David Christian's book is published in 'Blackwell History of the World' and this has in many ways predetermined the author's approaches to the topic. He attempts to present in a synthetic form the history of a region named by him 'Inner Eurasia', from its earliest times until the Mongol Empire's era. It took the author seven years of hard work to complete this task, for it is absolutely clear that writing such a book is indeed a real act of heroism--only the specialists know how difficult it is to present what, when and how happened in such a large area and over such a long period, and how, volens nolens, one has to decide what to include in such a book and what to leave out.
Christian is well aware that he is acting as a synthesizer, who is interested mainly in large-scale patterns and trends rather than in details. He is also well aware that the region of Inner Eurasia is difficult to define strictly as a homogenous unit, for its boundaries, and especially those in eastern and western direction, are not clear enough. Defining Inner Eurasian boundaries mainly according to two criteria-- geographical and ecological--he attempts to write a coherent history of this region, for, in his view, Inner Eurasia is a coherent historical region. It is absolutely clear that perhaps the most important thing for such a study is to define the region, for 'Inner Eurasia' is not something which can be easily understood as a wholeness and homogeneity per se (as is the case with Africa, for instance). Given the situation, David Christian pays special attention to terminology (why exactly 'Inner Eurasia') and tries to convince the audience in his theses', arguments' and approaches' rightfulness (pp. xv- xxiii, 3-20). One of his main arguments is that Inner Eurasia's history was distinct from that of Outer Eurasia due to the different climates and ecology of the two parts of Eurasian landmass. This geographical and ecological determinism is a clear mark that he was influenced to some extent by Halford J. Mackinder, though Christian claims he was trying to stay away from the geopolitical (and also from the linguistical or cultural) model of history. According to the author, it was Inner and Outer Eurasia that acted for many millennia as moving regions in human development, and that their mutual 'challenges' and 'responses' received a special push from the so-called state-formation era thus lasting for many centuries. It was exactly during the era in question that the frontier zone between Inner and Outer Eurasia became 'the dynamo of Inner Eurasian history' (xxi), a thesis, which is very well defended later in the book.
In Part One, "The Geography and Ecology of Inner Eurasia", Christian attempts to define the dominant features of the region. We can agree with him that three main features mark Inner Eurasia: 1) interiority; 2) northerliness; and 3) continentality, as well as with the four ecological zones that existed there (the tundra, the forest, the steppes, and the deserts). Here he argues that an odd feature in Inner Eurasian history is "that a very unstable frontier of ecological and political conflict dominated its history for several millennia". (17) Christian also writes that "the ecological divide between Inner and Outer Eurasia was so fundamental that it allowed no one type of society a decisive military, demographic or cultural advantage until the modern era." (18) The pressure of Outer Eurasian civilizations was constant, which led to the appearance of four main 'cultural' zones in the region. Christian calls them western, southern, eastern and northern, claiming that only the fourth one, i. e. the tundra zone, has not been influenced by Outer Eurasia. The others three felt strong external influences mainly of Mediterranean and Mesopotamian lands, of Iran and India, and of China, respectively.
Part Two, "Prehistory: 100,000-1000 BCE", gives data about the region's history from its settling until the end of the Bronze Age. Here the author prefers to follow the so-called archaeological chronology, which is absolutely admissible. For the first settlers, Neanderthals, it was very difficult to live in Inner Eurasia because of the long, cold and arid winters that posed problems with the food and warmth. Nevertheless, the first Neanderthals appeared in the southern borderlands of Inner Eurasia during the first stages of the last ice age, c. 90-80,000 years ago. The major Inner Eurasian sites of a Neanderthal presence are at Teshik-Tash in Modern Uzbekistan, in the Caucasus, in Crimea, and at Molodova on the river Dniester (map 2.1), which means Neanderthals came perhaps from the Middle East, thus colonizing the marginal environments of south-west Inner Eurasia. But the real settling there started only after 40,000 BC, or during the time of the so-called 'revolution of the Upper Palaeolithic'. The first clear signs of the colonization of Siberia, for instance, date back to c. 35,000 BC (the Malaya Siya site near Lake Baikal). Christian argues that humans managed to settle most of the environments of ice age Inner Eurasia during the upper Palaeolithic, excluding only Arctic shores. (38) Thus Inner Eurasia was included in the exchange of goods, ideas, gifts, information etc., something characteristic of that era. One could suggest that upper Palaeolithic societies were structured according to gender and kinship. We may agree also with his thesis that the increasing "technological and social virtuosity of the humans of that remote past were the main reason for the successful colonization of most regions of Inner Eurasia during the Upper Palaeolithic". (42)
The 'Neolithic revolution' does not bypass Inner Eurasia, though the process in the steppes and wooded steppes there was a slower and more complex than that in Western Europe and the Balkan Peninsula. In Christian's view, this 'revolution' took quite distinct forms in Inner Eurasia: due to the climate here, early forms of agriculture spread very slowly and it was 'pastoralism' (Christian dates its appearance in Inner Eurasia from c. 4000 BC) that formed the destinies of these societies for millennia. (69) Unlike Outer Eurasia, which during the same time developed mainly domesticated plants, Inner Eurasia exploits mainly domesticated animals and this fact leads the author to the conclusion, that "Pastoralist lifeways set the history of Inner Eurasia off on a very different trajectory from that of Outer Eurasia." (70) Christian mentioned the earliest agricultural communities of Inner Eurasia ('Jeitun' culture in modern Turkmenistan, and others in modern Moldova and Ukraine), dated back to c. seventh millennium and the end of sixth millennium, paying here also special attention to cultures such as Cucuteni-Tripolye and Usatovo (fifth-fourth millennium), which are from the same period as that of Kansu in Central Asia. He writes that such farming communities before the first millennium were rare in Inner Eurasia and they occupied only the so-called 'hot spots'. (81)
The origins and development of Inner Eurasian pastoralism and its impacts as well as urbanization in Central Asia are thoroughly studied in the last two chapters of Part Two. Among many features of the pastoralist societies in the region, Christian has chosen three that can explain their real impact in human history: 1) their mobility; 2) their military virtuosity; and 3) their capacity for rapid mobilization. (86) All that became clear during the Bronze Age of Inner Eurasia (3000-1000 BC), which was marked by the development of pastoralist lifeways (sic in the book) and their expansion to the central and eastern steppes, by the emergence of towns and even cities in the oases of southern Central Asia, and by the evolution of durable relations of exchange and symbiosis between these two very different worlds. (99) Here the author tries to clarify the essence of some archaeological cultures from that epoch (Afanasevo, Andronovo etc.), as well as the origins of the so-called 'Oxus' civilization, i. e. the towns and qalas along the Kopet Dag and in Margiana oasis, the latter becoming the main centre of urban development there and the real heart of the 'Oxus' civilization. Christian argues that there was a "natural symbiosis" between the steppes and the urban world of Central Asia, which created a Inner Eurasian network of technological and economic exchange, thus attaching Inner Eurasia to the emerging of the earliest 'world-system' that joined Inner and Outer Eurasia during the second millennium. (113)
I suppose that for those interested in the Scythian, Turkic- Mongolian and Russian (Rus') history the last three parts of the book would be of great importance. In fact, these last parts form three-fourth of the study and obviously they are the core of this book.
Part Three, "The Scythic and Hunnic Eras: 1000 BCE-500 CE", consists of four chapters that deal with the Scythians and their history and society, with the Outer Eurasian invasions, with the empire of the Hsiung-nu as well as with the 'barbarian' invasions before AD 500. Following W. Watson's Cultural Frontiers in Ancient East Asia, Christian adds another four features to the cultures already defined as 'Scythic', namely the use of improved compound bows, the widespread use of bronze cauldrons, the making of the so-called 'deer stones' and the appearance for the first time in the steppes of complex horse harness. (127) But instead of the term 'Scythic cultures' he prefers to use another and, in my view, a much more appropriate one--'the 'Scythic' culture complex'. All these eight distinctive 'Scythic' features helped these societies to form powerful supra-tribal federations, and especially in the steppes, which consist mainly of Iranian, Proto-Turkic and Proto-Mongolian speaking groups. Thanks to the records of the Outer Eurasian literati, we already know the names of some of these supra-tribal formations: Cimmerians, Scythians, Saka, Hsiung-nu, Tung-hu etc., who dominated the steppes from the Black sea in the west to the borders with Manchuria in the east. During the first millennium BC there appeared signs of urbanization in many regions of Inner Eurasia (Khorezm, in Bactria, Sogdiana, in Sinkiang and along the northern shores of the Black sea), as well as some fortified 'towns' (known today also as 'gorodishche') in the forest steppes of Scythia north of the Black sea (Kamenskoe on the river Dnieper, Elisavetovskoe in the Don delta, etc.). Explaining the lifestyle and religion in Scythia, Christian claims that the problem of 'Scythian' ethnicity is extremely complex, for in the pastoralist world the sense of identity could be extremely powerful, but it was also multiple and depending on circumstances, rank, gender and kinship. (149) For him the Scythic states were not bureaucratized or durable enough to be regarded as true states (150), a statement, which is in opposition to some extent to A. Khazanov's idea that these formations could be regarded as 'early' states. The pages from 163 to 179 deal with the invasions of the Outer Eurasian powers such as Persia and Macedonia and their effects on the Inner Eurasian societies. These two great powers of the sixth-fourth centuries BC had a huge impact on Central Asia, for they (and especially the Macedonians and Greeks) influenced that region both culturally and economically, linking western Central Asia with the civilizations of the Mediterranean. But it seems to me somewhat artificial to refer to the Parthian empire as a 'frontier' empire. (pp. 171, 175-179)
The first great steppe empire, that of the Hsiung-nu, affected directly or indirectly the fortunes of many regions of Inner and Outer Eurasia. It became in many ways a model for the next mighty empires north of China, that of Juan-juan, the Turks and Uighurs, and had an indirect impact on the creation of the first highly syncretistic empire in Central Asia, that of the Kushanas. In fact, for many centuries there were five great empires in Eurasia, namely those of the Romans, Parthians, Kushanas, Chinese and Hsiung-nu, but only the latter one was a typical steppe-Eurasian empire. It was the Goths and the descendants of Hsiung-nu, i. e. Huns, who, especially after the fourth century AD, reshaped in many aspects the European world. As for the 'Hunnic' era, it is worth noting here one of Christian's theses: "For pastoralists to cross to the other side of the ecological frontiers of Rome or China was a radical step^æThat is why so few pastoralist empires actually created empires within the agrarian lands of North China or eastern Europe. Only in Central Asia did fingers of steppe land lead deep into Outer Eurasia, so only here was it common for pastoralists to create ruling dynasties in Outer Eurasia." (238)
It is parts four ("Turks, Mawara'n-nahr and Rus': 500-1200") and five ("The Mongol Empire: 1200-1260") that are related to the history of Rus' and the Mongols proper and their concrete deeds, fortunes and impacts on the history of Eurasia. Before proceeding to the explanation of the main features of the Rus' and Mongols' history and societies, Christian quite reasonably studied the essense of the Turkic kaghanates in Inner Eurasia as well as of the Islamic civilization in Central Asia (pp. 247-326). He followed the traditional description of the first and the second Turkic kaghanates as well as that of the Uighurs, the latter regarded by some scholars as the third Turkic empire, and their political, cultural, and economic models. He is absolutely right in saying that the Turks created a new 'world-system', linking through commercial contacts the Mediterranean, the Near East, Persia, India and China. (254) Besides, the kaghanates' elites and the merchants who used the 'Silk route' also stimulated new trade networks in Western Inner Eurasia; this helped the Khazars and later the Viking Rus' to become the greatest powers there. Christian also pays special attention to questions such as the spread of the world religions in Inner Eurasia (esp. Buddhism, Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity) and their attitudes towards traditional religions in Altai, to the 'Turkic' identity as well as to the internal structures of these kaghanates. He claims they were 'imperial confederacies' which were deeply influenced by the Sogdians and, but only to some extent, by the Chinese.
Christian regards the Avar and Khazar empires as "Turkic Empires of Western Inner Eurasia" (pp. 277-298). It is curious why he missed the Bulgars, for it is well known that for the whole of the ninth century Bulgaria was the dominant power from the river Tisza (Theiss), southern Carpathians and Dniester- Dnieper to Thessalonica and the Black Sea. The Bulgars replaced the Avars as the major power here and, what indeed is more important, they acted towards Byzantium as a typical Inner Eurasian empire at least from the beginning till the middle of that same century. The strategies and the behavior of the Bulgars against the Rhomaioi, and especially during the reign of the Bulgar ruler Omurtag (814-831), remind in many aspects those of the Uighurs against China in the second half of the eighth century. I was also surprised to see that the author uses the dated etymology of the name 'Bulgars', as 'mixed' ones (278), which is for many reasons unacceptable.
It was the Khazars who built the largest empire on Inner Eurasian model in Eastern Europe. So, it is not strange that Christian dedicates to them so many pages (pp. 282-298). The Khazars and the Uighurs are also interesting because they both made their decisions to adopt religions that were not so popular among the steppe tribes. The former, or to say it more precisely, their aristocracy and the kaghan, accepted Judaism, and it was the latter who became Manichaeans. It is well known that Khazaria, Byzantium and Bulgaria, the latter especially during the siege of Constantinople of AD 717-718, did not allow the Arabs to penetrate Europe from the East. Christian is absolutely right that it was Khazaria which established the mightest and best organized commercial empire of that part of Europe between the seventh and the tenth centuries, though he does not quote the studies of T. Noonan, who is one of the leading scholars in these matters, nor does he use in his book the articles that were published in such an important for Inner Eurasia journal as Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi. As for the western frontier of Khazaria, it is absolutely clear that it never reached Danube or even Dniester (287), though, perhaps, the Khazars might have had some influence west of the river Dnieper. Christian argues that the Khazar king Josef exacted tributes from Volga Bulgaria in the middle of the tenth century. (290) Although true for the 920s, this statement is difficult to prove having in mind that Khazaria was in decline in 960s. In this chapter there are some errors in data and I will note here only two of them: 1) on page 292 he wrote that Leo III the 'Isaurian' ruled from AD 711 till 741, though it is well known that he was Byzantine emperor from AD 717; and 2) as for the Cyrillic alphabet, it was not St. Cyril (Constantine Cyril the Philosopher, d. February 14th 869 in Rome) who created it, for he invented the so-called 'Glagolitic' alphabet.
Definitely, Khazaria had a "profound impact" on the early state of Rus' and Christian is absolutely right when saying that Russian historiography, "partly under pressure from Stalinist censors, has generally refused to accept the role played by Khazaria in the creation of^æRus." (298) But one should remember here that even during the Stalin's rule, in the beginning of 1950s, A. N. Nasonov in his Russkaia zemlia' i obrazovanie territorii Drevnerusskogo gosudarstva acknowledged the Khazars' influence on the early state of Rus'.
In his book Christian does not also bypass the Islamic conquests in Central Asia and the region's development from the middle of the seventh century on. In fact, during the eighth- ninth centuries there were four great powers in the region, namely those of the Turks, China, Tibet and the Arabs. The latter established their power over Mawara'n-nahr, the 'land beyond the river', i.e. over Bactria, Sogdiana and Khorezm, which led to the further development of culture, trade and economy of the whole southern part of Central Asia. It had also a great impact on the Khazars as well as on Volga Bulgaria and Rus'. The Bulgars became Muslims in 920s and their state became the most northern area that Islam reached during the Middle Ages. Islam reshaped in Mawara'n-nahr many aspects of everyday life and religious beliefs of the mainly Iranian and Turkic speaking peoples who lived there, thus turning the region into a new 'melting pot'; that is why Mawara'n-nahr became 'for a time, the cultural, intellectual and scientific centre of Islam'. (321) And all that was possible thanks to the strong government and commercial prosperity here under the Abbasids and later the Samanids. This period from the Central Asian history was really a 'renaissance' for the whole region.
The last two chapters of Part Four deal with the origins of Rus', their early kaghanate and Kievan Rus and the adoption of Christianity there in AD 988 as well as with the development of Rus' till the end of the twelfth century, and also with the polities and dynasties in the steppes and Mawara'n-nahr up to the establishment of the Mongol empire, i.e. with the states of the Kipchaks, Ghaznavids and Karakhanids, Saljuks, Khorezmshahs and that of the Karakitai dynasty. Christian masterly and vividly comments on their deeds and fortunes. Here I shall pay special attention only to the early Rus' history, for, on the one hand, Rus' state became the first great agrarian empire in Western Inner Eurasia, and, on the other hand, its early history in many aspects is still open to further discussions. One of the most controversial questions is that of the origins and essense of the so-called Rus' kaghanate. In my view, we can not take for granted that, first, this formation was a real kaghanate, second, that it "seems to have existed for at least 80 years" (338), and third, that "its political institutions were modeled on those of the Khazars" (ibid.). I prefer to think of it as 'quasi' kaghanate, for we have information only about the existence of the title 'kaghan' among the Rus' during the 830s and nothing more. Probably it was a loose union of Viking settlements in northern Russia whose leaders expropriated the supreme steppe title, because the Khazars, who were the major power in the region of that time and had a legitimate right of the title 'kaghan', were the main rivals of Rus' here; thus Rus' rulers declared they intended to replace Khazaria as a dominant power in Eastern Europe and especially over the important commercial routes along the rivers Volga and Dnieper. One can not accept the author's thesis that "what is still not adequately appreciated is the extent to which the earliest Rus' state was orientated towards the Khazars and Baghdad rather than towards Byzantium and the Christian world" (335), for in recent decades many scholars, and among them especially T. Noonan and V. Petrukhin, clearly showed exactly this feature of the early Rus'. But Christian is right when he pays so much attention to Khazaria and the Arabs, for, if one wants to know and better understand the history of early Rus', he should know its natural context. He is also right when saying that after AD 988 "Christianity gave the Rus' state a new source of legitimacy", transforming "the cultural life of Rus' and 'incorporating it in the wider cultural world of European Christianity." (347) There are some errors in this chapter and I shall note here three of them. First, the Bulgars did not borrow "their statecraft from the Khazars" (327), for they came from that same nomadic and semi-sedentary milieu as the Khazars came and therefore they knew the political models in Inner Eurasia. Second, Svyatoslav wanted to move his capital from Kiev to Malak (i.e. Small) Preslavets on the Danube delta, which was a big trade centre of the First Bulgarian empire (cf. Veliki, i. e. Great, Preslav, the capital of Bulgaria from AD 893 till 971), and not to "Pereslavl on Danube" (345) or to "Pereiaslavets" (map 13.1). And third, there are no serious linguistic reasons to trace relation between the Slavic god Perun and the Old Iranian 'Farn' (347), for 'Farn' came from Old Iranian Hvarena/Hvarnah.
Christian has chosen to show the early history and origins of the Mongol Empire describing life and deeds of its founder Temujin, that is Chingis Khan. And this is not strange, for Chingis Khan is the first great leader of a mighty Inner Eurasian empire for whom we have an account written from within the steppe world, the so-called "Secret History of the Mongols". Chingis created a new and specific social order based mostly on the so-called noker, which helped him and his descendants to conquer so many tribes and regions. The Mongols thus established the biggest Inner Eurasian Empire and even the biggest world Land Empire ever to exist in history. Christian rightly argues that "the key to the success of the Mongol armies lay in structures of discipline, organization, and coordination that owed little to traditions of kinship" (398), as well as to the terror inspired by the Mongol and Turkic warriors. (403) He concludes that as a result of their victories there was a real increase in the importance of the Turkic elements in Central Asian society. (404) The army organization, taxation and communications, bureaucracy and the capital Karakorum as well as the material and spiritual life in the Mongol empire are thoroughly studied by Christian and one can accept his thesis that, thanks to the Mongol conquests, "Inner Eurasia, previously a region marginal to the histories of Outer Eurasia, became the centre of a single Eurasian system" (426), that is the Mongols created a new 'world-system' on the eve of the Modern Era.
In this book David Christian clearly shows that Inner Eurasian societies are in fact quite important for the world's development and that they had a profound impact on Outer Eurasian agrarian civilizations. His book is supplied with many figures, maps, tables and plates, as well as with 'further reading' at the end of every chapter, which is very important for a better understanding of the written text. There are also a lot of fresh ideas in this synthetic book and certainly it will be interesting not only for a reader who wants to know more about the region's history but also for specialists.