Mongolia

A landlocked country sandwiched between Russia and China, Mongolia is sparsely populated, with fewer than 3 million inhabitants spread over a territory more than twice the size of Texas. It is home to a peaceful people, and hasn't caught the world's attention for good or ill in the past half-millennium. And yet, Mongolia was once the center of an empire that ruled the Old World from the Danube to the Pacific Ocean.

Because of its location in the great Eurasian steppeland, Mongolia has been inhabited by horse-riding nomads since prehistoric times. These nomads, usually divided in rival tribes, were sometimes unified under a strong visionary ruler, and at such times engaged in wars of conquest against the Chinese, their sedentary neighbors to the South. It was in order to protect themselves from such invasions that the Chinese built the Great Wall.

The various empires that arose in Mongolia include the Xiongnu Confederation (the Xiongnu are known in Europe as the Huns), the Xianbei Empire, the Rouran Khaganate and the Liao Dynasty. At the end of the 12th century, as the tribes had once again fallen into disunion, a ruthless and ambitious chieftain named Temujin imposed his rule, organized the Mongols into a brutally efficient war machine, and proclaimed himself Genghis Khan. He then embarked on a series of conquests that his sons and grandsons would continue, until most of the Eurasian landmass was under their domination.

The Mongol Empire fell apart, bit by bit, over the following century and, though the Mongol tribes would be unified again on later occasions, they never again managed to conquer so much territory. In the 17th century, the Mongols, who by then had largely adopted Tibetan Buddhism, became the vassals of the Qing Dynasty. They regained their independence as China was in the throes of the Warlord Era, but it was to fall in short order under the suzerainty of the Soviet Union.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mongolia became a democracy, but it has found the transition from decades of collectivized economy difficult.

These days, it is somewhat famous for its velociraptors (of the fossilized variety of course).

Works set in Mongolia:

Conqueror
Blue Wolf by Inoue Yasushi is a fictionalized biography of Genghis Khan
Urga is a 1991 film about a Mongolian shepherd who befriends a stranded Russian truck driver.
The Story of the Weeping Camel is about a shepherd family trying to save the life of a rare white camel.
The Cave of the Yellow Dog is about a young girl who adopts a stray dog against her father's wishes.
Mongol is a Russian biopic by Sergei Bodrov about Genghis Khan.

The Mongolian flag