Migration and Cultural Contact in the Emergence of Rus’-land, Sixth to Nineteenth Centuries
Dirk Hoerder
Migrations in the intercontinental macro-region have been studied as proto-Slavic early settlement; transit zone for Varangian-Arab trade and Byzantine-Kiev interactions; space of Mongolian intrusion a territorially integrated Muscovite state with rural populations immobilised serfs. This article integrates migrations from to neighbouring Scandinavian, East Roman, Steppe macro-regions up fifteenth century and, more briefly, sixteenth nineteenth centuries. In these poly-ethnic worlds, resident in-migrant cultural groups adapted frames intercultural contact, migration, hierarchies, processes power imposition exchange. An important facet is ‘small numbers-large impact’ character many before advance Mongol/Tatar armies. From century, elites new such traders colonisers moved east into Siberia’s societies attracted technical administrative personnel German-language societies. The traditional historiographical narrative, centred on an east-west perspective, expanded include north-south axes migration contact.
Journal of migration history