The Mongols: The Great Unifier For The Mongols

Genghis Khan, born Temujin in 1162 AD was known as the Great Unifier for the Mongols. The Mongols were nomadic people that originated from what is today known as Mongolia. Khan, whose name means ‘Universal Leader’ is known as the founder of the Mongol’s empire before his death in 1227 AD. He started by conquering most of Asia such and pretty much all of China. During this expansion, while the Mongols conquered these places, they did not yet occupy any of them. It was more like unifying the world, or as much of it as possible, under one banner. However, the Mongol expansion, like everything in this life, had consequences. One of its most dire one was the reopening of the Afro-Eurasian trade routes and starting trading again. That is a dire consequence

Due to their positive attitude towards trades, they reopened the Afro-Eurasian trade routes and once again the old Silk Road was open. This then brought about other trades such as people, as slavery was still prominent, animals and other goods. While that sounds like the beginning of a thriving business, the traffic of people and animals brought with them diseases, in this case, specifically the Black Death. The Bubonic Plague, otherwise known as the Black Death was the major epidemic that swept across Asia and Europe and changed the course of human history. Believing to have been started in Yunnan province around 1320, the plague would then spread to all parts of China and beyond causing a widespread devastation unlike anything ever seen before. It is said that rodents of Central Asian Steppes were the first ones to have carried the disease. From there, it spread from rodent to rodent and then moved on to fleas. And from there, it moved to the human populace causing widespread panic and

Due to the fact that without the Mongols expansion spearheaded by the great Genghis Khan, the Afro-Eurasian trade routes would have never been open, and from there, the plagues would not have been brought on the boats, it can be argued that Genghis Khan’s rise to power affected the prevailing social and political conditions that paved the way for Protestant Reformation while examining the precursors that set off the revolution of the Protestant Reformation over 200 years after his rule. Also, it can be argued that the Black Death was not the only disease sweeping through Europe and killing people during that time. “I shall try to determine, whenever possible, what people actually died of and what factors can be discerned to have affected overall mortality”. This quote from an article titled ‘Three Days in Venus’ by Stephen R. Ell resonated with me as it got thinking. The article focuses on the mortality of men using a plague that swept across Venice. The three days that he focused on in the article has been illustrated as the most brutal days of the plague. However, just because it was a plague, does not mean it was the plague, The Black Death. Given the time period, people had no resources to know exactly what they were fighting. With some symptoms being similar, they just assume it to be the Black Death. However, the article argues that they were other diseases