The Mongols and The Making of The Modern World

Characteristics of The Mongols

  • Pastoral nomads and hunter-gatherers

  • Skilled horseback riders

  • Valued courage, hunting, and warfare

  • Surrounded by other nomadic groups

  • Dressed plainly with few possessions

    • Yurts, weapons, tools, and horses

  • Lived on the fringes of Chia

Ghenghis Khan

  • Created alliances amongst Mongol tribes and defeated neighboring groups

    • Ruler of all

  • Focused on building power

    • 1277: Khanate stretches from the North China Sea to Persia

    • All resistors were brutally killed

    • Khan and Mongols earned a reputation as brutal and skilled warriors across Eurasia

  • Khan also developed an efficient command structure

    • Special units mapped terrain ahead of time

    • Army was broken into smaller units with a hierarchical leadership structure

    • Pony express type mail system was used to communicate

  • As Khan conquered new territories, he adopted their ideas and technology

Genghis Khan At Peace

  • Pax Mongolia: a period of peace as a result of Mongol rule (13th-15th century)

  • Karakoram

    • Genghis consulted with scholars and engineers from China and the Islamic world

  • Genghis is responsible for building more bridges than any other ruler in history

Genghis Khan’s Successor

  • After Genghis’s death, Ogodei became ruler of the Mongols

  • Ogodei was not as skilled of a leader or general as his father was

    • Regardless, empire continued to grow

  • Ogodei focused on building the Mongol bureaucracy and further developing the capital city

  • Following the death of Ogodei, his 3 sons split the empire into 3 separate Khanates

    • Bath

    • Hulegu

    • Kublai

Batu and the Golden Horde

  • 1236-1241: Expands into Russia (decentralized)

  • Ruled Russia through a tribute system

    • They choose this form of indirect rule because they didnt want to live there

  • Rulers in Moscow began collected additional tribute from the people

    • Extra tribute was set aside to develop an army to fight against the Mongols

  • Mongol rule had a lasting impact on Russia

  • Russia began to recover

Hulegu and Islamic Heartland

  • 1258: Led Mongols into Abbasid territories

    • Destroyed Baghdad, killed the caliph and 200,000 residents of the city

  • I’ll-Khanate: Mongol territory in the Middle East

  • Mongols ruled, but the Persians served as ministers and converted to Islam

  • Hulegu and other Mongols living in the Il-Khanate converted to Islam

    • No longer tolerant to other religions living within the territory

  • 1260: Mongols were defeated as a result of the temporary alliance of Mamluks and Christian Crusaders

Kublai Khan and the Yuan Dynasty

  • Kublai Khan conquered Song China, creating his own Yuan dynasty

  • Kublai Khan proved to be skilled at governing a large, diverse territory

    • Chinese initially approved of Kublai Khan, despite him being a foriegn ruler

    • Kublai Khan fails to expand his rule beyond China- loss of the Mandate of Heaven

    • 1350s- rise of the White Lotus Society and defeat of the Yuan

Long Term Impacts of the Mongols

  • Mongols conquered a larger area than the Romans, and their bloody reputation was usually well earned

  • During this period know as Pax Mongolia, Mongols revitalized interregional trade between Asia, the Middle East, and Africa and Europe

  • The Mongols ruled successfully because of their understanding of centralized power, a capacity that would transfer in many cases to the occupied civilizations

  • The Mongols devised and used a single international law for all their conquered territories

  • The Mongol conquest helped to continually transmit fleas that carried the bubonic plague