In the beginning of the chapter Strayer states that the Mongols played an enormous and surprisingly role in the Eurasian world of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The "revolution of domestication" began around 11,500 years ago and involved plants and animals. "Pastoralists had their greatest impact in the Afro-Eurasian world because in most parts of the Americas the absence of large animals that could be domesticated precluded a herding economy" (458). Strayer's remark reminded me of one of the previous chapters about how the Americas was agriculturally behind due to the absence of these large animals. In the section about the world of pastoral societies, Strayer states that people generally lived in small and widely scattered "encampments or seasonal settlements made up of related infolk rather than in village, town, and cities characteristic of agrarian civilization" (459). Pastoral societies different from their agricultural counterparts because pastoral societies supported smaller populations and generally offered women a higher status. In the section called "Before the Mongols: Pastoralists in History" Strayer mentions how the Xiongnu Empire effected a revolution in nomadic life as it transformed fragmented egalitarian societies into a centralized hierarchical system. I thought this was particularly interesting because the word "egalitarian" reminded me of Strayer's comments about Paleolithic peoples.
"The Mongol Empire left a surprisingly modest cultural imprint on the world it had briefly governed" (467). Unlike the Arabs, the Mongols left no new language, religion, or civilization as they never tried to spread their own faith among different peoples. Despite this, their religion centered on rituals "invoking the ancestors." The major steps in the rise of the Mongol Empire include Temujin, later known as Chinggis Khan, brought the Mongols together to be unified "through the incorporation of warriors from defeated tribes into his own forces (468). In his campaigns, he ended up building an empire that contained China, Korea, Central Asia, Russia, much of the Islamic Middle East, and parts of Eastern Europe (468). The remaining of the chapter has to do with comparing three cases: China and the Mongols, Persia and the Mongols, and Russia and the Mongols. China --> The Mongols united a divided China and made use of China's administrative practices. The Mongols also took Yuan and moved their capital to a new capital city which is now Beijing. Mongol rule was different in Persia as compared to China because heavy taxation pushed Persian peasants off the land and the Mongols who had conquered Persia converted a number of them to Muslim faith.
"The Mongol Empire left a surprisingly modest cultural imprint on the world it had briefly governed" (467). Unlike the Arabs, the Mongols left no new language, religion, or civilization as they never tried to spread their own faith among different peoples. Despite this, their religion centered on rituals "invoking the ancestors." The major steps in the rise of the Mongol Empire include Temujin, later known as Chinggis Khan, brought the Mongols together to be unified "through the incorporation of warriors from defeated tribes into his own forces (468). In his campaigns, he ended up building an empire that contained China, Korea, Central Asia, Russia, much of the Islamic Middle East, and parts of Eastern Europe (468). The remaining of the chapter has to do with comparing three cases: China and the Mongols, Persia and the Mongols, and Russia and the Mongols. China --> The Mongols united a divided China and made use of China's administrative practices. The Mongols also took Yuan and moved their capital to a new capital city which is now Beijing. Mongol rule was different in Persia as compared to China because heavy taxation pushed Persian peasants off the land and the Mongols who had conquered Persia converted a number of them to Muslim faith.
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