The Mongol Peace, also known as the Pax Mongolica, was the period of relative stability and openness in the Eurasian trade routes that lasted from the early 1220s to the mid-fourteenth century. The phrase is borrowed from the Latin Pax Romana, and it refers to the fact that the Mongol Empire, at its height, made it possible for merchants, missionaries, and travelers to move across much of the Eurasian landmass with a degree of safety and predictability that had not been possible for centuries.
The Pax Mongolica was a major feature of the medieval world, and it had a profound effect on the political, cultural, and economic life of Eurasia. The Pax Mongolica was made possible by the institutions of the Mongol Empire, including the yam postal system, the imperial guarantee of safe conduct for travelers, and the Yassa code of law that severely punished robbery and other crimes against travelers.
The Duration of the Pax Mongolica
The Pax Mongolica lasted from the early 1220s, when the Mongols completed their conquest of the Khwarezmian Empire and established control over the trade routes of Central Asia, to the mid-fourteenth century, when the collapse of the Ilkhanate and the Yuan Dynasty removed the two khanates that had been the principal guarantors of the peace.
The Pax Mongolica was a relatively brief period in the history of the medieval world, but it had a profound effect on the political, cultural, and economic life of Eurasia. The Pax Mongolica made it possible for merchants, missionaries, and other travelers to move across the continent with unprecedented freedom, and the Pax Mongolica was a major factor in the development of the modern world.
The Effects of the Pax Mongolica
The Pax Mongolica had a number of major effects on the political, cultural, and economic life of Eurasia. The most obvious is in the increase in trade: the Silk Road and the maritime trade routes became safer and more heavily used, and the volume of goods moving along the routes increased dramatically.
The Pax Mongolica also had a major effect on the cultural exchange between East and West. The Pax Mongolica made it possible for merchants, missionaries, and other travelers to move across the continent with unprecedented freedom, and the cultural exchange that took place during the Pax Mongolica was a major factor in the development of the modern world. The most famous of the cultural exchanges was the visit of Marco Polo to the court of Kublai Khan, but the cultural exchange was not limited to a single traveler.
The Pax Mongolica also had a major effect on the spread of major technologies from China to the rest of the world. The most important of the technologies that were spread during the Pax Mongolica were paper money, gunpowder, paper, printing, and the compass. The spread of these technologies was a major factor in the development of the modern world, and it was a major step in the development of the modern systems of communication, transportation, and warfare.
The Decline of the Pax Mongolica
The Pax Mongolica began to break down in the mid-fourteenth century. The Black Death, which swept across Eurasia in the 1340s, killed millions of people and disrupted the trade routes that had made the Pax Mongolica possible. The collapse of the Ilkhanate in 1335 and the Yuan Dynasty in 1368 removed the two khanates that had been the principal guarantors of the peace. The rise of the Ming Dynasty in China, the Timurid Empire in Central Asia, and the Grand Duchy of Moscow in Russia created new political configurations that were less favorable to long-distance trade.
The end of the Pax Mongolica was a major turning point in the history of Eurasia. The overland trade routes of the continent became more dangerous and less heavily used, and the center of economic gravity shifted from the interior of the continent to the maritime periphery. The age of exploration that began in the fifteenth century was, in a sense, a response to the breakdown of the Pax Mongolica: the European voyages of discovery were attempts to find new routes to the east that did not depend on the overland trade routes that had been disrupted by the collapse of the Mongol peace.
Sources
- David Morgan, The Mongols (2nd ed., Oxford, 2007).
- Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (London, 2005).
- Timothy May, The Mongol Conquests in World History (London, 2012).