Culture and Conquest: the Impact of the Mongols and their Descendants

Admission requirements

Admission to (one of) the programme(s) listed under Part of in the information bar on the right.
If you are interested in taking this course, but NOT a student of (one of) the listed programme(s), please contact the Education Coordinator.

Description

In the thirteenth century, the Mongols created a vast empire that covered large parts of Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Their swift conquests shook the Old World to its very foundations and changed its outlook entirely. In many contemporary sources the Mongols are depicted as ruthless barbarians. At the same time, however, the Mongols heralded a new era of globalization by creating unprecedented opportunities for cultural transmission and exchange. Hence by stimulating the circulation of people, commodities, knowledge and ideas, they made a significant contribution to almost all the medieval civilizations surrounding the arid zones of Central Eurasia.

In this course, we will look at the immediate and long-term impact of the Mongols and their descendants (e.g. the Timurids and Mughals) on the course of Eurasian history. How should we evaluate their political and cultural legacy in the light of both contemporary sources and the more recent historiography? How did the various settled societies of Eurasia resist and/or accommodate this sudden outburst of both relentless violence and refreshing creativity?

Finally, how did the Mongols themselves fashion their legacy and to what extent were they able to construct their own image and memory in e.g. art, literature and history-writing? All these questions will be discussed with experts from various disciplinary and area backgrounds and as such the course aims to provide a truly comparative and connective Eurasian perspective.

Course objectives

Students acquire:

• The ability to independently identify and select sources

• The ability to independently formulate a clear and well-argued research question

• The ability to analyze and evaluate literature and sources for the purpose of producing an original scholarly argument

• The ability to interpret a corpus of sources

• Knowledge and comprehension of global history and its historiography specifically:

1) empirical research from a comparative and connective perspective;
2) comprehension of how global (political, socio-economic, and cultural) connections interact with regional processes of identity and state formation; hence insight in cross-cultural processes (including the infrastructure of shipping and other modes of communication) that affect regions across the world such as imperialism, colonisation, islamisation, modernisation and globalization (in particular during the period 1200-1940)

Specific objectives:

• This course aims to provide a comparative and connective Eurasian perspective of the history of Asia, the Middle East and Europe, taking the Mongol Empire as a premodern example of globalization.

• It intends to provide analytical tools to evaluate the literature on the topic, to build scholarly arguments and to develop original research questions in connection with the current historiography.

• Special attention will be devoted to cross-cultural approaches. Contemporary debates will be identified and discussed, including the most recent issues regarding the Pax Mongolica, the Silk Roads, the Tatar yoke, pre-modern imperialism, political and national uses of historical figures such as Chinggis Qan, Qubilai, Timur and Babur.

Timetable

The timetables are available through My Timetable.

Mode of instruction

Seminar

Assessment method

Assessment and weighing

AQCI

This exercise is based on an attentive reading of the course manual (Thomas Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001) taken as a starting point for the current approach of the Mongol agency in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The student is asked to identify the author’s main arguments and to connect them to his own scholarly knowledge. A first set of potential research questions should be addressed.

Paper

The student writes an academic paper in which the capacity to interpret and synthesize scholarly and specialized literature relevant to the topic is displayed. The use of primary sources is obligatory. This paper shows:

• The ability to independently identify and select sources

• The ability to independently formulate a clear and well-argued research question

• The ability to analyze and evaluate literature and sources for the purpose of producing an original scholarly argument

• The ability to interpret a corpus of sources

• The ability to give a clear written report on the research results in English or Dutch,

• The ability to independently identify and select sources and literature* Presentation, comments and participation show

• The ability to give a clear oral report on the research results in English or Dutch The ability to provide constructive academic feedback

• The ability to engage actively with other students (participation)

• The ability to engage with constructive academic feedback (participation)

The paper is written in two stages: a first version which will be commented on and a final version. Students who do not meet the deadline for the first version will lose the right to get comments and will only be graded based on their final version. (The paper deadline mentioned in uSis is a fictional date for administration purposes only. The actual date will be communicated by the convenor of the course.)

In order to pass the course, students must obtain an overall mark of 5.50 (=6) or higher.

The course is an integrated whole. The final examination and the assignments must be completed in the same academic year. No partial marks can be carried over into following years.

Resit

Only if the total weighted average is insufficient (5.49 or lower) and the insufficient grade is the result of an insufficient paper, a resit of the paper is possible (60%). In that case the convener of the course may assign a (new) topic and give a new deadline.

A resit of the other partial assessments is not possible.

Inspection and feedback

If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.

Reading list

Reading list: selected readings

• Thomas Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001.

• Michal Biran, “The Mongol Transformation: From the Steppe to Eurasian Empire”, Medieval Encounters, 10, 1-3 (2004): pp. 339-361.

• Nicola di Cosmo, State Formation and Periodization in Inner Asian History, Journal of World History, 1999, Vol. 10 (1), pp. 1-40.

• Michael Hope, Power, Politics and Tradition in the Mongol Empire and the Ilkhanate of Iran, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016

• Joseph Fletcher, “The Mongols: Ecological and Social Perspectives”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 46 (1986): pp. 11-50.

• Peter Jackson, The Mongols in the Islamic World. From Conquest to Conversion, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2017)

• Morris Rossabi, The Mongols. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012.

Further readings will be announced via Brightspace.

Registration

Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.

The number of places is limited and the principle is first come, first served. Priority is given to students from the MA programmes listed under Part of in the information bar on the right, who started with the MA programme in 2024-2025.

General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.

Contact

• For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.

• For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office Herta Mohr

Remarks

Please note that the additional course information is an integral part of this course description.

A detailed syllabus including assessment guidelines will be made available at the beginning of the course.