I find this very interesting and I've enjoyed thinking about the subject. Since the Mongols swept through a great corridor from Manchuria to Hungary, there seems to be a geopolitical element in it similar to European and British thought at the turn of the last century that the power controlling the heartland of Europe would control the continent. I wonder whether there was a parallel train of thought on the Mongolian side? On the British side, this line of reasoning led to the conclusion that if the Royal Navy could control the seas, they could in effect control the world. Thus the apex of British power was probably in the mid-nineteenth century before European rivals began seriously to challenge British supremacy.

As I understand a basic point in Mongol history, they managed to expand by entering into a series of alliances. I imagine that the dynamics of it were similar to the British concluding agreements or alliances with the tribes of the Northwest frontier of India or in the interior of Africa. Thus one can find the origins of "indirect rule" whereby British influence or paramountcy was achieved through indigenous structures.

I think it is a common view that barbarian Mongolian hordes swept through Europe and employed massacre and plunder, but is it not the present scholarly view that the Mongols reverted to savagery only when it was necessary to break the power of an opponent? If this is so, it is not so entirely different from European expansion, whether Russian or German, and perhaps even not so far removed from the British method of using the Gatling gun or primitive machine gun to subdue their opponents? Or is that an exercise in relativism? Perhaps there were real differences, cultural as well as military, that can't be brushed aside by saying that all imperialists were equally brutal?

On the differences, there was for example a real difference between British and French traditions of colonial rule because the French believed to a much greater degree than the British that the indigenous peoples, or at least a significant part of the elite, could be assimilated into French culture and politics. How did he Mongols deal with their subject peoples? On the French side, again, the French have proved to be much more willing than the British to continue in the post-colonial period to deploy troops and invest money. This probably explains why French influence in the former colonial world is greater than is the British. What of the Mongol legacy?