The historiography of the golden horde and a new global approach

Abstract

This presentation focuses on the historiography of the Golden Horde from a global perspective. With a critical introduction to the 19th and 20th century historiography shaped with colonial and Eurocentric ideas, then it continues with the recent trends in the last two decades in the historiography of the Golden Horde with different aspects of its history hereto undermined or ignored. The historiography of the Golden Horde has been affected by Russo-centric and euro-centric approaches which positions the Golden Horde as a peripheral actor to the history of Russia and thus, even those interested in the Golden Horde itself often treated its history as an adjunct of Russian history. However, this trend has been slowly but surely changing and the study of the history of the Golden Horde is becoming more a global question then a local one which interests the whole wider Eurasia rather than only Russia. Two sets of theoretical framework have been influential in the development of a new approach. The first one was eurasianism, mainly shaped in the Soviet Union, but also continued to influence the post-Soviet republics and other countries such as Turkey. The other approach is