Political Complexity in Nomadic Empires of Inner Asia

Abstract

The nomadic empires of Inner Asia are a unique historical phenomenon. Large mountain and steppe territories allowed hundreds of thousands of nomadic families to pursue their economic activities, creating the conditions that led to their integration into big imperial communities. The long border in the South with empire-civilization and world-system center China was one of the major ‘challenges’ for steppe people, the ‘answer’ to which was often the creation of semi-peripheral imperial polities, as only the common military capacity of the Inner Asia stockbreeders guaranteed them at least temporary military and political equality and even supremacy during periods of weakening of the Middle Kingdom. The established opinion on the similarity of the nomadic empires in this region is mostly the result of a long period of research on nomadic economies, social and political structures, and the relations between nomads and China (evolutionism, positivism, Marxism). In the last few decades, the concept of multi-linearity (non-linearity) of sociogenesis and politogenesis has been applied to this field of study, allowing us to focus on the peculiarities of the Inner Asia nomadic empires, creating a solution to the old issues surrounding the nature of the power systems among nomads, the existence or absence of statehood, and the typology of imperial structures according to their level of complexity.