The Steppe and the Sea: Pearls in the Mongol Empire by Thomas T. Allsen, and: Sudden Appearances: The Mongol Turn in Commerce, Belief, and Art by Roxann Prazniak

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Steppe and the Sea: Pearls in the Mongol Empire by Thomas T. Allsen, and: Sudden Appearances: The Mongol Turn in Commerce, Belief, and Art by Roxann Prazniak Jennifer Purtle The Steppe and the Sea: Pearls in the Mongol Empire by Thomas T. Allsen. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Pp. viii + 230. $45.00 hardcover, $44.95 e-book. Sudden Appearances: The Mongol Turn in Commerce, Belief, and Art by Roxann Prazniak. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2019. Pp. xi + 287. $80.00 hardcover, $30.00 paper. As narratives of globalization multiply, scholars and authors of popular nonfiction alike have increasingly turned their attention to the study of the Mongols and their Eurasian empire to understand the premodern processes of this phenomenon. Indebted to Janet Abu-Lughod’s seminal work, which identifies the Mongol empire as one of eight zones of transmission within a thirteenth-century world system, two books of 2019 embody the different methods current in the study of the Mongol empire.1 After World War II, European and North American [End Page 328] programs in Mongolian studies emphasized philology and linguistic facility in the languages both of the Mongol empire and also of the secondary scholarship written about it. Thomas Allsen’s posthumously published work exemplifies scholarship of this type. However, a newer mode of Mongol-empire scholarship is emerging in which authors— including some who are not expert in even one premodern language of the Mongol empire—write historical narratives across the span of the Mongol khanates based mainly on secondary literature and translations of primary sources. The research foundation of such works has greater affinities to popular nonfiction than to academic scholarship. Roxann Prazniak’s book utilizes this latter approach. Different as they are in working method and philological foundation, both Allsen’s The Steppe and the Sea and Prazniak’s Sudden Appearances make visual and material culture central to their narratives of political and economic history. Given the polyglot nature of the Mongol empire, the transmission of images, objects, and people played a significant role in establishing cultural continuity among geographically discontinuous lands outside the framework of language; such movement underpins the narratives of both books. Beyond a shared general interest in how mobility shaped the Mongol empire, Allsen acknowledges that “informal conversations” with Prazniak on Yuan-dynasty empress portraits that depict pearl jewelry and pearl-adorned boqtaq (Mon., headdresses) precipitated his project (p. 231); correspondingly, Prazniak notes Allsen’s engagement with her research (p. ix). These portraits, such as an untitled portrait of Čabi (Ch. Chabi 察必; 1225–1281), consort of Qubilai Khan (Ch. Hubilie han 忽必烈 汗; 1215–1294, r. 1260–1294), indeed figure prominently in both books (Allsen, pp. 52–55; Prazniak, pp. 177–94). The Steppe and the Sea has two main parts. The first, “From the Sea to the Steppe,” traces in eight chapters the mechanisms by which pearls entered new physical and cultural contexts. These chapters first establish contemporary and historical lexicons for describing and analyzing pearls (chap. 1). Then they consider means of acquiring pearls, from pearl hunting (chap. 2) to gifting, commodity trading, tribute paying, and forcible seizure (chap. 3). Allsen documents the amassing and stockpiling of pearls (chap. 4). His narrative subsequently transitions from pearl acquisition to structures of their value (chaps. 5, 6), including their symbolic value (chap. 7) as well as their [End Page 329] significance and circulation after the disintegration of the Mongol empire (chap. 8). Whereas part 1 principally addresses what might in classic Marxist materialist terms be considered the productive forces involved in the “making” of pearls as a commodity in the Mongol empire, part 2, “Comparisons and Influence,” subsequently addresses in six chapters what in similar Marxist terms would be the social and technical relations of production. Put more simply: part 1 follows the logic of production, including the production of value, and part 2 addresses topics that bear upon consumption. Part 2 begins with price and pricing (chap. 9) as well as marketing (chap. 10), then it extends the discussion to market substitutes and competition from fakes (chap. 11). Consumption is also analyzed in relation to routes of distribution (chap. 12) and the economic outcomes shaped by...