| MONGOLIA
– A Brief History
Mongolia’s
history is one of invading armies and huge conquests. The first recorded
invasion was by the Huns in the 3rd century BC who founded the first
nomadic empire in Central Asia and afterwards one state followed another
for more than a millennium, each developing upon the ruins of the previous
one.
This wild region spawned fierce people whose ambitions threatened the
foundations of Chinese and European civilisation Nomadic tribes of sheep-herders
and horse-breeders, the Mongols’ homeland was the grasslands along
the banks of a tributary’ of the Amur river which now forms part
of the Russia- China border. At the beginning of the 13th century, the
Mongols were united by one of its most famous sons, Genghis Khan, who
went onto lead his armies in the invasion and conquest of China. A highly
organised army entirely on horseback, they went on to found an empire
stretching from the Yellow river to the Danube. The Chinese built the
Great Wall in a futile attempt to keep them out of their Middle Kingdom.
However the Mongol horde swept all before them and the grandson of Genghis
Khan, Kublai became the Great Khan of China, establishing his capital
in Peking. His death was followed by a succession of weak and incompetent
rulers, and internal feuds eventually brought about the demise of the
Mongols and the disintegration of the Mongol Empire.
The Gobi desert divides Mongolia politically and geographically. The
expanding Russian empire had set up a protectorate over the northern
part of the country while the Chinese governed the south; later designated
the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia. Outer Mongolia remained firmly
under Soviet control until it became an independent republic in 1991.
Today, Russia’s former influence is still much in evidence in the
industry and architecture of the capital, Ulan Bator. |
