Recent research has enlightened the groundbreaking impact of the Pax Mongolica— how it contributed to science, administration, literature, art, and medicine; and how it promoted religious toleration, diplomacy, gender equality, and social openness to differences. Many things we see as symbols of advancement and modernity are included in the Pax Mongolica, and its legacy on global history is unprecedented.
Today most historians have accepted the notion of a Mongol world empire, merging East Asia, the Islamic world, the Slavic world, and Europe into one economic system. In 13th and 14th century, faraway regions of the globe came into contact more than superficially and were linked in a common network of exchange and production. For the first time in history, people and caravans could safely travel from Europe to China.
As a result, trade, scientific and artistic exchange intensified in all of Eurasia. Historians call this unprecedented commercial boom Pax Mongolica, “The Mongol Peace”. The Mongol Peace was a key macro-historical phenomenon in global history on pair with such world-shaping phenomena as the Trans-Saharan trade, and the Columbian Exchange. The Pax Mongolica transcends the separation between medieval and modern; it bridges the gap between the ancient world’s Silk Road and the modern world’s Age of Exploration, transforming our historical perception of both.
The post-conquest stability of the Mongol dominions allowed such great exchanges, and the Mongol rulers created strategies to trigger them. Their liberal policies led to the densification of the connections from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea and beyond as far as China. These policies combined state control (treaties, currency issue, taxes, roads supervision) and liberal exchange (fluidity in partnership, alliances based on common interest and not on ethnic or religious affiliation, low taxation regime). Significantly, during the Pax Mongolica, we see no clash between globalization and state building.
The Mongols created favorable conditions for markets to flourish. They developed a multi-lateral diplomacy that featured mutual accommodations and switching strategic alliances. The agreements established with local Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and others led to the transformation of the mercantile, artistic and intellectual networks. A complex system of currency exchange developed. Multilingual glossaries were produced in Egypt, in Central Asia, in Yemen and in China.
Under Mongol leadership, new cities emerged on the model of Karakorum. The descendants of Chinggis Khan chose to locate them in great river valleys for their ecological potential, for intensive pastoral life and for agriculture. During the reigns of the first khans, the massive demographic increase of the empire turned these areas into major commercial hubs. In the thirteenth century, Mongols started to finance the construction of buildings, including facilities for merchants, public baths, mosques, churches, and monasteries. Women of the elite (khatun) were actively involved in the development of permanent structures in the steppes, commissioning schools, and impressive scientific and religious complexes.
The Khaans valued merchants, granting them lofty distinctions, privileges, and tax exemptions. Nomads invested in fashionable clothing, travel equipment and weaponry and craved furs, leather, and imported luxury fabrics made of silk and cotton. The steppe had its social markers: riding a horse, carrying expensive weapons, and wearing jewels, belts, hats, fine robes, and leather boots. High-ranking women had a very distinctive way of dressing and wore a conical headdress (boqta) as a widely-recognized symbol of their status. They showed themselves in public spaces, unveiled, displaying their wealth ostensibly. The “Mongol fashion” made an impression on foreign travelers who noted that many people, even Europeans, wanted to look like them.
The current historical research offers a new understanding of the Pax Mongolica that reflects how the nomadic elites transformed the economy, and how their creative economic system was part of their regime. Their great achievements came from the nature of Chinggis Khaan’s empire which was both nomadic and modern, and from its economic impact which helped to establish new bonds between distant societies. They supported and rewarded the best people, were they craftsmen, military engineers, cooks, traders, musicians, or scientists. Their empire was open to multiple ethnic groups, religions, and cultures; and they hired people for their abilities, loyalty, and hardworking skills and not for their color, gender, and wealth.
Under Mongols’ leadership, even the sedentary vassals of the khans experienced extraordinary economic vitality. Artisanal production grew dramatically and trade developed rapidly, bringing Eurasian long-distance commerce to the far north and to Russian towns, thus creating an unprecedented trade network that connected the circuits of the Baltic, the Volga, the Caspian Sea, and the Black Sea in a single operative system, which was itself linked to Central Asia, Middle East, and Europe. The Mongols enlarged the commercial horizon and multiplied the trade prospects of their subjects. In doing so, they had profound effects on the future of the world.
By order of the Khaans, not only craftsmen, manuals, and tools, but crops, plants, fruits, trees, and animals were exchanged all over Eurasia. In China, the Mongols did not necessarily introduce new crops but popularized a range of products such as the carrots, called “Iranian turnips”, Iranian beans, a variety of citrus, and watermelons that were known before in the East. And finally cotton became widespread under the Mongols as the khans supported the plantations of cotton in China.
Once in power the Mongols show that they had an innate sense of the links between human society and natural environment. They developed new tastes that fitted with their spirituality. Hence, the new Eurasian cuisine appeared in connection with Chinggis Khaan’s quest for both healthiness and longevity. In China, Iran, Russia, and Europe Chinggis Khaan and his descendants transformed social and cultural behaviors, introducing new fashions that would last until today. The history of the consumption of rice, noodles, and tea is deeply linked to the Pax Mongolica – the spread of crafts, practices, technologies, and peoples that transformed medieval Eurasia and paved the way for our modern world.
Mongols were nomads and, as such, became fierce promoters of good health and increasingly ingenious in their ways to cure diseases. Aged-old cultures, like the Pazyryk, knew hemp and its medicinal properties, and used opium, henbane, extract of mandrake, and wine as analgesics. Compared to other Eurasian cultures, the steppe horsemen considered agronomy, cuisine, medicine, and ecology as deeply interconnected and subjects of primary importance. For the Mongols especially, plants and trees were symbols of rebirth and longevity that referred to “the tree of life”. This explains why the khans ordered the planting of trees throughout their empire.
Contemporary travelers to the Mongol empire described an impressive nomadic organization: the vast numbers of people involved, their massive camps with their city-like facilities, the huge mobile market which followed the people and their herds. But also the mobile administration, which included a minting workshop, the chancellery and the treasury, with secretaries, accountants, and elite watchmen. The Mongols created a strong link among people, place, and mobility. The nomads produced space when they invested in city building, changed their migration routes, gathered, or dispersed, and connected places through the yam system (Өртөө in Mongolian). They understood and capitalized on mobility which they turned into strategies of ruling.
The collection of taxes and tribute in the form of cash, goods, and people was the main resource of the empire in its formative period. Trade revenues gradually increased in importance from the mid-thirteenth century onwards. The descendants of Chinggis Khaan transformed the most productive trades of their regions into quasi-monopolies: the fur, slave, grain, and salt trades in the west; the cotton, rice, and silk trades in the east. They developed the trade tax (tamga). This also meant that Mongol political leaders needed to attract merchants and their caravans to their camps and mobile courts, which they transformed into major redistribution centers.
Although the Mongol khaans accumulated commodities in their treasuries, their ultimate purpose was not to retain but to circulate wealth. Rashid al-din (1247–1318), vizier of Ghazan Khaan, recorded several anecdotes emphasizing the liberality of his masters: One day, when he [Great Khaan Ögödei] had laid the foundations of Kharkhorum, he went into the treasury and saw nearly a hundred thousand bars [of silver]. “What benefit do we derive from all these stores?” he asked. “They have to be constantly guarded. Have it announced that everybody who wants a bar should come and take one.” The people of the city, high and low, rich, and poor alike, all rushed to the treasury, and everyone got an abundant share.
According to Rashid al-din, the khan claimed that what he had given to his subjects would return to him anyway. In the Mongol conception, the circle of redistribution brought happiness. The things they shared, apportioned, and circulated among themselves had a direct impact on the well-being of the society and its vital hierarchy. This was the key to maintain social order, and to repair social disorders. It is hard to reconstruct how the Mongols of the past defined collective happiness and prosperity, but they certainly believed that the circular movement of things was crucial in producing them. This notion of circulation linked to the happiness of the people was a necessary element of their economic system.
With the Pax Mongolica, the Mongols engaged in the creation of the largest integrated market in pre-modern history. They built new institutions to support Chinggis Khaan’s world order: institutions that enhanced communication (Mongol written language, yam network) and political consensus. They allowed trade to flourish by offering security and safety for merchants, travelers, and messengers.
Finally, the Mongols not only changed the world by implementing new institutions, they also transformed the vision peoples had of the world they lived in. The Pax Mongolica generated a new knowledge of the world which deeply influenced the sciences including astronomy, geography, cartography, and mathematics. New encounters and transfer of knowledge increased, leading to a better understanding of space and time. It is not by chance that Rashid al-din composed his World History (Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh) at roughly the same time as Marco Polo wrote his Book of the Marvels of the World. Concurrently, new maps were produced in the Mongol empire that would shake the Islamic, Chinese, and Western traditions of cartography. In the 14th century, the representation of the world has changed radically: on maps references to legendary and sacred histories are replaced by scientific information based on concrete geographical knowledge. The Atlas Catalan (c.1375) and Fra Mauro’s world map (c.1450) are the best examples of this new production which shows the first accurate representation of the known world.