¹ Morris Rossabi, “Modern Mongolia and Chinggis Khan,” Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs 3, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 25.

² Under Soviet direction, the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) killed many nobles, particularly those claiming descent from the Chinggisid line. Family and clan names were prohibited, in order to eliminate a source of national consciousness based on the Chinggisid descent. Hundreds of monasteries were destroyed, and 18,000 Buddhist lamas, along with 18,000 Buryats and other intellectuals, were executed. Henry G. Schwarz, “Preface,” in Mongolian Culture and Society in the Age of Globalization, ed. Henry G. Schwarz, Studies on East Asia, v. 26 (Bellingham, Wash: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 2006), 4–6; Alicia J. Campi, “Globalization, Mongolian Identity, and Chinggis Khan,” in Mongolian Culture and Society in the Age of Globalization, ed. Henry G. Schwarz, 71–72; Johan Elverskog, “Theorizing Violence in Mongolia,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, no. 16 (September 2015): 166.

³ When family names were restored under presidential decree in 1991, over 60% of the people chose Borjigid, the name of the clan of Chinggis. Campi, “Globalization, Mongolian Identity, and Chinggis Khan,” 75–78.

⁴ However, Rossabi suggests that Chinggis' image in Mongolia is losing power as the Mongolian public is increasingly disillusioned by bleak economic prospects and political realities. Rossabi, “Modern Mongolia and Chinggis Khan,” 28–29.

⁵ Rossabi, 27.

⁶ Morris Rossabi, “Genghis Khan,” in Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, ed. William W. Fitzhugh, Morris Rossabi, and William Honeychurch (Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution and Mongolian Preservation Foundation, 2013), 105–9.

⁷ Schwarz, “Preface,” viii–ix.

⁸ Morris Rossabi, The Mongols: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 60.

⁹ Michal Biran, “The Mongol Empire in World History: The State of the Field,” History Compass 11, no. 11 (November 1, 2013): 1021.

¹⁰ Manfred B. Steger, Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, Second edition, Very Short Introductions (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 8–16.

¹¹ A. G. Hopkins, “The History of Globalization—and the Globalization of History?,” in Globalization in World History, ed. A. G. Hopkins (New York: Norton, 2002), 19.

¹² Manfred B. Steger, “Imperial Globalism, Democracy, and the ‘Political Turn,‘” Political Theory 34, no. 3 (June 2006): 372.

¹³ A. G. Hopkins, “The Historiography of Globalization and the Globalization of Regionalism,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 53, no. 1/2 (2010): 26.

¹⁴ Steger, “Imperial Globalism, Democracy, and the ‘Political Turn,‘” 372; Steger, Globalization, chapter 3 to 7.

¹⁵ Ronald Findlay and Mats Lundahl, “The First Globalization Episode: The Creation of the Mongol Empire, or the Economics of Chinggis Khan,” in Asia and Europe in Globalization: Continents, Regions and Nations, ed. Göran Therborn and Habibul Haque Khondker, Social Sciences in Asia, v. 8 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2006), 13–54.

¹⁶ Jeffrey E. Garten, From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization through Ten Extraordinary Lives, First edition (New York, NY: Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2016), 8.

¹⁷ As part of the national celebration of Chinggis Khan's 850^th birthday in 2012, Mongolia held an international conference on “Chinggis Khan and Globalization.” Biran, “The Mongol Empire in World History,” 1021.

¹⁸ The government also released 700 prisoners, or 10% of Mongolia's incarcerated population. “Mongolians Honour Genghis Khan,” July 11, 2006.

¹⁹ This film was released in the West as Genghis Khan: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea. To avoid confusion, we refer to it by its Japanese title, The Blue Wolf: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea.

²⁰ The English title for the DVD version of this television series is Genghis Khan. To avoid confusion, we refer to it by its transliterated Chinese title, Chengjisi Han.

²¹ Uradyn Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism: The Politics of Friendship on China's Mongolian Frontier (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010), 23.

²² Jim Rohner, “On the Circuit: Sergei Bodrov (Mongol),” Zoom In Online, accessed April 4, 2010.

²³ Morris Rossabi, “Genghis Khan: World Conqueror? Introduction to Paul Ratchnevsky's Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy” (Blackwell Publishing), xvi– xvii, accessed April 2, 2010; Ryszard Paradowski, “The Eurasian Idea and Leo Gumilëv's Scientific Ideology,” trans. Liliana Wysocka and Douglas Morren, Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne Des Slavistes 41, no. 1 (March 1999): 22. For a balanced and concise history of the Golden Horde, see Daniel C. Waugh, “The Golden Horde and Russia,” in Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, ed. William W. Fitzhugh, Morris Rossabi, and William Honeychurch (Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution and Mongolian Preservation Foundation, 2013), 173–79.

²⁴ Stephen Kotkin, “Mongol Commonwealth?: Exchange and Governance across the Post-Mongol Space,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 8, no. 3 (Summer 2007): 493.

²⁵ Dmitry Shlapentokh, “The Image of Genghis Khan and Ethnic Identities in Post-Soviet Russia,” Asia Europe Journal 7, no. 3–4 (December 2009): 493.

²⁶ Paradowski, “The Eurasian Idea and Leo Gumilëv's Scientific Ideology,” 22–24.

²⁷ Shlapentokh, “The Image of Genghis Khan and Ethnic Identities in Post-Soviet Russia,” 493.

²⁸ Gumilev was the son of famed poets Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova, and also a Gulag survivor. The third book in his trilogy on the history of the steppe nomads, which devoted considerable time to the rise of the Mongols and which Gumilev dedicated “to the fraternal Mongol people,” has been translated into English: L. N. Gumilev, Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom: The Legend of the Kingdom of Prester John, trans. R. E. F. Smith, Past and Present Publications (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Gumilev's grand synthesis of human history and natural history is also available in an English translation: L. N. Gumilev, Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1990).

²⁹ Bassin, The Gumilev Mystique, 96–98.

³⁰ Bassin, 102–103.

³¹ Benjamin Nathans, “The Real Power of Putin,” The New York Review of Books, September 29, 2016.

³² Charles Clover, “Lev Gumilev: Passion, Putin and Power,” Financial Times, March 11, 2016.

³³ Bassin, The Gumilev Mystique, 123–28.

³⁴ Mark Bassin, “Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Book Review),” Slavic Review 68, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 1016.

³⁵ Andreas Umland, “Post-Soviet Neo-Eurasianism, the Putin System, and the Contemporary European Extreme Right,” Perspectives on Politics 15, no. 02 (June 2017): 468.

³⁶ Nathans, “The Real Power of Putin.” At Lev Gumilev University in Astana, Kazakhstan, President Vladimir Putin declared in 2004 that “Russia is the very center of Eurasia,” and that Gumilev's ideas of “a united Eurasia in opposition to the transatlantic West — were beginning to move the masses.” Kotkin, “Mongol Commonwealth?,” 495. In his December 2012 address to the federal assembly, Putin invoked Gumilev's concept of passionarnost' (passionarity) to promote “chest-thumping nationalism, the martial virtues of sacrifice, discipline, loyalty and valour.” Clover, “Lev Gumilev.”

³⁷ Gumilev's conception of Russia as a super-ethnos made him popular in Russia, but since he also “celebrated the Mongol and Turkic ethnoses,” he is popular in Inner Asia as well. Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbaev invoked Eurasianism to position his country as a link between Asia and Europe. Kotkin, “Mongol Commonwealth?,” 495.

³⁸ The future of Bodrov's project remains uncertain. It appears that Bodrov's plan has changed to making just a single sequel continuing the story to the death of Chinggis Khan in 1227. This sequel is tentatively titled Mongol II – The Legend, with a target completion date of 2019. “Mongol II – The Legend,” Getaway Pictures, August 5, 2016. It should be noted that Bodrov's Mongol is by no means an isolated manifestation of Eurasianism in Russian popular culture. Bodrov had earlier made a film about Kazakhs in the 18^th century, Nomad (2005). Even earlier in 1991, Nikita Mikhalkov directed Urga, about a Russian truck driver's friendship with a Mongolian shepherd (Urga is the former name of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia). In addition to Mongol, Karen Shakhnazarov's Vanished Empire (2008) and Andrei Borisov's By the Will of Genghis Khan (2009) are big budget productions that “invoke romanticized images of Russia's East.” Bassin, The Gumilev Mystique, 240; Brian James Baer, “Go East, Young Man! Body Politics and the Asian Turn in Putin-Era Cinema,” The Russian Review, no. 74 (April 2015): 230.

³⁹ Shlapentokh, “The Image of Genghis Khan and Ethnic Identities in Post-Soviet Russia,” 494–95.

⁴⁰ Anton Dolin, “Sergei Bodrov: People Love to Pass the Blame onto Others,” Russia Beyond (blog), February 2, 2015. Buryats and Kalmyks are both Mongol subgroups, each with their republics in the USSR/Russia.

⁴¹ In numerous interviews, Bodrov refers to the title of Gumilev's book as The Legend of the Black Arrow. But there is no such title in a bibliography of Gumilev's publications. The closest title is The Black Legend, which is indeed a positive take on the Mongol era in Russia, and has been described as the “first book written in the western world to present Genghis Khan in a favorable light.” Brian James Baer, “Go East, Young Man! Body Politics and the Asian Turn in Putin-Era Cinema,” The Russian Review, no. 74 (April 2015): 238.

⁴² Three English translations of this Mongol epic are: Francis Cleaves, The Secret History of the Mongols (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1982); Urgunge Onon, The Secret History of the Mongols: The Life and Times of Chinggis Khan (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001); Igor de Rachewiltz, The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2006). The compiler of The Secret History is unknown, and its date is uncertain, as it stated only that it was completed in the year of the Rat, which had been variously advanced as 1228, 1240 or 1252. The date of 1228 is supported by de Rachewiltz, Ratchnevsky and Urgunge Onon, among others. Christopher Atwood, on the other hand, argues for the date of 1252 on the basis of his view of the text as “a unitary work, composed in a single style and full of partisan biases” rather than “the product of later additions, deletions and other editorial changes carried out during the Yuan and early Ming periods,” as Igor de Rachewiltz believed. Paul Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, ed. and trans. Thomas Nivison Haining (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006), xiv; Ruth Dunnell, Chinggis Khan: World Conqueror (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Longman, 2010), xxiii; Christopher P. Atwood, “The Date of the ‘Secret History of the Mongols’ Reconsidered,” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, no. 37 (2007): 40.

⁴³ There are a number of other important primary sources on the Mongol Empire, including Ata-Malik Juvaini's Tarikh-i jahangusha (History of the World Conqueror), Rashid al-din's Jami' al-Tavarikh (Compendium of Chronicles), Yuanshi, the Chinese official history of the Yuan Dynasty, and travel accounts by scholars and religious officials, such as John of Plano Carpini, Friar Benedict the Pole, and William of Rubruck. However, The Secret History is the only primary source on the life of Chinggis Khan that was written by Mongols from a Mongol perspective, and therefore considered the most authentic account by Mongolians today. William W. Fitzhugh, “Genghis Khan: Empire and Legacy,” in Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, ed. William W. Fitzhugh, Morris Rossabi, and William Honeychurch (Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution and Mongolian Preservation Foundation, 2013), 31–33.

⁴⁴ This event occurred during a most difficult period for the preteen Temüjin, one where the Tatars poisoned his father Yisügei, and his Tayichi'ut clan kinsmen abandoned his family. The Secret History of the Mongols records that Temüjin and his brother Khasar were angered when their half-brothers Begter and Belgütei snatched first a fish, and then a bird that they had harvested, after which their mother Hö'elün simply told them to stop fighting among themselves. Temüjin and Khasar subsequently sneaked up on Begter and shot him to death with arrows, but Belgütei was spared. de Rachewiltz, The Secret History of the Mongols, 20–21.

⁴⁵ The date of Temüjin's birth remains a topic of some controversy. Several official Chinese sources date it in 1162, and this is the date accepted in Mongolia and in most secondary sources. However, the French scholar Paul Pelliot believed that 1167, given in one Chinese source, is the date most consistent with details of Chinggis Khan's life recorded in other sources. If the account of Rashid al-Din were correct in stating that Chinggis Khan died at the age of 72, then he would have been born in 1155. Paul Ratchnevsky argued that 1155 is unlikely on the ground that it would imply that Temüjin only became a father at the age of 30 in a time when Mongols married early, and that he led a campaign against the Tanguts at age 72. Ratchnevsky believed that the exact year of Temüjin's birth cannot be established, and that he was born in the mid-1160s. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan, 17–19.

⁴⁶ de Rachewiltz, The Secret History of the Mongols, 32, 41.

⁴⁷ Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan, 37.

⁴⁸ Jamukha was in fact executed according to both The Secret History and Rashid al-Din, though the accounts vary in detail. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan, 87-88.

⁴⁹ There is a controversy among scholars whether Chinggis merely saw himself as ordained by Tenggeri to rule over the Mongolian steppe, or whether he believed that Tenggeri sanctioned him to conquer the world, an interpretation that would be supported if the meaning of Chinggis was “ocean” and hence Chinggis Khan meant “universal ruler.” During the reigns of Chinggis' successors from Ögedei to Möngke, Tenggerism developed into a sophisticated ideology “according to which all under Heaven must be united under the rule of the Mongols.” After Khubilai Khan conquered the Southern Song, thereby completing the establishment of the Mongol universal empire, he was more concerned with pacification and consolidation than with conquests. Though tolerant of and respectful to the major religions, Khubilai favored Buddhism as “a neutral and more universal religion in comparison with other religions known to him.” With the collaboration of the Tibetan lama 'Phags-pa, Khubilai fused Buddhism with the Mongolian belief in Tenggeri to create a Tenggerism that legitimated his universal emperorship, by strengthening Tenggerism with the Buddhist model of the monarch as Chakravartin. Shagdaryn Bira, “The Mongolian Ideology of Tenggerism and Khubilai Khan,” in Mongolian Culture and Society in the Age of Globalization, ed. Henry G. Schwarz, Studies on East Asia, v. 26 (Bellingham, Wash: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 2006), 13, 16–25.

⁵⁰ In Mongol, when his nine-year old son Temüjin is frightened by thunder, Yisügei tells him: “Thunder means our god Tenggeri is angry. All Mongols are afraid of it.” When Yisügei is poisoned by the Merkits and lies dying, he tells his son: “Be strong, and ask our lord of the blue sky, Tenggeri, to help you.” When Temüjin as a boy is captured by Tarkhutai, chief of the Tayichi'ut clan and forced to wear a cangue, he runs to the sacred mountain and prays to Tenggeri. The blue wolf, who, according to Mongol myth, was the progenitor of the Mongols and is used by Bodrov to represent Tenggeri, appears, and he is miraculously released from the cangue (In The Secret History, Temüjin escaped with the help of Sorkhan Shira, a subordinate of the Tayichi'uts; de Rachewiltz, The Secret History of the Mongols, 22–26). In the climactic battle between the forces of Temüjin and Jamukha, lightning and thunder scare the Mongols. Temüjin, however, is fearless. Confident of protection by Tenggeri, he leads his troops forward and wins decisively.

⁵¹ Morris Rossabi, “Genghis Khan,” in Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, ed. William W. Fitzhugh, Morris Rossabi, and William Honeychurch (Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution and Mongolian Preservation Foundation, 2013), 105.

⁵² The Tangut Kingdom episode is completely invented by Bodrov, with no basis in The Secret History or any other historical sources, rooted only in Gumilev's speculation about the possibility that Temüjin might have been a captive during a ten-year gap in existing records. Daniel Eagan, “Epic Challenge: Sergei Bodrov's ‘Mongol’ Captures Tumultuous Life of Genghis Khan,” Film Journal International, 2008, 17.

⁵³ B. Byambadorj, “Ch. Biligsaikhan: The Top Spots Should Be Taken, Not Begged For,” The UB Post, October 1, 2012.

⁵⁴ B. Bulgamaa, “Film on Mongols Dismays Nation,” The UB Post, November 22, 2007.

⁵⁵ Sorimachi Takashi played the role of Temüjin, while fellow Japanese actors Kikukawa Rei starred as Börte, Wakamura Mayumi as Hö‘elün, and Matsuyama Ken'ichi as Jochi. Korean actress Ara played the pivotal role of Khulan, one of Temüjin's concubines. Shochiku Co.‘s official film site, first archived on Internet Archive on February 4, 2007.

⁵⁶ For a succinct account of the invasions and recent archaeological finds, see James P. Delgardo, Randall J. Sasaki, and Kenzo Hayashida, “The Lost Fleet of Kublai Khan: Mongol Invasions of Japan,” in Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, ed. William W. Fitzhugh, Morris Rossabi, and William Honeychurch (Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution and Mongolian Preservation Foundation, 2013), 244–53. Interestingly, it was not until 1934 when the term kamikaze appeared in Japanese history textbooks. With the war turning increasingly against Japan towards the end of the Pacific War, the Japanese were hoping for a repeat of history: “Japan has never lost a war to outside enemies … it will be saved by a Divine Wind at the last moment … The Japanese expectation that the gods will somehow solve pressing difficulties remains alive even today.” Junko Miyawaki-Okada, “Homeland, Nationalism and the Legacy of Chinggis Khan: The Japanese Origin of the Chinggis Khan Legends,” Inner Asia. 8, no. 1 (2006): 126–27.

⁵⁷ Miyawaki-Okada, 124.

⁵⁸ Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism, 40.

⁵⁹ Boyd, Japanese-Mongolian Relations, 1873-1945, 56.

⁶⁰ Contributing to the popularity of this book was Suematsu's status as a son-in-law of Itō Hirobumi, Meiji Japan's most eminent statesman. Suematsu later served as communications minister in 1898 and as minister of the interior in 1900-01. Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism, 40.

⁶¹ Miyawaki-Okada, “Homeland, Nationalism and the Legacy of Chinggis Khan: The Japanese Origin of the Chinggis Khan Legends,” 129–32. In the early 1940s, several English-language publications by Japanese authors reintroduced this myth to Western readers. Boyd, Japanese-Mongolian Relations, 1873-1945, 57.

⁶² Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism, 39.

⁶³ Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 183; Prasenjit Duara, “Ethnos (minzoku) and Ethnology (minzokushugi) in Manchukuo,” Asia Research Institute, Working Paper Series No. 74 (September 2006): 18-21. Accessed June 28, 2011.

⁶⁴ The Occupation authorities had ordered that the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki be excluded from the school curriculum, allegedly for contributing to Japan's militarism. The Horsemen Theory, which was seemingly buttressed by archaeological evidence, could replace those banned works as a new source of national myth and pride. The seminal work of the Horsemen Theory is the book by Japanese historian and archeologist Egami Namio, Kiba minzoku kokka: Nihon kodaishi e no apurōchi (1967). James Boyd, Japanese-Mongolian Relations, 1873-1945: Faith, Race and Strategy, Inner Asia Series, v. 8 (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2011), 11; Miyawaki-Okada, “Homeland, Nationalism and the Legacy of Chinggis Khan: The Japanese Origin of the Chinggis Khan Legends,” 124-125.

⁶⁵ Inoue Yasushi, The Blue Wolf: A Novel of the Life of Chinggis Khan, trans. Joshua Fogel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 269. According to Yuki Konagaya, there are two prototypes for standard portraits of Chinggis Khan. The first was based on his famous portrait at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The second prototype features Chinggis Khan with a very different costume, particularly his helmet. Oyabe, the author of Chinggis Khan was Minamoto Yoshitsune, had traveled to a Mongolian temple and found a version of the second prototype there. He identified the figure on Chinggis' helmet as the family crest of the Minamoto clan, and concluded that Chinggis Khan was indeed Yoshitsune! Yuki Konagaya, “Modern Origins of Chinggis Khan Worship: The Mongolian Response to Japanese Influences,” in How Mongolia Matters: War, Law, and Society, ed. Morris Rossabi, Brill's Inner Asian Library, volume 36 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2017), 151–52.

⁶⁶ Inoue Yasushi, The Blue Wolf: A Novel of the Life of Chinggis Khan, trans. Joshua Fogel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 270–72.

⁶⁷ Inoue, 272; Konagaya, “Modern Origins of Chinggis Khan Worship: The Mongolian Response to Japanese Influences,” 155.

⁶⁸ Morimura was also co-script writer. “Kadokawa's next Big Thing - Genghis Khan and 3000 Real-Life Mongolian Cavalry,” Hoga Central, January 14, 2006.

⁶⁹ Inoue, The Blue Wolf, 27–29.

⁷⁰ This is in stark contrast to Bodrov's Temüjin who accepts Börte's pregnancy and later Jochi without question.

⁷¹ Jochi's death scene in The Blue Wolf departs from actual history in important ways. Chinggis Khan's expedition against the Jin Dynasty was launched in 1211, long before Jochi's death in 1225. Moreover, Jochi participated in his father's Jin campaign, first in 1211 and then in 1213. He did subsequently arouse Chinggis' suspicions of insubordination and rebellion. When Jochi failed to show up in response to Chinggis' repeated summons in 1225, and Chinggis received reports that Jochi was hunting despite pleading illness, the angry father ordered an expedition against the son. There was no final meeting and reconciliation between the two as in the film. Chinggis Khan received news of Jochi's death, and was most aggrieved when he learned that Jochi was indeed gravely ill and not malingering or rebelling. Rashid al-Din ibn Ṭabib, The Successors of Genghis Khan, trans. John Andrew Boyle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 118–19; Qu Dafeng and Liu Jianyi, “On Some Problems Concering Jochi's Lifetime,” Central Asiatic Journal 42, no. 2 (1998): 285, 289–90.

⁷² Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism, 42.

⁷³ Wang Ke, Xiaoshi de “Guomin”: Jindai Zhongguo de “minzu” huayu yu shaoshu minzu de guojia rentong (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2017), 106–9; Makoto Tachibana, “The 1911 Revolution and ‘Mongolia’: Independence, Constitutional Monarchy, or Republic,” Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies 3, no. 1 (January 2014): 77–78.

⁷⁴ Bulag, 69.

⁷⁵ He was the eighth Jebtsundamba Khutughtu, the third ranking lama in the Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhist hierarchy. Bulag, 69.

⁷⁶ In 1915, the Tripartite Treaty between China, Russia and Mongolia reduced Bogd Khan Mongolia to the status of the Autonomous Outer Mongolia, under the suzerainty of China. In November of 1919, when Russia was embroiled in civil war, the Chinese general Xu Shuzheng invaded Mongolia and abolished Mongolian autonomy. The Mongols rebelled, first inviting the White Russians and then the Red Army to intervene. Bulag, 72–73.

⁷⁷ A Communist people's government was established in 1921 with Jebtsundamba Khutughtu as constitutional monarch. Upon his death in 1924, the MPR was proclaimed. Bulag, 73.

⁷⁸ The Mongols of Inner Mongolia were torn between three competing forces, the Japanese in Manchukuo, the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and the opposition Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Inner Mongols of different political persuasions chose to collaborate with one of the three powers to achieve their own nationalist goals and political agendas. For example, the Chinggisid Prince Demchugdongrub (Prince De) launched an Inner Mongolian movement in 1929, and inaugurated a Mongolian military government in central Inner Mongolia in 1936 with the support of the Japanese. The Janggiya Khutughtu, the highest ranking cleric in Inner Mongolia, sought to restore Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism and strengthen his religious authority. He pledged allegiance to the KMT government, and was appointed to the new Mongolian-Tibetan Affairs Commission in 1930. Ulanhu, the top Mongolian Communist in Yan'an, aimed not for autonomy or independence, but for a new China that would accord Mongols full dignity and citizenship. He became the founder of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in 1947 and led it until 1966. Bulag, 42-43, 79, 101, 103, 119-20, 122.

⁷⁹ This conception of China with national minorities as lineages of the Han was later enshrined in Chiang Kai-shek's China's Destiny (1943). Bulag, 42, 103.

⁸⁰ A pamphlet entitled Chinggis Khan the Hero of the Chinese Nation was published in Xi'an in 1939. He was praised as the only great man to “add color to our Chinese nation” after Qin Shihuang, Han Wudi, and Tang Taizong. Bulag, 44.

⁸¹ The number of Chinese workers in Mongolia peaked around 12,000 in 1960. Sergey Radchenko, trans. with introduction, “New Documents on Mongolia and the Cold War,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 16 (Fall 2007/Winter 2008): 342; Robert A. Rupen, “Mongolia in the Sino-Soviet Dispute,” The China Quarterly, no. 16 (December 1963): 75.

⁸² As Sergey Radchenko points out, a subtext to Mao is that he had “put Mongolia on the same footing as Chinese national minorities,” particularly by emphasizing that the Chinese had to ‘repay debts’ incurred through years of Qing exploitation of minorities.“ As Mao told Dashiin Damba, the first secretary of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), neither Mongolia nor China's internal national minorities had anything to fear, ”for the Communist party undertook to root out “Great Han nationalist thinking” and promote “equality of nationalities.'” At the same time, Mao had repeatedly asked Soviet leadership in secret to acquiesce to the return of Mongolia to China, which the Soviets consistently rejected. Mongolian Prime Minister Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal proposed that China send Inner Mongolians instead of Chinese workers and settle them permanently rather than temporarily in Mongolia: given that there was no hope of Mongolia regaining Inner Mongolia from China, Tsedenbal hoped to retrieve ethnic Mongolians. Zhou Enlai rejected Tsedenbal's request on the ground that there was already a shortage of Mongols in Inner Mongolia, where the Han outnumbered the Mongols seven to one. Radchenko, “New Documents on Mongolia and the Cold War,” 342–43.

⁸³ Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism, 51.

⁸⁴ Bulag, 46–47.

⁸⁵ Bulag, 51.

⁸⁶ Bulag, 50.

⁸⁷ Bulag, 54–55; Rupen, “Mongolia in the Sino-Soviet Dispute,” 77–78.

⁸⁸ Han Rulin's article has been reposted online: Han Rulin, “Lun Chengjisi Han,” Dagezi's Blog (blog), October 20, 2015; Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism, 52.

⁸⁹ Rupen, “Mongolia in the Sino-Soviet Dispute,” 78.

⁹⁰ Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism, 54–55. It should be pointed out that during the Sino-Soviet rift, Mongolia consistently took the side of the Soviets, leading to China withdrawing all its workers from Mongolia by 1964, and Mongolia's request for the stationing of Soviet troops in Mongolia in 1965. Radchenko, “New Documents on Mongolia and the Cold War,” 343–46.

⁹¹ Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism, 56; Michal Biran, Chinggis Khan (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), 151. For a concise account of Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution, see Kerry Brown, “The Cultural Revolution in Inner Mongolia 1967–1969: The Purge of the ‘Heirs of Genghis Khan’,” Asian Affairs 38, no. 2 (July 2007): 173–87.

⁹² This movement was reinforced in the 1990s by the negative examples of the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, which called attention to the dangers of ethnic separatism. Uradyn E Bulag, “Mongolian Ethnicity and Linguistic Anxiety in China,” American Anthropologist 105, no. 4 (December 2003): 760–61; Uradyn E Bulag, “Inner Mongolia: The Dialectics of Colonization and Ethnicity Building,” in Governing China's Multiethnic Frontiers, ed. Morris Rossabi, Studies on Ethnic Groups in China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), 113. In addition, in the early 20^th Century, anti-Manchu revolutionaries had identified the Yellow Emperor – a legendary, benevolent, and wise ruler from antiquity – as the “founding ancestor of the Chinese people.” In more recent years, he has been transformed into the progenitor not only of the Han, but also, of “many ethnic groups, including Tibetan, Hui, Miao, Li, Mongol and Manchu among others.” Li Liu, “Who Were the Ancestors? The Origins of Chinese Ancestral Cult and Racial Myths,” Antiquity 73, no. 281 (September 1999): 608–10.

⁹³ Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism, 57. Beijing restored the mausoleum of Chinggis Khan, and annual celebrations at the site resumed under the banner of “Mongols and Han are one family.” Biran, Chinggis Khan, 151.

⁹⁴ For a detailed analysis, see Nimrod Baranovitch, “Others No More: The Changing Representation of Non-Han Peoples in Chinese History Textbooks, 1951-2003,” The Journal of Asian Studies 69, no. 1 (February 2010): 85–122.

⁹⁵ Wang Wei-fang, “‘Pan-Mongolism’ and U.S.-China-Mongolia Relations,” Jamestown 5, no. 10 (May 5, 2005). However, Chinese fears of pan-Mongolism has proved to be overblown. Not many Mongols today harbor the ideal of pan-Mongolism, or the unity of all Mongols around the world in the creation of a greater Mongol nation-state. Russia and China are strongly opposed because of the presence of sizable Mongol minorities within their borders. But Mongolia itself is against pan-Mongolism, because its new nationalism is Halh-centrism, privileging the dominant Halh majority in Mongolia as ethnically and culturally pure, and deprecating other Mongolian groups such as the Buryats and the Inner Mongols as impure for their alleged cultural and even biological assimilation among the Russians or the Chinese, as well as for their potential corruption of the ideological foundation of Mongolia. Before 1989, when the border between China and Mongolia was flung open, many Inner Mongols had harbored an idealistic image of Mongolia as “a paradise where Mongols live in happiness, where genuine Mongolian culture is developed without restriction, and Mongols can walk shoulder to shoulder with any nation in the world.” Once they visited Mongolia, they became disenchanted, for they were rejected by the Mongols of Mongolia as half-breeds (erliiz) or even as Chinese. Uradyn Erden Bulag, Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia, Oxford Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1998), 3–5, 136–37; Enze Han, “The Dog That Hasn't Barked: Assimilation and Resistance in Inner Mongolia, China,” Asian Ethnicity 12, no. 1 (2011): 70–71.

⁹⁶ This 1990 biography (Chengjisi Han quanzhuan) was subsequently republished in various editions with slightly variant titles in China and Taiwan, e.g. Zhu Yaoting, Chengjisi Han dazhuan (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2016).

⁹⁷ “Balajinima, Zhu Yaoting tan Chengjisi Han yu Mengguren,” Dagezi's Blog (blog), March 19, 2016. This interview was originally published on Sohu.com on June 23, 2003.

⁹⁸ “Battle for Mongolia's Soul,” The Economist, December 19, 2006.

⁹⁹ “Balajinima, Zhu Yaoting tan Chengjisi Han yu Mengguren.”

¹⁰⁰ “Yingmu shang de Chengjisi Han Mengguzu yanyuan Basen de yishu rensheng,” China.com.cn, August 14, 2009.

¹⁰¹ Ba Sen was also cast as Temüjin's father Yisügei in Mongol.

¹⁰² “Battle for Mongolia's Soul.”

¹⁰³ By 1947, when Mongol Communist leader Ulanhu founded the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, the Han already constituted an overwhelming 85% of the total population of 5.62 million people. Moreover, even by 1947, only 22.4% of Mongolian rural population were pure pastoralists, with the remainder combining the practice of farming with herding. By 1995, the percentage of rural Mongols engaged exclusively in herding declined further to 18.4%, while 77.0% were semi-agriculturalists and 14.6% were pure farmers. Jirgal Burjgin and Naran Bilik, “Contemporary Mongolian Population Distribution, Migration, Cultural Change, and Identity,” in China's Minorities on the Move: Selected Case Studies, ed. Robyn R. Iredale, Naran Bilik, and Fei Guo (Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 2003), 56, 59; Bulag, “Inner Mongolia: The Dialectics of Colonization and Ethnicity Building,” 87.

¹⁰⁴ Bulag, “Inner Mongolia: The Dialectics of Colonization and Ethnicity Building,” 101.

¹⁰⁵ Burjgin and Bilik, “Contemporary Mongolian Population Distribution, Migration, Cultural Change, and Identity,” 61.

¹⁰⁶ Bulag, “Inner Mongolia: The Dialectics of Colonization and Ethnicity Building,” 100; Bulag, “Mongolian Ethnicity and Linguistic Anxiety in China,” 753.

¹⁰⁷ Almaz Khan, “Chinggis Khan: From Imperial Ancestor to Ethnic Hero,” in Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Stevan Harrell, Studies on Ethnic Groups in China (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 2003), 248.

¹⁰⁸ Khan, 276.

¹⁰⁹ Many scholars credit Changchun, whose lay name was Qiu Chuji, with persuading Chinggis Khan against killing the Chinese indiscriminately. Tao-chung Yao, however, takes the contrarian view that he merely secured special privileges and protections for members of his Quanzhen sect of Daoism but did not fundamentally change the khan's ways. Tao-Chung Yao, “Ch'iu Ch'u-Chi and Chinggis Khan,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 46, no. 1 (1986): 201–19.

¹¹⁰ Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2012), 12.

¹¹¹ Chinese fascination with Mongol culture is manifested in such phenomena as the popularity of Ordos as a tourist destination or the enormous success of Jiang Rong's semi-autobiographical novel Wolf Totem (2004). The premise of this best-seller echoes Lev Gumilev's view that the Mongol-Tatars invigorated the emerging Russian ethnos. Jiang Rong's novel is an allegorical mourning of the displacement of the Mongol nomads by Chinese agricultural civilization, as symbolized by the extinction of the wolves and the disappearance of the grasslands. In Jiang's view, the Mongols “injected much-needed virile blood (shuxue 输血) into the Chinese, through repeated invasions and conquests throughout history,” and the loss of this source of vitality made the subsequently effeminate Chinese vulnerable to the West and Japan. Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism, 1.

¹¹² In addition to the various Japanese cultural myths discussed earlier in the paper, the recent success of Mongolian sumo wrestlers is another factor in sustained Japanese interest in Mongolia. As for the Mongolians, many feel an affinity to the Japanese because they believe that the Japanese and the Koreans are descendants of the Mongolians on the evidence of linguistic similarities and Asian migration patterns. Some Mongolians even believe that they are descendants of the first Japanese emperor. According to a 2004 opinion poll conducted by the Japanese Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, “more than 70% of Mongolian people polled said they felt an affinity with Japan. In addition, the largest percentage – 37.4% - of those polled cited Japan as a foreign country with which Mongolia should have the most intimate relations.” Currently, “Around 1,600 Mongolian students study in Japan in any given year — the most from any country in proportion to its population. Nearly 10% of the Mongolian legislature has study abroad experience in Japan. Linguistic similarities between Mongolian and Japanese make fluent Japanese speakers fairly common among the general population as well.” Ralph Jennings, “Mongolians Fete Japan Ties but Fret Future,” The Japan Times Online, April 15, 2005; Hisane Masaki, “The Great Japan-Mongolia Love Affair,” Asia Times Online, February 28, 2007; Daisuke Harashima, “Japan-Mongolia Ties Shifting from Aid to Economic Exchange,” Nikkei Asian Review, June 16, 2016.