Mongols Chart



Rise of the Mongols |Began as an unstable collection of feuding nomadic tribes (collection of lineage-based, kinship clans)

• First major attack on agricultural societies towards their south in 1209…China

• Multiple generations created the ultimate Mongol Empire – descendents of Chinggis Khan (Ogodei, Mongke, Hulegu, Khubilai)

• Empire came out of its own momentum without any grand scheme

• Chinggis Khan began military expansion in order to keep the unity of his newly formed Mongol Nation

• At its height the Mongols themselves were only 700,000 people, but they expanded rapidly due to their well-disciplined army with good leaders | |

|Social |Conquered peoples offered little more than subordinate, defeated status |

|Structures |Borrowed craftsman and spread throughout the empire as needed |

| |Women had more freedom – ride horses, shoot arrows, sometimes warriors, file for divorce and inherit land, own land, remarry without negative |

| |connotations, considered more equal…looked down upon by the Chinese and others |

| |Commanders of the army dealt with same hardships as the warriors – creates loyalty, egalitarian |

|Political Forms |Military units of 10, 100, 1000, and 10,000 warriors – all about organization |

| |Relied heavily on foreigners for administration in Persia (bureaucracy); in China they remained as the ruling class but adopted Chinese |

| |political styles (ruler has the Mandate of Heaven, postal system, administrative practices, taxation) |

| |In China, created a new dynasty – Yuan Dynasty |

| |Militarily relied on horses and horseback fighting – superior to others |

| |Assimilated conquered armies into their own – distributed throughout the ranks |

| |Khubilai Khan’s policies were often benevolent because he improved roads, built canals, lowered taxes, limited death penalties and torture, and|

| |supported peasant agriculture - China |

|Interactions |Taxed the poor Persian peasants (alliteration!) so much that their farmland became wasteland – irrigation systems didn’t have maintenance |

|with the |needed |

|Environment |Plague (Black Death!!!!!) started in Central Asia – came from fleas on rats, spread to people |

| |Fleas ate grass? (leave this fact for Jay and Jay alone…) |

| |After taking over China, prohibited other pastoral people from grazing on Chinese farmland because it destroyed Chinese pasturelands and farms |

|Culture |Never tried to spread their own faith among their conquered peoples |

| |Adopted or allowed different religious faiths, as long as it didn’t provide political opposition |

| |Weren’t as technologically advanced as the people they conquered – Chinese (gunpowder, battering rams and catapults) and Persians (governmental|

| |structures) |

| |Russian Orthodox Church flourished since the Mongols did not oppose them |

| |Starting religion was based on rituals invoking ancestors, performed around the hearth, involved shamans communicating with spirits (especially|

| |Tengri, supreme sky-god) |

|Economic Forms |Promoted international commerce (trade from China and Persia, long distance trade across the Silk Roads) for taxation reasons |

| |Brought Eurasia into a single interacting network (Silk Roads, political organization) |

| |Offered merchants 10% above asking price to promote trade – Mongolia and China |

|Fall of the |By 1350 empire was in disarray, in large part from the Black Death, which killed between 33 and 66% of the population. This was after their |

|Mongols |golden age under Khubilai Khan |

| |By 1450 had lost control of Chinese, Persian (lost control by integrating), and Russian civilizations |

| |Memory of Mongols motivated the Ming dynasty to renew interest in Confucian values, wipe out traces of Mongol Empire |

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Mongols Chart

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