Mongol conquests (1274): Japan expeditions

Steppe unification, city sieges, and a Eurasian afterlife The Mongol wars were a technology of mobility and terror that became, in the successor khanates, a system of tax, post and pluralism -- at a demographic price still counted in ranges. Chinggis's early wars were against steppe rivals, then Western Xia and Jin. The 1215 fall of Zhongdu (Beijing) is an early named urban catastrophe in the Chinese record.

Ogedei and later Mongke continued the China war; Kublai's Yuan was a conquest dynasty that also became a Chinese state. The Khwarezm war (from 1219) after the Otrar incident produced the most famous massacre chronicles. Batu and Subutai's 1237-42 western campaign broke Volga Bulgaria and many Rus' cities and defeated European knights at Legnica and Mohi -- then withdrew when Ogedei died.

Hulagu's 1258 sack of Baghdad ended the Abbasid caliphate's old political theatre. Ain Jalut (1260) stopped the Syrian advance. Japan survived two invasion attempts (1274, 1281) that Korean and Chinese shipyards were forced to support -- a Goryeo trauma as much as a Japanese typhoon legend.