Page 255 - Encyclopedia Of World History

eastern europe 605

the European promontories to Eurasia, Eastern Europe garia) had populations under twenty-five thousand until
was the path of migration for Germanic and Hunnic the early twentieth century.At that time, population den-
tribes in the fourth and fifth centuries CE; Bulgars and sity across much of Eastern Europe was still less than 100
Slavs in the seventh and eighth; Magyars in the ninth; people per square kilometer. In most areas south of the
and Germans and Jews, migrating eastward, in the Danube, it was less than 50 people per square kilometer.
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the Middle Ages, Marked increases in population and urbanization did not
major overland trade routes crossed Eastern Europe, occur until after 1950.
connecting the German and Italian states with Constan- Other demographic indices further illustrate Eastern
tinople and the Baltic Sea. And the region has been dev- Europe’s standing as a marchland.The British demogra-
astated by the epic conflicts of western Eurasia, from the pher John Hajnal has drawn a line demarking the “Euro-
ravaging of Attila in the fifth century to the Nazi–Soviet pean Marriage Pattern” through Eastern Europe, from St.
campaign in the twentieth. Petersburg toTrieste.To the west of that line, Hajnal and
The lands of Eastern Europe have offered a variety of others have observed, medieval Europeans married later
natural resources. The plains of Poland, Hungary, and than people in most other world regions (the average age
Ukraine are areas of abundant agricultural production, of first marriage was in the mid-twenties, while some 10
supplying grain for centuries to Western Europe, Con- to 20 percent of people remained single) and established
stantinople/Istanbul, and Moscow. During the medieval single-family households.To the east of that line, and in
centuries, mining was an important activity throughout most areas of the world, marriage was nearly universal,
the region, with gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, and salt couples married at a young age (late teens to early twen-
extracted from the mountains of the Czech lands, Slova- ties), and multifamily households were organized along
kia, Transylvania, Bosnia, and Serbia. In the nineteenth patrilinear lines. In the lands that Hajnal’s line crosses
and twentieth centuries, coalfields were mined in the (the Baltics, Poland, the Czech lands and Slovakia, Hun-
Czech lands, Poland, and Ukraine, and oil and gas de- gary, Slovenia, and Croatia), patterns of medieval mar-
posits were tapped in Romania and Ukraine. riage and household composition followed both western
Although some of these mineral and agricultural and eastern models.
resources were processed and consumed within the This same line also serves as a boundary in mapping
region, for the most part Eastern Europe has produced indices of economic and social modernization: in the
raw materials for neighboring states. A principal reason mid- to late 1800s, levels of gross domestic product
for this disparity in consumption was the low population (GDP), industrial output, and density of rail lines were far
density in Eastern Europe. In the eleventh century, the higher to the west of the line; by the 1930s, there was
estimated population density of Italy was 24 people per also a large disparity in literacy rates and infant mortal-
square kilometer, and in France, 16 people per square ity. As with Hajnal’s mapping of the European Marriage
kilometer. In the Czech lands, in contrast, population Pattern, areas of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, and
density was only 7.8 people per square kilometer; in Croatia were a transitional zone. In terms of demo-
Poland, 5 people per square kilometer. By the late Mid- graphic and economic measures, the Czech lands in the
dle Ages, when cities were emerging as economic and cul- 1930s were most like Western Europe: the literacy rate
tural centers in Western Europe, only a handful of cities was 96 percent, over half the population lived in urban
in Eastern Europe had populations over ten thousand: areas and was engaged in industrial or commercial activ-
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Prague, Wroclaw/Breslau, Gdansk/Danzig, Krakow, ity. Furthest removed from West European indices were
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Kiev, and Smolensk. Contemporary capitals such as Bulgaria, Albania, and the southern regions of Yugo-
Ljubljana (Slovenia), Zagreb (Croatia), and Sofia (Bul- slavia. In Albania, in the 1930s, only 12 percent of the