Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-17T07:52:34.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The rebirth of Chinggis Khaan: state appropriation of Chinggis Khaan in post-socialist Mongolia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Orhon Myadar
Orhon Myadar*
Affiliation:
School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
*
*Email: orhon@email.arizona.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A massive monument of Chinggis Khaan (Chinggis Khaan's name is spelt differently depending on the language in which it was written and on conventions of transliteration. Among the most common are Chinggis, Genghis, Genghiz, or Jengiz. For the purpose of the paper, the Mongolian transliteration is used.) imposingly gazes down from the government palace in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia. The monument was erected in 2006 in commemoration of the 800-year anniversary of the establishment of “the Great Mongolian State.” Occupying arguably the most prominent national space, the monument serves as an arresting emblem of the state. With its silent yet triumphant symbolization, the monument articulates the state's new ideology in the post-Soviet era. The monument is one of countless symbolic and material grand-scale state expressions appropriating Chinggis Khaan. In this article, I examine the state's appropriation of Chinggis Khaan as the marker of Mongolian post-socialist national identity. In doing so, I critically examine how the state appropriates history, remembering and forgetting certain parts, to cultivate a shared sense of belonging and pride. Unifying the public in shared glorification and celebration of Chinggis Khaan ultimately serves to instill devotion to the national political and ideological project.

Keywords

MongoliaChinggis Khaanmemoryideologynationalism
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 45 , Issue 5 , September 2017 , pp. 840 - 855
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bat-Uul, Erdene. 2012. В.И.Лениний хвшввг буулгалаа [V.I. Lenin Statue Is Removed], October 12. Accessed May 23, 2017. http://news.gogo.mn/r/112413.Google Scholar
Billé, Franck. 2016. Sinophobia: Anxiety, Violence, and the Making of Mongolian Identity. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Boldbaatar, Jigjid. 1999. “The Eight-Hundredth Anniversary of Chinggis Khan: The Revival and Suppression of Mongolian National Consciousness.” In Mongolia in the Twentieth Century: Landlocked Cosmopolitan, edited by Kotkin, Stephen and Elleman, Bruce A., 237–246. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe.Google Scholar
Bulag, Urdyn E. 1998. Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bulag, Urdyn E. 2010. Collaborative Nationalism: The Politics of Friendship on China's Mongolian Frontier. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Busteed, Mervyn Austen. 2009. “Historical Geography of Nationalism.” In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, edited by Kitchin, Rob and Thrift, Nigel, 255–260. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1986. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Constitution of Mongolia. 1992. “Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.” Accessed May 23, 2017. http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@ed_protect/@protrav/@ilo_aids/documents/legaldocument/wcms_117392.pdf.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Diener, Alexander C., and Hagen, Joshua. 2013. “City of Felt and Concrete: Negotiating Cultural Hybridity in Mongolia's Capital of Ulaanbaatar.” Nationalities Papers 41 (4): 622–650.Google Scholar
Duncan, James S. 1990. The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dwyer, Owen J., and Alderman, Derek H. 2008. Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of Memory. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Forest, Benjamin, and Johnson, Juliet. 2002. “Unravelling the Threads of History: Soviet-Era Monuments and Post-Soviet National Identity in Moscow.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92: 524–547.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1980. “War in the Filigree of Peace Course Summary.” Oxford Literary Review 4 (2): 15–19.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Emily. 1999. “Forging a National Currency: Money, State-Making and Nationbuilding in Canada.” In Nation-States and Money: The Past, Present and Future of National Currencies, edited by Gilbert, Emily and Helleiner, Eric, 25–46. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Government Decree. 1991. Zasgiin gazryn zarlig (N348), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.Google Scholar
Government Decree. 1993. Zasgiin gazryn zarlig (N27), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.Google Scholar
Government Decree. 1997. Zasgiin gazryn zarlig (N115), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.Google Scholar
Government Decree. 2001. Zasgiin gazryn zarlig (N112), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.Google Scholar
Government Decree. 2005. Zasgiin gazryn zarlig (N 136), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 1974. “What Kind of Geography for What Kind of Public Policy?” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 63: 18–24.Google Scholar
Hook, Derek. 2005. “Monumental Space and the Uncanny.” Geoforum 36 (6): 688–704.Google Scholar
Humphrey, Caroline, and Sneath, David. 1999. The End of Nomadism? Society, State, and the Environment in Inner Asia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ippei, Shimamura. 2012. Chinggis Khaan henii baatar ve? [Whose Hero Is Chinggis Khaan?]. Ulaanbaatar: Admon.Google Scholar
Kaplonski, Chris. 1993. “Collective Memory and Chingunjav's Rebellion.” History and Anthropology 6 (2–3): 235–259.Google Scholar
Kaplonski, Chris. 2000. “The Role of the Mongols in Eurasian History: A Reassessment.” In Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary Civilization vs. ‘Barbarian ’ and Nomad, edited by Villen Bell, Andrew, 251–274. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Kaplonski, Chris. 2005. “The Case of the Disappearing Chinggis Khaan: Dismembering the Remembering.” Ab Imperio 4: 147–173.Google Scholar
Koch, Natalie. 2010. “The Monumental and the Miniature: Imagining ‘Modernity’ in Astana.” Social and Cultural Geography 11 (8): 769–787.Google Scholar
Lkhamsuren, Munkh-Erdene. 2008. “Selling of Good Father's Name: Legitimacy, Pride and Commodity, Commemoration of Chinggis Khaan.” Modern Mongolia Bulletin 24: 35–46.Google Scholar
Lowenthal, David 1985. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Man, John. 2007. Genghis Khan: Life, Death, and Resurrection. London: Bantam Press.Google Scholar
Man, John. 2010. The Leadership Secrets of Genghis Khan. London: Bantam Press.Google Scholar
May, Timothy. 2007. The Mongol Art of War: Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Military System. Yardley, PA: Westholme.Google Scholar
McDermott, Sinead. 2002. “Memory, Nostalgia, and Gender in a Thousand Acres.” Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (1): 389–407.Google Scholar
Miller, Peter, Gordon, Colin, and Burchell, Graham, eds. 1991. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Don. 1995. “There's No Such Thing as Culture: Towards a Reconceptualization of the Idea of Culture in Geography.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 20: 102–116.Google Scholar
Myadar, Orhon. 2006. “Post-Soviet Transitions: Central Asia and Mongolia.” In Islam, Oil, and Geopolitics: Central Asia after September 11, edited by Davis, Elizabeth and Azizian, Rouben, 257–269. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Myadar, Orhon. 2011. “Imaginary Nomads: Deconstructing the Representation of Mongolia as a Land of Nomads.” Inner Asia 13 (2): 335–362.Google Scholar
Myadar, Orhon, and Deshaw Rae, James. 2014. “Territorializing National Identity in Post-socialist Mongolia.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 55 (5): 560–577.Google Scholar
National Audit Office. 2016. Ih ezen Chingis Khaan hoshoo, turiin yoslol, hundetgeliin hoshoo tsogt-solboriig barij baiguulahad usliin tusvuus 2006ond olgoson horongiin guitsetgel [Audit Report on the Expenditure of the 2006 State Budget Allocated to the Construction of the Chinggis Khaan Complex at the Government Palace]. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.Google Scholar
Penrose, Jan. 2011. “Designing the Nation. Banknotes, Banal Nationalism and Alternative Conceptions of the State.” Political Geography 30 (8): 429–440.Google Scholar
Presidential Decree. 1991. Yeroenhiiloegchiin zarlig (N239), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.Google Scholar
Presidential Decree. 1997. Yeroenhiiloegchiin zarlig (N59), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.Google Scholar
Presidential Decree. 2001. Yeroenhiiloegchiin zarlig (N118), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.Google Scholar
Presidential Decree. 2007. Yeroenhiiloegchiin zarlig (N98), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.Google Scholar
Presidential Decree. 2012. Yeroenhiiloegchiin zarlig (N4), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.Google Scholar
Renan, Ernest. 1990. “What Is a Nation?” (1882). In Ernest Renan, Qu'est-ce qu'une nation? Paris: Presses-Pocket, 1992. (Translated by Ethan Rundell). Accessed May 23, 2017. http://ucparis.fr/files/9313/6549/9943/What_is_a_Nation.pdf.Google Scholar
Rose, Mitch. 2002. “Landscape and Labyrinths.” Geoforum 33 (4): 455–467.Google Scholar
Rossabi, Morris. 2005. Modern Mongolia: From Commissars to Capitalists. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Michael. 1992. Reading the Postmodern Polity: Political Theory as Textual Practice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Sneath, David. 2007. The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Sonin, 2013. Д. Сухбаатарын χθπιθθ τθβ талбайд 90 гаруй жил болсны учир [Why Sukhbaatar's Statue Occupied the Central Square for over 90 Years?]. Accessed September 13, 2015. http://www.sonin.mn/news/politics-economy/20543.Google Scholar
Spadavecchia, Jamian Ronca. 2014. “Nationalism, Pastoral Nomadism, and Political Risk to Natural Resource Investments in Mongolia: Case Studies of the Aluminum Corporation of China Limited (Chalco) and Rio Tinto.” Journal of Political Risk 2 (6).Google Scholar
Stewart, Susan. 1984. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Time. 1999. “Millennium Top Ten.” December 31, 154 (27).Google Scholar
Trubetzkoy, Nikolai Sergeevich, and Liberman, Anatoly. 1997. “The Legacy of Genghis Khan and Other Essays on Russia's Identity.” Studies in East European Thought 49 (1): 70–79.Google Scholar
Undesten. 2015. Иргэдийн 97% нь Сухбаатарын талбайн нэрийг хуучнаар нь улдээхийг дэмжлээ [97% of Citizens Supported Keeping Sukhbaatar Square's Old Name]. http://undesten.mn/index.php?newsid=335.Google Scholar
Weatherford, Jack. 2005. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. New York: Crown.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond. 1982. The Sociology of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Zerjal, Tatiana, Yali, Xue, Bertorelle, Giorgio, Spencer Wells, R., Weidong, Bao, Suling, Zhu, Qamar, Raheel, et al. 2003. “The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols.” The American Journal of Human Genetics 72 (3): 717–721.Google Scholar