Conquering the North

Conquering the North surveys two millennia of competition across the immense region where China, Mongolia and Russia meet. Beginning with the Xiongnu and other steppe powers, John Man follows the rise of the Mongol Empire, the southward and eastward expansion of Russian rule, Qing attempts to control Mongolia and the diplomatic settlements that fixed an increasingly formal border between the Chinese and Russian empires.

The later chapters carry this frontier history through revolution, Soviet influence, the creation of modern Mongolia, Maoist China and the changing balance between Beijing, Moscow and Ulaanbaatar. Combining political history with journeys across the borderlands, Man shows that the region was not an empty buffer but a contested world of trade, migration, religion, military power and local survival whose history continues to shape contemporary Eurasia.