Mongolia

From steppe horse-archers to the largest land empire in history, and the long road back to an independent democracy.

Mongolia is the heartland of the great nomadic confederations of the Eurasian steppe, from the Xiongnu of the third century BCE to the empire forged by Temüjin, who in 1206 was proclaimed Chinggis (Genghis) Khan, supreme ruler of a united Mongol nation. His successors built the largest contiguous land empire ever known and, under his grandson Kublai Khan, ruled China as the Yuan dynasty. After the empire fragmented, Mongolia fell under the overlordship of the Manchu Qing for two centuries and embraced Tibetan Buddhism. Independence declared in 1911 and secured by revolution in 1921 produced the Soviet-aligned Mongolian People's Republic in 1924; a peaceful revolution in 1990 ended one-party rule, and Mongolia today is a multiparty democracy and market economy wedged between Russia and China.