Customer Reviews

A History of Inner Asia

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book follows the history of 'inner asia' from the time of the Islamic conquests to modern day independence. The area covered is the steppe lands from Mongolia to the former soviet republics(Kazakhstan, Uzbek, Tajik, Turkmen and Kyrgiz) as well as the Sinkiang(Xinxiang/Uiguer) province of China. It covers with wonderful fluid writing the history from the original linguistic families of Turkic speaking tribesmen to the arrival of Islam. We see how the people were once Buddhist and how Arabic script colonized them only to be repalced by Cyrillic in modern times. We are told of the the story of the Kok Turks, and CHinese expansion into Inner and outer mongolia. Various dynasties are covered, including Persian influence and the lands of Bokhara and Khiva. The arrival of the Mongols is explained and the decline through to Soviet expansion

Most fascinating is the account brings us up to the modern day, explaining the Communist state of Mongolia and the Sovietization of Central Asia, including the various autonomous 'nations' the Soviets created for groups like the Bakshir nomads and other peoples of the Steppe, preserving, creating and in come cases fragmenting culture.

The soviets even impressed language onto peoples, such as the Uzbeks, giving alphabets and coercing natives. Modern times has seen war, famine, dictatorship, Chinese encroachment, Suppression, and of course Islamization of the region. Today seperatist movements are encoruaged in China and Pan-Turk ideals are pipe dreams.

This is inner asia, a fascinatign region of diverse culture and history, fascinting linguistic ties and a history that must be told and read. A Highly readable book about an amazing place and a wonderful people. Anyone interested in the world, in history or new ideas will enjoy this read.

Seth J. Frantzman

I don't know why this book is so poorly reviewed. Yes, it is short on detail, if by detail you mean every minor battle between every minor clan, or every minor intrigue between each petty ruler and the three thousand four hundred and twenty seven claimants trying to wrest his power away from him. But I've had enough of skimming through that kind of history, and I found this book a breath of fresh air. This author distills a very complex history down into a few of its more important elements, and he explains things. Want to know where Fergana is actually located? This book will tell you. Want to know where the Uighers originally came from? This book will tell you. Want to know what distinguishes the Naqshbandiya from other orders of Sufis? This book will tell you that also.

If you are new to this subject, then none of that might seem important. But so many other works on Inner Asia presuppose that you already have this information in your head, it makes you want to hang the authors by their toes and boil them in oil. (Figuratively speaking, of course). As for the maps, they are not great, but they are several orders of magnitude better than I have seen in any other book on central Asian history.

As for the fact that the weight of the book leans toward the present, I found that refreshing also. Too many books seem to end with the dismemberment of the Golden Horde or something like that, leaving you to scratch your head and wonder: but happened after that? My gripe is that the book doesn't come far enough into the present. It ends in the late 1990's, just when things started to really heat up in the area. But that's not the authors fault. He wrote it when he wrote it.

I do, however, agree with the reviewer who complained about the spelling of Chinese names. This is for all writers on China: Hello! Wade-Giles is dead! Pinyin is now the accepted standard. Please use it. It's not Sinkiang; it's Xinjiang! To refuse to use pinyin is to needlessly (and perhaps deliberately) create confusion. Get with it, scholars.

By "Inner Asia" is meant the area corresponding roughly to modern Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and the Chinese province of Xinjiang. The history of this region is fascinating, and little known in the West. There is a clear need for books about it.
Unfortunately, "A History of Inner Asia" does not meet this need. It purports to cover nearly 1400 years, from the emergence of Islam to the present, but this coverage is very unbalanced - about a third of the book is devoted to the last 100 years. The challenge of a history covering such a diverse and complex region is to weave the threads into a coherent account. The author has not met this challenge. A lot of detail has been amassed between the covers of this book, but writing good history requires more than amassing detail. Consequently, the book does not engage the reader's interest.
The author displays a surprising failure of scholarship in his treatment of Chinese names. Instead of adopting the standard Pinyin transliterations, he uses an arbitrary mixture of transliterations, apparently at random. Mixed with Pinyin (Beijing, Xian) we find old Wade-Giles spellings (Hsi-Hsia, Hsuan-Tsang) and old British spellings derived from Cantonese pronunciation (Sinkiang). Sometimes the same Chinese character is represented in different ways on the same page! (Peiting, Beijing - the first syllable of both place-names is the Chinese character for "north"). Bei Lu is in Pinyin on page 266, but spelt "Peilu" in the index. Some of the transliterations do not follow any system; for example in Appendix 2, where the Chinese for "autonomous region" (zizhi qu, in pinyin) is rendered as "zeji chu". The author seems to have made it up, or possibly transliterated into the Latin alphabet from some Cyrillic transliteration.

This book covers great span of history and geography, it is reasonable intro text to Inner Asian history and will give you a sense of everything, but it tries to cover too much and gives nothing in-depth.

There are few shortcomings of this book: needs more and better maps (unless you know Inner Asia geography very well), needs a glossary (too much foreign terms, needs a timetable (the author tend to go back and fore a lot). This book is not for beginner, I really hope he can write something less confuse.