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The importance of the Eurasian steppe to the study of international relations

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Abstract

This article is a call for making the Eurasian steppe an object of study within International Relations. The first section argues that the neglect of the steppe is due to 19th-century prejudice against non-sedentary polities as being barbarian. This is hardly a scholarly reason to neglect them. The second section is a nutshell overview of literature on the steppe from other fields. On the strength of these literatures, we postulate the existence of what we call an almost three thousand year long steppe tradition of ordering politics. The third section of the article suggests that the steppe tradition has hybridised sundry polity-building projects, from early polity-building in the European the Middle Ages via the Ottoman and Russian empires to contemporary Central Asian state-building. We conclude this exploratory piece by speculating whether a focus on the steppe tradition may have the potential to change our accounts of the emergence of European international relations at large.

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Notes

  1. In lieu of written sources produced by the peoples studied and also because of the particular challenges of steppe archaeology, many issues, including some major ones, are contested. The dating of the taming and general use of the horse is a case in point; see discussion in Anthony (2007: 193–224).

  2. Prior to this, we simply do not know what language they spoke, though several theories have been launched (Goxman 1980: 29; Viktorova 1980: 120−23; Bailey 1985: 25–41; Adas 2001: 88; Beckwith 2009: 404–405, nn. 51–52). Nevertheless, one may argue that the political tradition which today can be called ‘Turko-Mongol’ certainly has a longer history, reaching back almost 3,000 years.

  3. Morgan's (1877/1963) evolutionary lay-out hit upon an enormous problem when it was discovered that the Chukchi living on the Siberian side of the Bering straits had, at some point, abandoned their nomadic life style and settled down, only to take up their nomadic ways again at some later point in time. While this messed up the evolutionary time line for anthropologists, it remained inconsequential for students of politics.

  4. Such a common ursprung rested upon the publishing of the Orkhon inscriptions by W.W. Radloff and their deciphering by the Danish philologist V. Thomsen in 1893. This provided a text that could be used both as a linguistic reference point, and an origo for ‘The Turks’, giving a past unity to what is at present a plurality of linguistic groups and ethnic and political identities.

  5. Here, one should keep the Bedouins of the desert separate from the Turkic and Mongol nomads of the steppe. They emerged from two separate political traditions, and the former was, at least in the early years, much closer to the Ottoman dynasty than the latter were.

  6. These Persians were called ‘Tat’, which had the general meaning foreigner or sedentary, underpinning Lattimore's and Barfield's points about the interdependence of sedentaries and nomads. This close contact resulted in a language known as Chagatai, which was an amalgam of Turkish and Persian, and served as the lingua franca of Central Asia from the early 15th to the late 19th century when it was displaced by Russian (Erkinov 2008).

  7. Khazanov (2001: 4–5 et passim) highlights the role of charisma within the steppe tradition. Weber categorises sultanism as traditional and leaves out the charismatic. We will argue that particularly 20th-century sultanism has involved a patrimonially organised state led by a charismatic leader. Both the Bolshevik and the Kemalist regimes came to power after historical discontinuities in the principles of rule. It would be meaningless to argue that they took their legitimacy from tradition. Rather, it was Lenin's, Stalin's and Kemal Atatürk's ability to do away with tradition that bolstered their charismatic positions.

  8. The guard included representatives of all the Mongolian tribes (‘a useful form of hostage-taking’, Morgan (1986: 90) comments), which was in effect Chinggis's extended household. It numbered around 10,000 at the outset of his conquests (Morgan 1986: 90).

  9. It is unclear what exactly the relationship of the Khagan to the khan originally was, as the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably (Golden 1992: 146).

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Acknowledgements

We should like to thank Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Lee Beaudoen, Amund Bjørsnøs, Bernt Brendemoen, Nihat Çelik, Ashk Dahlén, Nina Græger, Domenico Ingenito, Karl-Gunnar A. Johansson, Knut Nustad, Indra Øverland, Elana Wilson Rowe, Audun Solli and three anonymous referees for comments and Ingvild Johnsen for research assistance.

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  1. NUPI, PO Box 8159 Dep, Oslo, NO-0033, Norway

    Iver B Neumann

  2. IKOS, University of Oslo, PO Box 1010 Blindern, Oslo, NO-0315, Norway

    Einar Wigen

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Neumann, I., Wigen, E. The importance of the Eurasian steppe to the study of international relations. J Int Relat Dev 16, 311–330 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2012.27

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