‘Converting’ Knowledge, Culture and Themselves

Abstract In this paper, I propose a new model of how the Mongol empire connected the various systems used by the subject peoples under their control. I contrast this to modern empires, which used a system of direct standardisation, so that one calendar, one currency, one system of measures, one way of doing history, often even one language (at least for most public purposes) and so on, was imposed on the entire empire. In the Mongol Empire, while a single system was not imposed, new methods of ‘conversion’ – or perhaps we could say ‘conversion formulae’ – appeared, by which disparate cultural practices of the conquered peoples were maintained, but rendered easily ‘convertible’ to each other, using tables and cognate methods. I discus this ‘conversion’ empire – as opposed to the modern ‘integration’ empire – in the fields of the calendar, language, money and historiography.