The Mongols At China S Edge

This important study explores the multifaceted Mongol experience in China, past and present. Combining insights from anthropology, history, and postcolonial criticism, Uradyn Bulag avoids romanticizing Mongols either as pacified primitive Other or as gallant resistance fighters. Rather, he portrays them as a people whose communist background and standing in China's northern borderlands has informed their political efforts to harness or confront Chinese nationalistic and political hegemony. Breaking new ground in the study of Chinese and Mongol history and ethnicity, the author offers a fresh interpretation of China viewed from the perspective of its peripheries, and of minority nationalities in relation to the study of Chinese representation and minority self-representation. The author interrogates received wisdom about Chinese and minority nationalism by unraveling the Chinese discourse and practice of 'national unity.' He shows how the discourse was constructed over time through political rituals and sexuality in relation to Mongols and other non-Chinese peoples that hark back to Chinese-Xiongnu confrontations two millennia ago and Manchu conquest in the 17th and 18th centuries. Titular rulers of an autonomous region in which they constitute a minority, Mongols face enormous barriers in building and maintaining a socialist Mongolian nationality and a Mongolian language and culture. Acknowledging these difficulties, Bulag discusses a range of sensitive issues including the imbrication of nation, class, and ethnicity in the context of Mongol-Chinese relations, tensions inherent in writing a postrevolutionary history for a socialist nationality, and the moral dilemma of building a socialist model with Mongol characteristics. Charting the interface between a state-centered multinational Chinese polity and a primordial nationalist multiculturalism that aims to manage minority nationalities as 'cultures,' he explores Mongol ethnopolitical strategies to preserve their heritage.

The History was written in the 13th Century. It deals briefly with the ancestors and successor (Ögödei, reign 1228-1241) of Chinggis Khan and in more detail with the life of Chinggis Khan, who was founder of the Mongol Empire. The empire during Khubilai Khan's reign was expanded from Mongolia and China to the western edge of Russia. It was the most extensive empire ever established on horseback (about 700 years later, the British empire was built on ships). The History has been translated into many foreign languages: Hungarian, Turkish, Polish, Chinese, Russian, French, German, Japanese and English, but the integral text has never before been translated by a native Mongol scholar, using mainly the Mongolian sources to explicate the meaning of previous unknown words in it. As the translator and annotator says in his introduction, the History is the winners' history. The losers' version might well have been different. Chinggis Khan with his 129,000 Mongol cavalrymen never lost a battle. He was the best strategist the world has ever produced. In his article "Chingis Khan and the Mongol Conquest", the late Professor Owen Lattimore said "As a military genius, able to take over new techniques and improve them, Chingis stands above Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Caesar, Atilla and Napoleon" (See Scientific American, August 1963, p. 66).

Uradyn Bulag presents a unique study of what it means to be Mongolian today. Mongolian nationalism, emerging from a Soviet-dominated past and facing a Chinese-threatened future, has led its adherents to stress purity in an effort to curb the outside influences on Mongolian culture andidentity. This sort of nationalism views the Halh (the 'indigenous' Mongols) as 'pure' Mongols, and other Mongol groups as 'impure'. This Halh-centrism excites and exploits fears that Mongolia will be swallowed by China; it stands in opposition to pan-Mongolism, the view that links between Mongolsof all kinds should be strengthened. Bulag draws on an abundance of illuminating research findings to argue that Mongols are facing a choice between a purist, racialized nationalism, inherited from Soviet discourses of nationalism, and a more open, adaptive nationalism which accepts diversity,hybridity, and multiculturalism. He calls into question the idea of Mongolia as a homogeneous place and people, and urges that unity should be sought through acknowledgement of diversity.

Published in 1999. A common theme linking these papers is that of the interaction of élite and popular traditions, as found in the writings and folktales of Yuan and Ming China. The first studies focus on historical writings, not just as topics of intellectual and cultural history, but as foundations for understanding the sources of that time and seeing how earlier periods were viewed - for example, in the composition of the Liao, Chin and Sung histories at the Mongol-Yuan court in the 1340s. A second cluster examines a number of popular legends in which Mongol and Chinese elements can be seen to mix: the use of a bowshot in choosing a site, as in the story of the founding of Peking; the legends of the foundation of the Ming dynasty; or the image and fictionalisation of the great Ming statesman, Liu Chi.

Rise of the Mongols offers readers a selection of five important works that detail the rise of the Mongol Empire through Chinese eyes. Three of these works were written by officials of South China's Southern Song dynasty and two are from officials from North China writing in the service of the Mongol rulers. Together, these accounts offer a view of the early Mongol Empire very different not just from those of Muslim and Christian travelers and chroniclers, but also from the Mongol tradition embodied in The Secret History of Mongols. The five Chinese source texts (in English translation, each with their own preface): Selections from Random Notes from Court and Country since the Jianyan Years, vol.2, by Li Xinchuan"A Memorandum on the Mong-Tatars," by Zhao Gong"A Sketch of the Black Tatars," by Peng Daya and Xu Ting"Spirit-Path Stele for His Honor Yelü, Director of the Secretariat," by Song Zizhen"Notes on a Journey," by Zhang Dehui Also included are an introduction, index, bibliography, and appendices covering notes on the texts, tables and charts, and a glossary of Chinese and transcribed terms.

This introduction to Chinese society uses the themes of resistance & protest to explore the complexity of life in contemporary China. It draws on perspectives from sociology, anthropology, psychology, history & political science, & covers issues including women, labour, ethnic conflict & suicide.

Genghis Khan is one of history's immortals: a leader of genius, driven by an inspiring vision for peaceful world rule. Believing he was divinely protected, Genghis united warring clans to create a nation and then an empire that ran across much of Asia. Under his grandson, Kublai Khan, the vision evolved into a more complex religious ideology, justifying further expansion. Kublai doubled the empire's size until, in the late 13th century, he and the rest of Genghis’s ‘Golden Family’ controlled one fifth of the inhabited world. Along the way, he conquered all China, gave the nation the borders it has today, and then, finally, discovered the limits to growth. Genghis's dream of world rule turned out to be a fantasy. And yet, in terms of the sheer scale of the conquests, never has a vision and the character of one man had such an effect on the world. Charting the evolution of this vision, John Man provides a unique account of the Mongol Empire, from young Genghis to old Kublai, from a rejected teenager to the world’s most powerful emperor.

This fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of Mongolia covers the people and organizations that brought Mongolia from revolution and oppression to independence and democracy, and its current unprecedented level of national wealth and international growth. This is done through a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1,200 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Mongolia.