It’s my second consecutive year teaching World History (I taught it last school year for the first time since the 2011-2012 school year—whoa!), and I’m pleased to see that I’m two weeks ahead of schedule compared to where I was last year.  That’s likely due to having a bunch of my lessons done this year, so I’m not trying to pad out lectures with a bunch of riffing.

So it is that, as of the time of writing, I’ve just covered the Mongols in detail (minus a couple of slides before we talk about medieval Japan).

The Mongols are wildly fascinating, in part because they were wild—nomadic horsemen who would drink the blood of their horses when they were low on supplies; wore silk underwear that served as protection against arrows; and would switch horses mid-ride, spending as much as ten days in their saddles.  Under Genghis Khan, they spilled an immense amount of blood, slaughtering an estimated 40,000,000 (that’s forty million) people, equivalent to low-end estimates of those who perished in the Second World War.  Again, these are estimates—numbers from the thirteenth century aren’t necessarily reliable—but that comes to roughly 13% of the global population at the time.  Indeed, while writing these numbers, they seemed fantastically large; I had to go back and consult my World History textbook (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you).

Genghis Khan’s conquests, as well as those of his successors, brought an odd peace, the Pax Mongolica (also an Amazon Affiliate link), to Eurasia for about 100 years.  It was the peace of the graveyard, as so many people were killed in the course of these invasions, there was no one troublesome enough left to cause a ruckus.  It also marked one of the few times in human history that a single political unit (sort of) controlled the great Eurasian steppes, allowing for the (alleged) journeys of Marco Polo and doubtlessly thousands of other unsung but intrepid merchants, missionaries, and explorers.

Naturally, the largest land-based empire ever to exist in the world could not long survive.  The Mongol Empire was probably never anything as such—a single, unified political unit—but more of an amalgamation of tribes, peoples, and regions swearing allegiance to the Great Khan.  After Genghis Khan’s death, the empire was divided into four khanates, with an ostensible Great Kahn ruling over the four, but with the regions going their own ways in practice.

Nevertheless, there is something captivating about the sheer scale of these conquests, and the way a nation of clannish, nomadic horsemen swept across the world, spreading their terrible fury and bloodlust as they went (and, it seems likely, the Black Death that would depopulate 25% of Europe).

Will another horde arise from the Eurasian steppes?  If so, let’s pray they fall far short of ambitious conquests of the Mongols.

With that, here is 5 March 2025’s “Midweek Mongol Madness“:

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