A Military History of Central Asia, 500 B.C. to 1700 A.D.. The first book to examine the nomads of Asia from a purely military perspective, from the ancient Scythians to the Manchu conquest of China. Across these two thousand years, the horse archer armies of the steppe-considered here as a unified phenomenon, linked by their reliance on mass cavalry tactics and the composite bow-resembled an unstoppable force of nature which sedentary people, except in rare instances, were unable to resist.