Tartary (Latin: Tartaria; French: Tartarie; German: Tartarei; Russian: Тартария, romanized: Tartariya) or Tatary (Russian: Татария, romanized: Tatariya) was a general term used in Western European books and maps to describe a large part of Asia. This area was surrounded by the Caspian Sea, the Ural Mountains, the Pacific Ocean, and the northern edges of China, India, and Persia. At the time, European geographers knew very little about this region.
The name Tartary was used in European sources from the 13th to the 19th centuries. It became the most common way to refer to Central Asia, even though it did not represent the real countries or groups of people living there. Until the 19th century, Europeans had only limited and incomplete knowledge of the area. Today, this region is often called Inner Asia or Central Eurasia in English-speaking countries. Much of the area includes dry, flat lands, where many people in the past lived by raising animals.
Misunderstandings about the name Tartary led to some incorrect ideas, such as claims about a "hidden past" or "mud floods." These ideas suggest that Tartary, or the "Tartarian Empire," was an ancient civilization with advanced technology and culture. However, these theories ignore the real, well-recorded history of Asia. Today, the Tartary region includes parts of central Afghanistan, northern Kazakhstan, as well as areas in modern Mongolia, China, and the Russian Far East, which is sometimes called "Chinese Tartary."
Geography and history
Before the 18th century, Europeans had little knowledge about Manchuria, Siberia, and Central Asia. These areas were often referred to as "Tartary," and the people living there were called "Tartars." As European understanding of geography improved during the early modern period, they began to divide "Tartary" into sections. Each section was named with a prefix that indicated the ruling power or the region. For example, Siberia was called "Great Tartary" or "Russian Tartary," the Crimean Khanate was called "Little Tartary," Manchuria was called "Chinese Tartary," and western Central Asia was called "Independent Tartary." However, by the 17th century, influenced by writings from Catholic missionaries, the term "Tartar" came to refer specifically to the Manchu people, and "Tartary" came to describe the lands they ruled.
European views of these regions were often negative, influenced by the memory of the Mongol invasions that had started in the area. The word "Tartar" originated after the widespread destruction caused by the Mongol Empire. Adding an extra "r" to "Tatar" made it sound like "Tartarus," a place in Greek mythology described as a hellish realm. In the 18th century, Enlightenment writers often described people from Siberia or Tartary as "barbarous," linking this view to ideas about civilization, savagery, and racism.
Some Europeans, however, believed that Tartary might hold spiritual knowledge not found in Europe. A spiritual writer named Tallapragada Subba Row quoted Emanuel Swedenborg, who suggested, "Seek for the Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary, China, and Tibet."
As European geographers learned more about the region, the use of "Tartary" declined. By the early 18th century, information collected by Jesuit missionaries in China helped replace "Chinese Tartary" with the name "Manchuria" in European maps. In the early 19th century, the travels of explorers like Egor Meyendorff and Alexander von Humboldt led to the term "Central Asia" and related terms like "Inner Asia." Russian expansion into the region also led to the term "Siberia" being used to describe the Asian part of the Russian Empire.
By the 20th century, the term "Tartary" was no longer commonly used to describe Siberia or Central Asia. However, it inspired the title of Peter Fleming's 1936 book, News from Tartary, which described his travels in Central Asia.
Tartaria conspiracy theory
Wrong understandings of Tartary as a separate empire, instead of as an old name for Central Asia, led to a conspiracy theory that claimed there was an advanced "Tartarian Empire."