Ancient Inner Asian Nomads: Their Economic Basis and Its Significance in Chinese History
The Journal of Asian Studies, 53 (4):
1092--1126 (November 1994)Abstract
In his article about Central Asia in the first millennium B.C., NICOLA DI COSMO challenges the established characterizations of the region's peoples as greedy (according to traditional Chinese historians) or needy (according to modern social scientists). He instead proposes that their economy paralleled that of Scythian Central Asia where scholars have long recognized the existence of a stable symbiotic relationship between agricultural production and steppe pastoral nomadism. Di Cosmo presents a variety of evidence-including historical texts, archaeological findings, and modern field studies of nomads-all suggesting that sufficient agricultural production existed within ancient Central Asia to support the population's needs. He proposes that the aggressive activities of the Xiongnu nomadic confederation beginning in the third century B.C. should be understood as a defensive response to Chinese expansion into the Central Asians' grazing and agricultural lands. He argues that during the reign of Han Wudi (141-87 B.C), the Chinese altered this policy by withdrawing from permanent occupation of Central Asian lands, and adopted a more successful pattern of short-term military campaigns aimed at weakening the Xiongnu confederation.