Greater Mongolia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Greater Mongolia, as a geographical region, is the contiguous territories primarily inhabited by ethnic Mongols. It approximately includes the modern state of Mongolia, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China (PRC), and the Buryat Republic as well as a few smaller territories in Russia.
The people in this area share the traditional Mongolian culture to varying degrees, and they speak one of several Mongolic languages. With the exception of the Mongolian state, Mongols now only form a minority in most of these areas.
[edit] History
The notion of the people living in those territories being "Mongols" was established at the beginning of the 13th century, when Genghis Khan united the Mongol-Turkic tribes into a homogenous nation. After the collapse of the empire in 1368, parts of Greater Mongolia were invaded by the Han-Chinese Ming Dynasty, with the rest splintering between several Mongol domains, mainly the Oirad and the Khalkha. In the 17th century, all of the territory fell to the Manchu-ruled Qing Dynasty.
After Outer Mongolia's Declaration of independence in late 1911, the Bogd Khan government initially sought to unify both Inner and Outer Mongolia. Troops were sent into Inner Mongolia, but had to be called back after Russia became worried that these moves might provoke a conflict with Japan. In 1919, the Japanese set up a so-called pan-Mongolian movement under Grigory Semyonov in northeastern Inner Mongolia, but the Bogd Khan government refused to join. Roman Ungern von Sternberg also made some references to pan-Mongolism.
After Ungern von Sternberg's defeat by the Mongolian communists under Damdin Sükhbaatar, the new socialist regime further considered the idea. But under pressure of the Komintern, which regarded alienating China for the sake of less than two million Mongolians as a non-issue, these policies had to be dropped in the mid-1920s.
Another revival of pan-Mongol sentiments came at the end of World War II, when Outer Mongolian troops took part in the Soviet Operations against Mengjiang (see Operation August Storm). However, Outer Mongolian troops were quickly withdrawn after the end of hostilities.
Following the democratic reform 1991, several non-governmental organizations reintroduced efforts to advocate pan-Mongolianism. In Mongolia those are the "Movement for Unity of the Mongol Nation", in Buryatia the "Movement for National Unity Negeden" and the "Buryat-Mongol People's Party". However, none of those organizations has gained any significant political influence.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ David Johnson, 9. Russia-Mongolia: Latent Territorial Issues, Center for Defense Information, 2003
