Abstract
This chapter focuses on CA’s economic evolution from the migration of the peoples to the pinnacle of nomadic power. The region initially re-stabilized under the Turkic Empire, whose Sogdian merchants reanimated transcontinental trade. Tang China, the caliphate, and partly Khazaria shared in the second apex of the SR from the late seventh to the late ninth century. Chinese know-how (silk production, papermaking, and the compass) were transferred westward in this time. Notwithstanding weaker international trade following the caliphate’s demise, C Asian intellectual and cultural achievement in the early second millennium CE boasted world renown. While the Mongol conquest of CA and of most of Eurasia brought unprecedented destruction and bloodshed, this was followed by the third heyday of the SR (second half of the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth centuries): Security was strictly upheld, and trade encouraged on a giant bicontinental and politically integrated playing field (Pax Mongolica). In this sense, the Mongol Empire may have been a driving force of early globalization. Paper money, playing cards, engraving printing, gunpowder, the abacus, and other inventions spread along the Mongol SR. Gathering political instability, imperial disintegration, and the “Black Death”—a second demographic catastrophe—hailed the collapse of Mongol rule and the renewed shrinkage of SR trade.
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Notes
- 1.
Thus, the White Huns controlled a sprawling territory comparable to that of their predecessors, the Kushans.
- 2.
They only seem not to have penetrated into the northern fringes of the Kazakh steppe.
- 3.
According to another theory, Arab-Muslim conquerors introduced metallic stirrups in Southwestern and Western Europe, from where the invention spread east (Rasuly-Paleczek 2006, 185).
- 4.
If one applies Lebedynsky’s definition, the Turkic Khaganate appears to fit the classic case of imperial nomadism.
- 5.
Important silk production centers were, i.a., set up in the Italian cities of Palermo, Lucca, and Venice and in the sixteenth century in Lyons (France). From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the silk industry thrived in Krefeld (Germany) (P.M. History 2011, 56).
- 6.
But this kind of division of labor – cooperation between nomads acquiring booty and exacting tribute, and preferred salesmen disposing of the merchandise and accessing desired products – was nothing new. It was already valid for the Xiongnu and their C Asian commercial agents.
- 7.
This is in contrast to their Kushan predecessors, most of who settled down relatively quickly after taking possession of Tokharistan.
- 8.
Prior to leaving the Sassanian Empire, the main Jewish community had lived for centuries in Merv. Between the late fifth and the early seventh centuries, many Jews moved from Merv to Tokharistan and Khorezm (Roudik 2007, 36).
- 9.
Perhaps owing to the traditional weight of nature in nomads’ life, and because of nomads’ mobility and frequent contacts with other cultures, rigid and intolerant conceptions of religion did not seem to play a large role in the nomadic world (Schmieder 2015, 199–200).
- 10.
In the late sixth and early seventh century, the climate also seems to have warmed up again (Vogelsang 2013, 66).
- 11.
It seems that the long filament technology (important for making fine textiles) practiced in China did not appear in other silk-producing countries before the mid-eighth century (Liu 2010, 101).
- 12.
Porcelain embodies fine and translucid ceramics, produced by the burning of kaolin – fireproof white earthenware – at high temperature (about 1200 °C) (Boucheron 2012, 50).
- 13.
Thus silk continued to serve, or served again, as quasi-money in China.
- 14.
In some cases, however, discontent arose among local peoples who had converted to Islam but were still forced to pay the jizya (poll tax) to the Arab treasury (Soucek 2000, 63).
- 15.
Compare Ponting’s quite broad view of the emergence of feudalism: “In new empires, the initial rulers had to solve three linked problems – how to reward their followers, how to control the newly conquered areas, and how to maintain an army. The solutions adopted were nearly always the same – the grant of conquered land to individuals within the elite so that they could use it to support a given number of soldiers to be provided to the ruler when required. This system is called “feudalism” in European history but it is merely one form of a phenomenon that was common across Eurasia for seven millennia.” (Ponting 2001, 145).
- 16.
Tiraz is a Persian word for embroidery.
- 17.
China’s grip on West Turkestan may also have grown weaker because meanwhile unrest had broken out in the Eastern Turk Khaganate, over which the Tang lost suzerainty in the late seventh century (see below).
- 18.
As Cameron and Neal pointed out, the Chinese had already experienced several cycles of inflation and monetary collapse before the West discovered paper money (2003, 82).
- 19.
There was a great variety of Khotan jades – some crystal white, some emerald green, some black, and some yellow (Zhang 2005, 120).
- 20.
One such raid in 698 allegedly yielded 80,000–90,000 slaves (Paul 2012, 295).
- 21.
Thus, it could be argued that China had turned into a giant de-facto Uighur protectorate.
- 22.
The Tibetan state had been established and consolidated by a few strong monarchs already in the seventh century, who had militarily unified a number of tribes on the plateau of Tibet and conquered some adjacent regions, also at the fringe of China.
- 23.
According to Vogelsang, the weakening of the Tang Dynasty also coincided with a worsening of the climate which became drier and colder (2013, 66, 274).
- 24.
The caliphate had provided for its own rules to satisfy this requirement.
- 25.
The Islamic Abbasid dynasty (750–1258) followed that of the Umayyads (661–750).
- 26.
This is reminiscent of the old Chinese practice of paying bolts of silk as in-kind tax to the state treasury (see Sect. 2.3.2.1).
- 27.
The know-how of the Chinese silk weavers captured in Talas certainly made its contribution to refining the Muslims’ silk processing and textile production capabilities.
- 28.
However, Roux has some reservations as to the size and importance of Khazar cities: He points out that most of them were actually market towns, improved encampments, even if many of the improvements had been brought about by Byzantine engineers. Probably, large numbers of Khazar urban dwellers only spent the winter in towns (Roux 2000, 93).
- 29.
When the demand exceeded the supply for these coins, due to a decline in the availability of coins from north African and Mesopotamian mints, the Khazars started to mint their own silver coins, beginning around the early 820s. The Khazar dirhams (imperfectly) imitated the designs and inscriptions on Islamic dirhams. For trading purposes in Europe, only the weight of the silver mattered, not what the inscriptions on the coins read, so the fact that these were not always perfect imitations was irrelevant (Brook 2006, 79).
- 30.
This might recall the piecemeal feudal transformation of the Holy Roman Empire (German: Heiliges Römisches Reich), partly through concessions of the central authorities, from a kingdom (under Otto I in the tenth century) to a decentralized confederation (under Charles IV in the fourteenth century).
- 31.
For more on the Samanid era, see below.
- 32.
Starr even argues that during this “Age of Enlightenment,” “CA was the intellectual hub of the world. India, China, the Middle East, and Europe all boasted rich traditions in the realm of ideas, but during the four or five centuries around AD 1000 it was CA, the one world region that touched all these other centers, that surged to the fore. It bridged time and geography, in the process becoming the great link between antiquity and the modern world” (Starr 2013, 4).
- 33.
Thus, as Feldbauer and Liedl point out, agrarian prosperity and political stability were probably linked under the Samanids (2009, 21).
- 34.
Together with increased spending for farming infrastructure, the reduction of the tax pressure on farmers may have stimulated output and therefore, possibly, total tax revenue (a Samanid Laffer effect?).
- 35.
This is obviously in continuation of Balkh’s exceptional position in C Asian farming in the era of the caliphate (see Sect. 3.3.2.4.1). The Balkh oasis moreover featured intensive processing of farm produce: For instance, one river alone – the Balkh river – is said to have provided the motive power for 70 water mills.
- 36.
The large number of Samanid silver dirhams found in regions as far away as northern Russia and the Baltics may be evidence of intensifying trading links with the ancient Rus and its western neighbors (Negmatov 1998, 85).
- 37.
As Fragner points out, slave trade was a very profitable economic activity for Samanid merchants (2008, 40).
- 38.
As de la Vaissière specifies, the volume of commerce on the steppe route (from Mavarannahr via Khwarazm to Khazaria) approximately doubled or even tripled from the ninth to the tenth century (2004, 264).
- 39.
In the sixth century, the Turkic Bulgars had still lived in the Pontic steppes. Approximately at the time the Khazar state was established (in the seventh century), the Bulgars left the Eurasian grasslands and migrated in two directions: one group of tribes moved northeast up the Volga to the Volga-Kama Basin, where they settled and soon became Muslims (Volga Bulgarians); another group moved southwest, crossed the lower Danube, settled in what was later called Bulgaria, and subsequently adopted Christianity and a Southern-Slavic language (Danube-Bulgarians).
- 40.
Bureaucratic and inflexible state intervention does not seem to be appreciated and may be a dangerous undertaking in a nomadic society. See also the serious repercussions mentioned above of the rigid attempts by Sogdian advisors to introduce regular taxation in the Eastern Turk Khaganate in the late 620s.
- 41.
More precisely, Turkic chieftains decided to adopt the new religion and to carry out wholesale conversions of their tribes (Soucek 2000, 75).
- 42.
There had already been Turkic populations in former Transoxiana before the ninth century, but these had been very small in numbers.
- 43.
The Kyrgyz migrated back to their earlier homelands in southern Siberia (Altay/Sayan region), but also moved to the Tienshan, where they became mountain nomads and practiced transhumance.
- 44.
Almost four centuries later (in 1453), descendants of the Seljuks put an end to Byzantium and gave birth to the Ottoman state.
- 45.
“Jin” means “gold” in Chinese, from which the word “China” is derived (Der Große Ploetz 2008, 676).
- 46.
Semirechie (Zhetysu) actually also featured several dozen agricultural and trade settlements (some of which had been founded by the Sogdians centuries ago). These do not appear to have been substantially damaged by the Karakhitay nomadic presence.
- 47.
The Ghurids controlled iron deposits in the mountain ranges of Afghanistan and were skillful in processing the metal (Paul 2012, 177).
- 48.
The Rajput were originally a warrior people that from the seventh century dominated regions in Northwestern India, which today make up the state of Rajasthan (Le petit Mourre 2003, 958).
- 49.
In German called Zehntausendschaften, Tausendschaften, Hundertschaften, Zehnergruppen.
- 50.
Genghis Khan had not invented the decimal system of structuring the armed forces; it had a long tradition in the steppe empires, starting with the Xiongnu. For example, it was also applied by the Khitan, which ruled northern China as the Liao dynasty. Genghis Khan’s innovation was to extend this principle of military organization to the entire society and state (Masselos (ed) 2010, 32).
- 51.
Genghis Khan’s breaking up of tribalist structures may bear a distant resemblance to the restructuring of French territorial administration into a large number of départements after the revolution of 1789. These départements were (theoretically) only arranged according to geographic features (were named after rivers, mountain chains, peninsulas, etc.) and to a functionalist logic (every inhabitant of a département should be able to reach its territorial capital (chef-lieu), carry out business there for a couple of hours, and return again in a horse-drawn carriage within one day). The départements were to put an end to traditional historical regions, a legacy of feudalism. However, in the framework of the décentralisation since 1982, French regions reappeared (as amalgamations of départements).
- 52.
More precisely, the city was founded on the location of Genghis’ principal encampment (from the early 1200s).
- 53.
As Barfield put it, the Mongols developed a Blitzkrieg approach to warfare, which is still studied by modern military strategists (Barfield 1989/1992, 202).
- 54.
These were the descendants of the Kyrgyz that had defeated the Uighur state in Mongolia in 840 and themselves had been overwhelmed by the Khitans in 917.
- 55.
Apart from the argument of severe or exemplary punishment for crimes of murder of diplomats and of insubmission, Grousset put forward another argument that might explain the extent of atrocities and terrorist annihilation that was inflicted on Western CA by the Mongol military (1965/2008, pp. 291 and 305): « S’il (Gengis Khan) detruisit dans l’Iran oriental la brillante civilization urbaine qui avait produit un Firdousi et un Avicenne, c’est qu’il entendait ménager aux marches du sud-ouest une sorte de no man’s land, de steppe artificielle, qui servit de glacis à son empire ». (“If he (Genghis Khan) destroyed the brilliant Eastern Iranian civilization that had produced a Firdawsi and an Avicenna, the reason was that he meant to arrange a kind of no man’s land in the southwestern periphery, an artificial steppe that would serve as a glacis for his empire.”)
- 56.
Its vicinity to the Eurasian steppe was a major drawback for Kiev and contributed to its loss of primacy among the cities of the Rus.
- 57.
This is because Khan Batu, the commander, was forced to retreat due to internal Mongol political reasons (death of Ögöday Khan, the successor to Genghis, therefore election of new Great Khan). A comparable process happened in 1260 (see below), when the Mongols lost their first major battle to foreign armed forces (the Egyptian Mamluks) in Ayn Jalut (east of Jerusalem) but not because the overall balance of forces was not in favor of the Mongols but due to some disorganization in connection with the unforeseen retreat of the commander, the Khan Hülegü following the death of Great Khan Möngke. The commander halted the campaign and began to travel back to his native land to join the kuriltay, which would elect the new Great Khan. This confirms that at least in the first decades of their empire building, the Mongols’ military supremacy over their neighbors and adversaries was such that retreats and setbacks, as far as they happened, were due to nonmilitary reasons. At the same time, this reveals that – as in other nomadic polities – badly regulated succession procedures (lack of a regular, orderly system for succession to the Great Khan) constituted a weak point of Mongol rule that could severely harm imperial interests.
- 58.
For instance, Northern Chinese technicians, mainly metalsmiths and carpenters, were conscripted from tradesmen’s families and accompanied a contingent of Chinese siege engineers during the Mongol invasion of Iran and Iraq (1258) (Allsen 2009, 136). Or captured Persian weavers from Herat were relocated to the north of Turfan in the Uighur area (de la Vaissière 2013, 74). Or Transylvanian miners were moved to Dzungaria, where they were ordered to prospect for gold (Borgolte 2015, 43). In most cases, the redeployments seem to have been long term or permanent.
- 59.
Public postal and messenger systems had, of course, existed in other sprawling empires before. ancient Persia (550–330 BCE) had already created one. As mentioned above, the name “Yam” was derived from the communication system of the Western Liao Empire/the Karakhitays (1130–1218), an immediate predecessor to Mongol rule in CA.
- 60.
There are estimates according to which after the split of the empire, the Great Khanate (the largest sub-empire consisting of Mongolia, Manchuria, China, and Tibet) accounted for more than 10,000 Yam stations and more than 200,000 postal horses (Roux 1993, 463).
- 61.
From Turkish ortaq, “partner”.
- 62.
The poll tax established during the Arab/Islamic conquest, to be paid by non-Muslim subjects of the caliph (see Sect. 3.3.1.3.2).
- 63.
To mention some facts reported by Rossabi: Ögöday Khan’s subjects built two mosques, Buddhist and Daoist temples, and a Nestorian Christian church within the city. Mostly, captured craftsmen and artisans from China, CA, Iran, and Europe fashioned essential as well as luxury products in many large and small workshops. Areas for the production of glass, gems, precious stones, and bone carving, as well as furnaces for the smelting of metals, especially bronzes, have been excavated. Notwithstanding Karakorum’s glory at the time, Wilhelm von Roebroeck, the Franciscan monk-traveler who had visited Karakorum in the middle of the century, proved somewhat prescient in recognizing that the Mongol capital was not ideally situated as hub of a great empire. The city and its neighboring regions could not provide basic provisions for its increasing population. Roebroeck writes that 400 carts of provisions arrived daily from China to supply the city – a costly and inefficient system. While Karakorum did possess, to some degree, a central geopolitical location in the swiftly expanding Mongol state, the city had little arable land in its surroundings, was not near a vital source of raw materials (known at the time), and did not lie on a major SR artery: In terms of logistics it was poorly situated (Rossabi 2012, 46–47).
- 64.
The major traits of this division had already been fixed by Genghis before his death (1227).
- 65.
This move, Kubilay’s rapprochement to Chinese sedentary culture, and centrifugal tendencies elsewhere in the empire triggered or reflected serious tensions among the Genghisids and the imperial nomadic nobility which lasted for decades and undermined the cohesion of the common state. The Mongol capital Karakorum, metropolis of administration and trade, far away from more densely populated areas, had been dependent on large and continuous outside supplies to maintain itself. The move to Beijing had been preceded by a conflict in which Kubilay demonstrated that he who controlled the source of supply, controlled Karakorum: “It had been the custom to bring food for Karakorum on wagons from Khitay. Kubilay Khan banned this traffic and there occurred a great dearth and famine in the region” (Rashid al-Din 1971, 253; Barfield 1989/1992, 218). Karakorum’s isolation and structural fragility was nothing new and recalled that of Karabalgasun, the former Uighur nomad capital.
- 66.
There is an interesting resemblance between “tamgha” and the French word “timbre” (stamp).
- 67.
In Olson’s terms, the adoption of this stance by the authorities would correspond to a move from roving to stationary bandit.
- 68.
Although the Mongols eventually decided to wind down Karakorum, they still established a number of important settlements in the steppe, including Old Saray and New Saray (on the Volga) and Sultania (Southern Azerbaijan, Iranian Plateau).
- 69.
In this respect, one could possibly, in a reverse sense, compare Kubilay to the first successful Tang emperors of the middle of the seventh century that had conquered the steppe and incorporated some nomadic military and administrative elements into the Chinese state.
- 70.
This should have important implications in later decades (see below).
- 71.
As will be explained below, the initial Mongol onslaught did not wipe out sedentary civilization in Semirechie, but what was left eroded and all but disappeared in the following decades.
- 72.
Jöchi was the oldest son of Genghis Khan and commander of the first Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe, which took place in the 1220s.
- 73.
The word “horde” was transmitted to western languages via Russian from Mongol “orda” (“army camp,” “khan’s court”), and the expression “golden horde” possibly derives from Batu’s (the ruler’s) gleaming golden-topped tent camp. “Sarai” means “palace” in Mongolian or “big house” in Persian (Shen 2009, 137; Weiers 2004, 118). The resemblance between “Saray” and the Turkish “Serail” is noteworthy.
- 74.
This is obviously a geoeconomic parallel to the location and function of Itil, the capital of the former Khazar Empire.
- 75.
Actually, these were gold-threaded silk brocades that the Mongol nobility cherished and often bestowed on guests as a symbol of honor (May 2012, 111, 115).
- 76.
Indirect rule is also in line with Lebedynsky’s definition of imperial nomadism (see Box 2.1).
- 77.
Here, Khazaria’s urbanization was probably another predecessor.
- 78.
This implies that despite the Mongol’s partial razing of Urgench and their devastation of Khwarazm’s sophisticated irrigation system in 1221, the city and its infrastructure were reconstructed relatively quickly.
- 79.
From the late twelfth century, Western Europe was experiencing a boom in cloth and textile production, spearheaded by Flemish towns.
- 80.
According to Martinez, the sturgeon and caviar were most likely procured from the Caspian Sea, where Marco Polo had noted the presence of Genoese shipping (2009, 104).
- 81.
Compare Norel’s considerations (2009, 176): « Il s’agit de l’idée (developée par Frank et Hobson) d’un capital marchand actif depuis très longtemps d’abord dans l’islam et en Asie puis, par contagion ou stimulation, en Europe même. Il n’y a aucune raison a priori pour que ce capital marchand n’apparaisse pas partout où le commerce lointain exerce ses effets et n’est pas reprimé ou pillé par le pouvoir politique. Et ce commerce lointain oriental commence clairement à toucher l’Europe durant le siècle mongol, voire avant ». (“It’s about the idea (developed by Frank and Hobson) of commercial capital which was active already for a very long time in the Muslim countries and in Asia, and later, via contagion or stimulation, in Europe itself. There is no a priori reason why such capital wouldn’t appear in all places where long-distance trade has its impact and isn’t suppressed or pillaged by the political authority. This long-distance oriental trade clearly started to touch Europe during the Mongol century or even before.”)
- 82.
Great Khan Möngke’s decision to integrate Transcaucasia and southern Azerbaijan into the Il-Khanate gave rise to long-lasting tensions with the Golden Horde, which itself had coveted these two regions.
- 83.
This recalls the (inconclusive) clashes, i.a., for control of the SR in approximately the same area between the Roman and Parthian empires more than a millennium earlier and between the Byzantine and Sassanian empires more than half a millennium earlier.
- 84.
Some qanats date back to the Achaemenid Empire (for more explanation on the qanat/karez system, see Sect. 2.2.1).
- 85.
This did not prevent Kaidu, once he had become the ruler of the Chagatay Khanate, from giving Governor Masud Beg the green light to continue business-friendly policies of reconstruction of Mavarannahr and other southern oases of the ulus.
- 86.
Yet the Mongols’ lack of success in venturing further into India was partly due to their dislike of the subcontinent’s subtropical and tropical climate and partly to the surprisingly strong military response from the Delhi Sultanate that had been established approximately at the same time as the Mongol Empire and whose core consisted of (former) Afghan slave soldiers and a robust cavalry largely consisting of horses imported from the Eurasian steppes, notably from the Khanate of the Golden Horde. Thus, one could infer that Mongols’ trade interests were so strong that they at times trumped their overriding strategic interests.
- 87.
This is no new phenomenon and recalls the ascension of Turkic slave soldiers in the caliphate and under the Samanids.
- 88.
Today’s Tatars of the autonomous Republic of Tatarstan in the Russian Federation and the descendants of the Tatars of Crimea (most of whom had been deported to CA in World War II on the orders of Stalin) can be traced back to these Islamized Turko-Mongols.
- 89.
It is estimated that at Kubilay Khan’s time, the Mongols represented less than one percent of the population of the empire (Lemercier-Quelquejay 1970, 56).
- 90.
With the temporary exception of the principality of Moghulistan, which broke away from the Chagatay Khanate – but this only underlines the rupture between eastern and western Mongols.
- 91.
Silver money was, i.a., issued in the mints of Otrar (which worked regularly until the end of the 1360s) and of Taraz, Ispidzhab, and Sygnak (Baipakov et al. 1997, 155).
- 92.
Of course this change also opened some (limited) possibilities for the princes to manipulate and embezzle tribute payments (Halperin 1985, 85).
- 93.
Why was Moscow chosen and not, e.g., the richer principality of Novgorod or the more powerful (at the time) principality of Tver? While there may be a number of political and other reasons, one can certainly add that Moscow at that time was a relatively small polity and therefore could not quickly turn into a danger for the Khan; Moscow was centrally located in the former Rus (not at the northwestern periphery), and Moscow was relatively easily accessible from New Saray via the Volga and its tributaries.
- 94.
The name “Uzbek” was not only famous in the fourteenth century but was to play an important role from the fifteenth century onwards. Abul Khair Khan, a Genghisid-Jöchid tribal chief from the later line of the khans of Sibir (a regional successor state to the Golden Horde situated in Western Siberia/Northern Kazakhstan) succeeded in rallying a number of tribes formerly subject to the Golden Horde. Probably in memory of one of the most important leaders of the Golden Horde, Khan Uzbek, the tribal confederation gathering around Abul Khair adopted the name “Uzbek.” This confederation soon started to expand militarily in a southerly direction (Fragner 2008, 54).
- 95.
Cuman or Kipchak is a Turkic language spoken by the Cumans or Kipchak or Polovtsy, as they were called by the Russians (see above). The Kipchak nomadized in the lands north of the Black and Caspian seas from the late eleventh century and continued to inhabit parts of the area under Mongol rule.
- 96.
This commercial opportunity-oriented trade interaction between Mongols and Genoa (or Northern Italian city-states) recalls another type of SR interaction, namely, that of the extortionary trade-creating type between the Xiongnu (or Turks, Uighurs, or other nomads) and China, as analyzed by Barfield (see above). Although the types of interaction were quite different in nature, in both cases a degree of mutual dependence between the nomads and their sedentary counterparts or clients tended to emerge over time. Menzel elaborates on the extent of complementarity reached in relations between the Golden Horde and its partner Genoa (even if, in some instances, he simplifies): “The Mongols were a major land power, Genoa a sea power. The Mongols had recourse to cavalry, the Genoese to a galley fleet. The Mongols were innovators in mounted archery, the Genoese in the maritime and commercial sectors. The Mongols were a purely military power, the Genoese a trading power. The Mongols practiced continental expansion, the Genoese carried out maritime expansion safeguarded by port colonies, contractual ports, concessions, and trading posts. The Mongols conquered half of the world, Genoa only possessed a small territory along the Ligurian coast from Monaco to Porto Venere. The Mongols’ economic basis was the exaction of tribute from subjugated peoples; Genoa’s economic basis was profit realized in middleman trade. Both powers complemented one another, both cooperated, and both participated in the other’s strength.” Therefore, Menzel concludes, “it is not surprising that both powers’ rise and decline displayed a remarkable degree of synchronicity” (2015, 152–153).
- 97.
Thus he was apparently right to expect that by bringing order into a partly chaotic and dysfunctional tax system, the reduction of tax rates and tax pressure can even raise overall tax revenue. While the scale of described policy problems may be hardly comparable, the essence of the problems and notably the expectations connected to tax reforms and reductions are not unfamiliar in modern economies (e.g., see what is known as the Laffer Curve – Laffer 2004).
- 98.
Whether Russia (or more precisely the Russian principalities) was really a “major player” in SR trade during the Mongol era is debatable, taking into account that Russia was not even independent at that time. But neither were China and Persia. Moreover, given Muscovy’s and the czardom’s increasingly active involvement in the region in the following centuries, it appears advisable to include Russia here too.
- 99.
The information below comes from a number of surveyed publications dealing with SR trade in the Mongol era.
- 100.
In this context of early globalization, e.g., Venetian and Vietnamese traders would meet in Beijing (Töpfer et al. 1985, 189).
- 101.
Rivalry at times even included, as described above, military hostilities.
- 102.
In this sense, Gunder Frank argues that even if military superiority was the case for CA, the latter never rose to become a core economic region because it was never the core of sustained capital accumulation (Gunder Frank 1992, 2).
- 103.
“Ortagh” is Turko-Persian for “partner” (Kollmar-Paulenz 2011, 40).
- 104.
For instance, extorted (tax-farmed or slave-produced) goods may have flowed directly from China or Eastern Europe to sustain Karakorum or Saray, and from there some of these goods (a surplus) possibly flowed on via the SR, to be sold by ortaghs at the limits of the empire (e.g., in Italian Black Sea ports). Agent-host-principal relationships along the lines of Muslim tax farmers exacting resources from China and selling them under Mongol oversight in the thirteenth century are nothing really new and recall, e.g., activities of Sogdian businessmen in China on Turkic assignment in the sixth or seventh centuries or the kind of protection-money relationship that existed between Uighurs and Chinese in the ninth century (outlined above).
- 105.
As shown in the table below (“Some famous Silk Route travelers and envoys in the Mongol era”), it reportedly took Wilhelm von Roebroeck only 2½ months to cover the distance from Karakorum to Saray (about 4500–5000 km), which is very fast (60–65 km on average per day without pause) and more than twice as fast as it had previously taken the Franciscan monk, coming from Kaffa, to cover the distance from Saray to Karakorum (in reverse sense).
- 106.
This was also the route suggested by Pegolotti (who himself had collected information about it and described it in detail but had never undertaken the trip personally) (Waugh 2007, 4). The western section of this route was also called “the Route of the Three Seas” (“la route des trois mers”), skirting the shores of the Black, the Caspian, and the Aral seas (Jehel (ed) 2007, 267).
- 107.
This connection was relatively secure because it was more or less outside the range of hostilities with the Mamluk Sultanate.
- 108.
Yet, as mentioned above, the Red Sea route was not controlled by the Mongols.
- 109.
Roux relates the profound amazement expressed by European travelers Wilhelm von Roebroek and Marco Polo as well as Ibn Battuta when they discovered or reported the use of paper money in the Great Khanate (Roux 1993, 403).
- 110.
Apparently, the old Roman tradition of glassmaking had fallen into oblivion or had been superseded by C Asian production technology.
- 111.
For once, this points to technology transfer in the opposite (west-east) direction; and it points to the swift adaptation by Chinese suppliers to demands in faraway places in the Mongol era: The porcelain manufacturing center at Jingdezhen (Jiangsu region) resorted to importing cobalt from the other end of Mongol Eurasia (Eastern Europe) to achieve the color tones most appreciated by the Iranian market (Allsen 2009, 140).
- 112.
Thus Schamiloglu estimates that the plague afflicted the Khanate of the Golden Horde in 1345–46, 1364, 1374, and 1396 (May 2012, 209).
- 113.
The Il-khan regime in Khorassan, Persia and Mesopotamia had already ceased to exist in 1335 and Mongol rule there was swiftly weakening (see below).
- 114.
However, this does not mean that CA had at least 40% less inhabitants in 1360 than it had had one and a half centuries before, because partly strong demographic growth and possibly some net-immigration had occurred in between.
- 115.
The Sarbadar rebellion against Mongol rule recalls a much earlier revolt in Persia: the Mazdakite insurrection (488–529) against the Sassanians (see Sect. 3.3.1.1). There are of course important differences: The Mazdakites included a peasant uprising against the land-owning aristocracy, while the Sarbadars rebelled against tax oppression and certain other practices of misrule. But parallels should not be overlooked: Both movements had religious aims and social-revolutionary goals of equal rights to property.
- 116.
For example, Northern Italian businessmen’s trading colonies in the Far East were closed in the mid-fourteenth century (Feldbauer et al. 2010, 82).
- 117.
In Olson’s terms, the stationary bandit (prince) reverted back into a roving bandit.
- 118.
In the following, a state (or polity) – whether nomadic or sedentary – is assumed to perform at least two fundamental services to its inhabitants: provision of internal security (police and judicial functions) and of external security (military protection against attacks from the outside). In order to do this, the authorities must be able to tax inhabitants (in whichever way) and to call them up for security services (to uphold law and order). These basic elements of state power require at least a simple administrative apparatus, e.g., a ruler’s court, to function adequately. A professional bureaucracy, consisting of various functional ministries and/or regional administrative structures, is not seen as a conditio sine qua non of statehood. Apart from organized power, statehood of course also requires a population and a territory (in German: Staatsmacht, Staatsvolk, Staatsgebiet).
- 119.
This probably owes to the cumulative impact of increased contacts, interaction, and division of labor between both groups.
- 120.
At least in the case of Bulgaria, one has to add that the Turkic nomadic conquerors constituted a particularly thin stratum of the population (which was dominated by Southern Slavs) and were assimilated quickly.
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Barisitz, S. (2017). From the Migration Period to the Pinnacle of Nomadic Power: The Mongol Eurasian Empire. In: Central Asia and the Silk Road. Studies in Economic History. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51213-6_3
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