Chapter 13
The World the Mongols Made
Review Questions
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WHY WERE the Mongols able to conquer such a vast empire?
WHAT WERE the positive and negative effects of the Mongol
conquests?
WHY DID the Mongols fail to conquer Egypt, India, and Japan?
HOW DID Kubilai Khan’s reign blend Mongol and Chinese
traditions?
WHAT TECHNOLOGIES did the West develop in the
thirteenth century and what were the consequences?
WHY DID nothing comparable to the Mongol Empire develop in
Africa or the Americas?
Rise of the Mongols
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Nomadism: Mongols, Xiongnu (Huns), Turks
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Environmental factors:
 Grasslands of Central Asia unsuitable for settled agriculture
 Nomadic pastoralism (herding) as a way of life
 Diet: animal products--goats, sheep, horses as food sources
Self-sufficiency
Conflict between nomadic groups, continual raiding
Plurality of religious practice
 Shamanism
 Buddhists, (Nestorian) Christians, Muslims
 Idea of a Great Khan
Mongol Conquests (1206-1258)
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Temujin or Genghis Khan (r. 1206-1227)
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Unites Mongol tribes
Conquest from Korea to Hungary, Moscow to Baghdad
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New technologies, adaptation
 Horse
and the bow
 Siege technology
 Use of Terror
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Khanates
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Use of local elites
Tax farming
Mongol rulers tended to focus on feasting, hunting, and internal
disputes rather than day-to-day governing.
Effects on Overland Trade
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Silk Road
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Marco Polo (1253-1324)
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Traveled to the East and back (1271-1295)
Influence on European attitudes towards the East
William of Rubruck
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Patrols and passports
Mission to learn and convert, 1253-1255
New Ideas
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Paper and paper money, gunpowder, coal, movable type,
passports, higher mathematics, etc.
Il-Khan Empire
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Collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate, 1260
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Religious conflicts in the Mongol Empire
Attempted interference by the West
The choice for Islam, 1295
Rise of Mamluk power in Egypt
Mongol Conquests in Russia
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Fall of Kiev, 1240
Batu (r. 1240-1255) establishes “Golden Horde” rule
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Use of the Russian Orthodox Church
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Church becomes central to Russian culture.
Center of resistance to Mongol rule and domination
Rise of Novgorod and Moscow
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Mongol capital at Sarai
Alexander Nevskii (lived around 1220-1263) argued for
cooperation with Mongols rather than resistance.
Mongol “yoke” or oppressive Russian nobility?
Knights Templar and the battle at Lake Chud, 1242
Serfdom introduced in Eastern Europe; slave trade decreases in Eastern
Europe.
Yuan Dynasty in China, 1272-1368
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Kubilai Khan, r. 1265-1294
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New capital at Beijing (1265)
Styles himself as a Chinese emperor
Introduces Mongols and Muslims into Chinese government.
Mongol domination caused various effects in East Asia.
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Recentralization of China, trade, and government
Prosperity in the cities, poverty in the countryside
Extraction of wealth for benefit of Mongol khans
Mongol Empire Impact on Eurasia
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Movement of peoples, trade, ideas across Eurasia accelerates
 New innovations and ideas reach Europe; increased interest by Europe in
the East raised by works of Polo, Rubruck, and others.
 Brought new peoples to power: rise of Turkic dominance in the Muslim
world (Ottomans, Delhi Sultanate, Mamluks), new elites in the Russian
world
 Ended political rule by Arabs, checked expansion of Germanic peoples
into Slavic lands, first (and only) foreign dynasty in China
Today’s Discussion Question
A new world order?
Consider
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The 13th-century Eurasian dominance of the Mongols is reminiscent of 1989
global U.S. dominance, which President George H. W. Bush dubbed “a new world
order.”
But the debacle in Iraq and the rising economic might of China call the reach,
durability, and effectiveness of American world leadership into question.
Are fundamental American values more in line with the aspirations of many of the
world’s people than Mongol values?
Can the U.S. lead a realignment of the world’s political and cultural landscape
with anything similar to the lasting consequences that the Mongols had on
Eurasia?