The contingencies of state formation in eastern Inner Asia.(Report)

ABSTRACT

Three key themes consistently play a role in the study of early state formation in eastern Inner Asia. First, scholars have frequently argued that China exerted a disproportionately strong influence on steppe polities, serving as a source of goods and ideas for neighboring pastoralist societies. Although Chinese states did very significantly influence steppe polities, interactions were complex and highly variable. Rather than being dominated by Chinese states, exchanges and interactions were often on a level of parity or were under the control of the steppe polities. It is frequently argued that the fragility of the pastoralist economy required steppe polities to acquire agricultural products, which in turn fostered a dependency on agricultural societies in the south. New evidence, however, suggests that the traditional distinction between pastoralist and agriculturalist economies may be insufficient to characterize the complex sets of interactions. Second, steppe polities are often described as short-lived entities that succeeded each other in rapid succession. This description deemphasizes the economic and cultural continuity that transcended the rise and fall of individual political entities. The third theme concerns the construction and maintenance of order. How, in other words, did rulers legitimate their power and maintain political and organizational control of populations and territories? Most interpretations argue that steppe polities looked to neighboring states for the cultural knowledge that allowed them to create and maintain order. That knowledge, however, came from multiple sources--especially the internal traditions that linked successive steppe polities. Keywords: state formation, empires, Inner Asia, social theory, power relations.

INTRODUCTION

THE STEPPES, DESERTS, AND MOUNTAINS OF EASTERN INNER ASIA provide the backdrop for the rise and expansion of a complex series of states and empires. The polities that originated in the expansive territory encompassing northern China, Mongolia, and surrounding regions of Siberia and eastern Kazakhstan often played a central role in Asian and world history. In the analysis of the origins and development of these early states and empires, several long-standing points of articulation continue to define the differences between prominent theories of political and cultural changes in Inner Asia. This article identifies several key issues and evaluates the nature of existing evidence for each within the context of general theories of state and empire formation.

Recent research on the formation of early states and empires raises several critical issues relevant for eastern Inner Asia (Alcock et al. 2001; Baines and Yoffee 1998; Bondarenko and Korotayev 2000; Claessen and Oosten 1996; Richards and Van Buren 2000; Stein 1998). Although these studies concern diverse regions of the world, all place considerable emphasis on both the internal and external workings of societies to explain large-scale changes. At the same time, the contingencies of history are not treated as a mere chronicle of change but as an active agent connected to shifts in ideas, values, and social outcomes. The overall result is an approach that rests on an increasingly dynamic interplay of factors, some of which are dependent on the decisions made by individual actors and others by the convergence of particular historical trajectories, economic capabilities, and environmental constraints. In the various analyses, however, emphasis on particular factors often depends as much on specific intellectual traditions as on the availability of evidence.

Among studies concerned with early states and empires in eastern Inner Asia, three key themes repeatedly emerge. First, interaction with China in what is typically described as an insider/outsider relationship, with the Inner Asian polities assuming the peripheral role (cf. Di Cosmo 2002:2-3); second, continuity and discontinuity, or the causes for the apparently cyclical or short-lived existence of a succession of polities (cf. Lattimore 1940:529); and third, the internal organizational coherence of the steppe polities themselves. Each theme is fundamentally intertwined in the interpretation of Inner Asian history but also embodies issues common to the general study of state and empire formation.

To contextualize the argument presented here, it is necessary to mention some basic criteria for what constitutes both states and empires. There are many definitions for both of these terms (Johnson and Earle 1987:246; Sinopoli 2001:444, 447). In the past, debates surrounding issues of definition have often sidetracked analysis more directly related to problem-oriented interpretations. In this study, I use generalized definitions for both state and empire. A state is any political entity in which authority is relatively centralized and hierarchical, and one in which control extends over a prescribed population and territory. States have one or more population centers, often called towns or cities, and individuals living in a state recognize it as politically independent of other such entities. Empires are states developed through expansion to incorporate other states, polities, and regions, resulting in larger territories with increasingly diverse populations. These descriptions may be fuzzy at the margins; however, the focus here is on exploring social trajectories, not through definition of formal traits, but through analysis of the scope and novel combination of diverse sources of power and opportunity.

THE INTERPRETATION OF INNER ASIAN POLITIES

Diverse styles of scholarship have produced fundamentally different interpretations of the steppe polities. Particularly significant in traditional interpretations has been a Marxist perspective in which the pastoral nomads--considered the basis for all Inner Asian states--passed through distinct stages from primitive communism to patriarchal society, feudalism, and eventually socialism, with the rise of the modern state in the twentieth century (e.g., Potapov 1955:17). Other perspectives have been less explicitly Marxist but have routinely implicitly assumed stages of social evolutionary development. Other more restricted developmental models have focused on pastoralism, such as Pletneva's (1982:145) three phases of pastoralist mobilization: pure nomadism, seminomadism, and sedentism. Recent research offers several revisions to this argument, especially concerning the lack of evidence for European-style feudalism as applied to pastoralists of the era of the Mongol Empire (Bold 2001:24; Gellner 1994:xi; Kradin 2002).

Other significant approaches include models of cultural change over time derived from the documentary sources. These theories tend to emphasize a "historical causality" emerging from a unique series of events (Schortman and Urban 1992:5). As in many other regions of the world, the history of eastern Inner Asian states is typically described as a relatively rapid and repeated replacement of political entities, most of which are known primarily from early documents. The sources tend to focus on the activities of the royal lineages, the conduct of war, and the expansion or contraction of polities, while many other issues are addressed in far less detail because they are simply considered unimportant to the overall interpretation.

The early documentary sources for Inner Asia certainly serve to mold interpretations, but they do not determine the potential for revision. Di Cosmo (1999:4), for instance, notes that some historians taking a comparative world history perspective tend to assign particular roles to the steppe empires, namely as facilitators of interaction and trade between widely separated sedentary civilizations. In this way, the empires established by pastoralists served as catalysts--significant but only intermediary to more fundamental processes taking place elsewhere. Beyond this role they are relegated to a peripheral significance, as events occurring in the great centers of civilization in the Near East, China, and Europe received the greater share of attention (e.g., Chaliand 2004:xi). In this secondary role, the steppe empires are compared more in terms of their similarities than their differences and are treated as relatively homogeneous phenomena. Among the attributes often assigned to steppe polities is the "inability to spread indigenous cultural traditions and their adoption of, or assimilation by, the cultures they encountered in their conquests" (Di Cosmo 1999:4). Such an orientation essentially downplays the influence, potential, and even the organizational integrity of the steppe polities. Although, for instance, the Mongol expansion of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is viewed as a watershed in Asian history, analysis of the continuities and discontinuities of regional dynamics is still unfinished business.

Historians working in the region have pieced together detailed treatments of some early polities that can serve as the basis for interpretation of some of the key processes. In the case of the steppe polities, there are a number of named political entities, and although this study is concerned with the rise of states, the focus is primarily on the time after the emergence of the first major political consolidation. Given the complexities of Inner Asian history, the details of any such list is subject to debate. However, the purpose here is not to provide a definitive summary but instead to alert the reader to key names and approximate dates for the rise and decline of prominent polities described in more detail elsewhere in the literature (Barfield 1989, 2001:23; Idshinnorov et al. 2000; Jagchid and Symons 1989). For the study of early state formation and the emergence of empires, the sequence begins with the Xiongnu, which also had the expansionistic attributes of an empire (c. 200 B.C.-A.D. 155). The Xiongnu state is the first significant consolidation of nomadic pastoralists to which the already existing states in China were forced to react (Barfield 2001:23; Christian 1998:183; Watson 1961; Yamada 1982). Following the Xiongnu, the largest centralized polities in Mongolia, in chronological order, were the Xianbei (A.D. 155-235), Toba-Wei (A.D. 386-581), Jujan (A.D. 380-555), First Turk (A.D. 552-630), Second Turk (A.D. 683-744), Uighur (A.D. 745-840), Khitan (A.D. 907-1125), Mongol (A.D. 1206-1368), and Zunghar (A.D. 1625-1757). While some of these entities are known archaeologically from several sites, others are known almost entirely from written records.

INTERACTIONS WITH CHINA

The first theme--China's relationship to the steppe polities--is an issue of central concern and is part of the historical backdrop for consideration of the other themes. It is also an issue with general significance, considering that regional interaction is a routine factor in each instance of state formation. Extensive research leaves no question that states originating in China exerted powerful influences throughout much of Asia. This observation is not disputed, although significantly different interpretations exist over China's actual role in the reformulation of the steppe polities, especially following the rise of the Xiongnu state around 200 B.C. (Barfield 2001; Di Cosmo 2002; Jagchid and Symons 1989).

The central issue that guides most interpretations of China's interaction with the steppe peoples is the contention that the pastoral nomads needed the products of the settled societies to the south, especially agricultural products and a wide variety of high-value or luxury goods (Barfield 1989:8; Pritsak 1981:15-17). An enduring impression has emerged that China, by contrast, had little interest in the products of the steppe regions, as evidenced by its long history of building walls between the two regions (Lattimore 1976:481). The reasons for building walls may have been defensive, but a rejection of economic exchange should not be assumed. Although the simplistic duality is not borne out in recent research, an economic and environmental contrast still forms the foundations of most interpretive models of China-steppe interactions. The perceived instability of steppe environments, in particular, and the consequently narrow economic base of the nomads are cited as the reasons for lack of economic and cultural parity (Krader 1978:104). This is the well-known dichotomy of the "steppe and the sown" that has guided interpretations for decades. In either traditional historiography or in culture developmental models, interpretations are heavily influenced by this dichotomy. In the case of Inner Asia, the distinction is implied in writings going back as far as the Zhou dynasty (1050-256 B.C.), in which Chinese authors speak of peoples to the north in less than flattering ways (Li 1973, vol. 1:209). This often-repeated Chinese view of northern peoples became an enduring stereotype, with ongoing significance in current …