Week 13 (Nov. 22 – Nov. 28)

Table of contents

To do and Schedule of the Week

Reminder

  • The 5-15 report for week 13 is due on Monday this week to allow you some extra time to digest Thanksgiving and travel; did you remember to send it in? Just a Google Doc shared with me will do!
  • Find all the Project and Time management info in the tab “Course Resources“.
  • You can at any stage share your project with me for feedback and I highly encourage you to do so. It doesn’t need to be perfect – in fact: I love to see work in progress because I love helping out!

Good to know

All due dates/times remain “Muhlenberg time” (that is: US East Coast Time), even when I am in a different time zone 😀

Remote learning

We will definitely be on Zoom for two Tuesday sessions: Nov. 30, and Dec. 7, but in addition there will be asynchronous online assignments so you engage with course materials without having to sit for 75 mins staring at a screen. “Asynchronous” means you can complete tasks in your own time by a certain date, while still interacting with your peers. Commenting on each other’s posts with Hypothes.is is one example you’re already familiar with!

The Thursday sessions are lab-time: come and join your fellow students! There are breakout rooms available if you want to talk, there is a quiet main space, and a private space for individual consultations with me.

Why this format? It’s quite powerful and encouraging to have dedicated time to work together as a community at a fixed time of the week and see that community at work. I am in several writing groups on Zoom, “camera on, sound off, chat in the sidebar” with a 15 check-in at the end, and they’ve been a lifeline for my productivity during the pandemic. Try it!

By Tuesday, Nov. 23, 11:59PM

Seating plan: A comfortable space where you will be able to read, think, and write quietly for a couple of hours 😀

We will look at the Mongols using some primary sources: one written by a Song military official who is trying to escape them; a description by a European traveller to the court of the Guyuk Khan, the third great Mongol Khan (and grandson of Genghis Khan), and the Khan’s reply to the Pope (they were not exactly pen pals, but they exchanged a letter); and an excerpt from the Secret History of the Mongols about the succession of Genghis and the destruction of the Western Xia kingdom (the Tangut people with the supercool writing).

If you need to get some additional historical background, check out the the “In Our Time” podcast linked below in Optional Extras: almost as fast as the Mongol conquest itself, your knowledge of its history will increase.

TASK:

  1. Look through the Slides. I left lots of notes in the Speaker Notes (View > Speaker Notes). I prefer this over a video because you can go at your own pace, and save the slides on your own drive for future reference.
  2. Pick 1 of the following primary source sets, and jot down your ideas, thoughts and responses on the Google Doc. You can in addition annotate the text using Hypothes.is, in group HST269.
  3. Then go through the responses on the other primary source sets, and add comments, questions, thoughts: do you see connections? Interesting contradictions or apparent paradoxes? Treat this as the “classroom discussion space”. TIP: If you are an early bird and do 2. early, you may have to return to the document after a day (or two) to be able to interact with other responses.
Primary source set 1
  • Wen Tianxiang. “Account of the Compass.” Translated by Stephen Owen, in An Anthology of Chinese Literature : Beginnings to 1911. 1st Ed. ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.
    • PDF
    • Extract from Wen Tianxiang’s Account of the Compass pp. 713-719. It’s ok to skim the poetry; main passage of interest marked in red brackets; you may read the longer translated section. Introductory notes from the translator included for your reference.
    • Wen was a loyalist of the Song regime. He was captured by the Mongols, then escaped. In this passage he makes his way south to what remains of the Song court. Mongol soldiers and their allies (“northerners”) are hunting him down, and southerners (Song people) do not trust him, thinking he was a spy, only pretending to have escaped.
    • Guiding questions: How reliable is this source, from a die-hard loyalist who’s unable to make contact with the authorities on whose behalf he is fighting? How does it make you feel to read this story?

Primary Source set 2

NOTE: contains TWO short texts

  • John of Plano Carpini. History of the Mongols. In The Mongol Mission: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. Edited by Christoper Dawson. Makers of Christendom. New York: AMS Press, 1980; letter of Guyuk Khan to Pope Innocent IV, dated 1246.
    • PDF
    • Brief excerpt from the History of the Mongols by John of Plano Carpini. This Franciscan friar was sent in 1245 by Pope Innocent IV with Lawrence of Portugal to send a bull (papal public letter) to the Mongol Khan. The pope entertained hopes of creating an alliance with the Mongols against the Muslims. This is only a small excerpt of a longer work.
  • “Guyuk Khan’s to Pope Innocent IV”, dated 1246.InThe Mongol Mission: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. Edited by Christoper Dawson. Makers of Christendom. New York: AMS Press, 1980.
    • PDF
    • This is the reply from the Mongol Khan to the pope to the mission seeking an alliance.
    • Note: “God” in the translation is not the Christian God, but the supreme deity of the Mongols, more akin to the Chinese concept of Tian or Heaven (as seen in the Mandate of Heaven)
    • Guiding questions: How were the Mongols seen by others? How did they see themselves and the world around them? How does John of Plano Carpini’s view on the Mongols compare with for instance Wang Renyu’s view on the Khitan (another pastoral people), as we saw in week 12 (Option A)

Primary Source Set 3

  • The Secret History of the Mongols: The Origin of Chingis Khan. An Adaptation by Paul Kahn. Boston: Cheng and Tsui Company, 1998.
    • PDF (selections marked in red brackets, starting p. 3, of PDF, p. 7, p. 11, p. 17, p. 20 ff)
    • Two “plot lines”: one is the destruction of the Xixia/Western Xia state of the Tangut; the other is the succession of Genghis (Chingis) Khan.
    • This is not the most authoritative translation, but it is easier to read. I have the same excerpt in a more scholarly translation should you wish to work with this document intensely.
    • Guiding questions: What can you learn about Mongol organization from this fragment, and do you find anything that points to the reasons for their success?

Optional Extras/Useful background

By Monday, Nov. 29, 11:59PM

Fill out and send in/share your “5-15 progress report“

All the details are in the form. This is a weekly returning assignment that helps us both to ensure you keep working on the course project(s). I often can identify a potential problem area before you’ve even hit it, and steer you on a more successful course, using these weekly reports.

Until further notice (or a full scale rebellion), consider these a weekly returning task. Please be careful when using pitchforks while staging a rebellion.

Slides

Mongols!

Where to get help