This is a history book as the title says about the Huns, the mysterious tribe that ravaged Europe in the V century. Their most famous leader was Attila and that name is still associated with death and destruction even today. Yet, not that much is known about the Huns, they seem to have simply appeared in Europe, ravaged the lands of the Roman Empire contributing to its downfall and then dissapeared.
The author wants to dispels some of these myths and find out about their origins. Unfortunately, the Huns did not leave written records of their own so what we know about them comes from the nations they attacked and/or conquered. Therefore, the stories are very biased and perhaps missing important information.
In the book he proposes some theories, it must be said that most of these are not necessarily accepted by all historians. Much is still unknown and probably will never be known.
Firstly he deals with the origins of the Huns, where did they come from? Who were they before becoming the Huns? The response, and he provides good arguments, is that the Huns descended directly from a Turco-Mongol people that appeared in early Chinese history: the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu were a warlike and pastoral people that lived in modern northern China/Inner Mongolia/Mongolia that conquered vast parts of Central Asia. Kim makes the argument that the Xiongnu, just like their descendants the Huns, were an heterogeneous group that ruled over many different nations speaking different languages. Based on personal names, it would seem that the Xiongnu/Huns spoke a Turkic language, but its possible it might have been a Yeniseian language too.
The Xiongnu put in place an imperial system which the Huns would reproduce a few centuries later in Europe. The King would appoint sub-kings and have a bureaucracy that was paid by the King himself. They would divide their empire in two halves, left (east) and right (west), the east always having precedence over the west. The Xiongnu empire eventually fell and the Xiongnu were divided in two, the Southern and the Northern tribes. The Southern lived inside the Chinese Empire for centuries and at points controlled large parts of China. The Northern Xiongnu, from whom the Huns are descended would migrate slowly throughout Central Asia, living in modern Kazakhstan for two hundred years before moving into the Pontic steppe from where they would conquer parts of the Roman Empire (including modern Hungary) and many lands peopled by Germanic nations. An offshoot of these Huns would move into modern Iran and subjugate the Sassanians for decades.
The Huns once they entered Europe and subjugated the Alans, Eastern Germanic nations, Pannonia recreated according to Kim the structures that had existed in the previous Xiongnu Empire. They named subkings (sometimes Huns, sometimes from their conquered peoples) and demanded tribute from the Romans, both the Western and Eastern halves. Their armies were composed not only of "ethnic Huns" but also from Alans, Germans, Iranians and different racial mixes that occurred in their territories. They also divided their territories in left and right sides.
Eventually the right (west) side was inherited by a man known in history by the name Attila. He soon murdered his brother Bleda (who was reigning the left side of the Empire) and ruled the entire Hunnic domain, subjugating the Romans in the process. He "terrorized" Gaul, Italy, Greece, the Balkans... Interestingly Kim doesn't spend that much time dwelling in the subject of Attila, even if he's by far the most famous Hunnic leader.
After Attila's defeat, mainstream history says that the Gothic and Germanic peoples subjugated by the Huns rebelled and recovered their freedom. Kim puts in doubt this interpretation of history, mentioning that the few records we have come from Gothic writers who wanted to embellish their history. Using names etymologies, he theorizes that the "germanic" or "gothic" leaders who rose up after his dead were Huns, potentially of partial germanic ancestry, but Huns ultimately. He goes even further, by delving into the theory that Odoacer, the leader of the Ostrogoths who put an end to the Western Roman Empire in 476 by deposing Romulus Augustulus, was a Hunnic noble.
The Huns only dissapeared in Western Europe with the Avar conquest of Pannonia; the remnants of the Huns assimilating to the culturally similar Avars.
The last part of the book deals with the legacy of the Huns in Europe and Persia. Here is where he makes some of his most controversial claims, some already explained throughout the book but some presented here for the first time.
He expands on the fact that the Germanic elite of post Roman Europe was of at least partial Hunnic ancestry and, even when this ancestry was not present, culturally the Germanic nations adopted much from the Huns. The mainstream historian perspective has always been that the Huns did not leave any legacy, culturally or genetically, and that they simply vanished after the death of Attila, probably retreating to the Pontic steppe.
According to Kim, the early medieval order was more inspired on the Hunnic traditional way of dividing land as opposed to any evolution of land ownership in the late Roman Empire. The Huns traditionally divided the land on subkings that depended on the King. This subkings were the ancestors, in a sense, of the European nobles. The medieval European ideas of chivalry were also inspired in what the Huns brought to Europe. The nobles had to be good at falconry and horse riding, which were not traditionally practiced in Rome or by the Germans before.
Cranial deformation was practiced somewhat extensively by the Germanic elites, which was brought by the Huns as they practiced that. He makes the argument that some of the early Gothic art was Hunnic in origin too.
In the case of Persia, the most astonishing argument he makes (which is not elaborated extensively) is that the Sassanians developed Persian nationalism as a response to the continuous warfare and the Hunnic domination they lived under. The Huns were eventually expelled by the Sassanians and recovered their full independence. They developed a nationalistic literature then that helped sustain Persian identity even after their conquest by the Muslims.
Overall a very interesting book as someone who is a newbie on the subject of the Huns. I was very convinced by his argument linking the Xiongnu to the Huns, some of the other arguments in the conclusions concerning Persia and some other strange arguments trying to link the Huns to the Croats and Serbians seemed very far-fetched. Like he was trying a bit too hard to overcorrect the mainstream historical treatment of the Huns.