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The mongol Empire (Gengis Khan (early live (was the oldest son, his father…

- - - - more cited than read
      - probably the most read english history book apart from Sellar and
        Yeatman’s 1066 and All That
      - Gibbon’s Law: “Empires may not fall until they have previously undergone a process of decline”
      - there were plenty of explanation for the fall of the roman empire: Dr Bryan Ward-Perkins reproduces a list (in German) of 210 reasons which have at one time or another been advanced
      - It is worth quoting some of Heather’s conclusion: “The Roman Empire had sown the seeds of its own destruction . . . not because of internal weaknesses that had evolved over the centuries, nor because of new ones evolved, but as a consequence of its relationship with the Germanic world . . . The west Roman state fell not because of the weight of its own ‘stupendous fabric’, but because its Germanic neighbours had responded to its power in ways that the Romans could never have foreseen
  - - - This did not of course mean that the Mongol Empire disappeared, or even that it began to fade away. One of the most obvious ways in which that empire was different from what one might call the normal run of nomad empires is that, far from beginning to contract or even collapse after the death of its charismatic founder, it continued to expand for a further half century, and by 1279 was something like twice as extensive as the already vast realm eft by Chinggis Khan at his death in 1227
      - In 1978, Professor Peter Jackson published what proved a deservedly influential article on “The dissolution of the Mongol Empire”.10 I was (and still am) inclined to disagree with some of the details of his argument, but its essential message was clearly
        right: the Mongol Empire ‘dissolved’ around the year 1260, that is, not much more than thirty years after the death of its founder, Chinggis Khan; and, paradoxically, twenty years before it reached its greatest geographical extent after the definitive conquest of the Song Empire in south China.
      - What Jackson was discussing was the end of the Mongol Empire as any kind of unitary state ruled from a central capital by a paramount emperor and his governmental machine. That, insofar as it can be said to have existed before 1260, certainly came to an end at around that date. There was still a Great Khan – after the civil war of 1260–64 and until his death in 1294 that throne was occupied by Qubilai. But Qubilai’s writ, unlike that of his predecessors Chinggis (to 1227), O¨ gedei (1229–41), Gu¨yu¨k
        (1246–8) andM¨ongke (1251–9), did not run the length and breadth of the Mongol Empire: nor did anyone else’s. He was recognised, indeed with some enthusiasm, by his close relatives the Ilkhans of Persia, but that was about it.
      - The Mongol Empire, if one may be permitted to oversimplify a little, was now divided into four more or less independent khanates, ruled by different branches of the Mongol royal house that descended from Chinggis Khan.
  - - - Perhaps more ominous than sanguinary feuding between Chinggisid cousins was another consequence of the warfare between the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanate in the 1260s:
        the alliance which developed, and endured, between the Golden Horde and the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and Syria. Here what transpired was that a Mongol regime was prepared to ally itself with a non-Mongol regime, against its fellow-Mongols of the Ilkhanate. It was henceforth difficult to pretend that a united Mongol people was any longer pressing forward to the common ultimate goal
      - For all that south China had yet to be conquered in the 1260s, the irresistible expansion of Mongol power which had been the world’s major political fact for half a century was now, evidently, grinding to a halt. The Mongols of the Ilkhanate would continue to invade Syria for several decades. The Mongols of the Golden Horde would continue to raid in Eastern Europe; so would the Chaghatais into India. But Egypt and North Africa, Western Europe and India would not now become provinces of the Mongol Empire (even if much of India ultimately became a Mongol, or Mughal, Empire in its own right).
  - - - there was never any serious danger that the llkhanate would
        be destroyed as a consequence of external attack
      - Either way, so far as the issue of ‘decline and fall’ is concerned, much depends on what onemakes of the reign of the last of the uninterrupted line of Ilkhans descended from H¨uleg¨u,Abu Sa’id (1316–35).18 For it was after his death that Ilkhanid rule collapsed
      - Melville considers it all explicable in terms of long-term decay, factional struggle and disintegration.
      - What had broken down in the Ilkhanate was the consensus, or any general agreement on how a consensus should be arrived at, about the succession to the throne. Abu Sa’id’s problem was much the same as Henry VIII of England’s: his difficulty in providing a male heir. Henry managed it in the end, after a fashion. Abu Sa’id did not, and there was therefore no unchallengeable member of the line of H¨uleg¨u available to succeed him when he died in 1335. Various expedients were tried by several factions. But essentially the throne was up for grabs, and the central government disintegrated as a result. Parts of the khanate fell under the control of what would now probably be called warlords – some Mongol, some not. No one had general control or widespread acknowledgement of legitimacy. Such was
        the situation until Mongol rule of a sort was reimposed towards the end of the century by Tamerlane, who though Turkish in speech was Mongol by descent (albeit hailing from a different Mongol realm, the Chaghatai Khanate), and who does appear to have seen himself as Abu Sa’id’s successor. But I do not myself see any compelling reason for supposing that Ilkhanid rule would necessarily have collapsed when it did, or for long after, had the line of H¨uleg¨u continued uninterruptedly after the death of Abu Sa’id.
      - :!: The explanation given here sort of contradicts the succession of other empires. think it was the mughal empire were the succession was fairer because it was based on merits.
    - - The Mongols were driven out, back to Mongolia, in 1368
      - The last Yuan (Mongol) emperor, Toghon Tem¨ur, is an interestingly close parallel with Abu Sa’id, briefly his contemporary. Like him, his reign was the longest of any member of the dynasty (1333–68); and like him, he came to the throne as a child, his reign being destined to be plagued by factional struggles (it was also to be plagued by plague: that, at
      - The major difference is thatAbu Sa’id died still in power: it was his death that precipitated collapse. But Toghon Tem¨urwas ejected from his throne, and obliged to flee back to Mongolia, where he died two years later
      - There is no doubt that the mid-fourteenth century was a difficult time in many parts of the world. Mongol China suffered as much as anywhere, being afflicted with a variety of natural disasters – especially floods and pestilences. The theory that the Black Deathbegan in China, and travelled to Europe across the Mongol Empire’s trade routes, is wellknown. The Chinese economy was so dependent on the waters of the Yellow and Yangtserivers that any major disruption could have catastrophic consequences. In this connectionit is worth noting that the government of Toghon Tem¨ur managed in 1351 to re-route thecourse of the Yellow River so that it flowed into the sea south of the Shantung peninsula –something for which there was no precedent.22 Only seventeen years before its fall, the Mongol government in China could still accomplish remarkable things.
      - The predominant feature of the final years of Yuan rule, however – if one is looking for evidence of ‘decline’ – is the increasing frequency and seriousness of native Chinese revolts, especially in south China, and a loss of grip on the part of the central government. The Mongol armies were no longer of a quality to be able to deal effectively with these problems. More important, there were not enough of them; and the fourteenth-century
        neglect and impoverishment of Mongolia itself had meant that few new recruits could be hoped for from the homeland
      - In the rest of the country, warlords – whether Mongol or Chinese – ruled, in most cases continuing to profess allegiance to the emperor. However, it does seem that there was a moment when everythingappeared to be coming back under control. In 1354 the principal minister, Chancellor ofthe Right Toghto, took personal command of a major expedition against rebel forces, layingsiege to the city of Kao-yu, refuge of the leading rebel Chang Shih-ch’eng. “Had the siegeof Kao-yu in fact forced Chang Shi-ch’eng’s surrender, which was all but inevitable, theback of the nationwide rebellions would have been resoundingly broken”. (Dardess ). However, the emperor banish Toghto, who duly obeyed. The siege disintegrated, and there was never again a similarchance for the government to regain the initiative.
      - Mongol rule in China fell because of internal collapse, not external attack of any kind; and there was nothing inevitable about what happened. As Professor Paul Buell puts it, “The downfall of the Mongols had come unexpectedly and quickly, just 60 years after the Yuan highpoint under Temu¨ rO¨ ljeitu¨”.26 There is every reason to suppose that, handled differently, the government’s problems might well have been solved, and Mongol rule continued after 1368.
    - - It is certainly true that Chaghatai rule continued in the eastern half of their territories – roughly what is now Chinese Central Asia – for a very long time: indeed, the dynasty did not finally expire until
        1678
      - And perhaps the continued emphasis on the Mongols’ traditional
        lifestyle helped them to survive economic or other difficulties which might have wrecked a sedentarily-based regime, as well as enabling them to retain their military effectiveness.
      - The Chaghatai Khanate remains the part of the Mongol Empire about which we know the least, to some extent because of the almost total dearth of indigenous sources on its history. The Golden Horde is not much better in that respect; but at least writers from outside its borders – especially in Mamluk Egypt and in the Rus principalities – showed some interest in what was going on there.
    - - traditional view
        
        as Mongol power declined the strength of its former vassals, the Russian princes and especially those of Moscow, grew. The old Golden Horde territories were divided among several successor khanates, with some degree of at least nominal overlordship being granted to what was called the ‘Great Horde’. That came to an end when it was destroyed by an alliance between the Mongol Khan of the Crimea, Mengli Girai, and the Russians, in 1502. That date therefore marks the end of the Golden Horde. True, the Crimean khanate continued – it had accepted some degree of Ottoman suzerainty since 1475 – till it was annexed by Catherine the Great in 1783, but that does not count.
        
        What Collins attempts, in my opinion successfully, to show is that there is no evidence that anyone at the time saw the events of 1502 as marking the end of the Great Horde. To summarise the conclusion of a long argument, what Collins contends is that
        Mengli Girai’s achievement in 1502 was not to destroy, but to take over, the Great Horde – which had changed hands in similar ways on a number of previous occasions. The Great Horde, then, continued: the only difference was that that paramount Golden Horde throne was henceforth held by the Khan of the Crimea.
        
        As a military power, the Crimeans long remained formidable. Collins, in an earlier article,29 showed how the Crimean Tatars were still campaigning successfully in Eastern Europe in the seventeenth century – a classic illustration of how unwise it is to write off the effectiveness of the steppe cavalry archer too early.
    - - the Ottoman empire
        
        It was widely agreed at the time – and subsequently, at least until recently – that the Ottoman Empire began to decline after, if not indeed during, the reign of Sulayman the Magnificent (1520–66). As Jane Hathaway justly remarks, “Seldom does an empire last for three hundred years, and yet the Ottomans are supposed to have had the luxury of declining for such a lengthy span of time”.30 It is even arguable that it is a decline that need not necessarily have ended in ‘fall’ when it did, had the Ottomans not been so injudicious as to choose the wrong side in the First World War, i.e. the side not containing Great Britain.
      - Safavid Empire
        
        It is customary to argue that the Safavid Empire was in decline for the whole of its secondcentury, after the death of Shah ‘Abbas I. In the relevant volume of the Cambridge Historyof Iran, this view is duly trotted out by at least two authors, Roger Savory and Laurence Lockhart. But the author of the admirable sequence of chapters on political history, the late Hans Roemer, comments that “this view is emphatically not justified
        
        In my view Roemer was right. Historians, I think,
        have tended to see Persia in the seventeenth century as a society in decline because nothing much actually happened. But it is by no means obvious that this should be taken to imply an
        adverse judgement on the Safavids: arguably, the opposite. Of course decay did eventually set in, as was demonstrated by the ease with which the Afghans destroyed the Safavid regime in 1722. But there is no need to look back as far as 1629 for its origins: this is a notable example of the dangers of ‘Gibbon’s Law’.
      - Mughal decline
        
        The late John Richards, the author of the volume on the Mughal
        Empire in the New Cambridge History of India, once told me that he did not think we shouldlook too far back for signs of Mughal decline. In his opinion the Empire collapsed between 1711 and 1719. I am old enough to remember the extraordinary speed of the British Empire’spost-World War II ‘decline and fall’, and it is possible that I shall live to see the same fatebefall the American Empire – an eventuality I view with mixed feelings.
      - conclusion
        
        What I think the Mongol case demonstrates is that while imperial collapse in one formor another may be inevitable – certainly, so far, it has always happened – there is rarelyanything inevitable about the specific circumstances in any particular instance. Parts of theMongol Empire continued for a very long time; and as it happens those were the partswhich retained more of the traditional steppe lifestyle. Other parts collapsed much earlier,
        and those were the more sedentary areas, where more accommodation to local mores hadbeen necessary, and where less of the nomadic lifestyle had survived. But even in those
        cases, an examination of the actual events suggests that the Mongol regimes could perfectlywell have continued, had different decisions been taken at various points or had different
        circumstances prevailed. Gibbon may well be the greatest historian ever to have written inEnglish, but in my opinion ‘Gibbon’s Law’ does not prove, when one examines specific case
        histories, to be of much help to the historian. If contemporary historians of the later RomanEmpire like Ward-Perkins and Heather have no further use for it, perhaps we too shouldconsign it to that capacious receptacle, the dustbin of history