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Xiongnu: The World's First Nomadic Empire

Online ISBN:
9780190083724
Print ISBN:
9780190083694
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Xiongnu: The World's First Nomadic Empire

Bryan K. Miller
Bryan K. Miller
Assistant Professor of Central Asian Art & Archaeology in History of Art and Assistant Curator of Chinese Archaeology at the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan
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Published online:
14 December 2023
Published in print:
24 November 2024
Online ISBN:
9780190083724
Print ISBN:
9780190083694
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book raises the case of the world’s first nomadic empire, the Xiongnu, as a prime example of the sophisticated developments and powerful influence of nomadic regimes. Launching from a reconceptualization of the social and economic institutions of mobile pastoralists, the collective chapters trace the entire course of the Xiongnu Empire starting from before its initial rise, leaping into its founding conquests, shedding light on the peoples and communities that maintained its Inner Asian realms, traversing the wars that challenged it and the reformations that made it stronger, and at last reflecting on the legacies that lived on after its eventual fall. By weaving together archaeological examinations with historical investigations, the book presents a more complex and nuanced narrative of how an empire based firmly in the steppe more than two thousand years ago managed to formulate a robust political economy and a complex political matrix. The nomadic regime capitalized on the mobilities of resources and agents and fostered alternative forms of political participation, allowing the Xiongnu to consume and dominate vast realms of central Eurasia and to have lasting geopolitical effects on the many worlds around them.

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