Slavs in the Middle Ages between Idea and Reality

The book presents a new history of the Slavs during the Middle Ages. Based on in-depth source analysis, it describes on the one hand the ‘factual’ historical structures that can be discerned behind the phenomenon of ‘the Slavs’ – from the ‘early Slavic’ population groups and their first formations of power in the 7th to 9th centuries, through the Slavic-speaking realms and nationes of the 10th to 12th centuries, to the late medieval societies of the 13th to 15th centuries. On the other hand, it analyzes external Byzantine, Latin and Arabic perceptions, as well as ‘Slavic’ self-imagery, with which the Slavs have been conceptualized or imagined as a cultural construct since the 6th century. Mühle further demonstrates that these images were already being instrumentalized for historical-political purposes in various contexts and for different purposes in the Middle Ages.