He started with his nokers, his companions: With his reputation of righteousness and fairness he was able to build a following… The noker functioned on the principles of equality among participants… this basic relationship of loyalty and equality was transferred… into the ranks of the army of conquest. Togan sees the beginning of an ‘anti-tribal movement’ before Chinggis, a voluntary, popular movement that Chinggis came to lead and made into a central policy. But if Chinggis the radical is your interest, it’s possible to consult the section on him as a stand-alone: ‘The New Universal Order’. You find another strongly-put case in Isenbike Togan, Flexibility and Limitation in Steppe Formations: The Kerait Khanate and Chinggis Khan. Mongolian political organization was not, therefore, the culmination of a long evolving steppe tradition, but a deviation from it.īarfield is one opinion. Chinggis had his reasons to distrust his kin, which, Barfield argues, was what led him to abandon tribal government, reject the aristocracy of the clans and switch to a talent system. He has a chapter on ‘Mongol Political Organization’ where he discusses Chinggis’ move away from political dependence on kinship and clans. Barfield, A Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221BC to AD 1757. One of the more gettable-at books is Thomas J. A where-to-read about Chinggis as social revolutionary (I’ll spell him Chinggis, the convention, when I mean the historical figure and not the guy in my novel).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |