VIEWS OF THE MONGOL EMPIRE

Historians confront serious obstacles trying to understand the Mongol empire. Westerners have, until recently, generally portrayed the Mongols as barbaric conquerors, and some historians in Russia and the Soviet Union, in particular, have depicted them as oppressive plunderers, who razed numerous towns and massacred untold number of inhabitants. Most disturbing, the Mongols reputedly severed Russia's relations with the West, preventing the spread of European ideas and technologies to the Tsarist State that replaced the so-called Tartar yoke. A few historians blamed the Mongols for introducing a more despotic form of government in Russia. Traditional Chinese historians described the Mongol-ruled Yuan Dynasty as having ravaged Chinese territory and decimated the Chinese population, having undermined the proper operation of government by suspending the civil service examinations, having fostered the development of more despotic rule in Ming China, and having caused many talented men to avoid government service. Central and Western Asian historians emphasised the horrors of the Mongol onslaughts and invasions, although later rulers such as Tamerlane sought to identify with the Mongol heritage to bolster their claims to universal rule. Because Korea had legitimate familial links to the Mongols due to royal intermarriages, the Khan's procurement of Korean concubines, and Korea's recruitment of talented men for its bureaucracy, its primary sources and its later historians were not as critical of Mongol rule. Japanese historians depicted the two abortive Mongol assaults as evidence that Japan was divinely protected even from brutal conquerors.

Starting in the mid-twentieth century, specialists on the Mongol empire began to challenge these negative images. While they did not ignore the almost catastrophic destruction and the loss of life engendered by the Mongol invasions, they also noted that the Mongols facilitated travel and contact throughout Eurasia, which witnessed the first direct contacts between China and Europe, resulting in trade, cultural and artistic diffusion, scientific and technological borrowing, and religious exchanges.