Barbarian
Barbarian was originally a Greek term applied to any foreigner, one not sharing a recognized culture or language with the speaker or writer employing the term. The word expressed with mocking duplication ("bar-bar") alleged attempts by outsiders to speak a "real" language. A "barbarism" in language, especially Greek or Latin, is a misformed word, such as a solecism or a malapropism. Related terms are barbaric and barbarous.
Barbarian is used in its Hellenic sense by 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). The word is not used in these scriptures in the modern sense of "savage".
Historically, the term has seen widespread use. Many peoples have dismissed alien cultures and even rival civilizations as "barbarians" because they were unrecognizably strange. The Greeks admired Scythian and Eastern Gauls as heroic individuals, but considered their culture to be barbaric. The Romans indiscriminately regarded the various Germanic tribes, the settled Gauls, and the raiding Huns as barbarians all.
The Chinese (Han Chinese) of the Chinese Empire regarded the Xiongnu, Tatars, Turks, Mongols, Jurchen, Manchu, and Europeans as barbaric. The Chinese used different terms for barbarians from different directions of the compass. Those in the east were called Dongyi (东夷), those in the west were called Xirong (西戎), those in the south were called Nanman (南蛮), and those in the north were called Beidi (北狄).
The Japanese adopted the Chinese usage. 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.
Converted barbarians have historically proved sometimes the staunchest supporters of the more developed culture they have recently subverted. Historic examples are the Lombards and the Manchu. "The best Romans," wrote Henry James, "are often northern barbarians."
Often today, barbarian is used to mean someone violent, primitive, uncouth or uncivilized in general. See also Philistine.
A non-pejorative, simply functional concept of "barbarian", as sociologists have redefined the term, depends upon a carefully-defined use of "civilization", denoting a settled, urban way of life that is organized on principles broader than the extended family or tribe, in which surpluses of necessities can be stored and redistributed and division of labor produces some luxury goods (even if only for gods and kings). The barbarian is technically a social parasite on civilization, who depends on settlements as a source of slaves, surpluses and portable luxuries: booty, loot and plunder.
Rich, deep authentic human culture exists even without civilization, as the German writers of the early Romantic generation first defined the opposing terms, though they used them as polarities in a way that a modern writer might not. "Culture" should not simply connote "civilization".
The culture of the nomad is not to be confused with the barbarian, either. The nomad subsists on the products of his flocks, and follows their needs. The nomad may barter for necessities, like metalwork, but does not depend on civilization for plunder, as the barbarian does.
In fantasy novels and role-playing games, barbarians (or berserkers) are depicted as brave uncivilized warriors, often able to attack with a crazed fury. Conan the Barbarian is best known among these. The modern sympathetic admiration for such fantasy barbarians is a direct descendant of the Enlightenment idealization of the "Noble Savage".
See also
- List of words meaning outsider, foreigner or "not one of us"
- Barbarian kings of Italy: in fact merely a list of the highly civilized Ostrogothic rulers, who avoided the term "king".
- Michael Wall's 1989 play Amongst Barbarians
- Conan the Barbarian
Compare
- Oriental, another word for an alien outsider, now also with pejorative connotations.
Further reading
- Hall, E. (1989) Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (Oxford/New york)
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Comments
This is an unfinished work in progress.—Jennifer Tanabe 18:37, 23 Sep 2005 (CDT)
