Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [70]
Some see in the centuries of Mongol world domination the first great wave of globalization. Under Mongol rule, Europe and the Far East were linked for the first time by trade routes as well as by the Yam: a network of relay stations, roughly thirty miles apart that stretched from one end of the empire to the other. According to Marco Polo, urgent messages could move through this courier system up to three hundred miles a day. The Yam also catered to international merchants by providing beds—sometimes with silk sheets—food, extra horses, fodder, even travel guides.
The Mongols, writes Weatherford, were “civilization's unrivaled cultural carriers.” They built churches in China, Islamic schools in Russia, and Buddhist stupas in Persia. “Because they had no system of their own to impose upon their subjects, they were willing to adopt and combine systems from everywhere.” The Mongols brought new strains of rice, millet, and other grains from China to Persia, while transporting new varieties of lemons and other citrus trees in the opposite direction. “An ever-expanding variety of peas, beans, grapes, lentils, nuts, carrots, turnips, melons, and diverse leaf vegetables” circulated the Mongol-dominated globe, as did new dyes, oils, spices, architectural styles, printing methods, card games, and fabrics such as satin, muslin, and damask silk. Muslim surgeons, supposedly the best in their day, now operated in China, while Chinese specialists in internal medicine and pharmacology cured diseases in central Asia and Mesopotamia. Russians were sent to north China, Genoese traders to the Black Sea, and Chinese merchants to Southeast Asia, where they built extensive commercial networks surviving to this day. From Arab mathematicians to Tajik carpets to Chinese acupuncturists, the Mongols “searched for what worked best; and when they found it, they spread it to other countries.”43
Khubilai, the last of the great Mongol rulers, died peacefully in 1294 after a reign of thirty-four years. In many ways, he differed from Genghis Khan. He lacked his grandfather's knack and drive for military expansion. He was also much more humane. Even on the campaigns he did lead, Khubilai never committed the ruthless massacres that earned his predecessors their terrible name. But like his grandfather, Khubilai was unhampered by ethnic or religious chauvinism. He freely admired and shrewdly drew on the knowledge, ingenuities, and cultural achievements of his subject peoples. He allowed all creeds to flourish, and he treated Chinese civilization like a jewel, even while infusing it with learning and technology from India and the Muslim lands.
Perhaps more consciously than his grandfather, who remained at heart a steppe nomad, Khubilai was a globalizer, seeking to create one world system. By synthesizing Arab, Chinese, and Greek expertise, Khubilai's astronomers and cartographers produced the world's most sophisticated maps, nautical charts, and terrestrial globes, far outstripping their European counterparts. He embraced international commerce, religious coexistence, free communication, and cultural exchange. Fittingly, two of Khubilai's most passionate ambitions were to establish a universal alphabet, encompassing all the languages of the world, and a universal calendar unifying the lunar calendar of the Arabs, the solar calendar of the Europeans, and the twelve-year animal cycle of the Chinese.44
INTOLERANCE AND DECLINE
As is the case with every empire, the collapse of the Great Mongol Empire was fueled by many factors, among them incompetent leaders, corruption, revolts, decadence, factional struggles, assassinations, external attacks, and bad luck. Not all parts of the empire fell at the same time. Mongol rule in China ended in 1368, when the new Ming rulers—triumphantly ethnic Chinese—sent Genghis Khan's descendants fleeing back to the steppe. Mongol rule in the Persian Ilkhanate, long