Prior to the rise of the West and European seaborne empires, the world witnessed another empire's meteoric rise in the thirteenth century: the Mongols. At its apex, the Central Asian empire stretched its territories across Eurasia to form the largest contiguous land empire in history. What were the Empire's immediate and long-term impacts on the conquered and its neighboring regions? In this paper, we first map out the geographic extent to which the Mongols spread their territories, using historical climatic anomalies as exogenous contingencies that could drive their expansion and identify which regions were more likely to have been invaded by the Mongols. Next, we investigate the Empire's subsequent impact on local development. Our main findings suggest that the Mongols' territorial consolidation encouraged urbanization by providing a safe overland passage for traders, but their conquests and urbicides across Eurasia also negatively impacted local development over the subsequent centuries.
Christopher Paik is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Division of Social Science at New York University Abu Dhabi and serves as Global Network Associate Professor of Politics at New York University. Christopher's research focuses on political geography, political economy and economic history. He is interested in the role of geography in explaining long-term outcomes related to political and economic development; the origins of states and state stability; the causes and effects of historical global encounters, including colonialism; and the politics of ethnic identification. Together, Christopher's research brings a global, comparative and historical perspective to the study of fundamental questions in the social sciences related to states and governance.
Host: Prof Sangyoon PARK, Associate Professor, Division of Social Science, HKUST