Until the collapse of the socialist system in Mongolia in 1990, Mongolian social sciences was fundamentally schematised in accordance with the prevailing political ideology of socialism, considering the country's history in the theoretical framework of historical materialism, the theory of socio-economic formation, and the feudalism model. Here, however, the author adopts a fresh approach and criticises the theoretical adaptation of the feudalism concept to nomadic culture while treating the history of Mongolia in view of the structural and developmental particularities of nomadic society. The book shows the economic conditions and everyday life of mobile livestock keeping, tribal and political-administrative organisation and the social strata of nomadic society during the 13th-19th centuries, demonstrating that development of nomadic societies in Central Asia cannot and should not be evaluated in accordance with European norms.

Nomads and Commissars: Mongolia Revisited, which was first published in 1962, provides a lively description of modern-day Mongolia, combined with historical material. Beginning with a geographical description, author Owen Lattimore narrates Mongolian history, both political and economic. He explains how and why Marxism succeeded in a country of nomads with almost no industry, capitalists, or middle class. His chapter on the revolution focuses on the partisan leaders, Sukebator and Choibalsang, and his account of Mongolia’s past and present relations with Russia and China is especially timely in view of the difficulties being experienced between those two countries. The author was a well-respected scholar, fluent in both Chinese and Mongolian, and was well-underwritten by some of the most famous institutions in the world, who sponsored his research and Central Asian travels. Lattimore’s books, such as Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1940), are authoritative, fascinating and give keen insights to the complex relationships in Central Asia, the political forces, the cultural variations of the divergent peoples and the geography. His works are a valuable resource for areas largely neglected at the time mostly because the area was closed for such a long time. Against the odds, Lattimore won his way into Mongolia and Central Asia and did his research while traveling in the most primitive areas by the traditional camel, donkey and yak cart. He talked to the people, understood their ways and culture. His record is a valuable insight into who and what transpired during the 1920s, right through to the 1940’s.

Since the first millennium BCE, nomads of the Eurasian steppe have played a key role in world history and the development of adjacent sedentary regions, especially China, India, the Middle East, and Eastern and Central Europe. Although their more settled neighbors often saw them as an ongoing threat and imminent danger—“barbarians,” in fact—their impact on sedentary cultures was far more complex than the raiding, pillaging, and devastation with which they have long been associated in the popular imagination. The nomads were also facilitators and catalysts of social, demographic, economic, and cultural change, and nomadic culture had a significant influence on that of sedentary Eurasian civilizations, especially in cases when the nomads conquered and ruled over them. Not simply passive conveyors of ideas, beliefs, technologies, and physical artifacts, nomads were frequently active contributors to the process of cultural exchange and change. Their active choices and initiatives helped set the cultural and intellectual agenda of the lands they ruled and beyond. This volume brings together a distinguished group of scholars from different disciplines and cultural specializations to explore how nomads played the role of “agents of cultural change.” The beginning chapters examine this phenomenon in both east and west Asia in ancient and early medieval times, while the bulk of the book is devoted to the far flung Mongol empire of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This comparative approach, encompassing both a lengthy time span and a vast region, enables a clearer understanding of the key role that Eurasian pastoral nomads played in the history of the Old World. It conveys a sense of the complex and engaging cultural dynamic that existed between nomads and their agricultural and urban neighbors, and highlights the non-military impact of nomadic culture on Eurasian history. Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change illuminates and complicates nomadic roles as active promoters of cultural exchange within a vast and varied region. It makes available important original scholarship on the new turn in the study of the Mongol empire and on relations between the nomadic and sedentary worlds.

The interaction between Eurasian pastoral nomads and the surrounding sedentary societies is a major theme in world history. This volume explores the mulitfarious nature of nomadic society and its relations with China, Russia and the Middle East from antiquity into the contemporary world with emphasis on the Mongol and Turkish peoples.

This book explores and contests both outsiders’ projections of Mongolia and the self-objectifying tropes Mongolians routinely deploy to represent their own country as a land of nomads. It speaks to the experiences of many societies and cultures that are routinely treated as exotic, romantic, primitive or otherwise different and Other in Euro-American imaginaries, and how these imaginaries are also internally produced by those societies themselves. The assumption that Mongolia is a nomadic nation is largely predicated upon Mongolia’s environmental and climatic conditions, which are understood to make Mongolia suitable for little else than pastoral nomadism. But to the contrary, the majority of Mongolians have been settled in and around cities and small population centers. Even Mongolians who are herders have long been unable to move freely in a smooth space, as dictated by the needs of their herds, and as they would as free-roaming "nomads." Instead, they have been subjected to various constraints across time that have significantly limited their movement. The book weaves threads from disparate branches of Mongolian studies to expose various visible and invisible constraints on population mobility in Mongolia from the Qing period to the post-socialist era. With its in-depth analysis of the complexities of the relationship between land rights, mobility, displacement, and the state, the book makes a valuable contribution to the fields of cultural geography, political geography, heritage and culture studies, as well as Eurasian and Inner-Asian Studies. Winner of the Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award (AAG, 2022)

This book describes nomadic life and culture in Mongolia depicting the patterns of the Ch'ing period (1644-1912), in which all the Mongols lived under the administration and control of the Chinese empire. It explains the patterns of the subsequent revolutionary period which altered the life of them.