In our digital age with its global challenges, art histories can be constructed only so far through the model of nation-states and their community ideals. Sometimes, a post-nationalist framework is called for, as in the case of the vast political formation conceived and initially forged by Chinggis Khan (r. 1206-27) on Eurasia’s steppe grasslands, which expanded from the Mongolian royal heartlands south of Lake Baikal to dominate much of the known world in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Neither exactly in ‘medieval’ nor ‘early modern’ history, yet of the so-called Middle Period of Chinese history, the Yeke Monggol Ulus (Great Mongol State) ranged east to west from the Korean peninsula to Hungary and remains the largest contiguous empire the world has seen. Most of East Asia was subjugated into the khanate of Dai Őn—in Chinese, Da Yuan (Great Yuan, 1271-1368)—, and ruled most famously by Chinggis’ grandson Qubilai (r. 1260-94), the founder of Daidu/Khanbaliq (modern Beijing), who at the time of his death was still set on invading Japan and Java. The old clichés about the Mongols as uncultured hordes have long been tempered by evidence of their cosmopolitanism, intellectual curiosity, tolerance, and industrial patronage of the arts. The questions raised here concern how to do justice to such a transcultural art history, which is continental (Chinggisid Mongol) and regional (Sino-Mongol Yuan), and the degree to which this can be done through the legacy of Chinese and East Asian art histories.
Image used in poster attributed to Liu Guandao (c. 1258-1336), Khubilai Khan and his Consort Chabui Hunting (1280), hanging scroll, ink and colours on silk, 182.9 x 104.1 cm, National Palace Museum, Taipei
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