Tartary

Tartaria or Great Tartaria (in Latin: Tartaria Magna) is the name by which it was known in Europe, since the Middle Ages until the 19th century, to a large area of land in central and northeastern Asia that ran from the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean and was inhabited by various Turkic and Mongol peoples, whom they generically called "Tatars.". It included what is now known as Siberia, the Russian Far East, Turkestan (including East Turkestan), Greater Mongolia, Manchuria, and occasionally Tibet.

Geography and history

In European maps and texts dated between the 16th and early 19th centuries, Tartary was the generic name for the extensive territories of Siberia and the Russian Far East. It took its name from the Tatars, a name assigned in the West to the Mongol peoples. The term fell into disuse as the Russian Empire expanded eastward and Siberia became better known in Europe.

The Map of Cary

One of the most complete maps of this region is the one designed in 1806 by the British cartographer John Cary, which summarizes the knowledge of Central Asia "according to the most recent authorities,", that is the data brought to the West by Jesuit missionaries, travelers and merchants, many of them French, Russian and Persian, until the end of the 18th century. The map shows the entire space between the Caspian Sea and Japan to the east, and from the Gulf of Obi to India, Burma and the Philippines in the north - south direction.

Tartaria appears divided into regions whose name denotes its geographical location and the state that exercises sovereignty over the territory. Thus, Tartaria Muscovite or Russian Tartary (current Tatarstan) corresponds to Western Siberia, Chinese Tartary or < i>Cathay is Eastern Turkestan (currently called Xinjiang, in China), Eastern Tartary or Mongolia is present-day Mongolia, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, (in pink on the map, with the erroneous inclusion of Japan), while the so-called Independent Tartary (in yellow on the map) corresponds to the historical region of Western Turkestan (or Russian Turkestan), today divided between the independent states of Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Little Tartary

Tartaria Minor or Little Tartary was the name of the Crimean Khanate, the state created by the Tatar peoples of the peninsula from 1441 to 1783, the longest lasting of the Turkic khanates that succeeded the Empire of the Golden Horde.

Tartaria in Western culture

Since the middle of the 19th century, Tartary appears as a more or less legendary toponym in literature and in descriptions of ancient and medieval travel. It is generally a term that has a negative connotation, linked to the hostile landscapes of Central Asia and its savage people. This use added to the negative perception of the East, characteristic of Europe in the 19th century, and Tartary lost its ethnic meaning, related with the Turkish and Mongol peoples, to become synonymous with barbarism, cruelty and slavery, as opposed to European progress and civilization. The Russians widely used this conception to justify the eastward march of the Tsarist Empire, and avoided linking Tartary with their own state. In the West, on the other hand, Tartary was often associated with the Russian Empire and later, with the Soviet Union, which propaganda presented as a "Tatar" that is, Asian.

In the post-Soviet academic community, the name Tartary is sometimes used in the context of the search for global concepts, as a synonym for the heart of Eurasia, without defined boundaries and with unclear content. The most comprehensive study of this concept is Svetlana Gorshenina's published 2014 monograph "The Invention of Central Asia: A History of the Concept from Tartary to Eurasia", in which studies in detail the evolution of the term Tartary and its relationship with the Tatars. The author explains the use of Tartary in post-Soviet pseudoscience, marked by nationalism, as the original name of an ancient imperial Russia, and highly developed, ignored and hidden by the West.

Tartaria in the arts

Tartaria was a common name in Europe to designate a distant and unexplored territory. In English literature, one of the Canterbury Tales (The Squire's Tale), by Chaucer, is set in "the royal court of Tartary." #3. 4;

In Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, the narrator refers to Tartary on two occasions. One of them indicating that the course could take them "beyond Tartary and the Glacial Sea" and the other, more elaborate and parodying the geographers of the time, where he points out that the same "... are in great error assuming that between Japan and California there is nothing except the sea; Well, in my opinion, there must be a land mass that acts as a counterweight to the great continent of Tartary."

Calaf, one of the main characters in the opera Turandot by Giacomo Puccini is Prince of Tartary.

The religious and writer Évariste Régis Huc titled one of his best-known books as "Memories of a trip in Tartary, Tibet and China during the years 1844, 1845 and 1846.& #3. 4; In it, Tartary recovers its old ethnic meaning and refers to Mongolia.

In the book "News from Tartary: a trip from Beijing to Kashmir", written by The Times correspondent Peter Fleming after a trip to the Karakoram and the Sinjiang, Tartary has symbolic meaning and corresponds geographically to ancient Tartary on the maps.

In the novel "The Desert of the Tartars" by Dino Buzzati, the toponym does not designate a specific territory, but is used as a symbol of a hidden threat, a metaphor for fear detached from any temporal and spatial characteristics.

In the novel Ada by Vladimir Nabokov, Tartary is the name of a large country on the fictional planet of Antiterra, Russia is its counterpart on Terra, the twin world from Antiterra.

In L. Frank Baum's story: The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, the antagonists are the three-eyed giants of Tartary.

In Walter de la Mare's poem 'If I were Lord of Tartary', this country is described as a land full of happiness.

Alternative Theory of Great Tartary

Origin

The theory of Great Tartary as a lost civilization originated in Russia, from the dissemination of the so-called New Chronology of Anatoly Fomenko, and was popularized by Nikolai Levashov. In Russian pseudoscience, known for its nationalism, Tartary was presented as the "true" name of Russia, maliciously "ignored" in the West. Since around 2016, conspiracy theories about a supposed "lost empire of Tartary" have gained popularity. among English-speaking Internet users, mostly in the United States, but separated from their Russian nationalist framework and integrated into the fringe theories of QAnon groups.

Features

The Western version of Tartary is based on an ahistorical interpretation of the development of architecture; Its defenders consider that certain classical-style buildings already demolished, such as the Singer or the Pennsylvania Station in New York, in the same way as the temporary pavilions of the World's Fairs at the end of the century XIX and the beginning of the XX, were in reality constructions of a vast world empire, Tartary, suppressed from History. Also Other large buildings, from the White House to the pyramids, are attributed to this civilization, supposedly very advanced, in some versions inhabited by giants, whose central core was a powerful empire that would have occupied all of northern Asia, from the Caspian Sea. and the Ural Mountains to the coasts of the Pacific Ocean. Some promoters of the idea add that Tartary managed to transmit energy by means of waves over long distances, just as Tesla tried to do, and that the spiers of the towers characteristic of Russian architecture, were receivers of these waves; at the same time they believe that the telegraph poles visible in some old photos are conductors of that same energy. Tartary, they maintain, achieved world peace, but was destroyed by a mud flood; To cover its remains and hide its existence, the «elite» invented the First and Second World Wars. From then on, according to the defenders of this idea, a reset or «restart» took place. of the civilization that gave rise to the current world.

Among those who share this conspiracy theory, photos, illustrations and old maps are the main evidence of their claims. They consider that there are similar constructions throughout the world, such as classical-style buildings with domes, star-shaped fortresses or palaces with elaborate towers, which demonstrate the existence of a global civilization. Regarding maps, the location of an extensive territory in Central and Eastern Asia called Tartary, with mentions of its symbols such as flags or emblems, is evidence of its existence, as well as its disappearance in them, indicates that it was suppressed by hidden interests.

On the other hand, according to followers of this theory, photos from the 19th century seem to show deserted streets in many cities and, when people appear, there is a contrast between the technology, horse-drawn carriages on muddy streets, and the elaborate stone constructions. The mention of clay is important for these believers, since in certain images architectural elements such as doors, windows and arches are seen, held, that barely protrude from the ground level; so they assume that they were buried by a deluge of mud.

Criticism

There is no evidence of the existence of this civilization and all the evidence that supposedly supports it is based on the misinterpretation of a series of data, documents and monuments.

Actually, according to all sources, Tartary was the name of a territory in Central and Eastern Asia, poorly known in Europe, populated by peoples of Mongolian origin. Dictionaries and encyclopedias from the 17th century to XIX they mention it and, as was customary at the time, they assign it emblems and defined borders that never really existed. As for neoclassical style buildings, they became fashionable at the end of the XVIII century and spread throughout much of Europe and America along with the Industrial Revolution, while the fortifications with pointed bastions, whose plan resembles a star, are earlier and correspond to the French defensive architecture of Vauban, developed from the advance of powerful firearms.

The Great Exhibitions, or World Fairs, were characterized by the construction of ephemeral and ornate buildings within which the technological advances of the so-called Belle Époque were exhibited. Although in the images they appear to be imposing works, the reality is that they were built with cheap or easily removable materials, such as glass or steel. The original plans of most of these constructions are stored in the archives of the cities that hosted, or participated in, these exhibitions.

As for photographs of deserted streets, it must be remembered that the first photos did not have enough exposure time to capture people, so they did not appear in them. Regarding the presence of "ancient technology" coexisting with modern buildings, the confusion comes from the erroneous idea that great monuments can only be built with ultra-modern machinery and the ignorance of the great development of construction techniques based on the use of energy from the steam and electricity since the mid-1800s. Finally, images of buildings along with excavations are records of urban renewal at the end of the 19th century< /span> and the beginning of XX, with the construction of underground and the placement of electrical lines or water systems underground current.

In summary, the theory of Tartary is the result of ignorance of modern History and a misinterpretation of architecture; All this added to the belief in a plot by the so-called "elites" to keep the world population deceived.