Step Twelve

Imagine, Matrix-style, that you've got a rid pill and a blue pill between which you have to choose. One of them is BE WARLIKE AND CONQUER EVERYBODY and the other is BE TRADERS AND GET CONQUERED BY EVERYBODY. Weighing the pros and cons, I would have totally picked the former - and then I read Liu's article on interaction between nomadic and sedentary socities.

Liu uses the Yuezhi-Kushan (whose identities are shrouded in layers of fog, which she does a pretty fair job of unraveling) as a model for other nomadic societies, talking about their widespread influence in East and Central Asia and through to the Hellenistic Afghanistan area. My first thought: "AHA! These are those awesome steppe traders that Christian was talking about!" because Liu gives them credit for being the first real users of the Silk Road.

The most interesting thing, though, is the contrast between the survival of cultures - I'm going to broad-brush-strokes it as a continuum from the Xiongnu through the Yuezhi-Kushan through the Bactrians.

How much do we know about the Xiongnu? I read an interesting article last week about their depictions in Chinese histories, and, frankly, we have very little either than those Chinese records on which to base our reconstruction of Xiongnu society. The Xiongnu were a crazy society that Han China (and all the other dynasties, it looks like Liu is suggesting) really hated, largely because the nomadic warrior-types were always trying to conquer China proper. Really aggressive, not much trading potential, angry-angry-angry people.

What about the Yuezhi-Kushan? Liu does a great job of explaining how they spread out through nomadic migratory practices to vaguely invade lots of places from China to India, and to keep really strong trade relations, especially with China, for whom they provided horses and jade and other stuff for the war against the Xiongnu. The Y-Z had terrible problems with the X as well, it seems, although after the majority of them (which may have just been people who spoke the same language rather than sharing a culture) migrated to India's side of the continent they stopped extensive trade with the Chinese. What we know about the Y-Z is fragmentary, and highly mixed up with all the other cultures around them, but it's definitely more than just entries in Chinese historical catalogues.

And, finally, the Bactrians, along with all the other people in India's side that the Y-Z happened to "conquer". Liu doesn't go into depth on their identities, but there seems to be very little controversy and very much really diverse information - from archaeological to written sources. We seem to know a lot more about them than about the vaguely conquering-types or about the really-seriously-we-want-your-kingdom-conquering-types.

So, my hypothesis! Liu talks about how sedentary societies tend to exert an extremely powerful influence on the nomadic societies which invade them, to the point where we really have no idea what, say, Mongol culture really looked like. Or Xiongnu. So it seems to me that, when deciding between red and blue pill, we should be looking at cultural survival.

The Yuezhi-Kushan spread out through EVERYONE, and in doing so a lot of their customs and religions became those of the people they conquered-ish. One particularly striking example is the introduction of Buddhism to China, which was done by KUSHAN missionaries. This is about as close to an explicit statement of assimilation as you're likely to get - the Buddhist practitioners in India/Afghanistan/that area converted large enough segments of the conquering population to send them back home with the good news.

Why DO conquering nomads end up getting subsumed into the lifestyle/practices/belief systems of their sedentary conquerees? Liu doesn't give much of an answer, but the question is one that I think is really important to our study of history. Furthermore, she implicitly sets up a pattern but does not derive from it a rule to hold next to other societies, and nothing I've yet read suggests any reason for cultural assimilation nor any rule that we can broadly apply and see how it fits.

So, for now, I'm going to have to be content to say that Step Twelve is to be traders and get conquered by everyone - you make tons of money and, really, you end up being the only one who people accurately remember.