ABSTRACT
Professor Arnold Toynbee has written what he himself considers a ‘condemnatory’ review of the book, ‘Oriental Despotism’. His way of handling the thesis that large-scale government-managed works of irrigation and flood control played a crucial role in the establishment of specific types of total power exemplifies his method. Toynbee’s request for ‘serious evidence’ on the Chinese background of the beginnings of Mongol rule in Russia is almost embarrassing. In 1234 the Mongol Great Khan, having completed the defeat of the Chin dynasty, became the official ruler of the vast realm of North China. In 1237, this monarch ordered his subordinate, Batu, to conquer the Russian lands and organize them in accordance with the political and administrative ideas then held in the eastern metropolis.
