The Empire of Illusion: The Black Death and the Mongol Legacy

The Dynastic Crisis and the Emergence of the Plague

• Succession Turmoil ($1328$ – $1332$):
  • In $1332$, the Mongol summer capital of Shangdu (Xanadu) faced a deep crisis that threatened the continuation of the dynasty.
  • Between $1328$ and $1332$, the throne of the Great Khan passed between at least four members of the Golden Family due to assassinations and unexplained deaths.
  • Rinchinbal Khan, a seven-year-old ruler, occupied the throne for only $2$ months in $1332$.
• Introduction of the Black Death:
  • Initially confused with political unrest, the true threat was the plague, which caused rapid physical dissolution in healthy individuals.
  • Clinical Symptoms: Victims suffered from high fever, chills, vomiting, and diarrhea. Lumps known as "buboes" (derived from the Greek word for groin) formed in the groin, armpits, and neck. These lumps eventually burst.
  • Nomenclature: The disease became known as the "Black Death" because victims appeared to turn black due to a lack of oxygen and dried blood beneath the skin.
  • Transmission Models: The primary form was the bubonic plague, but a pneumonic version attacked the lungs, causing victims to spread the infection through coughing and gasping.

Pathogens, Transmission, and Early Demographics

• Origins and Vectors:
  • The disease likely originated in southern China and was carried north by Mongol warriors.
  • The plague bacterium lives in fleas, which travel on rats. These rats were transported via shipments of tribute and food.
  • In the Gobi, the fleas found hosts in marmot burrows and rodent colonies, where the disease remains endemic today.
• Inhabited Environments:
  • The plague remained virulent on the open steppe but caused fewer epidemics due to the sparse population and the presence of horses, which repel fleas.
  • In densely populated urban centers, the plague flourished within rat populations living near humans.
• Demographic Toll in China:
  • In $1331$, $90\,\%$ of the population in Hopei Province reportedly died.
  • By $1351$, China lost between $1/2$ and $2/3$ of its people.
  • The population dropped from approximately $123,000,000$ at the start of the $13^{\text{th}}$ century to as low as $65,000,000$ by the end of the $14^{\text{th}}$ century.

The Global Trade Network as a Disease Vector

• The Epidemic of Commerce:
  • As the manufacturing center of the Mongol World System, China exported the disease alongside silk and spices.
  • By $1338$, the plague crossed the Tian Shan Mountains, decimating a Christian trading community at Lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan.
  • Mongol roads and way stations served as essential transfer points for fleas and infected goods.
• The Siege of Kaffa ($1345$):
  • Plague reached Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde on the Volga.
  • Yanibeg, the Kipchak khan, was forced to lift his siege of the Genoese port of Kaffa (modern Feodosija, Ukraine) when his army was struck by the disease.
  • Biological Warfare Account: Gabriele de Mussis reported that the Mongols catapulted plague-infested bodies into Kaffa. While often cited, this report was not from an eyewitness and is considered historically doubtful as a primary infection method.
• Maritime Incubation:
  • Ships acted as ideal incubators for the plague, allowing humans, rats, and fleas to mix in closed environments away from horses.
  • The disease reached Constantinople, Cairo, Messina (Sicily), and Italy by $1348$. By $1350$, it reached Greenland via the Faeroe Islands and Iceland.

Comparative Mortality and Social Impact

• **Global Population Loss ($1340$ – 1400$ house):**\n * Africa: 80,000,000$to$68,000,000.\n * Asia: 238,000,000$to$201,000,000.\n * World Total: Fell from approximately 450,000,000$to between$350,000,000$and$375,000,000.\n * This represents a loss of at least 75,000,000$people, averaging over$1,000,000 deaths per year for the rest of the century.\n* **Impact on Europe:**\n * Population declined from 75,000,000$to$52,000,000$, a loss of$1/3$to$1/2 of the continent.\n * Comparison: The death toll of around 25,000,000$equals the total worldwide toll of AIDS in the$20^{\text{th}}$century. WWII death rates in France were$1.5\,\%$, Germany$9.1\,\%$, and Poland/Ukraine$19\,\%, all significantly lower than the plague.\n* **Social Disintegration:**\n * The plague destroyed the social order established since the fall of Rome, killing the educated class and skilled craftsmen.\n * Monasteries and convents suffered heavily due to their closed environments, leaving the Roman Catholic Church severely weakened.\n * Giovanni Boccaccio described the breakdown of family and law in Florence (1348) in his work *Decameron*.\n\n# Quarantine Measures and Persecution\n\n* **Quarantine efforts:**\n * Milan successfully limited the spread by sealing infected houses with all inhabitants inside.\n * Pistoia (Tuscany) enacted laws in 1348$banning infected persons, used textiles, and the sale of fruit. Baggage was limited to$30\,lb, and the leather tanning trade was halted.\n* **Persecution of Minorities:**\n * Frightened populations blamed foreigners and merchants for the disease.\n * **Anti-Semitic Violence:** In 1348, the campaign against Jews escalated despite a protective papal bull from Pope Clement VI. \n * In Strasbourg (1349$),$2,000$Jews were taken to a cemetery for a mass burning. By September$1349, chroniclers claimed all Jews between Cologne and Austria had been burned.\n * In Spain, Christians initiated persecutions against Muslim minorities, driving them to Granada or Morocco.\n\n# The Financial and Political Collapse of the Mongol Empire\n\n* **Breakdown of the World System:**\n * The plague isolated global regions, cutting off the interlocking system of ownership and tribute between China, Persia, and Russia.\n * The Mongol Empire required constant movement; once trade lines were severed, the administrative center could not hold.\n* **Economic Ruin:**\n * Mongol authorities lost control of the paper currency system. Inflation caused the value of paper money to plummet, making it worthless by 1356.\n* **Absorption and Assimilation:**\n * In the Ilkhanate (Persia), Mongols were absorbed or killed by 1335.\n * In Russia, the Golden Horde fragmented into smaller entities that persisted for four centuries.\n * Mongol rulers in the Middle East and Russia sought legitimacy by converting to Islam and adopting local languages and cultures to maintain power.\n\n# Rise of Successor States and the Gunpowder Empires\n\n* **The Ming Dynasty (1368):**\n * Togoon Tumur and 60,000$Mongols fled China to resume a nomadic lifestyle, while$400,000 were captured or killed.\n * The Ming rulers systematically rejected Mongol policies, banning Mongol names and dress, abolishing paper money, and replacing Tibetan Buddhism with Confucianism.\n * They built massive walls to isolate China and burned ocean-going vessels, ending the Mongol era of open commerce.\n* **The Gunpowder Empires:**\n * New dynasties—the Ottoman (Turkey), Safavid (Persia), and Moghul (India)—relied on Mongol military innovations like armed infantry and firearms to maintain status.\n * **Timur (Tamerlane):** A Turkic warrior who claimed descent from Genghis Khan. He attempted to restore the empire through extreme cruelty and mass slaughter, though he did not follow Genghis Khan's administrative wisdom.\n * **The Moghuls of India:** Founded by Babur (a descendant of Chaghatai). The empire peaked under Akbar (1556$–$1608), who abolished the jizya tax, raised the status of women, and promoted a universalist faith called Din-i-Illah.\n\n# European Perceptions and Scientific Racism\n\n* **Columbus and the Mongol Illusion:**\n * In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail to find Cathay, carrying Marco Polo’s journals. He was unaware the Mongol Empire had collapsed a century earlier.\n * Columbus named the people of the Americas "Indians," believing he had reached the lands south of the Mongols.\n* **Enlightenment Critiques:**\n * Montesquieu (1748) attacked Asians as "servile slaves" and blamed the Mongols for destroying civilization.\n * Voltaire (1755) reimagined Genghis Khan in *The Orphan of China* as an "ignorant and cruel villain," using him to critique the French king.\n* **Scientific Racism and the "Mongoloid" Category:**\n * Compte de Buffon and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach created classifications of human races, labeling all Asians as "Mongols."\n * Robert Chambers (1844) claimed the "Mongolian" was an arrested stage of human development.\n * **Dr. John Langdon Down:** In 1867, he formalized the "ethnic classification of idiots," linking retarded children to the "Mongoloid" race. Scientists used the history of Mongol invasions to claim these children were "atavistic" throwbacks caused by ancestral rape.\n\n# Modern Nationalism and the Legacy of Genghis Khan\n\n* **Intellectual Re-evaluation:**\n * Pan-Mongolism became a movement for Asian identity against Western colonialism.\n * Jawaharlal Nehru, writing from prison to his daughter Indira in 1931, described Genghis Khan as the greatest military genius in history, superior to Caesar or Alexander.\n* **Military Application in the 20^{\text{th}} Century:**\n * Modern tank warfare and the German "blitzkrieg" were modeled after Mongol highly mobile cavalry tactics.\n * The Nazis and Soviets both attempted to study the *Secret History of the Mongols* to unlock military secrets.\n * Stalin exhumed the body of Timur and searched for Genghis Khan's remains.\n* **Soviet Purges:**\n * The Soviet Union purged descendants of Genghis Khan in Mongolia, killing families and erasing their history.\n * The "sulde" (Spirit Banner) of Genghis Khan disappeared in the 1960s, likely destroyed by Communist authorities.\n* **Final Descendants:**\n * The last reigning descendant of Genghis Khan, Sayid Alim Khan (Emir of Bukhara), died in exile in Kabul in 1944. \n * The British exiled the last Moghul emperor, Bahadur Shah II, in 1858$$.