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Far in the east, there lies an almost limitless, almost boundless, almost unending stretch of land. People call it The Wild Fields, the vast grassy steppe that stretches all the way from Ukraine to Mongolia. The Wild Fields were home to many free spirited and tough nomadic people. Though different from one another, they were linked intricately by their ways of life, the life of nomads. Many legends surfaced from this sea of grass in the east like the female warriors of the Amazons – and indeed women in the nomadic societies of the steppe lived their lives very differently from the women in sedentary states. For the sedentary states and empires bordering the steppes, these nomadic steppe peoples usually were not a threat — unless they combined their strengths for a common cause or under the leadership of a charismatic Khan . United, their raids devasted the border regions and could even bring the most powerful of empires to its knees. Be it China in the east, Persia in the south, the Byzantine Empire in the west or the Kievan state in the north they all had their encounters with the power of the steppe people one way or another at some point in time. In this video we paint a picture of how these peoples lived, how they formed some of the most dangerous armies of the world and what could be done to counter them. This is the world of the eastern steppe.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:50 Chapter 1: Enter at Your Own Peril
06:02 Wren
07:22 Continuation of Chapter 1
08:49 Chapter 2: Amazons?
12:00 Chapter 3: Brining Empires to Their Knees
18:29 Chapter 4: How to Stop the Flood


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Bibliography:
Amitai, R., Biran, M.(eds). Mongols, Turks, and others: Eurasian nomads and the sedentary world (Brill's Inner Asian Library, 11). Leiden 2005.
Dawson, C. (ed.), Mission to Asia, Toronto, 2005.
Grousset, R., The Empire of the Steppes: a History of Central Asia, New Brunswick, 1970.
Herodotus, Histories, online via Perseus [ https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...].
Kappeler, A., Die Kosaken, 2013.
O'Rourke, S., The Cossacks 2007.
John of Plano Carpini, "History of the Mongols," in Christopher Dawson, (ed.), Mission to Asia, Toronto, 2005, pp. 3–76.