The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous empire in human history.
It sprung up into power, from a union of all the Mongol clans to dominating nearly all
of Eurasia in less than a century.
However, as quickly as it rose, it also fell, lasting in total from 1206 to 1368.
So, what kind of an impact did this massive but short-lived empire have on human history?
The Mongol Empire was one of the most powerful entities of world history, and even though
the empire didn’t last long before someone broke it, it still left a lasting legacy that
we see all around the world to this day.
I mean, think about it, there was an empire stretching from modern to Hungary, from Tonkin
to Turkey, and from Beijing to Busan… okay, that last one probably wasn’t the best example,
but you get the idea, the Mongol Empire was, as Overly Sarcastic Productions puts it, stupidly
big.
What I mean by this is that territory currently controlled by nearly 30 different countries
was under the authority of one giant empire, which made things like trade incredibly easy.
This makes sense, after all it can be hard to transport people and goods across borders,
and no one entity could police the whole of the Silk Road trade networks.
In other words, if Europe and China wanted to trade, there were various kingdoms in southwestern
Asia who could have called the final shots on that.
Okay, first some history.
For the longest time, China had been threatened by tribes north of their border, who they
called the Xiongnu, and would therefore do whatever it took to not be conquered by these
guys.
You know that pretty big, fairly decent wall that now attracts tourists from all around
the world?
Yep, it was to keep out the Xiongnu (there’s a reason it was built on what was the northern
border).
However, when they weren’t diverting energy and resources to building a giant wall, they
were diverting money to pay different tribes to go to war with each-other, in a kind of
divide and conquer but without the conquer scenario.
Thus, anyone who tried to unite the Mongols would quickly be seen as a national security
risk, and be captured and executed.
Then came a man named Temüjin, who-- after a series of fights and clever tactics that
made him quite popular amongst the people of the tribes he conquered-- was declared
the Khan of all the Mongol people (not to be confused with the KhAnubis, that’s a
very different thing).
You all know the Khan I’m talking about though, Genghis Khan (and yes, I’m pronouncing
it the Mongolian way).
Following the unification of the Mongol people, Genghis Khan quickly started to wage war against
more and more neighboring kingdoms, and blah blah blah, watch the Extra Credits series
if you want to actually see how this all happened, I’m just talking about what happened after
his empire fell.
Then, by the year 1279, Genghis Khan and his descendants had established an empire stretching
from St. Petersburg to Shenzhen, from Fujian to… just kidding, I’m not doing this again.
The reason why Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire are so controversial is because these
conquests resulted in the deaths of anywhere from 20 to 40 million people, about 5% of
the world’s population at the time.
This is a death toll so high that the carbon levels in the atmosphere actually fell by
a noticeable amount, with over 700 million tonnes of carbon scrubbed from the atmosphere
(maybe that’s a solution to climate change).
However, once this empire had been established, it became relatively easy to trade and transmit
goods and ideas across the empire.
In fact, a common saying throughout the empire about this newfound safety and stability along
the trade routes was, "a maiden bearing a nugget of gold on her head could wander safely
throughout the realm".
The Mongols even moved people from different cultures and professions around to advance
cultural and scientific understanding.
Religion was also famously widely tolerated under the Mongol leadership, possibly largely
because the Mongols knew that their religion was tied strongly to the steppe, where none
of their newfound subjects came from, and so didn’t expect them to convert to their
religion.
This period of stability was known as Pax Mongolica, and would last throughout the Empire’s
short lifespan.
The Mongols also reportedly brought gunpowder to Europe, soon after it was invented in China.
In fact, gunpowder was a key ingredient in the Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453,
so I guess you can say that the true fall of the Roman Empire was brought on indirectly
by some guy in Mongolia… as with the Protestant Reformation.
In short, while the Mongols themselves didn’t exactly do many sciences, they did bring together
all the different cultures of their realm, and help continue the spread of new technologies
and ideas throughout it.
However, another thing the Mongol Empire arguably helped spread was the Black Plague.
The plague had already started earlier in northern China, but now with people moving
around suddenly more freely than they had been before, the plague found an easy route
around Asia and into Europe.
There are stories about the Mongols themselves suffering from the plague, and throwing the
corpses of their deceased comrades into the walls of the city of Kaffa in 1346, as a form
of early biological warfare, with the plague then accidentally spreading throughout Europe
via Genoese merchants who decided that they didn’t want to stay there much longer.
However, I’d take this with a grain of salt, just a grain!
Because these accounts were written 100 years after this had allegedly taken place, and
the accounts were about as well sourced as a typical KhAnubis video.
Death and disease weren’t the only legacy of the Mongol Empire among the populations
of Europe and Asia though, there was also the genetic impact.
Genghis Khan was a very… prolific man, having had as many as 11 children in his life, with
those children going on to of course have more children themselves.
Genetic analysis has revealed that around 16 million men, about 0.5% of the world’s
male population, has a Y-chromosome inherited from Genghis Khan himself (I mean, this might
also be true with women as well, but biological women don’t tend to have Y chromosomes,
so that’s kind of hard to check).
In short, the Mongol Empire obviously had a massive impact on world history, arguably
changing the course of most of Asian history in the latter half of the 2nd millennium.
Much like the empire founded by Alexander the Great nearly 2,000 years prior, the Mongol
Empire didn’t last very long before it broke up.
The empire was divided in four by the year 1300, and these Khanates themselves would
go on to influence new empires.
Genghis Khan has left an interesting influence on world history, though.
Depending on who you ask, he was either a nation builder who united most of a continent,
or a tyrant who caused little but death and destruction.
I fall a bit more towards the middle, but it’s important to remember people and events
from history for everything both good and bad that came from them and their achievements.
It just depends on how many of those achievements were good or bad.
Thank you as always for watching.
By the way, for the next few weeks, I will be going on a trip throughout five different
cities in east Asia and Australia, so if you want to meet up or suggest something for me
to do in the cities I’ll be going to, feel free to get in touch through email or social
media.
I will see you next week from Hong Kong.