Patrick J. Geary

"Much of the objection against Western Civ. is Whiggish Western Civ. - the glorious progress of Western civilization against Asiatic barbarism. I think that that is dead, except as a rhetorical device. The important issue is that, for good and for ill, the world in every corner has been very, very profoundly affected and transformed by certain kinds of cultural attitudes and institutions, which need to be understood, and which developed in, and then out, of western Eurasia. Whether one likes them or not, we have to understand them. If the largest country in the world, China, adopts a philosophy which is at least theoretically developed by a German Jew in the nineteenth century... (1998)"

"The second model of ethnogenesis drew on Central Asian steppe peoples for the charismatic leadership and organization necessary to create a people from a diverse following. . . . these polyethnic confederations were if anything more inclusive than the first model [in which ethnic formation followed the identity of a leading or royal family], being able to draw together groups which maintained much of their traditional linguistic, cultural, and even political organization under the generalship of a small body of steppe commanders. The economic bases of these confederations was semi-nomadic rather than sedentary. Territory and distance played little role in defining their boundaries, although elements of the confederation might practice traditional forms of agriculture and social organization quite different from those of the steppe leadership."

"For most of the Goths defeated by the Huns, entering the confederation was an obvious choice . Although a Hunnic core of Central Asians provided central leadership to the Hunnic armies, the peoples they conquered were assimilated with ease . Good warriors, whether of Gothic, Vandal, Frankish, or even Roman origins, could rise rapidly within the Hunnic hierarchy Even among the central leadership, this polyethnicity was obvious. The Hunnic leader Edika was simultaneously a Hun and a Scirian, and ruled the short-lived Scirian kingdom as king. The greatest of the Hunnic leaders, Attila, bore a Gothic name (or title): Attila means "little father:" Gothic, Greek, and Latin were used alongside Hunnic in his court, and among his advisers were not only leaders of various barbarian peoples but even former Greek merchants. For a time the Italian aristocrat Orestes, father of the last Roman emperor in the west, Romulus Augustulus, served the Hunnic king."

"As Frankish, Longobard, Anglo-Saxon, and Visigothic kingdoms assimilated surviving Roman political and cultural traditions, they became the center of post-Roman Europe, while new barbarian peoples, most notably the Saxons, Slavs, and Avars, replaced them on the periphery, Ethnic labels remained significant designations within the Romano-barbarian kingdoms, but they designated multiple and at times even contradictory aspects of social and political identity"

"Modern history was born in the nineteenth century, conceived and developed as an instrument of European nationalism. As a tool of nationalist ideology, the history of Europe's nations was a great success, but it has turned our understanding of the past into a toxic waste dump, filled with the poison of ethnic nationalism, and the poison has seeped deep into popular consciousness."

"The peoples of Europe are a work in progress and always must be... The history of the people of Europe has not ended -- it never will. Ethnogenesis is a process of the present and future as much as it is the past. No efforts of romantics, politicians, or social scientists can preserve once and for all some essential soul of a people or nation. Nor can any effort ensure that nations, ethnic groups, and communities of today will not vanish utterly in the future. The past may have set the parameters within which one can build the future, but it cannot determine what that future must be."