Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

dynasties: the Jin in China and the Khwarazmians in Persia. And there was more to come. From Genghis’s rise in the early 1200s, until 1259, when the superstate he conquered was formally partitioned into four huge quarters, the Mongols controlled the biggest contiguous land empire in the world. And although the Mongols’ period of global preeminence lasted only 150 years, their achievements in that time stood in comparison with those of the ancient Macedonians, Persians, or Romans. Their methods were more brutal than those of any other global empire before the modern age: the Mongols did not hesitate to level entire cities, wipe out whole populations, ruin vast regions, and leave once-busy metropolises smoldering and desolate, either to be rebuilt to their own liking or simply wiped from the map.5 Yet weighed against their appalling legacy of slaughter, waste, and genocide was the fact that the Mongols rebooted the whole shape of trade and interaction across Asia and the Middle East. The severely policed order they imposed on their conquered territories created a relative period of peace sometimes known by historians as the Pax Mongolica. It permitted epic journeys of overland exploration, and an easier transfer between east and west of technologies, knowledge, and people. It may also, as we shall see in chapter 13, have allowed for the transmission of the worst pandemic in world history. The Mongols pioneered the administrative tools of a global empire: a world-class postal...