Abstract
This chapter applies the empire model to what is arguably the first globalization episode: the creation of the largest territorially continuous empire that the world has so far seen, ranging from Korea to Eastern Europe, by a maximum of 1 million Mongols. The chapter examines the Mongol choice between herding and conquest, arguing that for ecological reasons the marginal return to the former was exceedingly low, which made conquest the superior alternative. It also argues that the Mongol Empire was ‘too small’ in terms of military power, but ‘too large’ in terms of the capacity to administer it.
Draft versions of this essay were presented at the conference ‘Asia, Europe, and Global Processes: Economic, Cultural, and Normative Dimensions’, at the National University of Singapore, 14–16 March 2001, in two seminars at the National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, at the Faculty of Social Sciences and the School of Economic Studies, 14 March 2002, and at the First SSAPS (Swedish School of Advanced Asia Pacific Studies) Asia-Pacific Annual Conference in Gothenburg, 26–28 September 2002. We are grateful for the constructive comments received on all four occasions, and to Stanley Engerman, for the same reason. The research has been funded by a SAREC (Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries) grant, which is gratefully acknowledged.
Revised from ‘The First Globalization Episode: The Creation of the Mongol Empire or the Economics of Chinggis Khan’ by Ronald Findlay and Mats Lundahl, in Göran Therborn and Habibul Haque Khondker (eds), Asia and Europe in Globalization: Continents, Regions and Nations, 2006, E. J. Brill, pp. 13–54. With kind permission of Koninklijke Brill NV.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Lundaspexet Djingis Khan, 1954, free translation.
- 2.
This has been questioned by David Morgan, who argues that it may never have existed, and that what is usually referred to as the Yasa may have been nothing but ‘an evolving body of custom, beginning long before … [Chinggis’] time and being added to long after’ (Morgan 1986, p. 99).
- 3.
Brent calls the 1,000-man unit guran. We have, however, inserted the commonly used names within brackets.
- 4.
- 5.
Cf. also Ratchnevsky (1991, pp. 169–70).
- 6.
Saunders (1971, p. 64) gives a range of between 200 and 300 yards. Lattimore (1962a, p. 22) reports that ‘an inscription on a stone, a little older than the Secret History [of the Mongols] and also of the 13th century, records an arrow shot of 335 “spans”, which has been estimated as about 500 meters’.
- 7.
See Liddell Hart (1967, pp. 9–10, 28, 31–32) for a more detailed discussion of Mongol tactics.
- 8.
The ‘God-belonging’ squadron (Lamb 1928, p. 131).
References
Adshead, Samuel Adrian M. (1993). Central Asia in world history. New York: St Martin’s Press.
Baumol, William J. (1990). Entrepreneurship: Productive, unproductive, and destructive. Journal of Political Economy, 98, 893–921.
Bold, Bat-Ochir. (2001). Mongolian nomadic society: A reconstruction of the ‘medieval’ history of Mongolia. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.
Boulger, Demetrius Charles. (1900). A short history of China: An account for the general reader of an ancient empire and people (New ed.). London: Gibbings & Co.
Brent, Peter. (1976). The Mongol empire: Genghis Khan: His triumph and his legacy. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Chambers, James. (1979). The devil’s horsemen: The Mongol invasion of Europe. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Chambers, James. (1999). Genghis Khan. Phoenix Mill, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing.
Dardess, John W. (1972–73). From Mongol empire to Yüan dynasty: Changing forms of imperial rule in Mongolia and Central Asia. Monumenta Serica, 30, 117–165.
de Hartog, Leo. (1989). Genghis Khan: Conqueror of the world. London/New York: I.B. Tauris.
Fairbank, John K, & Reischauer, Edwin O. (1979). China: Tradition and transformation. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Findlay, Ronald. (1996). Towards a model of territorial expansion and the limits of empire. In Michelle R. Garfinkel & Stergios Skaperdas (Eds.), The political economy of conflict and cooperation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Findlay, Ronald., & Lundahl, Mats. (2000). Globalization, economics and history. Mimeo. Stockholm: Stockholm School of Economics.
Findlay, Ronald, & Wilson, John D. (1987). The political economy of Leviathan. In Assaf Razin & Efraim Sadka (Eds.), Economic policy in theory and practice. London: Macmillan.
Fletcher, Joseph. (1979–80). Turco-Mongolian Monarchic tradition in the Ottoman empire. In Ilhor Ševčenko & Frank E. Sysyn (Eds.), Eucharisterion: Essays presented to Omeljan Pritsak. Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 3–4, 236–251.
Fletcher, Joseph. (1986). The Mongols: Ecological and social perspectives. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 46, 11–50.
Foltz, Richard C. (1999). Religions of the Silk Road: Overland trade and cultural exchange from antiquity to the fifteenth century. Basingstoke/London: Macmillan.
Greenway, Paul, Storey, Robert, & Lafitte, Gabriel. (1997). Mongolia (2nd ed.). London: Lonely Planet Publications.
Grousset, René. (1966). Conqueror of the world: The life of Chingis-Khan. New York: Viking.
Grousset, René. (1970). The empire of the steppes: A history of Central Asia. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Hobbes, Thomas. (1985). Ed. C. B. Macpherson. Leviathan. London: Penguin Books.
Hucker, Charles O. (1975). China’s imperial past: An introduction to Chinese history and culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Huntington, Samuel P. (1968). Political order in changing societies. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
Jackson, Peter. (1978). The dissolution of the Mongol empire. Central Asiatic Journal, 22, 186–244.
Jackson, Peter. (1999). The Mongols and Europe. In David Abulafia (Ed.), The New Cambridge medieval history, Volume V c. 1198–c.1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jackson, Peter. (2000). The state of research: The Mongol empire, 1986–1999. Journal of Medieval History, 26, 189–210.
Jackson, Peter, & Morgan, David. (1990). ‘Introduction’ to The mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His journey to the court of the Great Khan Möngke 1253–1255. London: The Hakluyt Society.
Juvaini, Ata-Malik. (1997). Genghis Khan: The history of the world conqueror. Trans. and Ed. J. A. Boyle. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Kahn, Paul. (1984). Introduction to The secret history of the Mongols: The origins of Chingis Khan. San Francisco: North Point Press.
Kwanten, Luc. (1979). Imperial nomads: A history of Central Asia 500–1500. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lamb, Harold. (1928). Genghis Khan: Emperor of all men. London: Thornton Butterworth.
Lattimore, Owen. (1951). Inner Asian frontiers of China (2nd ed.). New York: American Geographical Society of New York.
Lattimore, Owen. (1962a). Nomads and commissars: Mongolia revisited. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lattimore, Owen. (1962b). Studies in frontier history: Collected papers 1928–1958. London: Oxford University Press.
Lattimore, Owen. (1963a). Chingis Khan and the Monol conquests. Scientific American, 209(2), 54–69.
Lattimore, Owen. (1963b). The geography of Chingis Khan. Geographical Journal, 129, 1–7.
Liddell Hart, Basil H. (1967). Great captains unveiled. New York: Books for Libraries Press.
Lipton, Michael. (1968). The theory of the optimising peasant. Journal of Development Studies, 4, 327–351.
McGuire, Martin C, & Olson, Mancur, Jr. (1996). The economics of autocracy and majority rule: The invisible hand and the use of force. Journal of Economic Literature, 34, 72–96.
Morgan, David O. (1982). Who ran the Mongol empire? Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 14, 124–136.
Morgan, David. (1986). The Mongols. Cambridge, MA/Oxford: Blackwell.
Olson, Mancur. (1962). The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Olson, Mancur. (1982). The rise and decline of nations: Economic growth, stagflation, and social rigidities. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Olson, Mancur. (2000). Power and prosperity: Outgrowing communist and capitalist dictatorships. New York: Basic Books.
Onon, Urunge. (1993). ‘Introduction’ to Chinggis Khan: The golden history of the Mongols. London: The Folio Society.
Plano Carpini, Giovanni di. (1996). The story of the Mongols whom we call the Tartars. Trans. with an introduction by Erik Hildinger. Boston: Branden Publishing Company.
Prawdin, Michael. (1940). The Mongol empire: Its rise and legacy. London: Allen and Unwin.
Ratchnevsky, Paul. (1991). Genghis Khan: His life and legacy. Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Rossabi, Morris. (1988). Khubilai Khan: His life and times. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Saunders, J. J. (1971). The history of the Mongol conquests. New York: Barnes and Noble.
Schurmann, H. F. (1956). Mongolian tributary practices of the thirteenth century. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 19, 304–389.
Shagdar, Bira. (2000). The Mongol empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: East–west relations. In Vadime Eliseeff (Ed.), The Silk Roads: Highways of culture and commerce. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Smith, John Masson, Jr. (1970). Mongol and nomadic taxation. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 30, 46–85.
Smith, John Masson, Jr. (1984). cAyn Jālūt: Mamluk success or Mongol failure? Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 44, 307–345.
The Secret History of the Mongols (1982), Trans. and Ed. Francis Woodman Cleaves. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press.
Vernadsky, George. (1938). The scope and contents of Chingis’ Khan’s Yasa. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 3, 337–360.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Findlay, R., Lundahl, M. (2017). The First Globalization Episode: The Creation of the Mongol Empire, or the Economics of Chinggis Khan. In: The Economics of the Frontier. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60237-4_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60237-4_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-60236-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-60237-4
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)