Political Order in Pre-Modern Eurasia: Imperial Incorporation and the Hereditary Divisional System

Abstract

AbstractComparing the Liao, the Chinggisid and the Qing successive incorporations of Inner Asia, this article is prepared to argue that the hereditary divisional system that these Inner Asian empires employed to incorporate and administer their nomadic population was the engine that generated what scholars see either as ‘tribes’ or ‘aristocratic order’. This divisional system, because of its hereditary membership and rulership, invariably tended to produce autonomous lordships with distinct names and identities unless the central government took measures to curb the tendency. Whenever the central power waned, these divisions emerged as independent powers in themselves and their lords as contenders for the central power. The Chinggisid power structure did not destroy any tribal order; instead, it destroyed and incorporated a variety of former Liao politico-administrative divisions into its own decimally organizedminqansand transformed the former Liao divisions into quasi-political named categories of populace, theirgens, stripping them of their own politico-administrative structures. In turn, the Qing, in incorporating Mongolia, divided the remains of the Chinggisid divisions, thetümensandotogs, intokhoshuuand transformed them into quasi-politicalayimaqs. Thus, it was the logic of the imperial incorporation and the hereditary divisional system that produced multiple politico-administrative divisions and quasi-political identity categories.