To search for a book for this assignment, I first considered what type of book or subject I might find relevant to the course. I settled on something about the Mongols, as we talk about them and compare them to other empires, but haven’t discussed much specifically about them. I therefore think a book about the Mongol Empire in terms of their conquering and ruling strategies might be compelling for class discussion. To find such a book, I searched ‘Mongol Empire’ on the library website and went to the shelf where the majority of the books were located, knowing that there would probably be something that caught my eye in this location. Mongol Imperialism by Thomas T. Allsen caught my eye, mainly due to the title. In flipping through the book, I discovered that Allsen lays out his argument pretty clearly in the introduction and that the book seems to be about the conquering strategies of the Mongols as well as the ways in which they were able to utilize and mobilize their various resources in order to create the largest contiguous land empire in human history. He even makes specific reference to their interactions with the people of China and Russia, areas on which we are currently focused. I thought this would therefore give a nice overview of Mongol rule to which the empires we discuss in class are so often compared. Adjacent to the book were several other resources of interest, including a primary source: The Secret History of the Mongols.

Allsen, Thomas T. Mongol Imperialism: The Policies of the Grand Qan Möngke in China, Russia, and the Islamic Lands, 1251-1259. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987.