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- Convenors:
-
Beatrice Manz
(Tufts University)
Timothy May (University of North Georgia)
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- Theme:
- HIS
- Location:
- Posvar 3800
- Start time:
- 26 October, 2018 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 1
Long Abstract:
The Mongol Empire casts a long shadow in history, most notably in Central Eurasia. Not only the ramifications of the Mongol Conquests and rule affected the region, but many of the institutions carried on long afterwards, extending well beyond the immediate steppe successors but also into successors that formed in sedentary states. Political institutions were not the only type that carried great importance within the Mongol Empire. Well known for their emphasis on trade, the Mongols also developed a commercial entity known as the ortoq. While how it operated is well understood, it origins and similarities with other commercial arrangements in the medieval world is less so. Yet, despite its similarities with other systems, unlike the Mongol political institution, the commercial institution did not survive the Mongol Empire. Additionally, not all institutions are readily identified and remain as underlying concepts that shaped the Mongol Empire, including obligations between the khan and his supporters. These ideas carried great importance not only during the Mongol Empire, but one can see their antecedents in steppe history and their legacy in the post-Mongol world.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Charles Halperin
Paper long abstract:
Michael Hope has proposed that there were two political cultured within the Mongol Empire and its successor states, unlimited authority of the ruler (such as Chingis Khan) and collegial, consensual authority (such as the kuriltai). This paper uses Muscovite diplomatic papers from the reign of Ivan IV, here during the 1560s and 1570, to argue that the Muscovite court perceived the political culture of the Crimean Khanate, a successor state of the Juchid ulus, as conforming to the second paradigm, a consensual, collegial state. Given intimate Muscovite familiarity with the Crimean Khanate, this perception of its political culture deserves to be considered accurate.
Michael Hope (Yonsei University)
Paper long abstract:
The themes of loyalty and betrayal are frequently encountered in the early history of the Mongol Empire (1206-1259). The minor qanates that competed for power on the steppe prior to the rise of Chinggis Qan (1175?-1227) were built upon personal bonds of trust and customary obligations, whilst acts of betrayal and deception were punished through vendetta and feud. The Great Mongol State (Yeke Mongqol Ulus), created by Chinggis Qan, also placed a high value on personal loyalty to the qa'an (Great Qan) through a series of oaths and duties, which informed the relationship between a qan, his companions (nokut) and the commoners. Going back on one's oaths and duties was seen to be a particularly egregious crime and brought about a state of 'bulqa', often glossed as 'rebellion' by modern historians, but more frequently tied to 'fitna' (chaos/disorder) in the Arabic and Persian-language sources. Bulqa could only be avoided by a qan and his subjects meeting their mutual obligations (üile) to one another. The present paper will discuss three such obligations, characterized as: traditional, personal, and imperial.
Enerelt Enkhbold (National University of Mongolia)
Paper long abstract:
The concept of a commercial partnership is deeply rooted in the Middle Ages. One of the oldest business organization forms is business partnerships established between the Mongol ruling class and their merchant partners, known as ortoq. Historical sources are extremely fragmented for economic historians. Therefore, this topic requires a scholar to master several languages, such as Mongolian, Chinese, Latin, Turkic and Persian in order to use primary sources. Until now, the comprehensive analysis of this ancient business organization is missing. This study aims to reconstruct the structural features of Mongol-ortoq partnership based on primary sources and academic literatures. Moreover, this study analyzes business activities undertaken by the ortoqs.
The three basic activities carried out by the ortoqs included principal-authorized purchase of rarities, reselling of purchased goods, and lending money using the capital advanced by the ruling class of Mongol Eurasia. In the first form of the three activities, a principal advanced capital to an ortoq with instructions to purchase or to sell pre-identified goods in selected destinations. The ortoq carried out commercial activities with the capital provided and shared profit with the principal at a pre-determined ratio. Due to lack of the primary sources, numerical variations for the profit-sharing ratio are unknown to date except for two ratios applied to the capital funded by the khan's treasury.
This study argues that the Mongol-ortoq partnership had several characteristics of other medieval trade contracts such as mudharaba or commenda. As analogy to the modern concept of limited liability, the principal was liable to all the losses up to the limit of the original investment whereas an ortoq was not liable to the lost capital. As the Mongol rulers and nobles suffered more losses over time, loan capital became dominant over the capital structure of Mongol-ortoq partnerships. When a principal lent money to an ortoq, most business risks were shifted from the former to the latter. In such a case the ortoqs became unlimitedly liable to loan capital used for the venture. The reason for this shift is not clearly known. However, in light of a large number of failures of the Mongols, credit had become the predominant form of capital used for commercial partnerships by the late thirteenth century. In the wake of the Eurasian social and political crisis, the ortoq system did not survive and disappeared by the fifteenth century.