Beyond Climate

This event will also include a workshop on Saturday, January 18. See here for more information about the workshop.

A light reception will follow this talk.

Early Medieval Central Asia, i.e. 3 million sq. km on more than 500 years with 6 major linguistic groups, cannot be dealt without making use of some clear overarching concepts, for fear of being lost in thousands of intricacies. In these generally harsh, if varied, environments, Climatic determinism is the most obvious of these ideas. But, conversely, the oases and pastoral populations have created pockets of resilience within this harshness. This granular landscape of agency offers a new conceptual model for the economic and social interplay of forces, as opposed to the open or ribbonlike landscapes of other major regions, from Europe to Egypt or China.

Etienne de la Vaissière is professor of Medieval Central Asian History in Paris at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. First trained as a historian of Medieval Europe, he has tried to import into the field of Early Medieval Central Asian history many of the methodologies elaborated for Western sources, especially as regard long distance and longue durée social history. He has published several books and articles on Central Asian caravan trade, on the islamisation of Central Asia, and on the history of the nomads. He has conducted excavations or archaeological surveys in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and now in Mongolia. He has recently published in French a 650 p. long synthesis book on the history of Central Asia between 300 and 850 AD.

This event is co-sponsored by the Council on East Asian Studies and the Central Asia Initiative