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Political Complexity in Nomadic Empires of Inner Asia

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Political Complexity in Nomadic Empires of Inner Asia Political Complexity in Nomadic Empires of Inner Asia Sergey A. Vasyutin Kemerovo State University ABSTRACT The nomadic empires of Inner Asia are a unique historical phenomenon. Large mountain and steppe territories allowed hundreds of thousands of nomadic families to pursue their economic activities, creating the condi- tions that led to their integration into big imperial communities. The long border in the South with empire-civilization and world-system center China was one of the major ‘challenges’ for steppe people, the ‘answer’ to which was often the creation of semi-peripheral imperial polities, as only the common military capacity of the Inner Asia stockbreeders guaranteed them at least temporary military and political equality and even supremacy during periods of weakening of the Middle Kingdom. The established opin- ion on the similarity of the nomadic empires in this region is mostly the result of a long period of research on nomadic economies, social and polit- ical structures, and the relations between nomads and China (evolutionism, positivism, Marxism). In the last few decades, the concept of multi-linearity (non-linearity) of sociogenesis and politogenesis has been applied to this field of study, allowing us to focus on the peculiarities of the Inner Asia nomadic empires, creating a solution to the old issues surrounding the na- ture of the power systems among nomads, the existence or absence of state- hood, and the typology of imperial structures according to their level of complexity. INTRODUCTION The issues concerning the characteristics of political regimes of medieval nomadic empires have provoked fierce debates among researchers and have become especially important during the last decade. The question of statehood among nomads and its specificity is still the most polemical issue (Khazanov 1981, 1984, 2010; Golden 1982, 1992, 2001; Barfield 1989, 2000, 2011; Kradin 1992, 2002, 2008, 2010, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2014, 2015; Kradin and Ivliev 2014; Kradin and Skrynnikova 2006; Social Evolution & History, Vol. 18 No. 2, September 2019 92–114 2019 ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House DOI: 10.30884/seh/2019.02.05 92 Vasyutin / The Political Complexity in Nomadic Empires 93 Maсkerras 1990, 2000, 2004; Sinor 1990; Di Cosmo 1999, 2002, 2011; Klyashtorny 2003, 2010; Klyashtorny and Savinov 2005; Klyashtorny and Sultanov 2009; Rogers 2007, 2011, 2018; Sneath 2007, 2009; Legrand 2011; Scheidel 2011; and others). The interpretation of the term state differs significantly among aca- demic papers. Since the known characteristics of political organization among the nomadic empires of Inner Asia do not completely meet the accepted criteria of state power (i.e., developed legal and judiciary sys- tem, specialized bureaucracy in the central and provincial management apparatus, a fiscal system, etc.); the researchers use vague and unclear interpretations of nationhood. Daniel Rogers, in particular, defines state as ‘any political entity in which authority is relatively centralized and hier- archical, and one in which control extends over a certain population and territory.’ He adds that the state has one or more city-type centers, and ‘in- dividuals living in a state recognize it as politically independent of other such entities’ (Rogers 1997: 250). The present stage of the discussion about the issues of statehood and the limits of political development of nomads demonstrates the necessity to define certain criteria to evaluate nomadic governing systems, their level of complexity, and typology. FEATURES OF NOMADIC EMPIRES We define classic (typical according to Nikolai N. Kradin) nomadic em- pires as territorially expanded polities of medieval nomads, formed in the steppe zone on the border with big agricultural civilizations. The dimen- sions of the nomadic imperial entities allow considering a certain military and administrative structure as one of the characteristics of such polities, namely: the staff of the khagan (khan) as the integrative center of the empire (command staff, the place of concentration of imperial ‘functionaries,’ counselors, service elite, and others); in terms of government, the ‘center of the empire’ was associated with summer and winter staffs of the Khagan which he would alternate; ‘the center of the empire’ was also associated with reserve train- ings, cult activities and sacral ceremonies, diplomatic receptions, and fes- tive activities; the division either into wings with separate centers or into wings with a center, or, as in one case, into a center with three wings (Malov 1959: 23); imperial princes with their titles; a decimal system which integrated tribes into the district hierarchy of military tumens and thousands of smaller units (the latter are not clear- ly defined in sources of nomadic origin; in the Early Middle Ages, for 94 Social Evolution & History / September 2019 typical empires the description of the decimal system is presented in the Terkhin inscriptions – Klyashtorny 2010: 42); embassies of the center in the regional tribal nomadic groups and in the territories of non-nomadic populations (viceroys, fiscal officers, and military groups/camps in remote regions such as Altai, Tuva, Kha- kasia, Transbaikalia, Eastern Mongolia, and Manchuria, as well as in ur- ban and agricultural communities in Eastern Turkestan); in some cases, a network of administrative personnel on the major trading paths and directions of geopolitical importance, similar to yam service in the Mongolian Empire. This administrative system superimposed on a complex hierarchy built on the combination of political, ethnical, social and other principles. This hierarchy included: a khagan (khan) and ruling clan in which an important role was played by the aspirants to the supreme power and supreme imperial titles; people closest to the ruler through their status and aristocratic clans related to him; people from the khagan's suite (his ‘command staff’ could include nomadic aristocracy as well as representatives of agricultural populations, like the Sogdians and Chinese people, religious figures, talented com- manders with non-aristocratic origins, personal army/guards, various servants, etc.); the tribes and clans that formed the elite layers of the empire (Lu- andi, Huyan, Lan, Xubu, and Qiulin in the Xiongnu polity; Ashina and Ashide in the Turkic Khaganate, Yaghlakar, Ediz, Kürebir, etc. in the Uyghur empire); the tribes of the dominant ethnic group (Xiongnu, Turk, Uyghur); dependent tribes whose armies were a part of imperial army; dependent clan and tribe unions with low status (such as tribe groups who could subject to tribute and different fees; the Khitans for the Turks and the Uyghur); subordinate semi-settled and sub-taiga populations on the periphery of the empire (they provided the empire with agricultural products, furs, metal, etc.); farmers and agricultural communities living in the steppe (traders, refugees, people captured in China, etc.); these communities could be quite large: emperor Taizong bought 80,000 Han people from the Turk for gold and silk. They were in the Khaganate during the period of the Sui falldown (Bichurin 1950: 256); in the other case, in 698, Qapaghan Kha- ghan attacked the prefectures of Zhaozhou, Dinzhou and others in the borderline county of Hebei and captured 80 to 90 thousand people (Liu Mau-tsai 1958: 163). Vasyutin / The Political Complexity in Nomadic Empires 95 Relationships between the khagan and the tribe leaders and their line- ages played a key role in the inner organization of the empire. Mainte- nance of high status was impossible without loyal powerful tribes and tribe groups. At the same time, one should not forget that some quite se- vere methods of submission could have been used by the center towards some units of the imperial hierarchy. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS IN NOMADIC EMPIRES Which criteria should be chosen to determine the level of complexity and the distinction between the chiefdom (in various forms) and the state (or early state), or alternative political forms among the nomads of Inner Asia? For researchers, the answer to these questions is complicated by the fact that in all nomadic empires, the ratio between pre-state and early state components of power is inconstant and fluid. The development of nomad- ic empires was not unilinear and single-vector. The examples of Xiongnu country, Rouran, Turk, and Uyghur Khaganates show in the first stages the trends towards centralisation of the political system. However, these trends could be alternated by separatist transformations (the strengthening of local leaders, domestic strife, riots, etc.). Sometimes, these contradicto- ry trends occurred at the same time. In the Mongolian empire, during the second third of the thirteenth century, the formation of the institutions of early statehood was combined with the strengthening of the ulus level. The imperial formations of nomads periodically returned to tradition- al clan-tribal institutions of governing when the mechanisms of subjugation of nomads of the steppe and the remote exploitation of agricultural peoples stopped or became inefficient (Kradin 2002: 191–193, 199–200, 230–231). The power of a nomadic leader lost the imperial character and the chief actions were aimed, first of all, at preserving his status among the elite. Another destructive process typical for nearly all nomadic empires was related to over-production of political elites – the growth of the num- ber of adult men in the leader's clan who wanted to participate in the gov- erning
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