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These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. Yet it was not just Novgorod that seems to have prospered. The fourteenth century saw the emergence of Moscow--previously a town of no consequence--as a significant political and cultural center, in the first instance precisely because of its princes' close relationship with their overlords, the Mongol khans.
The pattern that seems to emerge here is one in which areas beyond any real focus of Mongol concerns might in fact be left alone. Areas central to the Mongols the capital of the Golden Horde, Sarai, would be a good example , might be built up by them.
Regions that had been devastated might recover rapidly, if the khans so chose, but other such regions might remain wasteland. One example of the latter, emphasized by David Morgan in his largely negative assessment of the Mongol impact, was some regions in Iran which had depended on the sophisticated underground network of irrigation channels that the Mongols destroyed.
We know, however, that most nomads relied on a symbiotic relationship with sedentary peoples; such dependence then required that agriculture and towns continue to flourish, at least in the regions that would directly interact with the Mongols. This is not to say that regularized Mongol exactions were easily borne by the populations which were counted in censuses and taxed.
In many cases, it seems clear that such taxes or the tribute payments required of local rulers were indeed very heavy. However, there is simply no way to know whether such impositions "set back" economic development "for centuries," or were substantially worse than what another conqueror at another time might have imposed.
In the case of Russia, for example, the tendency has been to exaggerate the level of tribute payments. Arguably the Russian princes, once free of any Mongol control, greatly exceeded their former masters in rapaciousness, aided to be sure by what they had learned from the Mongols about tax collection.
Any discussion of the economic impact of the Mongols must include trade and the production of commercial goods. Juvaini makes very clear that Chingis Khan's invasion of Central Asia in was connected with trade disputes. In fact Juvaini has the Khan boast of the fact that his treasury was full of rich products of international trade; the Mongols were no rubes when it came to dealings with deceitful Muslim merchants.
Archaeology confirms that even before the rise of Chingis, towns in Mongolia were actively involved in trade, in which the patterns of relations with China can be traced back to the beginnings of the "Silk Road. The development of the Silk Road commerce under the Mongols was a result both of its direct promotion and the creation of an infrastructure which ensured safe conditions for travel.
The direct policies obviously could cut two ways. There is ample evidence that craftsmen were re-settled individually and en masse at the whim of the khans. Among those he met there was a Parisian goldsmith, Guillaume Bouchier, who had been captured at Belgrad on the Danube. Bouchier's French wife had also been carried off during the Mongol invasion of Hungary. Thomas Allsen has carefully documented how the Mongol taste for luxury Middle Eastern textiles led to the transplantation of whole colonies of weavers from the Middle East to Mongolia and north China.
Marco Polo describes such settlements in the time of Qubilai Khan. Of course, what was positive for the heartland of the Empire likely had a negative impact on the areas from which the craftsmen were conscripted.
The fragmentation of the Empire, a process which began even before the last conquests had been completed, was a result both of political competition and competition for control of trade routes. An illustration of this can be seen in relations between the Golden Horde which encompassed the northwest quadrant of the Empire , on the one hand, and the Ilkhanids who ruled in the Middle East and their successors the Timurids, on the other.
Included in the territories of the Golden Horde were the Crimea, with its trading connections to Constantinople and further West, and the lower Don and Volga Rivers, which funneled trade from the north and controlled the routes into Central Asia. In a commercial handbook compiled around , the Florentine merchant Pegolotti describes the situation like this:.
Eventually, the Mongol Empire was divided into four khanates — Yuan dynasty, Golden Horde, Chagatai Khanate, and Ilkhanate — but the Pax Mongolica remained until the disintegration of the khanates and the outbreak of the Black Plague in Asia; a disease which spread along the trade routes, including the Silk Road, and had far reaching social, economical and political effects for both Euroasia and northern Africa. Even before the rise of Genghis Khan , towns scattered along the Silk Road in Mongolia were actively involved in the trade that took place along its route, and this is supported by both archaeological evidence and written sources.
When Genghis Khan eventually rose to power and began his conquests, control of the Silk Road trade — and dealing with certain trade disputes — were an essential part of the development. The flourishing of the Silk Road under Mongolian rule was due to several factors, including Mongolian promotion of the route and the improvement of vital infrastructure that helped make the trips safer.
The Mongolian khans were known to sometimes forcefully re-settling individuals along the Silk Road as they saw fit. The Franciscan monk Willem from Rubruck, who traveled on the Silk Road in the s and visited the Mongol capital Karakorum, does for instance write about how he met a goldsmith named Guillaume Bouchier in the capital.
Bouchier, a Paris native, had been kidnapped by Mongols at Belgrad and ended up in Karakorum. Research at Cambridge. Cambridge Central Asia Forum. Out now: Kalra, Prajakti. November Upcoming events. Latest news. View all news. Quick links. Twitter ccaforum.
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