AP World History: Political and Economic Effects of Mongol Rule in China and the Middle East

Part B (from the 2005 AP^® World History Released Exam)

Directions: You are to answer the following question.  You should spend 5 minutes organizing or outlining your essay.  Write an essay that:

• Has a relevant thesis and supports that thesis with appropriate historical evidence.
• Addresses all parts of the question.
• Uses historical context to show change over time and/or continuities.

2. Compare and contrast the political and economic effects of Mongol rule on TWO of the following regions:

            China

            Middle East

            Russia

Beginning in the thirteenth century AD, a tribe of nomads called the Mongols conquered most of Asia, from present-day Korea in the East to parts of present-day Europe in the West.  After wreaking havoc on the locals, the Mongols assimilated to the cultures of the conquered.  Two notable cultures which were conquered were those existing in China and the Middle East. While united under the same name, the Mongols in China and the Middle East affected their political and economic environments with varying degrees of violence and success.

            Towards the end of the thirteenth century, Kubilai Khan, a descendent of the prominent Mongol leader Genghis Khan, succeeded in capturing all of China and thus ended the Song dynasty.  However, instead of slaughtering the prior dynast, Kubilai treated him with respect.  As was typical of the Mongols, Kubilai assimilated to the Chinese ways; he adopted the Mandate of Heaven, proclaimed himself ruler of China, and began the Yuan Dynasty.  He then did something contrary to Chinese tradition; he welcomed many non-Chinese ethnic groups into high seats of political power.  Therefore, at the top of the Chinese political hierarchy reigned the non-Chinese.  However, the Chinese elites retained their governmental positions over the cities and smaller subdivisions.  These political changes in authority in turn changed the economic landscape of Yuan Dynasty China.  The expansionist and out-looking nature of the Mongols resulted in a lessening of the Chinese seclusion.  Trade routes brought western goods and influences into China and took Chinese productions out. 

            At the other end of the Mongol network laid the Middle East.  In the mid-thirteenth century the Mongols, under the leadership of Hulagu, overthrew Baghdad, the heart of Islam, and rampaged the lands up until Byzantium, ending the Abbasid caliphate as they had done under Kubilai to Song China.  However, the Mongol forces were not as kind to the Abbasid caliph as they were to the Song emperor and quite literally trampled him to death.  Despite the violence done, the Mongols eventually assimilated to the Islamic culture as they had in China.  Meanwhile, Hulagu sought to gain control of the newly conquered peoples, mirroring his brother, Kubilai, in the west; however, he struggled to gain political reverence as his distinctively ferocious methods were only effective for so long.  By the time the Mongols could gain traction, the Bubonic Plague invaded in the mid-fourteenth century and brought the Muslim territory to near political and economic collapse.  Following the trading routes the Mongols had cleared, the Black Death ravaged the trading cities and eventually the heartland of Baghdad, suffocating the once booming mercantile productivity and trade.  However, as the death of a plant is fertilizer for many more, the waning of the population, government, and economy provided a fertile base for three even greater Islamic states to bud, blossom, and grow in an expanding world – the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires

            China and the Middle East experienced varying political and economic changes as the result of the conquering Mongols and their assimilation.   In China, the political hierarchy and economy was opened to outsiders and thus the Chinese commercial and intellectual seclusion was terminated.  On the other end of Asia, in the Middle East, the Mongol invasion fostered an expansion of the trade routes, but also provided an easy path for disease.  As a result, this led to the crippling of the Muslim heart, Baghdad, along with its current political and economic system; however, in the long-run, this destruction fostered the production of even greater and stronger Islamic states.  Not only did the Mongol invasions effect the political and economic climate, the social lives of the invaded were changed.  In China, because of Kubilai’s restructuring and welcoming of the non-Chinese into government, the subjugated Han thus felt inferior in their own lands.  They were Chinese, in China, subject and servant to non-Chinese.  On the other end of the Silk Road, the unity and moral of the Muslims dissipated with the slaughter at Baghdad.  Their holy mosques in their once grand capital were violated by the massive bloodbath.  Never again would all of Islam be united by a single power and place; instead they were socially divided as the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires arose.  Yet still, politically and economically, the damage wrought by the Mongols on Chinese and Middle Easter Civilizations ultimately brought greater interconnectedness to all of Asia in the long-run.