page_title: Pax Mongolica
section_title: Bubonic plague
hierarchical_section_title: Pax Mongolica / Decline / Bubonic plague
caption_attribution_description: English: Map showing the spread of "black death" from Asia towards EuropeΕλληνικά: Χάρτης διασποράς της Μαύρης Πανώλης από την Ασιατική γη στην Ευρώπη
context_page_description: The Pax Mongolica, less often known as Pax Tatarica, is a historiographical term modelled after the original phrase Pax Romana which describes the stabilizing effects of the conquests of the Mongol Empire on the social, cultural and economic life of the inhabitants of the vast Eurasian territory that the Mongols conquered in the 13th and 14th centuries. The term is used to describe the eased communication and commerce the unified administration helped to create and the period of relative peace that followed the Mongols' vast conquests.
  The conquests of Genghis Khan and his successors, spanning from Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe, effectively connected the Eastern world with the Western world. The Silk Road, connecting trade centres across Asia and Europe, came under the sole rule of the Mongol Empire. It was commonly said that "a maiden bearing a nugget of gold on her head could wander safely throughout the realm". Despite the political fragmentation of the Mongol Empire into four khanates, nearly a century of conquest and civil war was followed by relative stability in the early 14th century.
context_section_description: The segregation and fragmentation of the respective khanates in the Mongol Empire were not the only factors in contributing to the decline of the Pax Mongolica. The outbreak of bubonic plague, or Black Death, also played a devastating role in the decline of the Pax Mongolica. Because the Mongol Empire bridged once isolated regions, it made it easy for the Black Death to spread rapidly.  Historian William H. McNeill has noted that the plague was transferred from ground rodents living in southern Chinese and Burmese Himalayan foothills to Mongol soldiers when they invaded the area in 1252. In 1331 the plague was noted in China, and from East Asia it was carried west along the trade routes by merchants and Mongol soldiers who were able to so freely and quickly travel across the continent during the Pax Mongolica. Plague-infected fleas hitched rides in the manes of horses, on the hair of camels, or on black rats that nestled in cargoes or in saddlebags. The Black Death is estimated to have killed one-third of China's population and 25-50% of Europe's population.
  Demographically weakened, the Mongols were not able to exert their rule over remote domains in their empire, which began to revolt once the plague broke out. These revolts disrupted the production of goods and flow of trade, which ended the Pax Mongolica.
caption: The spread of the Black Death in Europe; it was introduced to Europe from Asia
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