SUMMARY:

Chapter 3 of the history course A New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia is titled “Consolidation of New Political Systems: State Building in Northern Eurasia, Eleventh–Twelfth Centuries.” It focuses on simultaneous developments in three regions of the continent. The Rous Land evolved into a loose commonwealth of principalities exploring different political strategies, and united just by a common religion, the language of high culture, and the legal norms. To the west, in the South Baltics, political self-organization of the Lithuanian land (a confederation of Slavic- and Baltic-speaking tribes) radically offset the existing balance of power. Lithuanians were drawn into the political system and culture of the Rous Land, gradually absorbing its western territories. The effect of Lithuanians’ raids against their pagan neighbors in the Baltic was the triggering of military colonization of the region by German pilgrims. Across the continent, the revolution of steppe politics by Genghis Khan brought about a new type of autochthonous polity built as an ultimate war machine. Both the emerging Mongol empire in the steppes and the rising Lithuanian “forest monarchy” succeeded in consolidating multicultural local populations, just as the Rous Land had done one or two centuries earlier.