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The Perilous
Frontier
Nomadic Empires and China
Thomas J. Barfield
Cambridge, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers
1989
Around 800 BC the Eurasian steppe underwent a profound cultural
transformation that was to shape world history for the next
2,500 years: the nomadic herdsmen of Inner Asia invented cavalry
which, with the use of the compound bow, gave them the means to
terrorize first their neighbors and ultimately, under Chinggis
Khan and his descendants, the whole of Asia and Europe. Why and
how they did so, and to what effect, are the
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themes of this history of the nomadic tribes of Inner Asia--the
Mongols, Turks, Hsiung-nu and others--collectively dubbed
Barbarians by the Chinese and Europeans.
The 2000 year history of the nomadic tribes is drawn from a wide
range of sources and told with unprecedented clarity and pace.
The author shows that to describe the tribes as barbaric is and
was then seriously to underestimate their complexity and
underlying social stability. He argues that the relationship
with the Chinese was as much symbiotic as parasitic, and that
they understood their dependence on a strong and settled Chinese
state. He makes sense of the apparently random rise and fall of
these mysterious, obscure and fascinating nomad confederacies.
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Table of
Contents
1. Introduction: The Steppe Nomadic World
2. The Steppe Tribes United: The Hsiung-nu Empire
3. The Collapse of Central Order: The Rise of Foreign Dynasties
4. The Turkish Empires and T'ang China
5. The Manchurian Candidates
6. The Mongol Empire
7. Steppe Wolves and Forest Tigers: The Ming, Mongols and
Manchus
8. The Last of the Nomad Empires: The Ch'ing Incorporation of
Mongolia
and Zungharia
9. Epilogue: On the Decline of the Mongols
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