The emergence of a Mongol state in succession to the Kereyit khanate led to the creation of the largest land-based empire in history and a new people. The Mongols and their partners deployed and elaborated shared steppe political traditions that valued trade and customized the resources of both steppe and sedentary worlds. Under Chinggis Khan’s successor Ögödei, the mission of sacred world conquest and the ideology, governing mechanisms, and fiscal policies that enabled the attainment of this mission achieved sturdy articulation. Chinggisid priorities engendered massive demographic dislocation and transfers of peoples, and new patterns of commerce to support a robust imperial culture of consumption, patronage, and display. Early qa’ans’ ideological prerogatives and attempts to assert tighter control over resources inevitably clashed with their kinfolk’s customary claims. Tensions erupted into open civil war in 1260, but the new Chinggisid communicative space across Eurasia survived the breakup of the United Empire.

Gender relations on the Mongolian steppe were crucial to Mongol military successes and the rise of the world empire. Women’s labor within nomadic camps freed up men for wartime mobilization. Elite women were directly involved in policy decisions at the highest levels, and, like elite men, might control large armies and estates. Some were Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist, and served as patrons of these religions for their nomadic followers and for conquered people. Royal women also influenced public affairs through their marriage ties, and could thereby empower their male and female relatives for generations. The first section of this chapter discusses women and gender relations during the expansion of the United Empire, including marriage practices, women’s work, women’s participation in politics, and examples of powerful women in Mongol history. The second section covers women in the western khanates, and the third looks at women and gender in China during the Mongol Yuan dynasty.