3 - Dividing the East: Post-Chinggisid World Orders

Summary

This chapter argues that in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries the early Ming and the Timurid Empire can very much be thought of as post-Chinggisid polities. Timur (Tamerlane) very deliberately fashioned himself after Genghis Khan, but the early Ming rulers such as Hongwu and Yongle also very much understood sovereignty in the manner of their Chinggisid predecessors. As a result, both the Timurid and the early Ming manifested ambitions of world empire and recognition as well and came close to constructing a world order we may call 'bipolar' in our time. This is the story told in this chapter, as well the demise of this would-be world order in the middle of the fifteenth century – the Timurids lost control over their realm and the Ming jettisoned Chinggisid norms, turning increasingly isolationist. The chapter speculates whether the fragmentation of this world order may have something to do with a period of continental crisis in the middle of the fifteenth century, which caused a coin shortage and disrupted trade flows.