Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

In 1287, Rabban bar Sawma, an Assyrian Christian, is sent to the kingdoms of Western Europe via Jerusalem and Byzantium as a Mongol ambassador. Though he visits the major European monarchies as far as England, he fails to conclude any treaties or negotiate any alliances. He is surprised by the religious uniformity in England and other Western European countries with an established state religion. Sawma returns to Persia, where his travels are recorded. According to Weatherford, his journey “illustrates how much the Mongols had changed the world in the fifty years since their army invaded Europe. Civilizations that had once been separate worlds unto themselves…had become part of a single intercontinental system of communication” (220). This time of relative calm and prosperity was later designated the Pax Mongolica (Mongolian Peace) by historians. The original Mongol goal of “uniting all people under the Eternal Blue Sky” (220) was now being affected not through conquest but through the free flow of people and ideas.

Weatherford describes this period of Khubilai’s rule as the time when the Mongol Empire could more aptly be called the “Mongol Corporation.” Trade was both easier as well as farther-reaching, yet the Mongol commitment to commerce was not entirely idealistic or based in principle; rather, it derived from the “deeply rooted” system of shares that Genghis had introduced: when a new people or settlement was conquered, the plunder was distributed evenly. Each member of the imperial family felt entitled to a share of the empire’s wealth. This logic extended even to skilled foreigners such as artisans and astronomers whose expertise also constituted the empire’s “wealth.” Economic connections between regions, and the maintenance of the empire’s transportation and communication networks, were often more enduring than political arrangements. If anything, Weatherford argues, the division of the empire into four separate regions “increased the need to preserve the older system of shares…[m]utual financial interests trumped political squabbles” (222).

Routes between regions that had been pioneered as routes for armies are transformed into trade routes. The continuing search for the easiest paths across Asia spurs Khubilai to send an expedition to find the source of the Yellow River of China; this expedition results in the connection of Tibet to the existing networks of the empire. The previous failure of the naval invasions in Japan and Indonesia spur advances in commercial shipping, and a new class of Chinese-born merchants and laborers are dispersed across Southeast Asia due to increased maritime trade. China had previously been relatively isolated from the rest of the world (and its leaders had spent great resources trying to wall off outsiders); the idea of trade as a path to profit, and not as tribute, is a new concept to its people.

The sheer size of the empire ensures that almost any region has a rare product that will be valued much more highly in a different region. Of these, textiles such as silks become the most profitable. Weatherford speculates that the decentralized nature of the empire’s administration was responsible for its long-lasting economic success. He contrasts the Mongol Empire with other empires in history, which all show an overreliance on a single imperial capital to manage trade, currency, and government; once that city is destroyed or superseded, the empire suffers.

However, Khubilai sees the need for some measure of centralization, especially in the measurement of times and dates. He sponsors the development of a standardized calendar to be used across the empire, and orders his scholars to undertake a massive compilation of the official national histories of the empire’s realms. Weatherford suspects that this is the largest history project ever commissioned. A boom in printing across the empire spurs an increase in literacy, as well as greater demand for paper.

The years 1328 to 1332 prove to be a period of remarkable instability, assassinations, and shuffling of positions within the empire. The Black Death afflicts China and in 1331 causes extreme devastation in the large, densely populated Chinese cities. By 1351, between half and two-thirds of the population of China was lost. The well-maintained commercial routes throughout the empire became ways for the disease to spread rapidly; Weatherford characterizes the plague as “an epidemic of commerce” (243). The disease tears through Western Europe and reaches as far as Greenland by 1350. Ships plying the new sea routes throughout the lands held by the Mongols prove to be perfect incubators of plague.

The Black Death wreaks extreme changes on the social order and way of life of communities both inside and outside of the empire. The four constituent parts of the empire become increasingly isolated, and the two main advantages held by Mongol rulers—military might and economic strength—are largely neutralized. Though Mongol rulers attempt other ways of maintaining control, such as intermarrying with native populations and adopting local customs, these measures ultimately deal a great blow to the former imperial principle of universalism. This period sees an increase in adherence to Islam within the empire. Meanwhile, Buddhism gains followers in China, emphasizing personal spirituality and an indifference towards the operations of society; Weatherford speculates on the cultural implications of such a shift.

By 1368, rebellions in China and Persia have begun to break the empire apart. In China, the victorious Ming rebels institute sweeping changes to the Mongol order, including isolation from foreign trade, restriction of travel, and the abolition of paper money. Indigenous peoples revolt in Korea and Russia, and in the Near East, Muslims who have rebelled against Mongol rule establish new empires influenced more by Mongol culture than by Arab culture.

A warlord named Timur arises in Central Asia, claiming descent from Genghis Khan. Timur reconquers much of Central Asia, but his ruling style is completely different from the Mongol rulers, and he perpetrates massacre and indiscriminate slaughter. His descendants become the Moghul dynasty of India, and that region undergoes a similar flourishing as China experienced under Khubilai.

Even after the collapse of the empire, the illusion of a single Mongol nation persisted in Europe, and served as a strong impetus for exploration of the New World; Weatherford notes, for example, that Christopher Columbus’s original objective was to sail to the court of the Chinese Khan. In the centuries between the decline of the Mongol Empire, anthropological racism and pseudoscience denigrate Mongol and Asian heritage in the eyes of the west. “Mongoloid” comes to be used as a slur in Western countries, and Genghis and his descendants come to be seen as barbarians and tyrants. The remedy for these misperceptions, Weatherford argues, lies in the recent increase in scholarship in Mongol history after the fall of the repressive regimes in the USSR and communist Mongolia, as he states in the Introduction.