The nomadic pastoralists of the inner Asian steppe had an impact on history out of all proportion to their small population. The cultures and politics of societies across Asia experienced profound change at their hands. China presents a good example of this phenomenon. The nomads on the steppe posed a perennial challenge to the Chinese political structure, making management of the nomads always one of the chief concerns of every Chinese dynasty. The Great Wall of China is the most famous demonstration of this imperial concern. The founder of the Qin dynasty, Qin Shi Huang (r. 221–210 BCE), made the construction of a complete wall along the northern border one of his main priorities. This first Great Wall of China later fell into neglect; the one we know today mainly dates to the Ming dynasty of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The original Great Wall of China fell into disrepair not because the steppe nomads ceased to pose a threat, but rather because the nomads had taken over the northern part of China and absorbed the territory on both sides of the wall, making it superfluous. In the chaotic centuries following the collapse of the Han dynasty, nomadic groups conquered large sections of China, most notably the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534). The Northern Wei were instrumental in promoting the spread of Buddhism in China. Before that time, most Chinese had dismissed Buddhism as a foreign religion unworthy of their attention. From the Northern Wei Dynasty and afterward, Buddhism became one of the major religions in China. There were a number of Chinese dynasties with ruling families from the steppe, such as the Liao, the Jin, and most famously the Yuan, which was ruled by the descendants of Genghis Khan. These steppe dynasties established the precedent for the Chinese capital to be located in the north (Beijing, or “Northern Capital”), a precedent that subsequent regimes followed for most of China’s history thereafter.

Even when a dynasty was ruled by a native Chinese family, China was still heavily tied to the steppe. This was especially true of the Tang dynasty. A Tang general of nomadic ancestry, An Lushan, launched a rebellion in 755 and attempted to found a new dynasty. He was assassinated but the rebellion continued, and in desperation, the Tang emperor turned to the nomadic Uighurs for help. The Tang bought Uighur help with a favorable trade arrangement that netted the Uighurs enormous wealth. The impact of the steppe nomads was felt far beyond China. Turkic nomadic pastoralists migrated into the Islamic Middle East in the eleventh century CE and ruled as the political elite throughout the region for centuries. In addition to the nomadic dynasties like the Seljuks and the Ilkhans, there were also regimes of slave soldiers—the Mamluk regimes of Egypt and the Delhi Sultanate in India—who derived their manpower from the steppe nomads. (The Mamluks of Egypt in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were Kipchak Turks imported from the Golden Horde.) Then, later, the Mughal dynasty in India descended from warrior elites in Mongol-ruled Central Asia. The nomads of the steppe were able to have such an outsized impact on their sedentary neighbors because of their lifestyle. The horse was essential to their way of life, making it easier both to manage their flocks of sheep and other livestock and to traverse the vast distances on the steppe. The steppe nomads learned to ride from a young age and were expert horsemen. They spent a great deal of time on horseback, not only herding their flocks but also hunting wild animals and raiding other tribes. The skills they learned from hunting and raiding easily translated to warfare. In agrarian regions, by contrast, only a small elite regularly trained in the arts of war. Farming, the occupation of the vast majority of sedentary populations, did not develop skills that translated to the battlefield.

But the relationship of the nomads with the agrarian societies was not simply political and military. Many nomadic groups were actively involved with trade. Pastoralism is self-sufficient for only very basic needs. Pastoralists, therefore, exchanged their specialized animal-based products for the variety of products available in farming societies: crops, like grain, and manufactured goods that could only be produced by sedentary people, like iron tools and weapons. Moreover, nomads presided over the Silk Roads, the vast network of trade routes that spanned the Asian continent. In fact, the Silk Roads began in trade between China and the steppe to supply China with horses. Throughout the history of overland trade, the nomads played a key role. We see this most dramatically in the case of the Mongol Empire, when the Mongol khans encouraged a flourishing of long-distance trade and travel across Eurasia. The Mongols conquered an empire that spanned Eurasia from the Pacific Ocean to Eastern Europe and the Middle East, bringing all these cultures into close contact. Persian artists under Mongol rule took new inspiration from Chinese art, adopting a lighter and more delicate style and utilizing Chinese techniques for giving the illusion of depth. Additionally, Persian workshops in the fourteenth century produced large quantities of imitation Chinese porcelain to supply the growing Persian demand for this expensive import. The nomads also left linguistic traces among the peoples they conquered. In the Russian language, for example, such common words as loshad’ (horse), chugun (cast iron), den’gi (money), and kazna (treasury) derive from the Turkic languages of Inner Asia.

In the short space available here, such examples of nomadic influence must be cursory. Suffice it to say that the nomads were major catalysts of political and cultural change throughout Eurasia. But in spite of their significant impact, they have been overshadowed in the modern imagination by large sedentary civilizations such as China and India. Not only did the sedentary societies have far larger populations, but they also produced virtually all our historical sources. This has contributed to a negative image of the pastoral nomads that persists even today—that they were simply barbaric, violent, and devoid of culture. Almost no historical sources survive that give the nomads’ perspective, so by relying so heavily on the written accounts of sedentary cultures, we risk inheriting their biases. Despite the importance of including the nomads in a world history or Asian history curriculum, it can be difficult to find good resources that are suitable either for presenting the nomads to students or for instructors to become more knowledgeable about them. The following is a selection of recommended resources on the World Wide Web for students and teachers.