How was the eurasian trading system during the period of the mongol empire similar or different?

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Mongol empire, empire founded by Genghis Khan in 1206. Originating from the Mongol heartland in the Steppe of central Asia, by the late 13th century it spanned from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Danube River and the shores of the Persian Gulf in the west. At its peak, it covered some 9 million square miles (23 million square km) of territory, making it the largest contiguous land empire in world history.

The year 1206, when Temüjin, son of Yesügei, was elected Genghis Khan of a federation of tribes on the banks of the Onon River, must be regarded as the beginning of the Mongol empire. This federation not only consisted of Mongols in the proper sense—that is, Mongol-speaking tribes—but also other Turkic tribes. Before 1206 Genghis Khan was but one of the tribal leaders fighting for supremacy in the steppe regions south and southeast of Lake Baikal; his victories over the Kereit and then the Naiman Turks, however, gave him undisputed authority over the whole of what is now Mongolia. A series of campaigns, some of them carried out simultaneously, followed.

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan, ink and colour on silk; in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan.

GL Archive/Alamy

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The first attack (1205–09) was directed against the Tangut kingdom of Hsi Hsia (Xi Xia), a northwestern border-state of China, and ended in a declaration of allegiance by the Xi Xia king. A subsequent campaign was aimed at north China, which at that time was ruled by the Tungusic Jin dynasty. The fall of Beijing in 1215 marked the loss of all the territory north of the Huang He (Yellow River) to the Mongols; during the following years the Jin empire was reduced to the role of a buffer state between the Mongols in the north and the Chinese Song empire in the south. Other campaigns were launched against central Asia. In 1218 the Khara-Khitai state in east Turkistan was absorbed into the empire.

Jiaohe

Portion of the ruins of the ancient city of Jiaohe, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. The city lay along the ancient Silk Road and was destroyed by Genghis Khan in the 13th century.

The assassination of Muslim subjects of Genghis Khan by the Khwārezmians in Otrar led to a war with the sultanate of Khwārezm (Khiva) in west Turkistan (1219–25). Bukhara, Samarkand, and the capital Urgench were taken and sacked by Mongol armies (1220–21). Advance troops (after crossing the Caucasus) even penetrated into southern Russia and raided cities in Crimea (1223). The once prosperous region of Khwārezm suffered for centuries from the effects of the Mongol invasion which brought about not only the destruction of the prosperous towns but also the disintegration of the irrigation system on which agriculture in those parts depended. A similarly destructive campaign was launched against Xi Xia in 1226–27 because the Xi Xia king had refused to assist the Mongols in their expedition against Khwārezm. The death of Genghis Khan during that campaign (1227) increased the vindictiveness of the Mongols. The Xi Xia culture, a mixture of Chinese and Tibetan elements, with Buddhism as the state religion, was virtually annihilated.

In 1227 the Mongol dominions stretched over the vast regions between the Caspian and China seas, bordering in the north on the sparsely populated forest belt of Siberia and in the south on the Pamirs, Tibet, and the central plains of China. This empire contained a multitude of different peoples, religions, and civilizations, and it is only natural to seek the motivating force behind this unparalleled expansion. Certainly the traditional antagonism between pastoral, nomadic steppe-dwellers and settled agricultural civilizations has to be taken into account. Raids by nomads from the steppe had always occurred from time to time wherever powerful nomadic tribes lived in the proximity of settled populations, but they had not usually taken on the dimensions of a bid for world hegemony or domination as in the case of Genghis Khan’s invasions.

Cai Wenji

A Mongol encampment, detail from the Cai Wenji scroll, a Chinese hand scroll of the Nan (Southern) Song dynasty.

Courtesy of Asia Society Galleries, New York

The idea of a heavenly mission to rule the world was certainly present in Genghis Khan’s own mind and in the minds of many of his successors, but this ideological imperialism had no foundation in nomadic society as such. It was most probably due to influences from China where the “one world, one ruler” ideology had a long tradition. The creation of nomad empires in the steppes and the attempts to extend their rule over the more settled parts of central Asia and finally over the whole known world may also have been influenced by the desire to control the routes of intercontinental land trade. The desire for plunder also cannot be ignored, and it was certainly not by accident that the first attacks by nomad federations were usually directed against those states which benefited from the control of trade routes in central Asia such as the famous Silk Road.

Silk RoadEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The amazing military achievements of the Mongols under Genghis Khan and his successors were due to superior strategy and tactics rather than to numerical strength. Mongol armies were chiefly composed of cavalry which afforded them a high degree of mobility and speed. Their movements and maneuvers were directed by signals and a well-organized messenger service. In battle they relied mainly on bows and arrows and resorted to man-to-man fighting only after having disorganized the enemy’s ranks. Mongol armaments and tactics were more suited to open plains and flat countries than to mountainous and wooded regions. For the siege of walled cities they frequently secured assistance from artisans and engineers of technically advanced conquered peoples such as Chinese, Persians, and Arabs.

Another factor contributing to the overwhelming success of their expeditions was the skilful use of spies and propaganda. Before attacking they usually asked for voluntary surrender and offered peace. If this was accepted, the population was spared. If, however, resistance had to be overcome, wholesale slaughter or at least enslavement invariably resulted, sparing only those whose special skills or abilities were considered useful. In the case of voluntary surrender, tribesmen or soldiers were often incorporated into the Mongol forces and treated as federates. Personal loyalty of federate rulers to the Mongol khan played a great role, as normally no formal treaties were concluded. The “Mongol” armies, therefore, often consisted of only a minority of ethnic Mongols.

In 1211, Genghis Khan (1167–1227) and his nomadic armies burst out from Mongolia and swiftly conquered most of Eurasia. The Great Khan died in 1227, but his sons and grandsons continued the expansion of the Mongol Empire across Central Asia, China, the Middle East, and into Europe.

The spread of the bubonic plague from Central Asia into Europe decimated the populations but increased opportunities for the survivors.
An enormous variety of new consumer goods, agriculture, weaponry, religion, and medical science became available in Europe.
New diplomatic channels between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East were opened.
Russia became unified for the first time.

Starting in 1236, Genghis Khan's third son, Ogodei, decided to conquer as much of Europe as he could. By 1240, the Mongols had control of what is now Russia and Ukraine, seizing Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary over the next few years.

The Mongols also tried to capture Poland and Germany, but Ogodei's death in 1241 and the succession struggle that followed distracted them from this mission. In the end, the Mongols' Golden Horde ruled over a vast swath of eastern Europe, and rumors of their approach terrified western Europe, but they went no farther west than Hungary.

At their height, the rulers of the Mongol Empire conquered, occupied, and controlled an area of 9 million square miles. In comparison, the Roman Empire controlled 1.7 million sq mi, and the British Empire 13.7 million sq mi, nearly 1/4 of the world's landmass.

Shepherd, William. Historical Atlas. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Reports of the Mongol attacks terrified Europe. The Mongols increased their empire using swift and decisive attacks with an armed and disciplined cavalry. They wiped out the populations of some entire towns that resisted, as was their usual policy, depopulating some regions and confiscating the crops and livestock from others. This type of total warfare spread panic even among Europeans not directly affected by the Mongol onslaught and sent refugees fleeing westward.

Perhaps even more importantly, the Mongol conquest of central Asia and eastern Europe allowed a deadly disease—the bubonic plague—to travel from its home range in western China and Mongolia to Europe along newly-restored trade routes.

The bubonic plague was endemic to fleas that live on marmots in the steppes of eastern central Asia, and the Mongol hordes inadvertently brought those fleas across the continent, unleashing the plague on Europe. Between 1300 and 1400, the Black Death killed between 25 and 66% of the population in Europe, at least 50 million people. The plague also affected northern African and large parts of Asia.

Although the Mongol invasion of Europe sparked terror and disease, in the long run, it had enormous positive impacts. The foremost was what historians call the Pax Mongolica, a century of peace (circa 1280–1360) among neighboring peoples who were all under Mongol rule. This peace allowed for the reopening of the Silk Road trading routes between China and Europe, increasing cultural exchange and wealth all along the trade paths.

Central Asia was a region that had always been important to overland trade between China and the West. As the region became stable under the Pax Mongolica, trade became less risky under the various empires, and as cross-cultural interactions became more and more intensive and extensive, more and more goods were traded.

Within the Pax Mongolica, the sharing of knowledge, information, and cultural identity was encouraged. Citizens could legally become followers of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, or anything else—as long as their practice didn't interfere with the political ambitions of the Khan. The Pax Mongolica also allowed monks, missionaries, traders, and explorers to travel along the trade routes. One famous example is the Venetian trader and explorer Marco Polo, who traveled to the court of Genghis Khan's grandson Kublai Khan (Quibilai) at Xanadu in China.

Some of the most fundamental ideas and technologies in the world—papermaking, printing, and gunpowder manufacturing, among many others—made their way across Asia via the Silk Road. Migrants, merchants, explorers, pilgrims, refugees, and soldiers brought along with them their disparate religious and cultural ideas and domesticated animals, plants, flowers, vegetables, and fruit as they joined this gigantic cross-continental exchange. As historian Ma Debin describes it, the Silk Road was the original melting pot, the lifeline of the Eurasian continent.

Before the Mongol Empire, Europeans and Chinese were largely unaware of the other's existence. Trade established along the Silk Road in the first centuries B.C.E. had become rare, dangerous, and unpredictable. Long-distance trade, human migration, and imperial expansion actively engaged people in different societies in significant cross-cultural interactions. Afterward, interactions between the two were not only possible but encouraged.

Diplomatic contacts and religious missions were established over vast distances. Islamic merchants helped gain a footing for their faith at the extreme ends of the Eastern Hemisphere, spreading from southeast Asia and west Africa and across northern India and Anatolia.

Alarmed, western Europeans and the Mongol rulers of China sought a diplomatic alliance with one another against the Muslims in southwest Asia. Europeans sought to convert Mongols to Christianity and establish a Christian community in China. The Mongols saw the spread as a threat. Neither of these initiatives was successful, but the opening of political channels made a substantive difference.

The entire overland route of the Silk Road witnessed a vigorous revival under the Pax Mongolica. Its rulers actively worked to ensure the safety of the trade routes, building effective post stations and rest stops, introducing the use of paper money and eliminating artificial trade barriers. By 1257, Chinese raw silk appeared in the silk-producing area of Italy, and in the 1330s, a single merchant sold thousands of pounds of silk in Genoa.

The Mongolians absorbed scientific knowledge from Persia, India, China, and Arabia. Medicine became one of the many areas of life and culture that flourished under Mongol rule. Keeping an army healthy was vital, so they created hospitals and training centers to encourage the exchange and expansion of medical knowledge. As a result, China employed doctors from India and the Middle East, all of which was communicated to European centers. Kublai Khan founded an institution for the study of Western medicine. The Persian historian Rashid al-Din (1247-1318) published the first known book on Chinese medicine outside China in 1313.

The Golden Horde's occupation of eastern Europe also unified Russia. Prior to the period of Mongol rule, the Russian people were organized into a series of small self-governing city-states, the most notable being Kiev.

In order to throw off the Mongol yoke, the Russian-speaking peoples of the region had to unite. In 1480, the Russians—led by the Grand Duchy of Moscow (Muscovy)—managed to defeat and expel the Mongols. Although Russia has since been invaded several times by the likes of Napoleon Bonaparte and the German Nazis, it has never again been conquered.

One final contribution that the Mongols made to Europe is difficult to categorize as good or bad. The Mongols introduced two deadly Chinese inventions—guns and gunpowder—to the West.

The new weaponry sparked a revolution in European fighting tactics, and the many warring states of Europe all strove over the following centuries to improve their firearms technology. It was a constant, multi-sided arms race, which heralded the end of knightly combat and the beginning of modern standing armies.

In the centuries to come, European states would muster their new and improved guns first for piracy, to seize control over parts of the oceangoing silk and spices trade, and then eventually to impose European colonial rule over much of the world.

Ironically, the Russians used their superior firepower in the 19th and 20th centuries to conquer many of the lands that had been part of the Mongol Empire, including outer Mongolia where Genghis Khan was born.

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