Since the first millennium BCE, nomads of the Eurasian steppe have
played a key role in world history and the development of adjacent
sedentary regions, especially China, India, the Middle East, and
Eastern and Central Europe. Although their more settled neighbors
often saw them as an ongoing threat and imminent danger
""barbarians, in fact"" their impact on sedentary cultures was far
more complex than the raiding, pillaging, and devastation with
which they have long been associated in the popular imagination.
The nomads were also facilitators and catalysts of social,
demographic, economic, and cultural change, and nomadic culture had
a significant influence on that of sedentary Eurasian
civilizations, especially in cases when the nomads conquered and
ruled over them. Not simply passive conveyors of ideas, beliefs,
technologies, and physical artifacts, nomads were frequently active
contributors to the process of cultural exchange and change. Their
active choices and initiatives helped set the cultural and
intellectual agenda of the lands they ruled and beyond. This volume
brings together a distinguished group of scholars from different
disciplines and cultural specializations to explore how nomads
played the role of “agents of cultural change.” The beginning
chapters examine this phenomenon in both east and west Asia in
ancient and early medieval times, while the bulk of the book is
devoted to the far flung Mongol empire of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. This comparative approach, encompassing both
a lengthy time span and a vast region, enables a clearer
understanding of the key role that Eurasian pastoral nomads played
in the history of the Old World. It conveys a sense of the complex
and engaging cultural dynamic that existed between nomads and their
agricultural and urban neighbors, and highlights the non-military
impact of nomadic culture on Eurasian history. Nomads As Agents of
Cultural Change illuminates and complicates nomadic roles as active
promoters of cultural exchange within a vast and varied region. It
makes available important original scholarship on the new turn in
the study of the Mongol empire and on relations between the nomadic
and sedentary worlds.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(1)
(7)
