Country Listing
Mongolia Table of Contents
Mongolia
Preface
This is the first revised edition of the Area Handbook for
Mongolia, published in 1970. The new edition recounts events
in Mongolia during the intervening years and brings up to date
such developments as the changing geopolitical role of Mongolia
in Sino-Soviet relations, the establishment of diplomatic
relations between Mongolia and the United States, the evolution
to a more open, reform-minded administration, and broad economic
achievements.
Like its predecessor, this study is an attempt to present an
objective and concise account of the major social, economic,
political, and national security concerns of contemporary
Mongolia, as well as to provide a historical framework for this
overview. The 1970 edition, which this volume replaces, was
prepared for The American University by a team composed of Trevor
N. Dupuy, Wendell Blanchard, Martin Blumenson, Richard L.
Butwell, Nancy Gager Clinch, Alvin D. Coox, Grace Person Hayes,
Marilyn Heilprin, Virginia M. Herman, Steven J. Hunter, Brooke
Nihart, Francis J. Romance, and Ellen L. Sato.
The current Mongolia: A Country Study results from the
combined efforts of a multidisciplinary team. The authors
obtained information from a variety of sources, including
scholarly studies, official reports from government and
international organizations, as well as foreign and domestic
newspapers and periodicals. Brief commentary on some of the more
useful and readily accessible English-language sources appears at
the end of each chapter. Full references to these and other
sources used by the authors are listed in the Bibliography. Users
of the book seeking additional materials on Mongolia, the
Mongols, and Inner Asian peoples are encouraged to consult the
annual editions of the Bibliography of Asian Studies and
The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European
Studies and Lidiia Pavlovna Popova, et alii Mongol Studies
in the Soviet Union: A Bibliography of Soviet Publications, 1981-
1986 (Bloomington, Indiana: Research Institute for Inner
Asian Studies, 1988).
The authors have limited the use of foreign and technical terms,
which are defined when they first appear. Readers are also
referred to the Glossary in the back of the book. The
contemporary place-names used in this book have been romanized--
but without using the dieresis and breve diacritics--from
Mongolian Cyrillic Script according to the system approved by the
United States Board on Geographic Names and the Permanent
Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use. The
pinyin system of romanization is used for Chinese personal names
and place-names, although occasionally some familiar Wade-Giles
romanizations have been provided. All measurements are given in
the metric system. A conversion table is provided to assist
readers unfamiliar with metric measurements (see
table 1,
Appendix).
Data as of June 1989