Review Of Owen Lattimore’s Mongolia Studies

As a notable scholar of American Mongolia Studies, Owen Lattimore masters Chinese and Mongolian for having lived in China long time. Starting from rich hiking experience in Inner Asia, Lattimore is an authority on Frontier Study. And along with his research on Inner Asia separately, he was concerned about the social history of Mongolia. Based on the theoretics of his frontier study, and his expedition about the folk customs and geopolitical values of Mongolia, Lattimore was the first scholar in U.S. to research Mongolia variously rather than solely focusing on folklore. According to Lattimore’s research on the development of nomadism in steppe society, Mongol Nationalism in modern times, and the satellite of Mongol prototype, this paper is intended to make several reviews and comments on Lattimore’s works of Mongolia studies which were merely referred in Chinese academia systematically, and then to analyse Lattimore’s original understandings and research characteristics of Mongol history in order to highlight Lattimore’s significance in the field of Mongolia Studies.There are three sections in this paper:The first section is a brief introduction of Lattimore’s academic career of Mongolia Studies. With respect to his destiny to get in touch with Mongolia, there are different experiences of expeditions or visits, focuses, features of research method and academic achievement in different phases of Lattimore’s life.The second section attempts to review Lattimore’s theoretics of Mongolia Studies. Initially, based on his frontier study, it is necessary to analyse Lattimore’s views of the development of nomadism in steppe society before twentieth century. He challenged the traditional view of the evolution of society, which evolves from hunting, nomad to agriculture, and pointed out agriculture was born before nomad. So Lattimore concluded that three origins of nomads were peasants from China, residents from Oasis and hunters from forest; and the relationships of nomads’ special mobility and wealth could be applied to explain the cycle of dynasty in steppe society and the its interaction with agricultural society. The second chapter is focused on various Mongol nationalisms in modern times to review Lattimore’s research on Mongol dynamic. According to the falling of Chinese feudalism, the invasion of imperialism and the evolution of Mongol society, this part is going to analyse the settings of Mongol Nationalism in advance, then illustrate the spark and fuse of Mongol evolution by the comparison of various Mongol nationalism. Meanwhile, Lattimore compared Mongol revolution with other Asian countries’ revolutions in the same period, and showed the importance of Mongolia to Asia geopolitics. It also becomes historical roots of the relationships between Mongolia and Soviet in the future. Finally, the third chapter is going to discuss Lattimore’s explanation of the satellite politics of Mongol prototype in the aspect of international politics. Lattimore proposed the standard of satellite state to make distinctions between satellite states and other subordinate states, and compared the differences among satellitism, feudal subordinate relationships and Titoism by describing Mongol’s interaction with Soviet during twentieth century.The third section are comments on the influences and limitations of Lattimore’s Mongolia studies by introducing his academic achievements, the realistic significance of his works and his special research methods.