The Historical Setting of Inner Mongolian Nationalism

Abstract

IT is not easy to bring into one focus the outlook which all Mongols have in common and the great political disparity between Inner and Outer Mongolia and the Mongol regions under direct Japanese control in Manchuria. Geographical diversity makes the problem more complex. The structure of society and the economic system in each of the major regions of Mongolia is transitional, and each phase of change has to be compared with a tribal past and estimated with reference to both new and old factors brought into operation by contact between Mongolia and such different societies as those of China, Japan and the Soviet Union. I have attempted elsewhere to describe the political results in Inner Mongolia of the Japanese conquest of Manchuria, the setting up under Manchukuo of a province of Hsingan for the Manchurian Mongols, the demand for autonomy in the part of Inner Mongolia still dominated by China, and the hopeless decay of the nationalist movement under the combined pressure of Japanese conquest and exploitation and the conflict between Chinese provincial interests and national policies.' It seems to me however that the different elements of which Mongol nationalism is composed should also be examined in their historical setting. Mongol nationalism as a political manifestation cannot be traced back much further than the fall of the Manchu dynasty in i9Ii; but its real origins are much older. The current phase of this nationalism is ending under our eyes, but the new phase which can be expected to replace it will also be difficult to understand if we neglect the historical reasons for both the rise and the failure of the older nationalism. The historical distinctions between the different parts of Mongolia are often disregarded. As a result of the conquests of Chingghis Khan, who died in I227, the Mongols became masters of an enormous empire. The Mongols of Inner Mongolia are descended from the tribes which were quartered near the Great Wall, to provide a military reserve for the