1. George Trevelyan “Let the science and research of the historian find the fact and let his imagination and art make clear its significance." E. Napp

2. “I NNER E URASIA A S A U NIT O F W ORLD H ISTORY ” Title: “Inner Eurasia as a Unit of World History” Written by David Christian Published by Journal of World History, Vol. 5, No. 2 Copyright 1994 by University of Hawaii Press E. Napp

3. R EFLECTIONS Ultimately, to read is to think And for every reader, there is a different perspective What follows is a selection of passages that captured this humble reader’s attention E. Napp

4. “I NNER E URASIA ” A S O NE O F T HE B ASIC U NITS O F E URASIAN A ND W ORLD H ISTORY Ever since history emerged as a distinct discipline in nineteenth-century Europe, most historians have treated the national state as their main unit of analysis This is hardly surprising, for history emerged as a scholarly discipline in a period of violent national building But the trouble is that the national state is a recent, and often artificial, creation E. Napp

5. All too many national states have been assembled mechanically from loose groupings of tribes, peoples, religions, and lifeways As a unit of analysis, the national state assumes that ethnicity, language, culture, and politics normally coincide Yet this is rarely true E. Napp

6. Empires, such as the Mongol or Soviet empires, or those of Kievan Rus’ or the Scythians, provide convenient units, but only for limited historical periods Recently, historians have taken up a much larger category: the world-system Immanuel Wallerstein first introduced the concept in 1974 He argued that since 1500 a system of interacting polities and economies had emerged that was more important than the sum of its parts E. Napp

7. Any regional unit of analysis must now take this larger unit into account and seek a place within it As a large regional unit of analysis, Inner Eurasia is based mainly on geography It is contrasted in its history with that of Outer Eurasia, which includes the rest of the Eurasian landmass Inner Eurasia includes the lands ruled by the Soviet Union in 1990, together with Mongolia More hesitantly, it would also include parts of China’s most western region, the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang Along the southern rim of Inner Eurasia, mountains form a natural border E. Napp

8. Within these borders has existed an immense variety of climates, landscapes, lifeways, languages, and religions The most striking of these divisions is that between the forests of the north and the steppes and deserts to the south Yet despite these geographical differences, the Paleolithic of Inner Eurasia was dominated by hunting rather than gathering, its Neolithic by pastoralism rather than farming, the era of state formation by pastoral nomadism rather than irrigation agriculture E. Napp

9. Inner Eurasia has experienced the repeated appearance of huge, if fragile, empires Of the three largest empires ever created, two, the Mongol empire and the Russian empire (respectively the second and third largest), both emerged in Inner Eurasia The geography and ecology of the region suggest why this should be so The region is dominated by the largest unified area of flatlands in the world The ancient habit of treating the Ural Mountains as a border between Europe and Asia has long obscured this point Yet the Urals offer no serious barrier to movement E. Napp

10. Topographically, Inner Eurasia is therefore different from Outer Eurasia, which geography has divided into distinct regions, separated by seas or mountain chains The flatness of most of Inner Eurasia had great military and political significance Successful armies met no serious barriers until they reached the western, southern, or eastern borderlands of Inner Eurasia The absence of major barriers to military expansion makes Inner Eurasia a natural unit of military history and hence of political history as well E. Napp

11. Interiority condemns Inner Eurasia to aridity and to great seasonal fluctuations in temperature Inner Eurasia is also northerly Northern latitudes mean colder climates and less sunlight, with less photosynthesis and shorter growing seasons And because Inner Eurasia is flat, it lacks the broken topography that helps moderate the climates of Outer Eurasia These factors reduced the natural productivity of much of Inner Eurasia E. Napp

12. The most striking consequence of Inner Eurasia’s relatively low ecological productivity has been demographic Even today, Inner Eurasia is a region of lower average population density than Outer Eurasia Yet despite everything – Inner Eurasia has played a pivotal role in Eurasian and world history It has done so because of its geographical position at the center of the Eurasian landmass Indeed before the sixteenth century, the main links between Outer Eurasia passed through the southern borderlands of Inner Eurasia, along the routes known as the “silk roads” E. Napp

13. If the history of the Eurasian landmass has coherence, it arises because genes, commodities, ideas, and diseases have all traveled through the Inner Eurasian borderlands Exchanges occurred most freely during those periods when empires controlled large areas of Inner Eurasia Some of these empires, such as Han China or Achaemenid Persia, originated in Outer Eurasia However, Outer Eurasian empires never achieved a firm grip over the communication routes of Inner Eurasia, because they lacked the special skills needed to adapt to the difficult terrain of Inner Eurasia Trade flourished when Inner Eurasian empires emerged that were capable of protecting large stretches of the silk roads E. Napp

14. This allowed societies of Inner Eurasia to have a profound impact on the history of Outer Eurasia As a result, the political history of Inner Eurasia shaped the rhythms not just of Inner Eurasia but of the entire Eurasian world-system The Türk empire of the sixth century C.E. linked eastern and western Eurasia for a second time Though the original empire fragmented rapidly, successor states continued to protect the main trans- Eurasian trade routes As a result, the Türk empire recreated for a while the Eurasian world-system of the classical era E. Napp

15. The Mongol empire of the thirteenth century played a similar role It provided such effective protection for the major trade routes across Eurasia that it created a single economic, cultural, and epidemiological world-system This in turn contributed to the economic and cultural expansion of the Middle Ages E. Napp

16. In Inner Eurasia, however, low ecological productivity combined with proximity to the more productive societies of Outer Eurasia forced societies to concentrate and mobilize scarce resources to an exceptional degree This distinguishes their history from that of Outer Eurasia E. Napp

17. A P ERIODIZATION O F I NNER E URASIAN H ISTORY The history of Inner Eurasia was dominated by a series of distinctive adaptations to low ecological productivity Five dominant adaptations have shaped the region’s history: hunting, pastoralism, pastoral nomadism, agrarian autocracy, and the command economy of the USSR E. Napp

18. Serious colonization of Inner Eurasia began only during the last Ice Age, within the past 100,000 years So, why did early hominids find it so difficult to colonize Inner Eurasia? Hominids evolved in the tropics and semitropics Hominids had to learn how to exploit the food energy of the steppes indirectly, by living off other animals that could eat grass And the Inner Eurasian steppes supported large herds of herbivores that concentrated the sparse food energy of the grasslands in their bodies E. Napp

19. Meat-eaters had to spread themselves more thinly than plant-eaters Small, scattered populations found it more difficult to stay in contact and to intermarry with neighboring bands This increased the danger that entire populations would die out through accidents or diseases Ultimately, developing reliable subsistence strategies based on hunting was extremely difficult E. Napp

20. The human history of Inner Eurasia really begins about 100,000 B.P. (Before Present or before the generally accepted date of 1950), with the arrival of the species that physical anthropologists describe as Homo sapiens Neanderthalis Still hunting techniques remained unspecialized and opportunistic Neanderthals probably scavenged for dead animals, brought down sick or old animals, or captured young animals But their hunting methods were just reliable enough to sustain the first durable societies of Inner Eurasia Yet as time passed, hunting became more systematic and more specialized, especially during the Upper Paleolithic period E. Napp

21. Improved techniques of hunting permitted the occupation of the even harsher environments of northern Inner Eurasia, including the far northeast. From here, toward the end of the last Ice Age, humans crossed frozen Beringia and entered the Americas, taking with them the specialized adaptations of their Inner Eurasian homeland E. Napp

22. The change to the upper Paleolithic coincides with the arrival in Inner Eurasia of our own species of hominid – Homo sapiens sapiens Nevertheless, the basic ecological rules of this region remained the same Scarcity forced the early populations of Inner Eurasia to lean toward the “hunting” rather than the “gathering” This pushed them higher up the food chain, which ensured that populations would remain small E. Napp

23. By the time of the Neolithic Revolution, different forms of it developed in Inner and Outer Eurasia Agriculture probably did not evolve independently in Inner Eurasia The early Neolithic societies of Inner Eurasia occupied either fertile river valleys in southern Central Asia or parts of the wooded steppe of Ukraine (ca. 6000 B.C.E.) But technologies of the Neolithic, like those of the Paleolithic, offered a choice between plant foods and animal foods Neolithic technologies spread more widely in Inner Eurasia after the emergence of more intensive ways of exploiting domesticated livestock These arose ca. 4000 B.C.E., during what Andrew Sherratt has called the “secondary products revolution” E. Napp

24. Neolithic peoples learned to use domesticated animals not just for their meat but also for their “secondary products” of milk, wool, and hides People also learned to use the traction power of domestic animals, such as horses and oxen Equipped with these new techniques, Neolithic herders could live almost entirely off their livestock Pastoralism was the appropriate Neolithic technology in Inner Eurasia From the fifth millennium B.C.E., populations in the steppes began to grow as rapidly as those of the cultivated river valleys Farther north, reindeer pastoralism allowed more intensive colonization of tundra regions E. Napp

25. Added to the challenge of a harsh environment was the presence of rival communities also intent on survival As a result, Inner Eurasian communities had to find ways of mobilizing scarce resources both to sustain and to defend themselves While there were fewer resources to mobilize, the burden of defense was greater, for the flat landscapes of Inner Eurasia offered few natural defenses And livestock is a more volatile resource than crops Disease can swiftly destroy a large herd So can theft, for animals, unlike standing crops, will follow a thief Thus herders must display great vigilance and must be able to react quickly in a crisis E. Napp

26. And pastoral societies inculcated these martial values in both their men and their women The pastoral life concentrated the military resources of small populations and compensated for low populations by providing a natural training in warfare Yet, early pastoral societies were mainly sedentary, though stock breeding forced part of the population to travel seasonally with their grazing herds Pastoralism, however, used land more extensively than crop farming, and this encouraged greater mobility In the Srednii Stog cultures of Ukraine, from about 4000 B.C.E., the first clear evidence for the domestication, and perhaps the riding, of horses is seen E. Napp

27. Although there may have been some fully nomadic pastoralists in Inner Eurasia as early as the third millennium B.C.E., pastoral nomadism became a significant historical force only late in the second millennium Yet there are no fully satisfying explanations for this momentous change But pastoral nomads moved with their flocks of sheep, horses, and other livestock through regular annual circuits Constant movement was necessary to feed their large herds Nomads depended for subsistence on the meat and milk of their flocks, but they still needed some agricultural products, such as grain They have never been completely independent of farming societies E. Napp

28. Pastoral nomads have always had to trade, yet in most exchanges they were at a commercial disadvantage Nomadism made it impossible to accumulate large surpluses of anything except livestock Pastoral nomads usually needed the grains and the luxury products of agricultural societies more than farmers needed surplus livestock This unbalanced relationship explains many of the conflicts between farmers and nomads in the borderlands between Inner and Outer Eurasia Nomads’ homes were mobile, consisting of felt tents or yurts, often carried on ox-drawn or horse-drawn carts There was usually a clear division of labor between men and women Men tended the large livestock, while women looked after the yurts E. Napp

29. The emergence of pastoral nomadic societies marks a profound change in the history of Inner Eurasia, for these societies created the first Inner Eurasian armies large and durable enough to support states Yet the real key to the military successes of pastoral nomads was mobility They could control subject populations over vast areas They could also cover huge distances with great speed to attack an enemy’s weak point They had also learned to mobilize scarce resources to maximum military effect As a result, pastoral nomadic lifeways set the tone and shaped the history of Inner Eurasia between 1000 B.C.E. and 1500 C.E. E. Napp

30. When organized into large, durable armies, pastoral nomadic societies looked like “states” But they lacked complex bureaucracies, for the bonds that held them together were ties of kinship or pseudo-kinship or really tribal alliances They were certainly not nations or national states rather each was a mixture of peoples and languages, as mixed as a modern mercenary army The earliest pastoral nomadic empires are associated with the names of the Cimmerians, the Scythians, and the Sarmatians These names refer to alliances of pastoral nomadic peoples that dominated the regions north of the Black Sea during much of the first millennium B.C.E. The Hsiung-nu established the first large pastoral nomadic confederation at the eastern end of the Eurasian plains from ca. 210 B.C.E. E. Napp

31. At the western end of the steppes, a succession of invaders created new tribal confederations The Huns, Altaic peoples from the east, formed the first large Turkic-speaking confederation of western Inner Eurasia in the fourth century C.E. The Huns may have been migrants from the great Hsiung-nu confederation of Mongolia The most powerful of all these steppe empires was that of the Mongols, which emerged in the early thirteenth century under the leadership of Genghis Khan E. Napp

32. Large populations of farmers first appeared in Inner Eurasia in the first millennium C.E. in the woodlands of the far west, where climatic conditions were far more favorable than in Siberia As farming populations filled Western Europe, population pressures in the borderlands of Outer Eurasia drove a new wave of peasant colonizers to occupy the agriculturally marginal lands of the Inner Eurasian forest belt During the first millennium C.E., Slavic-speaking farmers from the southwest flooded into the forest steppe and forest lands north of the steppes, into the regions later known as Rus’ E. Napp

33. Farming communities shared the military weaknesses of all agricultural societies Their villages, farmsteads, and fields offered fixed targets to raiders, and their lifestyle provided little training in combat and military logistics So crop-growing societies usually had to set aside substantial resources to support specialist warriors Still, crop-growing societies had advantages of their own Being sedentary, they could accumulate surpluses, both material and demographic E. Napp

34. For farming societies, political and fiscal organization was the key to success Leaders had to form alliances that were durable and extensive enough to concentrate and mobilize the economic and demographic resources of large regions over long periods This demanded unified and durable political leadership In early states, where kinship provided the strongest social bonds, the success of tribal alliances depended on kinship or pseudo-kinship relations at the very top In this sense, Kievan Rus’ was typical Yet the decline of the Mongols provided new openings for polities based in the agricultural regions west of the Urals E. Napp

35. The rise of Muscovy was due to a complex system of marriage alliances within the boyar elite, coupled with a widespread acceptance that unity benefited all members of the elite What emerged was something more durable than a mere tribal alliance It was a true ruling class, an alliance that developed traditions capable of preserving its structures over many generations After 1326, when the metropolitan of the Orthodox church settled in Moscow, Moscow became the spiritual capital of Orthodox Christians throughout the Slavic world Ecclesiastical support gave the princes of Muscovy a degree of popular legitimacy that none of their rivals could match E. Napp

36. In fourteenth-century Muscovy, there emerged an oligarchical structure of boyars and church leaders who in their own interests maintained solidarity around a single ruler Durable and unified leadership allowed Muscovite governments to mobilize the region’s increasing demographic and material resources The growth of serfdom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was just one expression of this huge effort In the seventeenth century the Muscovite armies began to conquer the steppes of Ukraine and to carve out a vast empire in Siberia Autocracy, then, was a response to the difficulties of creating an agrarian state in Inner Eurasia E. Napp

37. Muscovy’s autocratic political culture offered a solution to the military challenges faced by agrarian societies in Inner Eurasia In the nineteenth century, however, the problem itself changed The rise of capitalist societies in Western Europe raised the stakes of international conflict by raising average levels of productivity to new levels The Crimean War (1853–55) gave the Russian government a first, painful lesson in the changing nature of international politics And once the Soviet government had banished the profit motive at the end of the1920s, it could only compete with capitalist rivals through ever more extensive mobilization of existing resources E. Napp

38. To achieve this, Stalin’s government fell back on Russia’s old traditions of mobilization, adding a new intensity of purpose and technologies borrowed from capitalism Like the autocratic governments of Russia’s past, the Soviet command economy was a device for mobilizing people, resources, and cash The industrialization drive of the 1930s depended on the Stalinist government’s power to mobilize E. Napp

39. Stalin’s government, like Russia’s traditional autocracy, clothed an oligarchic alliance of central and local power brokers in the symbols of personal authority Stalin himself described the local alliances of Soviet bosses as “family circles,” and he failed to destroy their power E. Napp

40. The Stalinist strategy could not have worked without the mobilizational traditions of Russia’s autocratic political culture It also required borrowing modern technologies from abroad Finally, it could not have worked in a smaller country, for it depended on Inner Eurasia’s vast reserves of people, land, energy, and raw materials E. Napp

41. Raw materials such as coal and oil had counted for little as long as crop growing was the main productive technology But in the industrial era, Inner Eurasia proved as rich in raw materials and energy sources as it had always been in land These advantages explain why the Stalinist gamble on the mobilizational power of the Soviet state succeeded as long as it did E. Napp

42. But like the Muscovite system, the Stalinist system was extremely good at mobilizing resources But neither system used resources efficiently Both substituted quantity for quality Meanwhile, capitalist societies generated waves of innovation that widened the difference in productivity between the capitalist and communist worlds E. Napp

43. By the 1980s the Soviet Union was running out of resources The mobilizational strategy that had worked for Muscovy in an era of slow technological change failed in the rapidly changing world of twentieth- century capitalism The Soviet experiment was an unsuccessful attempt to apply traditional solutions to a twentieth-century problem E. Napp

44. By the twentieth century technological changes had reduced the importance of Inner Eurasia’s distinctive geographical and ecological heritage E. Napp

45. It has been argued that Inner Eurasia was distinctive in two main ways: the natural productivity of the region was lower than in Outer Eurasia, and the flatlands that dominate the region deprived its societies of natural defenses against invasion By the late twentieth century, both factors had lost their former significance In the capitalist era, productivity depends more on technique than on geography For better or worse, the technological creativity of the twentieth century has almost erased the ecological differences between Inner and Outer Eurasia E. Napp

46. Meanwhile, the military technologies of the twentieth century have deprived Inner Eurasia’s flatlands of their former military importance Militarily speaking, the entire world is now a single, vast plain As a result, Inner Eurasia no longer counts as a distinct unit of world history In the new epoch, the differences that have set the histories of Inner and Outer Eurasia on separate tracks for 100,000 years will cease to count E. Napp

47. Lord Acton “History to be above evasion must stand on documents not on opinion.”