Abstract
The Mongol are known, in particular, for their land-based conquests and their promotion of the Silk Roads across Eurasia. Their maritime history would appear to have been disastrous. They failed miserably in two naval expeditions against Japan and one against Java and even required considerable assistance from the Chinese to cross the Yangzi River to defeat the Southern Song dynasty. Despite these disasters, the Mongol Emperors of the Yuan dynasty in China supported shipbuilding and maritime commerce. Such historians as Lo Jung-pang and Tansen Sen have already shown that the Mongols promoted seaborne trade, and the late Professor Thomas Allsen profited from their research, although it is curious that he did not cite Lo’s major essay on the Yuan’s contribution to shipbuilding and maritime commerce.
Allsen chose to write about pearls as an example of the Mongols’ North and South endeavours rather than on their better-known East and West contacts. He devoted the early part of his book to a discussion of pearls and the values attached to them. After this introduction, he proceeded to describe the methods and fishing and processing pearls. This information is useful, but then the author veered into a traditional form of Sinology – examining one topic without providing real context for a specific period.
Allsen pulled together references to pearls without examining time periods. Thus, in discussing in one paragraph the prices of pearls, he wrote about discussions concerning pearls in the Han dynasty of a text produced in 81 BCE and then shifted to a description of the use of pearls in a celebration in Tamerlane’s (or Temür’s) domain in 1404. There is scant consideration of historical change. This kind of analysis would convey the impression of stagnation, especially in the history of pastoral nomads. In other chapters, the author cited specific instances or trends regarding pearls but again at different time periods (the Abbasid era of 750–1258; the Xiongnu, third century BCE to second century CE) and attributed them to the Mongols, the focus of his inquiry. The underlying assumption is that societies, particularly nomadic ones, are static.
Despite this framework, the book provides interesting information about the marketing and the desire for pearls in different societies. The author extracted citations from some Asian texts, in the original and translations in English, about pearls and their roles in specific cultures. The anecdotes from these sources are useful and, on occasion, revealing. In addition, the book argues that the steppe and sea routes for trade were interrelated in the Mongol period, and it emphasizes that commercial voyages often used both. Ports such as Hormuz and Quanzhou served as conveyors of pearls and other commodities, via land-based routes to consumers. As Allsen wrote: ‘. . .starting from 1251, the Mongolian leadership consistently pursued plans to participate actively in the commerce of the southern seas.’ (139).
The book rightly emphasizes the importance of maritime activities in the Mongol era, but it is interested principally in commerce and not as much on shipping. It focuses on the role of pearls, both real and counterfeit, as State symbols and their value in trade, and it makes a contribution in that respect. Yet it does not deal with the construction and types of ships, the sea routes from China to Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East, and navigational aids available to sailors. The spate of shipwrecks that have been discovered over the past half century off the coasts of Korea, China, India, and Persia are not within the purview of this work. Descriptions and analyses of these shipwrecks await a maritime historian.
Allsen made a strong case for the significance of maritime activities for the steppe peoples in this book.