Bawden Charles R. Modern History of Mongolia

Routledge, 2002. — 475 p.Charles Bawden has written in this book the first complete account in English of Mongol history in the colonial and modern periods. He begins his account at the end of the seventeenth century, when the Manchus overran all China and much of central Asia, and swallowed up the old Mongol nation - left exhausted and politically disunited by the imperial adventure under Genghis Khan and his successors. A feeling of cultural unity nevertheless remained among the Mongolian people, emphasised and buttressed by their general acceptance of the Buddhist faith. It was fortunate, therefore, that in the twentieth century the survival of a Mongolian state, as a buffer on the frontier with China, served the political interests of Soviet Russia, and that this survival was thus eventually ensured. Dr Bawden continues the story down to the present day, showing how a society of nomadic herdsmen is being transformed into a centrally controlled socialist state, in which industry and agriculture compete with animal herding.