Table Of ContentThe Mongol Conquests
in World History
timothy may
The Mongol Conquests in World History
globalities
Series editor: Jeremy Black
globalitiesis a series which reinterprets world history in
a concise yet thoughtful way, looking at major issues over large
time-spans and political spaces; such issues can be political, ecological,
scientific, technological or intellectual. Rather than adopting a narrow
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conceptual in focus yet present an array of historical data to justify
their arguments. They often involve a multi-disciplinary approach,
juxtaposing different subject-areas such as economics and religion
or literature and politics.
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THE MONGOL CONQUESTS
IN WORLD HISTORY
Timothy May
reaktion books
For my wonderful and beautiful wife, Michaeline,
without whom I would still be writing this book
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
Great Sutton Street
London ec1v 0dx, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published
Copyright © Timothy May
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the publishers.
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by MPG Books Group
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
May, Timothy Michael.
The Mongol conquests in world history. –(Globalities)
1. Mongols –History –To 1500.
I. Title II. Series
950.2-dc22
isbn 978 1 86189 867 8
C
ONTENTS
Introduction
part one
THE MONGOL CONQUESTS AS CATALYST
The Formation of the Mongol Empire
Dissolution of the Empire
The World of : A Global World
part two
THE CHINGGIS EXCHANGE
Pax Mongolica and Trade
New Forms of Warfare
The Mongol Administration
Religion and the Mongol Empire
The Mongols and the Plague
Migrations and Demographic Trends
Cultural Exchanges
appendices
Glossary
Dynastic Tables
references
bibliography
acknowledgements
photo acknowledgements
index
I
NTRODUCTION
When asked to write this book by the editor of the Globalities series,
Jeremy Black, I did not hesitate, as the Mongols always seem to have at
least a cameo appearance, if not a starring role, in the discussion of
world history. The title of the project could easily have been changed
to The Mongol Empire Is World Historyalthough it would look odd on
the spine of a book. I can think of no period other than perhaps the
past years in which the world was more interconnected. The con-
quests of Alexander? Despite a brief foray to the Indus and the Libyan
Desert, the Alexandrian world excluded much of Asia and virtually all
of Africa. The Roman Empire? Largely a Mediterranean event except
for the more rustic provinces to the north and a few merchants deal-
ing with India. Perhaps the Crusades? Again, primarily a Mediterranean
event, although more of Europe and North Africa was involved, but it
did not impact upon China or India. The Age of Exploration is always
a good place to begin, but without the Mongol Empire would Colum-
bus have sailed? After all, he was trying to reach the Great Khan in
China. In short, the Mongol Empire is the very definition of world his-
tory. True, the Mongols did not have a huge impact on Africa or the
New World, but for the Eurasian landmass no event or empire had a
larger impact in history. The Mongols brought military innovation,
international commerce, the spread of world religions and the dif -
fusion of technology and ideas together in one crucible – the Mongol
conquests. After the dust settled, the world had irrefutably changed and
could never return to the way it once was.
In the s John Andrew Boyle, the great historian of the Mongol
Empire, coined the term ‘Mongol World Empire’ – and he hit the nail
on the head.It is unknown if Boyle considered the Mongols through
the lens of world history, but he clearly saw the Mongols as an empire
that dominated the medieval world and could not be viewed in a strictly
regional sense. In his preface to Boyle’s The Mongol World Empire, Owen
Lattimore noted that in order to properly understand the place of the
Mongols in world history, ‘we need to bring into better balance the
enormously rich and Middle Asian sources’. Lattimore alludes to a
basic issue of the study of the Mongol Empire – the number of lan-
guages involved in the sources often leads to examining the Mongols in
a regional rather than a holistic or world perspective. At the same time
one should not only consider the Mongol World Empire in a geograph-
ical but also a temporally transcendent sense. The Mongol moment is
truly a pivotal and perhaps an axial era in history. In many ways it is the
dividing point between the pre-modern and the modern ages.
This idea of the Mongol Empire as the dividing point, or perhaps
even the beginning of modern history, is buttressed by the opinion of
esteemed scholar of East Asia Arthur Waldron. In his introduction to
Bertold Spuler’s classic work The Mongol Period(),the middle vol-
ume of Spuler’s trilogy on the history of the Muslim world, Waldron
wrote:
Where should one begin the study of modern history? The
soundest answer is probably with the Mongols. The great states
of Eurasia today – China, Russia, and India, as well as most of the
Middle East – all were once incorporated into Mongol empires,
and changed by that experience. The modern history of those
states, moreover, began when the Mongol empires ended then
the component parts reconstituted themselves, emerging as suc-
cessor states that, although independent, nevertheless bore an
unmistakable Mongol stamp. Study the Mongol empires and
their gradual breakdown, then, and you have the basis for an inte-
grated understanding of contemporary Eurasia.3
It is difficult to dispute Waldron’s contention. Indeed, it is only by
investigating the Mongol Empire and the changes that it brought to
the Eurasian continent that we truly see an integrated Eurasia and
indeed an integrated world. While trade routes have connected cul-
tures and civilizations for hundreds of years, the view of the world by
a particular civilization was compartmentalized. The Romans possessed
a clear view of the Roman world as did the empires of Iran and the
many dynasties of China of theirs, but their vision of the world out-
side their respective borders remained murky. Although knowledge of
the outside and the Other is always elusive, with the Mongol Empire
unprecedented numbers of travellers, merchants, missionaries and
others criss-crossed the Eurasian landmass and even beyond. Granted,
many other regions remained outside the empire, but the ramifications
of the advent of the Mongol Empire created conditions and events
that led not only to an integrated Eurasia but an integrated world,
which, of course, is what this volume will demonstrate.
The Mongol Empire’s importance in world history is most apparent
in two fashions. The first is through its immense size at its peak, making
it the largest contiguous empire in history – approximately .million
sq km ( million sq miles), or roughly the size of the continent of
Africa. Although it became divided politically, nonetheless a con siderable
amount of interaction existed across Eurasia and beyond through
Mongol domains, no matter how one defines them.
The second is shown by the sheer number of languages used in
the sources related to the study of the Mongol Empire. Perhaps the
most important are Chinese and Persian, based on the number of
sources in these languages, but the sources also include Mongolian,
Russian, Old Slavonic, Arabic, Latin, Old French, Japanese, Italian,
Armenian, Georgian, Old Uighur, Tibetan and others. Few people can
master all of these. Added to this is the problem of transliterating
names from a wide variety of scripts, potentially ending up with a
plethora of spellings for any given name. Take Khubilai, for instance.
Qubilai, Khubilai, Kublai and Kubla have all been used, and are accept-
able depending on which system of transliteration and language one
uses. Most scholars have no difficulty keeping track of who is who, but
a novice to the history of the Mongol Empire can easily be over-
whelmed by the names. Other problems resulting from the variety of
languages will be discussed later.
Yet evidence of the Mongols’ importance to world history is in
many ways best demonstrated by the problem of studying the Mon-
gols – where does one begin? Indeed, where does one even place them
in Asia? Certainly they were an Asian people and the bulk of the empire
existed in Asia, but does Asia include the Middle East? And what of the
European domains? The Mongols’ importance to Europe, and by
extension to world history, is aptly demonstrated by David Morgan’s
classic and still standard introduction to the study of the Mongols, The
Mongols (1986). Indeed, The Mongols is actually a part of Blackwell’s
Peoples of Europeseries.
When I received my first copy of this magnificent book as an under-
graduate, I remember being perplexed by this odd placement. After all, a
quick glance at any picture of the Mongols makes it quite clear that they
