Compare And Contrast Mongols And Aztecs

The Rise To Power: The Mongols and The Aztecs The history of these two empires shows how they were able to conquer the different variations of subjects, and by this the Mongols had to conquer slightly more technologically advanced populations than the Aztecs had to. Even with being built on different hemispheres and different time periods, it is very odd how they compared in becoming popular and prosperous empires, until their decline of course. Besides their sad endings, their rise, as always, shows the great human ability to find a way to gain power in any way possible. From 600-1450, the Aztec and Mongol Empires rose and fell but in their rise to power they both needed merchants to work along with their expansion and also both did not
The Aztecs, for example, needed them to gain military intelligence of the lands they visited to later on conquer. The merchants returning with foreign exotic products, such as gems, animal skins, and tropical bird feathers to give to the ruling elites evidence the information gathered about these soon-to-be-conquered lands. The Aztecs also used the merchants to sell the abundance of tribute given to ruling elites to distant lands. Many of these items included translucent jade, emeralds, tortoise shells, jaguar skins, parrot feathers, seashells, and game animals. In the Mongol Empire, they supported merchants and artisans directly more than the Aztecs by making trade routes safe. This resulted in the increase in commercial investment and the volume of long-distance trade, but more importantly lands of China and Western Europe were directly connected for the first time. The Mongol and Aztec empires were both affected by merchants because trade had existed throughout each society creating this class of merchants to help only during win-win situations because merchants are just ordinary citizens trying to find that perfect trade to get them