The Limits of 'Global History': Interpreting the Mongol Yoke

Note: This article was originally written in 2021 as part of an Oxford history course

There is a moment in history marked by the “radical creation” of the concept of “universal peace.”[1] It is an era that has increasingly attracted scholarly appraisal as “the onset of global history.”[2] To quote one historian, the epoch “triggered a long-lasting cultural effervescence; a thriving artistic and scientific exchange; booming international trade; new and abiding forms of legitimacy, jurisprudence and imperial culture.”[3] What is the historical moment outlined here, in such glowing terms? Who was fortunate enough to live through such innovating times? 

The answer would most certainly come as a surprise to both historians and the broader population in decades and centuries past, for these descriptions refer to none other than the Mongol Empire. The Mongols, or Tartars, have long been identified for their profound violence. Indeed, in a period still reeling from the brutality of the Crusades, Christians and Muslims alike agreed that the nomadic warriors were “sent by God to punish the nations for their sins.”[4] Until recent times, most nationalist historians have framed the Mongol conquerors as a regressive force in human history, responsible for their country’s “backwardness.”[5] At the forefront of popular imagination of the Mongols, too, are stories of twisted barbarity or unspeakable tragedy like that given by one Russian chronicler. After the nomads conquered Ryazan, he bluntly wrote that “’no eye remained open to weep for the dead’.”[6]

The discrepancy between such divergent evaluations of the Mongols can be explained by the rise of revisionist history in the 1950s. A more positive assessment of Mongol influence was first brought to the forefront of scholarly consciousness through the discipline of art history, and especially in the work of Basil Gray.[7] Mongol-era Ilkhanid artistic productions deserved further attention, he argued, especially for their syncretism. Over time, historians began answering his call, and the Mongol legacy has been subject to reinterpretations and revision, most prominently by Jack Weatherford. Although cultural historians, microhistorians, and others play significant roles in transforming Mongol historiography, global historians in particular have been responsible for rewriting the legacy of the Chinggisids.

The subsequent analysis, therefore, investigates the contributions and limits of global history to understanding the Tartar legacy. Historians who employ the methods of global history may or may not consider themselves to be practitioners of “global history.” After delineating how that term is to be understood for the purposes of this essay, an analysis of the merits of the approach for examining the specific case of the Mongols follows.

As a subject of inquiry, Chinggisid Eurasia offers some unique advantages to circumventing common critiques of global history, namely that the approach is Eurocentric and frames globalization as inevitable. Furthermore, the methods of global history have much to contribute to understanding the Mongol legacy by offering important context to cultural, economic, and societal transformations. An examination of how global histories of the Mongols have been written, however, exposes its limitations. A weak grounding in primary sources, eschewing of human agency, and preoccupation with the present means many of the bolder claims by global historians are unconvincing. Moreover, Mongol hegemony facilitated interactions that yielded regressions in addition to progressions. In practice, global histories of the Mongol Empire neglect these negative consequences of a connected Eurasia. Employing the methods of global history to assess the Mongol legacy is fruitful for explicating positive cultural, economic, and societal transformations but falls short at explaining concurrent transformations resulting from disintegration and discord.

What does global history as a term and methodology mean? There is ambiguity about whether global history is something beginning in the 1950s or as old as Herodotus, whether it is dominant or “small and weak” in the contemporary field of history, and what exactly it entails.[8] According to Patrick O’Brien, it is defined by the study of historical connections or comparisons across continents, oceans, or countries to investigate transformations.[9] David Motadel and Richard Drayton agree that the approach is best characterized by exploring connections or comparisons across geographically separate historical communities. Perhaps the preeminent expert on global history, Sebastian Conrad offers a more precise description: “If “comparisons and connections” serves as the conventional shorthand for global history, then we must add a third “c”: causality, pursued up to a global scale.”[10] For the purposes of this study, this latter definition will suffice: work examining connections and interactions to explain historical transformations is considered to be employing the methods of global history.

A global history of the Mongol Empire succeeds at yielding new insights into processes of cultural, economic, and societal transformation across Eurasia that transcends suffocating national confines. Global historians consciously and deliberately abjure national narratives that too often imply moral or cultural superiority of one people; it is no different for global historians of the Chinggisids. As one author notes, discourses on Mongol violence are “often freighted with strong nationalist undertones.”[11] Studying history outside of a nationalist paradigm is thus useful to correct chauvinistic distortions. Furthermore, the Mongol case in particular offers the advantage of overcoming several common critiques of global history. One is the risk of Eurocentrism – although European sources are important for a global history of the Mongols, they are not dominant; more significantly, the legacy of the Mongols is not the triumph of the West. Kenneth Pommeranz warns that global history risks reinforcing a popular view of globalization as something inevitable and in which “one need not understand particular histories or cultures to function.”[12] But the Mongol case, insofar as it ended with disunity, subverts a narrative of inevitability.

As has been noted, art historians began the reexamination of Mongol Eurasia and global historians have since contributed significantly to understanding syncretic cultural productions. Global historian Morris Rossabi affirms that in the context of Pax Mongolica, “Iranian miniature paintings, Chinese plays, and Russian gold vessels emerged from the ensuing cultural efflorescence.”[13] A sophisticated trade network and patterns of Mongol patronage encouraged such cultural blossoming. Under the Tatar yoke, Chinese potters became aware of a West Asian market and “adopted additional Islamic shapes, including tankards, the so-called moon flash, and several types of ewers” to appeal to more “flamboyant” foreign tastes that diverged from traditional Chinese “emphasis on refinement, introspection, and purity.”[14] Of course, trade went in both directions and “West Asian artists would themselves adopt some of these Chinese motifs in tiles, pottery, and illustrated manuscripts.”

In addition to shaping their designs according to the tastes of a wider market, artists likewise had Mongol patrons in mind. These suzerains had aspirations and tastes “shaped not only by their encounter with the urban, Islamic culture of Iran but also by contact with the highly sophisticated civilization of China.”[15] To take one individual case, Rossabi affirms that Khubilai Khan “needed to be a patron of literature and the arts” if he “wished to gain in stature as ruler of China.”[16] Indeed, beyond supporting artistic productions, the Mongol elite were “avid patrons of history and historical chronicles,” supporting eminent figures like Rashid al-Din who wrote, arguably, the first world history: the Compendium of Chronicles.[17]

Explaining how such artistic and historical productions developed benefits enormously from the methods of global history. Only through an understanding of the enormous commercial market that stretched across Eurasia and of the active role of Mongol patrons does it become clear how artistic conventions and innovations developed. New artistic dialogues even spread to Europe: they “would have moved just as easily back to Siena from the rich environment of Ilkhanid art, a fusion of Persian, Chinese, Mongol, and Tibetan styles,” and may thus help elucidate Chinese and Persian design elements in Sienese art.[18] A wider lens that emphasizes connections and interactions is crucial for addressing causality – how “porous, translocal Eurasian artistic communities…stimulated unprecedented levels of creative synthesis across the continent.”[19]

Economic transformations are closely connected to cultural efflorescence and likewise benefit from a global historical analysis. Although specific figures are difficult to come by, it is clear that “opportunities for importation of silk increased with the Mongol conquests, and by the 1250s Chinese silk was being traded into Genoa, Lucca, and Tuscany from Ayas in Armenian Cilicia via Sivas and Tabriz in Iran.”[20] Khubilai Khan “supported commerce by increasing the flow of paper currency, providing government loans for long-distance trade, and building roads and canals.”[21] As a result, trade and cross-continental contact reached a level never before seen: cobalt from Europe allowed Chinese potters to make blue and white porcelain sold throughout the Muslim world, the art of distilling sugar reached the Far East,[22] and there was a sharp rise in the use of silver from England to Bengal to North Africa as uncoined silver became the standard unit for pricing transactions across Mongol Eurasia.[23]

More significantly, however, is the insight that a global historical approach yields to European conceptions of the broader economic world. Rossabi asserts that the most enduring legacy of travel, trade, and contacts between Europe and Asia was to foster “a commercial revolution and an age of exploration in the West.”[24] A brief period of intense interaction, it is argued, imprinted a lasting fascination among Europeans for the East, a fascination that would inspire later Europeans to voyage around the Cape of Good Hope.[25]

In conjunction with cultural and economic transformations, social and political diffusions resulting from a Mongol era benefit from global historical analyses. One consequence of Mongol hegemony was greater opportunities for women. In both Persia and Korea, princesses attained an elevated status and became intimately involved in politics;[26] in China, meanwhile, a few elite women artists such as Guan Daosheng capitalized on the conquerors’ more liberal attitudes to come to the fore with their work.[27] In India, a global historical approach reveals why “several Delhi sultans actively enticed Muslim religious scholars, scientists, merchants and soldiers into their realm.”[28] As the argument goes, exposure to Mongol practices explains why these transformations occurred. 

Global historian Roxann Prazniak goes so far as to argue that the development of humanism in Italy depended on its relation to a religiously tolerant Mongol Eurasia. According to her, the painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti “employed his sensibilities to express a place-based articulation of humanist ideals that were emergent across Eurasia.”[29] Indeed, she contends, one interpretation of Lorenzetti’s frescoes is as a critique of Catholic “exclusion” in favor of a Tartar-inspired “reorganization of human relations that acknowledged diverse histories and secular life.”[30] Only when segments of European society for the first time connected with Asia’s diverse cultural life could ideas of humanism and religious tolerance begin to thrive. 

This latter claim about the development of humanism, however, reveals the limits of global history to extracting the significance of the Mongol legacy. As Prazniak admits, her analysis is just “one reading” of Lorenzetti’s frescoes based primarily on secondary literature and her own interpretation of the material pieces.[31] The dearth of primary sources represents a major limitation for the larger claims of global historians of the Mongol Empire: claims like the Mongols “benefitted the Orthodox Church,”[32] and “our globalized world can be viewed as a progeny of the Mongols’ imperial enterprise.”[33] Moreover, such broad-sweeping claims almost always portray the Mongols positively, undermining their persuasiveness.

While in theory global history studies discord as much as connection, in practice global historians tend to deemphasize the negative legacy of Tartar hegemony. Mongol military techniques have long captivated historians, but global historians have little to say about that aspect of Mongol legacy. Rossabi, includes one pithy affirmation that Mongol rule “was not free of all violence,” without expanding on that violence.[34] George Lane echoes Rossabi in describing Hulegu – the butcher of Baghdad – as having stabilized the region, ending the turmoil of Abbasid rule.[35] Human agency plays little role in such narratives, and culpability for dramatic population declines across Eurasia is largely ignored.

The deemphasis is disappointing because a global history that attends to discord and disintegration would contribute to a more comprehensive analysis of the Mongol legacy. National humiliations would be a useful subject to global history – a way to remove them from confining national contexts. Rossabi passingly mentions Zheng Sixiao, a painter hostile to the Mongols who used art to criticize foreign rulers; it is a fascinating topic to explore but most analysis is confined to painters promoted by Mongol elites.[36] Likewise, Qubilai’s financial adviser Ahmad plays a peripheral role in the writing of Mongol global history, but he was considered an evil minister and thoroughly hated by the Chinese public which, according to Allsen, translated to “deep-seated anti-Islamic attitudes on the popular level.”[37] Global history’s emphasis on movement privileges study of merchants and diplomats, usually Persian-speaking Muslims or Italian-speaking Christians, but their high profits are only half of the story. According to Saunders, “a high proportion of their wealth flowed out of China and the growing scarcity of coined money probably explains the lavish issue of paper notes which led to an inflationary crisis in the fourteenth century.”[38] That is a story largely unexplored in the practice of global history today.

The case study of the Mongol Empire reveals where a global historical approach is restricted in its usefulness. While every methodology is limited, emphasizing connections, interactions, and scales would enormously benefit from concurrent emphasis on disconnection and friction. In Mongol Eurasia, this might mean analyzing how the Tartars contributed to Russian tsardom, a decline in Islamic openness to scientific inquiry, and the development of national consciousness in Persia.[39] Further, it would do well to examine the relationship between plagues and connection, rather than dismissing that connection as something merely “seductive to believe.”[40]

Appraising the Mongol legacy through the methods of global history contributes significantly to understanding transformations that took place in the realms of culture, economics, and society. Rich, syncretic art was only possible under a system of Mongol patronage and vast commercial exchanges, a European fascination with the East was stimulated by cross-continent contacts, and even ideas about women in power and religious tolerance took root under the Tatar yoke. Yet, as historian Thomas Allsen notes, “cultural diversity and confrontation were ingredients in their [Mongol] success, not cultural unity. Internationalism, like nationalism, is a modern ideological construct.”[41] Indeed, some claims by global historians of the Mongol Empire are wholly unconvincing and seem tainted by contemporary interest in the benefits of globalization. Discord and disintegration are as significant as integration and diffusion under the Chinggisids. After all, it was an era constructed on the traumatization, humiliation, and annihilation of whole civilizations.

Bibliography

Allsen, Thomas T. Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Biran, Michal. "The Mongol Empire and Inter-civilizational Exchange." In The Cambridge World History, edited by Benjamin Kedar and Merry Wiesner-Hanks, 534-58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Conrad, Sebastian. What Is Global History? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Drayton, Richard, and David Motadel. “Discussion: the Futures of Global History.” Journal of Global History 13, no. 1 (2018): 1–21. doi:10.1017/S1740022817000262.

George Lane. Central Asiatic Journal 56 (2013): 260–67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13173/centasiaj.56.2013.0260.

Morgan, David. “Mongol Historiography since 1985: The Rise of Cultural History.” In Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change: the Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors, edited by Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran, 271-282. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2015.

________. The Mongols. Peoples of Europe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.

O’Brien, Patrick. “Historiographical Traditions and Modern Imperatives for the Restoration of Global History.” Journal of Global History 1, no. 1 (2006): 3–39. doi:10.1017/S1740022806000027.

Pomeranz, Kenneth. "Histories for a Less National Age." The American Historical Review 119, no. 1 (2014): 1-22.

Prazniak, Roxann. "Siena on the Silk Roads: Ambrogio Lorenzetti and the Mongol Global Century, 1250-1350." Journal of World History 21, no. 2 (2010): 177-217.

Rossabi, Morris. The Mongols and Global History: A Norton Documents Reader. First ed. Norton Documents Reader Series. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.

________. “The Mongol Empire and its Impact on the Arts of China.” In Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change: the Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors, edited by Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran, 214-227. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2015.

Saunders, J. J. The History of the Mongol Conquests. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.