A grand story: historic migration across the inhospitable Tibetan Plateau.

What is it about?

This paper casts entirely new light on the extraordinary circumstances and consequential outcomes of a generations' long risky migratory process across the the Tibetan Plateau, generally characterized as " the world's roof".

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Why is it important?

This article tells a hitherto entirely unknown migration history from the late seventeenth and the eighteenth century to Chang Tang in Eastern Tibet. Chang Tang, the enormous high-plateau in Western Tibet, is a world-famous national park, better known internationally for its rare wildlife than its poignant human story. Evidence is presented about the rise of an intriguingly well-regulated nomadic society, questioning the dominant, environmentally framed narrative of Chang Tang as uninhabited wilderness. The article not only examines why people started migrating, but sheds light on specific dramatic migratory events and their intriquing long-term effects. The article highlights nomads’ prevarious adaptation efforts in a sacred mountain landscape with a forbidding climate. A story is unraveled about painstakingly established customary practices and contending centralized sources of religious and political authority that depended upon the nomads' fierce martial ethos and diverse skill sets. The article employs an interdisciplinary theoretical approach, which is of relevance not only for migration studies of the Western Tibetan Plateau, the Himalayan Region and Central Asia, but may help explaining more fully nomadic movements in other high-regions.

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