Introduction to Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

Pastoral Peoples on the Global Stage

The Mongol Moment

1200–1500

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Chinggis Khan at Prayer This sixteenth-century Indian painting shows Chinggis Khan at prayer in the midst of battle. He is perhaps praying to Tengri, the great sky god, on whom the Mongol conqueror based his power. From History of the Mongols, India (Lahore), Moghul, Court of Akbar the Great, ca. 1590/Library, Golestan Palace, Teheran, Iran/Werner Forman/Art Resource, NY

LookingBack and Looking Around: The Long History of Pastoral Peoples

The World of Pastoral Societies

Before the Mongols: Pastoralists in History

Breakout: The Mongol Empire

From Temujin to Chinggis Khan: The Rise of the Mongol Empire

Explaining the Mongol Moment

Encountering the Mongols: Comparing Three Cases

China and the Mongols

Persia and the Mongols

Russia and the Mongols

The Mongol Empire as a Eurasian Network

Toward a World Economy

Diplomacy on a Eurasian Scale

Cultural Exchange in the Mongol Realm

The Plague: An Afro-Eurasian Pandemic

Reflections: Changing Images of Pastoral Peoples

Zooming In: A Mongol Failure: The Invasion of Japan

Zooming In: Khutulun, a Mongol Wrestler Princess

Working with Evidence: Perspectives on the Mongols

In late 2012, the Central Asian nation of Mongolia celebrated a “Day of Mongolian Pride,” marking the birth of the country’s epic hero Chinggis Khan 850 years earlier. Officials laid wreaths at a giant monument to the warrior leader; wrestlers and archers tested their skills in competition; dancers performed; over 100 scholars made presentations; traditional costumes abounded. In central London, no less, a large bronze statue of Mongolia’s founder was unveiled for the occasion. For this small and somewhat remote country, seeking to navigate between its two giant neighbors, China and Russia, it was an occasion to express its own distinctive identity. And Chinggis Khan is central to that identity. With his bloody conquests played down, Chinggis Khan is celebrated as a unifier of the Mongolian peoples, the creator of an empire tolerant of various faiths, and a promoter of economic and cultural ties among distant peoples.

The 2012 celebrations marked a shift in Mongolian thinking about Chinggis Khan that has been under way since the 1990s. Under the country’s earlier Soviet-backed communist government, the great Mongol leader had been regarded in very negative terms. After all, his forces had decimated Russia in the thirteenth century, and resentment lingered. But as communism faded in both Russia and Mongolia at the end of the twentieth century, the memory of Chinggis Khan made a remarkable comeback in the land of his birth. Vodka, cigarettes, a chocolate bar, two brands of beer, the country’s best rock band, and the central square of the capital city all bore his name, while his picture appeared on Mongolia’s stamps and money. Rural young people on horseback sang songs in his honor, and their counterparts in urban Internet cafés constructed Web sites to celebrate his achievements. The elaborate celebrations in 2012 for his 850th birthday represent just the latest expression of his continuing centrality to modern Mongolia.

All of this is a reminder of the enormous and surprising role that the Mongols played in the Eurasian world of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and of the continuing echoes of that long-vanished empire. More generally, the story of the Mongols serves as a useful corrective to the almost-exclusive focus that historians often devote to agricultural peoples and their civilizations, for the Mongols, and many other such peoples, were pastoralists who disdained farming while centering their economic lives around their herds of animals. Normally they did not construct elaborate cities, enduring empires, or monumental works of art, architecture, and written literature. Nonetheless, they left an indelible mark on the historical development of the entire Afro-Eurasian hemisphere, and particularly on the agricultural civilizations with which they so often interacted.

A MAP OF TIME
ca. 4000 B.C.E. Beginning of pastoral economies
ca. 1000 B.C.E. Beginning of horseback riding
ca. 200 B.C.E.–200 C.E. Xiongnu Empire
6th–10th centuries Various Turkic empires
7th–10th centuries Arab Empire
10th–14th centuries Conversion of Turkic peoples to Islam
11th–12th centuries Almoravid Empire
1162–1227 Life of Temujin (Chinggis Khan)
1209–1368 Mongol rule in China
1237–1480 Mongol rule in Russia
1241–1242 Mongol attacks on Eastern Europe
1258 Mongol seizure of Baghdad
1274, 1281 Failed Mongol attacks on Japan
1295 Mongol ruler of Persia converts to Islam
1348–1350 High point of Black Death in Europe

SEEKING THE MAIN POINT

What has been the role in world history of pastoral peoples in general and the Mongols in particular?