In March, the Center sponsored two talks by Agata Bareja-Starzyńska, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Oriental Studies and head of the Department of Turkish Studies and Inner Asian Peoples at the University of Warsaw. Dr. Bareja-Starzyńska is a long-time friend of Indiana University and the Department of Central Eurasian Studies, having spent a semester in Bloomington as an exchange scholar in 2000.
Bareja-Starzyńska first talk was a lecture on “The Tibetan–Mongolian Interface in the 17th and 18th Centuries”, which examined the political landscape of the Mongol lands during this period in the context of both the relationship between Khalkha Mongols and the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan government and that between the Khalkha and the Jungar-Oirat (Western) Mongols. Bareja-Starzyńska examined the complex politics of the Mongol world on the cusp of Qing domination through the lens of the relationship between Zanabazar, a Khalkha noble and Buddhist polymath who rose to both spiritual and political leadership of the Khalkha Mongols, and Galdan Boshugtu Khan, the leader of the Oirats and staunch ally of the Dalai Lama. Bareja-Starzyńska’s research showed that the conflict between the Khalkha and the Oirats in the 17th-18th centuries was a product of both a longstanding political rivalry between Eastern and Western Mongols and a turbulent personal relationship between Zanabazar and Galdan Boshugtu Khan, who quarreled over issues of political legitimacy and each other’s support of rival Buddhist sects. This conflict culminated in an Oirat invasion of the Khalkha lands in 1688 and Zanabazar’s flight to Manchu-controlled lands, establishing what proved to be two centuries of Qing rule in Khalkha.
Two days after the lecture, Bareja-Starzyńska gave a workshop on the rich, but underutilized collections of Mongolian and Tibetan sources in Poland, focusing on the materials assembled by the famous Polish Mongolist Władysław Kotwicz during his expeditions to Mongolia and Kalmykia. Kotwicz’s collection includes both rare manuscripts and printed material ranging from illuminated Buddhist texts to early 20th-century Mongol maps to Kalmyk periodicals from the 1940s, along with a personal library of several thousand volumes, many of which are now difficult to access. These materials are now held in several libraries and archives in Poland and accessible to researchers. Bareja-Starzyńska encouraged the graduate students in attendance to consider visiting Poland and making use of these collections. The workshop was followed by an informal discussion about the state of Mongolian studies in Europe and the United States. Bloomington’s own Little Tibet restaurant provided catering for the event.
It was a pleasure for the IAUNRC to welcome Dr. Bareja-Starzyńska back to Indiana. We hope to see her again in the future and to continue sponsoring events that help maintain Indiana University’s international connections and its global renown as a center for the study of Inner Asia.