The Unification of Eurasia

When evaluating the role ofthe empire ruled by Chinggis Khan and his successors in world history, one should not overlook the fact that the Mongol conquests brought death and destruction to many peoples and civilizations.

After the conquests of the Mongols, the geopolitical balance of power dramat­ically shifted in the Old World. In the eastern part of the Islamic world, the center moved from Baghdad to Tabriz; in Central Asia, from Balasagun to Almalik; in Eastern Europe, from Kiev to Sarai and later to Moscow; in China, from Kaifeng to Beijing. The Mongols reunified all of China into a single state, and their administra­tive divisions remain intact to the present day. What is more, they laid the founda­tion for the creation of the Chinese state with its modern borders—including Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Manchuria. The Chinese historiography of today per­sistently emphasizes the multiethnic symbol of the Yuan society as a very important contribution to the People's Republic of China's national formation.

The Mongols had a significant influence on Russian history. Through the medi­ation of the Mongols, the practice of prostrating oneself before the sovereign and punishing those who failed to pay taxes by beating their ankles with sticks arrived in Rus' from China. The Mongols established the basis for the eventual rise of the tsardom of Muscovy, which subsequently acted as the successor of the Golden Horde and as such presided over the creation of what came to be Russia - a fact which members of the political movement of Eurasianism wrote about at great length in their works. The postal system created by the Mongols has been preserved in China, Iran, and Russia. Mongol military institutions continued to exist during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Chinese technicians and engineers accompanied the Mongol armies as they invaded Islamic states. Significant population groups from the territories of the Jin dynasty were resettled in the cities of Merv and Tabriz in order to work as craftsmen and farmers. By the order of Hulagu, Buddhist temples were built on the territories

of Khorasan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Archaeologists have studied the ruins of one such temple not far from Merv. Its construction combined local and Far Eastern building traditions. In many cities there were Chinese quarters, and their presence exerted a certain influence on the local culture. Similar borrowings were numerous throughout the Mongol Empire. This created the possibility of novel associations between cultures, as well as the development of new fashions and tastes. However, one should not forget that the Mongols' aim was not to create a network for global informational exchanges. They were possessed with the idea of subjugating the world, and, therefore, many of the results of their contact with other cultures and civilizations were not premeditated. The spread of technology was largely a con­sequence of the political will of the Mongol Empire's rulers, rather than a conse­quence of the internal development of economy and trade.

The Mongols also aided the spread of various religions. But, in the final analysis, it was Islam that benefited the most: the ilkhans in Iran, the house of Chagatai in Central Asia, and the leaders of the Golden Horde in Desht-i Qipchaq all eventually converted to the faith of Allah. This was possibly caused by the nomads' marked predisposition toward Islam—the religion of warriors and merchants. One additional outcome of the large-scale cultural exchange was the broadening ofvisual horizons in Eurasia and the development of cartography. To a certain extent, this pushed Europeans to search for new sea routes to India and ultimately led to the Age of Discovery.

The Mongol conquests played an important role in setting off massive migratory processes, new cultural contacts, the conception of new tastes and fashion, and the development of cosmopolitanism. Mongol emperors were patrons of Chinese art. The Yuan court was a place where the confluence of various civilizations' cultures occurred. Elements of Chinese painting and decorative art entered Central Asian art, just as Central Asian brocade found its way to the Far East. The national cuisines of many countries were enriched by the dishes and culinary recipes of other peoples. In China during the Yuan dynasty, the elite became active consumers of dishes with lamb, pushing rice-based dishes into a secondary position. From the Middle East, noodles found their way to China and Italy, where they became one of the main na­tional dishes. Europeans became acquainted with the technology of distilling spirits, as well as other important technologies that were revelatory to the West, such as the compass, gunpowder, and printing.

The Mongol Empire was a multinational power, and the Mongols used diverse languages to govern conquered territories. The Mongols created special schools for the training of translators, and they catalyzed the process of creating multilanguage dictionaries, which started to appear in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in various states linked by trade over the Silk Road from China to Europe. Furthermore, there are countless linguistic borrowings of Mongolian words pre­sent in various languages, and many linguistic shifts stimulated by interactions with the Mongols. For example, the Russian language owes the following words to con­tact with the Mongol nomads: argamak (a breed of horse), bazar (bazaar), dengi (money), kazna (the treasury), tamozhnya (customs office), tabun (herd), tma (ten thousand, multitudes), and yamshchik (coachman, cf. the yam postal system).

The Mongols' influence on Russia was not limited to linguistic matters. They provided the basis for Russian imperialism. It is possible to trace the adoption of chancelleries, diplomatic and court etiquette, the yam postal system, and some ad­ministrative and military institutions back to the Mongols. Russian princes used the Mongols' principles of military organization, strategy, and tactics right up until the introduction of firearms. Taken as a whole, the Mongol influence on Russia was larger than their impact on either Chinese or Muslim culture.

To sum up, it seems unquestionable that the most important positive effect that the Mongol Empire had on world history was forging a single, unified system of land and sea routes used for international trade. For the first time, all of the major regional powers of the medieval world-system (Europe, Islam, India, China, and the Golden Horde) were integrated into a single informational, macroeconomic, and cultural space.

From an epidemiological perspective, this had one catastrophic consequence. In 1252 the Mongols came into contact with a plague, whose source was possibly located in the Himalayas. The bacteria spread to Southern China from Burma, but there it was temporarily halted, as the source of infection was successfully iso­lated. However, about a century later, in the year 1331, the infectious disease was reactivated, and the malady started to spread uncontrollably. Fifteen years later, the disease reached the territory of Desht-i Qipchaq and the Black Sea region. During their siege of Caffa in 1347, the Tatar Mongols launched dead soldiers who had died from the plague into the city using catapults. This led to an outbreak of the epi­demic in the city. From Caffa the plague spread to Venice, Genoa, Constantinople, and other Mediterranean port cities. The consequences of the catastrophe caused by this plague, the Black Death, were horrific for the entire Old World. According to historians, in the most densely populated centers, anywhere from a third to a half of the entire population died from the plague.^[1371]

For this reason, the most important legacy of the Mongol epoch is not so much the unprecedented informational, technological, and cultural exchanges that occurred in the wake of Chinggis Khan's creation of the Mongol Empire, but rather the lesson that humanity should learn from its past. In our time, when communication technologies allow for almost instantaneous contact with the Earth's other hemisphere and the dis­tance between continents is measured in hours not months, this question has taken on a particular urgency. It is easy to imagine what kind of catastrophic consequences the spread of AIDS, atypical pneumonia, avian flu, COVID-19, and other epidemic diseases could have on the modern world.

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