The Center for Regional Studies hosted a lecture of the Cambridge University professor Uradyn Bulag

On 8 April 2025, the Center for Regional studies at Turan University, hosted a lecture “The Yuan Dynasty in China and Mongolia: Contested Legacies, Historiography and National Ontologies” by Uradyn E. Bulag, Professor of Social Anthropology, Research director of the Center for Mongolian and Inner Asian studies, University of Cambridge (UK).

The lecture focused on Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368), which occupies a unique position in both Chinese and Mongolian historiography, its contested legacy reflecting the intricate interplay of national identity, historical narrative, and state legitimacy. The lecture discussed inter-nationalist and inter-ethnicist frameworks, grounded in constructivist theories, to examine how China and Mongolia negotiate their national ontologies through the lens of the Yuan. Within Chinese inter-ethnicist historiography, the Yuan is embraced as a legitimate Chinese dynasty, subsuming Mongol rulers into a broader multiethnic framework designed to maintain territorial cohesion—a view contested by Tibetan and Inner Mongol perspectives. By contrast, Mongolian historiography, viewed through an inter-nationalist lens shaped by Soviet Russia’s anti-Mongol “Tatar Yoke” discourse, has traditionally regarded the Yuan as a Sinicized aberration.

However, post-socialist initiatives have sought to reintegrate the Yuan into a more expansive vision of global Mongol heritage. Thus, the history of Yuan dynasty became a contested site of “combating history.” In this arena, the tensions between ethnic diversity and national unity are vividly manifested across both China and Mongolia. Dr. Uradyn Bulag is an author of several books on history of China and Mongolia, including   “Collaborative Nationalism: The Politics of Friendship on China’s Mongolian Frontier” (2010), “The Mongols at China’s Edge: History and the Politics of National Unity” (2002), “Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia” (1998).

In 2025, Dr. Uradyn Bulag was a visiting scholar at Nazarbayev University (Astana) and Turan University (Almaty).