Research

In summer 2013 Caroline Humphrey carried out research together with Nikolai Tsyrempilov in Kyakhta and the Buryat villages strung out along the border to east and west. The project concerned the Tsongol Buriad (Buryats), who are interesting because of their border crossing history. They have a rather well documented origin in 17th century Southern Mongolia, from whence, taking flight from internal political disputes, a group migrated into Tsarist held territory near present-day Kyakhta. When Russian administrative controls became irksome, much of the group took off to join with kin in Mongolia; subsequently, dissatisfied with their status there, the Tsongols returned to Russian-held land. In the upheavals of early 20th century civil war, many Tsongols again escaped to Mongolia. The research involved clarifying this history from chronicles held in archives and attempting to discover how it is represented and given meaning by contemporary Tsongol groups. Part of the research, concerning the political character of mobile and interstitial groups like the Tsongols, has been published in Inner Asia, Vol 16, no 1 (2014), a special issue devoted to historical studies of the north-eastern Russia-China border. Humphrey intends to publish further work on the present-day Tsongols.