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Modern History Of Mongolia
First published in 1989. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
476 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
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March 25, 2022
This book is written by Charles R. Bawden, who is Emeritus Professor of Mongolian at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. Before this book had published, there were some works about Modern Mongolia, such as Owen Lattimore’s Nationalism and Revolution in Mongolia and Robert A. Rupen’s Mongols of the Twentieth Century. However, according to Joseph Fletcher, this book is the first full-length historical work about modern Mongolia in the English-speaking world. As we can see, this book has become a landmark in the Mongolian studies. Most of the important works about this topic written later are based on this book’s achievement, no matter they agree with its point of views or not.
In this book, Bawden mainly relies on the sources in Russian and Mongolian. He also uses a lot of secondary researches and translations in English, French, and German. Newspapers, official reports, travel writings, and speeches are included in this work.
In the preface, Bawden explains the two internal factors of the Mongol identity: the common feeling of being Chinggis Khan’s descendents and spiritual unity of Buddhism. They are the drives to evoke the Mongols to pursue their independence after the collapse of the Manchu empire. He also believes that the Mongol revolution had a native root and was not a reflection of the interests of Russia. He also mentions the reasons why he thought it was good to write a history of Modern Mongolia during that time, they are, 1) the publications from Mongolia were available; 2) Mongolia became more visible on the international stage; 3) The status of Mongolia had become relatively stable.
Then, he starts this book from the chapter “An Introduction to Mongolia” and offers his readers a profound view of Mongolia’s natural, cultural and historical background. He talked about the Mongols’ political situation at the beginning of 17th century and their conversion to Buddhism under Altan Khan (1508-1582). He also clarifies the definition of Mongolia in this book: roughly speaking, the Mongolian People’s Republic, in which the Mongols could govern themselves, entirely speak their own language, and form a majority of national population.
In Chapter 2 “The Loss of Mongol Independence”, the author describes the process which the Mongols was conquered by the Manchus. First, the Manchus defeated Chakhar Ligden Khan in 1634 and incorporated Inner Mongolia in 1636, and then crushed the force of Galdan, the leader of the Zungar Mongols and won the support from Mongol nobles of Outer Mongolia in 1691.
In Chapter 3 “Khalkha in the Eighteenth Century,” Bawden mentions the Qing policies and social institutions and commerce in Outer Mongolia, such as the league and banner system, Lifan Yuan (Colonial Ministry or Court of Colonial Affairs), the relay-station system, Khamjilga and shabi systems. To Bawden, Manchu policy was ‘essentially a conservative and reactionary one,’ and to the Manchus Mongolia was ‘primarily a reserve of mobile military strength.' Here, in Bawden’s opinion, the condition of Mongolia under Manchu rule was ‘feudalism’and Chingunjav’s rebellion in 1756 was a large scale movement. Nonetheless, Fletcher argues that Bawden’s interpretation of ‘Mongol feudalism’ is problematic and the scale and influence of Chingujav’s rebellion is exaggerated.
In Chapter 4 “Social and Economic Developments in the Nineteenth Century,” the author describes that the Mongol society was a stratified one. The lay people can be divided into two classes, the nobility and the subjects (albatu). The church had a similar organization: higher lamas and lower ecclesiastical serfs (shabi). He also discusses the heavy taxation and the newly-appeared and small-scale urbanization. When he talks about the discontent with the church, he takes the Inner Mongolian poet, novelist and historian Injanashi (1837-1891) as an example. In his Köke Sudur (The Blue Chronicle), he criticized his fellow Mongol people who were immersed in Chinese culture but knew little about their history. During this time, the Mongols had been drawn more and more into the world trade system and their society had become vulnerable and unstable.
In Chapter 5 “From Autonomy to Revolution, 1911-1921,” Bawden illustrates the process from the Mongolia’s independence proclaimed by Jibzundamba Khutugtu to the forcing to accept the autonomy under the pressure of Russia in 1915. In this sense, Mongolia became one of the modern nations during that time. Nevertheless, Mongolia’s international status did not be recognized by other countries. Bawden also distinguishes the two revolutions in 1911 and 1921, the former nationalistic movement; the latter Russian-style (soviet) revolution. Later even this autonomy could not sustain because of Russia’s unstable condition and China’s reinforce. In 1919, the Chinese general Xu Shuzheng arrived in Urga with a Chinese force and controlled Mongolia. Mongolia’s autonomy was relinquished by China. But the establishment of the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP), Soviet Union’s intervene, and Ungern’s expelling of Chinese force made the success of the Mongolian people’s revolution possible.
In Chapter 6 “First Steps in Revolution, 1921-8,” Bawden mentions the 1921 revolution and the three years of constitutional monarchy from 1922 to 1924. Regarding to the social condition, Bawden said, ‘a less promising field for the development of a socialist society along Marxist lines than Mongolian in the year 1921 can hardly be imagined.’ He also correctly points out that the main opponent of the revolution was not a foreign colonial power or a class of native capitalists, but the church. By 1924, Mongolia was to lessen her ties with Soviet Union and enter the wider sphere of world commerce. However, her attempt was suppressed by Soviet Union after the third party congress of the Mongol People’s Party. Bawden adopts Zlatkin’s evaluation of the congress and argues that that failure was partly due to Mongolia’s dependence on Soviet Union. The factional contradiction, the right and left wings, was the consequence left by the third congress of the MPP. He also argues that 1928 ‘marks a definite watershed in the history of revolutionary Mongolia.’ After 1928, Mongolia became solely relied on the Soviet Union and entered a period of entire segregation from the world until the Second World War.
In Chapter 7 “The Socialist Fiasco, 1929-32,” Bawden demonstrates the extremism of 1929 to 1932, including the collectivization and the leftism, after the seventh congress of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP). He also mentions the subsequent Mongol economic decline and the civil war and the soothing New Turn Policy.
In Chapter 8 “The Destruction of the Old Order, 1932-40,” the author discusses Choibalsang as dictator of Mongolia under the support of the Soviet Union. Under Choibalsang, he completed the eradication of the Church in Mongolia and faced the Japanese penetration to Mongolia.
In Chapter 9 “Post-War Mongolia: Achievements and Prospects,” Bawden gives his opinions about Mongolia’s accomplishment and potential problems. As to the social problems which Mongolia faced during the post-war era, he mentioned the imbalance of the age groups, underpopulation, children proper care, socialization of production as a new form of exploitation, social slackness and irresponsibility, and dishonesty and criminality in the management of public property rapid urbanization made imbalance of labor distribution and seasonal unemployment. Even so, Mongolia still maintained her independence and enhanced her international status. The confirmation of her statehood might be one of the most important developments.
Briefly speaking, according to Bawden, Mongolia has ‘suffered’ a complete disconnection from her past. Until 1921 her spiritual roots were in Tibet, had strong tie with the Buddhist world. From 1929, Mongolia was redirected to Russia. ‘Learning form Soviet experience’ is the general line of Mongolia. During the 1960s, Mongolia is a totalitarian, not democratic in western sense, state. Political power is controlled by the MPRP. Regarding to the prospect of Mongolia, Bawden argues that she was going to accomplish total communization, which we have known that it was not realized.
When reviewing this book written 42 years ago, I am benefited from the historical hinder sight. In this book, Mongolia was always subject to the influence of the geopolitics and international relations. She was of no agency or self-determination and only listened to her ‘big brother,’ Soviet Union. She was spiritually depended on Moscow, and cannot stand aloof between Russia and China. However, if we could interpret this as Mongolia’s strategy of preserving her independence?
Moreover, it seems that Bawden sympathizes with the figures that were opposed to the Soviet Union’s policies and managed to maintain the independent status of the newborn Mongolia state. In Fletcher’s words, Bawden has anti-communist supposition. For example, regarding to the New Turn Policy, he does not blame Gendung (Genden) who played an important role, but claims that those inexperienced and incompetent local functionaries should be responsible for the bewilderment brought with the New Turn Policy. To me, Mongolia seems a typical communist country, parallel to those soviet satellites of that period. They share similar processes of progress in history. What would be the characteristics of Mongolia among those communist countries? I think that this question was not well answered by the author.
One of the interesting points to me is the issue concerning the renovation of the Mongol script. Mongolia decided to replace their original Uighur-script Mongolian with new script. However, she turned down the Latin script project and switched to the Cyrillic script project from 1941 and consolidated by 1951. Later, in 1953, the leader of Inner Mongolia, Khafungga, was also to adopt Cyrillic script to reduce illiteracy in Inner Mongolia, but the proposal was rebuffed by Zhou Enlai, China’s premier, possibly due to the aggravation of the Chinese-Russian relationship in 1958. This trend even cannot be reversed in Mongolia after the democratic reform in the 1990s. In this point, Bawden’s analysis is correct that Mongolia has been alienated from and hard to return her tradition.
With regard to the sources, one of the obvious drawbacks of this book is its lack of Chinese sources. As we know, China was the master of Mongolia until 1921 and had great ties with Mongolia in economic sphere afterwards, and Inner Mongolia which was under control of China were also one of the components in the pan-Mongolian movement. There are also a lot of historical sources in Chinese about the Mongol history before 1911, such as Shilus (The Veritable Records) of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Most of the Chinese sources Bawden scarcely cited are the translations in German and French. This makes this herald work incomplete.
Even though, as the earliest achievement about the history of modern Mongolia, Bawden had contributed a framework to the later generation of the Mongolists. We can add more new sources and findings on the base given by Bawden’s work.
(Jan 3, 2011)
In this book, Bawden mainly relies on the sources in Russian and Mongolian. He also uses a lot of secondary researches and translations in English, French, and German. Newspapers, official reports, travel writings, and speeches are included in this work.
In the preface, Bawden explains the two internal factors of the Mongol identity: the common feeling of being Chinggis Khan’s descendents and spiritual unity of Buddhism. They are the drives to evoke the Mongols to pursue their independence after the collapse of the Manchu empire. He also believes that the Mongol revolution had a native root and was not a reflection of the interests of Russia. He also mentions the reasons why he thought it was good to write a history of Modern Mongolia during that time, they are, 1) the publications from Mongolia were available; 2) Mongolia became more visible on the international stage; 3) The status of Mongolia had become relatively stable.
Then, he starts this book from the chapter “An Introduction to Mongolia” and offers his readers a profound view of Mongolia’s natural, cultural and historical background. He talked about the Mongols’ political situation at the beginning of 17th century and their conversion to Buddhism under Altan Khan (1508-1582). He also clarifies the definition of Mongolia in this book: roughly speaking, the Mongolian People’s Republic, in which the Mongols could govern themselves, entirely speak their own language, and form a majority of national population.
In Chapter 2 “The Loss of Mongol Independence”, the author describes the process which the Mongols was conquered by the Manchus. First, the Manchus defeated Chakhar Ligden Khan in 1634 and incorporated Inner Mongolia in 1636, and then crushed the force of Galdan, the leader of the Zungar Mongols and won the support from Mongol nobles of Outer Mongolia in 1691.
In Chapter 3 “Khalkha in the Eighteenth Century,” Bawden mentions the Qing policies and social institutions and commerce in Outer Mongolia, such as the league and banner system, Lifan Yuan (Colonial Ministry or Court of Colonial Affairs), the relay-station system, Khamjilga and shabi systems. To Bawden, Manchu policy was ‘essentially a conservative and reactionary one,’ and to the Manchus Mongolia was ‘primarily a reserve of mobile military strength.' Here, in Bawden’s opinion, the condition of Mongolia under Manchu rule was ‘feudalism’and Chingunjav’s rebellion in 1756 was a large scale movement. Nonetheless, Fletcher argues that Bawden’s interpretation of ‘Mongol feudalism’ is problematic and the scale and influence of Chingujav’s rebellion is exaggerated.
In Chapter 4 “Social and Economic Developments in the Nineteenth Century,” the author describes that the Mongol society was a stratified one. The lay people can be divided into two classes, the nobility and the subjects (albatu). The church had a similar organization: higher lamas and lower ecclesiastical serfs (shabi). He also discusses the heavy taxation and the newly-appeared and small-scale urbanization. When he talks about the discontent with the church, he takes the Inner Mongolian poet, novelist and historian Injanashi (1837-1891) as an example. In his Köke Sudur (The Blue Chronicle), he criticized his fellow Mongol people who were immersed in Chinese culture but knew little about their history. During this time, the Mongols had been drawn more and more into the world trade system and their society had become vulnerable and unstable.
In Chapter 5 “From Autonomy to Revolution, 1911-1921,” Bawden illustrates the process from the Mongolia’s independence proclaimed by Jibzundamba Khutugtu to the forcing to accept the autonomy under the pressure of Russia in 1915. In this sense, Mongolia became one of the modern nations during that time. Nevertheless, Mongolia’s international status did not be recognized by other countries. Bawden also distinguishes the two revolutions in 1911 and 1921, the former nationalistic movement; the latter Russian-style (soviet) revolution. Later even this autonomy could not sustain because of Russia’s unstable condition and China’s reinforce. In 1919, the Chinese general Xu Shuzheng arrived in Urga with a Chinese force and controlled Mongolia. Mongolia’s autonomy was relinquished by China. But the establishment of the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP), Soviet Union’s intervene, and Ungern’s expelling of Chinese force made the success of the Mongolian people’s revolution possible.
In Chapter 6 “First Steps in Revolution, 1921-8,” Bawden mentions the 1921 revolution and the three years of constitutional monarchy from 1922 to 1924. Regarding to the social condition, Bawden said, ‘a less promising field for the development of a socialist society along Marxist lines than Mongolian in the year 1921 can hardly be imagined.’ He also correctly points out that the main opponent of the revolution was not a foreign colonial power or a class of native capitalists, but the church. By 1924, Mongolia was to lessen her ties with Soviet Union and enter the wider sphere of world commerce. However, her attempt was suppressed by Soviet Union after the third party congress of the Mongol People’s Party. Bawden adopts Zlatkin’s evaluation of the congress and argues that that failure was partly due to Mongolia’s dependence on Soviet Union. The factional contradiction, the right and left wings, was the consequence left by the third congress of the MPP. He also argues that 1928 ‘marks a definite watershed in the history of revolutionary Mongolia.’ After 1928, Mongolia became solely relied on the Soviet Union and entered a period of entire segregation from the world until the Second World War.
In Chapter 7 “The Socialist Fiasco, 1929-32,” Bawden demonstrates the extremism of 1929 to 1932, including the collectivization and the leftism, after the seventh congress of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP). He also mentions the subsequent Mongol economic decline and the civil war and the soothing New Turn Policy.
In Chapter 8 “The Destruction of the Old Order, 1932-40,” the author discusses Choibalsang as dictator of Mongolia under the support of the Soviet Union. Under Choibalsang, he completed the eradication of the Church in Mongolia and faced the Japanese penetration to Mongolia.
In Chapter 9 “Post-War Mongolia: Achievements and Prospects,” Bawden gives his opinions about Mongolia’s accomplishment and potential problems. As to the social problems which Mongolia faced during the post-war era, he mentioned the imbalance of the age groups, underpopulation, children proper care, socialization of production as a new form of exploitation, social slackness and irresponsibility, and dishonesty and criminality in the management of public property rapid urbanization made imbalance of labor distribution and seasonal unemployment. Even so, Mongolia still maintained her independence and enhanced her international status. The confirmation of her statehood might be one of the most important developments.
Briefly speaking, according to Bawden, Mongolia has ‘suffered’ a complete disconnection from her past. Until 1921 her spiritual roots were in Tibet, had strong tie with the Buddhist world. From 1929, Mongolia was redirected to Russia. ‘Learning form Soviet experience’ is the general line of Mongolia. During the 1960s, Mongolia is a totalitarian, not democratic in western sense, state. Political power is controlled by the MPRP. Regarding to the prospect of Mongolia, Bawden argues that she was going to accomplish total communization, which we have known that it was not realized.
When reviewing this book written 42 years ago, I am benefited from the historical hinder sight. In this book, Mongolia was always subject to the influence of the geopolitics and international relations. She was of no agency or self-determination and only listened to her ‘big brother,’ Soviet Union. She was spiritually depended on Moscow, and cannot stand aloof between Russia and China. However, if we could interpret this as Mongolia’s strategy of preserving her independence?
Moreover, it seems that Bawden sympathizes with the figures that were opposed to the Soviet Union’s policies and managed to maintain the independent status of the newborn Mongolia state. In Fletcher’s words, Bawden has anti-communist supposition. For example, regarding to the New Turn Policy, he does not blame Gendung (Genden) who played an important role, but claims that those inexperienced and incompetent local functionaries should be responsible for the bewilderment brought with the New Turn Policy. To me, Mongolia seems a typical communist country, parallel to those soviet satellites of that period. They share similar processes of progress in history. What would be the characteristics of Mongolia among those communist countries? I think that this question was not well answered by the author.
One of the interesting points to me is the issue concerning the renovation of the Mongol script. Mongolia decided to replace their original Uighur-script Mongolian with new script. However, she turned down the Latin script project and switched to the Cyrillic script project from 1941 and consolidated by 1951. Later, in 1953, the leader of Inner Mongolia, Khafungga, was also to adopt Cyrillic script to reduce illiteracy in Inner Mongolia, but the proposal was rebuffed by Zhou Enlai, China’s premier, possibly due to the aggravation of the Chinese-Russian relationship in 1958. This trend even cannot be reversed in Mongolia after the democratic reform in the 1990s. In this point, Bawden’s analysis is correct that Mongolia has been alienated from and hard to return her tradition.
With regard to the sources, one of the obvious drawbacks of this book is its lack of Chinese sources. As we know, China was the master of Mongolia until 1921 and had great ties with Mongolia in economic sphere afterwards, and Inner Mongolia which was under control of China were also one of the components in the pan-Mongolian movement. There are also a lot of historical sources in Chinese about the Mongol history before 1911, such as Shilus (The Veritable Records) of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Most of the Chinese sources Bawden scarcely cited are the translations in German and French. This makes this herald work incomplete.
Even though, as the earliest achievement about the history of modern Mongolia, Bawden had contributed a framework to the later generation of the Mongolists. We can add more new sources and findings on the base given by Bawden’s work.
(Jan 3, 2011)
May 2, 2020
Published in '68 by a brilliant British scholar. Excellent run down of the political, social, cultural and economic history from the 17th to the mid-20th centuries. Chuck-full of detail, but never dry. Bawden gives a lucid, easy to follow explanation of how economic and other hardships drove Mongolia into Manchu servitude in the late 17th century and subsequently stirred anti-Manchu feeling and helped bring about an autonomous Mongolia in 1911. He chronicles Mongolia's status as a Soviet satellite, her role in the Soviet-Japanese disputes of the '30s, her unfortunate aping of Soviet collectivization and Stalin's cult of personality (during the rule of Choibalsang) with similarly disasterous results.
He particularly focuses on the role of Lamaist Buddhism in all aspects of Mongolian life. He makes no bones about his distaste for the "decadence" of the church, faulting it for enriching itself on the labor of its adherents, monopolizing a considerable portion of the country's productive citizens through the clergy; passing off "quackery" as legitimate medicine, etc. Despite this, the author is not a Marxist-Leninst apologist and he does not defend the Soviet inspired destruction of the church, nor does he defend Choibalsang's cult of personality, the purges initiated by the party, it's economic bungling that nearly destroyed the country in the early 30s, etc.
However, it is fascinating to read a work written in an era when the socialist experiment was still alive and well throughout much of the world, including Britain. The author speaks about building socialism and communism as if these were workable states that could objectively be achieved rather than utopian fantasies. Of course, it is anachronistic of me to project my late 20th century thinking back on to something written before I was born. The collapse of the USSR was not a forgone conclusion at that time. As dis-functional as it was by '68, it still appeared as a somewhat legitimate model of social, economic and political, though oppressive, development. What Bawden's real gift is, is that he brings together Chinese, Russian and Mongolian sources to get at what actually took place in Mongolia's modern development. He starts to prise open the secrets of a society that was isolated and mysterious long before it hitched it's star to the USSR. He does an especially admirable job of trolling through the shifting historiography of the country, as yesterday's revolutionary heroes were suddenly branded as Japanese spies and erased from official documents, made non-persons. He makes a serious attempt to investigate important figures who were eliminated for so-called treason, the true details on the rise of Choibalsang--as opposed to the school book nonsense about his destined rise to leadership, etc.
He particularly focuses on the role of Lamaist Buddhism in all aspects of Mongolian life. He makes no bones about his distaste for the "decadence" of the church, faulting it for enriching itself on the labor of its adherents, monopolizing a considerable portion of the country's productive citizens through the clergy; passing off "quackery" as legitimate medicine, etc. Despite this, the author is not a Marxist-Leninst apologist and he does not defend the Soviet inspired destruction of the church, nor does he defend Choibalsang's cult of personality, the purges initiated by the party, it's economic bungling that nearly destroyed the country in the early 30s, etc.
However, it is fascinating to read a work written in an era when the socialist experiment was still alive and well throughout much of the world, including Britain. The author speaks about building socialism and communism as if these were workable states that could objectively be achieved rather than utopian fantasies. Of course, it is anachronistic of me to project my late 20th century thinking back on to something written before I was born. The collapse of the USSR was not a forgone conclusion at that time. As dis-functional as it was by '68, it still appeared as a somewhat legitimate model of social, economic and political, though oppressive, development. What Bawden's real gift is, is that he brings together Chinese, Russian and Mongolian sources to get at what actually took place in Mongolia's modern development. He starts to prise open the secrets of a society that was isolated and mysterious long before it hitched it's star to the USSR. He does an especially admirable job of trolling through the shifting historiography of the country, as yesterday's revolutionary heroes were suddenly branded as Japanese spies and erased from official documents, made non-persons. He makes a serious attempt to investigate important figures who were eliminated for so-called treason, the true details on the rise of Choibalsang--as opposed to the school book nonsense about his destined rise to leadership, etc.
December 12, 2018
Very interesting concept but oh my goodness this was the hardest book I have ever had given read in my life. The language and prose was way too advanced for any general reader so this is definitely more for a scholar who is really interested in Mongol history and would take the long amount of time it would take to read and understand this book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews