ABSTRACT
Mongolia is part of Inner Asia but also of Asia in general, and in that sense takes part in the patterns of Asian history with its periods of universalism and localism following one another in alternation up to the emergence of the Mongolian Empire in the 13th–14th centuries. In the periods of universalism empires coexisted across Asia: the first period saw the Qin-Han in China, the Xiongnu in the steppe and the Roman Empire in the west. In the second phase of universalism we see the Tang, the early Turk, the Uyghurs, Byzantium and the Islamic empires. These were all multiethnic, multicultural political entities established along trade routes, yet they had differing trade policies. It was among pastoral nomadic people of the second localist period that Chinggis Khan became a leader and rose to eminence.
