Essay On Mongol Empire

489 Words2 Pages

The great Mongol empire experienced a crippling blow to its foundation in the form of the bubonic plague. This deadly epidemic resulted in a great population drop, a situation that would never be solved properly by the Mongols; the plague was a major contributor to the eventual destruction of the Mongol empire. A great former leader of the Mongols was officially known as Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan was shown to be an expert strategist and military genius, which was reflected in the tactics that his Mongol army displayed during battle. Despite those presentations of military prowess, the Mongols are considered to be severely barbaric and violent peoples to most modern Europeans. Modern Asians recognize this misconception and have made efforts …show more content…

A perfect summary of how the Black Death spread is demonstrated in the quote “The plague was an epidemic of commerce.” The origins of the outbreak can be traced back to Mongol soldiers that brought the disease north from south China, which quickly spread across trading outposts via fleas; these fleas would then be transported by living in sacks of grain, human clothing, and on rats. Because the epicenter of the spread was located in China, the manufacturing center of the Mongol World System, the disease seemingly spread out in all directions at once. Now not only did silk and spices travel the Mongolian roads with merchants, but contagious disease did as well. From the trade routes and outposts, the bubonic plague spread expeditiously, infecting small camps to large regions within the Mongol empire and causing an alarming population drop by 1351, reaching death counts between two-thirds or one-half of the Chinese populace (p. 242-243). The people of Eurasia identified the correlation the spread had with trade, and rashly responded with either abandoning their city or rejecting the admission of outsiders. The impacts of these reactions would soon take hold as commerce, communication, and transportation were subsequently halted. In the Mongol empire, Persian and Russian Mongols were cut off from