Of all European literatures, the Russian literary canon has perhaps been the one most focused on the figure of the ruler. In the eighteenth-century odes, the relationship between the poet and the ruler was described as vertical: the poet looks up at the ruler and exalts him or her through poetry. The first attempts to shift from the vertical to the horizontal plane took place in Gavriil Derzhavin’s verse, most notably through the familiar depiction of Catherine II in his ode ‘Felitsa’ (1782). The influence of this ode can still be felt half a century later in Aleksandr Pushkin’s novel The Captain’s Daughter (1836), where the titular Masha Mironova meets (but does not recognise) Catherine II, and the empress comes to personify history itself. Such images of the pre-Revolutionary ruler went on to shape depictions of the leader (namely Lenin and Stalin) in the first half of the twentieth century.

This chapter traces Chinggisid influences throughout the globalising world order of the sixteenth century. It shows that the European timeline – so foundational to IR – cannot be thought of as free from influences from Asia. As this chapter clearly demonstrates, Charles V and the Habsburgs were very much shaped by their competition with the Ottomans. The chapter then moves to the north and discusses the influences of Chinggisid sovereignty model on Muscovy, specifically on Ivan IV. It also catches up with sixteenth-century developments in Inner Asia and Ming China. The sixteenth-century order, with its centre of gravity in the post-Timurid empires of west Asia, fragmented in the seventeenth century, during the long period of 'general crisis' (often associated with climate change) which frayed both the material and ideational connections across Eurasia. Though some Asian polities were relatively unaffected by this period of crisis and others bounced back economically, no world ordering projects were successfully launched out of the East after this period. This was a major contributor to the perception of Eastern decline.