Baabar’s History of Mongolia is a unique history book. It is the first history of Mongolia available in English to draw upon both academic scholarship and archival data that only became available with the collapse of the socialist regime in 1990.

Baabar’s History of Mongolia is a unique history book. It is the first history of Mongolia available in English to draw upon both academic scholarship and archival data that only became available with the collapse of the socialist regime in 1990. In doing so, it highlights the role of international politics - involing Russia/the Soviet Union, China and Japan - in the shaping of Mongolia’s history. Baabar himself feels that the role of China in determining Mongolia’s fate is under-appreciated in Western scholarship. The volume is composed of three ‘books’. The first offers a survey of the history of Mongolia up to the 1911 revolution. The second looks at the political situation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, up until the early socialist period (the early 1920s). While drawing upon Western sources, it also incorporates some newly available materials from the period. The last book is in many ways the most interesting, for it is in this section of the work that Baabar draws most heavily upon new material. It makes extensive use of archival material that has been made newly available with the collapse of the socialist regime. In doing so, it offers a richer picture and fuller understanding of the events of the 1920s and 1930s in Mongolia - a key period in the country’s history. Although the socialists were unable to establish a fully socialist society, during this period Soviet influence became dominant, and they faced the most serious threats to their power. This part of the book, which concludes with the official recognition of Mongolia’s independence by China in 1946, also examines the destruction of the Buddhist church and nobility by the socialists.