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Summary
Kradin, Nikolay N. Imperiia Hunnu [The Hsiung-nu Empire]. Moscow, 2001
This study was supported by Giants of Soros Foundation # Z16000/542 and # H2B741, RGNF # 93-06-10313, RFFI # 97-06-96759 and # 99-06-99512, and the Russian Federal Program «Integration»» M422-06.
The Hsiung-nu history is one of the most interesting pages of the history of the Eurasia steppe's people in the ancient epoch. On the boundary between III and II centuries ВС. the Hsiung-nu have established the first steppe empire which has consolidated many ethnoses of the Inner Asia. Over a period of 250 years, a dramatic confrontation between Hsiung-nu and southern neighbour — Chinese dynasty Han. At the end of the first century AD, the Hsiung-nu era in the Inner Asia was over but from this point a new stage of their history — the Hun invasion to the West and their devastating conquests in the Old World begins.
Basic sources on the Hsiung-nu history [Лидай 1958] are data of the which was made into basic languages [Бичурин 1950/1851; Groot 1921; Watsin 1961; Материалы 1968, 1973], as well as materials of archaeological excavations on the territories of Mongolia, Russia and China [Доржсурэн 1961; Unehara 1960; Rudenko 1969; Коновалов 1976; Давыдова 1995; 1996; Миняев 1998 etc.]. At present, there are several great papers [Egami 1948; Бернштам 1951; Гумилев 1960; Ma Чаншоу 1962; Давыдова 1985; Сухбаатар 1980 etc.], in which different aspects of the history and culture of the Hsiung-nu society are elucidated. However, many questions remain as before unsolved and debatable. This book will consider some of these problems.
To a problem of origin of the nomadic empires, a great number of different special and popular studies has been devoted. Joseph Fletcher, referring to the works of the Chinese historian Ch'i-ch'ing Hsiao, believes that all theories explaining the reason of formation of the nomadic empires and their invasions to China and other agricultural countries can be reduced to the following seven ones: (1) greedy and predatory nature of inhabitants of steppe region; (2) climatic changes; (3) overpopulation of steppe; (4) unwillingness of farmers to trade with nomads; (5) necessity of additional livelihood sources; (6) need in a creation of supertribal unification of nomads; (7) psychology of nomads; aspiration of nomads to feel themselves to be equal to farmers, on the one hand, and a faith of nomads in divine predestination given Heaven Tenggeri, to them by to subjugate the whole World [Fletcher 1986: 32–33].
In the majority of the factors listed there are their own rational aspects. However, an importance of some of them has been overestimated. So, the present paleogeographical data don't conform a strict correlation of global periods of the steppe drying (hunidification with periods of decline) prosperity of nomadic empires [Иванов, Васильев 1995 table 24, 25]. A thesis of 'class struggle' of nomads proved to be erroneous [Марков 1976; Khazanov 1984/1994; Крадин 1992]. A role of demography is not entirely known because an increase of the livestock went on move fast than that of population. An increase of livestock has led to destruction of grasses and crisis of the ecosystem. The nomadic life can, naturally, contribute to development of some military characteristics. But the number of farmers was many times over and they had ecologically complex economy, reliable fortresses and more powerful handicraft-metallurgical base.
As a whole, from the ecological point of view, the nomads have not needed in a state. A specific character of pastoralism assumes a dissipated (disperse) existence mode. A concentration of large herds at the same place has led to overgrazing, excessive trampling down of grass, growth of a danger of a spreading of infections diseases of animals. The cattle can tot be accumulated to infinity, its maximum quantity was determined by the productivity of the steppe landscape. In addition, regardless of a gentlehood of the cattle owner, all his herds could be destroyed by murrian (dzuf), drought or epizootic. Therefore, it was more profitable to give a cattle for pasture to the kinsmen not sufficiently provided for or to distribute as the 'gifts' thereby raising his social status. Thus, all the production activities of the nomads have been carried out within the amily — related and lineage groups using only episodically the labour cooperation of the segments of undertribal and tribal levels [Lattimore 1940; Bacon 1958; Krader 1963; Марков 1976; Khazanov 1984/1994; Масанов 1995а etc.].
This circumstance has led to that the intervention of leaders of the nomadic life has been very insignificant and could not be compared with numerous administrative obligations of the rulers of the settled agricultural societies. By virtue of this fact, the power of the leaders of the steppe societies could not develop to the formalized level on the basis of regular taxation of cattle-breeders and the elite was forced to be satisfied with the gifts and irregular presents. Besides, a considerable oppression of mobile nomads on the side of the tribal chief or other person pretending to a personal power could led to mass decampment away him [Lattimore 1940; Марков 1976; Irons 1979; Khazanov 1984/1994; Fletcher 1986; Barfield 1992; Крадин 1992; Kradin 1995; 2000a; Масанов 1995а etc.].
What has, in such a situation, incited the nomads to raids and been a reason to create the 'nomadic empires? The eminent American anthropologist Owen Lattimore, living over prolonged period among the cattle-breeders of Mongolia, has written that a nomad can easily manage with only products received from his herd of animals, but a pure nomad will always remain to be poor [1940: 522]. The nomads are in need of foodstuffs of farmers, products of craftsmen, silk, arms and refined adornments for their chiefs, and chiefs' wife's and concubines. All of this could be get by two ways: war and peaceful trade. The nomads have used both ways. When they have felt their superiority or invulnerability, they have mounted their horses and left in a raid. However, a neighbour was the powerful state. The pastoral nomads preferred to carry on with it a peaceful trade. But quite offer the governments of the settled states prevented from such the trade as it got out of hand. And at that time, the nomads had to assert their right to trade using arms.
The complicated hierarchical organization of the power in the form of the 'nomadic empires' and similar political formations has been developed by nomads only in those regions where they have been forced to have the long and active contacts with more highly organized agricultural-urban societies (Scythians and ancient oriental and western states; nomads of Inner Asia and China, Hunns and Roman Empire, Arabs, Khazars, Turks and Byzantia etc.) ILattimore 1940; Хазанов 1975; Khazanov 1984/1994; Barfield 1981; 1992; Fletcher 1986; Крадин 1992; Kradin 1995; 2000a]. In the Khalkha-Mongolia, the first steppe empire — Hsiung-nu — has emerged just as in the Middle China plain after the long period of the internal wars the Chinese national centralized state — the Ch'in empire and afterwards the Han empire [Kradin 2000].