Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vsgnj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T04:17:34.929Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Where Did the Mongol Empire Go?

The Presences of a Eurasian Steppe-Nomadic Past

from Part I - The Imperial Past and Present in International Politics and IR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2023

By
Einar Wigen  and
Iver B. Neumann
Edited by
Klaus Schlichte  and
Stephan Stetter
Klaus Schlichte
Affiliation:
Universität Bremen
Stephan Stetter
Affiliation:
Universität der Bundeswehr München
Get access

Summary

Attempts to re-write recent world history as a long series of struggles against European imperialism are inherently self-defeating, for the effect is exactly what it is purportedly trying to avoid. By making struggle against Europe the sine qua non of the past two hundred years of overall human experience, such an approach privileges Europe, and so is by definition Eurocentric. Furthermore, it would be wrong to assume that only European imperial pasts are present in the contemporary international system. Other imperial systems have also left their marks on historical polities that are kept up by today’s polities. In this chapter, we discuss ho what we have elsewhere baptised the steppe tradition is still alive in parts of Central Asia. It has also left a solid legacy in Turkey, as well as remnants in Russia. The difference between these polities and European ones are often observed. The debt they owe to the Eurasian imperial steppe tradition takes us one step closer to accounting for these differences.

Keywords

steppeMongolsnomadsEurasialegacies
Type
Chapter
Information
The Historicity of International Politics
Imperialism and the Presence of the Past
 , pp. 123 - 137
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Albert, M., Brunkhorst, H., Neumann, I.B. & Stetter, S. (2023). The Social Evolution of World Politics, Bielefeld: transcript.Google Scholar
Allsen, T. T. (1987). Mongol Imperialism: The Politics of the Great Qan Möngke in China, Russia, and the Islamic Lands, 1251–1259, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Barfield, T. J. (1989). The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, Cambridge: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Barfield, T. J. (2010). Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Boeck, B. J. (2009). Imperial Boundaries: Cossack Communities and Empire-Building in the Age of Peter the Great, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Cosmo, N. (2002). Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, A. (1999). A Precarious Balance: Conflict, Trade and Diplomacy on the Russian-Ottoman Frontier, Istanbul: İsis Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, A. W. (1970). The Russian Annexation of the Crimea 1772–1783, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Golden, P. B. (1992). An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples, Wiesbaden: Otto Harassowitz.Google Scholar
Jordheim, H. & Neumann, I. B. (2011). Empire, Imperialism and Conceptual History, Journal of International Relations and Development, 14(2), 153–85.Google Scholar
Kasaba, R. (2009). A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants & Refugees, Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Khodarkovsky, M. (2004). Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Khazanov, A. (1994). Nomads and the Outside World. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Kotkin, S. (2007). “Mongol Commonwealth? Exchange and Governance across the Post-Mongol Space”. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 8(3), 487–531.Google Scholar
McNeill, W. (1964). Europe’s Steppe Frontier 1500–1800, Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, D. (1986). The Mongols, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Nexon, D. H. & Wright, T. (2007). What’s at Stake in the American Empire Debate, The American Political Science Review, 101(2), 253–71.Google Scholar
Pardesi, M. S. (2018). Mughal Hegemony and the Emergence of South Asia as a ‘Region’ for Regional Order-Building, European Journal of International Relations, 25(1), 276–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, J. C. (2009). The Art of Not Being Governed, New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sewell, W. H. (1996). “Historical Events as Transformations of Structures: Inventing Revolution at the Bastille”. Theory and Society, 25(6), 841–881.Google Scholar
Sverdrup-Thygeson, B. (2012). “A Neighbourless Empire? The Forgotten Diplomatic Tradition of Imperial China”, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 7(3) 245–267.Google Scholar
Wigen, E. (2019). O Brother, Where Art Thou? Kinship in Turkish Region-Building, in Haugevik, K. M. & Neumann, I. B. (eds.). Kinship in International Relations, 121–37, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zerjal, T. et al. (2003). The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols, American Journal of Human Genetics, 72(3), 717–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×