MONGOLIA (Western Colonialism)

In 2005 Mongolia was home to 2.5 million people on a 1.5-million-square-kilometer (972,445-square-mile) landlocked high plateau, averaging 1,580 meters (almost 1 mile) above sea level. The country has thick forests and mountains in the north, but 90 percent of the land is arid steppes and deserts, unsuitable for farming. It traditionally has been occupied by migrating herders of sheep, goats, cows, horses, and camels, living in a harsh, dry climate. The country’s population is quite homogeneous. Nearly 90 percent are of Khalkha Mongol, with the largest minority being Kazakh Turks in the west. Not included in this modern definition of Mongolia are large populations of Mongols in China (Inner Mongolia) and Russia (Buryatia and Kalmykia), who number another 6 million.

Mongolia traces its origins to the election of a young warrior named Temujin, who in 1206 was elected in a kuriltai (council) as Khan. Temujin chose the mystic name of Chinggis (Genghis) Khan, which perhaps means ”universal or great khan.” This great military leader established the Mongolian Empire of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the largest empire in world history. It stretched from Siberia, Korea, and China to Afghanistan and North India through Tibet, Central Asia including the Silk Road cities, Russia, Turkey, and Iraq to the borders of Egypt and Germany. The Mongols promoted trade, art, and cultural exchange throughout the empire, which is why historians call this period of history Pax Mongolica.

Chinggis reorganized his nomadic warriors to establish a political-military system totally loyal to him. Then he turned against the Jin Empire in North China, where his army developed siege techniques to attack fortified cities. Chinggis devastated the Jin capital (modern Beijing), but the subjugation of China was completed only by his grandson, Kubilai, who in 1279 became the emperor of a new Mongol dynasty called Yuan. Chinggis himself spent much time fighting the Qara Khitai (Western Liao or Tangut) state over the next twenty years.

The murder of Mongol envoys in 1218 in the Muslim Central Asian state of Khawarism was the defining reason that the Mongolian Empire expanded westward from East Asia into the Middle East and Europe. Chinggis, with a nomadic army of 200,000, wiped out the country. He sent small detachments of Mongol cavalry west to defeat the Georgians. These crossed into Russia, through the Crimea and Ukraine. The Khan also made a political-religious alliance with Tibetan Buddhists, which initiated more than 700 years of cultural and religious connections between the two peoples.

Chinggis died in 1227, dividing up his empire between his four sons.

His son Ogedei was elected Great Khan. He expanded the empire further into Russia, Korea, China, Iran, and Syria. He built the empire its first sedentary capital called Karakorum in the heart of the Mongol homeland steppe. This capital was visited by Western writers such as John of Plano Carpini, William of Rubruk, and Marco Polo. During the imperial period the Mongol rulers in the four major parts of the empire usually came to promote the religion and arts of the peoples they ruled. This was particularly true in Islamic and Buddhist countries.

In West Asia the Mongol Ilkhans remained in power only until 1335. However, Mongol rule—”the Golden Horde”—persisted in Russia until 1502 when it was destroyed by the Muscovite state, but did not embrace Russian Orthodoxy. The Mongols’ administrative practices greatly influenced Russia, and often this heritage, also known as Tatar, is credited with explaining Russia’s distinctive culture from that of other European nations.

When the Mongols were deposed in China in 1368 by the Ming dynasty, they returned to the Mongol steppe in disunity. In the late 1500s they became Tibetan Buddhists, which impacted greatly on Mongol culture. In the seventeenth century the Manchu people made an alliance with the Mongol nobles to conquer China and establish the Qing dynasty. Over three centuries the alliance disintegrated into full political and economic domination. With the fall of Manchu rule in China in 1911, Mongolia was able to establish a weak autonomous government under a Buddhist religious leader with strong ties to Republican China.

In 1921 Mongolia underwent a communist revolution with the aid of Siberian Bolshevik forces, and became a loyal Soviet satellite from 1924 to 1990. In 1990 the country experienced a peaceful democratic revolution, and in the twenty-first century seeks to develop its rich mineral and animal resources through free market and democratic institutions.