之前應H-War的邀稿，在寫這本書的書評。下面是書評全文。我自己覺得這本書寫得不錯，算是世界史風行以來，新近的研究中寫得最完整的一本。跟Rossabi之前出版的世界史教材The Mongols and Global History: A Norton Documents Reader相比，這本書更像是一本專著。雖然內容有些小瑕疵，例如把Erdene Zuu的興建者喀爾喀的阿巴泰汗誤植為土默特的阿勒坦汗，但是瑕不掩瑜。第三章「1350年的世界：一個全球的世界」，是我目前讀過用最短的篇幅而能恰當總結蒙古帝國崩潰後的歐亞世界概況，特別是內亞部分。由於作者本身研究蒙古軍事史，所以第五章有關軍事的部分寫得也很不錯，特別是蒙古的戰術對現代戰略思想的影響。推薦給有興趣的朋友。:-)

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Link: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=36345

Timothy May. The Mongol Conquests in World History. London: Reaktion Books, 2011. 304 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-86189-867-8.

Reviewed by Wei-chieh Tsai (Indiana University)
Published on H-War (September, 2012)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey

Reevaluating the Heritage of the Mongol Conquests

The Mongol conquests shook Eurasia and were of significant influence in world history. Since the 1970s, a great number of articles and books have been written or edited evaluating or re-examining its heritage. Among those works, J. J. Saunders’ The History of the Mongol Conquests (1971) and David Morgan’s The Mongols (first published in 1986 and second edition in 2007) are of great use for students and experts of Mongol history. In the past two decades, Thomas T. Allsen has made an immense contribution on this topic. His books Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles (1997) and Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (2001) expand our vision about the cultural exchange in Eurasia. As new archaeological evidences are found, we can better understand the technological and material exchange between East Asia and the Middle East. Many papers about these topics have been edited into books, such as The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353 (edited by Linda Komaroff and Stefano Carboni, 2002) and Beyond the Legacy of Genghis Khan (edited by Linda Komaroff, 2006). By dint of those works, May’s new book The Mongol Conquests in World History digests those modern findings and shows us the latest development in this field. [1]

Opening with a concise introduction of sources and theoretical concerns, May’s book is divided into two parts: “The Mongol Conquests as Catalyst” and “The Chinggis Exchange.” May considers the Mongol conquests to have changed the political map of Eurasia and offered a platform for the Chinggis Exchange, a term which was coined by its initiator, Chinggis Khan. The first part has three chapters and respectively deals with the formation, dissolution, and aftermath of the Mongol empire. Since May is an expert of Mongol military history, he offers his readers a fairly clear account of Mongol conquests in Eurasia. The third chapter is a succinct overview of the Eurasian regimes in the post-Mongol era.

The second part includes seven chapters, each discussing a different dimension of the Chinggis Exchange: trade, warfare (and technology), administration, religion, germ (bubonic plague), human (migration), and culture. In the trade chapter, May mentions how Chinese paper money influenced the monetary reform in the Middle East (pp. 128-129). He also points out that the Mongol capitals Karakorum and New Saray rose and fell with the development of the Mongol empire since the Mongols deliberately arranged the post-road routes for merchants (p. 119, 126). The warfare chapter is based on May’s first book and is an admirable account about Mongol military and its modern influence. He is also cautious in pointing out that at that time the gunpowder might not have been applied outside of China since we have no archaeological evidences and philology is not enough to support this theory (p. 152). [2] In the administration chapter, May demonstrates that the Mongol governance was coherent inside of the empire by means of taxation, and the pervasive census facilitated the implement of taxation. The Mongols left their successors a new model for administrating their territories. As for religion, the Mongols were known for being tolerant of world religions, but they did not convert to any of them until the dissolution of their empire. In May’s opinion, the main reason is that the Mongols believed they obtained a mandate from heaven to conquer the world, and to adopt another religion meant losing their identity. Even though the Mongols converted to Buddhism and Islam, they actually adopted the syncretic form of those religions which was more flexible to foreign elements. Therefore the Mongols would not need to convert at the expense of changing their identity (p. 197). In the migration chapter, May argues that the Pax Mongolica not only facilitated migration, but also contributed to the establishment of Turkic states in Eurasia. In the final chapter, May probes some cultural exchanges which have been undervalued, like food and apparel.

Although May has done a good job evaluating roles of different peoples under the Mongol rule, the part concerning the importance of the Uighurs could still be elaborated. It is correct that Xi Xia was the first sedentary power that the Mongols invaded (p. 38). But we need to notice that the first sedentary power that joined the Mongol camp was the Uighurs. The Uighurs’ obligations to the Mongols became a model for later states that were incorporated into the Mongol empire. For instance, the subordinate ruler had to pay homage to the Mongol khan in person, he had to send his relatives as hostages, and his territory was subject to Mongol taxation, military recruitment, and post-road system. As for Uighur cultural influence on the Mongols, Chinggis Khan ordered to adopt the Uighur script for writing Mongolian. Tata Tong’a, the creator of Mongolian writing, is Uighur. Uighur script and scribes were popular for the Mongol administration. Chinqai (?-1252), chief minister of Ögedei and Güyüg Khan, was also Uighur. The Mongol conquests also made the Uighur culture spread across Eurasia. [3]

As for the transformation of the Mongol identity, May mentions the Khamag Mongol Ulus, a common identity created by Chinggis Khan for replacing the old ethnic identities, such as the Kereits and the Naimans (pp. 36-37). May uses this term as a proper noun and for him it seems that there existed a Khamag Mongol Ulus in the pre-Chinggis era. Therefore, Khamag Mongol Ulus served as the archetype of the Yeke Monggol Ulus (p. 213). Although some Soviet and Mongol scholars had the same assumption, Igor de Rachewiltz demonstrated that this might not be an acceptable reading and the khamag Mongol ulus simply means all the Mongols, not a proper noun or an appellation for the pre-Chinggis Mongol state. [4]

Some minor mistakes in the editing were found in the book. Zhao Gong 趙珙, the author of Mengda beilu (Record of the Mongols and Tatars), is erroneously transcribed into Zhao Hong (p. 17). Zhongxing 中興, the capital of Xi Xia, was wrongly transcribed into Zhongxiang (p. 39, 45). The famous Mongol Buddhist monastery Erdene Zuu was not sponsored by Altan Khan of Tümed, but Abatai Khan of Khalkha (p. 116).

May’s book reveals to us that during the Chinggis Exchange of the medieval world the Mongols played an active role. Before the rise of the Mongols, the Islamic Middle East and the Confucian East Asia were not interested in international exchange. Without the Mongols, the major Eurasian civilizations might not have been forced to start large-scale interactions and exchanges since they were all highly self-conceited and looked down on other civilizations. As the subject of world history becomes more and more popular, May’s work is an admirable contribution in this field and a necessary guide for teaching and research today.

Note

[1]. Although Rossabi published two books about the Mongols recently and also touches this topic, one is more like a textbook or reader for students and the other is a booklet for introducing the Mongols to the public. The main audience of both books is not academic researchers. See Morris Rossabi, _The Mongols and Global History: A Norton Documents Reader_ (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011) and _The Mongols: A Very Short Introduction_ (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

[2]. See Timothy May, _The Mongol Art of War: Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Military System_ (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2007).

[3]. For the Uighurs under Mongol rule, see Thomas T. Allsen, “The Yüan Dynasty and the Uighurs of Turfan in the 13th Century,” in _China among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th-14th Centuries_, ed. Morris Rossabi (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 261-269.

[4]. Igor de Rachewiltz, trans., _The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century_, 2nd impr. with corr. (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 296.