The Mongol Archive in Late Medieval France

Texts, Objects, Encounters, 1221–1422

Mark Cruse

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781501779374
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Central Asian History
• Index: History

The Mongol Archive in Late Medieval France is the first comprehensive study of contact between France and the Mongols in the late Middle Ages. As these realms expanded across Eurasia—the French through crusade and settlement, the Mongols through conquest—their encounters altered each other's understanding of the world and their place in it.

The Mongol influence on French culture is visible in what Mark Cruse calls the Mongol archive—a wide range of materials including chronicles, crusade treatises, encyclopedias, manuscript illuminations, maps, romances, and travel accounts—revealing how the French court made sense of a people previously unknown to the European intellectual tradition. Cruse mines this archive of Franco-Mongol contact to reassess France's place in the continental history of medieval Eurasia.

By comparing the French and Mongol courts, Cruse shows how their similarities allowed meaningful communication between them and highlights the surprising connections—diplomatic, intellectual, and genealogical—across vast distances. The library of King Charles V (r. 1364–1380), one of the largest in medieval Europe, is a monument to the richness of these encounters, which anticipate the global interconnectedness of the modern world. Ultimately, the innovative approach in The Mongol Archive in Late Medieval France toward French conceptions of and relations with the Mongols demonstrates how a global perspective transforms our understanding of the medieval world.

Table of contents

• List of Maps and Figures
• Preface: Artifacts of Our Global Past
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Mongol Archive in Late Medieval France
• 1. The Origins of the Mongol Archive in Late Medieval France
• 2. Louis IX, the Mongols, and International Court Culture
• 3. Eurasian France: The Cumans, the Valois, and Marco Polo
• 4. The Mongol Archive and the Library of King Charles V
• 5. The Mongol Archive during the Reign of King Charles VI
• Conclusion: The Afterlives of the Mongol Archive
• Appendix A: France and the Mongols: Textual References, Diplomatic Contacts, and Select Objects, 1221–1422
• Appendix B: Objects and the Mongol Archive in Late Medieval France
• Bibliography
• Index