Nomadic Shadows

From the eastern steppe north of China, the Xiongnu forged one of the most formidable political powers of the ancient world. Under Modu Chanyu and his successors, they confronted the Han dynasty, dominated vast stretches of Inner Asia, controlled crucial frontier routes, and helped shape centuries of diplomacy, warfare, migration, and political change across Eurasia.

This substantially revised second edition of Nomadic Shadows brings the Shiji, Hanshu, Hou Hanshu, and later historical traditions into dialogue with archaeology, material culture, frontier geography, ancient DNA, and recent linguistic research. It examines Xiongnu origins, imperial government, military organization, heqin diplomacy, the wars of Emperor Wu, the Western Regions, civil conflict, the Southern and Northern Xiongnu, and the long afterlife of the Xiongnu name.

Rather than reducing the Xiongnu to raiders on China's frontier-or treating them merely as a prelude to later steppe empires, Nomadic Shadows reconstructs their history on its own terms, distinguishing what the evidence can establish from what remains uncertain.

A detailed study of the first great imperial power of the eastern Eurasian steppe.