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Correspondence of the Medieval Oirats and modern Western Mongols in historiography

Vladislav Terentyev

Vostok/Oriens '2017, №3

 
The paper analyzes the highly topical problem of the relationship between medieval ethno-political associations and their modern descendants in the Eurasian steppes. The author analyzes the ethnic composition of the Western Mongols in order to determine the place and role of the ethnonym Oirat in modern ethno-cultural environment of Western Mongolia. History of Oirats is full of unresolved issues because of the insufficient number of sources. This fact allows researchers in some cases free interpretations of events, and relatively arbitrary identifications of the ethnic composition of the medieval ethno-political associations. The paper refutes a direct link between Oirats and Western Mongols and analyzes all the modern interpretation of the ethnic composition of the latter. The author has shown the impossibility of applying modern ethnonym Oirat to their descendants.

Keywords: Mongolia, Oirats, western Mongols, ethnic names, ethnicity

Pages: С. 81–93

 
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