How Did The Mongols Affect Eurasia

The Mongol way of life was primarily pastoral as they had to travel quite often to provide their livestock with enough food to survive. The Mongols lived off of their livestock and the food from the towns that they raided. As Mongol power increased, the Mongols began to conquer rather than merely pillage. As a result, by 1279, the Mongols had created the largest land-based empire ever, stretching from Asia’s Pacific coast all the way to Eastern Europe (Strayer, 466). Mongol conquests often resulted in mass destruction and death. These Mongol military campaigns had a few positive effects on Eurasia, but overall the negatives far outweighed the benefits, because in the long run, the Mongols left nothing but destruction in their wake. By connecting Eurasia and unifying China, the Mongol’s positively impacted the Eurasian world. The Mongol empire …show more content…
The Mongols left no language, religion, or civilization to those they conquered. A Hungarian Bishop living in the 13th Century wrote, “ They believe nothing” (Student Handout 1.1). Secondly, the Mongols left mass annihilation in their wake. Thomas Barfield, a scholar who studied the Mongols, wrote, “ Chinggis often chose to annihilate a region’s entire population, if it appeared too troublesome to govern” (Strayer, 472). The Mongol’s would kill anyone that got in their way leading the death of many innocent people. So much so that Persian historian Juvaini wrote, “ The population will not attain a tenth part of what it was before” (Strayer, 476). In addition to destruction by battle, the Mongols brought mass decimation upon the Afro-Eurasian world through the spread of the Black Death. This disease spread rapidly through Eurasia as infected Mongols spread it to those they conquered. The Black Death had a lasting and extremely damaging effect especially on Europe as the initial outbreak of 1348-1350 killed approximately half of its population (Strayer,