Ethnography and Geography in China under Mongol Rule: Comparative Views

• In Event: Conflicting Identities: Negotiating Ethnicity and Religion in Mongol China and Beyond

Abstract

With the expansion of their empire, the Mongols encountered new geographical realities, and new ethnic identities. The necessity to investigate, administer and describe the different parts of a ”universal” Mongol empire appeared, as has been widely shown, in an intense cultural interchange and the ultimate mixture of Western and Eastern geographical perceptions of the world. But what about native Mongol views and the ideology connected with them? Taking the example of the Yuan dynasty as a case study, the paper investigates the issue of how the production of geography and ethnography during the Mongol era connected to a greater Mongolian tradition and representation of the world. Were the ideas and principles of Mongolian processes of identity-building maintained in the work of their Chinese officials and subjects? And how did this change the traditional Chinese perception of the “other?”
In investigating these questions, the paper focusses mainly on the production of official historiography under Yuan rule, and the image that this historiography conveys of their Northern ”dynastic predecessors“ and non-Chinese neighbors. Did the Mongol imperial project influence the way in which Inner Asian identities are portrayed in these works?
Through a survey of these issues, the paper offers new insights into understanding the cultural and ideological realities of the Yuan as a gradual process of enrichment, adaptation and at the same time preservation of Mongolian ideas. They deeply shaped the perceptions of the self and of the “other” in the East Asian world of the time.

Author

• Francesca Fiaschetti, Hebrew University