Christopher Mott PhD thesis - University of St Andrews

224 Pages·2014·1.44 MB·English

by  Christopher D. Mott

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The Formless Empire: The Evolution of Indigenous Eurasian Geopolitics

A dissertation presented by

Christopher Douglas Mott

And written under the supervision of

Professor Andrew Williams

To the International Relations Department of the University of St Andrews in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Subject of
International Relations

St Andrews, Fife

January 2014
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Acknowledgements:

I would like to acknowledge my parents, who made this possible in the first place. Also, I
would like to acknowledge the following: The original Comrades of Room 13 who
assisted in the process of enjoying and adapting to the research student lifestyle despite
misunderstanding to the contrary from an outside perspective, to the creative inspiration
provided by Qara-Tamgalug, and above all to my supervisor Professor Andrew Williams
who from the start had interest and faith in this unconventional topic for research and
writing.
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1.0…Abstract:

This dissertation seeks to make a unique contribution to the study of geopolitics and
empire in Central Asia by focusing on both the indigenous developments of grand
strategies and their legacies by examining several key points in history of the region’s
geopolitics in order to determine the peculiar and specific nature of regional geopolitical
evolution, and how its basic concepts can be understood using such a locally based
framework. By putting the focus on several key concepts which hold steady through
major societal and technological upheavals, as well as foreign incursion and both the
inward and outward migrations, which together create the conditions which I have
dubbed ‘The Formless Empire’, it is possible to see the elements of a regional and
homegrown tradition of grand strategy and geopolitical thinking which is endemic to the
area of Inner Eurasia, even as this concept adapts from a totality of political policy to
merely frontier and military policy over the course of time.
This indigenous concept of grand strategy encompasses political, military, and
diplomatic aspects utilizing the key concepts of strategic mobility, and flexible or indirect
governance. These political power systems originated in their largest incarnations
amongst the nomadic people of the steppe and other people commonly considered
peripheral in history, but who in a Central Asian context were the original centerpieces
of regional politics until technological changes led to their eclipse by the big sedentary
powers such as Russia and China. However, even these well-established states took
elements of ‘The Formless Empire’ into their policies (if largely relegated to frontiers, the
military, and a few informal relationships alone) and therefore the influence of the
region’s past still lingers on in different forms in the present.
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Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………4

Chapter Two: Literature Review & Theoretical Approaches……………………………..15

Chapter Three: Historic Examples of the Pre-Modern Formless Land Empire…...........43

Chapter Four: The Post-Pax Mongolica Through The Timurid Powers…………………72

Chapter Five: End of Nomads, Rise of States, and the Transference of a Geopolitical
Legacy…………………………………………………………………………………………101

Chapter Six: The Invasion of the Littorals…………………………………………………124

Chapter Seven: Rebirth through Smothering…………………………………………….166

Chapter Eight: Conclusion………………………………………………………………….195

Bibliography & Works Cited…………………………………………………………………211
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Introductory Chapter

“If I determine the enemy's disposition of forces while I have no perceptible form, I can
concentrate my forces while the enemy is fragmented. The pinnacle of military
deployment approaches the formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot
discern it nor the wise make plans against it.”

~Sun Tzu, The Art of War

1.1…Defining the Terminology

The two relevant terms which need to be clarified in order for this project to put forth a
logical and coherent argument as well as remain focused on a defined scope is both
what is meant by the geographic phrase ‘Central Asia’ and its derivative versions as
well as the specifics of the new ‘Formless Empire’ concept put forward here to
understand that region’s historical and political context. Using historical case studies
beginning in the third century B.C.E. and moving up through the present day offers an
immense danger of overreach, meaning there are two limiting factors on the specific
examples-one is geographic and the other is the conceptual relevance. On occasion a
case study slightly or even noticeably outside the region of focus is utilized for
illustrating such a purpose and likewise case studies which fall outside of the focus of
the primary examples will be brought up as secondary cases to further illustrate
preexisting points.

1.2…Geographic Overview

First, it is relevant to define exactly what we call the region ‘Central Asia’. The definition
of what this constitutes has fluctuated with time. Originally a place set apart from littoral
and coastal Eurasia due to the relative dominance in its economy and politics of both
overland caravan trade and nomadic herding people-this is as good a place to start from
rather than using the somewhat limiting yet commonly held contemporary definition of
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan alone. Indeed, while
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the story of Central Asia has moved to increasingly marginalize the importance of the
nomadic population in the past few centuries, a certain fluidity of movement and
ambiguity of borders is endemic to the region-and so it is only logical that the
geographic scope chosen for the examples fluctuates with the warp and weft of eras,
political entities, and the apparent strategic thinking used in them. Therefore our
concept of what constitutes Central Asia itself is held on the type of state which dwells
there, rather than an absolute sense of clearly defined borders.
It is, however, possible to show the rough region of delineation for the purpose of
this study. The terms Central Asia, Inner Eurasia, and Central Eurasia can all apply to
various examples and often multiple terms will be used to show both minor distinctions
and to break up linguistic repetitiveness. ‘Central Asia’ is often employed to describe
what historically is known as ‘Transoxiana’ and its surrounding steppes. ‘Inner Eurasia’
and the nearly identical ‘Central Eurasia’ are used in order to describe a somewhat
more vast area including Transoxiana but extending further past the steppe to
encompass much of the terrain of non-littoral Eurasia, this can include the Black Sea
steppe in the west and the mixed steppe/forest land of Manchuria in the east.1
This massive region-though often lowly populated in terms of density-known for
its overland rather than oceanic trade-is the geographic setting to which we now must
turn our attention. Geography and ecology is the first building block in a region from
which the societies endemic to it grow, and so it is important to appraise this factor first.
The most important elements of this geography is both its vast space as well as its
diversity-both contained within a certain level of continuity connected by the flat, dry
grasslands known as the steppe. For most of history the steppe was a poor place for
agriculture to expand into, aside from the occasional fertile river valley, but still the grass
could support numerous domesticated animals. This flat and edible (for pack animals)
highway enabled herding-based nomadism to take hold-turning the apparently hostile
and sparse landscape into a highway which connected the various mountainous,
forested, and cultivated plains areas together through the common denominator of
mobile groups of herding people who migrated and traded across the steppe. As the
steppe flows west-east from the Ukraine to Western Manchuria and much more

1 Stuart Legg. The Heartland (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970), pages 31-9
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narrowly from the forest edge of southern Siberia to the mountains of the Caucasus and
Afghanistan, as well as the deserts of Xinjiang and Turkmenistan, we have a common
ecological denominator which can be taken to make a large and diverse area part of a
unified geopolitical network. This and the regions adjacent to it are often integrated into
this network through the policies and accidents of history, and share certain common
attributes which make them a cohesive if somewhat nebulous whole in military and
political history. Being on the interior of the world’s largest continent and having a
seasonal-if often more cold than warm-dry climate coupled with intermediary location
between what is traditional considered to be the major world civilizations create a
unique context worth examining.2 3
These circumstances naturally facilitate the decentralized ‘multicultural’ empire
as the lynchpin of governance. The modern term ‘multicultural’ will stand in this
dissertation as an approximate term which describes a society of relative openness to
foreign influence with an ethnically and often religiously diverse population. Though far
more typical and older than the nation-state and endemic to almost every part of the
world-the study of empire often evokes negative emotional reactions in contemporary
study. We can further delve into the importance of empire in the following chapter, but
for now it is worth noting that, value judgments aside, empire is tied only with tribes and
city-states for the top place position of historically common political entities. As Jane
Burbank and Frederick Cooper state succinctly in their overview of the subject:
“By comparison [with empire] the nation state appears as a blip on the historical
horizon, a state form that emerged recently under imperial skies and whose hold
on the world’s political imagination may well prove partial or transitory.”4

Inside Inner Eurasia this predilection for empire was perhaps even greater than
elsewhere overall. Wide varieties of peoples, economic structures, and geographic
diversity came together to imply that only a highly mobile, decentralized, and often
informal type of power structure could suffice for optimal geopolitical governance. Often
it was the tribal element of the nomadic peoples which held the decisive strategic niche

2 David Christian. A History of Russia, Central Asia, and Mongolia. Volume I: Inner Eurasia from Prehistory to the
Mongol Empire (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1998), pages 5-6.
3Legg, 37-9.
4 Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper. Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2010), page 3.
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of mobility and space control to be the ruling elite and the predators that preyed upon
the settled and littoral peoples around them. Other more settled people who emulated
the military methods of the nomads often responded in kind as they too adapted into
this system-though in time technological and economic changes would swing the force
of dynamism in this realm to the more settled and littoral powers. Even so, such a
change would have to adapt itself to the realities of governing in such a region and
make even the new and often alien powers adapt accordingly just as much to the local
circumstances.
2,000 B.C.E. is the rough starting point of this geopolitical complex when the
chariot was introduced to the region. Utilizing the endemic regional horses to great
effect on the flat steppe plains was the first opening salvo in the evolution of the steppe-
empire.5 This was the first change that enabled the nomadic element of the population
to become the decisive lynchpin in the system, however they did not hit their full integral
stride until about a thousand years later with the adoption of horseback riding and the
high endurance little steppe ponies which would become their staple. The first wave of
nomads, such as the Huns and Xiongnu, were the vanguard of this increased potency
amongst the nomadic tribes and showed the societies peripheral to them the deadly
combination of horse-borne mobility and lifestyle in conjunction with accurate arrow fire
from the horn-and-sinew recurve bows which could be fired from full gallop.
Another addition to their power came in another thousand years, with the
invention of the stirrup. Now the hammer of the light ranged cavalry could have the
complimentary anvil of heavy cavalry armed with a furious charge of lowered lances.
The stirrup-enabling the rider to couch his lance in the charge-greatly increased the
combat effectiveness of such units and further added to the power of the nomadic
armies. With armies which rode entirely on horseback and lived in transportable tents
called gers (Mongolian) and yurts (Turkic) such forces had many advantageous for
achieving total strategic dominance out of proportion to their numbers over any place
with sufficient grazing land for the livestock, and so the steppe was both highway and
corridor for them. It would remain so until the 19th Century, when only railroads would

5 Rhoads Murphy. “An Ecological History of Central Asian Nomadism”, Chapter 3 in Gary Seaman (Editor) Ecology
and Empire: Nomads in the Cultural Evolution of the Old World (Los Angeles: University of Southern California,
1989), page 45.