Eurasian Studies Yearbook

During the years 2003 - 2006 Uppsala University and WSH published the Uppsala Yearbook of East European Law. For a number of reasons publication of the Yearbook was discontinued after the 2006 issue. We are happy and proud to be able to resume publication of the Yearbook, now with a broadened perspective. As the title, Uppsala Yearbook of Eurasian Studies, indicates the Yearbook now covers also other disciplines than law, in particular political science and economics. Given recent developments in the Eurasian region this enlarged focus is increasingly relevant and important.

In this first issue of the relaunched Yearbook we publish presentations made at a symposium devoted to Russia's membership in the WTO, a development of potentially great significance both to Russia and the rest of the world.

Relations between Inner Asian nomads and Chinese are a continuous theme throughout Chinese history. By investigating the formation of nomadic cultures, by analyzing the evolution of patterns of interaction along China's northern frontiers, and by exploring how this interaction was recorded in early Chinese historiography, this book explores the origins of the cultural and political tensions between these two civilizations through the first millennium BC. The main purpose of the book is to analyze ethnic, cultural, and political frontiers between nomads and Chinese in the historical contexts that led to their formation, and to look at cultural perceptions of 'others' as a function of the same historical process. Based on both archaeological and textual sources, this book also introduces a new methodological approach to Chinese frontier history, which combines extensive factual data with a careful scrutiny of the motives, methods, and general conception of history that informed the Chinese historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien.

This volume is a tribute to Professor Vovin’s research and a summary of the latest developments in his fields of expertise.