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The Journal of Military History 67.4 (2003) 1271-1272



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HdO: Warfare in Inner Asian History (500-1800). Edited by Nicola Di Cosmo. Boston, Mass.: Brill, 2002. ISBN 90-04-11949-3. Maps. Illustrations. Tables. Bibliography. Index. Pp. vi, 456. $112.00.

The ten papers collected in this symposium volume deal with the military history of Inner Asia, three each being devoted to the pre- and post-Mongol periods, and four to the Mongol age itself. Both "military history" and "Inner Asia" are defined broadly. The individual essays are all of high quality and reflect state-of-the-art scholarship in their respective areas, and this book will be of interest to Near Eastern and East Asian specialists as well as to military historians. The volume as a whole also indicates how much our understanding of Inner Asia depends on the historiographical traditions of the urban-agricultural civilizations that border Inner Asia, a theme that the volume editor has explored in other publications and to which he returns in his excellent introductory chapter.

Six of the papers deal with the eastern part of Inner Asia. David A. Graff's "Strategy and Contingency in the Tang Defeat of the Eastern Turks, 629-30" and Michael R. Drompp's "The Uighur-Chinese Conflict of 840-848" both show the Tang empire—strong in 629-30 and much weaker in 840-848—coping effectively with a threat from Inner Asia. John E. Herman's "The Mongol Conquest of Dali: The Failed Second Front" offers the revisionist view that this campaign was essentially a dead end, rather than a necessary prelude to the conquest of Song China. Peter C. Perdue's "Fate and Fortune in Central Eurasian Warfare: Three Qing Emperors and their Mongol Rivals" summarizes the history of the Qing annexation of much of Inner Asia, and is also revisionist, portraying Yongzheng as the least able of the three Manchu rulers who warred against Galdan and his successors. Joanna Waley-Cohen's "Military Ritual and the Qing Empire" describes the efforts of the Manchu emperor Qianlong to create military (wu) rituals to balance China's civilian (wen) cultural traditions. These papers all depend on Chinese source materials, whose limitations of perspective the several [End Page 1271] authors make every effort to transcend. In contrast, the volume editor's "Military Aspects of the Manchu Wars against the Caqars" uses Manchu and Mongolian sources to give a fresh perspective on this important episode in the founding of the Qing.

Michael Biran's "The Battle of Herat (1270): A Case of Inter-Mongol Warfare" (the date is given as "1240" in all the page headings) and Reuven Amitai's "Whither the Ilkhanid Army? Ghazan's First Campaign into Syria (1299-1300)" (the date is rendered "1299-1230" in the Table of Contents) both deal with the history of the Mongol Ilkhanid regime established by the conquests of Qubilai's brother Hülegü. While it is difficult to fit Syria into any definition of Inner Asia, the two papers belong together, as both effectively compare Ilkhanid sources written in Persian with Arabic-language Mamluk histories to reach new conclusions.

The two remaining papers are broadly interpretive. Peter B. Golden's "War and Warfare in the Pre-Cinggisid Western Steppes of Eurasia" uses Byzantine and Arabic sources and Russian scholarship to illuminate its subject, and Thomas Allsen's "The Circulation of Military Technology in the Mongolian Empire" is an empire-wide view by a leading expert.

For military historians, having these papers together in this attractively produced (despite the errors noted) volume should be of great interest. Despite different historiographical traditions, surrounding civilizations for centuries produced the same view of the military Inner Asian: the fast-moving mounted archer on his small, tough horse, whose nomadic culture gave him a natural military edge. But his culture could be subverted by civilization, and his military skills could sometimes be countered by strategy, as the essays collected here demonstrate.



Edward L. Dreyer
University of Miami
Coral Gables, Florida

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