ABSTRACT
The breakdown of the Soviet Union in recent years has enhanced our knowledge of significant cultural interactions among the peoples who have inhabited East Asia and the part of the Eurasian continent that is called Inner Asia. East Asia, defined as the territory occupied by the modern nation-states of Japan, Korea, and China, also includes the Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan. Whereas much of East Asia is coastal, China and Russia control territories that are situated in Inner Asia (figure 1). Inner Asia stretches westward to the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe, and from the Arctic Ocean southward to the Himalayas: as Denis Sinor notes, when one subtracts the sedentary agricultural economies of Europe, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, what is left behind is “the central part of the Eurasian continent,” Central Eurasia or Inner Asia (Sinor 1990:2). Because East and Inner Asia are two rather distinct regions, with somewhat separate though mutually interacting histories, we will deal with each as a separate unit before considering their cultural interactions.
