Talk:Pax Mongolica

On the Last Edits to this Page
I must heavily contest the changes the last user, Lao Wai, made to this page. I find it very biased in the very deliberate efforts to portray Pax Mongolica as a modern scholastic fantasy, a nonexistant revisionist history, by cramming this article with words and phrases like "invented by," "alleged," "sometimes claimed," "little evidence," "less evidence," etc. The conclusion of his non-NPOV arguments: it is more a "theoritical concept" than a practical reality. First of all, although Lao Wai is claiming he's making the article more historical, all he as actually done is just attack the credibility of this historical theory without adding any substantial historical facts. Secondly, although he claims in his profile that he likes adding sources to articles to add to their legitimacy, he makes all these claims against the Pax Mongolica viewpoint without adding any sources to back up his claims at all - he provides no sources to back up his absurd claims that no Islamic traders crossed the Silk Route during the time of the Mongols (Huh?) and that there is no evidence that the Mongols made the silk route more safe or more effecient. Why are these claims absurd? That brings me to my third point: Lao Wai made these biased changes without even bothering to read the one link that this page lead to, which is a very balanced article by a Professor at UW who, while acknowledging the desctructive extent of the Mongol expansion, also points out systems and evidence of the Silk Route, and overall production across the Empire, flourishing after Mongolian conquest. He even goes so much to quote primary documents, where Marco Polo, who travelled the route himself, says "The road you travel from Tana [Azov] to Cathay is perfectly safe, whether by day or by night, according to what the merchants say who have used it.." Very much contrary to what Lao Wai has added.

All of the info on this page is pure and unsourced conjencture. Pax Mongolica? "It was said"? - by whom, the Mongols?

This article does not acknowledge the real price a which this alleged Pax came. It's unsourced and it's more than a bit biased. It's a bad article, therefore. 24.80.109.19 03:00, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Where there are no historical facts it is hard to provide them. Can you name an Islamic trader that crossed the Silk Route?  Notice that Islamic traders did before the Mongols.  Are you claiming that more did after the Mongols (although I deny the existence of the Silk Route as well you might be pleased to hear).  There simply is no evidence that the Mongols made the route safer.  Look at Marco Polo.  Read carefully.  I suspect I did read that link.  What is your point?  Marco Polo does not make that claim.  Francesco Balducchi Pegolotti does.  Pegolotti never travelled that route and is reporting hearsay.  And, by the way, it takes some imaginative reconstruction to translate his words so that they refer to the Silk Route at all. Lao Wai 17:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The cut piece is


 * It is sometimes claimed that the "Silk Road," which connected trade centers across Asia and Europe, was made possible by the Mongol control of this territory. There is little evidence of Western or Islamic traders crossing the Mongol Empire although some religious and diplomatic figures were able to do so. There is less evidence that the Mongols even tried to make the route safer for traders. The phrase refers more to a theoretical concept than practical reality.


 * It is sometimes claimed that this was so. But there is in fact little evidence of Western of Muslim traders.  The majority of people who did were not merchants (Rubrick, Marco Polo etc).  There is precisely no evidence that the Mongols tried to make the route safer.  It is more a theoretical concept than a real one.  What is objectionable about that? Lao Wai 18:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * My textbook tells me that when Ibn Battuta traveled to China in 1345, he did so along well-established routes of Arab merchants. It also quotes him writing in his book: "In all Chinese provinces, there is a town for the Mohammedans [Muslims], and in this they reside. They also have cells, colleges and mosques, and are made much of by the Kings of China."


 * Perhaps it is not definite evidence, but I think that shows reason to believe that there are Muslim merchants in China. Please correct me if I am interpreting you wrong. Wikignometry (talk) 03:58, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Discussion G4
I added some headers. I deviated a little from the original outline: I paced "Post System" and "Mongol administration" (basically Sean's topics) under the header World Trade because i think they belong under world trade more than the rise of the Pax Mongolica itself. I also added "Fragmentation of Mongol Empire" to the Decline section: Fragmentation is a working title as of now. Feel free to change them accordingly if you think they need to be changed.Gxlarson (talk) 20:46, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Good job so far, but group members other than Stefan should join the discussion here as well. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:06, 17 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Please do not add empty headers to articles. I've removed those that had no or only trivial content again. If you want to experiment with the article structure, you can do so either on the talk page or in your user space. --Latebird (talk) 11:26, 18 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Sounds good Stefan, what do you think about a section which we can talk about how peace and safety were maintained along the trade routes?

--Seanmac33 (talk) 18:19, 23 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Sean: I think that it will be a very important section. I'm not sure if it should be two separate sections or just one combined section. If there is a lot of material to write about, I think it should be two sections, if not, then just one. I think it (or they) should be a subsection(s) under the Trade Network section. Gxlarson (talk) 15:50, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Hey guys I just added the small section of the post system. Let me know what you think. Also, how are your parts of the article looking Lauren and Carly? --Seanmac33 (talk) 18:38, 30 October 2009 (UTC)


 * That's a good addition to round out the picture, and I've added some links and spelling fixes. However, I removed the part about Kharkhorin, because it was only the capital for a very short time, and its status was not related to the postal system. --Latebird (talk) 11:42, 1 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Heyyyy! I added to the part about Marco Polo but I am not sure i cited it correctly?!?!
 * Can someone please let me know?
 * Jam187 (talk) 02:00, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The inline citations are fine, but bear in mind that the story of Marco Polo is rather peripheral to the Pax Mongolica. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 02:07, 2 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Hey guys, just a reminder we should all attend class tomorrow because we have our obligatory meeting afterward

.--Seanmac33 (talk) 04:24, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Group: the article is coming along slowly but surely. In order to bump it up to the next class(es), I think we need to add a subsection about the the Mongols' political authority and/or administration of the trade network. Also, there might be some interesting information that could be added to the article in the last chapter of BEH. Still waiting on Decline... Lauren & Carly.......post questions here (discussion page) if you have any... Gxlarson (talk) 22:55, 2 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Carly and Lauren: Very well done! I corrected some of the grammar, and added some "citation needed" thingys. I added these because we need to cite everything that isn't necessarily common knowledge. There are some lingering reservations I have about Decline however. First, I think that the end part of this section, and the whole section in general, needs to be more oriented to Pax Mongolica as a whole, rather than just simply the Mongol empire(s). Luckily this will be easy to fix. Second, I think there needs to be some information about the rise of European hegomonic powers as a result of the decline of the Pax Mongolica; Abu-Lughod's last chapter in Before European Hegemony will be helpful. Overall, a nice addition. Gxlarson (talk) 01:58, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Stephan- ok that sounds good, we arent too wiki-savy so maybe you can help us haha anyways, see you in class! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cmp77 (talk • contribs) 02:07, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

We need pictures... any ideas? Gxlarson (talk) 15:36, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * A lot of Wikipedia articles use images from Wikimedia Commons. Here are some of the images that they have related to this topic. If you need other images, you might look at WP:Images for ideas on where to find them. Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 21:12, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Early draft review
Early draft review notes: You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 22:10, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Consider adding more links to the article; per Manual of Style (links) and Build the web, create links to relevant articles.[?]
 * This article has no or few images. Please see if there are any free use images that fall under the Image use policy and fit under one of the Image copyright tags that can be uploaded. To upload images on Wikipedia, go to Special:Upload; to upload non-fair use images on the Wikimedia Commons, go to commons:special:upload.[?]
 * If there is not a free use image in the top right corner of the article, please try to find and include one.[?]
 * Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
 * Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “ All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
 * As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space in between. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2][?]
 * Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.[?]
 * Current ref 15 is missing a page number

Stay on topic
The topic of this article is the Pax Mongolica. The history of the Polo family and the decline of the Mongol Empire are already covered in other articles, and don't need to be repeated here. I'm going to remove all material that isn't directly related to the topic. If you think that any of the removed material is not covered in those articles where it belongs, feel free to add it there. --Latebird (talk) 19:42, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I already commented on the irrelevance of the Polo story above. The decline of Mongol Empire is more relevant, as it is a partial explanation of the decline of Pax Mongolica. What I'd like to see are sections explaining why the Pax Mongolica came into existence (already begun in the "Foundations" section) and why it disappeared (and what replaced it). The latter section should in fact contain some of this information, as it is relevant to the article (but decline of Pax Mongolica should not be confused with decline of the Mongol Empire). PS. That said, for my course, improvements to Mongol_Empire can be considered for extra credit. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The decline of the Empire and the decline of the Pax Mongolica are of course related, but not the same thing. It would be interesting to learn which events in the decline of the Empire had specific(!) consequences for the Pax. Also possibly how the split into the four khanates may or may not have changed the situation. The text I removed, however, didn't relate to the Pax Mongolica at all. --Latebird (talk) 15:27, 6 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with the reasons for removal. The next Decline will hopefully be more Pax Mongolica centered. Gxlarson (talk) 16:20, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Lead
Needs to summarize the decline section. Few others comments: more categories are needed (something related to the Mongol Empire, certainly); decline section could use a picture. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:38, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Using templates and makes it much easier
Hello all, impeccable work on the article so far, Kudos all round.

I would however give a few pointers on how to correctly CITE and how to use and this;, then whenever you want to ref page three you simply put in  and to ref page 21 use

Then we need to split the references section at the bottom in two: ==Notes== and ==References== in ==Notes== we'll stick the reflist template, and since it is a particularly large amount of references will split it into 4 columns by writing it like this: this will automatically list all the 's throughout the article and sort them into 4 even columns for us.

Under the ==References== We'll list each of the books like this:. That way when people see "Hopkins 2003, Page 3" listed under ==Notes== they'll know to look for it under ==References== for Hopkins name.

If you've done it all properly it should look like below.

Removing WikiProjects Economy and Sociology
While Pax Mongolica had socioeconomic importance, those projects cannot include "everything". Each period or era had a socioeconomic importance, but we cannot include them all in those projects. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk to me 21:52, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Factual errors
The article is very well written, but contains some factual flaws. I think the main problem is that the Mongols sometimes just robbed other countries, and haven't established a political system there. For example, Hungary was broken in 1241, but after a year, the Mongols mainly left the country, which they ruled, but never governed. So to say that "the Mongolian empire stretched from Shanhaiguan in the east to Budapest in the west at its height" is simply misinformation. Mongols governed a very big area, and they often robbed the neighboring lands, but they chose not to govern them.

What do you think?

145.236.146.16 (talk) 23:58, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Map only shows red
The map labeled 1206 only shows the red (early) holdings. Below the full size version other colors are given for the later expansions, but they are not on any version (that I can see) of the map itself. Shannock9 (talk) 10:46, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Budapest
"At its height, the Mongolian empire stretched from Shanhaiguan in the east to Budapest in the west" Budapest is a city name adopted in 1873 after the administrative unification of Pest, Óbuda and Újbuda. There was NO Budapest in the mid 13th century. Kill that anachronism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.36.175.136 (talk) 12:32, 2 December 2019 (UTC)