2023 Reading List & Book Review

Review of the Best Books I read in 2023

Preliminary note: For Gmail readers, this essay might be clipped due to size limitations. To read the entire essay simply click on “View entire message” at the bottom of the email, thanks.

Hello Readers!

To end the year off I thought it would be good to publish a review of the best books I read in 2023.

Some of these books might difficult to find. For those that cannot be found in libraries or purchased, or are being sold at an unreasonable price, I would recommend searching for them on either Libgen or on the Internet Archive. If anyone has trouble locating material, leave me a comment below and I will do my best to help.

Following my reviews, I would like to briefly share my plans for this blog going forward.

The Russian Conquest of Central Asia: A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914 - Alexander Morrison

Possibly the best book I have read all year, Alexander Morrison’s work is the seminal English language history of how and why Russia conquered Central Asia. Morrison makes extensive use of a wide range of primary sources, and tells a narrative history of Russia’s imperial expansion that is both highly readable and informative. I had known of Morrison’s project for several years now and had been looking forward to it. It did not disappoint in the slightest. If anything it exceeded my expectations. I wrote a much longer review of this book, which can be read here. I also wrote a long book thread on Twitter, which can be found here.

All I will say further is that Morrison’s book is not only a great read, but also achieves what only the very few of the best books can: it inspires the reader to driver deeper into the subject, and ultimately changes their entire intellectual trajectory. I first became interested in Central Asian history and the Russian Empire through Peter Hopkirk’s wonderful books, and Morrison’s book has only sent me deeper into the rabbit hole. I combed through the footnotes and bibliography of this book in search of primary texts to read, which ultimately lead me to publish the translations I have been working on this past year. I learned Russian some time ago and had been neglecting it, but Morrison revitalized my interest, which I owe him great thanks for.

This book is best read alongside Peter Hopkirk’s “The Great Game” and Peter Perdues “China Marches West”. These three books will provide the reader with solid idea of how Eurasia was divided between the British, Russian, and Chinese empires, which is crucial for understanding contemporary geopolitics.

The Uighur Empire according to the Tʻang dynastic histories: A study in Sino-Uighur relations, 744-840 - Colin Mackerras

This book is a compilation of Tang Dynasty era primary sources on the Uyghur Khaganate. The Uyghur Khaganate was steppe nomadic empire that was centered on the Mongolian Plateau from 744 to 840, and was a contemporary of China’s Tang Dynasty, which maintained extensive contacts the khaganate. The Uyghurs and the Tang represented the apotheoses of both China’s and the Turk’s imperial rule over Eurasia. During this time China’s power reached as far West as Samarkand. The Tang’s and Uyghur’s mutual history together was particular dramatic as the rise of the Uyghurs was quickly followed by the An Lushan Rebellion in 755, which “shook all under heaven”. The Uyghurs intervened twice and saved the Tang Dynasty from complete collapse, but in the process secured extremely exploitative commercial relations with China. For the next 100 years China’s wealth was sucked dry by the Uyghurs, in a relationship similar to what existed in the 19^th century between China and Europe.

 As the Uyghurs were largely illiterate nomads who did not leave behind their own writtings, this book represents nearly all of the primary written source material on the Uyghur Khaganate. As far as I know, the only other surviving primary sources are Tamim ibn Bahr's "Journey to the Uyghur Khaganate" and several inscriptions written in Old Turkic runes that have been discovered around the former Uyghur capital of Ordubaliq. The Tang Dynasty’s writing on the Uyghurs largely covers their diplomatic and commercial relations, and the internal politics of the Uyghur Khaganate.

For more on the Uyghurs and the Tang Dynasty, see my essay “The Collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate and the Uyghur Migration across the Silk Road”, and my republishing of Tamim ibn Bahr’s account with added commentary (linked above).

I would also recommend reading Michael Drompp’s “Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire”, which covers the Tang Dynasty’s 840-843 border crisis.

This was my 2nd time reading this book.

Sogdian Traders: A History - Étienne de la Vaissière

Understanding the Sogdians is crucial for understanding the commercial and economic dynamics of the Silk Road. The Sogdians were an Iranic speaking Central Asian people that lived during antiquity and the middle ages in the oasis cities of modern day Uzbekistan, such Bukhara, Samarkand, Panjikent, Tashkent and others.

The Sogdians are noteworthy as they were the merchants, caravan drivers and diplomats that made facilitated trade along the Silk Roads. The Sogdians spread out from their city-states to create diasporas and colonies deep into the steppes and as far as China. Similar to the Jewish diaspora across Europe or the Armenians in the Near East, the Sogdians leveraged their diaspora to create long distance commercial networks between China, the steppe nomads, Persia and Byzantium. And in the cultural sphere the Sogdians were like bumblebees, cross pollinating every culture they came into contact with.

This is probably the single best book on the Sogdians that exists in English. It covers their entire history in a broad overview, both chronologically and as geographically. If I am not mistaken, Étienne de la Vaissière is one of the primer scholars of the Sogdians. Similar to other HdO Brill publications, this book is heavily based upon primary sources.

Alongside this, I would also recommend “Religions of the Silk Road: Premodern Patterns of Globalization” by Richard Foltz to understand how the Sogdians spread various religions across Eurasia as a consequence of their commercial activity.

This was my 2nd time reading this.

The Jews of Khazaria - Kevin Alan Brook

The Khazars are one of the great curiosities of history - a nomadic Turkic empire that ruled the south Russian and Ukrainian steppes and, bizarrely in the eyes of some, converted to Judaism. Aside from this novelty, the Khazars were very important in the geopolitics of the early middle ages. The emergence of the Khazar Khaganate coincided with the rise the Islam and the Caliphate, the decline the Byzantium (the Byzantine defeat at Battle of the Yarmuk to the Arabs and the loss of Egypt, Palestine and Syria in 636 can be understood to be the end of antiquity) and the earliest emergence of the Russians. Similar to how the Franks under Charles Martel stopped the expansion of Islam into Western Europe, the Khazars blocked Islam from penetrating into Eastern Europe by holding the Arabs at the Caucasus and allying with the Byzantines during their Dark Age during the 7^th and 8^th centuries.

But most importantly, the greatness of the Khazars was based on their success in integrating their enormous and diverse imperial sphere, and holding it for nearly three centuries. This is particularly impressive by the standards of nomadic states which were highly ephemeral and often short-lived.

This is an incredibly useful book for research purposes. The majority of the book is essentially a detailed review of all of the written primary sources on the Khazars. Chapters are divided by language of the source material (Arabic, Greek, Syrian, Armenian, Hebrew, Russian, etc). Thus, this book can be used as a reference guide for what limited sources have survived and come down to us today.

In terms of learning more about the Khazars in detail, I would recommend “The World of the Khazars” edited by Peter Golden (along with all of Peter Golden’s books) and “Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness”. I also wrote a lengthy overview & introduction of the Khazars, outlining their history and empire, which can be read here.

Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe - Robert Drews

This book covers the origins of the Indo-Europeans, also known as the Aryans, the origins of nomadism in western Eurasia, and how the Aryans came to conquer Europe. Drews argues that the Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE) were originally from Anatolia, but fled from the suffocating constraints of agricultural civilization. From Anatolia they sailed around the Black Sea until they eventually settled in the Kuban region of modern day North Caucasus Russia, where they developed pastoral nomadism and began exploiting the rich metal deposits of the region. In the wilderness beyond civilization the PIE became increasingly warlike, cultivated a highly militaristic culture and ethos. Later they migrated northeast towards the Ural Mountains, where they came into contact with another people, likely of Siberian origin. These two groups merged somewhere in the south Urals region, and began to exploit the region’s vast copper resources in order to create bronze weapons and armor. From here, with their bronze arms and militaristic culture, Aryan war bands set out and conquered the world.

Early expansion of the Indo-European

This was a very interesting book that explains one of the most important, but largely unknown chapters of European history. The broader implication of Drew’s thesis are very important, especially in understanding the origins of civilization. Nietzsche was indeed correct when he wrote that, “It was the noble races which left the concept of 'barbarian' in their traces wherever they went”. Drews’ work is especially important as it revitalizes a most important field of history. The history of the Indo-European Aryans received considerable scholarly attention prior to the World Wars, but for political and ideological reasons it was sidelined, especially after 1945. The book relies largely on archaeological evidence. This book was recommended by the Bronze Age Pervert on this show “Caribbean Rhythms” (I forget which episode).

The Yuezhi: Origin, Migration and the Conquest of Northern Bactria

This book is very important for understanding the landscape of ancient China’s Eurasian frontier, and to understand how nomadic migrations across Eurasia. The Yuezhi were a semi-nomadic Indo-European people, possibly Tocharian speaking, and largely “European” in appearance, that lived in the modern day Chinese province of Gansu prior to the 2^nd century BC. Gansu, also known as the Hexi Corridor, is a chain of oases that runs between the Gobi Desert and the Tibetan Plateau, which links China to the rest of Eurasia. While they were in the Hexi Corridor, the Yuezhi controlled the lucrative jade trade between China and Khotan, located in the southwestern Tarim Basin. Later in the 2^nd century BC the Yuezhi were attacked and defeated by the Xiongnu, a nomadic empire based on the Mongolian plateau. This forced the Yuezhi to commence a series of migrations, which eventually resulted in their invasion and conquest of the Greco-Bactrian kingdoms around 140 BC. In Bactria the Yuezhi created the Kushan Empire, which would play a significant role in the spread of Buddhism into Central Asia and to China.

Similar to “Sogdian Traders” mentioned above, this book relies heavily on primary sources, and is likely the best book on its subject in English. Along with showing how Aryans lived along China’s northern and western frontiers during antiquity, the book highlights the important jade trade that existed. It could be said that the Jade Road existed before the Silk Road. This book also serves as a great case study of the “billiard ball” model of nomadic migrations. This involves a scenario where one tribe attacks and displaces another tribe, who is then forced to migrate away, which brings them into contact with another tribe, which the displaced people then attack and displace in turn.

The Rise and Fall of Khoqand, 1709-1876: Central Asia in the Global Age - Scott C. Levi

The Kokand Khanate was a Central Asian state based in the Fergana Valley that existed on the eve of Russia’s conquest of the region. The focus of the book is primarily on the development of Kokand as a political entity, namely its rise and fall, and its foreign and commercial relations with China, Bukhara, Russia and British India.

This book is particular important because it is a history of European colonization written from the point of view of an indigenous power, all while simultaneously contextualizing the Kokand Khanate within the era’s broader geopolitical landscape. The book also pushes back against two common misconceptions: that the countries Europe conquered were “backwards”, and that Central Asia had been made weak and vulnerable due to a centuries’ long decline in overland trade in favor of maritime trade.

Levi shows that through the 19^th century Kokand was modernizing and adopting new military technologies and forms of organization. What ultimately doomed Kokand, and many of the other countries Europe colonized, was that they were unable to keep pace with Europe. In other words, they simply lagged too far behind technologically, and in other spheres.

This insight is especially important here, as Russia is also often thought of a state constantly lagging behind the West. Since the 17^th century at least, a deep sense of vulnerability and inferiority vis-a-vis the West has existed in Russia, and periodically the Russian state forces itself into a rapid modernization effort in order to stay competitive with West. This is why Peter the Great and Stalin are often compared to each other. In this sense, Russia is more similar to the non-Western world that the West itself. Whereas India, China, Kokand and others were unable to keep pace with Europe and were conquered, Russia was similar to Japan in that both powers were able to assimilate Western technology and modernity so successfully that they were not only able to retain their sovereignty, they were even able to defeat European forces on many occasions.  

This is very good book to read alongside Morrison’s book discussed above, and “Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864-1877” by Hodong Kim.

This was my 2nd time reading this.

The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China - Christopher Beckwith

Christopher Beckwith’s most recent work, published earlier this year, is a very odd book. The Scythians, as most people conceive of them, were a nomadic people that existed on the Pontic steppes during the era of the ancient Greeks. Yet despite being titled “The Scythian Empire”, the book is not really about the Scythians, but the empires they built, or what Beckwith believes were empires of Scythian creation. More precisely, Beckwith argues the Scythians created the Persian and Chinese empires.

Beckwith’s argument in regards to Persia is the more convincing of two. According to Beckwith, the Scythian invasion of the Near East during the 7^th century BC resulted in some Scythians settling down in Media, where they mixed with the local population creating a creolized Scytho-Median culture. This Scytho-Median milleu was the fertile soil from where emergenced of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. This interpretation is certainly very possible. The Scythian did invade and occupy Media and northern Mesopotamia during this period, and the various aspects of Persian culture that Beckwith argues are of Scythian origin do make sense. For example, similarities in dress, religion, linguistics, military/honor traditions, etc.

Less convincingly, Beckwith also argues a similarly creolized Scythian culture created China’s Zhou Dynasty in the 11^th century BC. I am not well read on the Zhou Dynasty so I cannot properly assess this claim, but regardless, I found Beckwith’s arguments here to be not at all convincing. (This paper argues a similar thesis as Beckwith, that the Zhou Dynasty had Indo-European origins. I have not read it myself yet.) But that being said, Beckwith does present an important question in regards to China’s early history: what role did Indo-Europeans (or Aryans) have in the creation of China?

As discussed above, the Yuezhi, an Indo-European people, lived right on the frontiers of the State of Qin, which was based in modern day Shaanxi province located immediately to the east of Gansu. The State of Qin would later unify China and create the first Chinese empire, the Qin Dynasty. It is known that the Qin used barbarian chariot mercenaries, which could possibly have been Indo-European peoples. It is also openly stated in Chinese sources that the Bodhidharma, who introduced Buddhism to China in the 5^th century AD, was a blue eyed barbarian from the west (possibly a Saka or Kushan man).

Additionally, the Xiongnu, the nomadic empire that ruled the Mongolian plateau during the era the Qin and Han Dynasties, left behind golden animal jewelry that is very similar to Scythian artifacts. Some genetic studies have shown that the Xiongnu were highly diverse and heterogeneous, with both “Asian” and “European” ancestry present, which included ancestry from cultures associated with the Scythians. It is also mentioned in Chinese sources that peoples with green eyes and red hair living in the Ordos, a frontier region just north of the ancient Chinese heartland of the Wei River valley. These seemingly European people lived there up until the end of the Tang Dynasty, until they were either assimilated or destroyed during the conflagrations of that era.

More speculative theories argue the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di, had Indo-European ancestry (and this is why the Chinese refuse to open his tomb), or that that the Greco-Bactrians played some role in either creating or inspiring the creation of Qin Shi Huang Di’s Terracotta Army. There is also speculation that the Indo-Europeans had influence on ancient Japan.

This brings us back to what is maybe the most significant aspect of Beckwith’s book. He is clearly not actually talking about the Scythians. The Scythians did not even exist during the founding of the Zhou Dynasty in the 11th century BC (the oldest Scythian sites date from the 8th century BC at Arzhan in Tuva). Beckwith is very clearly using the ethnonym Scythian as a stand in for the word Aryan. During his discussion of Persia he even claims that the royal Persian family came from the Scythian clan with the name of “Aryas”, which means noble ones, which the term Aryan can also mean. It is simply impossible that Beckwith does not know what he is actually arguing in this book.

The term “Aryan” largely fell out of vogue and gained negative connotations after 1945, due the word’s usage by the Nazis in their racial ideology. The term “Indo-European” is more so a linguistic classification, and came to be a “politically correct” way of saying Aryan in academic literature. Thus, we can see what Beckwith is actually doing here, which is to shine light back on the study of the Aryans and their impact on world history.   

For a more focused text on the Scythians, I would recommend “The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe” by Barry Cunliffe.

The End of History and the Last Man - Francis Fukuyama

Fukuyama’s very famous, and often misconstrued, book from the end of the Cold War is still very much worth reading. The basic thesis of Fukuyama is that after the political and ideological struggles of the 19^th and 20^th century, democracy has emerged decisively as the winner, and is the end state of political development. The victory of liberal democracy means the end of all meta-political and metaphysical struggles, and as a result people will no longer seek radical alternatives. Instead politics will settle down into, what some might say is boring, but peaceful competition for recognition and social respect within the confines of democracy.  

Fukuyama’s thesis is often ridiculed has many claim the emergence of Islamic terrorism, the reemergence of China and Russia, or the rise of “populism” invalidate the book. In other words, critics claim history has clearly not ended. I think this criticism is wrong, and I doubt whether the people who say this have actually read the book, or understand exactly what Fukuyama is arguing. If I am not mistaken, Fukuyama’s thesis is essentially a more simplified version of Alexander Kojeve’s argument that history ended at the Battle of Jena in 1806, where Napoleon defeated Prussia.  There, the spirit of the French Revolution proved triumphant over the ancien régime of kingship and aristocracy. According to Kojeve, the spirit of French Revolution has been disseminating worldwide ever since.

The implicit assumption behind the thesis is that the current age is fundamentally democratic in nature. This is a product of the spread of mass literacy and education, which inevitably results in mass political consciousness by extension, and effectiveness using appeals to the “people” and other democratic norms to mobilize people and entire societies. It should be noted that even the most prominent technologies of our era are fundamentally democratic. The internet has only made the contemporary age even more innately democratic, as it cuts out the middle men gatekeepers of information dissemination such as mass media and academia. Niall Ferguson very correctly has compared the internet to the printing press, which served to democratize Christianity, empowering various Protestant movements and irreversibly undermining the autocratic power of the Roman Catholic Church.

Any political actor, party or regime that fails to recognize the innately democratic nature of our age is doomed to failure. It must be emphasized then even the states today that are thought to be arch autocratic powers, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, none of which have any meaningful history of democracy, nevertheless base their legitimacy on popular support. In this very important sense they are not fundamentally different than any Western “democratic” state. Both Russia and Iran hold elections, while both China and North Korea are self-described “people’s” states. Of course, none of these states would tolerate attempts to overthrow their regimes, but neither would Western democracies either. My point is that even the so-called alternatives to Western liberal democracy are fundamentally democratic. And as for “populism”, this is nothing other than a more pure version of democracy. A figure like Trump who claims to speak on behalf of the people against the “elites” only validates Fukuyama’s thesis. For readers who are enrolled in a political science course at university, try asking the professor (politely) what the difference is between “democracy” and “populism”. I doubt they will be able to provide a satisfactory answer on what exactly the difference is between the two.

One additional point of interest is that Fukuyama even manages to generally anticipate the future discontent with Western liberal democracy. Often overlooked, the second half of the book’s title, “and the Last Man”, is just as important as the first part. The figure of the “last man” comes from Nietzsche, and represents a type of sedated, pacified and neutered man that Nietzsche thought democracy would ultimately produce. The last man in Nietzsche’s words: “For this is how things are, the diminution and leveling of European man constitutes our greatest danger, for the sight of him makes us weary. We can see nothing today that wants to grow greater, we suspect that things will continue to go down, down, to become thinner, more good-natured, more prudent, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more Chinese, more Christian—there is no doubt that man is getting 'better' all the time.”

Has Nietzsche been proven wrong in his prognosis? I do not think so. His comparison to China particularly very apt. Since the Song Dynasty, China has been a country that values stability over drama, a state that cultivates order and suppresses the possibilities for adventure, and ultimately a society that favors safe and pleasant mediocrity over the alternative, which is correctly understood to be potentially very dangerous. And of course, such things are easier to see in a country when looking at it from the outside. And as Nietzsche, and Fukuyama, correctly predicted, this state of affairs is rapidly developing in the West. What is the European Union if not the Mandarinization of Europe? (The famous Chinese civil service exams were only adopted as the main pathway to state service during the Song Dynasty in the 10^th century. Prior, positions were secured through references, while the real arbiters of state were often military men. Nevertheless, the conquest dynasties of the Liao, Jin, Yuan, and Qing remained highly militaristic. I should add that the dynasties which based their regimes on the civil service exams, the Song and Ming, were defined by their mediocrity. It was always when China was at its most militaristic and most dramatic that it attained its greatest civilizational achievements). The similar responses both China and the West had to covid says all that needs to be said in on this subject.   

Fukuyama also argues that some will find the end of history to be an extremely unfulfilling place to be, with some seeking to create challenges for themselves to overcome. This is quite reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s famous quote from “Notes from the Underground” : “even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object--that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key!”

What I find most curious about this book is that despite being fully aware of the end of history means and what the last man is, Fukuyama is nevertheless supportive of this development. I find this to be very strange - a scholar who spends his time studying the most interesting things in the world, yet wants no part in them! Myself, I would have loved nothing more than to march with Alexander into Asia.

“The End of History” is often placed together with John Mearsheimer’s “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics” and Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” as seminal texts from the early 1990’s which outline different possibly trajectories for the post-Cold War era. Fukuyama’s book is by far the most interesting, and has proven to be the most accurate in my opinion. The theses of the other two are simplistic to the point of not being useful. I would also recommend Leo Strauss’s “On Tyranny, Corrected and Expanded Edition, Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence” to be read alongside Fukuyama’s book.

Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life - Oswald Spengler

This is a short book where Oswald Spengler outlines is philosophy of life, which is heavily influenced by Nietzsche’s idea of a will to power. Spengler is best known for his two volume “Decline of the West”, a philosophical study of world history which views each world civilization as a distinct entity, each with its own metaphysical self understandings and cultural horizons. According to Spengler, a culture-civilization experiences a life cycle similar to a flower throughout the year, a blossoming in the spring, a fullness of life in summer, and an eventual withering and death in the winter.

“Decline of the West” is lengthy and not the easiest book to read, while “Man and Technics” is a very short and reads like a refined distillation of Spengler’s thinking. It serves as a great introduction to Spengler.

The Jewish Century - Yuri Slezkine

Yuri Slezkine argues that the 20^th century was the Jewish century, and that modernity is fundamentally Jewish in character, or at least the Jews are uniquely suited to excel in modern conditions. This is a very interesting and important book as it is simultaneously a book on Russian-Jewish history, a history of the 20^th century, and a study in sociology. The two main elements that will be of interest to readers is Slezkine’s theory of “Mercurial and Apollonian peoples”, and his explanation for why the 20^th century is the Jewish century.

First, Slezkine presents his model of “mercurials and “apollonians” as a way to understand the social-economic function Jews have traditionally played. According to Slezkine, “mercurial peoples” take after Hermes, the Greek God of travelers and commerce, and are characterized by their status as a minority group that functions as middle men among the majority and between the their host society and others. These “mercurials” tend to occupy certain economic niches that the majority group is either unwilling or poorly suited to occupy. For example, Christian prohibitions against debt in the middle ages allowed the Jews gain a prominent place in Europe’s banking industry. In Eastern Europe, the greater commercial savvy of the Jews allowed them to dominate the alcohol trade. Today, the Jews are known for their aptitude for law, which is largely a result of their strong cultural traditions of education and literacy, as well as their traditions of rational debate towards their religious texts. Other “mercurial peoples” include the Sogdians on the Silk Road (as discussed above), the Armenians in the Near East, Gypsies in Europe, Hakka in China, and Chinese in Southeast Asia.

The second element of the book is Slezkine’s explanation for why the Jews gained such prominence in the 20^th century. According to Slezkine, the European Jewry faced a crisis as the 19^th century came to an end. Europe was experiencing a wave of nationalism, which threatened the Jews. Increased nationalism and anti-Semitism pushed the Jews in either one of three directions. Either they went east to the Soviet Union, west to America, or to Israel as a part of the Zionist movement. In all three cases the Jews were moving what were new countries where their marginal status in the Pale of Settlement would be transcended. In the case of America and the Soviet Union, the Jews were given an opportunity to fully manifest their “mercurial” energies, and as a result they came to occupy many of the most important elite positions within each of the two countries. In the case of Israel, Slezkine argues, the Jews transformed into “apollonians”.

The causes for Jewish success in American and the Soviet Union were largely a result of the Jews happening to have in abundance the skills and qualities that would bring success in the 20^th century. For example, in past centuries the profession of law was of marginal utility, whereas in today ‘s world with our complex legal codes, commercial contracts, tort, etc, the profession of lawyer is vastly more important. Additionally, the high rates of intelligence, creativity, and open mindedness among Jews allowed them to excel in media and propaganda production. For example,Hollywood is well known for its Jewish over representation. It could go without saying that success in media was especially important in the 20^th century (and remains so). A country’s or movement’s success was in large part determined by its ability to mobilize the masses. And to achieve this mass mobilization, a story with a beautiful cause, and with heroes and villains, all needed to be created.

Slezkine’s thesis is largely correct I think, and along with helping us understand the past century, his book serves to dispel many simplistic explanations for Jewish success. For example, some allege that Jewish ethnic-nepotism explains Jewish success. This is probably true to some extent, but it then poses the question as to why groups that are even more ethnically-nepotistic than the Jews do not enjoy even greater success than them. For example, Chechens in Russia or African-Americans in America are far less successful than Jews despite having vastly higher rates in-group favoritism. This is because in today’s world, a media figure such as Vladimir Solovyov (Russian media personality, comparable to Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson in America) wields far more power and influence than a soldier or assassin does (common occupations among Chechens).

Others cite high Ashkenazi intelligence, which certainly plays a major role in their success, but this is still insufficient as an explanation I believe. As Slezkine accurately points out, the crucial factor are the spheres that the Jews are intelligent in. For example, Jewish engineers are not typically encountered, whereas Jewish lawyers are very common. Another example, despite that fact that Germans are very smart, they are generally not known for their comedy, whereas Jews very much are. Generally speaking, Jewish intelligence is verbal, whereas “apollonian” intelligence is more evenly balanced, if not more spatial. As Slezkine explains, the keys to dominating modern society lay much more with professions such as lawyers and comedians than with engineers. Thanks to the television and the internet, a comedian such as Jerry Seinfeld can easily seduce millions, whereas an engineer will remain largely unknown regardless of his talents.

A final, amusing observation. Slezkine also argues that due to the inherently Jewish nature of modernity, the “Apollonians” have effectively become Jews, or at least Jewish in spirit. A good example of this is Donald Trump. Despite being of Germanic-Anglo stock, and with the persona of something like a “chad football star” or a Latin American strongman, Trump is at his core a Jewish comedian. It is as if Rodney Dangerfield had become president of America. And again, it must be noted, Trump’s success is far more a consequence of his skills in media, as a comedian and as an entertainer, than thanks to whatever business acumen he might have.

This interview with Slezkine summarizes his book better than I have. I would also recommend this speech by Slezkine, on how the Bolsheviks were a messianic, religious movement.

I would also recommend to read Slezkine’s book alongside Ernst Notle’s “European Civil War”, which has been translated into English from Germany by Theognis of Megara and can be found on his Substack.

The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution - Oswald Spengler

Unlike Spengler’s other writings which are philosophically and historically focused, “Hour of Decision” is a call for Europeans to recognize the crisis they are living in. Spengler argues that Europe stands at the precipice of its own destruction. This crisis he argues, is a result of the West’s own internal weakness, brought about by its civilizational age which is accelerated by the dissolving qualities of industrial life, and the dissemination of powerful technical forces to the non-European world. According to Spengler, as the West weakens, the non-West world will use Western technology to tear the West down.

Very similar to Nietzsche’s writing, this book by Spengler is probably even more relevant today than it was at the time of its writing in 1933. At the time the West was shaken, but it still ruled the world. Yet in subsequent decades everything Spengler feared came true. The forces of global communism aided anti-European elements to tear down the European colonial empires (it should be noted that America played as much a role in decolonization as did the USSR or communist China).

By the 20^th century it was well understood by many Germans and other Europeans that the time for petty and short sighted politics had come to an end. The world had become divided among several continental-scale super states which included America, Russia/Soviet Union, China, and the British Empire. These continental super states could, and later did, mobilize resources to an extent that mere nation-states such as Germany or Japan would be unable to maintain their independence in the long run. Thus, what was understood was that Europe needed to become a continental super state itself in order to remain geopolitically competitive. Germany attempted this in the two world wars, where it aimed to unify Europe and secure the vast food and natural resources of the east. Of course this failed, and in many ways ultimately worsened the situation. The Nazis lost, and this allowed Europe to become dominated by communism and America (which should be understood to be more similar to the USSR than not).

The crisis that Spengler outlines is anything far worse today than in his time. Europe has an even weaker a vision and sense of self than before. The continent has been largely deindustrialized and demilitarized, which has only worsened in recent years. Simultaneously, its native populations are declining in size and are being actively replaced by foreigners. The same conflicts which occurred in Europe’s colonies in the 20^th century, where anti-European, anti-white forces sought to tear down European civilization, are today being imported into Europe itself. The fact that so many are completely blind to the possibility that Europe’s future might be worse than what it experienced during the past century only vindicates Spengler’s thesis that the West has become characterized by moral and intellectual feebleness. Instead of the kumbaya future that liberal democrats promised, we are getting Bosnia and Rwanda. The proliferation of pro-Hamas protests across American college campuses is another example of this. It must be understood that these people despise Israel for the same reasons they despised South Africa in the past - both are seen as colonial outposts of European civilization. And again, it is not merely that these people have been allowed into our countries, but they have also been allowed into our best and most important institutions such as Harvard and Oxford.

The severity of Europe’s crisis only worsens when considers the broader geopolitical situation. To Europe’s east, Russia has managed to successfully recover from the collapse of the Soviet Union and is now on the war path. Simultaneously, Europe’s security grantor since 1945 is rapidly losing interest in the position. This of course could be as much an opportunity as a crisis for Europe. America’s gradual withdrawal could prompt Europe’s return to history, which would entail reindustrialization, cultural revitalization and a strengthening of military forces. But instead, the current elite and ruling institutions are content with allowing Europe to slide further towards annihilation. As discussed above in reference to Fukuyama’s book, the European Union as an organization is meant to facilitate the transformation of European man into the “last man”. It cannot and will not advance European civilization. The current European elite believed they could be a great power without military forces, and thought that war was a thing of the past. This is nonsense that beauty pageant contestants believe or what children believe (I never had such delusions I would like to say). And most importantly, the Russians never believed in this nonsense either. The Russians never lost their nerve and fled into childlike fantasies, despite the fact that they suffered far greater tragedies then did Europe in the 20^th century.

The question today, for the 21st century, is no longer whether Europe can maintain mastery over the world, but whether Europe can survive at all.

Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present - Christopher Beckwith

This is book is a broad overview of the history of Eurasia, and is probably the best book of its kind. Along with the historical outline that Beckwith sketches, he also presents his theory of the “Central Eurasian Cultural Complex”, which is his model for how Eurasian nomads and all derivative societies function. He argued the nucleus of socio-political-military organization was the war chief and his circle of most trusted and loyal followers. This concept had different names in each of Eurasia’s languages, but in each case the institution was effectively the same (“Mannerbund” in German, “Comitatus” in Latin, “Druzhina” in Old Slavonic, Alexander’s Companion Cavalry, etc. It was also found among Turks, Mongolians, Manchurians, Tibetans, Arabs, etc).

This basic unit of organization became the basis for all Eurasian states, and the principle aim of these states was war, adventure, and commerce. Beckwith points out that the motivating factor in all expansions by Eurasian peoples was the prospect of trade and securing wealth for themselves. Whether it was Alexander raiding the Persian Empire, the Turks seeking trade access to China, Persia and Byzantium or the later European seafarers seizing control of global maritime trade, war was not so much an obligation as it became in modernity with mass conscription, but a privileged activity that was only undertaken if you yourself would stand to gain something. More than anything, this book shows how the pre-modern world of Eurasia was far more noble than our world today.

Along with presenting a very detailed and thorough chronological history of Eurasia and the Silk Road, Beckwith’s interpretation of how Eurasian peoples functioned is very important for understand the history itself.

This was my 2^nd time reading this. I first read this several years ago, but the finer details of the picture that Beckwith paints were lost on me. I would suggest reading the footnotes and endnotes as very important information is recorded there.

The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. - Robert Drews

Around 1200 BC the Bronze Age civilizations of the Near East all suffered a cataclysm that tore them apart. Only Egypt survived the storm, albeit much weakened. This simultaneous collapse of civilizations globally (or what amount to the civilized world at the time) has mystified historians. Theories explaining what happened typically involve some sort of natural disaster or barbarian invasion by the mysterious “Sea Peoples”. Drews argues that is was a revolution in military technology that caused the world to end. According to Drews, the Bronze Age states of the era relied on fleets of professional charioteers as their primary military forces, in addition to auxiliary mercenaries recruited from the fringes of civilization. He argues that these mercenaries developed short throwing javelins and quality slashing swords which allowed swarms of infantry to defeat the chariots. Eventually the barbarians realized these new weapons could allow them to defeat their pay masters’ professional chariot forces, and once the realization was made and then tested, the die was cast.

Also of particular interest, Drews offers an explanation for what really happened at Troy (as mythologized by Homer, but based on a very real event) and what actually occurred during the exodus by Moses and the Jews from Egypt. This book should be read alongside “1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed” by Eric Cline, who differs from Drews and argues that environmental crises and the breakdown of complex interdependence primarily caused the collapsed. This book was recommended by the Bronze Age Pervert on his show “Caribbean Rhythms” (I forget which episode).

For more a detailed overview of this book, see my thread on Twitter.

A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail Lermontov

A (short) 19^th century Russian novel about a nihilistic Russian army officer named Pechorin and his adventures in the Caucasus. The novel is set up in quite a fun way, where the story is not chronologically organized, and instead is told episodically, either as stories by characters in the novel or in the form of Pechorin’s diary. This book famously sent the arch conservative Tsar Nikolai I into seething rage after reading it, who reported to his wife that is was “disgusting”, a “depiction of despicable characters” and “such a novel that ruins one’s morals and hardens their character.”

This is a very fun novel, maybe my favourite novel. I’ve come to the conclusion that Lermontov is like the anti-Tolstoy, maybe. Whereas Tolstoy’s novels are overly long, overly sentimental, too much concerned with the pedantic personal lives of Russia’s already very decadent aristocracy, Lermontov’s novel is the opposite. Pechorin instead bride kidnaps a beautiful Circassian princess, mocks the vanity of superfluous nobles and has rowdy affairs with the Cossacks. To the extent Pechorin concerns himself with “fine society”, it is to troll the vanity of the men and to seduced the childlike women, not for pleasure but for amusement, out of boredom.

The decadence of the late Russian nobility really must be emphasized. These were the people whose ancestors battled the Tatars for a millennia and conquered 1/6 of the world, only to lose their nerve in the middle of the First World War and allow the Bolsheviks to seize power and rape Russia nearly to death. Pechorin was entirely justified in his disdain for them. Also should be noted that the conservatism of Tsar Nikolai I was in large part responsible for Russia’s humiliating defeat in the Crimean War.

This is also a very important book as a historical text, is it helps us understand the significant role the Caucasus region plays in Russian history and consciousness. For more on this, I recommend two movies: Alexei Balabanov’s “War” (on Youtube with English subtitles (also my favourite Russian film) and Sergei Bodrov’s “Prisoner of the Mountains” from 1996 (also on Youtube with English subs).

This was my 6^th time reading this novel.

China in Central Asia: The Early Stage, 125 B.C.-A.D. 23 : An Annotated Translation of Chapters 61 and 96 of The History of the Former Han Dynasty - A.F.P. Hulsewé

This book is similar to “The Uighur Empire according to the Tʻang dynastic histories” by Colin Mackerras, as discussed above. Whereas Mackerras’ translation focuses on the Tang’s rival on the steppe, this book details all that was recorded in the Han Dynasty chronicles about the Western Regions. The Western Regions, known in Chinese as Xiyu, encompass the lands west beyond the Jade Gate at Jiayuguan near Dunhuang, located at the western end of the Hexi Corridor. The Western Lands today correlate to the modern day Xinjiang province in China and everything further to the west, all the way to Rome.

This book covers the earliest Chinese penetration and conquest of Central Asia, during the era of China’s Han Dynasty which lasted from the 2^nd century BC to the 2^nd century AD. China at the time was locked in a rivalry with the nomadic empire of the Xiongnu, which was centered on the Mongolian plateau. Initially the Han was unable to counter the Xiongnu’s power, and was forced to accept the Xiongnu as an equal and to pay the nomads tribute. Unwilling to accept this, the Han court sent the diplomat Zhang Qian to seek out potential allies against the Xiongnu, namely the Yuezhi (as mentioned above), whose defeat at the hands of the Xiongnu was known to the Han. Zhang returned with information that the Xiongnu economy was highly dependent upon trade with the city-states of the Tarim Basin, and if the Han could break this region off from the Xiongnu’s empire, they would be in effect be “cutting off the right arm of the Xiongnu.”

The first half of the book covers how the Han Dynasty expanded into the Tarim Basin and slowly cemented its control over the Silk Road. It also covers the “War of the Heavenly Horses.” Zhang Qian had also reported that the State of Dayuan, likely a Greek kingdom in the Fergana Valley, had horses that were faster and stronger than any others, and that also sweat blood. The Han led two campaigns to force the submission of Dayuan and to capture their blood-sweating horses.

The second half consists of a geographic overview of the Western Lands, including their population sizes and economic profiles. It is really quite remarkable how accurate and detailed the text is, generally speaking. All place names are written with their Han Dynasty era names, yet nevertheless many countries and regions can be identified by their depictions. The first part, which is largely a narrative history, is also remarkably detailed in that the ebb and tide of Han-Xiongnu competition for influence in the Tarim Basin’s kingdoms is clearly observable in the diplomatic relations that are recorded.

Lastly, the book’s plentiful footnotes and annotations make this otherwise very archaic text easy to read.

Qarakhanid Roads to China A History of Sino-Turkic Relations - Dilnoza Duturaeva

This book is not so much about the Qarakhanids themselves, but a study of the Silk Road during the era of the Qarakhanids. The Qarakhanids were the first major Muslim Turkic state. The Qarakhanid Khaganate was founded sometime in the late 9^th or early 10^th century in the Semireche region of southeastern Kazakhstan and northern Kyrgyzstan, and it came to control many of the trade routes that linked China to the rest of Eurasia.

The Qarakhanids are particularly important as they initiated the Islamification of the Silk Road. Prior, the Tarim Basin, as well as Afghanistan, northern India and elsewhere were Buddhist, but from the 10^th century onwards the Buddhists of the Silk Road began converting to Islam. This process was likely connected to the relative decline of China, Tibet, and the Uyghur Khaganate, all of whom collapsed in the 9^th century. My theory is that the collapse of these empires also resulted in an economic collapse across eastern Eurasian. The Turks of Semireche, a region which faced west towards the Caliphate as much as it faced east towards China, were drawn further into the orbit of the Islamic world as at the time it was far more economically, culturally and politically vibrant than China. With far more economic opportunities available with the Islamic world than with China, the Turks Islamified as opposed to Sinified as they had in the past.

It would have been nice if Duturaeva had discussed the Qarakhanids themselves more, but from what I understand sources on them are very limited. Regardless, this book is incredibly detailed and informative. Like other HdO Brill publications this book relies heavily on primary sources, including Chinese language ones. This is very important book for understanding the Silk Road.

Open access is available for this book on Brill’s website, where it is free to read.

Soldiers Alive - Ishikawa Tatsuzo

This is a short novel which tells the story of an Imperial Japanese Army unit in 1937 as it advanced on Nanking during the 2^nd Sino-Japanese War. The author accompanied the Japanese Army as it advanced on the Chinese capital, where the subsequent Nanjing Massacre occurred. The book is as much a first-hand account of what happened as it is a novel. The author tells of the extreme violence that Japanese soldiers inflicted on Chinese civilians, who were raped and killed as if they are animals.

Due to the extremely unflattering depiction of Japanese soldiers, the book was initially banned by Japanese censors and the author was arrested. Its publication was only permitted in 1945 after the war over.

This is a very important book because it is an honest depiction of what occurred and it does not attempt to white wash the historical truth. Modern Japan’s historical memory towards events that occurred in the Second World War can be characterized as being similar to Holocaust denial in the West. The Japanese view point on these matters is understandable. For Japan to fully accept their historical “guilt” as Germany has done would mean the delegitimization and deconstruction of Japan, which is exactly has happened to Germany since the war. Today in Germany one cannot have nationalist sentiments or views without the risk of being called a “Nazi”, regardless of whether they are one or not. Germany is basically a country without an immune system.

The importance in reading this book is to be able to look the horrors of the 20^th century and simply brush them aside and move on. The alternatives are either to remain a state of moral stupor such as what the West as been in, where the entire culture is frozen in horror with what has happened, or engage in low IQ denialism. The first option, like all stupors, leaves you weakened and physically incapable of acting with any decisive force, even when faced with serious threats. Imagine an entire society trapped in the same state of terror that Ivan the Terrible is in after he has murdered his own son.

Detail from “Ivan the Terrible and his Son Ivan” - Ilya Repin, 1885

The correct path to take, I believe, is to acknowledge what happened did happen, to contextualize it, and then to move on.

What Japan did during the Second World War was not at all unique or different from what occurred during wars all throughout history. Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, for example, resulted in about a 1/3 of the population dying and another 1/3 being enslaved. When Alexander conquered Gaza he killed all the men and enslaved the women and child. Much is made of the Nanjing Massacre, but a comparable number of civilians died during Siege of Changchun in 1948 during the Chinese Civil War. Of course, one could say that there is difference between being murdered by bayonet and dying from starvation during a siege. But is there? I do not think so. In 1938 during the war, the Chinese authorities caused the Yellow River to flood its banks in a bid to stop the Japanese from advancing. This action also killed a comparable number of civilians as those that were killed at Nanjing. Again I ask, what is the difference?

This is why Notle’s book, “The European Civil War”, which I recommend above under the “The Jewish Century”, is so important. Instead of denying the Holocaust and other German actions, or attempting to poke holes the historical narrative as David Irving has done (and very unconvincingly), Nolte contextualizes the Holocaust as a response to the equally bad atrocities that were being committed by the Soviet Union. As Nolte rightfully points out, the Soviet Union was first country to create a system of death camps and to selectively exterminate categories of people that the state viewed as undesirable. For more on Soviet-German issue in particular, I would recommend Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands”. I very much suspect that Snyder copied Nolte’s thesis and regurgitated it in a manner that is more digestible for an American audience.

This book was recommended to me by Masaki Jinzaburo, who can also be found on Substack here.

Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino

This magical novel is written as a conversation between Marco Polo and the Mongolian Yuan Emperor Kublai Khan. Polo tells Kublai about all the cities he has seen and traveled through. None of these are real cities, and are instead the fantastical inventions of Calvino speaking through Polo. But nevertheless they all feel very real, and some of them surely did exist. This book could be classified not so much as historical-fiction, but as fantasy or as a pseudo-travelogue. The entire book feels like a dream.

This book reminded of Julien Gracq’s novel “The Opposing Shore”, which I also hugely recommend (this is Nassim Taleb’s favourite novel if I am not mistaken).

The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia - Christopher Beckwith

From the 7th to the 9th centuries the Tibetans battled the Chinese, Turks, and Arabs for the control of Inner Eurasia, during the golden age of the Silk Road. During this period the Tibetans were able to rival China when it was at its imperial peak under the Tang Dynasty and exert its control over the Silk Road. Tibetan power reached out to Bactria, to Semireche and into the steppes as far as the Mongolian plateau. The Tibetans even managed to capture and sack the Tang Dynasty’s capture of Chang’an.

The era of the Tibetan Empire was not only the commercial peak of the Silk Road prior to the Mongol epoch, it also saw constant warfare between China, the Turkic Khaganates, the Arab Muslim Caliphates, and Tibetans. While the focus is on the Tibetans, Beckwith covers the era’s history with a global scope. This book could have been named “The World War for the Silk Road in the Early Middle Ages”. As a result, this book is not only exceptionally exciting to read, as the geopolitical drama that Beckwith covers is no less exciting than the history of the Peloponnesian War or the World Wars, but as a historical text it is one of a kind. There are plenty of books and papers on the Turks, Arabs, Tang, etc, individually but only this book depicts all of them together with their interlocking geopolitical conflicts.

Like other Beckwith books, footnotes and endnotes must read as they contain very important and relevant information. Beckwith mostly uses older and archaic names, and the narrative moves kaleidoscopically across terrain that few will be familiar with, thus this quite a difficult book to read. I wrote a long, very detailed, and very readable thread on Twitter covering this book. While my thread is easier to read, I still suggest diving into Beckwith’s book for those who are interested.

This was my 3rd time reading this book.

Mystical Ennui – Doonvorcannon

This book is a collection of short stories, reflections and poems, all focused on ennui. The entire book is very dreamlike and very comfy to read. This is a self-published book by the Twitter user Doonvorcoon who has written several other great books.

His Twitter account can be found here, and Mystical Ennui can be found here on Amazon.

China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia - Peter C. Perdue

This is the definitive text on how the Qing Dynasty conquered Inner Asia and how modern China came to rule its non-Chinese realms of Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. It is worth pointing out that of all the world’s empires from the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th centuries, only the Chinese one has remained largely territoriality intact. The only territories that were conquered by the Qing and later lost were its most peripheral regions that were always very loosely controlled, such as Semireche, Outer Mongolia, Tuva and others (Taiwan was also loosely controlled, but the state that controls Taiwan today also calls itself China). This is all the more remarkable considering that China was actually the weakest of all major world powers until very recently.

The first half of this book is narrative history of how the Manchus, a semi-nomadic, semi-Sinified people first conquered China and founded the Qing Dynasty, and then defeated the Zungar Khanate, conquering Inner Asia in the process. The Zungars were the last independent Mongolian khanate (not technically a khanate as the Zungar royal family was not descendants of Chingis Khan and did not use the ruling title of Khan. Instead, the ruler was called “kontaisha” and political legitimacy was derived from the Dalai Lama in Tibet) which emerged among the western Mongolian Oirats. The Qing-Zungar conflict began over their rivalry for control of the Mongols on the Mongolian plateau. Both sides proved resilient and the war dragged on for nearly hundred years, finally concluding with the Qing invading the Zungar heartland around the Tianshan Mountains and physically exterminating them.

The narrative focused first half is a great read, as it places the Qing Dynasty within the broader scope of Eurasian geopolitics. Perdue always keeps one eye towards the Russians who were at the time expanding across Siberia and first came into contact with the post-Chingis Mongols and China, as well as the activities of the Western Jesuits who were influential at the Qing court. The second half of the book focuses on how the Qing ruled and incorporated their new and very distant borderlands. This section is much denser and will be far lesser interest to most readers.

This book is excellent as it tells a very important story that, as far as I know, is not told anywhere else in as much detail. Additionally, this is an excellent book as a jumping off point for learning more about China’s inner Asian frontiers. Perdue does a very good job of explaining how the geography of the region, namely its oases, deserts, steppes and mountains, affected how the Qing Dynasty expanded outwards. The geography of the region had an enormous role on how China expanded into Eurasia historically. This history cannot be understood without also understand the geography.

For further reading on the geography in China and its frontiers, I would recommend everything written by Owen Lattimore, specifically “Inner Asian frontiers of China”, “Studies in Frontier History: Collected Papers, 1928–1958”, “Pivot of Asia”, “Manchuria: Craddle of Conflict”, and his two part travel memoir where he crossed the Silk Road on camel back in the 1920’s, “The Desert Road to Turkestan” and “High Tartary”.

For more on how China managed to hold its Inner Asian empire together through multiple wars and revolutions, I would recommend, “Holy war in China” by Kim Ho-dong, “Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State” Justin M. Jacobs, “Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang” by James Millward (Millward’s other books, "Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity and Empire in Qing Xinjiang, 1759-1864” & “New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde” are also probably worth reading, although I have not read them myself yet).

This was my 3rd time reading this book.

Beasts, Men and Gods - Ferdynand Ossendowski

This is the famous travel memoir by Ossendowski that tells of his escape from Bolshevik Russia and his encounter with the legendary and mystical Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternbern, which is the highlight of this book.

The “Bloody Baron” Roman von Ungern-Sternbern is best known for his adventures during the Russian Civil War. A Cossack officer of Baltic German origin, Ungern went “native” one could say, assimilating with his Mongol cavalrymen, and began preaching a form of messianic Vajrayana Buddhism that promised to redeem the world through fire and cleanse it of Bolshevism. Following the defeat of General Kolchak the leader of the White Armies, Ungern fled into Outer Mongolia with his ethnically mixed Cossack force.

At the time, Outer Mongolia remained a Chinese possession, and Ungern hoped to turn Mongolia into a base from where further attacks against Bolshevik Russia could be launched. In order to achieve this, he captured Urga, Mongolia’s capital city now known as Ulaanbaator, from the Chinese garrison. Ungern was eventually captured and executed by the Bolsheviks, but in the process, the Red Army also occupied Outer Mongolia and installed a communist regime there. From the 1920’s onwards, Mongolia became a de facto Soviet protectorate, and one could say the first Soviet satellite state. Outer Mongolia’s de facto independence was later recognized by Mao in exchange for the Soviet Union returning Manchuria to China in 1949. Thus as a result of a chain of events initiated by Baron von Ungern-Sternberg and later formalized by the Stalin, Mongolia emerged as an independent country free from communist China.

More generally, Ossendowski is an extremely compelling story teller. He begins with his wanderings in Siberia attempting to evade death by a Bolshevik firing squad. He then flees across the Minusinsk Basin and across Tuva (where he came across the ancient Uyghur fortress of Por-Bazhyn) into Mongolia. His telling of his encounter Ungern-Sternbern has an extremely powerful energy to it, with Ungern-Sternberg appearing other worldly.

Lastly, this book could be included as a part of the wider orientalist-mystical movements that were prevalent across Europe and Russia during the early 20^th century. These include Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy, Nazi Germany’s Ahnenerbe organization, the Vril Society, the works of Nikolai Roerich (see the Chud tunnels to inner earth under the Altai Mountains), and others. I have been told that “Red Shambala” by Andrei Znamenski is a good book on this subject.

Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits - Friedrich Nietzsche

I read several books by Nietzsche this year, but I enjoyed this one the most. Similar to most other of Nietzsche’s works, this book is a series of short essays and aphorism. It has a fairly general focus and was easy to read. This would be a good starting point with Nietzsche. I would also recommend Nietzsche’s essays “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life”, which I also read this year.

Imperial Russia in Frontier America: The Changing Geography of Supply of Russian America, 1784-1867 - James R. Gibson

This book is a study of Russia’s empire in the America’s, namely its colonies in Alaska, California and Hawaii. The focus is how the colonies were supplied and their commercial logistics. This is very good way to approach to this subject because fate of Russia’s empire in North America was largely determined by the logistic constraints it faced.

Russia first reached Alaska in the mid-18th century, starting with the Aleutian Islands. They then expanded eastwards along Alaska’s coast, eventually founding the capital of Russian Alaska at Novo-Archangelsk, modern day Shitka on Baranov Island, which is a part of the Alaskan panhandled that reaches down towards Canada’s province of British Colombia. Very similar to England and France’s expansions in the New World, as well as Russia’s own expansion across Siberia, Russia came to America seeking furs, primarily sea otters.

Also similar to England with its Hudson’s Bay Company, Russia’s colonial empire in the New World was initially a private business effort of the Russian American Company. By the turn of the 19^th century the company’s business began to terminally decline. First, animal populations had been hunted to near extinction which led to a massive decline in exports. The company attempted to diversify into lumber, coal, and other sectors, but it lacked the manpower and capital to succeed in this. The second problem, as just mentioned, was that the colonies could not be properly supplied. It should be noted that this all occurred before Russia had established its naval fortress of Vladivostok on the Pacific. Instead, supplies had to be transported from the interior of Siberia, to the Sea of Okhotsk, and shipped to Alaska. As a result, most food supplies went bad before they reached their destination, while the local environs could only meagerly feed the Russian colonies (Alaska’s climate was colder than it is now, which only further limited agriculture).

The company attempted to solve this problem by establishing agricultural colonies on the Hawaii Islands and later on California at Fort Ross. Later, the Russians signed an agreement with the Hudson’s Bay Company where the HBC would supply the RAC with food. In the end, the colonies were deemed indefensible in the face of global British naval power, and Alaska was sold to the United States.

Plans for the New Year & A Thank You To Reader

First, I am working two books. One is a translation of “Поход в Хиву” (Campaign to Khiva) by Lieutenant-General Maksud Alikhanov-Avarsky. This is short memoir written by a Dagestani officer in the service of the Russian Imperial Army. It tells of his command of a regiment from the Caucasus that took part in the 1873 conquest of Khiva in Central Asia. Alikhanov-Aversky’s unit was shipped across the Caspian Sea to the shores of Turkestan, and then marched inland as one column of a four pronged invasion of the Khanate of Khiva, which had been a throne in Russia’s side for centuries. I hope to have this book ready for publication by summer of 2024.

The second book will be a history of the Uyghur Turks, with a focus on their Khaganate on the Mongolian plateau and the later Qocho state at Turfan. This will essentially be a much expanded version of my essay that I published earlier this year on the collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate. This will be a very thorough study of the Uyghurs that will understand them in the context of Eurasian history. I will look at the origins of nomadism, the origins of the Turks, how the Uyghurs emerged from among the Turks, the religious transformations of the Uyghurs, their cultural legacies, and their disappearance during the Mongol era. Additionally I will examine theories of steppe -nomadic state formation and how trade functioned on the Silk Road.

I will also continue working on translations similar to what I have been working on this past year. I also hope to publish shorter research papers on select topics, especially on subjects where the existing academic literature is largely in Russian and thus largely unknown in English language world.

And lastly, I would like to thank all of my readers! I very much appreciate that so many people read my work, it is very encouraging. And a special thanks to my few paid subscribers!! Especially considering that all of my posts are all free. Thank you all!