MIASU Research Seminar – 5 May – Nik Matheou

Nomadic Aristocracy & the Political Economy of the Mongol World Empire

Nik Matheou (University of Edinburgh)

 

Eurasia's "Mongol Moment" has long been recognised as a crucial conjuncture in economic history over the long term, witnessing unprecedented levels of commercialisation in particular. Generally characterised as the so-called Pax Mongolica, the traditional story presents the Mongols in a curiously passive light: their rule fostered intercontinental connectivity while lowering transaction costs and increasing safe passage, but the real economic work was done by their sedentary subjects and neighbours. This passive image was grounded in a tribal and kinship-based view of Central Eurasian nomadism, which presumed that it constituted a comparatively unproductive lifeway ultimately dependent on sedentary societies. This view has come under increasing critique in recent years, however. In its place scholars have proposed a new vision of Central Eurasian nomadism as a form of political economy constituted by aristocratic orders. What, then, are the implications of this political and economic understanding of nomadic aristocracy for the classic story of the Pax Mongolica? This seminar tackles the question firstly by giving an overview of nomadic aristocracy as a tributary regime of accumulation, and then by analysing the dramatic economic developments of the Mongol world-empire in its light.