LL-L "History" 2011.05.12 (05) [EN-NL]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 12 May 2011 - Volume 05
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: History

Luc, you wrote:

Note that a couple of centuries later, Saxons (and Danes) will in turn take
the lead in the Wendish Crusade, trying to convert the Polabian Slavs:

[....]

>From victim to perpetrator, so to speak ;=)

True, and I'm not a Saxon apologist (and shouldn't be, if for no other
reason that my ancestry seems to be more Slavic than Saxon). However, here's
the nutshell version of the way I personally see things:

Once the Franks had beaten down the Saxons after many battles and
atrocities, the Saxons were not only under pressure to become (at least
nominally) Christians, but it probably also did not take terribly long for
Frankish propaganda and sheer scare tactics to take effect among many
Saxons, although Saxon uprisings in various locations continued for a long
time.

The Franks were clever in establishing "power points," namely centers from
which they, including their Saxon sycophants, could rule the Saxon region, a
tactic that they would later continued using in Slavic regions. These tended
to be religious centers doubling as trading posts. This way, clerics
doubling as administrators could oversee the land and continue to establish
Christianity, and at the same time the surrounding population became
dependent on the goods that could be traded there. Two early such centers in
the Saxon region were Bremen and Hamburg. Bremen was for a long time the
bishop's seat, while Hamburg (Hammaburg) served two main purposes: (1) a
trading post for Saxons and Franks with the Angles, Jutes and Danes to the
north and the Polabian Slavs just to the west, and (2) a launching pad for
Christianization of said peoples. However, this provoked those peoples to
continuously attack and ransack Hamburg, although it was supposed to be a
fortress. (Why barter for commodities when you could steal them and in the
process kill off a few of those pesky missionaries?) It was at times so
unsafe that Ansgar (the English-born bishop of Bremen and Hamburg who is
credited with having converted the Scandinavians as the "Apostle of the
North") moved back to relative safety in Bremen, closer to the Frankish
mother ship and farther away from the violent heathens.

Please bear in mind that about 250 or 300 years passed between Charlemagne's
Saxon Wars (772–804) and the massive colonization campaign into Slavic
(mostly Polabian, Pomeranian and Sorbian) lands. That's equivalent of a good
number of generations of gradually indoctrinated Saxons. Bear also in mind
that not only Saxons followed this call of "Go east, young man!"
(*N**â**ôstland wil ik vâren
*) but also many Frankish sub-ethnicities of what are now the Netherlands,
Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Ripuarian and Alemannic areas. (They would
later be joined by some Scots.)

Nevertheless, I can not help suspecting that Saxon resistance was not all
that easily and quickly killed off. Not only did Saxon uprisings continue,
as I mentioned above, but the fervor with which the Saxons built up their
international Hanseatic trading empire leads me to wonder if this was not at
least in part a way to compensate for the loss of political independence.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

P.S.: Below is a response from Olaf Bordasch

Olaf Bordasch <o.bordasch at planet.nl>

Beste Luc,

Hartelijk dank voor jouw reactie! Ron was zo vriendelijk en heeft
deze naar mij doorgestuurd.

Zover we weten, was het arianisme dat de Goten aanhingen minder
gewelddadig. Ook de Goten hebben waarschijnlijk het christendom onder
de germaanse stammen gepropageerd, maar in woorden en niet met vuur
en zwaard. De Goten hebben nooit de neiging vertoond om iedereen in
een alomvattend rijk of in een alomvattende kerk te willen integreren.

Nadat de Goten uitgeschakeld waren, was de weg voor de Franken vrij
en die hebben zonder enige remming gebruik van de gunstige situatie
gemaakt... De Franken hadden een ander staatkundig en cultureel model
- centralistisch, universalistisch zou ik willen zeggen - en dat
hebben ze met geweld in Europa verspreid.

Zonder de hegenomie van de Franken en hun cultureel model zou de
Europese geschiedenis waarschijnlijk in volstrekt andere banen
verlopen zijn die we niet voorspellen kunnen. Meer probeerde ik niet
te zeggen.

Olaf

P.S.: Je hebt trouwens gelijk. De Saksen hebben later bij alle
misdaden vrolijk meegedaan.


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