The Huns at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains

Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a 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.^[1]

The term originates from the Greek civilization, meaning "anyone who is not Greek". In ancient times, Greeks used it for the people of the Persian Empire; in the early modern period and sometimes later, they used it for the Turks, in a clearly pejorative way.^[2][3] Comparable notions are found in non-European civilizations. In the Roman empire, barbarian was meant as "anyone not educated in Roman ways".

Etymology[link]

Routes taken by barbarian invaders, 5th century AD

The Ancient Greek word βάρβαρος (barbaros), "barbarian", was an antonym for πολίτης (politis) "citizen," from polis "city-state." The sound of barbaros onomatopoetically evokes the image of babbling (a person speaking a non-Greek language).^[4] The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek pa-pa-ro, written in Linear B syllabic script.^[5][6]

The Greeks used the term as they encountered scores of different foreign cultures, including the Egyptians, Persians, Medes, Celts, Germanic peoples, Phoenicians, Etruscans 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.^[7] Of course, the term also carried a cultural dimension to its dual meaning.^[8][9] 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 βάρβαροΦώνος (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.^[10] 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.^[11]

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.^[12]

Greek barbaros was the etymological source for many cognate words meaning "barbarian", including English barbarian, which was first recorded in 16th-century Middle English.

Semantics[link]

"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.^[13]

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.^[14] 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'."^[15] 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'."^[16] 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 "barbarians."^[17] 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.

"Barbarian" in Greek historical contexts[link]

Slavery in Greece[link]

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,^[18] 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".^[19]

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). However, Saint Barbara is mentioned as being the daughter of rich and respectable Roman citizens. Evidently, by her time (about 300 AD according to Christian hagiography, though some historians put the story much later) the name no longer had any specific ethnic or pejorative connotations.

Hellenic stereotypes[link]

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 BC who called for a war of conquest against Persia as a panacea for Greek problems. Ironically, many of the former attributes were later ascribed to the Greeks, especially the Seleucid kingdom, by the Romans.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[20][21]

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"), all of which are 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 Gaul statue[link]

The Dying Gaul, Capitoline Museums, Rome.

Some insight about the Hellenistic perception of and attitude to "Barbarians" can be taken from the "Dying Gaul", 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).^[22] The statue depicts with remarkable realism a dying Gallic warrior with a typically Gallic 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."^[23]

The Greeks admired Scythians and Eastern Gauls 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-Greco-Roman.

"Barbarian" in international historical contexts[link]

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.^[24]

Arabic and North African cultures[link]

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".

Hindu culture[link]

The Hindus anciently referred to foreign peoples as Mlechcha or Mlechchha "dirty ones; barbarians."^[25][26] 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."^[27] In the ancient texts, Mlechchas are people who are dirty and who have given up the Vedic beliefs. Today this term implies those with bad hygiene.^[28][29] Among the tribes termed Mlechcha were Sakas, Hunas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Pahlavas, Bahlikas and Rishikas.^[28]

Chinese culture[link]

The Siyi 四夷 "four barbarian/foreign tribes" on the Chinese borders: Dongyi (東夷) in the east, Nanman (南蠻) in the south, Xirong (西戎) in the west, and Beidi (北狄) in the north.

Barbarians in traditional Chinese culture had several uncommon aspects. While most languages only have a few words meaning "barbarian" (for example, English barbarian and savage), Chinese has many historical "barbarian" exonyms. Several 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". The original Hua-Yi distinction between "Chinese" and "barbarian" was based on culture and not race.

History and terminology[link]

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."^[30]

Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BCE) oracle and bronze inscriptions first recorded specific Chinese exonyms for foreigners, often in contexts of warfare or tribute. King Wu Ding (r. 1250-1192 BCE), for instance, fought with the Guifang 鬼方, Di 氐, and Qiang 羌 "barbarians."

During the Spring and Autumn Period (771-476 BCE), the meanings of four exonyms were expanded. "These included Rong, Yi, Man, and Di—all general designations referring to the barbarian tribes."^[31] These siyi 四夷 "four barbarian tribes", most "probably the names of ethnic groups originally,"^[32] 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.^[33]

In Wu Xing "Five Phases" theory, the five directions (center and four cardinal directions) were sinocentrically correlated: China (called Zhongguo "middle kingdom") was in the center, bordered by the siyi "four barbarian tribes", beyond which were the sihai "four seas."

A scene of the Chinese campaign against the Miao in Hunan, 1795

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.^[34]

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."^[35] 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.^[36]

The Chinese used different terms for foreign ethnic groups which have been historically translated into English as "barbarians." However, despite the conventional translation of such terms (especially 夷) as "barbarian", in fact it is more accurate to translate them simply as 'outsider' or 'stranger', with far less offensive cultural connotations.

Idealization[link]

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.^[37]

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."^[38]

Some early texts suggest the Zhou dynasty founders were Western "barbarians." Pulleyblank concludes that if the Zhou were originally Rong people," they must have undergone a process of sinicization before the conquest."^[39] The Bamboo Annals recorded that the founder King Wu of Zhou "led the lords of the western barbarians" to conquer the Shang Dynasty.^[40] A Mencius passage praising two legendary sages described them as Dongyi 東夷 and Xiyi 西夷. "Mencius said, Shun "was an Eastern barbarian" and King Wen of Zhou "was a Western barbarian."^[41] 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 is surprising then to see the early Chou, so revered in the tradition, called barbarians. … 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.^[42]

Pejorative Chinese characters[link]

Many languages have uncomplimentary names for foreign peoples, comparable to these Chinese exonyms translated as "barbarians." Creel admits some of them "may have been given by the Chinese as terms of contempt—this is hard to determine—but it is unlikely that all of them were."^[43] Written Chinese contempt is unmistakably evident in a group of Chinese characters that James A. Matisoff calls "graphic pejoratives."^[44] Chinese characters characteristically combine "radicals" indicating meaning and "phonetics" suggesting pronunciation. Several pejorative character exonyms were written with the "dog / beast radical" 犬 or 犭, such as Di 狄 "northern barbarians" with this radical and a huo 火 phonetic.

Language reforms initiated in the Republic of China in the late 1930s and 1940s and continued in the People's Republic of China in the 1950s replaced "dog radical" ethnonyms of minority peoples with more positive characters. ^[45]

• The Yao people's exonym changed from (犭"dog radical" and yao 䍃 phonetic) yao 猺 "jackal; the Yao", to (亻"human radical") yao 傜 "the Yao", and to (玉 "jade radical") yao 瑤 "precious jade; green jasper; the Yao."

• The Zhuang people were first recorded as ("dog radical" and tong 童 phonetic) Zhuang 獞, which was also read tong 獞 "a dog name". This was first replaced by ("human radical") Zhuang 僮 "the Zhuang" that was commonly read tong 僮 "child; boy servant", and later replaced by a completely different character zhuang 壮 "strong; robust".^[46]

• The Lolo or Yi people's oldest Chinese exonym was Luoluo 猓猓, giving a new luo reading to ("dog radical" and guo 果 phonetic) guo 猓 or guoran "Proboscis monkey". The first replacement was ("human radical") luo 倮, already used as a graphic variant character for ("clothing radical") luo 裸 "naked"; the second was luo 罗 "bird net; gauze". The current politically correct exonym for the Lolo 猓猓, 倮倮, or 罗罗 is Yi, written yi 彝 "sacrificial wine vessel; the Yi."

• The Lahu people were written Luohei 猓黑, with this same simian luo 猓and 黑 "black". Their modern exonym is Lahu 拉祜, transcribing with la 拉 "pull; drag" and hu 祜 "favor or protection from heaven".

Historical "dog/beast radical" examples include the Quanrong 犬戎 "dog barbarians" and Xianyun 獫狁 "Xianyun people" (with 獫 "long-snouted dog"). The German anthropologist Karl Jettmar explains that Chinese exonyms calling outsiders "wild beasts, jackals, and wolves" linguistically justified using brutality against them.^[47]

Some denigrating exonyms have radicals for other animals. The "sheep radical" 羊 is seen in Qiang 羌 "shepherd; Qiang people" and Jie 羯 "castrated; Jie people"; the "insect/reptile radical" 虫 is in both Man 蠻 "southern barbarians" and Min 閩 "southeastern barbarians" (see Fujian#History); and the "cat/beast radical" 豸 is in Mo 貊 "leopard; northeastern barbarians" (modern Huimo 濊貊 "Yemaek people").

Although Creel cautioned about the complications of determining which early Chinese exonyms were derogatory, the first character dictionary, Xu Shen's (121 CE) Shuowen Jiezi, provides invaluable data about Han Dynasty usage. Among the directional "four barbarian" characters, two are defined militarily and two beastily.

• Yi 夷: "平也. 从大从弓. 東方之人也." Level; flat. From 大 "big (person)" and 弓 "bow" radicals.^[48]
• Rong 戎: "兵也. 從戈從甲." Weapons, warfare. From 戈 "dagger axe; halberd" and 甲 "helmet" radicals.^[49]
• Man 蠻: "南蠻, 蛇穜. 从虫䜌聲." Southern Man, a snake species. From 虫 "insect" radical and luan 䜌 phonetic.^[50]
• Di 狄: "赤狄, 本犬種. 狄之為言淫辟也. 从犬,亦省聲." Red Di, originally a dog species. Calling the Di dogs refers to licentiousness and depravity. From 犬 "dog" radical, which is also phonetic.^[51]

Dikötter provides historical perspective.

Physical composition and cultural disposition were confused in Chinese antiquity. The border between man and animal was blurred. 'The Rong are birds and beasts' [Zuozhuan]. This was not simply a derogatory description: it was part of a mentality that integrated the concept of civilization with the idea of humanity, picturing the alien groups living outside the pale of Chinese society as distant savages hovering on the edge of bestiality. The names of the outgroups were written in characters with an animal radical, a habit that persisted until the 1930s: the Di, a northern tribe, were thus assimilated with the dog, whereas the Man and the Min, people from the south, shared the attributes of the reptiles. The Qiang had a sheep radical.^[52]

The anti-Manchu revolutionary Zhang Binglin blended traditional Chinese imagery with fashionable Western racial theory. "Barbarian tribes, unlike the civilized yellow and white races, were the biological descendants of lower species: the Di had been generated by dogs, and the Jiang could trace their ancestry back to sheep."^[53] However, this type of imagery was not officially endorsed by the central authorities in China at that time: in fact the kǎozhèng movement of the Qing scholars (consisting of "Song Learning" and "Han Learning") as supported by the government was opposed to this to the point that out of some 2,320 resultingly suppressed works many were banned for having a perceived critical, "antibarbarian tone".^[54]

Cultural and racial barbarianism[link]

According to the archeologist William Meacham, it was only after 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."^[55] 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.^[32]

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.^[56] 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.^[57]

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."^[58]

Warring States Period texts record a belief that the respective natures of the Chinese and the barbarian were incompatible. Mencius, for instance, criticized an ex-student of Xu Xing, a "barbarian" from Chu who became a leading Chinese philosopher of Agriculturalism. "I have heard of the Chinese converting barbarians to their ways, but not of their being converted to barbarian ways."^[59] 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."^[60]

However, this seems to take on a different light in considering the somewhat paradoxical situation that after the Song Dynasty, China's ruling dynasties were often of Inner Asia ethnicities, such as Qidan, Ruzhen, and Mongol of the Liao, Jin and Yuan Dynasties: according to historian John King Fairbank: the "influence on China of the great fact of alien conquest under the Liao-Jin -Yuan dynasties is just beginning to be explored."^[61] In fact, during the Qing Dynasty, the rulers of China adapted Confucian philosophy to explain why the Manchu rulers had received the Mandate of Heaven to rule China, while remaining ethnically Manchu.^[62]

Modern reinterpretations[link]

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."^[63]

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."^[64] 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."^[65] Wu says the 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.^[66]

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."^[67] 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."^[68]

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-.^[69] "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."^[16] 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'."^[70] Despite this semantic hypothesis, Chinese-English dictionaries regularly translate yemanren as "barbarian" or "barbarians."^[71] 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."^[72]

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."^[73] 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)"^[74]
• man 蛮 "barbarians of the South; barbarian, savage," "Southern barbarian"^[75]
• rong 戎 "weapons, armour; war, warrior; N. pr. of western tribes," "weapon; attack; war chariot; loan for tribes of the West"^[76]
• di 狄 "Northern Barbarians – "fire-dogs"," "name of a Northern tribe; low servant"^[77]

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,"^[78] 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."^[79]

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."^[15] 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."^[80]

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'."^[81]

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."^[82] 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."^[16]

Barbarian Puppet Drinking Game[link]

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.^[83]

Japanese culture[link]

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[link]

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 for 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).

Early Modern period[link]

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.^[84]

Modern academia[link]

A defeated Sarmatian barbarian serves as an atlas on a 16th century villa in Milan. Sculpted by Antonio Abbondio for Leone Leoni

A famous quote from anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss says: "The barbarian is the one who believes in barbary",^[85] a meaning like his metaphor in Race et histoire ("Race and history", UNESCO, 1952), that two cultures are like two different trains crossing each other: each one believes it has chosen the good direction. A broader analysis reveals that neither party "chooses" their direction, but that their "brutish" behaviors have formed out of necessity, being entirely dependent on and hooked to their surrounding geography and circumstances of birth.

Although some terms in academia do go out of style, such as "Dark Ages", the term Barbarian is in full common currency among all mainstream medieval scholars and is not out of style or outdated, though a disclaimer is often felt to be needed, as when Ralph W. Mathisen prefaces a discussion of barbarian bishops in Late Antiquity, "It should also be noted that the word "barbarian" will be used here as a convenient, nonpejorative term to refer to all the non-Latin and non-Greek speaking exterae gentes who dwelt around, and even eventually settled within, the Roman Empire during late antiquity".^[86]

The significance of barbarus in Late Antiquity has been specifically explored on several occasions.^[87]

Examples of this modern usage can also be seen in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, which has an article titled "Barbarians, the Invasions" and uses the term barbarian throughout its 13 volumes. A 2006 book by Yale historian Walter Goffart is called Barbarian Tides and uses barbarian throughout to refer to the larger pantheon of tribes that the Roman Empire encountered. Walter Pohl, a leading pan-European expert on ethnicity and Late Antiquity, published a 1997 book titled Kingdoms of the Empire: The Integration of Barbarians in Late Antiquity. The Encyclopædia Britannica and other general audience encyclopedias use the term barbarian throughout within the context of late antiquity.

In contrast to mainstream academic usage, some politically correct authors (like Christopher I. Beckwith noted above) argue that using the word "barbarian" is insulting, even in historical contexts. For example, the "Barbarian Invasions" of Europe are sometimes called the "Migration Period."

Modern popular culture[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Modern popular culture contains such fantasy barbarians as Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian.

In fantasy novels and role-playing games, barbarians or berserkers are often represented as lone warriors, very different from the vibrant cultures on which they are based. Several characteristics are commonly shared:

• Physical prowess and fighting skill combined with a fierce temper and a tolerance for pain
• An appetite for, and the ability to attract, the opposite gender thanks to animal magnetism
• Meat eating (this fits several social norms. Nomadic peoples and military men often ate more meat because they were not in one place long enough to farm and harvest)
• An appetite for alcohol and an unusual stamina to stave off its effects
• A blending of Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, and nomadic Turco-Mongol cultures

See also[link]

Look up barbarian in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.