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Podcast: New Books in East Asian Studies
Episode: Pamela Kyle Crossley, "Hammer and Anvil: Nomad Rulers at the Forge of the Modern World" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019)
Description: This groundbreaking book examines the role of rulers with nomadic roots in transforming the great societies of Eurasia, especially from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. Distinguished historian Pamela Kyle Crossley, drawing on the long history of nomadic confrontation with Eurasia’s densely populated civilizations, argues that the distinctive changes we associate with modernity were founded on vernacular literature and arts, rising literacy, mercantile and financial economies, religious dissidence, independent learning, and self-legitimating rulership. Crossley finds that political traditions of Central Asia insulated rulers from established religious authority and promoted the objectification of cultural identities marked by language and faith, wh...