilated by the Empire it conquered and became part of it. It was not the Manchurian Empire, but the Chinese Empire.
Collapsed ~3 centuries after the conquest.
And finally, the Huns. Which collapsed.
These examples lead to the following conclusions :
- The most probable powerbase of a surviving Hunnic Empire with decidedly Hun, Turkic features, would be Pannonia. Even then, it would most likely sedentarise to survive.
- If it were to control Europe, it would lose its distinctive features and it wouldn't be known as the Hun Empire but the Roman Empire. Furthermore, dynasties rarely survive 9 centuries. After all, of all the dynasties to have ruled the various realms of Europe, there may be about only a dozen left. The ruling dynasty is therefore unlikely to have remained Hun-descended for that long.
- If it doesn't conquer Europe, it's likely the next group of European invaders - the Avars, the Slavs, the Bulgars, the Magyars, whoever - will do them in, or more sedentary adjacent rising powers will.
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The Huns are in a pretty bad time to survive long-term. They'd be Germanified (they kind of were to some extent) or Slavified before long if they were to "survive". Otherwise they'd be obliterated by the Avars, Magyars, etc. Any Hun state in Europe in 1335 will have absolutely nothing to do with the Huns of 469 aside from sharing the same name and at absolute most, having the same ancestry in their ruling dynasty.
Hunnic hegemony can't really be considered as an empire, in the sense of an unified authority on a territory, and peoples living on it.
What existed was rather a personal construction, led by a charismatic leader on several different peoples (mainly German, then Iranian, and some Huns) and with an unstable aristocracy (without the presence of what is a Late Antiquity imperium or what it implies, such as taxes and absence of fixed social roles) made in good part of Romans.
The degree of submission, and not really integration (more like political-military alliances between different cohesive peoples and groups), of these peoples varied, but Hunnic hegemony wasn't that strong compared to its importance in the mid-Vth century.
It didn't litterally disappeared overnight but, frankly, almost so : Nedao is a good enough exemple on the relative superficial domination of Huns, as a political and personal alliance and chain of obligations.
Attila's power in particular, and Hunnic dominance in general eventually came down to two features, namely the unicity of royal power since Ruga and the redistribution of Roman gold, from tribute and/or plunder.
For that it survives Attilla's death, we should gave a look at how Barbarian ensembles and leagues as Franks, Goths or Vandals worked out, rather than Avars or Mongols*. It implies necessarily military successes and deeper integration in Romania' politics (more than a predatory mindset that is)
I would tend to think that killing Attila in 449 (IOTL, the assassination attempt failed) or slightly later would help : a less ambitious and "hunnic"-minded leader could better fit these, more or less pulling a Dengizich but at a point where it could be viable.
Let's be blunt tough, it would have relativly little macro-historical impact historically : I could see well a more limited Hunnic hegemony replacing Upper Danubian peoples (as Herulii, Lombardii, etc.) and heavily "germanized" (meaning heavily romanized as well).
Basically, germano-roman agglomeration of peoples, whom ethnogenesis would be based on their contact with Romania, and that would keep the ethnonym of "Huns" or maybe identify themselves as "Scythians", and establishing themselves in Romania either creating their kingdom in Romania (Italy or Illyricum, maybe Moesia or on its marches (as Gepids IOTL) along Danube.
Of course, at this point, there's nothing really allowing this *Hunnic Kingdom, to be more prone to survive than other trans-danubian petty-kingdoms or states as Heruli or Gepids did IOTL, would it only because they would be stuck between incoming entities as Kurtigurs or Avars from one hand, and cisdanubians states as Italy and Romania.
Eventually, maybe they could fill the role Lombards did, for exemple, for Constantinople as in a ready-to-use vassalized people, but it's obviously not a self-evident outcome.
*Whom, in spite of an heavily racialized historiography, they shared little with.
What existed was rather a personal construction, led by a charismatic leader on several different peoples (mainly German, then Iranian, and some Huns) and with an unstable aristocracy (without the presence of what is a Late Antiquity imperium or what it implies, such as taxes and absence of fixed social roles) made in good part of Romans.
The degree of submission, and not really integration (more like political-military alliances between different cohesive peoples and groups), of these peoples varied, but Hunnic hegemony wasn't that strong compared to its importance in the mid-Vth century.
It didn't litterally disappeared overnight but, frankly, almost so : Nedao is a good enough exemple on the relative superficial domination of Huns, as a political and personal alliance and chain of obligations.
Attila's power in particular, and Hunnic dominance in general eventually came down to two features, namely the unicity of royal power since Ruga and the redistribution of Roman gold, from tribute and/or plunder.
For that it survives Attilla's death, we should gave a look at how Barbarian ensembles and leagues as Franks, Goths or Vandals worked out, rather than Avars or Mongols*. It implies necessarily military successes and deeper integration in Romania' politics (more than a predatory mindset that is)
I would tend to think that killing Attila in 449 (IOTL, the assassination attempt failed) or slightly later would help : a less ambitious and "hunnic"-minded leader could better fit these, more or less pulling a Dengizich but at a point where it could be viable.
Let's be blunt tough, it would have relativly little macro-historical impact historically : I could see well a more limited Hunnic hegemony replacing Upper Danubian peoples (as Herulii, Lombardii, etc.) and heavily "germanized" (meaning heavily romanized as well).
Basically, germano-roman agglomeration of peoples, whom ethnogenesis would be based on their contact with Romania, and that would keep the ethnonym of "Huns" or maybe identify themselves as "Scythians", and establishing themselves in Romania either creating their kingdom in Romania (Italy or Illyricum, maybe Moesia or on its marches (as Gepids IOTL) along Danube.
Of course, at this point, there's nothing really allowing this *Hunnic Kingdom, to be more prone to survive than other trans-danubian petty-kingdoms or states as Heruli or Gepids did IOTL, would it only because they would be stuck between incoming entities as Kurtigurs or Avars from one hand, and cisdanubians states as Italy and Romania.
Eventually, maybe they could fill the role Lombards did, for exemple, for Constantinople as in a ready-to-use vassalized people, but it's obviously not a self-evident outcome.
*Whom, in spite of an heavily racialized historiography, they shared little with.
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