Authors: Christopher I. Beckwith
Tags: #History, #General, #Asia, #Europe, #Eastern, #Central Asia
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (74 page)
Many, perhaps all scholars who have written on Central Eurasians in Chinese sources, have at one time used the English word
barbarian
in connection with them, so no one needs to be blamed for such sins of the past.
98
Now the problems with it have been pointed out in print. The present explanation of why the term is not usable for histories based on Chinese sources is specific to that part of Eurasia, but the principle is the same for the rest of the world. James remarks, “Many historians in the last two centuries, oddly enough, have rather admired the clothed and uniformed Romans, whose idea of warfare emphasized discipline and ruthlessness, rather than the individual heroism of the Celtic warriors. It is more difficult in a post-colonial world with a post-fascist consciousness.”
99
Yet scholarly books continue to appear on
barbarians,
East and West.
The meaning and implications of the word
barbarian
are clear. Using it—even in scare quotes—to translate Chinese language words, more or less all of which are ultimately phonetic transcriptions of foreign names and not demonstrably pejorative in themselves, superimposes a powerful, uniquely European concept on the Chinese sources, giving the false impression that the Chinese had the same ideas about Central Eurasians as the Europeans did. Except for literal translations of Western texts that use the term or its etymological relatives, or direct quotations of European language sources or earlier scholars who use the word, it should no longer be used as a term by any writer.
The Fate of the Central Eurasians
What, then, happened to the peoples so many would call
barbarians?
They have in many cases not disappeared at all. A few of them have managed to preserve much of their traditional culture and life-style against the onslaught of the peripheral peoples and their cultures. Some have once again become independent and are energetically trying to rebuild their devastated countries. But many others are still ruled by oppressive foreign regimes and are slowly being driven to extinction. Their languages and cultures, and in some cases the people themselves, are seriously endangered.
The most prominent cases are the Tibetans of Tibet (and the many “autonomous” districts into which the Chinese have divided that country) and the Uighurs of East Turkistan. Both are labeled “minorities” by the Chinese, even though they are living in their own countries, where they suffer severe Chinese political, military, economic, demographic, linguistic, and cultural repression. Other peoples, smaller in population and less well known, are threatened even more immediately. The Turkic Tuvins of the Altai region and the Mongolic Kalmyks of the North Caucasus Steppe, among others such as the Evenkis of Siberia who remain under Russian rule, are so reduced in size and population, and so bereft of any real influence over their political destinies, that their cultures are seriously endangered as well.
The disastrous Manchu-Chinese and Russian conquest and partition of Central Eurasia has thus not been completely reversed, while Southern Central Asia (most of which is now in Afghanistan) has been ravaged for three decades by almost constant civil war connected to fundamentalism, the extreme form of Modernism that has taken hold in parts of the country.
It is quite possible that Central Eurasia will continue to be impoverished, and could become increasingly disenchanted and dangerous, unless the peripheral powers allow it to once again assume its rightful, historical place as the heartland of Eurasia.
1
For the background of the discussion of Chinese terminology in this chapter, see endnote
105
.
2
Di Cosmo (2002b: 4). The received view of Central Eurasians remains extremely pervasive. Practically all specialists and nonspecialists have expressed such views.
3
Di Cosmo (2002b: 7); see the preceding note.
4
Joseph Fletcher, quoted in Di Cosmo (2002a: 185).
5
James (2001: 19).
6
The pro-Roman bias is not necessarily true of all historians (e.g., Gibbon). Nevertheless, most classicists of recent times have tended to be anti-Christian (in that respect including Gibbon), but pro-Roman, at least in the sense of pro-Cicero.
7
On the pseudo-Hippocrates text, see the justly critical comments of Rolle (1989).
8
Taylor (2003), emphasis added.
9
Jones (1924: 242–245).
10
For criticism of Khazanov’s (1984) widely accepted view, see endnote
106
.
11
Di Cosmo (2002a: 168–171). He notes, “While it is true that much of the history of the relations between nomads and agriculturalists along the frontier is a history of raids and wars, both sides tended to incorporate parts of the other’s people, economic resources (such as land and livestock), or territory.” The region between the two was “neither purely nomadic nor purely sedentary but a combination of both.” Cf. similarly Psarras (1994: 5).
12
Cf. Tilly (1975, 1990) and Hui (2005).
13
Di Cosmo (2002a: 170) rightly notes that the existence of centers “of agricultural production and of other economic activities, including handicraft and trade” in nomadic Central Eurasian states themselves calls “into question the historical validity of theories based on the premise that Inner Asian empires were created by nomads for the purpose of forcing agriculturalists, by the sheer power of military force (or the threat of it), to surrender products the nomads needed or desired, namely, cereals and luxury products.” Di Cosmo’s arguments effectively disprove the theory.
14
Allsen (1989: 92) notes, “Li Chih-ch’ang
the chronicler of the travels of the Taoist master Ch’ang-ch’un
records … that when his party encountered coral merchants in the Hindukush, the Mongolian officers in his escort purchased their wares in a straight business transaction. No attempt was made to exact them by force.”
15
Maqdisî’s text (de Goeje 1877/1967: 325, line 3) has
al-raqîq
‘slave(s)’. This particular word implies ‘chattel slaves’ and is not used to refer to comitatus warriors, who would not be considered slaves in the English sense. A study of medieval Arabic terminology for unfree categories of people is a great desideratum; the many Arabic words for them (all of which are usually translated with the one English word ‘slave’) had different meanings in the context of medieval Islamic society.
16
Maqdisî’s text (de Goeje 1877/1967: 325, line 15) has
al-raqîq.
17
From Barthold’s (1977: 235–236) translation of Maqdisî (de Goeje 1967: 323–326); cf. Christian (1998: 320–321). Barthold notes that the fish teeth are evidently walrus tusks.
18
Barthold (1977: 237), citing Istakhrî (de Goeje 1870/1967: 305).
19
For further comments in this vein by Allsen, see endnote
107
.
20
Christian (2000: 2–3). The term Silk Road is already misleading enough. The plural form should be avoided even more because it emphasizes the misconception of Central Eurasia only being a system of trade routes. Similarly, Franck and Brownstone (1986: 7–9) talk about trade and other exchange between the steppe zone peoples and peoples in and along the “Silk Roads” and related “routes,” remarking that “the transverse routes were not just tacked onto the arterial routes. They were older than the arterial routes, and were always integral to the functioning of the Silk Roads.”
21
Alexander the Great’s army, for example, methodically executed all surviving men when they captured a city that had resisted them.
22
Di Cosmo (2002a: 170) rightly notes that there were “no large demarcations between nomads and sedentary peoples” in internal economy or political organization.
23
Barfield (1989: 133). The quoted passage was chosen purely at random. For another, see endnote
108
.
24
See the studies of Psarras (2003), Di Cosmo (2002a), and Noonan (1997). For a detailed examination of the economics of the trade in Turkic horses and Chinese silk in the early medieval period, see Beckwith (1991).
25
Located in the area of Inner Mongolia, which has been almost completely Sinified under Chinese communist rule.
26
Psarras (2003: 141 et seq.).
27
Psarras (2003: 141).
28
The reasons for Chinese aggression are manifold, but fairly consistent throughout Chinese history. “I have found that the Xiongnu merit the attention paid them since the Han, not because of any threat they posed to China, but because they were China’s equal. It is this equality which constituted the supposed menace to China” (Psarras 2003: 60).
29
The theory of Central Eurasian military superiority is followed by nearly everyone, including specialists (e.g., Drompp 2005: 11–12).
30
This is the modern name for the modern urban-agricultural Turkic Muslims of East Turkistan. Their language, Uighur (pronounced with an initial vowel
u
—[uy.yur]—not w, as in “[wi.gə]” or the like), and Uzbek are dialects of each other. In premodern times Uighur refers to a different Turkic language.
31
Barfield (1989), following Khazanov (1984), focuses on the idea that the Central Eurasian mode of life was based on “extortion” from the peripheral agricultural peoples. For more on this claim, see endnote
109
.
32
Psarras (2003: 300), citing Barfield (1989: 46–47).
33
That is,
ho-ch’in,
the usual peace treaty sealed by dynastic marriage.
34
Most Americans are actually poor, or at least not wealthy, but that does not stop even poorer people from wanting to emigrate to the United States in
hope
of a better life.
35
Yü (1986: 385). Some generals also undoubtedly fled to the Hsiung-nu to avoid execution by the Han government for losing battles, or for being on the losing side in court politics.
36
This would seem to supply the motive behind Chinese and Graeco-Roman officials’ proclamations about the superiority of their cultures to those of the non-Chinese and non-Graeco-Romans of Central Eurasia. The historical picture has been muddied because in China the government was run by Confucians who wrote the official accounts that are often our only historical sources. The Confucians maintained that they and other Chinese were superior beings who did not need to stoop to unsavory activities such as commerce. The Roman elite had exactly the same view of commerce. A merchant could not be a senator.
37
Wolfram (1988: 8).
38
HS
94b: 3803–3804. The very same concerns existed in the T’ang period, and certainly in less well-known periods as well. They have existed throughout the entire history of Chinese–Central Eurasian relations down to modern times.
39
The chief intention most of the builders had for constructing such walls was clearly to fortify and hold conquered territory and the subjects acquired along with it, as well as to keep the conquerors’ military, colonists, and other subjects within the borders (cf. Di Cosmo 2002a). They were thus primarily offensive, not defensive. In addition to those already mentioned, the Byzantines, Sasanid Persians, and Rus’ also built walls.
40
For example, Sinor (1990a), Barfield (1989), Drompp (2005). The received view is presented succinctly by Di Cosmo (2002b: 7): “Their raids were fairly serious threats to the security of the frontier, to trade and to settlement in peripheral areas—and could swell to critical proportions in the case of mass migrations.”
41
Before the battle in which the T’ang and their Uighur allies retook the western capital of Ch’ang-an, the T’ang gave the Uighurs “the right of plunder should the capital be retaken” (Mackerras 1972: 18–20). Because Loyang, the eastern capital, was still in rebel hands, the Chinese asked the Uighurs to postpone their reward until that city was retaken. The same reward obtained later when Loyang, which had been lost to the rebels once more, was again recaptured with Uighur help in 762. Mackerras’s sympathy for the Chinese and antipathy for the Uighurs reflects the emotions of the Chinese sources, but it is unjustifiable on the basis of the actual events, which we know about from those very same sources.
42
This is all remarkably clear in the summary of events provided in Mackerras’s (1972: 14 et seq.) introduction to his valuable translation of the T’ang official accounts on the Uighurs, despite the fact that it repeats the strong pro-Chinese and anti-Uighur sentiments found in the sources even when those sentiments are actually intended to be critical of Chinese behavior and attitudes (some are almost openly sympathetic to the Uighurs). A critical analysis of Mackerras’s text would provide excellent examples of virtually all the points discussed in this epilogue.
43
Peterson (1979: 467). These misconceptions, which are shared by most other historians of China, have been questioned very little, or not at all, in the literature.
44
Peterson (1979: 464–465).
45
This judgment by the T’ang Chinese is practically the same as that made by the Arabs from the early ninth century on with respect to Central Eurasians versus Arabs.
46
The aggression of the peripheral states against the Central Eurasians has been noted by others; cf. Golden (1987–1991, 1991).
47
Mote (1994: 622), whose treatment of Mongol history in China is, however, in general relatively balanced and sensitive to the sources.
48
For discussion of similar problems, see Di Cosmo (2002b: 5–7).
49
Although most cities in the nomad states were located outside the steppe zone proper, some did exist in the steppe zone itself—more in some areas and periods than in others—and some of them have been examined archaeologically. The best known of the latter is one of the Scythian cities, on which see Rolle (1989). See also note 58.
50
See the account of the Persian invasion of Scythia in
chapter 2
. Cf. Arreguín-Toft (2005).
51
This began very early in China. “The gradual encroachment of central states [i.e., Chinese] on the northern region, and their subjugation and incorporation of Di [Ti] and other frontier peoples, eventually brought China into direct contact with the nomads, primarily in the Ordos region” (Di Cosmo 1999: 950–951).
52
Köl Tigin (Kül Tigin) inscription, east face, line 7 (Tekin 1968: 233; for his translation, see 264).
53
The process is exactly paralleled by the Anglo-American conquest of North America and the seizing of Indian lands, q.v. Drinnon (1987).
54
Di Cosmo (2002a), Nagrodzka-Majchrzyk (1978).
55
Central Eurasian peoples were, however, quite interested in foreign foodstuffs and were willing to trade for them, as noted below. One of the main ways they used grain was for pasta, which they seem to have acquired a taste for through contact with Chinese. See Golden (1995).
56
Di Cosmo (2002a: 169–170) says, “Historical sources repeatedly indicate that nomadic raiding parties, sometimes as large as armies, carried away animals and people, not agricultural products.” On nomad “raids,” see endnote
110
.
