Barbarians at the Wall: The First Nomadic Empire and the Making of China

by John Man

The people of the first nomadic empire left no written records, but from 200 BC they dominated the heart of Asia for 400 years. They changed the world. The Mongols, today’s descendants of Genghis Khan, see them as ancestors. Their rise cemented Chinese unity and inspired the first Great Wall. Their heirs under Attila the Hun helped destroy the Roman Empire.

We don’t know what language they spoke, but they became known as Xiongnu, or Hunnu, a term passed down the centuries and across Eurasia, enduring today in shortened form as ‘Hun’. Outside Asia precious little is known of their rich history, but new evidence reframes our understanding of the indelible mark they left on a vast region stretching from Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China.

Based on meticulous research and new archaeological evidence, Barbarians at the Wall traces their epic story, and shows how the nomadic cultures of the steppes gave birth to a ‘barbarian empire’ with the wealth and power to threaten the civilised order of the ancient world.

Genres: History, China, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Archaeology

336 pages, Hardcover

Published June 13, 2019

About the author

John Anthony Garnet Man is a British historian and travel writer. His special interests are China, Mongolia and the history of written communication. He takes particular pleasure in combining historical narrative with personal experience.

He studied German and French at Keble College, Oxford, before doing two postgraduate courses, a diploma in the History and Philosophy of Science at Oxford and Mongolian at the School of Oriental and African Studies, completing the latter in 1968. After working in journalism with Reuters and in publishing with Time-Life Books, he turned to writing, with occasional forays into film, TV and radio.

In the 1990s, he began a trilogy on the three major revolutions in writing: writing itself, the alphabet and printing with movable type. This has so far resulted in two books, Alpha Beta and The Gutenberg Revolution, both republished in 2009. The third, on the origin of writing, is on hold, because it depends on access to Iraq.

He returned to the subject of Mongolia with Gobi: Tracking the Desert, the first book on the region since the 1920s. Work in Mongolia led to Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Resurrection, which has so far appeared in 18 languages. Attila the Hun and Kublai Khan: The Mongol King Who Remade China completed a trilogy on Asian leaders. A revised edition of his book on Genghis Khan, with the results of an expedition up the mountain on which he is supposed to be buried, was upcoming in autumn 2010.

The Terracotta Army coincided with the British Museum exhibition (September 2007- April 2008). This was followed by The Great Wall. The Leadership Secrets of Genghis Khan combines history and leadership theory. Xanadu: Marco Polo and the Discovery of the East was published in autumn 2009, and Samurai: The Last Warrior, the story of Saigō Takamori's doomed 1877 rebellion against the Japanese emperor, was published in February 2011.

In 2007 John Man was awarded Mongolia's Friendship Medal for his contributions to UK-Mongolian relations.

Reviews

[Christine Watts · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like three and a half....generally disappointing. I appreciated the difficulties of carrying out research in this area but the rather chatty style made it read like a travelogue at times. The most frustrating thing was the lack of maps to go with the text. The two at the beginning of the book were insufficient and confusing to understand.

[springheeled · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man's exploration of the rise and fall of the Xiongnu empire and early dynastic China is occasionally tedious but overwhelming fascinating

[Diarmid · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up after listening to the fantastic Fall of Civilizations podcast from Paul M.M. Cooper on China's Han dynasty. The Xiongnu were a steppe empire who dominated Mongolia and Xinjiang at the time of the Han dynasty more than 2,000 years ago, and who may (or may not) have been the ancestors of the Huns. Barbarians at the Wall is a very readable story of an area of history many Western readers won't be familiar with. John Man has written books on the Mongols and on China, and on Attila the Hun, so it's an area he knows well. The nature of the evidence and the sources means that it is as much about Han China as the Xiongnu, though it's no weaker for that and the two empires were inextricably linked.

[Bertie Brady · Rating 3 out of 5]

Barbarians at the wall cover the rise and fall of the Xiongnu and its relationship and influence on China, the empire which spanned across most of present-day Mongolia and Kazakstan and is considered one of the first great Nomadic empires.

The introduction gave me hope of reading a extremely fascinating book about an obscure empire in the Xiongnu, however I was disappointed to find the majority of the book discussing Qin/Han china often in little to no relation to Xiongnu. luckily I'm quite interested in early China as well but for someone who came into the book solely interested in the Xiongnu, I imagine this was a quite a let-down. It always felt like the story was looked at through the eyes of the Chinese rather then the Xiongnu I suppose this was inevitable given the absence of records from the Xiongnu and reliance on Chinese authors like Sima Qian.

The book is written quite informally which is refreshing but I find makes it difficult to bring structure causing the book to drift from point to point. Some points are explained in an extremely detailed manner particularly the passage on Roman prisoners influence in western China which Man travelled to Liqian to study the evidence (or lack there of). he also doesn't blindly follow narratives laid down by Sima Qian and often demonstrates how a certain passage could be more a result of biases or a willingness to make a point against emperor Wu whom Sima Qian despised.

Overall the book had some interesting aspects to it but I feel the lack of information on the conflict and particularly the Xiongnu, made it difficult to write about in much depth and resulted in the author often branching out into unrelated topics which have little to nothing to do with the main subject matter of the Xiongnu.

[Dimitrios Souvan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Xiongnu, based on an almost unpronounceable name to most English speakers, sound very obscure. In fact, these were giants of ancient China. They held the Qin and Han Dynasties to ransom for centuries. They were mighty, they conquered vast swathes of kingdoms around China and even into China itself. The Han dynasty would score victories but never were able to crush them entirely. This book goes through the long history of the Xiongnu and the potential links to the Huns of Attila. John Man is a good author, with a tendency to repeat half of his material in the form of a new release with a slightly different focus than his last book meaning that he only has to write 50% of a book. This time it is almost entirely different material to some of his books I've felt have repeated the same photos and paragraphs half a dozen times. This one deserves a read and a 5*.

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

The quality of the history is mostly average, dipping to poor in some instances. The most egregious for me was the use of the terms ‘moor’ and ‘saracen’ to describe groups from the 4th/5th century without context; simplistic at best and misleading at worst, given the modern (and common) usage.
There’s also some generally weird and uncomfortable orientalist interjections eg introducing a real person the author met, called Ding Ding, by saying ‘a name melodious to my English ears’. Please calm down... if someone wrote ‘then I met John, a name calling to mind sunburnt skin and fish and chips’ that would be jarring enough without the additional level of historical oppression, colonialism, and violence underpinning orientalism like this.

[Pei-jean Lu · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of The Great Wall’s purposes was to keep the nomadic tribes who were labelled as barbarians out of China, but as with all histories of a group of people written about by those who have little understanding, these so called barbarians were far from it.
Though interesting to look into the history of these tribes, this was still rather tedious especially when compared to previous books written by Man.

[Isidora · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book very well written. It was fascinating to read, and I also learnt a lot – things that will definitely stay in my memory. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in ancient Chinese and east-Asian history and culture.

[Brendon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and easy to follow account. Very interesting archeology.

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

Do not bother with this book unless you are a John Man fan and you need all of his works to complete your collection. He contributes very little new information (understandable as reliable info about the Xiongnu is hard to come by) but he recycles words and sentences, sometimes verbatim, from his other books. If you have read The Terracotta Army and The Great Wall, you will get a sense of deja vu when you come across a nearly identical sentence he has plucked from his other books. This book comes across as a lazy attempt to publish something new by plagiarising himself.

[Hans · Rating 2 out of 5]

A rather boring story. Not particularly well told.
Informative concerning the Great Wall and the Silk Road.
Personal visits by the author to places of interest don’t really contribute anything to the story.